Good morning. Standing outside a few minutes ago, feeling the hint of rain, I realized that we probably all both want the rain and don't want to get wet. Mostly, I think we want the rain. There is a dedication verse that I recite quite often at the end of doing practices or at the end of a retreat. And there's one line in the verse that goes, may all have equanimity without too much aversion or too much attachment. And it always interests me.

[01:03]

You know, it's like the precept that says not to harbor ill will. Most of us have some idea that we should never be angry or we should have no aversion or no attachment. But here are some very ancient teachings that are more modest in aspiration. Too much aversion or too much attachment. So then the trick is to figure out what's too much and what's not enough. So I've been thinking about the cultivation of equanimity and what it is that becomes an obstacle to equanimity because, of course, that's how we can begin to know the detail of what we get into trouble with. Where do I go in my mind that leads to suffering that is an instance, a specific instance of disturbing equanimity?

[02:16]

And for each of us, we have to answer this question for ourselves because, of course, what may be the ground of suffering for me may not be necessarily, at least exactly, the ground of suffering for you. And what I've learned is that the more particular I am in attending to what is troublesome or difficult, the more insight may arise that leads to my ability to, in fact, cultivate equanimity, even if it's only for a moment. I think probably most of you understand that in Buddhism there are lots of lists. I think that may be one of the qualifications for being a Buddhist, that you love lists and don't mind flies on the end of your nose.

[03:21]

Not too much aversion to the fly on the end of the nose. So one of the lists is the list of eight worldly concerns. I find this list very interesting and useful to pay attention to. There are four pairs on the list of eight worldly concerns. The first one is the desire for fame and the aversion or, yes, the aversion to obscurity. The second pair is the desire for gain and the aversion towards loss. The third of the pair is the desire for pleasure and aversion to pain. And the fourth is

[04:28]

the desire for praise and the aversion to censure. And as I've been hanging out with the list for a while now, I realized that this list covers quite a multitude of sufferings. In fact, I've been hard-pressed to figure out what isn't on this list, a very broad list. In the Brahmajala Sutra, the Supreme Net Sutra, which is the first sutra translated in the collection of long discourses of the Buddha, there's a new translation by Maurice Walsh, which some of you may know, titled, Thus Have I Heard, and I recommend it to everyone. It's really, I find myself feeling inspired and guided by reading these early sutras that carry not only the teachings of the Buddha but in a way his voice, some sense of this particular historical human being who is our model for what is possible in our lives.

[05:51]

Anyway, in the very early section of this sutra, the Buddha says to his disciples, don't get too excited if somebody criticizes me or the Dharma or the Sangha. Because, of course, if you get too excited, what will happen is really only a hindrance for you. and you will lose your equanimity, basically what he's saying, which is, of course, so true, isn't it? What do you mean? And he suggests to his disciples that, in fact, what they might do is to say, this is what is incorrect here and now, and this is what is correct, and this is how it is here. And the same with praise, that if someone praises the Buddha or Dharma or Sangha, to not get too excited about that either.

[07:04]

But to be able to simply note and, if it's appropriate, express, this is what is so, this is what is correct, this is what is incorrect. One of my favorite stories illustrating this possibility is a story I actually listened to a tape of an interview that a woman I know did with His Holiness the Dalai Lama shortly after he was told that he had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She actually did her interview some while later. And she said to him, how was it when you first heard that you'd been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize? And he said, well, a little bit excited. I was a little bit excited. Must have been a little bit excited because that evening as I was listening to the BBC News, which I guess he does pretty regularly, I was particularly interested to hear if there was any word about the Nobel Peace Prize.

[08:18]

And he said, of course, there was no word, so I thought, oh, maybe mistake. So, he said he then forgot about it and went to sleep, and the next morning got up early and did his practices, and it was only in the middle of the day, the following day, that he received some official communication that he had indeed been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. And he said by then, you know, it was So, I'm awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I'm not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Same thing. Someone thinks I'm terrible. Someone thinks I'm wonderful. Same thing. And when I listened to that part of the interview, I thought, yeah, sure. Maybe for you, but I'm not so sure I could, even with a straight face, say that that's remotely true for me. I wish it was. And of course, particularly when we think about praise and censure, there's a way in which we get caught by praise.

[09:32]

We may not feel the condition of being caught. in quite the way we do when we experience being on the receiving end of censure. But I think if we pay attention, we actually can see that it is as much of a kind of briar patch. Praise is as much of a briar patch or maybe Velcro territory as censure. a different kind of trouble that maybe takes a little longer to be able to see. So in the teachings, particularly in this wonderful sutra called the Supreme Net Sutra, there is some pointing of the finger to how critical, how important the cultivation of mindfulness is in being able to pay attention, to notice the territory of the eight worldly concerns.

