Before I begin my talk, I'd like to introduce my dear friend and Dharma brother, Mike Port, who is visiting us here this weekend from Minnesota. And I'd like to say out loud in front of everyone how happy I am whenever you can come and be here with us. I was actually saying to Mike earlier this morning that the longer I study and practice the Buddha Dharma, the more I appreciate the teachings from Shakyamuni Buddha in what is called the first turning of the wheel, the first public teaching that he gave in Sarnath. where he presented the teaching about the Four Noble Truths. And in particular, this last week or ten days, I've been appreciating the liberative aspect of this teaching.

[01:14]

And in particular, the First Noble Truth, which is the truth about the fact of suffering. As I've been thinking about our being together this morning and what I might say on this teaching about the fact of suffering, what came up in my mind is what a dour reputation Buddhists have. You know, we're always talking about death or shit. But my experience is that the people that I have known over the years who are long-time practitioners are people who have a quality of real joy, a capacity for delight, being delighted by simple things.

[02:19]

From the inside I know that this is not a path about sinking mind or being dour. So there's this paradox. The truth of suffering, the fact of suffering, that there is in our lives suffering and that it isn't just random, it doesn't just fall randomly from the sky. The suffering in our lives isn't the consequence of somebody sitting somewhere thinking up terrible things for us. Although, of course, there are times in our lives when that's how it feels to us. Somebody is doing this to me. But I find that this description about the fact of suffering

[03:23]

And that suffering has causes and conditions. There are causes and conditions that lead to suffering. The truth of the law of causation. And that there is a path for the cessation of suffering, the liberation of suffering. And the articulation about how, what that path looks like. I spend quite a bit of time each week, or most weeks, sitting and listening to people tell me about their lives, and in particular telling me about their suffering. So I have a kind of built-in opportunity for knowing about, meeting, really being affected by the suffering of the world, not in general, but in particular.

[04:25]

And I'm actually quite grateful for that opportunity because there's another part of my nature, and I think this is true for many of us, some inclination to turn away from suffering, to distract myself from suffering, to not read the article in the New Yorker about the massacre in the village in Salvador. to not want to go to the Holocaust Museum. I have learned that it's better for me if I want to sleep at night to not watch the news on TV at all, ever, under any circumstances. So then what do I do if I'm not going to turn away from the suffering of the world? I think there are other and perhaps more reliable ways of knowing about what happens in the world.

[05:37]

I discovered a while back that if I read the newspaper but I let them age a little bit, I somehow have a different relationship to the stories, which are of course mostly about terrible things. We don't seem to report the liberative events of our lives. This last week when I was in Berkeley on Tuesday evening, just before I went to the yoga room for the class that I'm doing there, I went to Mo's bookstore and I parked up the side street, quarter of a block off of Telegraph. And I'm a little nervous going to the East Bay these days. All of you who are my friends who live over there keep telling me about the increase in random violence visiting the so-called safe neighborhoods.

[06:52]

So I noticed that I have a kind of alertness, as I did this evening. I had my purse carefully anchored over my shoulder under my cape. I had the book that I had bought for my daughter under my arm. As I walked up the street, a slight incline in the street, coming out of the People's Park was this apparition, this vast, furled, no, unfurled, a sleeping bag that looked like a kind of down mountain on legs coming out of the park. And I was a little interested, what is that person doing? And suddenly my leg gave way and I took quite a hard fall on the sidewalk. Hard enough so that it knocked my breath out of me and I wasn't able to speak for a while or move.

[07:57]

But the unfurled, no, is it unfurled? Unfurled. The unfurled tent manifested as a homeless man who came rushing over, as did another man, to see if I was all right, to offer some assistance. Should they call somebody? Could I stand up? You know, my purse went flying up the street, the book skidded some distance away. If somebody had wanted to take my stuff. They could have. I was not in any position to be protecting myself. In that moment, I was completely vulnerable. And what came to me was this very dear attention and kindness from these two men. In the days since then, I can see their faces quite vividly.

[09:00]

Their faces dropped into my heart that evening. I stood up, they helped me stand up, and I gathered up my book and my purse, and I kind of hobbled to the car, and I sat in the car kind of Moaning. My dear friend Nancy Wilson Ross used to say that when you don't feel good, it helps to moan lightly and nibble on the edge of the sheets. Of course, I didn't have any sheets to be nibbling on, but I was enjoying a little moaning. I really did hurt my poor knees. People at the class were also very kind and attentive when I said what had happened, but of course I expect them to be kind because I know them and they're not homeless. They're not the sort of dark, scruffy, potentially scary folk.

