March 19th, 1995, Serial No. 00911, Side B

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a number that
at some
it's a nice challenge to the up here and in fact i thought of deborah yesterday because own after the last two women says scenes we fell into conversations that of the end of which there would say well you should say that in the zendo you should say that in the zendo and yesterday i couldn't remember
what it was so you remember
remind me because i don't think
said this is about that

there are a lot of issues with practice that i would love to talk about and
after practicing for nine years i feel like i'd like to be able to pull things from the sutras and the masters and sort of we things together really well
and this being a women sitting i'd also like to address women's issues and our particular challenges with practice
but what i feel is that i'm a beginner i really feel like a beginner
and i can't even brag that i have beginner's mind i feel like i can't even offer you that
and to get up here and try to express my experience
feels really difficult because experiences so nonverbal
so
being up here how am i like right now what is my experience right now
how do we arrive in the moment without wiggling out of it
and is it enough and can i let it be enough
i'm
i think of the bodhisattva avalokiteshvara with the thousand arms and the thousand eyes reaching out to respond to the world of suffering with compassion
and for me there's a dark side of those thousand arms and thousand eyes being greedy with desire
there's a book by david cooper hannah hit it's called the principles of buddhist psychology it's a really excellent book that i can't find anymore
in it he compares the psychological studies of william james to the teaching of the buddha
and they both agree that this world is the world of countless possibilities
there's just lots and lots to choose from but it's also the world of selection and were required
by the form of this world and by our karma to make selections
and this is an endless source of grief for me
so i work at a public school and i teach science
and so of course i want to be really really excellent at it right now so i have this goal of reaching children and improving their lives and also making education really exciting so that my goals could be virtuous or even altruistic
used to but no longer obscures the fact that i have a greedy desire to shine right now so it's not just shining in front of other so that you'll think i'm great but shining in a way that means i've arrived at a full development without having
to go through the steps
as i've been uncovering this need for excellence
on and seeing it as a desire as i'm sort of woken up something about my suffering my real suffering
so the truth is i'm really struggling in my job
with the actual activity of teaching and then also all the lesson planning and all the anxiety it brings up for me and
what it's teaching me is that my practice right now is to suffer
and it's it seems like it's been that way a lot in my life
but it's been cloaked actually
and i don't mean to glorify suffering but actually i think i do glorify suffering
i mean to
because something isn't good enough for me
it's yeah i'm really driven to enhance it or embellish it or make it more terrifying than it actually is
so my question is how is it that i can suffer and desire that i don't suffer and then choose to make it worse
so as most of you know the four noble truths are
life is suffering
there is a cause to suffering there's an end to suffering
in the eightfold path
is the life to and suffering
a rep once gave a lecture
where he he was very impassioned he was very emphatic that the first noble truth was not in fact life is suffering but the translation is actually attachment to life is suffering and i really like that because it meant that life itself wasn't suffering it meant that you know i was doing
ng something we were doing some on there was comic effect there was something that could be fixed and so there was the sort of freedom of well life's not really suffering well life really is suffering it's not that he was wrong it's just that our attachment is a condition of our life and we we can't escape that so we can't escape
suffering
category rose she says that suffering is the first of the for holy truths
suffering is not merely pain or the lack of pleasure it's actually a wholly truth of existence
so what he says
the first fully truth is suffering this is a very important point suffering is not merely suffering as opposed to pleasure suffering is a wholly truth this means that it is one aspect of human life from which no one can escape it is completely beyond what one likes
or dislikes you have to face it directly because your life is right in the midst of suffering you cannot ignore it if you ignore suffering it becomes monstrous
in a he goes on to talk about three kinds of suffering physical suffering mental suffering and my favorite the third suffering which is radical suffering
and some want to read just a bit of it and then i'll go on
very basic a fundamental suffering radical suffering is the suffering produced by the transient see a phenomenon realization of this suffering is something you can experience through deep practice or through deep understanding of the total picture of human life as it interrelate with all safety of been
things in other words through deep practice of buddhism you can understand and experience radical suffering
when you're mine is busy and noisy it is very difficult to have this experience only when your practice is moving along very deeply will you experienced this kind of suffering this suffering is very calm very still in very silent but still it is there
it is very difficult to be free from radical suffering when your practice is very deep in your body and mind are very calm you understand human feelings you understand the feelings of the bird the feelings of the tree you understand everything still there are suffering that is very calm and site
isn't it is a kind of fear a very deep fear coming from the bottom of the human mind and body you cannot explain it but it is always there you have to face the suffering too

