Good morning. Thank you very much for inviting me to be here this morning. I haven't been here for a while, and it's very nice to be here. I'm always struck by the coincidence of considering suffering on such a sweet, sunny day. But that's of course the way our lives are. About suffering, they were never wrong, the old masters. how well they understood its human position, how it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along.

[01:05]

This morning I would like to talk for a little while about the calling forth and cultivation of compassion as a way of meeting the suffering in our lives. And in particular, I'd like to talk about the Bodhisattva Jizo. We have this wonderful image of Jizo standing here. an inspiring and beautiful expression of this particular quality of compassion that is a focal point for bringing our suffering particularly around the occasion of the loss of a being through dying of one sort or another, through miscarriage or abortion or stillbirth or SIDS or any cause that leads to the passing over of some being, but particularly of a child or a being not yet born.

[02:19]

But first I want to say a few things about suffering and the way we meet sufferings. My experience in my own life and in practicing with other people is that very often when suffering arises in our lives, something comes to the mind that, some thought comes to the mind of, I can't stand this or I want to run away. And it is at those times when I may feel overwhelmed that I don't know what to do." There's a kind of description about Buddhists, and especially Buddhist priests in Japan, as being the ones who get to take care of dying. The Shinto priests get to take care of weddings and blessings.

[03:27]

A dear friend of mine who is a disciple of Maezumi Roshi's, a great Zen teacher who just passed over recently, when I spoke to her a few days ago, she said, my goodness, they really do know something about how to do a funeral in Japan. And I've always, through the years, felt a little, some funny feeling about the kind of funeral business But when I listened to my friend describe the series of ceremonies, or the series of chapters to the ceremony for Maezumi Roshi, what I realized was that focusing that attention for many, many, many years, centuries, on how to attend to dying in Japan is a great gift. And I think that the practice that has grown up around abortion and miscarriage in Japan that focuses on Jizo is a very good example of that kind of cultivation that can provide for us some container where we don't have a container for a particular kind of grieving that comes up around these experiences.

[04:57]

From what I understand about the ceremony for those who have passed over, particularly for children that has grown up in Japan, it really took the kind of form that it has now, just after the Second World War, when abortions became legal again. And abortion is the standard means of birth control in Japan. So that means that there are many, many abortions. And not from any of the sort of officials in the Buddhist world in Japan, but from ordinary people with their suffering, there began to be, at a kind of grassroots level, this going to temples and standing in a shrine before an image of this bodhisattva of compassion and doing some form of a memorial or funeral ceremony.

[06:06]

as a way of holding and being with the suffering that various people have experienced as a result of abortion or miscarriage particularly. So a few years ago, when I was in Japan, I went on a kind of walking trip, and I went from one shrine to another and saw as many different jizos and jizo shrines as I could find. I remember at one point on Shikoku Island, I was walking up in the mountains, very far from any village or city, And after not seeing anything except the forest and the mountains for a few hours, suddenly I came upon a series of stone shrine houses with a jizo standing in them, one little shrine house after another, about every 50 yards.

[07:09]

So someone had to carry these very heavy shrine houses and figures up to the top of the mountains. At the base of the Tokyo Tower, there is a very big Jizo shrine with over a thousand figures of Jizo. And I sat there one day for a whole day and just was with the Jizos and the people who came to offer incense, to recite the Heart Sutra, to put a bib or a pair of shoes or a toy or a McDonald's hamburger or a Coca-Cola or whatever offering someone had, they would bring And people came and went all day. Young people, couples, women by themselves, older couples who looked like they were grandparents. All different kinds of people came and went all day long.

[08:16]

There's a very famous temple just near the outskirts of Kamakura where there is a Jizo garden that looks like a kind of sea of Jizos, thousands of figures. And the garden is emptied every month, and it fills up again in the next month. So let me tell you a little bit about Jizo as the emanation of compassion, but a particular quality of compassion which has to do with nurturance and protection. That quality of compassion which exists in every one of us, at least potentially. Because, of course, this is the way these Jizos and Shakyamuni Buddhas and Manjushris, three of the figures that we have here in the meditation room, are, among other things, a way for us to be reminded that we can bring forth, each one of us, these qualities of compassion or enlightenment or awakening and wisdom.

[09:48]

So Jizo is described as the bodhisattva of compassion who is willing to go into the hell realms and bring beings back out of the hell realms. It's the only bodhisattva who has that quality. There's a very beautiful small temple in northeastern part of Kyoto, which has a small garden that's filled with stone figures that people have gone there and made in remembrance of some being who has passed over. They're not made by great artists. They're made by people who come with their hearts full and who are trying to find some container for their suffering and grief. I think of all the places that I went on my walking trip, the images that I saw in that garden have stayed in my heart more vividly than any others.

[10:55]

In particular, one figure of the thousand armed Avalokiteshvara, thousand armed bodhisattva of compassion. a three-foot cube of granite that had been carved with hands. There's nothing but hands all over it. It's very moving. Anyway, at this temple, there's a large tatami-matted room where you can go and sit and have a cup of tea or eat a picnic lunch that you may have brought. Because at this temple, they do the jesus ceremony frequently and many people go to that temple and so there's this friendly and beautiful space where people can rest and be with each other and on the ceiling is a wonderful painting of the hell realms quite vivid

[12:00]

the hot hells and the cold hells. And there's Jizo swimming down into the hell realms, pulling beings out of their suffering. There is in Japan this kind of melding into this bodhisattva of compassion, a lot of folk religion, a lot of folklore. So Jizo carries many things for many people. Particularly in Kyoto and in the region around Kyoto, you will commonly find a little shrine house on a street corner, on almost every street corner. So every neighborhood has a little shrine house with a Jizo in it. And someone in the neighborhood takes care of the shrine, keeps it clean. Every morning fills a little cup of water or sake, puts some fresh flowers.