[10:05]

Even so, that kindness is great kindness. When I was sitting early this morning, I remembered an encounter I had in New York a few years ago with a homeless woman who was sitting outside the entrance to the subway in December. It was a particularly cold night. And I started to go down the stairs to get to the subway. And something about her, I felt stopped. And I went back up the steps and gave her some money. And she reached out and she held my hands. We held each other's hands for a few moments and just sat there and looked at each other. To this day, I can see her face. and feel that sense of connection with her. Everything in me wanted to walk by her, go down the stairs and keep moving because of course her situation is frightening because I have some place in me, I think most of us do, some recognition of our own possibility of being in such circumstances.

[11:32]

There is something that I think arises very easily when we encounter in some direct way the suffering of others, where there is that inclination to turn away, and yet when we turn towards our own suffering and the suffering of others, such remarkable things happen. And most importantly of all, There cannot be any liberation from that suffering until and unless I come to know the suffering in great detail. Thich Nhat Hanh in his book The Miracle of Mindfulness has a little subtitle on one of the early sections in the book where he talks about the meditation that reveals and heals. Very important flag. Because if I don't know the nature of what is so, I don't know what is so, I don't know accurately, clearly, truthfully what is so, I have no possibility of taking care of what I can take care of and accepting, learning how to accept what I can't do anything about.

[12:57]

I often think about what happens if I have some injury, a cut on my finger or my arm. I can't begin to know how to heal that injury if I don't first look at it carefully and notice the very specific details of the cut. Does it need to be cleaned? Does it need stitches? Does it need bandages? Does it need open air? Does it need leaving alone or attending? If so, what kind of attending? So that pull to turn away from suffering is a kind of abandonment. that just keeps us in that place of perpetual suffering and away from that encounter of connectedness with ourselves and others that arises with our willingness to know the suffering in the world.

[14:04]

Some of us recently did a retreat, seven days between Christmas and New Year's. Who would think sitting quietly for seven days with all of the agony of aching legs and ankles and backs and headaches and let me out of here. I signed up for this and I paid for it. And after several days, we individually and collectively landed, settled into, experienced ourselves, connected and landed in this realm of great liberation and joy. I was, of course, in the lucky position where I got to hear what everybody had to say about how it was.

[15:12]

It was wonderful. It was a great gift. Because, of course, what I kept hearing was one after another amazement at the delight that began to arise somewhere on day four. And somebody said, I thought it would just get more and more painful, that the discomfort would just get more and more intense. One person who came neglected to tell me that she hadn't done any formal meditation practice for three years. She'd had quite a bit of experience, but it was a while back. And she actually came to the retreat thinking that we were going to do kind of workshop stuff and be out in the garden and walk a lot and do some art projects. She didn't know it was going to be hardcore, silent, sitting and walking and not much else.

[16:16]

And she was kind of alarmed, stunned, appalled, panicked, deeply delighted. Maybe that's where this reputation about being gluttons for punishment comes from, for meditators. That we intentionally sit down and sit still and hang out with physical discomfort, mental discomfort, discomfort of the heart, all the different discomforts that arise. If we're patient enough, we discover our capacity for liberation from suffering by that sitting down, that radical sitting down, cultivating our ability to be with what is so, refining our capacity to see clearly.

[17:22]

There's a way in which I think if we are really open to knowing, seeing and hearing and being touched by the suffering in the world, we also, of necessity, visit our helplessness to change someone else's suffering. And I think that in that sense of helplessness to relieve someone else's suffering, the dead end, if you will, of being an ambulance driver. Some of us have tried ambulance driving for very long periods of time. All we do is wear ourselves out. I think that in that experience, that encounter with a kind of helplessness, we forget about the kind of help that we receive from each other by being inspired, by having company, the inspiration of seeing another person turn their own suffering.

