So as we grow older, our past changes, but it still changes within some kind of context. Just like we say, don't mistake the finger for the moon. We may agree that there's a finger, but where it's pointing there's a new perspective. And yet, there's still something about dropping our stories, dropping our fingers, and just being in the pure golden sunshine or the ravaging winds. So we're actually these magical beings that were born somehow, and then we keep growing, hopefully.

[01:09]

So what is it I'm trying to say here? Just that we're wondrous entities, which we tell ourselves stories about ourselves, which are not exactly true or false. But the fact that we're stuck with our stories is the only way we can let go of them. So we each have stories about ourselves. Some of us like pleasant stories, some of us like unpleasant stories. But they're stories, and we should know what our stories are, the stories we keep making about ourselves, in order to be able to be freed from them. I lost my notes on the way here, so I'm trying to see if I can remember what else I had to say.

[02:48]

Michael? Yes. Were those notes a story? Yes, they were a script, actually, which I usually riff off of, but I don't even have that to do today. Yeah, everything is a story, but that doesn't mean that everything is false, or everything is a story. And yet, because it's a story, it's important. If we make up a story, there must be some reason we're making it up. So we're now in a story in our lives, in the political life, in the political world, which can become a very disturbing story. So it's good to think about why we're creating this story.

[04:02]

It's probably out of great impatience, creating a story out of great expectations, and about great frustration. It hurts. Our individual stories hurt. Our collective stories hurt. Ouch. It hurts. And as you notice, your old stories change. It's the story that changes, it's not the facts that change so much. The facts are there, it's how we connect the facts that change.

[05:09]

And we have certain habits, habits that make certain connections for each one of us more prevalent than others. You know, if you have a political argument, most of the time, you can't articulate what you're arguing about, because it's about some story underneath, some basic story that you each have which is different. And it's hard to argue about stories. You can argue about facts, but facts are just a little bit the surface. Underneath is a story which is... It hurts. But I think it's important for us to keep in mind the magic of who we each are.

[06:44]

The magic of your birth. The magic of the flexibility of who you are, the possibility of who you are. When we say we're all Buddhists, that's about that, you're a Buddha. Isn't that amazing? If you look at it, it's tremendously amazing. And yet, we often don't live up to it. Ah! Ah! Well, dragons and elephants, what do you have to say about this? Do we speak about liberation if we step away from our stories and not drag them into each moment?

[07:52]

If self arises and passes away in each moment, do our stories do the same? Do they? Sometimes and in some ways. Yeah, but looking at it that way on top, it doesn't help so much, I don't think. True, our stories are always with us. But stories are just... The Buddha is a story. It's a beautiful story. Donald Trump is a story. And this story is so beautiful. We have all kinds of stories and... We can use our stories, we can use the example of the Buddha as a story to help us. On the other hand, there is no Buddha. They're just us schlubs.

[08:58]

That's a story. That's a story too. When you say that our stories hurt, do you mean when we start to look at them, how painful that is? That's part of it. What's the other part? Well, we all want a story that we can put our money behind. And when we see how fragile our stories are, it's very disconcerting. So we just scrap them, blow them away? No, no, I think we have to study our stories. Not necessarily believe them, but study them. Know them. What about the pain of forgetting? Forgetting what?

[10:01]

Part of your story. Like when you know that you've forgotten. The memory of the facts that occurred aren't the same as the real facts. That's what I understand. So I have a very personal memory, which I won't go into, but I discovered a diary, and I forgot that I was even writing at the time. And it revealed a very different story than what I had experienced of my memory there. Well, it could also be wondrous. There's a whole new world about who you are. There's a whole new you there. Which maybe you don't like, or maybe you like. But it also shows the flexibility.

[11:05]

You can change who you are, to some extent. But you can't change it until you know some of the possibilities of who you were. Do you wait for the story to happen, or do you make the story? Depends on your story. But really, on the basis, we make it. Sometimes we make it by not, by being a victim of it. But, you know, karma, some people think of karma as a kind of victimization, but it's an intention. Intention. Intention, yeah. What is an appropriate response to a story?

[12:06]

Is that so? I think so. My story is that there is an appropriate response, and there's an inappropriate response. And I feel concerned when the response doesn't correspond to the action. More specifically, with respect to environmental degradation and destruction, when people are sitting around, I feel that we need to put a foot down. And it concerns me, I think, when I feel like I'm using practice to escape, basically. Your passivity, yeah.

[13:10]

Yeah. But then again, I'm not really helping either if I'm running off my cushion and doing what? Yeah. So what is the appropriate response? I said, is that so? Yes. So I think this is connected to that question, to the conversation that I've had for a while with Bernie Glassman, whose philosophy has been taken from the Big Lebowski. Basically, well, that's just like your opinion, man. And so Bernie has, he talks about the formal process, the formal opinions. And basically, he takes the position that it's all opinion.

