I've been reading somewhat slowly this book called At the Mind's Limits, Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities. It's not bedtime reading. I'm just reading the second essay on this man's experiences being tortured. And I can only read a little bit at a time and early in the day. But I want to recommend the book. I think that what he has to say is actually quite relevant to what's happening in the world today. Very careful, beautifully written series of essays. What I've been thinking about and what is up this morning that I'd like to talk about with you actually has to, somehow relates to what I was just saying a few minutes ago about how can we begin to notice the habits in the body that are so familiar that, you know, if you're sitting this way and suddenly you get some adjustment

[01:28]

about center and you think, I'm not sitting straight, I'm sitting like this. How hard it is for us to see accurately what is familiar. And I can't emphasize enough how much what is familiar escapes us or is a trap because we go for what's familiar. We think, oh, that's what's natural. That's the way I am. That's my personality. That's my nature. That's just the way I do things. And even more challenging, how do I see the conditioning that I'm not even aware of? I had a conversation with someone that I've been practicing with for a while now, yesterday, and after we finished talking, I found this issue coming up for me.

[02:46]

Because this is, for those of us who are not phobic, but are counter phobic, we go for what we're afraid of. We move toward. without even realizing quite what we're doing. So we keep finding ourselves moving into a buzzsaw. How did I get here? So I think this territory of training the mind and training the whole system mind, body, spirit, action, speech, the whole works, as my dear teacher, Kadagiri Roshi, used to say, the whole works, including what I'm not yet able to see.

[03:54]

And this is, of course, where having a spiritual friend or a teacher or a guide is crucial. Even practicing together, we become like mirrors for each other. We begin to notice something in another person and in a while realize we're noticing what is so within ourselves. I'm of course talking about this whole territory called ignorance, or as the mad Bob Thurman would say, unconsciousness knowing. I think it's a great restatement for ignorance. How can I wake up to what I'm deeply asleep about?

[04:58]

Having a company is crucial. But I also want to emphasize that no other person can fix or bring about change in those kinds of patterns. Someone may help me begin to notice something that I've not been able to notice up until now. But the actual process of transformation is in my own hands. Nobody can train my mind except me. This is the only mind I can train. One of the things about cooking, if one sits in the teaching seat, is learning how little one can do for another person. And of course, what I'm talking about requires the cultivation of trust.

[06:10]

And for some people who've had the kinds of life experiences where one comes to the conclusion that it's perhaps not safe to trust. Excavating and unpacking and dismantling that mistrusting so that I can then slowly begin to cultivate trust that is appropriate and is not generalized becomes possible. A number of years ago, when Suzuki Roshi was still alive, we drove back from Tassajara one Thanksgiving and sat in the car in front of the Sokochi Temple, where the Zen Center was then located, and talked for... He'd slept most of the way back.

[07:24]

But when the car stopped, he woke up and we had this remarkable conversation that lasted for, I don't know, hours. into the wee hours of the morning about trust. And he opened with, I don't trust anyone. I thought, how can that be? Here was a person who, in my experience, had the kind of capacity for being present and spacious and kindly and encouraging. And of course, he then went on to unpack what he meant. And of course, he was giving me a teaching that was, for me, quite central.

[08:27]

Because of course, up to that point, my strong pattern was to trust blindly or not at all. and to have virtually no experience of anything in between. And I think that the issue of trust for many of us arises in terms of can I trust another person, can I trust a situation that is outside of ourselves. And I would like to propose that what is much more appropriate is that we cultivate our own capacity to be trustworthy, including, most importantly, knowing when I may not be so trustworthy, when I may not be so sure what will arise in the mind. When will I go out of attention? When will I slip into some ancient twisted reaction?

[09:34]

And to be able to see those moments, I have to be willing to bear seeing my own imperfection, my own inability of a certain sort up until now. This question comes up around this time of year when we busily take New Year's resolutions. And most often the resolutions I hear are big and general and probably not keepable. I was very pleased at the end of our winter retreat. The intentions that people announced were quite doable. and reasonable. How often do we commit ourselves, for example, I'm going to get up at five every morning and sit for three hours or one hour or whatever.