[18:58]

The kind of ripple effect that happens when we practice together and can see over some period of time, not nearly as quick as we might imagine we would want, but if we're patient, over some period of time, deep cultivation and transformation of, in some cases, mind-boggling suffering. I think one of the reasons I so love the tradition of sacred art in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition is because there is this kind of brave depicting of the most grim states of mind, this display of the possibility of transforming anything, that there isn't anything that will arise in the mind that can't be

[19:59]

transformed, that isn't the field of opportunity for liberation. Some of the more terrific forms of compassion, if you hang out with them long enough, you begin to see how here is some expression of the darkest part of the human mind and the capacity to move that darkness to light. And how much we can't do that if we don't include both. A few days ago, the son of a man that I knew for a long time at the Zen Center, a man who was ordained as a priest and who at some point in his life got hooked by cocaine and heroin.

[21:04]

He became a very high roller dealer. We did all kinds of things. We did interventions. He ended up in a treatment center several times. I packed up his house for him more than once. He almost made it to recovery. He was desperate for money once he got clean and sober, and he was on one last trip to Thailand to sell his connections to somebody. He hadn't used any drugs for quite a while, and he OD'd on heroin. So he had quite beautiful Amida Buddha and some Thangkas, and these were what was left for his son, who's now, I don't know, how old would you think he is?

[22:12]

Nineteen, maybe? Sweet young man. I could just see his father's face in his face when he came a couple of nights ago with the Thangkas and the Buddha. He's out of work and he wants to sell them. So he came to see if we were interested in any of them. So this is one of the Tanka's here on the wall. And there's another one I put up by the coat rack in the library. And I look at them and I remember Terry Gregg. He had some feeling for the Buddha Dharma and he had some sense of the possibility of liberation. But it wasn't this round strong enough for him.

[23:13]

Such deep suffering in his life. that touched so many of us who knew him. Suffering which we were all completely and utterly helpless to do anything about. He died quite a number of years ago, so I'm a little bit struck at the vividness of his presence, his effort, that arises in me this morning. It does seem that our willingness to be open to suffering, our own and each other's, brings along with it, is part of, is the same territory, our capacity to touch and be touched,

[24:25]

for gladness and joy. We don't get to have one without the other. In the dedication verse that Bill was going through with some of you after the talking about prostrations, may all beings have equanimity without too much attraction or too much aversion. We all would like the attraction side forget about the aversion side. So the first noble truth that there is suffering. I am struck by the importance, the deep, great value in our meeting or hearing or understanding very deeply how important that first truth is.

[25:32]

Yes. Maybe because there's some possibility that I will go to India in March I find myself thinking about the practice of going on pilgrimage. The first time I went to India, I only made it to two of the pilgrimage places, to Bodh Gaya, which is where the Buddha was enlightened, and to Sarnath, where this first teaching, this first turning of the wheel took place. And also to Vulture Peak, which is where the great Heart Sutra teaching was given. If any of you ever have a chance to go on a trip and do the pilgrimage practice, I hope you will do it.

[26:45]

Something remarkable about being in those places, There is a way in which you can feel quite palpably the Buddha's life and teaching. And when I consider the Four Noble Truths, the teaching about the truth of suffering, that suffering has causes, that there can be liberation or an ending of suffering, and that that liberation is the path of the Eightfold Path. That landscape in which the Buddha gave that teaching comes up so vividly. Inspiring. More than 2,500 years later, there are still pilgrims going to that place.

[27:53]

There's a great ancient stupa there. Just at the edge of town there's a hill, not a very big hill, not a very dramatic hill. But I couldn't leave that hill alone. I kept being pulled to that hill. And you walk up on a little footpath up to the top of the hill, and the hillside was just covered with little tiny stupas that were made by people bringing stones and just piling them up. They weren't beautiful. The hill wasn't beautiful. The view wasn't particularly good, because the hill was just this little mound. And the friend that I was with said, when I finally, he kept wondering, where do you keep going? I finally told him I was going to this hill. He said, well, you know, it's quite likely that that was one of the places where the Buddha taught because he could sit up on the hill and people would gather and be able to hear him and see him.

[28:59]

This is the neighborhood after all. To see so many people from so many different parts of the world going around the stupas and doing various practices. Taking up this teaching about there is a path to liberation. Incredibly inspiring. Particularly to see how many different looks we have. And of course the challenge for us is to find how to pick up the pith, essence, teachings in ways that really work for us as Americans. We have to know the suffering that is particular for us in our time and circumstance.

