Good morning. Good morning. Does this work? Well, maybe it does, maybe it doesn't anyway, as I was saying. Last night it was, you know, freezing. And I was worrying about some of you who were staying for the afternoon study group. Where would you hang out in the freezing cold winter day? But, you know, now it's so pleasant. Just wait. I want to just mention this place in Czechoslovakia which this book is depicting. There's an old chapel and cemetery associated with the Benedictine and subsequently Cistercian order that has an ossuary, a place where the bones of unknown people are kept.

[01:20]

And there's some photographs in here which some of you may enjoy looking at. of the chapel, there are two layers, down in the, not exactly basement, but sort of like that, in the main chapel, upper story chapel area, where the bones of all kinds, including skulls, are used, placed with enormous care. quite remarkable aesthetic sense. Garlands of skulls. Book that has my name written all over it here. And I'm struck by the kind of beauty and care and attention that is obviously been given to these bones of unknown people.

[02:26]

over the centuries. Maybe there's a certain freedom to work with the bones because nobody knows whose they are. But my vote is to put my bones out there with the pile of unknown people's bones any day. As I was looking at the book just arrived yesterday and I looked at it for too late last night. I just couldn't put it down. It's just so interesting and beautiful. What I was reminded of are pictures I've seen of the arrangements of skulls and other bones in Cambodia. as a way of working with the extraordinary amount of death that happened during the reign of the Khmer Rouge.

[03:31]

And some similar feeling, actually. Anyway, I want to call all of our attention to the passing of One of the really great writers of our time, W.G. Sebald, died yesterday. The speculation is that he had a heart attack. He was driving his daughter, who teaches preschool, I think, and he turned right into the oncoming traffic. He was killed instantly. His daughter was seriously injured, but okay, I guess, we'll survive. 57, and in the prime of his writing life. And we think, you know, oh, 57.

[04:36]

He shouldn't have died at 57. And of course, laced in there is, I shouldn't die if I'm not yet 57, If I'm older than that, I'm still here. We really don't believe that we can die, that not only is death inevitable, but that it can come at any time. My daughter was telling me this morning that a lot of his work has been done in relationship to postcards and different kinds of photographs. Starting with a photograph that he saw when he was five of someone who was killed suddenly in an automobile accident. That was what started him on this path of visual image and writing.

[05:42]

So wonderful this kind of Yeah, there's a kind of... what we think is going way off in a direction and there can... so often if we're patient we can see a kind of return. What I actually want to focus on this morning is something that arose towards the end of our one day sitting last week. Something that I said in perhaps too cryptic or abbreviated a form and which I'd like to expand on if Betty will forgive me. Towards the end of the day in the discussion that we had someone brought up the question about should I really be sitting on my meditation cushion when actually I should be out on the street marching in protest against what our government is doing or you know in protest of any one of a number of things but

[07:10]

That being so currently what's up for some people. And I made this observation that historically Buddhism has not been about social action. What do you mean? But I think until Thich Nhat Hanh and what he was doing in Vietnam before he had to flee from his country is really the first instance of large-scale, at least that I can think of so far, of large-scale social action coming out of Buddhist practice. And what I want to bring up for our consideration this morning is this, that of course, if the Buddhist path, if the teachings of the Buddha are fairly articulated as the cultivation of the mind, the training of the mind, the training of the untrained reactive

[08:39]

mind of suffering for a mind capable of seeing clearly, seeing things as they are. Not just in a superficial way, but in a very deep and abiding way. That anyone who has cultivated that capacity for seeing clearly is more likely to act in ways that may be effective and may be in service of not harming. May be able to act in ways that are informed by having a sense of the potential short-term and long-term consequences too. one's actions, including what one says. So I think there is a way in which we can see the Buddhist teachings as quite radical, quite revolutionary, certainly coming out of a culture and a time when there was a lot of warfare and killing and harming.