[13:04]

They're quite beautiful. Because of this connection, particularly between Jizo and children, there also are sometimes rather celebratory festivals for children associated with Jizo. He's very often called upon for doing something that someone feels they can't possibly do or they have some feeling of hopelessness. There's a wonderful story that I think captures this quality about a very old woman who was a widow. And she was so old that taking care of her rice fields was very difficult for her. So when it was planting time, she went out and she planted the fields. And she got to the point where she was able to finish half the field. And she was at that point so exhausted that she couldn't move anymore.

[14:08]

She went back into her house and went to bed feeling very forlorn because she didn't know how she would finish planting the rice. So when she got up in the morning, she looked out the window to the field and it had been finished. The plants were all out. And she was so grateful and so amazed that she went to the shrine for Jizo across the road from her field to offer incense and to say thank you. And the feet of Jizo in the shrine house were covered with mud. So there are many stories like this about Jizo. Because of this close association between Jizo and abortion in particular, the figures of Jizo that have been made in the last 50 years

[15:12]

very often, more and more, are images of Jizo holding a child or holding many children and with children coming out of his sleeves and standing around the bottom of his feet. But, of course, he has a much older association with tending and caring for anyone who has passed over, no matter what their age is. So the last time I was at Renso in Suzuki Roshi's temple, his son, knowing how much I liked Jizo, said, oh, let's go to the graveyard. And there was this very beautiful figure of Jizo, and standing, kneeling actually at his feet, were figures of an old man and an old woman. So he was holding a child but standing with an old man and an old woman. And that had apparently been a figure that the members of the temple had decided they wanted to have present in their graveyard.

[16:22]

And in many graveyards, the way a gravesite will be marked will be with a figure of Jizo. Sometimes even the container which carries the ashes of someone who has passed over may be a lotus, and then the lotus itself is filled with the remains with the image of Jizo standing on top. This Jizo, as with many of them, he is always depicted as a monk with his head shaved, with his begging staff, staff which usually has six rings on it so it makes a clanking noise so that when you go out doing walking meditation or begging especially if you're in the forest the clank and thump of the staff will warn creatures that you're coming so they'll get out of the way so you won't step on them and harm them and in his left hand he's holding the wish fulfilling gem

[17:28]

that represents a great, powerful, clear intention. So we have this tradition coming to us from another culture which provides some inspiration for the creation of a container in which we can bring forth whatever suffering we have, especially suffering that we may have historically turned away from because we felt like we would be overwhelmed or consumed by it. And what we discover, what I've discovered, and what I've seen for many other people, is that in doing some simple practices, sewing a bib or a hat or a cape to put on the bodhisattva's figure, sitting together and making some garment like this in silence,

[18:48]

being able to speak about what brings us to come to do the ceremony together, giving the being that we are remembering a Dharma name, writing prayers or messages, whatever we have carried in our heart unexpressed for a long time. we discover that there is a kind of container which is big enough and strong enough to hold whatever suffering we bring. And of course the great paradox is that in bringing forth, in turning towards our suffering, we discover our capacity to hold whatever the suffering may be. And we discover in that very process of turning towards our suffering that it begins, as with everything, to change. Maybe even to begin to dissolve and pass away.

[19:52]

Some years ago, the first time I did the ceremony for a large group of people was at a conference for women in Buddhism. And I'd been doing the ceremony for a while, but always for small groups of people, usually at the end of a retreat. And I had been so moved by the helpfulness in doing this simple ceremony of remembrance and saying goodbye that I suggested that anyone who wanted to do the ceremony might meet me at a certain place at a certain time. And 37 people showed up. In that circle of us who sat together that particular morning, we represented every possible position on the political spectrum with respect to abortion. There were people who were there because of miscarriages.

[21:01]

There were people there who had had children die at a young age. There were people there doing the ceremony for their own lost childhood. There were people who came for many different reasons. And within the circle, people who were ordinarily used to being at loggerheads with each other because of their ideas about what is right and what is wrong. But what brought us together, of course, was what we all shared, which was some suffering. And the container was big enough to hold it all. So this bodhisattva of compassion marks this possibility of the kind of compassion, the quality of tender, nurturing, protective compassion that is such that any suffering can be held with this quality of the mind.

[22:13]

And for many of us, even though we may not know quite how to bring forth such compassion, especially for ourselves, especially for our own suffering, we discover step by step how to do it, even though we have this thought, I don't know how. We discover this quality of compassion by having an image which expresses this quality of presence, of protection, of being with without judging. Whatever arises in the mind that is difficult to be with can be met with this quality of tender attention.

[23:18]

The template for how to do this in the Buddhist tradition is to be with whatever arises as a mother is with her only newborn child. I'm always struck by that as the template. It's not a mother with her 11th child. It's a mother with her only newborn child. So there is no priority given to someone who is an expert, someone who is a beginner. So it means there's no gender preference either. It means that this quality of tender attention, interest, amazement, but mostly willingness to be present, to show up, is what we are going for.

