Good morning. Before I forget, someone mentioned to me yesterday that there's a call put out for whoever is so persuaded tomorrow the 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour to make some sound for peace wherever we are. Strikes me as a great thing to do. All we have to do is remember and notice when it's eleven o'clock tomorrow morning. What is on my mind to speak about and invite you to consider this morning has to do with a sticking point that is pointed to throughout the Buddhist teachings and very graphically identified in what I call the

[01:20]

the kind of pithy bottom of the 12 links. And those of you who are familiar with that imagery will remember that you have sense bases. Contact, the image is the couple making love. Feeling, the guy with the arrow he's trying to pull out of his eye. Find that image that stays with me. Craving, which is a picnic, right? And grasping, which is someone or some several people trying to get all the fruit out of the tree. It's for me, mine. Grasping. And I've been kind of sitting with some different sense about grasping related to attachment for the last little while.

[02:34]

Informed by knowing a little bit about the details of a tumor attached to a gland. Just somehow that specific circumstance gave me... it kind of led to some understanding about certain characteristics of attachment. I've long thought that the word was perhaps not the best choice for the translation into English, but I'm now reconsidering that. For a long time I thought that what is being pointed to about noticing the consequences, suffering consequences of attachment has to do with possessiveness.

[03:44]

But I also think there's something about attachment that blots or obscures or weighs upon or can in time actually harm by the very nature of that relationship. So I've been just letting myself muse about, notice, rest with attachment from this point of view. And one of the things that kind of bubbled up for me was the ways in which expectation is in the same territory. that our attachment about something in the future manifests with respect to expectation sometimes, often.

[04:57]

Our attachments are clinging to having something stay the same way not just in this moment but ongoingly. I find this particular sequence in the Twelve Links especially important because there's a kind of articulation in that segment of the Twelve Links about the causes and conditions manifest as contact, which then leads to feeling, which then leads to craving, which then leads to grasping. It's also the sequence where we have the chance, when we bring attention to that sequence, we have the chance to choose to break

[06:07]

the linkage in terms of causes and conditions for grasping and then before that craving. And I appreciate that there is a difference between attachment and grasping. But part of what I want to bring up for our consideration this morning is to wonder together about what the differences are. And to invite all of us to, over the next while, pay attention to our own direct experience of this territory. Someone wrote me a note a few days ago.

[07:15]

Is this thing working? It's kind of, this machine's a kind of mystery machine. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. Everything changes, nothing remains the same. Someone wrote me a note. a week or so ago and wanted to know if I would sometime talk about grief, which is actually what I was planning on talking about, and then I realized that this business about attachment and grasping is really related to our experiences that we might label as grief. And I know in my own experience, grabbing onto, holding onto just about anything leads to suffering.

[08:17]

And how fruitful it is, at least in my experience, to notice when I'm doing this about just about anything, you know, that sense of hanging on. Because I've been traveling a lot the last month, I haven't been able to work in the garden at all. And I asked Josue, who helps me in the garden quite remarkably. I don't know what I'd do without his help. But before I started bebopping up and down the coast, We went over a list of things that involved a lot of, you know, taking things out, you may have noticed.

[09:27]

Or maybe you didn't. But of course, you know, so I have a certain idea about what's going to be taken out. and I go away for a week or so and then I come back and find out that maybe what I thought was going to be taken out was taken out and then again maybe something else was taken out. And there's only a certain number of times you can take plants out and put them back in again before they get tired of it and they just, you know, fall over. Is it the right word? Extirpate? We extirpated the bamboo out to the outer edges of the compound. But of course, you know, this is a perfect situation for noticing attachment.

[10:34]

Bleeding into grasping about how things are supposed to be or should be or what I had in mind and did or didn't communicate. I think it's very easy for most of us anyway to notice attachment and clinging and grasping around what we like and what we don't like, what we're thrilled with especially. Very easy in the moment of experiencing what we find beautiful to want to freeze dry it and keep it that way. I remember a number of years ago when I was in New York with the Gyuto monks when they were making a butter sculpture.

