so thank you good morning
greetings bodhisattvas
greetings future ancestors
so today we're in the middle of are getting close but not quite to the middle yeah maybe of our six week practice period because we've completed two weeks of sex
and ah the topic for the practice period is
basic buddhist teachings
and i've been thinking that we're what we're doing with this study this practice period study is kind of like strengthening our core
like you do in exercise where you have to keep strengthening your core especially as you get older and that's kind of like what we're doing
and of course in one sense our court as doesn't always had we've been talking a lot about it's him
but another way to understand our core are these sort of foundational teachings of buddhism matter pretty much shared by all the schools most if not all of the schools of buddhism
and they're kind of the foundation from which all these flowerings of these different schools
have come and you know in during this coven year i somehow ended up in a and few different groupings tackling these really challenging mahayana teachings
and it feels really good to return to these core basic teachings after that it feels to me like those see trezor they're like a really complicated dance move or gymnastics or athletic task you know or like figure skating it's as if the my jamaica
drupal toe loop of buddhism or something
a really difficult move that you need to have a strong core to perform and you can start to feel it when you're studying these challenging soup teachings like you're like whoa i'm going all over the place you know and that you are and in fact even in these teachings themselves there's often a
passage that says if you can listen to this teaching with you can read this teaching without freaking out that in itself is your body mind you know so anyway strengthening our core and of course one core teaching a buddhism as if most of you probably have
heard as the four noble truths
the truth of suffering that there is suffering
sometimes life is suffering or the five clinging scandals are suffering and then the second truth is the cause of suffering the third truth is that there is a cure where there's a cause there's a cure and then the fourth truth is the cure in detail which is the noble eightfold path
and so with this first truth the truth of suffering it seems like there's two basic responses to when you first hear that teaching one response some people as one responses like you hear that life is suffering and you think oh thank god i
thought it was just me or like oh they're saying they're saying the secret out loud like you know like the emperor's new clothes or something it feels like something's being revealed you know that we kind of all knew but we were afraid to say or something or we didn't know anybody else felt that way so that's one response
and another responses just to feel really turned off like it's so negative so gloomy so life denying
and you know both responses are valid as to me and even the same person can have both responses at different times for example when i i first i took world religions and high school and we studied buddhism in world religions
and
i didn't resonate with buddhism it seems so yeah dry really dry
and yeah life denying he know where was the love the bliss the joy of baba ram das or like the sufi dancers which you know is
part of those were available somewhat available to me in those years my early high school and early college years and by the way i apologize that my camera likes to refocus sometimes it's just a thing it does
anyway so i didn't resonate with her
you know those early that early buddhist teachings were in world religion buddhism from the perspective of the world religion buddhist philosophy and even you know compared to zen stories which at that time i didn't exactly realize we're the same relationship as a i didn't
i realized then was buddhism in a way you know
the on monday karen sometime was talking about how she first read this first story and this books and flesh and bones which happened to be a book the first book i also read in high school and i was looking at the book of this morning it actually of the story than she
responded to with is the very first story in the book and the story that i responded to limit the piano and i've talked to many people actually who this is their first send story is this actually the third one in the book which is the story of haku in and the baby
i'm i'm in a retell it many people know it a girl and haku and so hoch one was like a very important eighteenth century japanese teacher and a girl in his village gets pregnant and she's afraid to tell her parents who the real father is so
she says it's haku and ngc says the zen master m is the father of this baby and the parents are furious yeah know and they take the baby when the is born they take the baby to haku on and say okay you you take the you did this you take care in this baby and his responses though is that so
so does may maybe here japanese
so then he takes the baby takes care of it and then a year later or in my mind more likely a month later the mother can't stand it any longer and she says she admits that her parents that actually this other person is the father and they go to haku cohen and then
he apologized profusely and they take the baby back and his responses oh is that so
and
you know i guess you could start a stretch it and maybe you can see something about the four noble truths in that story perhaps i don't know but to me as very juicy it's you know haku and he's composed but he's not apathetic i mean he's open to what the universe is handing him including figuring out how to take care of a tiny newborn baby
and that kind of aliveness is what seemed to be lacking in these the world religions version