[10:03]

but out of his very deep understanding of what is necessary to train the mind in the way that he lays out. And that is laid out and amplified and cultivated in the experience of practitioners over the centuries, over a very long history. I think that we here in the United States may be rather quick to move towards social action as an expression of our spiritual life because there's such a strong emphasis in Christianity on social action, at least in recent times, as an expression of one's spiritual life.

[11:10]

as a way of making manifest one's spiritual life. And I think that it's useful to pay attention to a rather different emphasis in the Buddhist tradition, which is this very strong emphasis on mind training. without coming right out with a brick bat and beating us over the head saying, do you know how hard this is? If you really pay attention, you begin to understand how patient we must be and how much we must be going for a longer term capacity because the untrained mind has been set by so much experience, so many years of conditioning. To see that conditioning, much less to begin to have a sense about how to change one's relationship to our own conditioning,

[12:22]

and out of that to begin to have a sense about how to train what wants training. That takes some while just to be able to see clearly what the task is, if you will. And my experience is that very few people really understand what is required for this path of mind training. The degree to which we have to be clear about what our intention is, and once, that's not a small task, and once we're clear to then understand that to train the mind If we're going to be effective in this endeavor, requires determination and consistency and a kind of doggedness.

[13:36]

You know, doggedness, dog with a bone. And of course what happens for some while is this kind of tension between the trained and the untrained mind. Oh, my life is going along nicely and I'm going to live to be 150 and I think I'll just stop meditate today or this week or this month. I've got other things I want to do. I'll do it later. And of course, if we examine our motivation for the doing that arises in us, we may see very clearly when we get pulled into action out of a motivation that is not so wholesome, that is arising from reactivity.

[14:50]

Anyway, my fairly cryptic remarks about Buddhism has, until really coming to this country, with, as I said, the exception of Thich Nhat Hanh, not really been about social action. It's about the action, if you will, of training the mind. What I've been thinking about is what I could feel. I could feel, for some people, their temperature just shot up. I could almost smell blood boiling. And of course, this you may not be thrilled about, but I've come to be thrilled about in my own life. Whenever I have that kind of, what do you mean? It's absolutely clear indicator that some self-clinging, some reactivity is afoot.

[16:08]

Of course, I then go to remembering the stories I've heard about Geshe Wangyal, who is the Tibetan Lama actually Mongolian the knitting I think of him as the knitting Lama Who came to the United States about the same time that Suzuki Roshi did on the East Coast and Was the teacher for some of the great translators and teachers now in the Tibetan tradition And one of the things that he would do, as I've mentioned before, is he would, with his more senior students, regularly accuse them of something he absolutely knew they couldn't possibly have done. Because that would be the occasion for seeing whether you have some bits lingering around of self-clinging.

[17:16]

may seem somewhat torturous on the part of Geshe Wangyal, but he was, of course, doing his best to help his students see accurately where there was some conditioning that still was lurking, that was waiting to be attended to, to be seen in service of the cultivation of the heart-mind. Is it interesting what arises when we get caught with thinking that we know what is right and we're going to go to the streets to express ourselves? And in fact, it may be that going to the streets, as we saw with the widespread expression of opposition to the Vietnam War, did begin to have some impact, got the then administration's attention.

[18:47]

So it's not that I'm pointing my finger at the kinds of actions we might take in this category of what we call social action, but a reminder about paying attention to asking myself the question over and over and over again, what is my motivation? I may do something wholesome with an unsound motivation, and whatever I do will be significantly affected by my motivation. And the best way to see that is to just watch motivation in your own life. Please don't take my word for it. And of course, the way to pay attention to our motivation is usually for some while after the fact.

[19:52]

But if we do that and are willing to see what we can see about our motivation in any given situation, any given action, any given action expressed as speaking out, will very quickly begin to see the relationship between motivation and the consequences of our actions. And of course out of that refined willingness and attention to noticing motivation, I begin to have some awareness of my motivation closer and closer and closer to the moment of it arising. This is where Suzuki Rishi's statement up there on the wall about do not say too late is very, very useful.