[11:45]

a sculpture that was in its finished emanation, 15 feet tall and 25 feet wide. And all the elements that were made of butter, colored butter, had to be kept. First of all, they had to make these things in ice water. So they were working in ice water. many hours of the day and then the room had to be quite cool or of course the whole business would start to melt. And there were some enormous number of people who came into the Natural History Museum where they were doing this and quite intrigued and bewildered. Why on earth are you doing this out of butter? I ended up being a kind of docent for particularly because there were only a few monks who could speak English and describing that this was an offering on the part of the monks and was also a reminder about impermanence.

[13:09]

I've seen butter sculptures made in India where literally as the sculpture is being made, the birds are flying in and eating the butter sculptures or it gets a little warm or the sun shines on a particularly beautiful element and it all starts to kind of drip, etc. But what was the most amazing to the monks was the number of people who wanted to know if they could please, at the end of the exhibit, take one or another piece from the sculpture home and keep it in their freezer. I thought, wow, you know, attachment. I want to keep it and I want it to be mine in my freezer. I suppose you'd open the door and then quickly close it. This was all going on in March, and the museum piped cold air in off the street to keep the room cool.

[14:19]

I wore my friend's long-deceased Both she and the coat, long-deceased fur coat, because it was freezing in there. But repeatedly, what young children, teenagers, adults were caught by is, you mean you're just going to put it out in the park and let the birds have it? It was so difficult. to accept that about these sculptures that the monks were making that were remarkably intricate and very beautiful. I've been spending time with arts professionals in a series of meetings where we're looking at the incidence of the influence of Buddhism in contemporary art.

[15:26]

And of course, the whole world of museums and people who are restorers is to hold at bay the disintegration of art. There's this kind of built-in tension. And what I've come to discover is that there's an enormous amount of suffering and grief for the people who do the restoration work. Because, of course, they're right there in the middle of that dilemma about keeping, holding on, resisting the inevitable fact of change. How many of us who were aware of the destruction by the Taliban in Afghanistan of those extraordinary sculptures of the Buddha that had been in existence for such a remarkably long time?

[16:38]

I still, when I see a picture of those carvings or just close my eyes and can see those images, notice a certain... And yet the other day when I heard about someone who had made a small model of those images some while ago and is dedicated to recreating them, I thought, oh. And what would the Buddha say? So, I think it's very interesting to notice the specific circumstance in which grasping occurs. the specific circumstance in which one can notice some sense of attachment.

[17:54]

For those of us who are these days working with impermanence meditations, different meditations will kind of open up experientially the ground that I'm inviting you to look into. In the verse that so many of you know about, birth will end in death, youth will end in old age, wealth will end in loss, meetings will end in separation. All things in cyclic existence are transient, are impermanent. for I think probably most of us, maybe all of us, the line about meetings will end in separation brings up wherever we have some strong attachment.

[19:01]

but that sense, that sensing, that awareness of the direct experience of this comes up far more often than we probably notice. I think some of you were aware of my happily somewhat amused engagement with, oh, that's what crepey skin looks like as I look in the mirror. Chicken neck. Oh, there it is. But during the retreat I just did this last weekend up in Alaska, there was one woman who's, I imagine she's in her early 50s, very attractive person, physically and in many ways.

[20:11]

And she confessed to me how much she hates looking in the mirror these days because she's beginning to see the signs of aging, you know, little wrinkles and sags, etc. She was not happy with me with my delight and enthusiasm for the territory that she could now begin to enjoy. She looked at me like I was nuts. She's new to meditation so in time she'll begin to I have some confidence that she'll find some delight in the misery of encountering. No, I don't want to get older.