[10:48]

I believe firmly in the minimum daily requirement. What is the amount of meditation I will do every single day no matter what? Five minutes? 10 minutes. And if I, in fact, keep that promise to myself, I begin to trust my capacity to promise to do something and to keep the promise. Otherwise, if we overreach, we undermine our capacity for confidence in ourselves and prove to ourselves what that little nagging voice is telling us about well, you're not reliable, you're not trustworthy. Look at that, there you go again. Not keeping your word. Whatever the variation on the theme may be. Different for each of us perhaps, but. I remember one time sitting in a room with people that I've been practicing with for a number of years

[11:57]

having one of our groups say that desperately he wanted to be trusted. And what he then got to hear was that no one in the room trusted him. It was very painful for all of us. But it was a very big lesson for me because what I came to understand was I'm barking up the wrong trust tree, if you will, if I'm hoping to be trusted by others. Very different to set my sights on developing my capacity to be trustworthy. That's what's in my hand. It's that difference between trying to mind someone else's mindstream Oh, I want you to trust me. That's an instance of wanting to mind somebody else's mindstream.

[13:17]

So being modest about our spiritual life and our spiritual practice I think is very important. And of course, we can build on success. We can build on a capacity we develop that's modest. That can be the kind of launching pad, if you will, for cultivation, which in time we may even be surprised by. If the through line in Buddhist meditation is the cultivation of highly energized and stable attention, what happens when I notice that I'm out of attention? Throw up my hands in dismay and say, oh, I can't do it? Or, oh, come back to attention.

[14:19]

This is not a path about perfection, instant perfection. It's about the uncovering of the perfection that already exists. And the uncovering is the dismantling of conditioning, of reactivity. And at some point, we may feel like, oh, this is going to take more than this lifetime. Maybe that's what stimulated all this talk in the Buddhist tradition about past and future lives. My own experience is that 10, 15, 20, 30, maybe 40 years, come in, Ann. I don't know where you'll sit down, but you're welcome to come in. Ashley, you can move this drum.

[15:32]

It can just go over there. Yeah, that's fine. Stand it up. You can share the mat with the Tongas. Thank you. Where was I? Lifetimes? Oh, yes. I think we get discouraged because we begin to pay attention to our mind stream and the characteristics of this particular mind stream on a particular morning, afternoon, or evening. And initially we may feel appalled. Someone recently said, I'm just now seeing how pervasively naggingly critical I am of everyone and everything. And I'm appalled. I said, well, you'll get over it. And when you get over it, then you'll have some energy to begin to cultivate your capacity to dismantle that reactive pattern.

[16:47]

One of the more recalcitrant patterns, but I know from my own experience that it can be dismantled. Not in a week or a year, over years. There are some patterns that are just doggedly set, so it takes a while. If we look at, well, how's it going, say every five years, we may have a somewhat realistic picture of what's happening in our meditation practice. Less than that, I think, is not such a good idea. And the only way to build confidence in ourselves

[17:50]

is to be modest and kind about what we're doing. Understanding something about the nature of mind and the nature of training the untrained mind. And in the process to slowly cultivate enough trust in ourselves so that we can bear to have our good friend. point out to us what we may have a hard time seeing. It's one of the big reasons, I think, for doing retreats, because we are developing together a container in which we can begin to approach what we historically have not been able to imagine approaching. One of the most challenging aspects for me in sitting in the teaching seat is watching and listening to the process of someone continually walking into whatever is their version of a buzzsaw.

[19:28]

And being very patient and spacious about not speaking too soon about what I observe. What I've learned over the years is that there is a kind of respectfulness in being present with and supporting someone to do the work that only they can do. Perhaps that's why I'm not of the school of yelling. All that happens is that the meditation hall becomes suffused with fear. And I think that the absence of fear or the eroding away of fear in the context in which we practice is extremely important.

[20:50]

As I said earlier this morning to somebody, I also hold in very high regard quality of ease. If there's too much striving, too much trying hard, too much pushing prematurely, our ability to see clearly things as they are will be hindered. So that's what's on my mind this morning and I wonder if any of you has something you'd like to bring up or argue with me about or whatever. Betty. There are a couple of things I wanted to bring up about noticing.

