I love to taste the drink, but the target is whipped. Good morning. You know, Buddhism, Buddha's message, Shakyamuni Buddha's message to us was, is, what is the cause of suffering and how we let go of suffering. Suffering in the sense of how we interpret the world and how we create a problem or problems for ourselves in how we interpret the world.

[01:10]

So, you know, if a brick falls on our head, we can say that the brick caused my suffering, caused my problem, caused a problem. The way we respond to our injury or our hurt can either create a problem of suffering or an alleviation of suffering. So our responses are the key. How we see, how we are aware of when we create a suffering for ourselves and when we can avoid a suffering for ourselves. Avoid creating a suffering for ourselves. There will always be events which are intrusions into our life. Pain is an intrusion in our life.

[02:17]

It's an intrusion because we don't like it. And if we let go of not liking it, then it's something that we can deal with. If we don't like it, then it's a catalyst for suffering. So pain and suffering are not the same, although they are related. Pleasure and suffering are also related, even though they're not the same. But pleasure is as related to suffering as pain is related to suffering. Pleasure is related to suffering in that when we don't have it, we suffer. When it's taken away from us, it can create a suffering. Pain is something that we are adverse to, but when it enters, we can use it to create a suffering.

[03:25]

So both pleasure and pain are objects of attachment. I remember when I was first starting to sit zazen, And the pain was so excruciating for me. And Suzuki Roshi would say, you are attached to your pain. I thought, I'm not attached to my pain. I just don't want it. I didn't see the connection. So we're attached to our pleasure and we're attached to our pain. And when we're not attached to our pleasure and our pain then we can avoid suffering. So today I want to talk about how we avoid suffering in a certain way.

[04:34]

Often people will come to me And someone would say, I'm going to go home. My mother is 85 and she and I had never gotten along. And I, you know, she'd been so mean to me. I really resent her. And here she's getting old, and what am I going to do? She's going to die pretty soon. And we have this, you know, dissension. I can't stand to be near my mother because of all the things she did to me. So we've created a painful situation, we've created a suffering out of a painful situation. So I, well, you almost always, I'll say, well, you have to, the way to release yourself is to forgive your mother, no matter what she did to you. But I can't, so hard, because if I do that, I'll be betraying myself.

[05:50]

I'll be betraying my feelings. So this is like being stuck in your feelings. This happens a lot, not just my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, my boss, my friend, my enemy. It just goes on and on. So resentments and anger and there's a whole list. which you know. So, what I'm going to talk about today is what the meaning of forgiveness is and how important forgiveness is for freeing ourself. Because forgiveness is not about the other person. When we have resentments and anger, and grievances, we bind ourself.

[06:58]

These are the chains that bind us. And we have to decide in our mind, well, what is the most important thing? Is my grievance the most important thing? Is my anger the most important thing? Or is my freedom the most important thing? This is the land of the free. I don't want to tell you how we're binding ourselves, but we're totally bound up in our land of the free. But freedom is something from inside, not something from outside. So let me talk a little bit about this. There's a wonderful book that I'm reading. It's called Forgive for Good. by a Stanford director and co-founder of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project.

[08:01]

I don't usually talk about these books, but he's categorized these things that I've always thought about in a very good way. And the subtitle is, holding a grudge is hazardous to your health. It's true. The more we hold this anger and grudge, it does things to our body. We carry so much anger and resentment in our back. When people tell me they have back problems, perennial back problems, I ask them about, are you angry about anything? Are you holding some grudge? Because we hold it in our upper back. And if you sit Zazen, with good posture, you tend to notice how people's postures are and how we hold ourselves.

[09:03]

It tells us a lot about what's going on in our emotions and feelings and in our mind. We can see a lot, you know, like, oh, that person's got something going in anger or resentment because of the way they hold themselves. And so our heart is affected by it, our nervous system is affected by it, our breathing apparatus is affected by it, the whole body becomes, depending on the extent to which we hold these things, our body is affected and of course diseased not at ease and not in harmony. So, I just want to read his introduction.