and then of course later after i'd been flailing around a bit in my late teens into my early twenties and experienced death and heartbreak getting more and more confused and unhappy
then and also connecting with the practice through suzuki roshi was a gentle fresh way to
to immerse yourself and i had warlike the first response thank god thank god we're spelling this out putting the truth on the table where we can study it and maybe learn to deal with it
so by the time i began my zen practice in earnest i was fully on board with noble truth number one
and it's not so much that everything is suffering or that life is suffering as that for one thing suffering is the root cause of all our problems it's what makes us make bad choices which cause difficulties for ourselves and each other and others
i'm
and you know that when they talk about when you learn about the for of the first noble truth the truth of suffering they sometimes talk about there being three kinds of suffering
and now in the ticknor hands book that we're using for practice period study kind check that out the window three types but i kind of resonate with three types i don't know if my three types are the same as the three types traditionally but to me the first kind is
like the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
tragic thing sad things harms traumas that happened to us almost every one has some pain and loss from childhood and some how much more than a little
and these leave a mark in our bodies it can be a physical harm it could be an emotional harm could be mental harm or spiritual harm but it leaves a trace traces in our bodies that we have to work through
and you know many of these things are from our childhood but then sad things continue to happen into our adulthood various losses that we all can experience they can happen to anyone but they feel unique to ourselves their part of our story
at the same time
and the second kind of suffering is a bit more of an everyday thing it's you know the way that often the things i like or want seemed far away and the things i i don't like and don't want are often nearby
and you know we're built as social beings and we have a need to be safe and need to feel we belong we need to feel are worth or value and we need love and these are built into our psychophysical systems
and so in our lives it's we can easily feel bad about ourselves and feel like we're not worthy or we don't belong there's something wrong with us we shouldn't be feeling this way that's a really common one whatever the feeling as i shouldn't be feeling this way so it's so easy to get down on ourselves and that
it's to me the second kind of suffering
and then the third kind is termed the suffering of conditionality which is like just the fact that any of this stuff in the first two could happen is where our vulnerability and we're we're aware it were either unconsciously are consciously aware of our vulnerability add things can happen at any time to me or my loved ones
and also i could anything could happen that would make you know make me feel like a failure or an outsider so invulnerable to all of that and even if something good as happening you know i know in the back my mind that it could end it it will end it could end it might go away
there's that vulnerability that's the one way to talk about the third type and then the state there's another way to talk about the third type conditionality that points to something a bit deeper and maybe something a bit more towards these more challenging
mahayana teachings which is it's related to are false division of subject and object so the perspective of myself is i'm like a fixed point in time and space and all these things are happening to me
and even the feelings in my body feel like they're they're happening to me another me not the a the body is one me but then the it's happening to me also another me
and so i can constantly buffeted by all this outside stuff that's happening are or were pulled around by the allure of some of these outside things
oh
so that's another way to think about the suffering of being subject to conditions there's our were trying to maintain this fixed thing keep it going and then we're just always like
outside things whether they're in our bodies have anything could be outside from this perspective
okay so that's the first noble truth however you define it at our lives include a fair amount of unease dis ease frustration unsatisfactory this and downright pain
you know they may say that newborn babies cried to average two hours a day it's hard to be a heaven beginning and it doesn't always feel so good and this you know this kind of is the main topic of buddhism buddhist that i teach suffering and the end of suffering period because
cause it's the main cause of the kind of problems we can do something about
i'm so then the second noble truth is about the cause of suffering
and you know the buddha the way he lays out this basic teaching he's talking more like a healer than a religious leader actually are almost any kind of problem solver like first we state the problem and we find the cause of the problem three is there a solution to this problem and for
for what is the solution in detail so it's really very practical and more like psychological healing than religion and away we have no cosmology nothing you have to believe in nothing that you have to take on faith you know you don't even have to believe in this first noble truth just study your life and see what you see why
what is your experience
and it's also like the boot is giving us the user manual want to our psycho physical system you know like you know you get a new device and you don't really want to look at the manual it's like nowadays everything's plug and play right and we're like that to where plug and play a newborn baby is totally plug and play