[24:28]

And such amazing things happen when we are willing to cultivate this quality of our own mind stream with whatever arises moment by moment. No matter what the thought or emotional state or feeling, whatever the experience, we discover that we have a capacity to be present with these qualities. the first step in the cultivation of loving-kindness. Because of course, if we can't begin with the cultivation of this quality for ourselves, we are not likely to be able to do that with another being. So the ceremony that's associated with Jizo is about discovering our capacity to meet whatever we carry that may be some old history, old responses to something we have done or something that has happened that has brought about the passing over of some being not yet born or born

[25:51]

And in the process of acknowledging that there has been a life and that there has been a dying, we are able to say whatever we have been carrying for a long time in a way that allows us to put it down. So we can have some release from the suffering that we may have carried for a long time. This business of dying is a grave matter and pertains to every one of us. And it's interesting that it seems that we all think it's something that will happen to someone else, but not to us. And I think particularly in our culture when we meet dying, particularly of someone very dear to us,

[27:01]

We don't know so much about what to do or how to be with that experience and the responses that arise in the mind. We don't really know what to do with fear and those situations when we feel like our heart is breaking. This path of the cultivation of loving kindness, of compassion, is a path about how to do just that, how to be with what we think is not possible to be with. Some years ago I participated in a conference on healing. And I talked about Jizo Bodhisattva and this ceremony. And afterwards, a woman came up to me who had just finished her residency as a medical doctor.

[28:02]

And she said that during the period of time when she was going through her training, whenever she would be in the hospital, which was usually for two or three days at a time, whenever she would go to sleep, she would have the same dream of a young boy child calling to her. She said, you know, I never thought about it until I heard you speak about this ceremony today. But seven years ago, I had an abortion. And I've always felt some great sadness and dis-ease. And I'm sure that that boy child who was calling to me was that baby. So she came to do the ceremony. And she wrote to me several months after that and said, I've not had that dream again.

[29:05]

Her willingness to turn towards what she was experiencing and to attend to whatever was arising within her is exactly what Jizo represents as a possibility in each one of us. The first time I went to Japan, I went to Mount Koya, where there are many graveyards. And I remember going to one big graveyard up on the top of the mountain. It's a very long, rather narrow graveyard. It's probably, I don't know, 200 or 300 yards wide and a mile and a half long. filled with these beautiful, beautiful figures of Jizo of all sizes, all bedecked with traveling hats and coats and picnic baskets and mostly with bibs.

[30:22]

New bibs piled on top of old ones, providing safe haven for earwigs and spiders and all kinds of creatures. What struck me about that graveyard was the joy that I felt in it. It was the most joyful place I had ever been. I was just amazed. And of course there were many families visiting different grave sites, sitting and having a picnic. We don't think of grave sites that way, do we? But maybe we could have a little revolution. One of my students whose family lives down in the Fresno area told me that in her father's family, apparently, except for one of his siblings, everyone in her father's family has stayed within about a 25-mile radius of each other.

[31:28]

That in itself is rather unusual. So there are many generations of their family buried in graveyards around in the neighborhood. And on Memorial Day, they all gather and they go to every single grave site and leave flowers. They all go together to all the grave sites within the area, and then they have a big meal together. The graveyards in Japan have some of that feeling to them. And I think it's largely because Jizo is there in all of them, with his staff and his jewel, with his hands in gusho. protecting and nurturing whatever beings need his protection and nurturance. And calling forth that possibility in the hearts of all those who call upon him.

[32:36]

There's a river up in northern Japan that's in an area that's very rocky. And it sounds a little bit like the river Styx. And one of the descriptions of what happens after a child dies is that the children get so busy piling stones on top of each other to make a kind of stairway to heaven for their parents that they get sidetracked. And then the masters of the hell realms can snatch them away. So part of what Jizo is supposed to do is to kind of shepherd the children across the river so they don't get waylaid by their playing. So there's this quality in all of these stories about Jizo of such sweetness. I've been doing the ceremony associated with Jizo for a number of years, and not necessarily with people who are Buddhists, people from many different religious and spiritual traditions.

[33:53]

And what interests me is how consistently when someone sees Jizo, they know exactly what he's about. It doesn't take a lot of explanation. I think that's wonderful. So I would invite each of you to, whenever you see Jizo here in the meditation room or down in the garden in some of the little shrine houses, to remember not only what Jizo represents, what Jizo is willing to do, but to remember your own capacity to bring forth this quality of nurturing, protecting compassion as a way of being present with the suffering that arises within your life and the lives of others.

[35:02]

Because, of course, if we can begin to turn towards what is difficult within ourselves, we will, in time, come to that place where we cease to be afraid of whatever may arise. Thank you very much. Before we begin, I want to do a little commercial. I think this is the great sleeper of the month, this book by Sharon Salzberg called Loving Kindness, the Revolutionary Art of Happiness. It's a deceptive book. And my recommendation is superb. Sharon has been, her focal point in her own practice for 25 years has been the cultivation of loving kindness.

[36:14]

She's had extraordinarily good teachers, and she's a fine practitioner herself. And the book is very clear and very fresh. And my suggestion is that you don't try to read it in the usual way, but to use it as a kind of practice manual and let what she presents guide you. So you read a little section as a kind of contemplation, and then I think beginning in the second chapter she has practice exercises, meditations. So she really unpacks the loving-kindness meditation into smaller elements and in the sequence which allows you to build what you're working with. Her last name is Salzberg, S-A-L-Z-B-E-R-G. It's a fine book. I didn't have my glasses on, so I can't tell you. It was all a little bit of a blur. But if it's not in the office, you could ask him to get it.

[37:16]

It's really good. Loving Kindness. The subtitle is The Revolutionary Art of Happiness, and it's published by Shambhala. So that's the end of my commercial announcement, and I'm not getting a cut. So I wonder if there are some things that any of you would like to bring up for us to talk about. All right, Linda. Yes. Yes, please. What is the Nishio? I never really knew about Nishio before. Jizo. Jizo. J-I-Z-O. He's in the Japanese system, a combination, a kind of blending of... The bodhisattva in Sanskrit called Siddhigarbha, the earth store bodhisattva, and a certain aspect of Avalokiteshvara. But it's a blending of the two.