[30:09]

Otherwise, we won't have any sense of how to proceed, how to take care of what we can take care of and come to some equanimity about that which we cannot do anything about. And of course, every time we turn away from suffering, we turn away from the opportunity to discover some capacity we haven't yet discovered we have. Most of us, I think, don't begin to have a clue what great and vast capacity each of us has. At the same time, I think many of us work too hard. We put too much pushing and trying in our practices. I can see it when we sit together, all this efforting.

[31:19]

Let the canary be our inspiration. I don't think he could begin to do that lovely singing if there wasn't some ease and relaxation in his throat. especially since he was silent for two years. He witnessed a really angry argument and shut up for two years. My friend finally said, here, you take him for a while. He's not singing for me. What he really likes is the juicer, the dishwasher, the vacuum cleaner, and the Heart Sutra. He sings for all of those sounds. So what I want to propose for all of us, myself included, that we really pick up

[32:40]

these teachings about the Four Noble Truths, that we keep reminding ourselves every time we notice in some specific situation a little turning away, that we keep, in the best way we can, just keep coming back to reminding ourselves about the possibility of turning towards, of staying present, even when what we're staying present with is the inclination to turn away. We may be surprised at what we discover. Great teachings arise out of our suffering. Great insights arise out of our suffering. And there is also the opportunity for coming to see clearly the causes and conditions that lead to our suffering.

[33:52]

Clinging. The Velcro material of our lives. Recently I sat and listened to a friend of mine who has been talking to me now for over a year about one heartbreaking romance after another. She still doesn't get the teaching about clinging and desire. Some of us keep going back to the same causes and conditions, revisiting the scene of the crime over and over again. 40, 50, 60 years, 17 lifetimes, who knows how many times we keep coming back to the same landscape.

[35:01]

And there's a way in which we stay stuck in that returning because we turn away. We don't quite notice, oh, I know this. I've been here before. How many more times do I want to keep showing up for this particular program? And mostly what we can do is to show up. is to bring the fullest awareness we can to what is in front of us. I was recently listening to an interview that Terry Gross did on Fresh Air of Jon Kabat-Zinn. The doctor and not very disguised meditation teacher who started the pain and relaxation clinic at the University of Massachusetts Teaching Hospital.

[36:12]

It's really lovely. There he is. Pure Dharma teaching. He doesn't, as Bill puts it, he doesn't use the B word. He talks about the universality of the teaching about mindful awareness. And he's had such extraordinary effect helping people who suffer from physical pain. And what does he teach them? How to be present with it. How to turn towards their suffering out of wisdom. There he was on public television suggesting to a group of people that they take one raisin and put it in their mouths and eat it.

[37:17]

It's a really radical thing to do on prime time television, right? So don't be put off by the word suffering. Don't be put off by the fear that may come up in you of, oh, I'm not going to have any fun in my life. I'm just going to have this dried up old prune of a life if I take up this path. Check out some of the people who've been practicing for a long time and see how dried and prune-like they look. There's one photograph on the mantle of Katagiri Roshi taken in the late 60s at Tassajara, the old zendo which subsequently burned down.

[38:36]

How did you describe it? It was his scowling look, which he later gave up. He could really do that. But he could also smile and laugh in a way that was like the sun shining. So let's have a cup of tea. I'll quickly pour the water over the tea leaves. We have some tea from the garden, some lemon verbena, if you like that, and some dark tea. So let's take maybe 10 minutes to get some tea and then reconvene. And if there are some things you'd like to talk about or discuss or wonder about, bring up for us to look at together, we can do that for a while.

[39:46]

And I thought we might do that for about 45 minutes, depending on what we get into, and then we can have lunch together. So let's start with a cup of tea. Bill brought up a concern about my unpacking. My suggestion to you that you look carefully at someone or some few people who have been practicing for a long time. It is possible to sit on your cushion and go through all the forms for a long time and not have anything happen. I mean, I think it's important to understand that. There are no guarantees. But people who feel like there's some authentic cooking, some authentic spiritual life in them, come to have a kind of glowing about them.

[41:00]

So there's also some, use your common sense, don't just buy press releases. So, any of you have something you'd like to talk about, or questions you have, or things that come up? Richard? Yeah, I think that's right. Well, I think that the insights that are embedded in the Eightfold Path really address that question.

[42:08]

What I'm talking about only can happen in particular, in each moment. A group of us have been studying the mindfulness sutra now for a while. I feel like we might spend the rest of our lives on this sutra. It's so rich. And in the cultivation of mindful awareness, a part of that cultivation includes developing the capacity to notice, but in a very specific way called bare noting. Noticing hardly at all. noticing in the context of settling with the very specific detail of physical body and breath in that moment with this breath in and out to be with anger or fear or irritation or whatever it is.