[22:04]

I'm noticing that I don't always know that I've noticed something until later. There's a kind of noticing and disregarding what I notice so quickly that I don't know it's happened until some while later. It's like the noticing is happening about three feet behind my seat. What I call lag time. Yeah. Keep in mind The cute statement from... It takes as long as it takes. Yeah. And I think my other noticing is in the same territory and that is reacting to what I notice with a kind of filter so that what I've noticed isn't so clear anymore.

[23:14]

my perception isn't so clear so it's not just noticing and what I think that I sometimes get confused between the noticing and the reaction to the noticing. But just having some sense that that may be what's going on is an approach point. You know, I think about, I mentioned this in the Thursday night class. Bill, when he first started taking all these Sudafeds, had this kind of niggling voice saying, should I be doing this? Should I be taking these pills? Exactly. Which he then went into override. Yeah. And You know, in... I can't remember what book of Trungpa Rinpoche's teaching, he talks about first thought.

[24:24]

And that's an instance of first thought. And if we've trained in doubt and judgment, we don't even register that first thought. But we can begin to dismantle that disregarding, that not noticing. By noticing the disregarding. Yeah. Whenever. And if the noticing is brief, is spare, maybe it's time to drag out bare noting again. If the noticing is spare, I have less, I'm less likely to go to judging about having not noticed sooner or whatever. It's not good enough or soon enough or full enough or whatever.

[25:26]

Now, the other thing that I have learned is that if I act on or stay present with what I notice when I notice it. Without all that, it's too late, or why didn't I notice this earlier, et cetera. If I act in a way respectfully and responsibly with what I've noticed, the lag time begins to shorten. Thank you. Useful question, thank you. Cliff? As you know, I've been working with my habitual judging and criticizing mind. Only you. I didn't say that. I just want you to know how much company you have. They do that so much better than me, but it's not at all obvious.

[27:31]

What is obvious is that the sinking feeling, you know, the kind of hopelessness that follows from it. Well, I do think that we can sometimes, particularly with a very highly energized habit such as you are describing, the access point may more often be through body sensation. And the sinking, the experience of sinking is sinking energy, but it also is, there's a kind of palpable quality that's in the body. So respect that. I would say that this, Habitual judging, criticizing, comparing, it's all aspects of the same habit, is probably the single biggest obstacle for being present and awake, at least in this culture that I know of.

[28:43]

And it may manifest in terms of being highly critical of the world, But rest assured, this is an arrow that's got points on both ends. And that projecting out may be the way in which I can move the energy of habitual judging out. Because the experience of that, you know, what's classically called self-loathing, is so painful. And more and more I'm convinced that if you drop deep enough under that habitual patterning, what you come to is fear. A kind of fear that we got, you know, holding onto that we'll never be good enough, we'll never be, do it right, et cetera. Somebody I know,

[29:47]

who has her own share of this particular brand of self-loathing. I told her one day, I love you quite dearly. You didn't earn it, you can't earn it, and you can't make it go away. It was like I'd taken a bucket of ice water in her face. But, you know, she went away and a few days later I got a little message from her. I got it. I don't know how long I'll keep it, but I got it. Because there is this sense underlying habitual judgment that somehow I have to do something to earn being better or being good or being able to do this or that. So I think really respecting and staying present with the sinking feeling, for one thing, what happens is with all of emotional and body-based experience, like everything else, it comes and it goes.

[31:09]

And if it doesn't go, it's probably because we're feeding with more judging thoughts. So we have this experience of a kind of steady state condition, but it's really rising, falling, rising, falling, rising, falling, rising, falling. And I can keep it going with the story and the messages. Karen can testify too. the benefit of quick, every time you, first you do bare noting, so you get, for a few days, so you get a sense of, oh, this is a pattern, this is not a series of isolated thoughts. Here is a reactive pattern. And once you really get that it's a pattern, you've already moved a little bit away from the experience, you're not in the grip quite the same way, at least some of the time.

[32:23]

And then do the antidote practice quick. Ten things I'm grateful for. It's like I pick the car of my mind up from this track and I put it over onto the track of appreciation and gratitude. Dragged kicking and screaming into appreciation and gratitude. But suddenly the world looks so different. I look different to myself. But I think attending to this particular reactive pattern is at least initially quite painful. It's quite painful. John? Along the same topic or lines, when you were discussing that, I was thinking back to some of the work I did years ago with adult children of alcoholics.