[21:14]

Several years ago, someone I met told me about a woman that she was taking care of. who was at the time in her 90s and who had apparently for a very long time focused on what was possible not what was not possible and absolutely chose as a path for setting a different groove than the one that arises with this about what is no longer so, this about what is gone, this about what's not happening, whether it's, is the sun out or can I hear as well as I did a month ago or am I able to walk today or, you know, whatever. Part of my intention in bringing up this territory about grasping or craving, craving, grasping, grasping, attachment, is that these reactions I think come up for all of us

[22:55]

and particularly to the degree that this patterning arises in ways that are so familiar that we aren't even aware of this reaction. What's happening is a kind of groove or pathway which, the longer we live, leads to increasingly more and more suffering. It is entirely in this segment of the teachings about the Twelve Links, the territory where we actually can, with persistence, have a more and more increased awareness of the degree to which we have choices about our state of mind, and can choose to break that line of

[23:58]

conditioning that's being pointed to in this sequence of the twelve links in service of not only getting off of the wheel of suffering but very clearly in service of cultivating our ability for presence, for being present. Grasping and attachment do not serve that cultivation. And I'm not in any way asking you to take my word for it. I want to invite you to look into your own experience about grasping, craving and grasping. look into your own experience of moments of attachment physically, mentally, emotionally, psychologically, in every way

[25:15]

There's a practice which you might try. During your daily practice, explore for a few minutes, maybe no more than five minutes, sitting as still as you can, physically to come to as much stability and stillness in your sitting. And in that stillness notice change with the body. Be open to bringing attention to any quiet or subtle movement that you're aware of.

[26:31]

If you are still and relaxed you may have access to some sense of movement in the heart as the heart beats or with the lungs awareness of change with breath with state of mind if some emotion arises, the changeable nature of that. And you may find your ability to sit very still enhanced with doing what I'm suggesting at the end of the exhalation especially if the exhalation is fairly deep there's a... when the breath is a bit slower and longer there's that space at the end of the exhalation where you can come to a degree of stillness within which you can experience the impermanence of all the different aspects of

[28:04]

body and breath and mind. I think that for many of us, if not all of us, impermanence meditations bring us to the direct experience of where we have some grasping, where we have some hanging on. And of course, one of the reasons for doing impermanence meditations is to be able to bring up into more conscious awareness where those places in the mind exist in order to begin to loosen the grip in service of being free of suffering.

[29:13]

And of course, what I'm talking about includes being willing to bring attention to resistance to noticing. There are some attachments and areas of grasping I don't want to give up. Well, are you willing to know what they are? I think one of the reasons that I am especially fond of this time of year is because it's a time of year when change quickens in the natural world and I have enhanced awareness of shift in the light, the angle of the light in the fall.

[30:21]

Yesterday as I was sitting in the in the interview room looking out into the garden there's so much out there that's in the process of releasing needles and leaves and that experience of the beauty in this area is not separated, separatable from the palpable quality of change. So... becomes the occasion for, oh, don't lose your needles just yet. Wait a week. At which point the dawn redwood kind of thumbs its nose at me.

[31:24]

It's that tree out there. It's needles. I find myself thinking of all the people who've told me about how they thought their tree had died when it lost all its needles and cut it down, thereby missing what happens in the spring when it gets these needles that are like baby bottom soft, exquisitely green. It's what we do out of ignorance and the want of patience. So in closing,

[32:28]

what I want to invite you to is the cultivation of curiosity about this area that's articulated in the Buddhist path as the territory of suffering and to be curious about the incidence of experience that each of us has with this grabbing on to, holding on to, in some cases holding on to for dear life. Whatever may be the focal point for that. You may uncover some aspects of What gives rise to this? What is the detail of this grabbing on, holding on, grasping?

[33:36]

See what you find out. So. I wonder if any of you have some things you'd like to bring up or ask about or wonder about? Jane? Yvonne, I'm so grateful for your topic today because it has taken over my life in a really dramatic way and my meditation today was about attachment. And in August in Santa Fe I met a black Indian man who was a documentary filmmaker and he was filming a Native Roots and River concert, and when I met this man and I looked into his eyes, there was this light that happened between the two of us. And I went away back to California, and we made contact with each other three weeks ago today, and spent two days together.