[10:38]

we have to be present and awake, mindful in the moment of what is so if we're going to be able to have some accurate sense of this particular area of cause and condition of suffering. I want to do something perhaps a little unusual. But as some of you know, I'm very interested in what I call Western Dharma texts, that is, evidence coming out of our own culture, writings, poems, artwork, etc., that is an expression of some of these insights which we receive and work with coming out of the Buddha Dharma. And I have two Dharma texts, if you will, that I want to reference this morning.

[11:47]

One is the Natural History magazine, which often has wonderful essays in it that I find very illuminating in this ongoing inquiry into the nature of the mind. And in the September issue, there's an article called The Infrequent Flyer. which is short enough so that I'm going to read it to you because the author of this short piece is actually talking about the territory called the Eight Worldly Concerns. So let me begin with that. I think one of the reasons I like the Natural History Magazine is that the editor must have a sense of humor. Frequently. So this is the piece. A friend of mine who knows Mel Brooks once felt obliged to tell him how awful he looked. Brooks shook his head and rolled his eyes and replied that things were not going well at all.

[12:55]

A couple of nights before, he explained, he was in bed reading Plato and ran across a passage in which Plato reported that all men are mortal. It's a very central teaching, isn't it? Brooks said he hadn't been able to enjoy a cup of coffee since. Hard to imagine a more unlikely circumstance, Brooks reading Plato in bed. A more unlikely innocence, needing Plato to tell him that men aren't mortal. that man is mortal, or a more unlikely consequence, a loss of joy and a cup of coffee. But realizations of one's own mortality rarely seem so funny. I once found myself concerned, cornered into considering the uncertain nature of my existence, alive or dead. I was in Jamestown, North Dakota for a conference.

[14:00]

I flew into town on one day. presented my paper, and went back out to the small airport to fly home the next day. I stepped up to the ticket counter and presented my tickets. The young man behind the counter looked over my papers, poked at the computer a couple of times, handed me back my ticket envelope, looked me straight in the eye and said, sorry sir, but your ticket has been canceled. Since you didn't use the first half of your ticket, the second half was automatically canceled. But I did use the first half of my ticket. I flew in yesterday morning. No, sir, I'm sorry, but our records show you did not fly in, at least not into this airport. Jamestown, North Dakota is a nice place, and I wouldn't have minded staying there another day or so until I got things straightened out.

[15:02]

But like Brooks, I was shaken by the prospect of not being. As I stood there looking at that ticket clerk, I realized that it was his contention that I was not there. And it was up to me to prove that I was. I had never had to do that before, so I really wasn't prepared to face the charge, absent until proven present. How can I be standing here in front of you if I didn't fly in yesterday? I have no idea, sir. But you did not fly in. Look, here are the tags on my luggage from yesterday's flight. How could I have gotten the tags without being on that flight? I have no idea, sir. If it's difficult to come up with a way of verifying my presence, when all six foot two inches, 270 pounds of me are standing right there, mortality and its consequences take on new importance and uncertainty.

[16:13]

I'm not the first person who has considered this problem. Philosophers and writers have devoted lifetimes to the task. You know, being and nothingness, to be or not to be, cogito ergo sum, I never think of that last quotation without also thinking of a variation I once read on some newlywed's car, coito ergo sum. You see what I mean about the humor here? What are we really? In the Western world, we seem to think that we are what we have, but once we are gone, so is all that. So is all that we have. So, Plains Indians hold that we are what we give away, but once we give it away, The Vikings believed that what endures of a person and therefore what is important in life is reputation. And they may be close to right since some of them remain with us in their reputations as reported by millennium old sagas.

[17:17]

Interesting, isn't it? Quite different from what this teaching on the eight worldly concerns suggests. But we're Westerners after all. Is our existence then embodied in the least tangible part of us, our reputation? Where does that idea leave us? Not long ago at the American Museum, I had an unpleasant recall of my Jamestown experience. I have only been in that wonderful place twice, both times to visit the office of Natural History Magazine. The first time I entered the museum through the south entrance, which meant that I was only a few steps from the Natural History offices, but I saw enough during my short walk in and my longer stroll out but I knew I wanted to see more. So on my second visit, I entered the museum through the main east door, the entrance farthest from the magazine's corner. I walked in, approached the information desk, and explained that I was on my way to Natural History.

[18:24]

The woman at the desk called the editorial office to get me a pass. She handed the telephone to me so I could explain that it was going to take me some time to get there because I was taking the long way through. The editor on the line asked me, are you here? Maybe I'm dense, but I didn't know what to say. Of course I'm here. I'm always here. The question was not my existence or presence, but the nature of here. I took too long to answer, and the person on the telephone tried again. Are you here? Yeah, I'm here, I guess. Then it won't take you long because you're only a couple of steps down the hallway. No, I'm not there, I'm here. So you're not here. No, I am here, but I'm at the big door in front, not the little door on the side. Here is wherever I am. On the other hand, I'm never there.