[20:56]

because if I notice after the fact and I accept what I see when I see it the seeing begins to arise closer to the moment of motivation arising so that I have the chance to say oh and perhaps sit with motivation for a while before I act and it is at that point then that I begin to have a capacity for some intention with respect to what I do or say or don't as the case may be. I'm bringing this up because Not everybody has their eye on New Year's Eve the way I do.

[22:01]

I sort of skip everything between the solstice and New Year's Eve. It is the time of year when we are, I think, many of us inclined to do a kind of review of the year. And what I would suggest as you do that, perhaps not quite now, but in the next little while, next couple of weeks, that you review the year in terms of actions, in terms of both inner and outer life with a particular interest in noticing not only what actions mark the year, but what you can recollect about motivation for some of those actions, positively and negatively.

[23:04]

Because if you do that, then out of the doing of that, you'll have a clearer sense about What you want is set for yourself with the turning into what we call a new year. You might even do that at the end of the day for the day so that you have some information informing your intention for the day that you awake to. I think this process goes much better in shorter bits than in bigger bits. I'm consistently impressed at the vastness, the Everest quality of people's New Year's intentions. General, big, and too many.

[24:12]

When you look at the pictures of the bones and the way they're arranged in this book, you might find yourself wondering about the intention of the monks who did this arranging. My own sense is that the motivation rings rather clear. in the arranging, just with a certain sense of this is the fruit of care and regard and honoring. So perhaps I might refine what I'm saying about the relationship between the Buddhist path and social action that we certainly, I think as practitioners of this meditation tradition, will feel a sense of responsibility

[26:01]

for the world we live in, for the particular community we live in, for our actions and to whatever degree we can be part of a larger group mind, the group mind actions that we have a sense of responsibility with and for. that we will perhaps not act out of righteousness or anger or fear. We may wait until our actions can arise out of clarity of mind and some degree of capacity to see not just in the short run, but in the longer run, what may be effective.

[27:06]

I know for myself, out of my dismay with more war, What I feel committed to is to try to educate myself about where the actions of our government are taking place, to understand as deeply as I can the causes and conditions that have led to the current situation. So I'm not saying that as a practitioner we don't act, but hopefully we can begin to make a distinction between action that arises more as reaction and action which arises out of wholesome motivation.

[28:19]

A few days ago, I received a letter from someone I know whose life has been committed to social action in the form of the work of the SEVA Foundation, who some of you may know about. And he and several of his colleagues are currently working on a project with youth at risk. in the East Bay, basically working with the, giving them, providing them with experiences that can begin to be a counterbalance to the circumstances of their lives that lead to their repeating the life patterns of their parents and the other adults in the world they live in. Understanding that perhaps the only way that we can change the world we live in is to pay very close attention and bring energy to

[29:49]

the next generation or the next two generations. Not by talking at them, but by actually affecting the quality and details of what their early life experiences are. That's the kind of thing someone will come to if they have a certain long view. Sometime in the last week or so, Terry Gross did a fairly long interview with a man who's the I think he's the foreign affairs reporter for the Boston Globe. He's located in London.

[30:50]

And he talked at some length about what's happening in the Middle East, and in particular, what's happening in Palestine and Jerusalem. He, again, was someone who was talking about the circumstances now have set the whole situation, our situation, as he put it. back ten years or more. And his focus was on... leaped into the tape recorder. This man talked about what he saw as the only hope in that part of the world being a change in the education of young Palestinians and young Israelis. That's the kind of perspective we don't come to out of reactivity.

[32:01]

Reactivity is almost always in the short run. At least that's been my experience. I wonder about yours. So let me reiterate the underlying point that I want to make, which is training the mind is not easy, which is not to say that it's not fun. It can be quite interesting and some days amusing. You know, those moments when you think, well, I can either laugh or cry. And there isn't a steady incremental cultivation. There will be what feels like a kind of flat, I'm not getting anywhere, and then all of a sudden you'll drop in a practice and suddenly have a kind of rise in what you can see and a sense of some particular reactive pattern beginning to break up.