as may be part of the problem here the baby can't look at can't read the manual it can't look at the manual and there's hardly even a manual for the parents that works you know because the babies so plug and play
and you know you who has time to look at the manual at that point so are buddhist practices like admitting okay we need to look at the manual now i've tried this plug and play way and now it's not working so well so i'm just going to get out the manuals that's buddhism
and i thought the most mind blowing part of the tick not han reading which i think was actually not in the part if you if you saw the one that came out on the email that pages it was not in that part i think but anyway his take on the second noble truth i thought was really mind blowing and you know the second noble truth is yeah
usually phrase something like the cause of suffering is desire
and any way to meet whatever you say it's like the cause boils down to one thing that's the way i was always taught a whether you call it attachment are clinging you know sojourn use the phrase being caught by things
in this friend of the cause of suffering is being caught by things being continually caught repeatedly caught or even just always being a little off center
but tick not handset actually so he says you know and thing i love about ticknor hand i don't know how you feel about as he is so confident when he defies a traditional teaching and it's not it's not a hubris it doesn't have any feeling like that he's just and he doesn't say i've been to the mountaintop
i see you know he says we can all see that this makes no sense else at yeah the oil anyone can we can all see that this makes no sense so his framing is like the years in desire as the first of as like shorthand for a list of things the cause of suffering his desire mm
maybe like the five hindrances maybe i think the first and first of the five hindrances is desired or the three poisons greed hate and delusion and so he's he's saying it's not this one is not if not like it boils down to this one thing
i'm
and he's so he's basically saying don't use this spoiler alert in a mode and actually look at your own suffering one by one study it and see see what the causes for you have this one and this one and this one ah
and then when you do that you know you can you can investigate and then you can use these teachings to cross check you know like i'm blaming my mom but buddha says it's not that you know or something like that so it's a conversation with the teaching and your own study of yourself
elf which get you know feels a little bit more like our era suzuki roshi style practice or dogan practice
ah so in this case though you know we can look at some of the causes of the three types of suffering i outlined
and so the first type the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune could maybe even more simply be stated as trauma and there's a huge conversation in western psychology right now about treating trauma with this even came up at lecture last saturday and it came up that the priest meeting and
it's bubbling up around us it's the new way to understand are suffering from the western psychological point of view and the approach actually
is something like sensory awareness it's it's to with the right kind of help and support to see where these trousers are held in our bodies
including intergenerational trauma
and you know some kind of mindful awareness of the body is what they're using and so i mean this is a really gross over simplification of of what's happening in the inlet conversation of western psychology and there's a lot available about that so and we can if you can't find it on your own we can help you
find out more about that if you're interested and you know of course trauma has all kinds of different levels of alpha
the cuteness or whatever
i think sometimes for me the pain of session does help me work through trauma emotional trauma and you know it's like the pain kind of a free associates me to my psychic pain mice you know and so it's right there and just by holding hold
adding at holding my suffering with a kind of friendliness and respect and appreciation that is part of a wet can metabolize it it takes time
i'm but i think that's one thing that can happen with our zen practice however we also know from experience of fifty years that it can be really counter indicated to sit zazen especially facing your you know wallow in a quiet silent rome and
all sort of via a coup drama of our zen practice can really be to triggering for people's trauma and so i'm
i think the takeaway is really like don't go it alone you know that's why we talked to teachers and talked to our friends in know you don't have to go it alone whatever you're going through get help
informally formerly in whatever way and i'll try different things
there are many many ways of healing and digesting and metabolizing what happened
so what about the cause of the second kind of suffering which is the everyday being buffeted by the range of feelings and disappoint manson
anxiety union but whether we belong whether we have value whether we're loved whether we're safe
and i think again took my hands encouragement to investigate for ourselves however since i have to give a talk and i have to give some causes to explain the second novel truth we could say that when possible cause the way we talk about him buddhism is you know ourself
you by appearances outside by our feelings
our perceptions our preconceived beliefs that we're going into the situation with and there's some way we get into this echo chamber of our south and were tort you're turning around and me but metaphor that used in in some scriptures is like a silkworm where you're wrapping yourself tighter and tighter and tie