[43:15]

The path is not in general, it's very much in particular. And when we get to that place where the world is horrible, that generalization carries lots of that habitual thinking that clouds our vision, so we're not seeing clearly. We get stuck in, we sink into stories about how it is and how it's been. We get caught in the stories. which is a very stuck place. It's one of the difficulties when we get stuck particularly in the stories about where we came from and what it was like when we were kids, etc. We need to do a certain amount of that to really study causes and conditions that have led to the characteristics of our mind stream. But at a certain point, the stories themselves become a kind of trap. We eat, we can keep regenerating that old suffering

[44:24]

and fail to see the possibility of generating different states of mind. So the detail in the cultivation of mindful awareness, the whole sequence of practices, the path is very specifically articulated in ways that address exactly what you're bringing up. In the moment. And I think most of us don't begin to know what extraordinary capacity we have to be present with what we think about, oh, I couldn't possibly do that. We don't know if we can do that. You know, it's one of the things that happens when you first start having a sitting meditation, is you begin to discover, the first time you do a long retreat, you discover, you know, can I really sit still in one place for a week?

[45:25]

Give me a break. I can't do that. Well, how do you do it? You don't do it in general, because if you do it in general, you'll leave. You do it one period at a time. You do it one breath at a time. It's actually quite radical. Someone else's traumatic experience. Maybe something very close to it. Well I think that's a real bite to that question for us as Americans because in our culture we have so much emphasis on action, on doing.

[46:54]

And we often feel compelled to do. in a way that takes us right through and past and away from being present with? And how often do we discover that 98% of what is possible occurs as a consequence of being present with what is so? It's the great discovery in the cultivation of mindful awareness. is that all our ideas about doing begin to be significantly affected, I think. I also think it's why working with dying people can bring us to some of the same realization. Because there comes a certain point in someone's dying process where there ceases to be much you can do except hang out. And that becomes amazing to discover how rich the capacity for seeing clearly, for seeing and listening, and at some point acting.

[48:06]

But specifically without judging, without either attraction or aversion. A different kind of seeing and listening. Anyway, I think that the sense of, oh, well, if I see a situation, then I'm going to have to do something about it. I think you're completely right that for many of us, kind of fear comes up in that configuration. But I think that's partially a kind of characteristic, a burden that comes from the emphasis that we place as a culture group on doing. Yeah, exactly. And how much comfort comes when someone is just with me?

[49:18]

I mean, that was what happened for me with those two homeless men on Tuesday night. They were offering to do something, but their presence, their actual activity was they were just there. And when I indicated, I couldn't really talk for a few minutes. And so, but I kind of, I didn't want anyone to touch me. I just wanted to kind of Where am I? They understood that. It was really very tender. Yeah. urban uh-huh very grungy clothing and matted hair matted beard you just flowing from free really flowing from his face and i was i avoided him we were on the sidewalk together the past and i avoided him it was an inversion 20 minutes later exiting the

[50:48]

and there he was going through the garbage. And for some reason I just stopped, motioned him over, and gave him a dollar. And he uttered, his eyes lit up, and he uttered, he became a human being for a moment. He uttered, it was a very guttural joy, but it was obviously out of his mind. And just that moment humbled me to certain things. And that was a gift to me with our compassion and on our way. That was my Christmas tree as myself. I have a friend who lives in Sacramento who told me about something that happened to her on the 23rd of December, she went to the local post office where they had all these letters from letters that children had written to Santa Claus, which apparently the postal employees gather together so they won't go to the dead letter pile.

[52:06]

And then people are invited to come in and if they want to take a letter and answer it somehow or another, they can. So I guess there'd been some publicity about this program. And so my friend and her husband on the 23rd of December went to the post office, and they each took a batch of letters, and they read through them, and they picked two letters. This was the story I keep meaning to tell you. I haven't gotten around it, so here it is. So one of the letters was from a little boy who lives in a very small town south of Fresno, who said, dear Santa, what I want is blankets, some blankets for me and my sisters and brothers and my mother and father because there are broken windows in our house and the wind goes through the house and we're really cold. Please can we have some blankets? And then the other letter that my friend and her husband picked was written by a young girl who lives in a very poor section of Sacramento who was asking Santa Claus for some clothes for herself.