[10:07]

His name is Fred Luskin. He says, picture the crowded screen in front of a hair, I better take off my glasses. Picture the crowded screen in front of a harried air traffic controller. Picture the chaos in the room and the jumble of planes on the screen. Now imagine that your unresolved grievances are the planes on that screen that have been circling for days and weeks on end. Most of the other planes have landed. But your unresolved grievances continue to take up precious airspace, draining resources that may be needed in an emergency. Having them on the screen forces you to work harder and increase the chances of accident. The grievance planes become a source of stress and burnout, which is often the result.

[11:09]

So if you think about that, we have what we call loops. When you sit in zazen, you really see the loops in your mind, because your mind is supposed to be concentrated on what you're doing, but the loops keep coming around, you know, my mother, my this, that, and the other thing, and it just keeps going around. But the plane gets low, and it can't land, and so it has to take off again. Then it comes back. So, how did the planes get up there in the first place? You took something too personally. The first one. You continued to blame the person who hurt you for how bad you feel. And you created a grievance story.

[12:10]

So, talk about these three. You took something too personally. When something, when some grievance does happen to us, when somebody does something that causes us to feel hurt, we take it personally. But there are two sides of looking at something. One is to see it, to look at something personally, and to look at something impersonally. So it's important to feel what we feel personally. but it's also necessary to see it in an impersonal way, which is more like objectively. What happened in an objective way? What happened to me is personal, but what happened here is impersonal. If we see something, if we're only looking at it from our own point of view, then it's personal.

[13:16]

So our own point of view tends to be biased toward ourself. But impersonal allows us to take into consideration, well, what really happened here, and how did I create the conditions for this to happen? When something happens to us personally, we don't think, how did I create the conditions, or what did I contribute to allowing this to happen? But when we take the impersonal view, we can see how, oh yeah, well, I acted this way, and this was a reaction. Or sometimes somebody's just mean, but then there's something that causes them to be mean. If I wasn't there, this wouldn't have happened. So just my presence is enough. to be a condition for something to happen to me.

[14:21]

So, then the second one is you continued to blame the person who hurt you for how bad you feel. There is a cause for us feeling a certain way, but the feeling, the continuation of that feeling is ours. I can decide to continue to feel this way or I can decide not to. That we do have a choice as to whether we continue to feel a certain way or not feel a certain way. So that's taking responsibility for our feelings. When we don't take responsibility for our feelings, then we give over our power to somebody else. We give over our power to the one who we feel is grieving us. And this is how we get bound. You did this to me and I'll never forgive you. So I am bound to you and you're always in my mind.

[15:30]

What a burden to be carrying this person who did this to you around in your mind forever. So we have this burden called, I am hurt. And it keeps recurring, coming back. If it recurs two or three times a day, you know that you're caught. And then the third part is when you realize that you have created a grievance story because you create ... Everybody sees the story from their own point of view. Someone will come to me and they'll say, you know what so-and-so did to me? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And I'll say, God, you're right. Then the other person comes to me and they say, you know what happened to this? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

[16:32]

Oh, you're right. And neither of the stories connects with each other at all. So what you think happened is your story. What the other person thinks happened is their story. This happens all the time. Excuse me, I'm going to get a drink of water. My vow is to never listen to one side of a story or making a judgment on hearing one side of a story without hearing the other side, because everyone's story is so convincing. And I've made mistakes thinking, yeah, that's right. And when somebody tells you a story that's convincing, it biases you against the other side of the story. And even though you correct the story, the bias is still there, the germ of the bias is still there.

[17:44]

Someone told me, when I got this book, I told a therapist, I said, this is a really great book. He said, oh yeah, I know. And I thought, oh yeah, I know. And that left a kind of perception in my mind, yeah, well maybe it's not so good, you know. But I know better, it's good. So, what is forgiveness? Gives a list of what is forgiveness. Forgiveness is the peace you learn to feel when you allow these circling planes to land. So, what is the most important thing? We have to decide what is the most important thing. Is the most important thing my hurt, my vengeance, my retaliation, my self-righteousness, or peace of mind?

[18:52]

So forgiveness is for you and not for the offender. It's not not for the offender, but basically it's for you. It's for you to come back to yourself. It's how you detach yourself so that you're not carrying this burden. You're not carrying the weight of something which is occupying your mind. He uses the simile of renting out space in your mind. Your mind has these rooms and then we fill these rooms with

[19:59]

various things. And if we keep filling these rooms with resentments, we don't have space for other things. And the more obsessive we become, the more space and time we give to our resentments and our self-righteousness and blah, blah, blah, the more it gets filled up. And then it clouds our mind and distorts our thinking and we become heavier and heavier. So it's like, if we go on a diet, we become lighter and lighter. So, giving up, holding on to these things, because it can become a habit. Sometimes we habitually think that everybody's giving us a problem, and then we just keep holding these problems, and it becomes a way of life for some, to keep collecting problems, because that gives us self-pity, which makes us feel that we're owed something.