[14:12]

And my feeling, in conception of something that you just said, is that there are facts. But even those facts are very dicey. Like, there are things that I remember in my life as facts. And then when I researched them, I discovered, oh, this is not what happened, actually. So how do we hold these deep perceptions, as Chu just asked him, about what we think of as facts? What we think about the fact that somebody went on a rampage and murdered four people in Philadelphia. Is that a fact? Is that an opinion? Is that a story? From these events, of course, we make stories, but I guess the question is, are there facts?

[15:14]

And if so, what is our responsibility? Yeah. Well, it may well be all opinion, but still we have to make decisions and choose. It may, but I think to know how fragile our basis of what we think is real is, is important. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't act at all. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, maybe that's enough, yeah. That's interesting to me.

[16:42]

Like, if our stories are the connective tissue, how does a one-handed person become a thousand-handed person in their own story making? You can't make a story true. That's megalomania. But our stories are powerful tools. It's a little bit like that koan about polishing a tile. You can't make that into a jewel by polishing it. But in a way you can.

[17:43]

I mean, you can make, you can rub something so it becomes jewel-like. But you really can't do it. You can't do it by yourself. Today I'm very much with, poignantly with the story of the birthday of Occupy. I think it was five years ago. And I was living in New York City then, and I went down there really not knowing what is the story of what's happening here. And I wonder, what helps to stay in the not knowing what is the story here, to be able to just be the connective tissue, feel that, stay open-hearted?

[18:56]

I'm not sure. I feel very tentative about what I'm about to say. So I just wanted to put that, I feel very tentative about this. But I feel like Occupy's reluctance to put forth a story was too much. That's why it became dismissed. Because no one could figure out the story of it. Which is a good sign. I'm not saying that there should be that sign. But there has to be some standing. As we just said, we still have to look, we still have to stand up and say something. So it sounds like part of the song or practice, if you will, is to find the story in which we can respond appropriately. That certainly would be good. And to also hear the pain in the story.

[20:06]

To not dismiss somebody because they don't agree with you, but to recognize their pain. There's a truth to that. I heard you say something like, sometimes the stories don't come true. And I wonder if it isn't kind of a purpose of stories to have them be true for a while and then become false later. And I'm thinking of when I was a kid, my mother said, believe everything your mother tells you. Right? And later on I heard that this intersection in Peoria, Illinois is the busiest intersection in the world. Now I took those two in and believed them forever. And one day I was walking in Manhattan and looking around. And I suddenly just laughed out loud realizing, nope, that's not the busiest intersection. And with a tear, possibly everything my mother said wasn't true.

[21:10]

So are stories something that we use, as you were just saying, as a functional thing to make a statement and then they become false later? Is that the depth of everything? Well, every story may be true in its time. And by the way, have you ever been to Tokyo? Busy streets, I don't know, it's like... Yes. What about the stories we tell ourselves that we don't know we're telling ourselves? Yeah, that's why we have to know what our stories are. Because so much of our stories are... In fact, you know, this can tie in, if I was giving a whole series of talks, I'd tie it in with dreams. Because we live our life in stories. Some of them are dreams, some of them are what we think we remember, but we don't remember.

[22:12]

It's something we create. And to find out what we create is very important. It's very important to know what stories you're creating about yourself. Not that they're false or true, but to just know that that's the story you're creating. You know, in some ways, we live two lives. We live our dream life and we live our waking life. And they connect somehow. Like, there are days, sometimes I wake up and I say, Well, that was an interesting dream. What was that about? And I could see how it was shaping my day. So, yes, it's very important to know what your dreams are and your stories. When I was growing up, my father's story was,

[23:17]

I'm the sergeant and you're the private. And, you know, today I still think sometimes I'm doing KP. And I'm still struggling with that story still comes up. So who's in the kitchen now? Well, I'm in and out. Hopefully I'm choosing. This time I'm choosing. Would you say don't mistake your stories for your life? Well, I think you should know what your stories are and you should know what your life is.

[24:19]

And they'll both inform each other. What would you say? That sounds good. The story seemed to be a half truth. Or a relative truth. It says something and also doesn't say something. So how do we get to what's beyond the story? By knowing the story thoroughly. But that's just one side. Yeah, but you got to know one side in order to know the whole thing. You know, we all want the perfect world in which we can all nail it down. That's what's been happening. We tend to hear today and usually focus on the pain and the hurt part and not the magical part, which is also part.

[25:33]

But is our every expression coming from varying levels of pain? Like not feeling so much pain, so a little bit more magic? Is our every expression based on how much pain we feel? Well, I prefer not to make it either or. I think pain is magical too. I mean, the whole world is just like, who could invent this world? I mean, breathing and eating and shitting and sex. It's all incredible. And it hurts too. So enjoy the pain? How do we enjoy the pain?