tighter if you start down that road you know you just keep wrapping yourself tighter and tighter and tighter into a little cocoon and it feels tight and know we feel boxed in we feel like an animal and a trap or a fish on a hook or you know what does it feel like to you once the metaphor for yours
and it seems like we are boxed in from the outside and you know maybe we are but a big part of it and the part that our practice is addressing is that were being boxed in by our own mistaken beliefs about ourselves and about the world where so wrapped up in them that we can
can't see beyond them
and this includes the third kind of suffering the belief or perception perspective that i am this fixed point which is being bombarded by all these happenings and you know there's some truth to the self perspective but the other perspective to explore is that we ourselves are
just like these things were another momentary happening just like all these things were nuts like standing on the bank of the river being splashed by the waves but you know are molecules are
part of the molecules are some of the molecules of the river
oh and so the third truth the so-called end of suffering would be the cure of suffering would be to develop this other perspective and not that we get rid of the self perspective although the self perspective can evolve and mature and heal
and soften
and one of the main ways that happens actually as by developing the other perspective we developed this wide spacious flowing fresh alive perspective where were just part of everything were part of the huge everything
we can step back into big mind for me it feels like it's behind maybe that's not true for you but i stepped back into something that's holding everything that's our big mine that's our buddha nature it's holding all the individual things all the sufferings all the experiences and it's high
holding them with friendliness and respect and appreciation
oh so lately i've had a little bit of a i'm not want to call him kick i've been on or something
which is based on noticing oh if i remember now that i can photo gallery view thank you at a little tired of looking at myself better
i received a everybody
ah so when i'm noticing lately as that we have the same word for feelings that we have for practices so like is it that we're supposed to feel patient or response to practice patience are we supposed to feel compassionate or feel generous
or is it that we practice patience when we're not feeling patient
ah it's so easy to we judge ourselves by our feelings i owe you know if i feel impatient i immediately think oh i'm such a bad zen student how could after all these years of practice how can i feel whatever it is i'm feeling we judge ourselves by our feelings but that's not what we're too
talking about actual hit it's the same word
pepper and that's i wonder if that's a problem or if that's fine but we need to wake up to it you know if we should have different words for the practices than for the feelings i don't know but it's the actual practice is not about trying to change are feeling directory like you know push
it down push it away all those things that we tend to wanna do possibly cultural baggage but also maybe just human i don't know
but you know i shouldn't be feeling this way i mean how often do i think that you know
and so it's really it's in that moment to do the practice when the when we're feeling impatient it's not that about the feeling it's about what we do in the next moment which is what we do if for practicing pay
patience we might pause we might take a brass we might not do the thing that we were about to do which feels exactly like the feeling i mean until you slow things down there is no gap between being bugged by somebody and punching them in the knows it
it's the same thing but if you slow it down you'll see that it's not the same thing there's a there's a space in there
and the space is not to whitewash the feeling our cover it over or get rid of it the feeling as okay now i'm feeling this what shall i do what was that practice i said i was gonna do in this situation can i remember what i said
ah and not with the want with any sense that the feeling is wrong in a feelings are just simply results and in know list of buddhism know study of buddhism is that ever the point where you introduce change to change the feeling it's after that
it's even a couple steps after that usually the grasping mclean the reacting
and of course our feelings are changing all the time and they may evolve with practice we may be less impatient perhaps but again there's that gaining idea where not worrying about that the causes and conditions are coming together for this feeling to be occurring and we have
very little control we may have some control over those it could turn out if i'd go to the zen monastery i'll feel less irritated and then sometimes you find out actually it doesn't doesn't work that way i'm just as irritated here as i was there it's a good way to learn
i'm so
we do so it's not that we want to ignore the feeling and move on to the practice it's like we hold the feeling and then we remember what the practices which has usually something to do with breathing feeling where it is in my body
feeling what it's about perhaps something old maybe reminds me of data my mother my father my sister my brother whatever
or maybe not maybe it's not that deep and be just momentary
but don't just don't go forward from there go forward from the pause go forward from the space in between what's happening
that's the
cure in a way that's one that's one cure
ah okay so the fourth truth and