[34:43]

And when I left to come back to California, I had this sense that, I mean, and I said to him, you know, until we meet again, you're in my heart and in my prayers. With the saying that in the spirit of I may never have another contact with this person in this lifetime and if I do in another lifetime he is still in my heart and in my prayers. Well, in the three weeks since I've seen him we have had an ongoing dialogue over the telephone and contact, grasping, clinging, all of that stuff is raging through me right now and it's so powerful that I don't have a grip on it at all. You know, I guess what I'm trying to get to is I've been

[35:50]

cultivating this meditation on impermanence for ten years now in the abstract. Ah. Yeah. And now I have this, you know, you were talking about that woman about the aging thing. Right. And all this week because I was just so high after a telephone conversation with him during the week that I was like spinning out into infinity and I just could not get myself back. So I went back to all my books. I've been reading everything I can get my hands on about how to deal with this situation and I'm not having very much success with it because

[36:52]

The feeling feels so good. Yeah. Big hook, isn't it? It's a huge hook. Yeah. And we're planning to spend Thanksgiving together. And I'm really like nervous. I'm like just shaking inside about, you know, I'm just a wreck. Well, it sounds like you're aware of feeling like a wreck? Yeah. That's great. Well, you know, I mean, usually with that high flight, with contact and feeling, we're gone. Yeah. How's the tape about expectation going? Oh, just running at full speed. Sure. Well, I'm not sure at a certain point reading about what to do helps.

[38:03]

It hasn't at all. Right. But I was just, I was stumbling. Well, you know, one thing you might do is do on the breath, do the meditation about everything changes, nothing remains the same and just do that on the breath for if you can, if you have the stability to sustain a daily practice do it for five or thirty minutes but on the breath because it's not then happening in the mind, the thinking mind but dropping into this more subtle mind that's not separatable from the body. For me, meetings will end in separation.

[39:04]

It's still the place in my life where I have the most work to do and the most fear arising around the ending of the meetings that I am attached to. And just all I know to do is to just keep resting on the breath and doing these various meditations on impermanence, that's one. Everything changes. Nothing remains the same. We all will die. We do not know when or how. Whatever I can access and to just keep coming back to those descriptions on the breath. I think that what you're describing is exactly why this sequence on the 12 links is so

[40:07]

crucial and is the place where one can get off the wheel because there is the possibility of resting with craving but not putting any energy into grasping. And the big question then is how willing am I to just rest on the breath with the actual direct experience of craving? And the more I do that, the more I open up to the causes and conditions that give rise to craving, feeling and before that contact. But we love that rush.

[41:14]

It's like a truck. It's better than any truck I've ever driven. Well, but this is the territory. This is where we get caught in this around, oh, I love this feeling. Now, what about what arises when the person walks away or dies or whatever? How about feeling arises then? Uh-uh, I don't want that. So, you know, the more present you are with whatever's arising, the more present you are on the breath with whatever's arising, this is where the time and energy that we've put into establishing a regular meditation practice can be an invaluable resource.

[42:18]

Even though we may feel like we're just hanging on to some degree of of attention kind of by our fingernails, that's still not quite just getting lost in the story and the rush of all of, you know, falling in love. And we fall in love in so many different ways. and go blind. So the big question is, how do I, if not stay in attention, keep coming back to attention on the breath? Can I do that? And not beat up on myself for all the moments when I was out there in the sky blue yonder. The other thing I want to say is that I was so surprised by the power or the force of my attachment.

[43:33]

I never expected that all of those old feelings would come back with the same level of intensity that I had before I started. That was a little troubling to me, to tell you the truth. I mean, I know I shouldn't judge it, I should just... But I was aware of it. I thought, oh, this feels exactly like what it felt like before. And I didn't feel like beating myself up about not getting it or not being able to transcend that condition. But it was a surprise to me. Well, I think one of the places we get caught is we think, oh, well, I've taken care of that. I'm not going to have to work with that stuff. My meditation practice has taken me beyond that. Probably not. The very thought might suggest that, you know, I think it's very helpful to think about mind training as being a kind of spiral.