[19:28]

The Lakota holy man Black Elk once took poet John Neihart to the top of Harney Peak in the Black Hills to pray. Neihart asked Black Elk why it was necessary to go to Harney Peak. Black Elk explained that Harney Peak is the center of the world. Neihart asked Black Elk why he thought Harney Peak was the center of the earth, how he came to know such a thing. Black Elk chuckled at the white man's innocence, and with studied patience explained that on a ball like the earth, every place is the center. I guess that's the way we move through this world, always in the middle of where we are. Maybe it comes down to what the old-timer said when he first saw a steam engine. I don't know what it is, but whatever it is, there she be. Anyway, that's the sort of unassailable logic I needed to get out of my jam at the Jamestown Airport.

[20:32]

I stood there in front of the stern ticket clerk trying to figure out what I could show him to document my Jamestown reality. My business card wouldn't do any good. Anyone could have my business card. My driver's license shows only that I have a driver's license. My visa card demonstrates that someone else believes I exist in a financially abstract sense, but not necessarily that I exist right here at the Jamestown Airport at this very moment. Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to move so I can help other passengers, the clerk said. I turned and saw that six or seven would-be flyers, all probably able to demonstrate their existence, were standing behind me, lined up at what was the only counter in the airport. Sir, can I ask you to step aside? And then I realized that the best proof of my existence was my existence. Pay no attention to me, I said.

[21:34]

You win. I'm not here. I had him cornered. Even if he believed I wasn't there, even if he knew I wasn't there, circumstances were increasingly requiring him to act as if I were there. And finally, that's what he did. I got home that afternoon considerably less confident than I had been the day before, but considerably more confident than I had been that morning. If I could talk with Mel Brooks, I would suggest the same course of action for him. Drink your coffee, Mel, and thereby demonstrate that at least for the moment, you are here, not there. Now, it's amusing. But it's also wonderful how many of the eight worldly concerns he's concerned with.

[22:36]

And I think that being able to hold our inquiry into this list of concerns in a way that's light, that isn't so deadly serious, is part of what allows us to actually pay attention to the stickiest places. that there is a kind of generosity in being able to laugh about this piece and at the same time say, there are some points here that are serious, deadly serious, if you might allow me. The other, Dharma text I would propose is a book that I've actually had on my bookshelf for several decades. I'm not quite sure how it's been there as long as it's been, and I had not read it until a few days ago. It's a book called Dibs in Search of Self by Virginia Axeland. There may be something about serendipity.

[23:46]

we read or hear or accept what we're ready for. So when I read this book a few days ago, it struck home in a very deep, deep way for me. For those of you who don't know this book, it is written by a woman who is a therapist, and it is her story of her work with a very troubled little boy. He must have been around five or so when she first started working with him, who, as it turns out, was indeed extremely intelligent, but whose parents kept saying that he was mentally retarded because he wouldn't speak or respond. And in fact, when they put him into the school where he was in attendance at the time that Virginia Axlin first met him and began working with him, he would spend all of the school day under a table or in a corner away from all of the other children, never speaking, sometimes having temper tantrums and acting out in very difficult ways.

[24:56]

And what Virginia Ashland presents in this book is the story of her experience with this boy. But for our purposes, she's also writing about a way of being with ourselves and with another that I think is deeply in the spirit of the teachings of Buddhism. deeply in all of the literature that teaches us about the powerful and healing aspect of being witness, being present with what is so. What is wonderful about her book is that she gives you a very specific, detailed description of how to do that. by talking about how when dibs would, in their sessions together, say something about a particular toy or the dollhouse in the playroom where they worked, and she would be dying to ask a leading question to try to bring him out, and how she kept holding herself to the position, if you will, of being a fair witness.

[26:16]

being completely present, listening in a way that was active and engaged so that he knew she was there with him, but letting him take the lead, letting him always take the lead so that he was the one determining the pace of their work, what they would focus on, what he was ready for. So what she is modeling in this story is a way of being in that posture of deep respect and understanding that allows us to not be an expert about someone else's truth or reality. And in fact, I would argue how to be present with ourselves, not even to be an expert, a so-called expert about ourselves either. Because, of course, so much of our expert mind is informed by these eight worldly concerns.