hassan trying to learn how the common man pugs on since it is gonna talk more about the of the fourth truth the holy eightfold path and on thursday so please come on thursday and i'm just gonna do a short introduction and a kind of already have started about talking about the cure because the third one
really is just that there is a cure and as soon as you start talking about what the curious you're already out of the third one in a way
but in my introduction i'm gonna divide the path into three categories are attitude our conduct and meditation
so first our attitude and our basic attitude can be summed up by suzuki maruti suzuki roshi is no gaining idea in fact a lot of what suzuki roshi is everything he's teaching is kind of about our attitude a lot of it is about trying to you know an attitude adjustment
the just our attitude from the usual attitude of what's this gonna get me or how can i be say for how can i avoid this ah
no gaining idea you know have no designs on becoming a buddha
big mind you know our prac our basic practices to express something something big and fast and indescribable
just by being by sitting by pausing when we're angry were expressing something married that's the point of the practice
not anything else at least not at this point in the attitude stage so that's our attitude and the second category is our conduct and it's in a quite simply put in the yeah precepts the and i think also
by andrea thatch and sixteen bodhisattva precepts i think it's two weeks after this search they may be anyway check the schedule
but the precepts are vast and why the precepts are a huge practice it's not just you know not to do harm learning not to do her myself we we have to prevent harm it's not just learning how not to steal it's we have to pay
prevent stealing you know like of land and resources and labor it's not just working to be honest learning how not to lie myself it's how can we create the conditions in our sanga in a end in our society of truth and honesty
it's it's it's a very it's a lifelong practice the precepts
so then in this scenario the third the third category is the meditation so i mean the interesting thing about the eightfold pratt path approaches that actually those first two are the precursors to calming our minds
in this you know is it's wonderful to had develop our attitude and clean up our conduct
and in this scenario they are like that's how you settle your mind by doing those things by changing your attitude and your conduct you know when i first started sitting i think maybe for the first year i don't know i never heard anybody else describe this and i mean maybe i've never mentioned this i had
at all in my zazen i had these memories floating up of mean things i've done has anybody else can tell near you know just little things little thoughtless mean things fortunately i'm lucky i wasn't conditions were not such that i
you know
did much more i don't think than hurt people's feelings and
maybe even badly but still
but i kept they just kept coming up they just naturally it was we were not studying the precepts at that point in nineteen eighty it was just what happened in my system i kept seeing these faces these hurt these hurt feeling faces that i had not at absorbed at all the first time but it was in my memory
you have an i had to sort of metabolize all that and you know accept myself except what happened apologize mimi in a few cases but am
and then you can start to settle
and your mind can settle and when your mind can settle
then you can step back as i said for me or whichever way to step coast for you step back into big mind
and hold hold all these little wonderful and horrible things that are happening in the world of happenings

and so in a way after that you circled back to your attitude right have helps you with your attitude when you can calm your mind and see the emptiness see this thing about how the subject object divide is not real
then you if you develop your attitude differently your attitude towards others towards yourself towards the suffering of the world
so you keep looping back around once you have that insight from the inside about your attitude then you might even have inside more things about your conduct the subtler things that no one else thinks are wrong but you know they're just off route just off especially
lee right after he hit two weeks have passed since best way to tell sometimes
and then the idea would be in here i mean i it's really hard not to introduce a gaining idea i have to say it's really really hard to give a talk about zen practice without introducing a gaining idea so now here i'm doing that which is you circle back around and then use your mind can
calm even more and when your mind comes even more you have more insight into this big mind and that helps your attitude which helps your conduct anywhere ad infinitum hopefully
ah
that's that's what i had prepared to tell you and now i would like us to have a conversation

good song as usual i bet you we invite you to raise your digital hand on and and i encourage you just to get straight to your question from the heart
i love her i love how blake's as good sanga he just that just every time anyway please

questions anybody raise their hand and when the hago
good lord really to
i just gonna escape the okay to sit quietly to is all i was gonna say but go ahead heiko
thank you larry
for bringing it down to the ground has really really easy to understand really really easy to see the sprouts and the siege in a granularity
in terms of my own causes of suffering and
i'm
as you went over the different things i had to laugh and addict
sort of understand because it was so right on for me or the