[38:17]

And in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, the bodhisattva of compassion, the form that is most comparable to Jizo is the four-armed bodhisattva. Avalokiteshvara, who has the work of guiding subtle consciousness to Amida Buddha at the time, after death, and guiding beings through the bardo state. So, forearmed Avalokiteshvara and Jizo have the same function, if you will, in terms of aspects of compassion. And how does Kuan Yin? Kuan Yin has some of the characteristics in terms of who you call upon when you're in danger. Calm and compassion in the midst of a great storm. So there's some of that quality in Jizo. And of course Kuan Yin is feminine. Jizo is androgynous and also somewhat phallic.

[39:22]

A lot of the images of Jizo in Japan are quite phallic, with the shaved head. And what you've got is this kind of stump of a body with the round head. And I'm sure there's some aspect of what's going on that's not altogether just an accident. How androgynous? What do you mean androgynous? The feeling tone of Jizo is often quite feminine, even though he's described as a monk, as a male, monastic. The feeling tone of the images of Jizo are consistently quite, have a feminine quality about them. I noticed there were mostly women here today. Pardon me? I noticed there were mostly women here today. That's a different subject. No. so even though he's overtly male the tone of the images of Jizo I think are not strongly masculine or feminine but a kind of blending of both qualities that may not be a correct use of androgyny but

[40:37]

Yes. This might be a little off the subject, but during your talk you were talking about facing what you fear or what you're running from. And I just started Jack Kornfield's book, Half Apart. I'm getting a lot out of that. In the beginning he was talking about how the Buddha roars back at the things that are distracting him while he's sitting. And that seems like a really kind of aggressive stance to take. And then I think about how to reconcile that with the idea of compassion, about kind of anything that comes your way or all the hearts of us. Well, but, you know, sometimes I think it depends entirely on motivation. If the roar is coming from compassion and wisdom, it's not harmful. It gets your attention. It's making a statement. There's a boundary there. Stop that. And you can yell, stop that, as an expression of anger or clarity.

[41:50]

So I think the question always is, what's the motivation? What are the causes and conditions that lead to a particular expression? So compassion isn't necessarily embracing your weaknesses? In the various practices for being with what you consider a weakness or an aspect where, say, an emotional state in which you feel quite vulnerable, what you're really going for is a kind of curious combination of qualities, a kind of neutral tenderness. Being present, but without clinging and grasping, without either a possessiveness or aversion. So there's an almost neutral tenderness, if you will. Otherwise, we get caught in our own stories. So very often the practices that you do, at least in the beginning, for being with what is difficult, are practices that emphasize brief attention.

[43:03]

Not trying to stay with what is difficult for a long time, but very briefly. So, for example, in meditation that I like very much, I find very helpful for working with fear and anger, you stay with the emotional state for the space of an inhalation or an exhalation, not even a whole breath. Anybody can stay with anything for that long. And most of the time when we feel overwhelmed, it's because we're trying to hang in with something for hours or days or weeks or years, not for an inhalation. And often we're focusing in a way that is a kind of generalization. I always feel such and such, rather than noting what I'm aware of arising in this moment. Amen. I'm trying to think about that in practice.

[44:06]

And after that breath. Then there's another breath. After the inhalation, there's an exhalation. But if your frame is the duration of attention described by an inhalation, and then an exhalation, and then an inhalation, you just take it one half breath at a time. You might surprise yourself. Yes. Well, going on the same feeling, I'm finding out that, well, the first time I'm facing this fear that I didn't face before, I kept ignoring it now and saying I don't want to face it and cancel it. But I find myself caught up in the fear so that I can't let anything come in that's really going to help me, and I don't know how to do that, and I'm sort of like... fearful of the fear because I really just to take care of myself I have to face the situation and handle it well you know I always think the language that we use in talking to ourselves about this kind of thing is very revealing handle it suggests doing something about it and that's the great American religion is doing we know a lot about doing and we don't know so much

[45:32]

about being with, just hanging out. And so we end up working a lot harder than whatever I'm aware of with that emotional state, including not only the emotion but the body sensations that seem to accompany it for the space of an inhalation and then an exhalation. Not thinking about the situation that was the trigger for fear arising, but with, what's my response? Because, of course, our lives are made up of, you know, stuff happens. People do things or they don't do things. They say something, they don't invite me to the birthday party, whatever it is. There's all this stuff that happens. I can't do anything about the stuff that happens apart from what I do. But in addition to things happen, then there's my response to what happens.

[46:36]

My work is with my response. And I think for most of us, our coping mechanism is often thinking about the situation, trying to figure, if I could just figure this out, if I could just understand what was going on, everything would be fine. my experience is that that's a pretty stuck place. And I too easily then get caught in whatever story I have about the stuff that happens. People do what they do We all do what we do, and we're so busy commenting and responding to what somebody else should or shouldn't do as a great distraction from what we can actually do something about, which is my own mind strength, my own responses. That's where I actually have a chance to cultivate certain qualities and gradually learn how to dissolve certain habits.

[47:42]

The rest of it, there's often very little I can do much about. And the more I pay attention to what's coming up for me in this moment, the more I realize I've got plenty, plenty to take care of here. And the taking care of is very often mostly cultivating my ability to cultivate awareness of what is so. There's this five-part transformation meditation. And in the first step, what you're doing is being with what is so. I don't know, something between maybe 90 and 97% of the transformation process happens in that first step. The practice of the cultivation of awareness leads to an ability to allow things to be as they are rather than fighting their being the way they are.

