home
mary
yeah
yes after me and derek skilled

raw fish
all art
ethics
as the
thank you
good morning
such a nice group of people here the morning friends
beautiful fall morning
about six months ago i was directed on
two metre practice
probably most of you know it met a practices it's the practice of developing compassion are loving kindness or open heartedness
actually for this talk i went back and looked at my notes and i was actually more specifically directed to sit with a on of the matter ceuta which is a little bit different actually and maybe more so
but it has led me down a variety of detours and pass on what i would like to do is take you on the circuit aware i've been since then
so you know met a suitor is the chance that probably is the most accessible chant we chant here choose me on monday mornings
i met a practice
as i was practicing it in the beginning
is the practice of
saying to oneself may i be happy
may i be well
maybe safe
may i be at ease
may i have that equiniti
and then doing that same thing for someone who is easy to do that for the that it comes naturally to do that for
and then doing that for someone that you feel neutral about that i feel neutral about
and then doing that for someone that is difficult to feel to bring up those feelings for
oh and the traditional instruction is that you start in the easiest place
which is oneself or at least that's what at the eastern tradition says that's actually was not sure for me and i think my be as najaf i can see maybe it's not true for other people here
this to someone they said well start easy start somewhere else
i didn't do that actually what i would i got caught by
oh
is that moment at which that objection arises like that feeling of
i would call what i've been calling it is unearned
unearned worthiness or inherent unworthiness
hum
that i have been living with
and that led me into some
some teachings about mindfulness and to on
and one of the things i did by the way
sees me
was it i listen to talks that people gave here years ago i don't know if you know that there's a gold mine of teaching and dharma on our website there's almost ten years of talks that you can go back and actually listened to people give classes give talks and so forth and so i listened to catherine cascade
kate and gerry oliva give a talk on mindfulness
oh
is wonderful but i noticed that what they what what does it is not you unusual with them but what i've noticed is that mindfulness is defined as the non-reactive attention or awareness and and i wanted to unpack
that non-reactive i mean i think we sort of just say like like you do an exercise just do it
but actually i didn't find out that easy
and i noticed that it can it can have as soon as one is aware of something as it comes up there can be a voice that comes that game in myself there's a voice that has an opinion about that about whether that's or whether i like it whether i
don't like it where i approve of it whether i don't approve of it whether i want to shove it away
and sometimes a hole saws and can period can be like like a game of whack-a-mole like plumping the thought or the feeling that comes out
oh
now i've spent a lot of time with this voice in myself about years in therapy and in this practice
i'm
so i'm very familiar with it as a psychological phenomenon as an inheritance of one's particular growing up if you will
oh

hey
pages or out owner one
and the question i would i have often had is how do you not use the voice to still the voice how do you not be critical of the critical voice and just pile on the no higher and deeper if you will
and there is some interesting cognitive research about how we scan the world cognitively how we process information and there's some data that there is a survival function that we have to scan the world and ourselves for negative stimuli and to over account it
to see it as having more valence and to see it as more prevalent than the positives to me like a scalded negativity bias
there's some interesting potential research on the horizon i mean psychologists like to look at the dark side of things so they do the negative negativity bias first
they have not they there's some suggestion that we actually process positive stimuli completely differently
if there's some tantalizing things about that but i don't want to get caught on but anyway it's a survival mechanism we are looking for dangerous are anticipatory in a reflex it's how we use what we learn in the world about what's dangerous and what safe
but what is this sound like in are buddhist steers it sounds to me like what we call ego it sounds to me like the part of ourselves that we see as separate
as threatened or threatened bull
especially from injury and death
physical or emotional
and it's our protect and defend function right
and i know myself that even keep tries it tries to keep me safe even from incoming criticism by by standing outside myself and looking at myself and seeing what other people might see in the and trying to correct before somebody else gets to it what they might be about to say
so in this foray into this
stepping away i thought from the meadow practice i did notice a shift from understanding this voice as sort of part of my own peculiar psychological makeup
who the part of myself that is operating under the delusion of separateness
and that led me to a shift from trying to change it to try to get rid of it like
to try to erase that tape if you will
to trying to bring some nurturance to it on
with the understanding that hobby living with this for the rest of my life this part of myself and that maybe what i need to do is figure out how to make friends with it rather than trying to
shut it up on
so the real task is to figure out how
you know to pry this the fingers of this part of myself off the wheel this that's driving this bus
oh how to do that so that led me into another detour which was around acceptance practices
i was looking for a kind of hands on way of developing non reactivity
and the practice i found most helpful was you know in that moment when something arises
to say to that something
yes
you are here to yes this is
yes and even then if there's a judgment about that to say yes to that too
just yes
the implicit context is the context of pausing not doing anything about either of those things not taking it anywhere not elaborating the story
then creating space to investigate what that is with the ultimate goal i think of figuring out how to choose a non habitual response to the moment a non usual way that a fresh
shh look at what this it is
oh
an analogy i used with my mediation clients a lot was the analogy to explain something about anger that anger is like a the the noise of a fire alarm the kind that are you know upon your ceiling and it's very annoying and very loud
and very attention getting and it by itself does not put out any fires
you actually have to figure out with the matter is you have to stop and say okay as a is there a fire or is their smoke from the kitchen or as the battery low or is this a gas fire and so forth and so on and figure out what is needed for figure out what is an
then figure out what is needed and kind of two-step operation
so and i would say just i don't mean this is a throw away because i want to come back to it but you're not one is i'm not saying yes to the circumstance i'm not saying yes to the thing that's wrong to the fire
i'm saying yes to my response
two that to the noise and to the noise and to the alarm
and then figuring out what's needed is what is the reaction to the circumstance