he goes on to speak of the causes of suffering and various other things but
i really can't get past
just this first holy truth of suffering especially this inescapable radical kind
after all this time it's basically all i can handle right now
and i cannot say that i've accepted that life is suffering this is what i've found out life is suffering
even i'm going to say it a lot
hello kitty historic there's not much more to it than that i'm just it's all embellishment
but i add on all this extra stuff and
i just i say it over and over and a kind of amazement no one escapes pain disappointment loss longing struggle i mean
i don't escape it none of us do but instead of this being a truth of life or my life i've taken it to be an indication that i'm messing up
so it's a wholly truth from the ages but for me it's not a wholly truth is an indication that i'm missing up so the medicine of practice is offered to me how can i use it when i'm fighting the fact that i'm even ill
yeah and you take the medicine my my cells are in denial so they can't take the medicine i it feels like i'm sick but i'm so i have so much reaction that this holy truth has happened to me i haven't illness that we all have
and i don't say this from a place of being a victim or being powerless you know
i'm ill i suffer from wrong views
and my wrong views of increase the suffering
i believe that i am somebody and that this somebody must perform in a really incredible way
and thereby be exempt from this truth of suffering
so when i sit down to write my lesson plans i'm not just coming up with a few interesting science activities for kids to keep them interested or learned something know i'm inventing and conjuring all science and all curriculum for all kids for all time so i'm
i have to master the past the present and future in these few moments at my desk and you can imagine the expectation is a little daunting
and
and so i have this healthy dose of anxiety that arises so at this point i've already added a layer or so to just the natural suffering and now enters the judge
now does the judge enter here i wrote that i wrote enter the judge and then my first question was does the judge enter here are a she been here all along i mean where is she working who's setting up one around here does she actually initiate the holy truth of suffering or is she may lee's
golden whip in the little blue bag may we talked about this woman who had a little blue bag and took out a golden whip to whip up for a champagne champagne wasn't good enough she had to sort of emphasize the fact well you can do that with champagne you can probably off for do it with other substances like so
offering so i i feel like i have a little blue maybe a big blue for where the big golden whip
there's a person and there's a task
and then there's some resistance to the task then there's a reaction to the fact that there's resistance
reaction than their shame and it's just piling up
so i'm just curious why someone as smart as myself would have to oblige herself to suffer this whole humiliating process
basically
when i backup i see i don't wish to experience the suffering of the task or the suffering of the resistance to the task
this is not suffering equal to a wholly truth it's to ordinary and there's no cure for it mean it's very deep radical suffering because it has no end it's an endless cycle to be endured there will always be presented with disagreeable tasks and i'll always
maybe encounter some resistance i mean this is sort of the cycle of our life it's not always the case that every task is disagreeable but i'll probably always have disagreeable tasks
this is the experienced this is as it is this is just it
i am the judge are in some sort of mysterious psychological cahoots and we feel like much more as called for them just that so there's all this critical response so now the disagreeable task is the disagreeable me
all of a sudden i'm not great i'm having a negative experience
and that's not okay and so this heaping just starts
judgment recrimination shame more judgment for years i couldn't even catch this process until i was positively seething with unfocused fear dread self loathing

ah
a lot of anxious crying

and are really bitter hopelessness
and by this point it's completely beyond control and endurance you know it's past the point
now that suffering right so why should it occur to me that i haven't faced my suffering i'm in a big time it hasn't occurred to me i'm not suffering cause i'm really suffering