[48:46]

So rather than trying to handle the situation, what you might imagine is handle in the sense of holding. your response, whatever it is, particularly if it's fear. Not hanging onto it and not standing it, but with that quality of tender attention. And you might be surprised what happens. The fifth step is kind of intellectual analyzing what are the causes and conditions that have led to whatever it is I'm working on. And most of us want to go from step one to step five as fast as possible. We'd rather think about what's going on than be with ourselves with whatever stuff is coming up. And most of us have capacities we don't begin to have much sense of.

[49:52]

So I wish you well. Thank you. Yes, Linda. I'm thinking about, as I listen to you talk today, probably a lot of us have had a lot of experience on an entire one personal level of thinking about and working with and practicing with the experiences you talk about, overwhelms, fear, all of this stuff. And that's where all my times and almost all my experience lies too. But for a long time I've been thinking about how to connect that level where we work with finding compassion for ourselves and ourselves. And these big social, public, political levels where it's really, it seems at some moments just exactly the same and at other moments it seems there's some important difference where it becomes acceptable to kill babies and lots of other people in a public way.

[51:05]

in our own crowds, in our cities, and in all the other places whose names you know. It's not a fully thought question, but I just want a little sharing about same or different or how do you begin to think about that gap or non-gap. Well, I think paying attention to what we practice and reaffirm and solidify as a group or as a society is very important. I mean, in our culture, there are certain things we practice that seem to reiterate some of the Buddha's observations about what leads to suffering. I can't remember in what context. In the last couple of days, somebody said that one time when someone was asking Thich Nhat Hanh about what is the realm of hungry ghosts, it came up yesterday, I guess.

[52:12]

It's actually quoted in Sheridan's book. Someone said to Thich Nhat Hanh, asking about the different realms, can you explain what the realm of the hungry ghosts is like? And he answered with one word, a very... So when we have a kind of mechanistic view of how things are, particularly about our lives, it leads to certain conclusions of the way we practice medicine, for example. And what comes up for me is an experience I had recently. I did a weekend on death and dying for medical school students. You see medical school really through the inspiration of one doctor on the teaching faculty. had, for the first time in the history of a medical school in the United States, this semester just ending, a course on death and dying.

[53:17]

Now, that's rather remarkable, I think. Some years ago, when I first started doing some seminars for doctors and medical students, the first time I did it was a group of doctors who were colleagues, who worked together. They had never talked with each other about their experiences and responses to their patients dying. It was an unexamined and unexplored aspect of our human life. Well, one of the things that came up in this weekend that I just recently did was that the students talked about their experience as first-year medical students, which is when everybody gets to take anatomy, which means you get to have a cadaver you work with. And it is definitely the initiation into a more mechanistic relationship to the people you work with and a kind of splitting between the work you do and your response to it.

[54:20]

And they, without exception, it was the first time they ever talked about it, they, without exception, describe incredible grief and anguish and questions about their relationship with the cadaver, who was this person, what are the circumstances that lead to somebody being... their body being available to be studied in an anatomy class, would people knowingly will their body to science if they knew in fact what was going to happen to their body, all this sort of stuff. But it was a very... complicated conversation about their individual responses to that situation. And they had no, up to that point, had no container to even talk about what was going on among themselves. You just don't do that. And what I thought was interesting was the degree to which they agreed that

[55:24]

They weren't convinced it was necessary as a learning tool, if you will. That's a very small example, but there's a kind of radiating consequences to that pathway of looking at our physical well-being in this kind of mechanical way. emanates out to all kinds of decisions about what we do and don't do in the way medicine is practiced, for example. That's just one little thing. What would happen if a large segment of the population just stopped watching television? Believe me, one's inner landscape changes enormously. really enormously. Because we keep practicing, we get accustomed to violence, we get accustomed to anger, we get accustomed, we begin to think, oh, this is just normal.

[56:35]

How does the amount of fear that is arising in the collective mind, what are the causes and conditions of fear arising? There are lots of them. Anyway, I think the question you're raising is a very important one. Because it's in asking that question that it's pretty easy to say, oh, I'm just one person. I couldn't do anything that would change things. It's one of the things Sharon talks about in her book. In the early part of the book, she talks about how King Ashoka, who lived... Some time after the Buddha. And, you know, he was out there slaughtering and conquering this and that. And one day walking out on a battlefield after a battle had ended, walking through the carnage of a battle. human beings, animals, you know, just blood and gore and corpses everywhere.

[57:43]

And across the field he encountered a Buddhist monk who was just radiating equanimity and joy. And he wanted to understand how that was possible. And so the monk gave him the Buddhist teachings. And he at that point vowed to change his intention with the kind of ruler that he would be. But along that same thing as with Robert Mapp in there, saying, oh, it's a mistake now with Vietnam and all the men who went to Vietnam don't like to keep Vietnam in his cheek. Well, my reaction to it was, how could he just, I mean, I haven't read the book yet, but it's like he knew the war was wrong and if he didn't have the insight to say, well, did you kill all these people? There was no courage. Now he's saying, well, it's mistaken. It may be valuable now, but it's like all those people are dead. All of Vietnam is completely destructed.

[58:44]

I mean, I work for a hotel in Lebanon. It used to be a middle-class family. She now claims it's a poor person's house. And it's like, I wonder if he sees the people that he actually... We're in the same thing. Did he see what he was doing or did he just blind him? Well, this is where I think the story of Ashoka is very important because in this encounter with this one monk, he changed this vast empire, which was the cause of the introduction of the Buddhist teachings to many other countries, to Sri Lanka, to Burma, to Thailand. This one monk... who was inspired by the Buddha's teachings and who taught Ashoka. So it was not just the awareness of what is so with all of this carnage, but the teachings are about how to proceed in a way that leads to different consequences. McNamara is not King Ashoka.