thing i'm left with is not a question but the gaining idea and i really appreciate that although we do come around and around and around in each time we get back to that seat and received for example that face and we heard or that thing that
it we know about we can recognize that there is a different attitude or we find i found in my experience openings to new attitudes as a come round and that is just such a realistic message of hope and oh the comment i
i was gonna make this yes when i'm people say thank you for your patience
i respond i wasn't really being patient and i guess i would say i was practicing but i thank you for opening and a taking me a step back with you
thank you i saw there was a message from charlie blake i saw that one which is are aren't feelings just thoughts or or wasn't just our feelings thoughts and i don't think so
and there's a there's different ways to talk about feelings and buddhism
i am going to tell you what
fact of at which is not exactly maybe the the party line feelings are the are things that happened in your body and your mind together so they're kind of a brit to me there a bridge between the body and the mind so i can have various thoughts and i'm not having a feel
dealing with all of em if i look at joe right now who's right under my square and i think does he like me or i worry that he doesn't like me i might have a feeling them but i could have another thought about him that i wouldn't have a feeling so feelings are in our bodies and that's a good place to
to study them because they have all sorts of stories and beliefs and they ran out in the mind they run feelings they ran whole movies you know when time i've told this story before i was sitting as as i was upset with somebody when i sat down and i thought i had a such a vivid
imagination of what i was gonna say and then they would say that and then i would say that and they would say it ended at a unfortunately five minutes before the period ended i realized what i was doing and i thought it was exactly like a movie i was watching i may i played a movie for
myself and it was feelings running it and you know churning them up more and more you know fact but as soon as i realized that all like you know how when you watch a movie you have all these emotions right and then when the movie's over there god it's not you know it was like that i think that was just gonna like oh you know and i ain't i still
had to deal with that situation but the sang a with the feelings but again i'm not saying they're wrong is just their evidence they're their outcome their results
but i don't mean to me they're not thought to be thought through our another thing even though they're close everything's closely related right and there's something artificial about separating them out but also there's something helpful for our study
my beliefs
peter robertson and theater
oh urine can you and mute you as to yes peter value thank you
i thank you learn this is really been interesting i wanted to follow up a little bit about what you were just saying because i've been thinking about that since he started talking about impatience and whether or not intentions he felt in patients who were the now was the same as being impatient and i sometimes i think it's useful to examine the way
we talk to ourselves about what's going on
but i am intentions is that guy i started classified magazine as a judgment bad exactly what's going on with me or if i say i feel impatient that's something about some guy on my body
and so it's sometimes soon the way we talk you know get us in trouble because we're not just making a distinguishing book about how are processing the experience
and on
yeah i think you have to be pretty quiet to even notice that difference right
ah it might be i mean i hope everybody here no matter where how long and rest could notice that right away but
it's you know and when i get really quiet that i think oh i'm talking to myself i mean i can't even hear that because i'm feeling how i'm feeling from the talking you know bad about myself downtrodden or something the others not to started happens after you
have to become aware of your feeling better
right where you story like know needs another would it's another world really yeah
now
to study the buddha away as to study the south to study the surface to forget to self don't forget to self before you study the south but if the private sector
matthew
and you know it's okay for us to sit quietly care when of art act to scene out karen's dakota's was saying that and i don't know how well this is going in a group that they were working on just if there aren't any questions sit and then maybe the really quiet people will have the nerve you know if we leave enough if
we leave enough space and if they've and if nobody does that's fine too but you know it's okay for us to leave a little space and feels like it'll hurt speakers feelings if there are no questions you know and i can relate to that i i might it might feel that way afterward but on what i'd like to say as but it's just
try
feeling that inner prompting you feel an inner prompting even if you're scared
please come forward

ross plum
ben ross either i'm so i am here to implicate ah
thank you very much for bringing up the western psychological bottle for helping us with our traumas and realizing herself
ah i've heard it said that you have to have a healthy self to forget the self and i'm wondering how do we discern the difference in our practice to you utilize a psychological
model or paradigm versus just city as you mentioned in your talk sometimes sitting activates things every a revisit a past traumas a inner liar so how do you discern a wet encouragement or advice do you have for us to
when we're sitting
how to add move forward with which school hum practice is via good question i think