[33:23]

So it's more a matter of the mind training process going as it goes, sometimes kind of slogging along and sometimes where there will be some important kind of opening and then you have a sense of being able to move with a different kind of energy in the process. One of the things I love about working with our language is that we can often see patterns by paying attention to what we say, either in speaking or in thinking, and then begin to train the mind by changing how we speak internally and externally. So there's that kind of immediate or much more quick success, if you will. That can be very energizing and we feel encouraged when we have some sense of something other than a recalcitrant, like a dinosaur fossil quality of mind.

[34:47]

And I think that being modest in our expectations with the mind training process is very important to do because then we have a sense of effectiveness which we can then build on. But I also think that it's very important for us to understand that the only way the untrained mind will begin to be trained is if that is our first priority and if we are absolutely persistent and dogged and stay with it. And if we do that, there will be some opening, perhaps sooner than you had imagined might be the case. That's what I wanted to bring up this morning.

[35:56]

And there's some set up here for tea if you'd... Okay, so... Discussion, questions, arguments. What do you mean? Ellen? I'm thinking about the relationship between a difference between motivation and intention I'm going to turn purpose, what I'm thinking about motivation in a sense of retrospective, intention, prospective, purpose more results-oriented, and maybe putting purpose aside because that's getting too complicated for a minute, I actually think it's useful. I hadn't thought about the relationship between intention and purpose in quite the way you're suggesting, but I think that's a useful distinction because of what Roger Fisher talks about in Getting to Yes, so effectively

[37:19]

what happens when we're goal-oriented over against process-oriented. And that distinction, what you're bringing up, I think is really crucial. And, you know, this whole notion about intention comes up very powerfully and it's up for me right now because I'm working with several people who want to do the Bodhisattva ceremony. And part of taking the Bodhisattva vow includes taking the precepts. So I invite people to work with the precepts for a certain period of time so you're not signing up for what you haven't looked into. And, you know, how does one take on? What do we mean when we say we're taking on the path of the precepts when we include things like a disciple of Buddha does not kill or does not take what is not given or does not lie?

[38:25]

When we begin to pay attention to the detail of our lives and begin to see, you know, as one person said to me recently, I've always thought of myself as an honest person. And she started working with the precept about not lying and she said, I'm appalled. I'm lying all the time in small, subtle ways. But I think that my own understanding about how to work with the precepts is here is a path that has to do with how we live, that we are taking on in the spirit of this. My intention is to follow these descriptions of what a fully awake person looks like and how they behave and what their life is like. So it's my intention to not intentionally harm, not to take what is not given, not to lie, not to intoxicate mind or body of self or other, not to engage in sexual misconduct.

[39:43]

Understanding that the path that's being articulated includes doing all those things I've said I'm not going to do and being willing to notice when I've broken a precept, the details of it, the causes and conditions in the spirit of this is how I train the mind. So there's intention includes seeing when I don't keep the intention, it's a kind of aiming. Now, I think that, and this is where Bill will bail me out hopefully, there's an important distinction between motivation which is unconscious and motivation which is conscious. where we're talking about what is kind of the energetically the engine, the driving for what we do or say. Etymologically, there's some light that could be shine, shown on, shined on, shine on.

[40:55]

Motivation, conscious, unconscious? No, between motivation and intention. Motivation is what moves us. So that sense that I'm making about engine is appropriate. Intention has to do with where we're putting our focused energy. So I think that the distinction between intention and what you're calling purpose is useful. Because there is a way in which I have articulated for myself out of this path and from the early reporting of what the Buddha's speaking and action was like. The precepts both descriptive and prescriptive. And I know for myself having grown up in

[41:58]

very authoritarian Catholic convents. I wasn't very interested in the prescriptive side. I'd had that up to here. But the notion that, oh, I could look at the precepts as the description of what a Buddha's life looks like, of what a fully awake mind looks like, I thought, oh. So then, that sense of aiming has a certain quality of expectation but to be effective the emphasis, the dominant energy has to be with process not outcome Because if I'm outcome-oriented, I'm going to, that's going to diminish, is likely to diminish the energy I have for seeing what I do that is breaking the precept.