[59:45]

I'm sorry to say. Yes, not yet. Not yet. But my point is, how do I become that monk? How do I cultivate those qualities within myself that bring about some inspiration for another person that I may come into contact with. And we divert ourselves by looking at what someone else is doing that is wrong as a way that bleeds our energy away from what we actually can do something about. And get discouraged because with this message about, oh, well, but I'm only one person. One person who's really awake makes a difference, even in this vast, complicated, speeded-up world that we live in.

[60:52]

I guess I'd try to be more that way and gentle. Even at work, where I found I don't think I have a good work relationship with some people. So I decided I would separate from the fighting and the anger, which is a real easy hook for me, and I know that. So I finally said, okay, I can do something by not participating. And it's been really interesting to see what's happened. I'm not upset. I mean, even if I had to not let it, you know, you said like for a second, and then go, okay, it's just as well. But I want to caution you about misunderstanding this possibility of being with what is so isn't with denial. at all. So, I'm likely to get into some trouble if I say, I am not angry, I am this calm, cool, collected Zen practitioner.

[62:07]

Oh, I don't claim to be that. Well, I've been known to fall into that particular trap. And that kind of turning away, I will not be angry, doesn't leave me with anywhere to go when what arises is anger. And what I'm talking about is finding a way to be present with anything that arises, whether it is anger or joy. Now, I think your decision to not participate in a lot of acrimonious stuff at work sounds like a very wise thing to do and a way to take care of yourself. Once you do that, then you stand in a field that has some other possibilities. Try at work taking on the practice of not talking about anybody who isn't present in the room. will totally revolutionize your relationship with people at work.

[63:08]

Suddenly the weather will look like a very good topic of conversation. Well, start somewhere. Well, I think that's very wise. That's very wise. Yes? Your story about the medical dissection reminded me of the story of Leonardo, who spent the morning talking to an elderly dying man. He died around noon. Leonardo proceeded to cut him up and make some of the most beautiful anatomical drawings that have ever been made. So really it isn't the action, it's the relationship between... It's the motivation again. Yeah, I think that's true. Often a given action can lead to very great harm because of some unwholesome motivation, where the same action, motivated by clarity and compassion and wisdom, will have very different consequences.

[64:20]

Yes? You started to talk about ways to draw the line between facing a feeling and dwelling upon it. For example, if you're breathing in and breathing outside, not dwelling on it. Could you talk more about that? It's a rather complex thing. There are different aspects. For example, sometimes the times in between facing things can be just suppression. There are many different aspects of it. What are the things, in addition to, so you, to be conscious, to develop the consciousness to know when it's, when it's really facing things enough and when you're facing it too much, and that's something I've worked through, you know, I'd like to open up on. Well, You know, this is where in the Buddhist tradition, among many different ways of practicing, one of the ways is called the graduated path.

[65:23]

And you start with certain practices that establish a certain kind of ground that then you can stand on to do other practices. So, for example, before you... work with morality or ethics or virtue, you begin with the cultivation of generosity. Because that quality of generosity, when the mind is suffused with generosity, will affect the way you work with conduct issues. Now, in terms of particularly difficult emotional states, most of us think in terms of either suppression or expression. And one of the things that happens when people begin to do a meditation practice of one sort or another, but particularly breath-focused meditation practices, is the discovery of a third option. to suppression or expression, which is the possibility of being present, completely, fully present with what is arising without stuffing it, but also without expressing it.

[66:39]

That's a third option, which means we less and less find ourselves having done something that we regret later. Now, I think that one of the very fundamental practices that's particularly emphasized in kind of beginning meditation in the Theravada tradition is a practice sometimes called the practice of bare noting. That is a moment of awareness of something that you are wanting to pay attention to, but you do it very briefly. Very briefly. That's the bare part. And you then shift your awareness to a neutral body sensation. And then the breath. I thought that neutral thing was suppression. No. What happens is you notice what you notice. You observe, identify and name.

[67:40]

and then shift your awareness to a neutral body sensation, which is the quickest, most straightforward way of bringing yourself into the present moment, not the past or the future. And it means you shift your awareness in such a way that you minimize getting caught in a story, which you just keep going over and over and over and over, which is not awareness, it's sinking. Now, if you actually practice bare noting, let's say, well, one of the habits that I attend and probably will to my grave is the habit of judging, noticing what's wrong. Note judgment and immediately shift to the sensation of my lower right leg against the fabric of the cushion.

[68:43]

And then breathe in and breathe out. If I hang out with the judging, pretty soon I am examining every picky detail of what's wrong in the room. And there's judgment piled on judgment piled on judgment. That's a stuck place. I'm not trying to get myself to stop the judging. What I want to do is cultivate my ability to notice that particular pattern or habit, but not get caught by the content. Note the pattern, not the content. So if I do that practice of bare noting thoroughly with a number of different habits or patterns or qualities of the mind, I begin to have a taste for the effectiveness of brief noticing and what happens out of that, which is a kind of allowing of insight rather than trying to go for it with my big stick and my flashlight.

[69:46]

And I begin to cultivate a kind of ease, and I cultivate allowing, and I begin to see how much more efforting I'm putting into my inner life than is skillful or effective. And there are certainly times when we see clearly, oh, this keeps coming up. I need to look into this. I need to really sit and think about this situation. But not as the first order of business. Maybe it's the fifth step, not the first one. You apply the same thing to an emotion or a goal. Yeah. Now, there are certain situations, particularly if they're not killers, if they're not great big challenges, where I might look into. So, for example, in sitting meditation, in the way that we practice zazen and the Zen tradition, one of the things we are, although you may not know it when you first start sitting, you discover fairly quickly, one of the things you're cultivating is your capacity to sit still with discomfort.