[53:23]

And then she went through each of her brothers and sisters asking for clothes for them. She said, since there are so many of us, if you can't bring clothes for all of us, you don't have to bring any clothes for me, but please bring some clothes for my brothers and sisters. So my friend and her husband and her sister and her sister's family all got together and they got clothes and stuff for the family in Sacramento. But particularly the story about what happened with a little boy south of Fresno was really wonderful. My friend called Macy's in Fresno. and said, I want to buy some blankets and put it on my credit card, but I want to make sure the blankets can be delivered by Christmas. And the woman who took her order said, oh, well, I know where this town is. It's not so far from here. And in fact, someone who works in customer service lives in that neighborhood.

[54:31]

Let me ask her if she would deliver the blankets. So she asked the woman, and the woman said, yes, she'd deliver the blankets. That woman had a son who just started a glass business. He went to the house and put in new windows. The windows that were broken were the front windows on the one side of the house and the other side of the house. And it really was like this gale going through the house. In the course of the phone call to Macy's and reading the letter to the woman who answered the phone call, they got all the employees on that floor in Macy's made contributions, including the temporary help to buy toys to go with the blankets. It was like this whole group of about 20 people got mobilized to help answer this little boy's letter. And my friend said, you know, she'd been for two months before Christmas moaning about all she had to do and she didn't have time and she resented it and it was such a drag and all these obligations.

[55:45]

And it was like this experience with going to the post office and getting these two letters and answering them, she said, I really felt like we had a true Christmas this year. This is what this is about. And it completely meant for her and her family taking on the suffering of these two children who'd written these two letters. She talked about going to the home of the girl who'd asked Santa Claus to bring her clothes for herself and her siblings. And her nieces were worried because they were going into a poor part of town and it was getting dark. And one of the girls said, well, what if we get robbed? And her aunt said, well, then the people who rob us will have the clothes and the presents and the blankets. Because if they're robbing us, maybe they'll need them. It's all right. What do we have to worry about? I thought it was an incredible story. And it had everything to do with that, you know, looking up and handing someone a dollar bill or having some contact.

[56:55]

It's a way for us to be kind to ourselves as well. Yes? That sounds like doormat-itis practice. I mean, what the Buddha was talking about in this teaching is about seeing clearly.

[58:10]

Seeing clearly includes seeing clearly enough to know what can I do something about and what can I not do something about. You know, do I keep showing up in a situation where someone keeps hitting me in the side of the head with a baseball bat? That's not seeing clearly. Seeing clearly is that seeing where I have some understanding, some capacity for seeing not only the suffering but the causes and conditions of that suffering. And I think particularly in relationships for a lot of us, we get caught because we have some idea that we can do, we can change someone else. I can change their suffering or I can get them to be a different person or whatever. And we miss that the only mind stream we can do anything about is my own.

[59:17]

relationship with? I can change something about me and that may or may not bring about some effect in this relationship. I can only do what I can do. But in a relationship with another person there's also this other person. What do they come to? What is the effect of my cultivating clear-sightedness and some sense of the unwholesome patterns in my mind stream and transforming those in whatever ways I'm able to. Sometimes the consequence of that is that it's clear that I should leave this relationship. I think it's very, very easy to not stay with the articulation of what the Four Noble Truths is about and come up with a kind of justification for codependency in the name of the Bodhisattva vow.

[60:37]

I don't think that's what the Buddha is talking about at all. I think it's very important to keep in mind that one of the qualities to be cultivated is the quality of patience. To take on the Four Noble Truths, to take on looking into, coming to understand deeply the truth of suffering, that there are causes and conditions. that there can be a cessation to suffering and that that cessation of suffering is brought about by the cultivation of and following the Eightfold Path. It takes patience because this is not a path that's quick. Lifetimes.