i'm all these processes processes are really compelling to me
i really enjoy the psychology and the mythology of sorting out the dimensions of this
i like to believe there's a structure which you know on a relative level there is there's this structure called me i've built it so i feel like it could be solved and rearranged and healed
and it's actually very instructive to sort of sort through my habits and my tendencies and all the contents of this drama now are buddhist tradition
urges us to sit still and observe what's happening as it's happening
and not to interpret it but just to observe it experience it
and let it go
and returned to the breathing for the next
moment
and i have practice diligently in this way
and i wanted to alleviate my suffering and i've tried to alleviate my suffering
and the more i saw my suffering remain the more i suffered about that
so of course we're supposed to sit just to sit not to improve
but the benefits of sitting even if you've only been sitting a short time or really unmistakable there are benefits
and since for most of us it requires you know unremitting pain and suffering to even get us here in the first place once we get going if it gets worse
there's something questionable of hop puppet so i would drop this stuff but they would get you know i would drop pride or anger or just to sort of common ordinary everyday suffering i would drop in him would get into this tangle that i was an expert at doing
and
they wouldn't get dropped and so when they would real arise they would be sort of armed with like more ammunition because they've been to this cycle and the judge has sort of added this stuff
shame and frustration in particular
the shame of returning suffering
becomes even a bigger problem the problem itself
so i felt and i often continue to feel that i had to enter these dark realms and sort out the contents and look at the structure and get really intimate with all this passion all this craziness
and if i had to enter in evaluate what i thought was going on
deconstructed and rebuild it and that probably sounds a lot like therapy the most of you and that's what i i've done i've done a lot of therapy and i ask what is this to do with practice
so the main thing is it's the understanding that i'm not admitting life is suffering that i am suffering life is suffering i'm not in a minute like backing up to the very beginning
life is this experience of suffering
and i excel at inflaming the suffering and really feeling suffering but not actually suffer kick
and i could not locate my resistance to all of this i i didn't know i was resisting it i thought i was truly suffering the grand suffering i couldn't find the place where i was just mad that i had to do a lesson plan or i was mad i had to get up early and
couldn't find that resistance i could only find the heat
i craft things so that the high drama and reaction obscure simple straightforward radical suffering
i add on so much judgment self loathing loneliness and vulnerability
and get all this fantastic delicious interesting psycho stuff that i couldn't endure a simple suffering
but there i was suffering and the wash of emotions i likened to floods of water gushing over me feelings of drowning nothing to stand on or hold on to just water swirling and your nothing there
sitting becomes a vessel to contain all this strong emotion it's very rude and it's very physical
particularly says sheen would help me to build a container
for that which i feel like i can't endure i can't understand nor could i release it was just the way to tolerate my existence
so
it's i'm getting to know the judge becoming intimate with her
or first her methods and then later on her motivation and to trace back my experience through this voice
so i now must enter the familiar and wild terrain of hysteria helplessness with an eye of dispassion and compassion
and this for me is nearly impossible because the judge is so convincing i couldn't separate myself from her
diminishing her negative power requires the light of awareness
which means i have to be able to see her shine a light
so with an eye to observe and be present with the experience
of her and resist diving into the soup that she's cooking up
so i ask her or what do you need what does she need what do you want that you're helping me to make the so much harder
i asked a direct question i thought i would just get a direct answer you know i all will hear it's like that vision that you go into therapy and you're going to have that one final sort of breakthrough where everything's going to fall into place you're going to have the one memory that sort of real lines everything
the feel like a cure and you're going to know ah here's the source of my suffering i've i've exposed it it's realign just do my exposure and it's fine and
it's been really difficult for me to see that it more for me it doesn't happen that way
it's taken me lifetimes and particularly this lifetime to build this very fixed solid structure of my personality it's complete with a really hard working judge and it won't dissolve in rearrange itself just because i've decided it's not good enough for
me anymore
so i it's the sort of rolling up the sleeves and having to slowly been by being deconstruct and reconstruct
my house the self
mean forget the fact that we're doing buddhist practice and we're trying to drop the self you know i mean we're talking pre buddhism here i'm i'm you know i'm getting herself together so i can drop it
i was telling grace on the phone one day i'm really getting this self just the way i want it so to help when i when i drop it it will be the supreme offering me and know it's like i'm there's not get dropping this neurotic sort of now i'm going to drop the best self ever
but maybe dropped the self that is just doing the basic essential suffering
one of the practices i've taken up is actually a dangerous one to sort of offer in the context of buddhist practice it's thinking you know we're also troubled by our thinking and i am as well a lot of my pain comes from wrong thinking
and how it sort of elicits emotion
but practicing clear thinking has been like airing out a soggy mess if all this experience has been real watery and full of
just damp soggy that sort of swampy feeling air sort of let's in the element that's missing from me and
ideas concepts all the isms and the allergies all those i love that stuff and it actually calms me down
they're very soothing to all this panic in paralysis that i feel that's actually very overtired you know
and i don't think for me it's been like false systems that are gonna fix me because as i've been walking waking up to the fact that there's not going to be just sort of one thing that fixes me if i could just find what it is
i've allowed analysis and study and thinking to provide insights about my condition
in my tendencies and to see that i have i have needs and that they're allowed
and then i begin to look at the judge in a way that has some distance and dispassion
and i see that her agenda is not necessarily nor entirely evil
in fact
it's actually quite useful when she's not beating me up with it
in other words could it be that she's trying to tell me something about my basic radical suffering
is she making my experience so severe because i'm ignoring the more moderate fundamental messages of suffering
and do i make the mistake over and over again a falling for her content self loathing manic effort all the symptoms of psychological distress
and am i missing her red flag of the truth
so now she's a little bit separate from and she's actually somebody in here who's trying to actually work with me and i've internalized her in some weird way and now i'm actually asking her is this who you are
i offer her some curiosity and also some kindness like what is it how can i help you as if she were my baby sister
as if she actually needed something also
so in this little crack of separation is my big chance
and
having a little distance provides just even a little bit of calmness and some separation
and this is where separation is also our truth where one but we're also separate while it's also true of our experience where one with our experience were also just a container for these experiences that are coming through us
so as i practice like with clear thinking
as well as this physical effort of sitting down and breathing
and also with the help of all of you talking with me in sitting with me the traps begin to clarify
so how has this helped you know insight alone i believe for me is insufficient
it's insufficient just to know what's going on
and that was a big disappointment to me i really it's that all it's that thing i mentioned before that i want that one memory from childhood to come and save me on insight that will fix things or without it we're lost this is true
i'm
and insight and sort of rearranging my thinking disciplines my mind which helps sort of air out in lighten up this heavy load of emotion it's a very rigorous retraining for me
there's a bumper sticker that says
if you can't change your mind are you sure you still have one
now
dogan says i believe to change the mind of a sentient being as difficult indeed
is it equally difficult to recognize that the mind when we don't interfere with it will change on its own and can we allow that
for me that's almost more difficult to stay out of the way
the mind will change things will drop it's already happening i'm just suffering i don't have to suffer more and then be the hero that lets it go
and this seems more in keeping the idea that the mind changes of its own that the our experienced changes on its own is in keeping with our practice what the teaching is in it offers the most freedom
so clear thinking has helped me sort through a real parade of suffering and emotions
and construct new selves i mean like waking up in the morning and thinking i could actually be a different person and could try one new thing i mean this was unavailable to me
and i realize i'm still in the realm of building you know and if our practices in read the realm of freedom and letting go or or recognizing all these constructions are delusions
that's helpful when i'm ready for it but i'm not eat sometimes not even ready for it i'm still mucking around in the structure and i need to struck me and i need the structure i need the security i need
to have this self to be this self
but it's only sitting the actual physical effort
of attention to breathing and experience that offers daily practice at getting better at the acceptance of life as it is i mean i could talk to you about it we could talk about were accepting life as it is
but usually i'm lying to you i'm saying it but i'm i'm really wanting it to be different and only when i sit and cast my eyes downward and stay here to i even get the chance to practice letting it be the way it is