[43:05]

I think that's where the rub comes. Does that help? That was very, that's very helpful. Yeah? Q. I don't think of action so much as going out there unless that becomes really clear to me. it would be an extension of the city.

[44:09]

But for me, the action is a stronger determination to save, not for myself, but to help those groups. Well, see I think that what I would encourage you to look at is the quality of either or in what you just said. Not to sit for myself, but to sit for others. And I think that's a misunderstanding of what's being pointed to in the Buddhist teachings. We have to sit for both ourselves and others. We have to include the training of our own mind stream and the quality of our own life. So, but you see, when people talk about social action, they are usually not talking about meditation practice. They are talking about going out and doing. I mean, I think one of the powerful, I mean,

[45:11]

experiences for me when I was diagnosed with a cancer a few years ago, actually being on the receiving end of lots and lots and lots of people's prayers. And having the surgery and healing and the whole thing just go extremely smoothly and well. I attribute as much to my own practices in that context, but significantly to being held and being on the receiving end of all that energy for healing that I was on the receiving end of. I mean, you know, I know monasteries of practitioners where, you know, the Gyuto monks in particular, who in their remote monastery up there in Assam State, up in the mountains on the border between India and China, spend a great deal of their time doing prayers for peace in the world, for the well-being of many people.

[46:31]

So, you know, if we could think about social action in that sense, but that's not what I hear people talking about when they use that terminology. And I think certainly the energy that is brought forth from our practices of what not just sitting, but all of our various practices, when they are regularly offered, it is that cultivation of generosity that also is beneficial both for ourselves and for others. Someone I know who has been in remission with breast cancer, has now after a very long time, 18 years since she was first diagnosed, now has quite fully metastasized cancer in her bones and pretty much throughout her body and she's been suffering a lot and so she contacted me and before her next

[47:52]

treatment for chemo, which has just been making her incredibly sick, I suggested that she do the Medicine Buddha meditation. and to actually visualize the chemo as it is dripped into her body in this stream of healing lapis lazuli blue light from the Buddha's heart to her heart. But she then sent that same healing energy to the hearts of all of the people in the room, whether she's in a room with 40 other people all getting dripped in all this stuff that is supposed to kill the cancer, but also is very toxic and they get very sick, et cetera. And she called me the next day after her treatment and she said, I can't believe what happened. I went home after the, she said, the experience of being in the room and doing that meditation and just sending all that healing energy from my heart to the hearts of all those people, she said, I felt a kind of lightness.

[48:58]

I felt a kind of receiving. she had virtually no suffering as a result of the treatment and in fact felt well and had a kind of turning since then where, and it may be that she just has gone through the treatments far enough so that would have happened anyway, who knows, but she said the whole refocusing not just on myself but to include others made a huge difference. So I think that, you know, particularly in the meditations that come from Vajrayana, where there's this strong emphasis on both receiving and sending, that there's a kind of balancing there that also affects the tendency to have me, [...] me as the center of what motivates me to do this or that. It's a great antidote to that, you know, what's called the self-cherishing habit.

[50:05]

So, if that's your definition of social action, I agree with you completely about the maybe not so visible always, but potent efficacy of Always dedicating whatever we do that's wholesome for the well-being of others and for the world. That's what these altars are about, you know. These two altars are about extending the benefit of our practice to particular people but also to all beings, not just human beings. Although right now it looks like human beings need a lot of prayers. Mary? Just a brief comment. I've noticed that in my own practice, if I pay attention to the movement of energy, then when I look at motivation, at some point it will flip into intention.

[51:13]

Or click into intention. And the same with giving and receiving. If I think of me, me, me, then it's really static. Well, my caution is this, that in addition to paying attention to the differences in energy moving or energy being blocked, that there is a real potency in having an intellectual contemplation and a clear setting of intention, that that can be the causal factor for energizing that kind of aiming.