so
when dealing with habit energy
the idea is that there is this structure of noticing notice and hawes create space
the of doing something different and then
doing that over and over and over again for the rest of your life for the rest of my life
ah
oh that that led me into the third detour on this meadow surge which is a kind of favorite go on of mine from forever which is what is right effort
i mean i i'm a person who tries hard and that's when i'm
so what is direct effort and how to manage it and how to do that without gaining mind
hum
i it's been suggested to me that of the the effort comes paired in the parameters effort comes paired with patients
and i've been told that to think of patience as the a radical acceptance of things as they are
as it is
rather than making an effort to get it right or to get anything or anywhere but i think this is a fund for me this is a fundamental contradiction in buddhism which is the tension between
practices if your hair were on fire whole heartedly throw yourself into it
and no gaining mind
progress is not a matter of far or near as the sun chi says
oh
now
for another reason i which i'll get to later i was directed to the tens of hokey and the instructions for the cook token our thirteenth century ancestors instructions to the cook on
but i found something relevant to this in which i'd like to share with you
in buddhism the view which only sees living in the world as impermanent and are trying to accumulate anything is useless is referred to his duncan
whereas a way of life which assumes that things must be accumulated and is based solely on setting up the limited goals of wealth good health and our offspring is called jochen by the way this is a gm his commentary in this is fujiyama speaking
both of these views are understood to be one sided
this is the understanding that brought up about the exposition of the middle way the middle way does not mean halfway
nor does it mean some sort of watered down defeated compromise
rather the middle way means to accept this contradiction of impermanence and cause and effect within your own life
to accept this contradiction means to forbear and overcome it without trying to resolve it at its very essence life is contradiction
and the flexibility to forbear and assimilate contradiction without being beaten down by her
nor by attempting to resolve it
is our life force
to express has concretely in terms of our daily attitude it means to live without projecting goals well yet having a direction
so i love that i tied right in to the developmental notion of how we get to be adults that the the development from adolescence to adulthood
and there are two things at least happening in the brain at that time one of them is that there there is a sheet of fatty sheaf that that insulates each neuron in the brain called myelin so there's a mile on isation that goes on
from it through adolescent is completed at the end of adolescent and them and the and the the she's actually in the installation speeds up the neuro the firing of neurons that processing capability
together with that there we know you have two hemispheres and they actually operate kind of differently they have different kinds of thinking capabilities but between them is something called the corpus callosum which is a bundle of nerves that connects and integrates those two halves and that isn't actually completed in its formation
until young adulthood
so together those two things suggest that
oh with it was suggested is that the adolescent sees things as more white and black than an adult does an adult they had an adult capability is the ability to understand and know that she feels the opposite
izzat things about the same thing love and hate about the same thing or
fear and excitement about the same thing and people to put those on the same page and tolerate the anxiety of that contradiction without having to resolve it
the adolescent not so much the adolescent sees somebody they love very much do something they don't like and that's called you know a fall from the pedestal right there you know very the very idealistic kind of waves they so so i when i when i read this i that oh
buddhism is about growing up
oh
so here we are growing up now all of this detours happening of course in real time and in the real world and the real world
intercedes as it does
and i started to have a really
hard time
with what was happening in the world
oh
i mean there's lots of things i know we're all reacting to but the thing that i particularly that dropped me to my knees
ah
was children being separated from their parents
some of them forever
ah
so
i took this to docusign and was directed to the tens okay okay specifically and to magnanimous mind particularly big mind
my doctor surgeon about this he said you to look up magnanimous and fashioned so i did
courageously noble and mind and heart
a generous and forgiving
a shoeing resentment or revenge and unselfish
oh
so
here's dogan
magnanimous mind is like a mountain
stable and impartial
exemplifying the ocean it is tolerant and views everything from the broadest perspective
having a magnanimous mind means being without prejudice and refusing to take sides
when carrying something that weighs an ounce do not think of it is light
likewise when you have to carry fifty pounds do not think of it as heavy
do not get carried away by the sounds of spring
now become heavy hearted upon seeing the colors of fall
view the changes of the seasons as a whole and way the relative newness of light and heavy from a broad perspective
then this is a oceana
this metaphor means that you should not be swayed by the values of society nor get all excited simply because it's spring
finding yourself in favourable circumstances
likewise just because it is fall there is no need to get all upset and have a nervous breakdown
rather see the four seasons of favourable circumstances
let me do that again see the four seasons of favorable circumstances
adversity
despair and exaltation
all as the scenery of your life
this is what lies behind the expression of big mind
living out your life firmly grounded in big mind does not mean that you become dom and mute nor that life is devoid of the scenery of enlightenment and illusion
heaven or hell
success and failure
happiness and unhappiness