[71:00]

and you do begin to investigate certain kinds of discomfort. One of the ways of working with discomfort is to get to know, what do I mean by the pain in my left ankle? Where is it? Is it constant or intermittent? Is it down deep in the joint itself or does it seem to have to do with muscle or flesh? I begin to have the room for that kind of inquiry. Now, it's not going to work with some really intense debilitating pain. I start with small doable discomforts that I can begin to cultivate some ability to investigate. And I begin to discover, oh, just because my leg falls asleep, I don't have to move. This isn't terminal. I can even sit with my legs still till the bell rings. Now, I might wiggle the first ear, but in time, I discover my capacity to sit still.

[72:09]

And I move, but maybe the moment between when I start sitting and moving begins to get a little bit longer because my capacity to be present with what is difficult is beginning to develop. Okay? Yes. Yes. God, it's such a pleasure to have you back. Thank you. I wonder where you've been, and are you going to stay away as long? Well, this is the first time I've been invited. Oh. Well, it occurred to me that I had been teaching here for a long time and hadn't actually been invited to teach. So I stopped. And I've been teaching at Goat in the Road. Why? Yes. I live over the fence. And I have a meditation room and meditation garden, and I teach there.

[73:11]

It's not so useful to teach unless you're invited. I mean, I know the board of directors, who would touch? We can't, right? Well, I don't know. I have been a little removed from the workings of Zen Center as an institution. So I don't quite know. Anyway, I was invited to come and do the Jesus ceremony, and I was invited to do the lecture, and I said, yes, I'd be very happy to do it. But as happens, our lives become very full. And I'm working on writing a book about language practices. So I'm doing my best to rope my foot to the desk, because I really want to do it.

[74:16]

I think it will be useful. And language practices. Paying attention to what we say as a way of getting to know the mind. And changing what we say as a way of training the mind. Noticing what the feeling tone is when I say I can't. And when I say I don't know how or I don't want to, for example. So why won't it be done? I mean, I've been teaching language practices for a long time. And I think it's an area of focus that's very good for us as Americans because we're so impatient. And the trade-off, the sense of getting somewhere, the sense of effective change is so quick with working with language.

[75:23]

Not like Zazen, where the payoff is much slower, much more subtle. So I figure this is a skillful doorway. So I don't know. I'm going to have to be isolated in a cave somewhere to get it done. But I really want to do it, and I'd like to do it this year. I don't know if I can, but I'd like to do it this year. I mean, all the material is there. The problem is I've got too much. I've got too much, mostly thanks to all the people I've been practicing with for years because I've got wonderful stories about what happens when you take on a practice like not lying. It's very powerful. It changes one's life. Yes? Do you miss more than the table of contents? Well, let's see. Let's see what else. Well. Pronouns. Pronouns. Pronoun disorder. Eliminating you and we.

[76:24]

I love Mark Twain's quote. The only people who can use the word we are royalty and persons with worms. And I appreciated it one time when I had worms. I thought, ah, until this gets taken care of, I can honestly say we. But, for example, my husband and I, I each seem, what I've observed is he seems to be focusing on this particular pronoun, we, and I do also. And I would say that the consequence of not using we has been entirely beneficial in the relationship that I have with my husband. I feel a lot of room to have my own particular experience and to share the richness of the particular experience I have in a situation that he's also in, or he has the experience he has.

[77:49]

And that is very rich and quite delightful. And I experience that level of attention that comes from the language practice as beneficial. I've also heard of the elimination of the use of the verb to beat. Could that be a practice that we can appreciate? I'll have to think about that. Maybe that's another focus. It's called E prime, English prime, not the wisdom. Oh, yes. Somebody told me about that and gave me a short description of this language practice where you use everything in the active voice and you make everything a verb. Yeah, it's definitely about the same. It has the same effect. So, for example, I torture the people I practice with whenever anybody uses the word it.

[78:54]

The great it. It makes me upset. It makes me crazy. what I've noticed is we use the passive voice when we want to distance ourselves from our actual experience in the moment and when we begin to listen to the occurrence of passive voice construction and notice when that's happening it can be very very revealing very revealing This is a practice you have to do on a buddy system. It helps enormously to have a buddy. Yes, I think that's right. I think that's right. So, for example, with the language of the Carey's Judgment, One of the practices that I attribute to my husband, really, is noticing that comparisons are a subcategory of judgment that leads to trouble.

[80:05]

So what he proposed and the two of us engaged in for some extended period of time was the practice of not using any comparative or superlative adjectives or adverbs. with the question, is there anything I want to say that I can't say if I eliminate that category of language? Not only did I discover, at least so far, I haven't found something I can't say, but what arose as a possibility was more attention... to descriptive language, and that I could say things that were potentially not so easy to say much more effectively and have it actually be possible in the sense of two people continuing to talk to each other, the more I developed my capacity for description, which is what happened with the subsiding of comparative adjectives and adverbs.

[81:10]

Would you give an example? The breakfast we had this morning was the... There's we, pronoun disorder. The breakfast I had this morning was the most delicious breakfast I've ever had. Superlative. Superlative. This morning, Bill fixed breakfast for me of fresh... muffins, toasted, and fresh boiled eggs. So I'm describing in detail. But you didn't say if you enjoyed it or not. You don't say if it's delicious? Well, I might go on. Does that not help? I enjoyed... My experience with the breakfast I had this morning of fresh toasted muffins with very fresh boiled eggs was a delicious breakfast.