life is suffering and that really really was not okay with me
so i made it suffering with a capital s you know and that was more gratifying to my ego
the more pain i went through the more redemptive the more redemption i thought i would earn
and actually it was a cloak for allowing me to indulge my desires even more who was suffering so much that i didn't realize i had so many desires so i would get to indulge them because i thought i deserved it
so analysis has been my painstaking attempt to live all of the suffering and expose it to myself and to other people
and call out all these characters and name them and be really familiar with the play i mean i'm writing it after all
but i would say that sitting is my expression of faith that it's okay to suffer
and that life is suffering and the fact of suffering doesn't mean that i've screwed up
and that i needn't whip up my suffering to punish myself or anybody else
i have this poem that i want to read it
that we know if it fits but it fits for me it's kind of a home of gratitude
and it gave me strength for a lot of years and i didn't even know how it's by anna akhmatova
and they don't even know the title of it
if all who have begged help from me in this world
all the holy innocents the broken wives and cripples the imprisoned the suicidal
if they had sent me one kopek
i'd be richer than all egypt
but they did not send me kopecks
instead they shared with me their strength
so that nothing in the world is stronger than i
and i can bear anything
even this

wow so we have some time it went a little longer than i thought but not so bad by the way this watch i got from the last woman says she so if it belongs to any of you
it's really not my style but i've been wearing it
we have some time and i really hope will respond