this i'm not entirely sure i can say why
oh
i found the words all the scenery of your life to be turning words actually gone
something about getting a wide enough angle lens and stepping back far enough
everything
when i was visiting the northwest recently i visited a family friend who is eighty nine years old and very
alert and active and
i was visiting him mrs wife just died
and
when he retired he was a
cardiologists for nessa
when he retired he took up the study of the presidents of the united states starting with washington and going down the line one by one and when you got done with that after a couple years he was started back with the first lady's than he did all those and then he did all of the the henchmen all the people around each president
and now he teaches that broad view of history to his did at the senior center on bainbridge island
and he said and i i
and i want to get deep into the idea i'm not historian so i can i can just tell you what he said he said wherein the third turning
said well said another is the first turning the revolutionary war there's a second turning the civil war this is the third turning and there was something about that lake
enlarged view there was like oh right
okay so at the chinese say about opportunity area about crisis there's an opportunity in danger both right there
hum
also i also wear what i got from it was home to figure out at least moment by moment not for good but mama by moment how to let go of the resistance to what is so
when i mean by that is when you're watching a slow motion train wreck
and you can't stand it and all of you goes
no
that's extra suffering
that's suffering
and
what it means to do malpractice is to open your heart
and to open your heart
means that your heart is broken some of the time
and that's okay and has to be okay
because otherwise what's the alternative stir i know what the alternative is when you try to not feel that
and that's not okay
that's an incomplete operation in your psyche everything goes numb ultimately you know don't feel anything
and i know a little bit about this me from my own
grief hum my both my parents have died and one grief
was wholehearted
and another grief was
incomplete and resisted
and they were really different
the resisted grief was
being stuck in an eddy you know on eddie and rivers has gotten round and round and the water is foul and you're just there
and open hundred grief is in clean water rushing with the current
you're swept along and it's not that it's easy there's not even that it's fun
but it's okay
and it's moving and you know it's gonna change
and it feels clean

so
i guess met is not about feeling all warm and fuzzy
ah
the separation of children from families is a great grief
and there's no
there's no gently down of that
hum
and so many practice must be learning to live with a broken hand
and
to mean to be open means to be open to everything i'm not pushing anything away
and so
you know him back to mete practice after all of this detour
scuse me
now i have new com which i
right you to help me listen
i want to fight to talk about
which is how to live in magnanimous mind
but with all the scenery of one's life
how
so we have plenty of time to do that i think
peter