[27:20]

So much of what we think of as the way we are has been handed to us on a platter with our mother's milk and through the accumulation of experiences through the time of a lifetime. So, what Virginia Axeland is also talking about is how to be present and awake, willing to be surprised, willing to see things as if for the first time. There's a commentary that I've been reading on, basically a commentary on the Abhidharma text about this way of seeing that's called clear-seeing, what I think Suzuki Roshi meant when he used the phrase beginner's mind. And what Axelin is modeling is how to be with oneself or with another completely and utterly with beginner's mind not pulled around by yearning for fame

[28:36]

or avoiding obscurity, not being pulled around by desire for gain or fear of loss, going for pleasure or trying at all costs to avoid pain, or my favorite for this week, going for praise and avoiding censure. I think one of the reasons that I find such delight in finding a story or an essay or a poem which carries the Dharma teachings that I know and treasure from Buddhism finding those same teachings in expressions that come out of our own culture is because there's always a certain aspect, a certain tone, a certain hue to the expression of insight that comes out of our own culture that helps me wake up in the life I'm actually leading.

[29:54]

Helps me be present in the United States, in California, in Marin County, in Muir Beach on Sunday morning, sitting in this tent together with all of you, paying attention to what is actually so in my life right now. not trying to force myself into the model of some 8th or 9th century text that comes from the teachings at that time in North India, for example, or in Japan, or Korea, or China, or Tibet. To be able to understand the teachings of the Buddhadharma in a way that is relevant in the lives we actually have. So for any of you who haven't read Dibs, please, I recommend it to you. And if you have but haven't read the book for a long time, you might enjoy going back and looking at the book from the standpoint of being a teaching text about how to cultivate our ability to understand, to be respectful and understand.

[31:13]

to be deeply respectful of things as they are. What interferes with our ability to be deeply respectful and understanding of things as they are? All our ideas about how it should be or how we wish it was or how we wish it wasn't. I think each of us has to ask ourselves those kinds of questions not in general but in particular, moment by moment. So this morning as we sit here together and in the time between now and lunch can each of us bring that quality of mind called respectfulness and some commitment to understanding

[32:17]

actually some openness to being taught by whatever arises in the moment. But most importantly, can we also be interested in what is an obstacle to that way of being? Thich Nhat Hanh in his wonderful book, Miracle of Mindfulness has a section early on in the book where he talks about the meditation that reveals and heals. What can I do to sponsor the revelation before me of things as they are? First of all, I have to be open, if I can be, to what obscures my ability or willingness to see things as they are. And if what is obscuring my ability to see things as they are is fear, can I be respectful of that quality of mind that arises called fear and let myself know about it?

[33:31]

You shouldn't feel that way. That's the antithesis of respect. Because, of course, in each moment what arises, there is some cause and condition. So if fear arises, there is some cause and condition that leads to fear arising. And only if I have this willingness to be present with that fear, some interest and curiosity about fear, for example, or a fear, for example, about being unseen. Oh, no one will notice me and maybe I'll disappear. Only if I can know the detail of what the fear arises about can I begin to be present, fully present with what is so. So after finishing reading Dibs and going back to this list of the Eight Worldly Concerns, I realized that what I had so enjoyed, what I had found so inspiring in reading Axelon's book was some inspiration about the particularity with how to be present.

[34:57]

with myself as I hang out with the list called the eight worldly concerns. As I hang out with noticing when I'm caught by one or the other. Hanging out with my discomfort when I notice where I'm caught. As a friend of mine says, oh how embarrassing. in a text that my husband has been reading that is the recording of teachings by a quite famous teacher who lived in the early part of this century, who was in the teaching that Bill is studying, was speaking primarily to monastics. And he said, fame may be the worldly concern that lingers the longest. Even for a great

[35:59]

monk who has given up the world and taken on leading a radically simple life. It may be there in his cave meditating that fame, the desire for fame may linger when all of the other worldly concerns are gone. Isn't that interesting? And how is a desire for fame connected to the desire for praise? They're a little different, but maybe friends? How do I not only let myself be interested and curious about these matters as I see them unfold in the world I live in and with the people that I live and practice with, but most importantly, how do I allow myself to pay attention to the way this list gives me some language for talking about the places where I get caught myself?

[37:09]

Because it is, of course, only my mindstream that I can attend to. That's what each of us can do. Tempting as it may be to try to be fixing up each other's mindstream. So far it doesn't look like it's much of a success. We can, of course, keep each other company. in doing our work. So I would invite you to join me in carrying the Eight Worldly Concerns in your hip pocket. putting whatever you do, whatever I do or say or think through the sieve of that list with some willingness to notice when one or the other of the worldly concerns describes a place where I can feel myself having been stuck or caught.

[38:31]

Aha! And that in our practice of noting instances of concern for these matters, that we remember always to do it with generosity and kindness, to not do it with a big, wagging, stern finger. And if the big, wagging finger comes out to note that, and to please not forget that we can laugh as we practice. Thank you very much. May our intention...

[39:29]

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