[44:42]

and we keep revisiting the same territory, but it's not quite the same as it was 10 or 15 or 20 years ago. I'm dropping to deeper and more subtle aspects of certain terrain. And if I find myself back in the soup I thought I'd never be in again, oops, And to what degree are we capable of that mind of, oh, oh, interest and curiosity gets killed with judgment, absolutely obliterated. You know, we have conditioning, and it's very powerful. And we can get kind of caught with thinking, oh, well, I'm free. As she rolls her eyes.

[45:48]

Yeah. Yeah, Kate. Could I speak to what Jim said? Sure. I guess I've been thinking of feeling it, not really in terms of grasping the performance, but in terms of keeping my heart open. And if I just, if I constantly, if I spend my time keeping my heart open, then there's room to look at my expectations about all these people as nice as they look. Or, even better, to see if my heart's open enough and say, well, maybe I should, you know, what's it like if I walk away? Maybe this isn't what I want. And not necessarily that, but just I could walk away from this relationship too. So one of the questions that comes up for me as I listen to what you just said is how about, how do I keep my heart open to the condition called my heart is closed?

[47:01]

There's a, you know, that's one of the edges where we can get caught because if we're caught in the thinking mind we kind of go, huh? Right, if I'm caught in the thinking mind then it just goes around in circles but if I come back to my heart and keeping my heart open then there's room to see other possibilities, the containers within. Right. And I know my closed heart. Yeah. And I can, you know, feel it open and closed. So let me make a suggestion that there are multiple ways of cultivating spaciousness, the experience of spaciousness. And one of the ways of working with the spaciousness of the heart when the heart doesn't feel very spacious is to work with the spaciousness that we can cultivate with the breath.

[48:09]

Um, then they're very related. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Margie? I've been, this topic is very relevant to me for a different reason in that, you know, I've been dealing with a very serious illness for the last six months and... Because you said only that long. Well, no, it's more than that. It seems longer than that, yeah. Six months of really not being well and now for the last three months I'm on men and I'm, it's very hard not to get really attached to that. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, yeah. And it's why, you know, the, what a friend of mine called the five miserable remembrances can be so useful in the bloom of health.

[49:14]

Because, of course, that's one of the places where we human beings have the most this. You know, I want to be well and I want to live to be 150. Right. With good hearing and not having any worse glasses and etc. You know, one of the people in the retreat that I just finished has a long history in her family of Alzheimer's. And now her father is beginning to have some, his own sense about he's maybe beginning down that track. And of course it brings it up for her vividly. My suspicion is that habit of grasping, if we don't bring attention to the grasping and what the conditions are that feed grasping, grasping will be with us to our last breath.

[50:40]

And it is absolutely the nature of suffering. I mean, I know that from sitting with people as they're dying. And, you know, doing that has been one of the real kicks for me in, okay, here is a place to bring attention. So, you know, the details of the story are different between you and Jane, but they aren't really. We have a kind... Being well. Being well. Being well isn't quite a bit of fun. Now you want more. More grasping. Yeah, well I can understand that. Bill? More variations on the theme. What's up for me is not that meeting may end in separation, but separation may end in meeting.

[51:48]

Because a guy's come back into my life who's been on the periphery and I just as soon never see him again. And I realize how thoroughly did I am to my aversion. Yeah. So it's the same stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And the antidote is heart opening, I think, and noticing this. So your talk was, you know, usefully, unsettlingly fruitful. the tight manhole cover loosened and I got a whiff of what's underneath it. Well, I also think that one of the places where we get caught with grasping is out of our expectation that we know that this person is the same person we knew ten years ago rather than

[53:04]

the possibility that who is this person? Yeah, I've changed but this asshole hasn't. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Betty? I appreciate the relationship and connection you made between expectation and attachment. And what came up for me was my expectations about testifying in this arbitration and I anticipated this experience for some months with a great deal of anxiety particularly when I considered the cross-examination and I testified on Thursday and... You're still alive! In the midst of the experience, I was in the room, at the table, listening to the questions, and thinking, I'm testifying.