a great question
well
now you have just named the two poles of the dilemma of my own effort kiss
the trying hard is you know how i have defined effort making it you don't make it so and
ha
when i think about the uncomplicated and open-hearted grief there was no effort in the hat and when i think about that it does feel
ah
like it burns through and cleans you and and is opening it creates space
hum
i do live with those two images them for is being that's true
chen

the neuropsychologist and scan it
correct me
with

yeah

hmm

ten pick up right at target
you want me to the crazy
my life and that all if as me and
challenges and facing a direct always and be magnanimous to them i take another prices the way i guess
it is very hard and very hard on people abandoned her
like that what as he that you were finishing up and i would suggest to bit the hope
as a lily over
i realized that i reached out and outlet and how was that nationalists
i thousand before i realized it on wrong
before he realized that suffer
this is that it was magnanimity out there an hour or something i don't know coming forward and he started to wake up
sponsors the spider
chaga i think having
well i have received magnanimity some and a nice began recognize
people
but here like that
i realized that i could partner and i'm not sure what that means anything really so today i found magnanimous the snipers outside and i received such generosity and kindness
you know thank you you help me remember something on he was intending to say that i didn't say i think which is that am
malpractice practice is really not
creating compassion in oneself it's finding the compassion that's already there

carry
right
now i ever since the ended in their practice
now again
if they have required reading is michelle
and and it's somehow
so i walked today
no time
is that the method
because i
you look at a superficial
denial
so
after the other thing is
about
hmm
right africa is
hmm
five just
same as
and
no end in sight and in fact that is
hey that's my home
now kith and kin
linda
discussion
okay i would love that
what
the
question

going to do
so

hmm
they
mm-hmm
yeah
you
one of the space doesn't seem to hang on

no way
it was titled
said
can you stay with them there
what happens if you do that
what

there's nothing you know they're not
hey
right
right
in that pract the acceptance practice there is there's there's a number of other steps which i didn't really go into but one of them is
i'm noticing
and having noticed attempting not to act out on him not to go anywhere
and then to bring an investigative mind to it and insofar as possible that the investigative mind is non-judgmental is and maybe even to make an inquiry which pulls up
nurturing mind what is needed what do you need what do you need
what is called for
and sort of bathe that with
an interested and curious
loving

asked you

why

hmm

right

hmm

maybe have

does the first noble truth
holy spirit

well

if you want to and was me
ever heard

when he has a
i'm actually work
your liking
you are
i thought about that everybody has
have a broken heart
much
commenting on federal point
yeah you have
that
this flexible that that was a almost word that was uchiyama his word
yes flexible now
have you
bondi

yeah
right on
well a colleague of mine sent around a i noticed that ah
volunteers were wanted to work with and be with the children in detention and so i signed up for that i don't speak spanish and or any indigenous language so i don't know how useful that was buried in a haven't been contacted so there is there is a community of mental health people at least who are trying to be
be with the children
i've a friend and i'm sure she wouldn't mind if i invited to fall is sitting at roma cafe on ashby in college ah at from a through
three to four thirty every wednesday afternoon i'm writing postcards to our congressmen about what you care about and so on that an opportunity and i've been doing there
and i plan to be part of the
i'm not busy see related activities and several communities that are politically oriented getting out the vote salem and we're gonna be doing that i have to say that
and there's same opportunity arises around those which is how how to do that wholeheartedly and not be wrapped up in whether it makes a difference
what what differences my little postcard going to make what differences that make to if i just don't you know it yeah this is something you have to actually just do whatever it is that one is called or able to do without thinking about the outcome because in between
the effort that you put in and the outcome or a lot of things you don't control
you know including impermanence so
that that's the hard part of it when more and that i think
i think the has
during the thaw i felt like that
right
he asked
passion but then often lie

how how that's decided as i often

there's this actions
there
do
participate right
right
maybe more
a way to participate that is necessary
that's what i expect with the
right five
grant
you know
do something that's where i feel i guess how to put him right okay i think right