[52:19]

So I think don't neglect that aspect of what we think about and contemplate and out of that come to set as this morning or this afternoon or in this conversation or in this meeting or as I drive my car my intention is. and doing that as a kind of intellectual process also. Yeah. Thank you for reminding me, because I find that I've been, because my life is so structured, I've been avoiding that kind of setting, kind of container structure. And when I do that, it helps a whole lot. Otherwise, it just flows. And setting intention as a practice takes moments. But if we set our intention for the day or for some particular occasion or some particular exchange or conversation or whatever just the clarity of doing that we then discover the fruit of intention.

[53:37]

And you know this has been a practice for me for some time and I'm still sometimes just amazed at the kind of available energy moving in the direction of intention, and it's like almost like, where did that come from? That sense of, wow. Yes, exactly, exactly. And of course, one of the things I love about the Eight Pieces of Brocade, this Jeet Kune sequence that we've been doing is that it's a way for us to begin to be more aware of energy and how we block energy. We can begin to have more heightened awareness just in the body in relationship to energy moving in the body. Eleanor? In 1999 at the Parliament of the World's Religions, His Holiness the Dalai Lama talked about meditation and social action.

[54:47]

And he talked about that if we're sitting on our cushions to feel good, that's not going to be of any value, that we need to take what it is that comes from the cushion and be present with the injustices of the world. And what I found for myself, having been involved in social action from the 60s, oftentimes then with a great deal of anger, that I can't be present with the injustices of the world unless I have a consistent practice. And that I also still fall down, but at least I notice it more quickly, like when I pushed these beads into the face of a woman, I got so angry with her because she wanted, she was talking about how good it was that we were bombing the people in Afghanistan and I just came back at her with anger and realized as soon as I had, well not as soon as I had done it, but shortly after that, wow,

[55:59]

Back to training this mindstream. And had the opportunity then to apologize to her the next day and then she could hear what I was saying about the children as well. But I fully intend to continue my social action but I probably need to sit more in order to do that without killing Well, that's my point. Yeah. And I also think that under this current circumstances, educating ourselves about where we Americans are these days and what we're doing is extremely important to do. I emailed to some of you a description written by a journalist named Robert Fisk. which is very much to this point. Quite a moving piece, I thought. I, by the way, put a pad of paper out.

[57:07]

If there are any of you who want to be on the mailing list for the calendar and are not on the mailing list, please put your name and address and phone number down. And if you want to be on the email list, write out your email address. because I do periodically submerge everybody with this or that that comes our way, like this piece by Robert Fisk. Becky, I think we have time for one more. I'm back to intention. I get confused when I ask myself, what is my intention? I get into a big intellectual discussion with myself. That's why I'm suggesting be specific and be modest and be particular. What is my intention in this phone call I'm about to make? Well, but if you're going to have an effective meeting with the dean, you might try to uncover, well, what is my intention as I go to this meeting?

[58:18]

And let yourself, between now and Monday, have just whatever starts to come up. Did you call the meeting, or did he? I called the meeting, and she is coming. You called the meeting, but you didn't know why you... Oh, I see. You called the meeting and she invited herself to the meeting. I see. Well, then just be clear about your intention for the meeting and forget about the dean. Good suggestion. If you called the meeting, you had some intention for this meeting. Clearly, the dean has an intention in coming, but that's her business. But you see, the trouble is when we're kind of, we sort of get fuzzy and go out of focus. Oh my God, the dean's coming. Now what do we do? Well, you know, you risk having her see what you're up to.

[59:22]

So. Yeah. energy to be a young friend from Macedonia who is going to be having eye surgery at Johns Hopkins on the 21st of December. At 21 he's having cataract surgery. Wow, yeah. Absolutely. So, I wish you all happy time and if appropriate, survival of the next two weeks, if you know what I mean. My solution is lie low and stay home. And also to wish you all best wishes for the new year. The next sitting, I believe, is January 12th.

[60:27]

As often happens with our calendar, It has a life of its own and it's mostly molasses. But anyway, I know there's a sitting on the 12th which you're certainly welcome to join us for. We are having a winter retreat and we still have a few spaces and I am willing to have people come just for the weekend if that's what is possible. Okay? So take good care of yourselves. and I'll look forward to seeing you in the so-called New Year.

[61:04]

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