[61:42]

I look at certain patterns in my own life And it's taken me a long time to realize it took a long time for these patterns to be so deeply entrenched in my mind stream. I'm not likely to transform or dissolve or ease away these patterns. It may take not just months or years, lifetimes, It's where the whole teaching, troublesome for us as Westerners, I think, teaching about past and future lives, is at least potentially very encouraging. Because, you know, I think every once in a while we encounter some aspect of our mind stream and we think, oh, this is really big and deep and strong. I know for myself the encouraging aspect of this teaching arose in practicing with people who have themselves been following this path on their own journey in understanding these teachings for a long time and seeing

[63:19]

what cultivated compassion and wisdom looks like in a particular individual. And the inspiration that arises from that in terms of, oh. I mean, I remember Suzuki Roshi, who in the time that I knew him, was someone I would describe as remarkably patient. And he said, oh no, my  tendency is to be very impatient and get angry very quickly. He said, I've been working with, practicing with the habit of anger and frustration and impatience all of my life. Well, by the time he was in his 50s, you could begin to see some other quality in the mind. It was hard for me to believe his description. His wife kept saying, yes, he's right, he's telling you the truth. It's always nice to have a spouse around to kind of verify what a creep you used to be.

[64:28]

until I could make a pair good enough that I would send it to him, and then with a very nice letter and so on. I kept waiting. And I wasn't answering the phone yesterday morning, but I happened to go in the room where the machine was, and I heard this terrible noise. And it was this friend telling me how despairing he is at this moment. Wife left him and so on. He was really right down there, placed. And so I listened to him talk and so on, but I felt terrible that I hadn't gotten my act together to call back. I didn't even make up a story of what he was calling for the first time, except it was some good news. And I was proud of him. And so I waited for such a big, you know, to give him a big present back, instead of just calling and saying, thank you for this wonderful gift. And somehow, in some way, I'd love you to say something then, because then I was left feeling very badly. How hard it is. with all the things that are on my plate, all the nice things I would like to do for people that would genuinely nourish me.

[66:12]

More of less. Do more of less. I mean, that's part of our current dilemma, isn't it? We're all incredibly busy. But also, that waiting until we can do it perfectly and we never get around to it. It's why, you know, when somebody gets a diagnosis of a life-threatening disease, it can be an incredible gift because you just don't wait around anymore. You know, it's no accident that there is this incredible early on the path articulation of meditate on the impermanent nature of things. Because we all act like we're going to live to be 200 years old. If I'm going to live for 200 years, I'll have time to get around to doing it perfectly. But this preciousness about saying, OK, I'll just take on a few people in my little rarefied circle, and those I will be very generous and always available right at the moment.

[67:29]

Isn't that nuts? Well, my experience is that I have a capacity to be present with a surprising number of people if I'm with the person who's in front of me. Otherwise, I don't think we can kind of think it out and make a plan. We don't all stay in place enough. jumping fences and going to other people's houses and mucking up the order. If I'm willing to be really present with myself and with whoever is in front of me and I mean, one of the big difficulties, and this again comes into the whole realm of what kinds of habits do we have? What are the habits in our mindstream?

[68:32]

Putting off doing something. Pretty soon I've got this collection of obligations that I haven't gotten around to doing. It's just this horrible burden. I'm kind of hauling it around. It's that image I think I've mentioned to you from the Andalusian Dog, the Luis Buñuel film, where the protagonist in the film spends the entire film with his toe line around his forehead, pulling a baby grand piano with a dead donkey draped over it. It's all that. You know, all those obligations, he's pulling them along through the whole film. I haven't seen that film for probably 30 years or 25 years. I should go rent it and see if it really is like that. But that's how I remember it. And it really got me because I thought, that's how I feel, pulling this baby grand piano with a dead donkey on it, you know, kind of looking like a Spanish shawl draped over the... And all the guy had to do was take the tow line off and put it down and walk out of the room.

[69:36]

This, you know, it takes as long as it takes. Suzuki Roshi, the companion kind of, you know, exhortation is from Suzuki Roshi about, do not say too late. We just do what we can do in the moment. We don't collect all those things we haven't quite gotten around to because it isn't the perfect time yet. I think some of us are really burdened with this sense of, you know, doing it perfectly and so we don't get to do it. Tartuku really took me to task about that. One time at the end of a long retreat he said, You know, it may not be that the world is imperfect, it may be that your perception of the world is imperfect. I mulled over that for a year, kind of just cooked in me, like a sand, you know, under my skin.