[54:10]

Wow. And thinking about it was a whole lot more difficult than doing it. That was my big piece of education this last week. You know one of the things I know about procrastination which is I think related to what you're saying is what I put off out of fear gets bigger and bigger and bigger and then when I do it I think, huh? What was the big deal? The other piece that I want to mention is also a deep gratitude for the practices that we have been doing together these last number of years. I arrived about an hour before I was supposed to testify, knowing that it would give me some time to sit.

[55:12]

And rather than being given somebody's office, there was a chair in the foyer. And I sat for, actually what ended up being a little more than an hour, and did a whole series of practices that I know how to do that affected the kind of experience that I could have when I walked into the room and made, I'm convinced, a huge difference in what my experience was. Now, how did the cross-examination go in terms of your ability to stay in your seat and all of that, the stuff you were afraid of? I felt quite present and I noticed there were a number of times when the opposing attorney was asking me questions like, so is blah, [...] this is your testimony. And I thought, no, I said, no, that's not my testimony.

[56:18]

And then he went on to another question. And I, you know, in that moment I was thinking, oh, this is a lawyer thing to do. It's called phishing. Yeah, and also I think that he was seeing if I was, that this is my assumption, and Bill may have more information about this than I do, but my sense was that he wanted to see was I nervous enough that I was going to let something go over my head that I had already said that was contrary to what he was restating. And so if I could stay present enough to say, no, that's not an accurate statement, then you just let it go. One of the key things for me was the taking and sending practice, which I did for each and every person in the room, including myself before I went in,

[57:22]

and then everyone in the room together. So that when I went in and testified, the only thing that mattered at that point was that I spoke the truth as I knew it and not get caught up in who's right, who's wrong, who's for me, who's opposing. And it was very useful also because the situation at the table was that I was sitting here and next to me was the opposing attorney. and on the other side of him was the person who was grieving the process. So that when the attorney was asking me questions and I was looking at him, she was on the other side really making an effort to engage and make eye contact and lots of gestures and facial expressions and noddings and shaking her head and, you know, where I could have gotten very caught up. I just didn't feel caught by it at all.

[58:24]

So... Great. Mazel tov. Thank you. And you did suffer a lot for a lot of months. I can testify to that. That's true. And I had never put that experience into the framework of expectation and attachment. That combination is really very helpful. Also, the practices that you taught at our last half-day retreat around contraction, I worked with each of those practices, both before testifying and during my testimony. Very helpful. Yeah, contraction is part of this whole landscape. There is something in expectation and attachment especially on the negative end of our experience where we do this.

[59:27]

Yeah. And we hold our breath and then fear is much more likely to arise. Well, good luck, all of us. I have this wonderful book of Japanese sculpture that includes some photographs of carvings from a temple in Kyoto called Bodo-en that has an Amida room dedicated to Amida Buddha, the Buddha of the Western realm, who's sitting over there behind Jane, said to reside in the West associated with the color red. and associated with, you know, what some people believe is a kind of Buddhist heaven and the Pure Land tradition especially.

[60:30]

And in this temple, there are 54 images of the Bodhisattva of Compassion manifest as goddesses on clouds. So this is a copy of one of those photographs that my friend Victoria had carved in Bali, playing a drum. But they're all, all these bodhisattvas, or cloud goddesses as they're sometimes called, are doing their best to get the subtle mind of beings after they've died to Amida Buddha. I'm not quite sure where I'm going to mount her, There she is playing a drum. Anyway, I think the few pictures I've seen of this temple kind of sends me into spasms of grasping.

[61:31]

Anyway, that's who she is. I thought you might like to know. Nice to see you all. If any of you brought lunch and want to eat, I don't know how warm it is outside, You're welcome to eat in here if you want to. And those of you in the study group will start at one. So, nice to see you and I look forward to seeing you at another time. Thanks a lot.

[62:01]

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