[21:22]

Self-pity is a substitute for self-respect. So forgiveness is for you and not the offender. So it gives you a chance to be objective. If you forgive your 85-year-old mother, if you can actually do that, then you can meet your mother. It doesn't matter what she's like. It doesn't make any difference because it's not You have the freedom from your mother's beam, whatever it is that's bothering you. I forgave my parents when they were alive many years ago because I thought that my upbringing was so horrendous. It wasn't that horrendous. It was pretty good, actually. But I just was pitying myself over my dissatisfaction But when I understood, well actually I had a dream.

[22:30]

I probably told you this dream once. I dreamt that my parents and I hope my family, who never touched each other, were all in a circle like a huddle and in this wonderful golden light and we were all embracing each other and saying, of course, of course, it's stupid. how stupid we are. Somebody said the way to free yourself from resentments is to realize that we're all going to die. So forgiveness is taking back your power. When you hold resentments, you give power to the other person to make you feel this way.

[23:32]

We just give away our power. And then we wonder why we're on the end of the stick being poked. So this is, and we keep creating self through self-righteousness. You're wrong and I'm right. That's hard stuff. Not easy stuff. Forgiveness is taking the responsibility for how you feel. You can feel any way you want, even though you don't think you can. Or you may say, well, I'll try feeling this way, which is just fake. That's different. There's a counterfeit. That's the counterfeit of actually shifting your feelings, because shifting your feelings means opening yourself up, not just pretending you're feeling good when you're not. That's not the same. And forgiveness is about your healing and not about the people who hurt you.

[24:42]

Although, when you can do that, you can, it will help the other person because you're also freeing the other person. Forgiveness is a trainable skill, just like learning to throw a ball, a baseball. It's like, if you practice it all the time, then it's not hard. But if you only practice it when some extreme problem comes up, then you have a hard time. But if you practice it all the time, it's not so difficult because you're training yourself in how to do this. And people come, sometimes they'll say, how do I get through my anger? Well, I can say something, but I don't know if that will help you, you know, because you're not skilled in doing that.

[25:51]

It's a skill. Skill in the sense of it's a kind of habit. It's a wholesome habit to always keep unburdening ourself. Things happen to us all the time, you know. Every day, little things happen to us, which we get angry at. And if we can unburden ourselves moment by moment, then that's how we train ourself. We don't think of it as training, we just think of it as Why do I want to hang on to this?" So we keep giving up resentment and anger all the time.

[26:53]

It's a constant thing because when we think about it, resentment and anger are entering into our consciousness continuously. All you have to do is think about the world. what's happening in the world. I mean, it drives you crazy. So we have to have objectivity as well as subjectivity. We have to take things personally, you know, like the war in Iraq is open air, but still it hurts us personally, what's going on. But on the other hand, the only way we can deal with it is impersonally. Otherwise we just get eaten up. So holding on to this anger and resentment just eats us up. There's a wonderful quote here. I'll try and find it. by Frederick Buchner.

[28:19]

He says, of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontation still to come. to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back. In many ways, it is a feast fit for a king. This is what kings do, actually. The chief drawback is what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you. So then, forgiveness helps you to get control over your feelings, because otherwise your feelings are dominated by your anger, your resentment, and your grief.

[29:35]

So we allow our feelings to dominate us. This is all just straight out of Buddhism. Talk about emotion thought. to the letting go of emotion thought. Not that feelings are wrong or emotions are bad, but we allow them to dominate us. So forgiveness can improve your mental and physical health, gives you the freedom to think and to feel. And forgiveness is becoming a hero instead of a victim. So, nurturing these grievances makes us into a victim. You did this to me, makes us a victim. If we can rise above that, then we become a heroine, or whatever, maybe that's too much, but it works.