you talk
good that's good
listening to on air
remind me of baseball
either you are
something was gone
ah but i haven't been here so my here is this watching
hmm
she's
i once asked that question to someone who's watching who is it and thought that's the person i want to identify with and the response was yes the question is who's watching
but then dropped the who and just watching and even know identity no identity
but that's that's the right way for me to go
yeah who's watching
this time
in
that you talk to like i a labyrinth
and i was partly feeling like running over there giving you a hug and say let her rip here or stay here keeping myself separate from your suffering
and why to say life is definitely suffering and so much more you know i've wanted to like i i have so much of a problem with staying with just that because it isn't just that for me
but rather what what you have also product me was how this one
how do we endure the unendurable
and
last night i am
i have a very dear friend who is a multiple
and i spent time last night talking to several people who are victims of ritual abuse and who are multiples
and i've never spent any evening like that with people who endure the unendurable
and whose egos and analytical stuff has been completely as far as i can tell burnout is it it's gone and what's left is
incredible presence
and spontaneity and vulnerability in the best sense without all these headset me hold onto they have no choice they will die if they held on so whatever person was on are whether it is the
best person who knows what would have been but it was it's gone
and on
what's left was a crow essence
a all heart peter last week so moving to exist
god i thought about it all week when you asked him how the deal i'll just paraphrasing with what would you say the today about your suffering and how to
cope with it he just merely said with all my heart and i just
so just
yeah i think that there is a lot more it was a you know if i sit down to do lesson plans and i go through anxiety you can imagine how it was when i sat down to do this talk
here the actual experience was right there in front of me that i wanted to talk about and so i had to practice as process of separation this there's so much more to life and those of you who know me know that i enjoy things quite a bit you know it was just really
important for me to see that life is suffering but it's not more than that i mean the suffering is not more than the suffering
it's just that suffering and seeing that the that i suffer so much more
for all these read from wall these you know it's it's extra and there's also joy and there's also liberation there's life is completely mysterious and
amazing but i'm interested in my suffering
and i'm interested in getting out of my suffering
but i've been making it worse so i've been just been tackling this one problem but acting like i was a victim
of the unbearable when in fact it's you know i'm will wanting up too much time lives just a lot to say about this that gray said on
who's watching
and i i just felt like i said who the work
well that would be my psychology talk you know that and that's really interesting to me
you know
the point is i'm now beating myself up
who beat you up words
right that stuff's all very interesting than me and and you know
there's lots of stories to tell about that and it's not just who beat me up but how the beating happened and in and the craziness our psyche can get into immense part of how we keep ourselves enslaved so for me it was important to go in and see the circuitry
i had to see it because it was operating all the time i don't say everybody has to do that some people were able to just sit and admit that it's messed up in practice dropping it but i got worse so i had to go in and look at it and shine the light on it and i couldn't do it by myself on the cushion
that's what peter color you had his you have done so that's what i did and it requires a lot of help and it's very interesting to me it actually calms me down to tell the story to make a myth out and it to tell let it be psychological
but all of it's been in service so i can get back on the cushion and face the law and dive a great death you know but these are where steps and stages serve me rather than
you know
rather than be a way to avoid
the great matter
so i don't feel like i'm really speaking to the the largeness of your question or your comment but yeah who beat me up
up
i know some third graders i'm beating up and i do i'm really mean to them and i watched that come out and it really makes me suffer you know cause life is so much in the moment you really can't control it
you may i like that
not no not yet that i'm working with that
i am
ah
and
it just made that
because although i know well that's what i know that and
so this was
gave to death to hear about the struggle but also i've always been fascinated by
mps listing landscape
have suffered the most
breathlessness and and liveliness and so it's i'm also having think they say about that than ah
it certainly make all the said i know is true for you and yet what just to the extent that i know you have what you give you so much on in this and go up your humor with some people here don't have and
me and second minute that's not just the finance i know defense matrix is not good heart and enjoyment
and how do you see how have to develop that how or no
right well how i developed it i think would be another good talk i loved it you know the family dynamics are just really interesting to me but you know in my family i was when we were all a bunch of ups but i was i just it was as survival thing and an intervention thing and all that but i also have a natural sense of humor
i mean things are really funny and i also like to be i like attention but i never would admit that of course i don't really need attention but i love attention love attention and i love to be funny and i love to make people laugh and i think there's a side of it that is really pure that is like when people are laughing their enlightened
and so to get people to life is giving them a great gift and i love to give gifts not just to be liked although i'm sure that's in there but because it's so much pleasure just to make people laugh
it's also it saved my life it just saves my life it's just
it's really allowed me a little bit of distance you know it really does
when get on time to close but yeah i really believe it for me it's also not a defense in fact i wish i had some more defenses sometimes you know cause i really suffered from not being able even to contain all this
but that all of you know when i'm going through something because it's not so easy for meter
to hide what i'm feeling but you know there are worse things so i don't mind so much