i think it's a process and it might involve talking to people and describing i mean i think i think it's everybody sits down and there's pain and discomfort and we have to sit through a certain amount of that
and i think i probably need to talk to more people i i have a couple friend i have one friend who stop sitting because she had such a traumatic childhood that it didn't make sense to her and she tried for a long time and judged yourself badly for a long time so that's don't do that that would
be one thing we could say don't let it go on for a long time without asking anybody without talking new body and and just trying to power through or whatever you think the zen students are doing in japan or whatever
so any a they can go hand in hand you know and so find that i think we could you know to some degree you you find an inner prompting about what healing modality you could explore in tandem with zen practice it's they don't have to be either or and you could pause pause do a little
you know and i think people who have intergenerational trauma you know from racism or family and of family violence in the family you know i was so lucky i had no male violence in my family really might one uncle could lose his temper a little bit i had a lot of as
absent man but you know now that i've talked to people it's amazing how many people have experienced violence in their childhoods you know from family members so you might know and some people will minimize if you find yourself not wanting to tell any
buddy or or thinking it can't be as bad as i remember it are trying to make it like other you know all those kinds of things i would say have a deeper conversation with someone and you know i think are the bcc senior students were trying to up our game a little bit about this be more be more aware of other
other options that we can point people towards
and be more aware of may be what the signs are
but i mean i think a lot of us felt real some kind of relief pretty early on in are sitting and and it's not if you don't feel that is not there's nothing wrong with it was not wrong it just a different the different psychophysical system's response you know
oh i don't know if other people even i wouldn't if other people have more insight about this that they want to answer i'd be open to them explore yeah we were not trained therapists so what's our trick or treating it of practice is what we can offer people when they come here so that a place where maybe this person needs
but another kind of help to submit or encourage them that they're not getting wholeheartedly with just sitting and as she said plowing through it because we don't wanna we don't want to plow through things we want to experience things and be with them and worked with them to very different kind of mindset then you so much through the guy thank you yeah
jeff taylor i invite you to ask a question hillary hey jeff it's also good to see you in the seat i was thinking that same exact thing
that's because you can see yourself have a nice thinking about you are seeing it so good to see you at episode run a you did a couple of things that it but i really one of the point of that resonated for me and when when you told the story of hoc wayne and the baby new viewpoint pointed at something that i think is is is really important to me which is side idea
a of of of the warm blood of cent of warm hand a warm hand of the aliveness of a practice i mean it's it's easy to use the overused me much staring at a blank wall was a very dry and sterile experience which couldn't be farther from the truth now when when when when mel used
to talk and he would kind of riff on on the ineffable where he would sit just a little way beyond our conscious mind and call us into the interplay of light and dark it would conjure very alive and very human experiences better that are really
articulated and in a dimension that's that's hard to speak about because it's it's it is that ineffable thing that we can't really wrap your hands around touch save or otherwise concretize and him in that story points at that for me and and thank you for sharing that
the other thing that you didn't i for the babies important in the story because if he had just if someone had told him oh you're a jerk and he said always add so and then they came back and said i was wrong you're not a jerk who cares you know but he'd actually took care of a tiny newborn baby you know what's a it'd be dead
in a floating work yeah
yeah and when you said he wasn't apathetic that's that's that's where the warmth kind of winters of store are now but he took the baby he cared for it and in the compassion of very humid and warm way he was he was really present for the experienced both sides of it did be dead here's your baby and oh by the way would like it back
players will now but the second thing that you did what the other favorite you didn't know that i person reps made whether she talked about the difference between an internal experience of how we experience ourselves nor internal world and how we experience the external world kind of coming at us and and having all of those exp
the wives and mackenzie oh come on which you were just talking about
really calls that for me right i mean to started the self as to forget the self but you can't separate those two experiences you can't forget the self before you started itself it doesn't work and in i think begin joe cohen and that particular instance is saying something that's really very true so forget the second part study yourself
but when you started the self how was it you'll do that how do you hold that idea and how does it change for you overtime that's a really interesting question but the thing that i was going to talk about in relation to what you said is that when when when we when we talk begins angel cohen also talks about or the idea of when we can