[30:43]

And forgiveness is a choice. And everyone can learn to do it. Now, what is forgiveness not? Forgiveness is not condoning unkindness. In other words, yes, you were unkind. And I'm not saying that forgiveness condones your unkindness. That's not what it's about. What you did is what you did. And it affected me, but So I'm not saying you weren't unkind. I'm just saying that I'm free from your unkindness. Forgiveness is not forgetting that something painful happened. Forgiveness is not excusing poor behavior. Forgiveness does not have to be an otherworldly or religious experience. Forgiveness is not denying or minimizing your hurt.

[31:50]

Yes, it hurts. That's the personal side. Forgiveness does not mean reconciling with the offender. It doesn't mean that we're friends now. It simply means that I am no longer bound by my feelings about this. I have my freedom. I'm no longer under your control, or no longer under the control of what I feel you did to me. And forgiveness does not mean you give up having feelings. So it's really about how you maintain your own integrity. without retaliating. In other words, you disarmed the fight.

[32:56]

You disarmed the war. Now, you know, if the Israelis and the Palestinians could actually take this to heart, it would work. I mean, it could work. But this goes on all over the world. Conflict is mostly, well, who knows the real source of the conflicts? Mostly about power and creating resentments. Resentments are so easily manipulated. As a matter of fact, one gossip talks to another. You know what so-and-so said about you. Boy, they do. You know what so-and-so said about you? And then you get the two going at each other. And then you give them guns. And then you make a lot of money out of giving them guns. And then they're all fighting each other.

[34:01]

We think that people are all fighting each other because they don't like each other. But it's all manipulation. It's all manipulation. Somebody's making a profit. That's another story. So, forgiveness doesn't mean not to pay attention, not to feel what you feel, and now everything is okay. It simply means that you free yourself so that you can actually, you're no longer bound and you have gained your freedom. And then you have the freedom to act in a way that's not biased.

[35:09]

Because as long as we keep our resentments, that's a bias. and we no longer have the freedom to move in a way that is objective, that has some objectivity and is not bound by those feelings. So, Buddhist practice, or Zen practice, is to continually let go so that we have our freedom moment by moment. And this is what we have to watch out for all the time. Feelings and thoughts and emotions will continually arise, but we don't get caught by them. This is what zazen is. We sit in zazen. Thoughts arise. Oh, this is a good thought, this is a terrible thought. We don't get caught by them, hopefully.

[36:14]

We just let them come and go. We feel them and let them go. Emotions arise, we feel them and we let them go. Feelings arise, we feel them and let them go. So we're not caught or attached to anything. Pain in our legs arises, but we don't turn it into suffering. I mean, we do, but Our effort is to not let it turn into suffering, not let our thoughts turn into suffering. To be free from suffering, which doesn't mean to be free from feeling or thinking. It does mean to be free from, to have thoughts, to have feelings, have emotions, but not to be turned around by them. so that we always have our freedom.

[37:17]

This is called renunciation. And it's called atonement, which means at-one-ment. It means returning back to wholeness instead of partiality. Partiality is an interesting word because it means partial to something and it also means apart from something. Split off. Partial means split off. And it also means just biased. partiality, bias to myself, which is split off from the whole.

[38:21]

So atonement is to let go of that partiality and get back to wholeness. And that's what we should be doing all the time. So it doesn't mean, oh God, you know, blah, blah, blah. Atonement simply means to let go of partiality and come back to wholeness all the time. So we have to save ourself. That's how we save. That's called our salvation, actually. Buddhism is a practice of salvation, which means to save ourself from delusion and suffering and not get caught by all this stuff. So forgiveness is the treasure we have, it's the tool we have for letting go. And not retaliating, because retaliation just creates more problems.

[39:31]

Retaliation just keeps us bound to the other, and then we're chained. We're chained to that which we hate. we're chained to that which we love. So Third Ancestor says, when both love and hate are neutralized, that's my word, then serenely we sleep. When we're not chained to either one, then serenely we sleep, which encompasses non-dualistic love. which means not being attached to anything through love. It's interesting. If the human being is five skandhas, form, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness, what is there to love?

[40:36]

That was a question that came up last Saturday. What is there to love? It wasn't last Saturday. That's a good question. So love is just love, which holds everything together. It's not some special thing for some special person. When we say, I love you, what does that mean? What does that mean, my eye, or my nose, or my guts, or my whatever, my sexual organ? What does that mean, I love you, or anybody? What is the meaning of that? In a basic way, it means it's impartial.