[82:13]

The difference between saying I have an old car and I have a 1952 pink Cadillac convertible, a much more vivid picture of But what I've discovered is that in a conversation with another person and out of that in a conversation with myself, the more I stay with describing, the more detail and awareness I'm cultivating that I have a kind of sloppiness with habitual comparative adjectives and adverbs. I was thinking about the whole question of awareness. Like if someone said to me, you're not aware, I would say, that's a lie. But the truth is that in every moment I'm not aware as I would like to be. And your practice of the breathing, how you described your in-breath and out-breath turned a light on for me because I use breath a lot.

[83:18]

And the concept I have is that I take something in when I breathed in. But when I breathed out, it's like I'm getting rid of a lot of toxins. So the idea that I could get rid of this thought, this anger, or this judgment, when I breathed out, I could get rid of it. It was like a light going on. All right, now, there's a very great commentator, and that was a... Can I say great? I guess I can say great. I mean, I'll tell you, one of the things that happens with these language practices is you go through increasingly larger comparative periods of silence. Or kind of, you know, I start to say something. It only lasts for a few days. There's a commentator named Vianna Mouli.

[84:22]

Nyanamuli apparently was introduced to the Buddhist teachings when he was in his 40s. He was born in Great Britain. And within a year had taken himself off to Sri Lanka, had taken monks' vows, and lived another, I think, 12 years. He had a relatively short dharma life. But during that time, he did a lot of translations and commentaries. very insightful commentaries. And he's done a lot of commentary material on Buddhist psychology texts. He suggests that the impulse to get rid of is an act of violence. that that impulse to get rid of a thought or a certain emotional state is a kind of violence against an aspect of one's own mind stream. And that what is more to the point is bringing awareness to the thought and allowing it to fade or dissolve or change as it will since everything changes.

[85:39]

That's a very different goal, if you will, or attitude. There's a rather strikingly different tone in the mind. I'm really glad that you picked up on my language disorder, because breathing out is certainly different. Now, there is classically the meditation on purification where you breathe out or visualize moving out in a black or dark gray cloud, sometimes on the breath, all impurities. as visualizations can be very effective. But I think that paying attention to that thought, I want to get rid of this, is the way we express in our language, which is, of course, thoughts are all about language, that is a kind of turning away rather than being with.

[86:42]

And it has a kind of energy of doing, which is part of our habituation, part of our conditioning in our culture. It strikes me a lot because of the work I've done over the years in being with people while they're dying. And I think one of the reasons that we as Americans have such a hard time with the dying process and with death, we get to that point where there's nothing anymore to do. And we don't know how to be in a situation where there isn't anything to do. So there's this frantic fluffing pillows and windows up and down and, oh dear, don't you need another pain pill? Because we don't know how to just hang out. So part of what meditation practice is about is practicing hanging out, just hanging out, not doing anything. Now, one of the important factors, useful factors, in working with awareness of our language, our capacity to notice will increase to the degree that we are not judging what we're noticing.

[87:52]

The habit of judging is a great obstacle to awareness and to being present. So for a lot of us, the initial piece of work is bringing up to some consciousness the degree to which we have a judging habit. And it's like asking the proverbial fish to describe water. Because for some of us anyway, the judging habit is so much part of our atmosphere, our environment, that we're not at all aware that that's so. One time when I did a weekend retreat on the judge, we did some writing exercises. And what began to happen for people as they would write out the inner dialogue they began to get, you know, right there in front of them. Like, goodness, I have no idea I talk to myself like this. One woman said, after one writing exercise, she said, I wouldn't talk this way to my worst enemy.

[88:59]

It was like news. This is where I think your point, Linda, that it helps enormously to have a swim buddy is really so. But it has to be someone who will do the noticing with my permission and will do it with great kindness. If there's any element of gotcha, at least until one's gotten into the fun of it, which may take a while. In time, it becomes great fun, but I think it takes a while. Yes? How does that buddy idea work with the internal lung load that is self-judging? Well, that's where the kind of writing practice that Natalie Goldberg talks about in writing down the bones can be a way of beginning to bring that inner dialogue up to some place of awareness. There are two books that I find quite helpful, writing down the bones, and the other is a book by Richard Carlson called Taming Your Gremlin.

[90:09]

And one of the exercises he has you do is to draw pictures of the critic. The critic, the inner judge. That can be another way of beginning to... Those crows that are sitting on power lines. There you go. Or, you know, the committee. One time, actually, in a workshop on this theme, we did a drawing exercise, and one woman who said, oh, I don't have a judge, I have a committee. And when we got to the drawing exercise, she drew the committee sitting at a table. The tablecloth on the table was a little short, so you could see there the lower leg and feet. And they're all drawn, you know, with suits and buttoned up and ties and really very serious and very formal. But what she did with the legs and the shoes for crump socks and all of that was when I could tell by the time she got to the legs, she was beginning already to change her relationship to the committee.

[91:19]

So it wasn't that she was getting rid of the committee. She was changing her relationship to the committee. And for a lot of us, especially with judgment, when we begin to have some consciousness of the effect of that habitual critic, we want to get rid of it. It doesn't occur to us to put our arm around the critic and say, it's okay, you don't have to leave the room, I'm just not going to pay attention to you. I'm not going to listen to you. It's a very different way to go at it. Yeah? Ever since you started, you described how you were trying to get this book written, and you got a look on your face that made it look like you thought that would be difficult. I've been scheming about how you can get your book written. No, no, no. It's not that it looks like it will be difficult. It has been. Can I tell you my scheme? Please. Okay. Well, go away. The first idea, which I think is the second idea, was for you to commit to do articles that represent drafts of each of your chapters to some of the Buddhist journals.

[92:30]

But my second idea responded to this woman's feeling of... real happiness to have you among us and to have you discussing. And that is to arrange a set of monthly presentations among a circle of people who love to listen to you, where you present the draft of each chapter one month for six months. That would be...

[92:51]

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