[26:39]

Not enjoy the pain, accept it. If you want to do something else, you can try it. So I think that I really like everything you said. And I think this might relate to a lot of other people's questions. But something that sort of scares me when you start talking about this path is that I think I end up feeling very alone. Like I'm trying to understand my stories and my whole world is my stories. Everything I see is through my stories. And the practice is trying to listen and understand other people's stories. And I think it becomes really hard for me to imagine being close to other people. And how does that fall within a story?

[27:44]

Well, if you know your story, you can know other people's stories. If you know other people's stories, it helps you to know your story. To divide it into your story and everybody else's story can be useful, but it can also separate yourself too much. There's a whole suffering group in here that we may not look at, but there's that connection. How many people feel like she does? How do we ease the suffering of someone who is so stuck in their story?

[28:58]

You can't do anything for them. Can we not listen to them? We can listen to them at a certain point. At a certain point it may not be useful. But we should listen to them at least a little bit. So the only way out for them is to really figure it out for themselves? You can maybe help, but you can't do it for them. You should worry about yourself a little bit. But what if their suffering is making you suffer? I wonder about that. To go along with what you just said, there's a developer in our neighborhood where I live who bought a house.

[30:18]

And to make his development profitable, he decided that he was going to take down a century old redwood tree. Because his story is, it's just a tree, and he's got a building to build. And if it's in the way, it's in the way. So we got really upset about that, and got together, and now he decided not to take down the tree. So, somehow we changed. I don't know if, his story sure has to change. But, um...

[31:20]

It doesn't seem like your story has changed either. Well, if we're talking about power, of course people can make people do anything, maybe. If we're talking about power dynamics, there's that. Well, his story caused a lot of suffering. Yes. It caused a lot of suffering, and so, uh... It did something to that. Peter? Um... There's also another piece of how we're creating stories, which I'm hearing.

[32:24]

Which is that, if something's happening, is it happening to us? Or are we making something happen to somebody else? Almost everything we can identify as a piece of our story is also a story. It goes to this question about whether or not so-called facts are stories, or whether they're real, and so on. And of course, I guess the difficult part is holding that... holding that the way we see things, the way I see things, is really just my own point of view. But I still have to act from my point of view. I have no other point of view from which to act. And, um... So I'm kind of rambling here, but I guess that you can only...

[33:28]

You will act. You will go forward and act, or not. But you will do so based on your point of view. And that may be inclusive, or exclusive, or whatever you want to call it, but it's still another story about your point of view. But you still have to do that. Well, we all make mistakes. What's a mistake? It's another story, but it's a story which makes us feel a certain way. Yeah, Alan? We do have these teachings that we've been talking about. We've been studying the five influences and the seven factors of enlightenment in class. And, you know, the factors of enlightenment are lenses. They're like glasses that you put on, so you can see the world in a certain way

[34:35]

that at least purports to be consonant with Buddhist teachings. So, like, I would say glasses that I put on, which is an influence to me, is that even when I perceive myself to be deeply alone, I'm not alone. Now, that is... One could say that's a story, and one could also say that from a variety of perspectives, that's a description of reality. But its effectiveness has to do with my perception of it. And, you know, so it makes me think like what Ed was saying about the neighborhood. So I have a value of doing things together with people. That's a social value, but it also gives me a dormant value. But I also, when he was talking, I was like, well, that's great, he had a success.

[35:39]

But I also think of this saying that comes from our old friends, who used to have this motto and said, the people united will sometimes win and sometimes lose. There's no guarantee that if you unite, you're going to succeed. But at least, in a sense, you can help your feeling of aloneness. Even if you're defeated. So that's a lens I choose to put on. Maybe that's a story I choose to wear. And I think we're encouraged in practice to both to try on these lenses and also not to believe that they are the absolute truth. Yeah.

[36:41]

So it's part of our practice to recognize that some stories are more useful, kinder, more effective than others. Is there a way we can evaluate one story over another and decide to pursue a story that's more... Well, that's a story on top of a story, but it's okay. If stories are all over the place, you can't ignore them. But do they all have equal merit? No, I don't think so. But I don't know how to necessarily evaluate them. But in fact, we have to. Just to act in the world, we have to decide this is better than that.

[37:44]

There's one thing that I had a friend who, just for a day, he never made a choice. He flipped a coin whether we go to the left or to the right. And he found that day one of the most interesting days of his life because he went to neighborhoods he never would have gone, he ate in restaurants he never would have eaten at. These things may seem trivial, but they're actually quite large because we're so habit-driven that we probably go the same way most of the time when we go from one place to another. Now what did all that have to do with stories? So that was another interesting story, but I find that story very interesting, very educational. We have to stop. Okay, one more. You started the lecture by talking about birthdays and the beginning of the story.

[38:48]

Can you talk about the endings? I haven't gotten that far yet. Okay, I appreciate this very much. Thank you.

[39:08]

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