kerry when we carry ourselves forward and experience myriad things as delusion
that's actualizing and redefine a sense of self it doesn't really exist
that myriad things come forth and experienced themselves
that's awakening some say enlightenment nat'l i don't like that words what i'll use it very often so so when when these things are actualizing themselves this idea of of how how do we experienced reality and where's the separation between who we are and what experiences i think this is some
thing really important to point out
how do we experienced the reality around us we talked about that space so nicely
anger is energy your body vibrates with it but how do you get that breath in front of punching somebody in the knows where is that bread for you and where's where's your practice in that mode
and and these are both jewels to be and been one to one of the sutras like a torture badly i mean it's probably a radical but back when the buddha was you know still hosting cocktail parties in the park and lots of you've heard me say this one hundred times somebody came up to him and said what happens when we die
and the buddha turned around which allow now when i know he said what are you gonna do next that's a really interesting question and so whether we're working with trauma from childhood or whether we're working with an uncomfortable conversation from yesterday what are you gonna do next
that's where the right conversation lives for me
how do i experience and how do i convey compassion or how do i experience and and and how to how to whiten fe wisdom what am i going to do next that's where encouragement comes in not i live in the past and i'm constantly have dressing my trauma that's not necessarily a really productive experience more productive is law
marie how do we help you do whatever the thing is you're really hungry to do let's talk about that and for something is getting in the way fine we'll talk about that too
anyway it was it was a rule as you can tell i'm i'm kind of move by your talk and and human inspired me
you're on your on your launched
worry
can nab i invite you to and meet yourself and ask a question
hi lori i can
going back to that same hawkwind interchange
i think that if
if we put ourselves in hock one's position
ah there's a thing of the we were talking about the difference between thoughts and feelings
i think obviously his first thought would be this woman is mistaken
when she says this is my baby and that's an accurate thought it's not just something floating from his mind but that doesn't mean i assume that he's thinking to himself and thinking
ah would that be like what we would do in that situation we would say no i'm not the father where are you to get where did you get that idea from and but are you talking about a but he presumably at least in the story is thinking well if
if she thinks i'm the father this is gonna be a copycat yeah know it's gonna maybe the daughter said this or something but of my go-to this is not gonna be a fruitful response to say that
and so a given the situation
i'm going to respond in a different way
i'm not going to say that's true
but i'm also not gonna say that's not true
i'm just gonna say oh
okay that like that is that so it's not quite a good translation because in english that always has a little bit of a always that so you know it's usually means know that has a and of i i think in the japanese it's probably a soccer
a in which is neutral it's like you just told me something and i say oh is that right
but it could be all that's interesting i didn't know that or a like okay okay on and i can be nice it's okay yeah but not it with no undercurrent of oh okay yeah you know it's like oh you're
giving me the bible take care of a okay i mean it could even be like
which again is ambiguous you don't know if he's if he's not admitting anything but he just saying okay i heard you and i i hear what you say and so oh okay i'm gonna take care of the baby but that's the we can assume that his feelings
even though he had the accurate viewed that she was mistaken
what he's going into there is like a i'm not gonna bring up that conflict i'm just going to accept this and given that i'm going to accept it i'm not gonna make any issue about it i'm just gonna say all oh okay
ah so this is a subtle thing and it's exactly that distinction you were mentioning between thought and feeling it's like he may have been thinking oh she's wrong but he's reacting
just to say how am i going to
you know do the best show yet our response to this thing for all concerned and so the best response is to
bring it on okay
and that when within when we add to the end of the story the a similar thing like he doesn't say well i told you yet
i wasn't the you know maybe have you will learn a lesson from the fisher center he's just say exactly the same thing like oh oh okay but here's the baby move on it anyway it it's it's it's interesting that to make that distinction of thought and feeling there and
the the response has to be like he has to make himself feel are just to be feel like this is okay
okay not just that i'm putting ever yet i'll making the best of a bad situation it's like all right
that's enough
i mean you until his ego i went to i was a big turning point in my practice when i thought he might have felt oh shit no i don't know how to take care of a death star star star baby and but you know that could have been the feeling right the feeling by the all my god no well how can i do this you know
but again it was like okay that's my feeling right now that i can't do this you know but does response or one is okay universe you gave me this i'm taking it
okay take it