[70:59]

And, you know, what I've come to is that he was right. Things are just exactly perfect, just the way they are, in the sense that there are causes and conditions that lead to things being the way they are. Maybe this is the curse of answering machines. We get to find out about all those people who called us, who've left a message and want us to call back. What if we didn't have, you know, like it used to be? If you were home, they got you on the phone, and if you weren't home, you didn't even know if they called, unless they sent you a letter and said, I've called you 15 times, and you're never home. Will you call me? I've been thinking about putting on my answering machine, leave a message if you'd like to, and I may or may not call you back. Did you know, like every time I go away and I come back and I've got 50, 60, 100 phone calls to return, it takes me months.

[72:12]

So you could just dump your answering machine. This machine only sends, it doesn't receive. I'm away, call another time. Thich Nhat Hanh puts all his mail in a box, and I think he answers it one day a month. Drives people crazy who want some kind of a response from him, you know, in a timely manner, but you get an answer a year or two later. Thich Nhat Hanh, one of the teachers I studied with in Japan, has a room that's about this big, and whenever he gets a lot of mail from people, he brings it up and puts it in his pod, and he also doesn't take time to clean it. Now his room is about this deep. When I was there a few years ago, it was about this deep, with piles of mail from people saying, can I come? Gifts, various things.

[73:16]

He doesn't deal with it. And he's quite happy. Well, and you know, anybody who has studied with him understands what happens when you write him a letter, right? You just show up. You know, I'm being a little light-hearted with what you're bringing up, but I know from first-hand experience that this is a terrible kind of bind to be in. And I think it really comes from having some expectation of being other than the way I am. This is who I am today, and I can pick up the phone and talk to my friend who's called, or I'm not answering the phone this morning. I really do think answering machines are a kind of curse. We have some illusion of being able to do more than we can actually do.

[74:25]

We have some illusion of being able to sustain a level of busyness and productivity that is not in fact sustainable. I remember Kadagiri Roshi one time wrote something about Hokyoji, about making a place in the country that would be based on the old ways, the old ways of living, a slower pace and a different kind of life, that as the suffering in the world increased, such a place would be a great resource and of great benefit to people. I think that's where we've gotten. We have some expectation that we ought to be able to do it all. And I think for most of us, our expectations are way off the map of what is sustainable. You know, so virtually all of the great teachers that I know living today want to ask, how can we have peace in the world

[75:36]

How can we bring about some more wholesome way of being? The advice is consistently the same. Spend a day a week doing practices, being quiet, meditating, leading a slower life. We all say, I can't do that, I don't have time. Wait until somebody says, well, you're going to die in a year. Your priorities suddenly just go completely. I mean, it's incredible what happens. I think the Four Noble Truths present a program for action.

[76:49]

The first two have to do with analysis, the second two with transformation. So there's a tremendous amount of activity which one can base on. Well, I also think that the kind of activity that leads to the first step of the Eightfold Path of Right View is being quiet and looking and listening, showing up, practicing being present. But that comes... Here's how to go, and all worldly actions are but winnowed chaff.

[77:54]

Consider this, and come to the resolution to extract some essence from life, and the program is about extracting the essence. It's a bit of maximizing the chaff. Maybe a more useful designation is that our doing, the doing that marks our culture, is the doing that has to do with the chaff department. We're caught with the eight worldly concerns. We're caught in the realm of bouncing back and forth between attraction and aversion. We're caught with the kind of spinning and repeating patterns without what happens when you step back enough to be able to see a pattern. All a matter of attitude.

[79:37]

Maybe on this note we might stop. Before we end, I want to mention a film that is being shown at the Asian Art Museum this evening by very fine filmmaker whose name is Ellen Bruno. She did a film some years ago on what was happening in Cambodia. And this is a film she did out of her interest in the Tibetans and her exposure to some of the young Tibetan nuns who had been in the forefront of the political action against the very repressive regime Chinese regime in Tibet. It's called A Prayer for the Enemy. And it's a film about some of these young nuns who have gone through a lot of suffering because of their both political and spiritual practice in Tibet and in exile.

[81:30]

Anyway, it will be at the Asian Art Museum this evening at 7. If any of you are interested, I'll put this note on the table in the library and you can get the details. So what I would like to suggest, those of you who brought a lunch and would like to have it, I think it would be nice if we ate lunch together, we'll bring the practice tables in. We're going to need to borrow back the two in your room and we can set the tables up here in the middle of the meditation room and sit on both sides and have our lunch together. And let's take, we probably need 10 or 15 minutes to get the lunch, the tables set up and the lunch on the tables. So I'll ring the meal bell when we're ready to sit down and eat together. Thank you all very much.

[82:33]

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