[41:39]

And so I can love you partially or impartially. But even if I love you partially, it's still impartial if it's genuine. Just love, that's all. Not anything special. Not anything special for any special person. But the deep love is what is offered to everything. And so when you shine it on somebody in particular, same thing. If you only love somebody for some reason, then whatever you love is going to be for some reason. And that's partiality. There's no reason, it's just that's the way things are. It's just impartiality.

[42:54]

Not explicable. Anyway, do you have any questions? On the back. Okay, you have to speak loud. No, I didn't say it created the situation. I said it is a factor in creating the situation. But if the other person has their own reasons for doing what they're doing the way they are, then whoever would be in this place would... In other words, the other person has their own reasons for doing what they're doing.

[44:35]

Whether I'm here or somebody else is in this place, that person would be acting the same way. I'm talking about you. I'm not talking about another person. Yes, we should only take it personally. Whatever happens to us personally, we should take personally. But at the same time, we should also see it impersonally. At the same time, we should also see it impersonally. At the same time, Personal, impersonal, at the same time, that's called this. This is personal, this is impersonal. Otherwise, if it's only personal, we can't get out of it. There's no way to get out of it if it's only personal. And if it's only impersonal?

[45:39]

If it's only impersonal, we're escaping. owning what's happening. The other thing was about the word forgiveness. The what? The word forgiveness. Forgiveness, yeah. It's very problematic for people because I think we think that it's doing something. But the way you talked about it and the way I understand it, it's really the absence of something. It's a letting go. It's not a doing. But letting go is also doing something. You know, there's an old saying,

[46:41]

story, but it just is. The student says to the Master, I'm not doing anything. And the Master says, well, not doing anything is doing something. You can't not do something. If you can not do something, then everything you do is not doing. And that's how we find our freedom. And in my experience, sometimes there are emotions that arise in me that won't go away when I let them go.

[47:46]

And so for me, it's been really important to learn how to maintain my freedom because I'm feeling it. Or if I'm feeling it, I'm feeling it on some unconscious level that I don't have access to, but I can experience it in my body. And for me to learn that I can still wash the dishes if I'm angry, or I can still take out the trash, I didn't even answer the problem. For me, that's been a good practice of how can I stay free? Or fear, the two of them, they both will tell me I have to do something else. I have to hit somebody or run away. So just continue to That's taking a step back and actually detaching yourself. It's like counting to 10 before you hit somebody. You can't get rid of this thing because it keeps coming back, but you work within it.

[48:52]

And that's actually the most valuable thing, is to keep working within it And that's like creating the pearl with a little bit of sand in the, you know. It's also helped me to recognize that when that happens, there are some things that I can't do because I'm so anxious. That's right. What can I do? The question, what can I do, is really important. Sometimes, you know, I'll say to a person, well, just write a letter to this person, but don't send it. So that you're able to express yourself. Even though it's too hard to actually say something to the person, at least you can get it expressed. and then don't send a letter.

[49:55]

And that opens up channels for a person. So anyway, yeah, it's not so simple, always. But if you practice it all the time, it becomes easier. And there are ways of practicing it. It was one more person that had their hand up. I don't know just what. You told the story of your dream a few times before. What was happening in your life during that time that you think sort of precipitated that dream? Well, let's see. What was happening? I think that was when I When I had that dream, I was studying Judaism when I was in my early 20s.

[50:58]

That may have had something to do with the dream, but when I had that dream, it totally transformed my attitude. I never said anything to my parents about that, but my attitude and the way I related to them was totally free of anything, and I must say I totally understood the difficulties that they had had in their life, and going through the Depression. I was born in 1929, the year of the Depression. Nobody had any money. Everybody was out of work. People were depressed. It was not a happy time at all. People were really depressed for 10 years.

[52:03]

they had this attitude of very heavy, kind of heaviness, and I was buoyant, you know, a young guy. And so the discrepancy between my energy and their energy created problems. Anyway, when I realized, though, that they took such great, always took great care of us. But the psychic, the emotional life was really bad. Dead. You know, deadish. Not dead, but not so good. But it's really helped me, you know, in my relationships with everybody. I think it really formed my basic attitude.

[53:06]

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