[33:27]

I grew up in a very crazy household where you just never knew which way the wind was blowing at some speed and whether you had done something nameless or whatever. But to begin to turn towards that, to recognize the pattern, the visual pattern of, oh my God, what did I do? It still comes up to me. Sure. I must have, you know, do they like me, do they not like me, the money? Yeah. They haven't talked to me, they haven't smiled at me quite the way they want them to smile at me, so I must have done something wrong. Yeah. Right. I mean, it's, A, it's painful. B, I think it takes, it's a lot of work. But it's something, it's not insurmountable. I mean, I've been, I did my first workshop with that, that ACA workshop 15 years ago, 16 years ago. There were a couple of things that came out of it. One was, at some point, to giving my parents.

[34:29]

Didn't happen immediately. Yeah, I think it takes a long time. But to get off the blame bandwagon, you know. What was the parenting that they had when they were kids, for example? Especially in alcoholic family systems where you have this kind of webbing that is often multiple generations. I think also growing up during the Depression was contributory. Yes. Hard times that many of us have never experienced. So, there's that. Then there's the business of just dealing with it as it comes up. Well, I do think that the habit, any reactive pattern, including this one, does begin to dismantle and dissolve. If I'm really dogged and consistent in bringing attention as soon as I'm able to the arising of a particular moment of that pattern.

[35:37]

The other practice in addition to the cultivation of appreciation and gratitude that really turned it for me is what I call the 98% goal. as a kind of antidote to what you just described, to listen to what anybody says as telling me about what is arising in their mind stream, what is of concern to them, what matters to them, even if there are a lot of statements about it, you always and you never, et cetera, to listen to that from the perspective of 98% of what this person is telling me consciously or unconsciously, is what's hard for them, what's upsetting to them, what matters to them, etc. And it was like having a light switch go on. Suddenly I could listen in the world and it was no longer about me.

[36:40]

I'm still working with that one. That's a tough one. Dogged, determined, consistent, just work it to the bone. And don't try to do too many different things at once. How do I know when dogged, determined? referred to before. Into pushing. Is that what you mean? Yeah. Well, you know, there's a very interesting book based on the work of Eugene Genlin by a woman who worked with him for a long time called The Power of Focusing by Carol Cornell Weiser.

[37:44]

And the language that Jenlin uses in the focusing work I find very useful. What's the felt sense? And I'm a very highly trained pusher. I kind of got it along with habitual judgment with my mother's milk. It wasn't mother's milk, but you know what I mean. And often I didn't recognize pushing until after the fact. But when I was willing to notice the pushing, that kind of felt sense of overextension or just pushing, pushing, pushing, then I began to notice the pushing more in the moment. And one of the practice phrases that helped me a lot was, is what I'm about to do including taking care of myself or instead of taking care of myself?

[38:59]

If I can remember to ask the question, I can answer it, at least so far. But I also think that this attention to, particularly in formal meditation, am I sitting or walking, whatever practice I'm doing, is there a quality of ease? And to keep ease, or keep bringing the quality of ease up as, is there a sense of ease as I'm sitting here? And if my sense is not, how would I soften and open for some ease? Little bit of ease. But if that's what I'm working with, then I want to work with that focus only. And I want to just keep working that edge as much as I can. It also helps if you've got a family member or someone that you spend time with who you feel safe enough with to do a little

[40:14]

I'll give you an example. My husband will sometimes say, are you in your Wonder Woman dress? He doesn't stick around for the answer. He just asks the question. And it's a little lighthearted. It's a little fresh. He hasn't been saying that for years. Very helpful. You know I turn around there's my cape flying But I think that the tendency for pushing Will show up in very specific particular detail where there's a kind of felt sense And the access in my experience is through the body scrunched up, leaning.

[41:19]

You know, there are a couple of arhats out here, one of them's got big, long eyebrows. I don't think that's what we're talking about. Cave dwellers. Anyway, that's my suggestion. But I have to say, and I am speaking from my own experience, but also what I observe, my fellow pushers, is that that pattern will be pervasive. It won't just show up in meditation or in work. It'll tend to be quite pervasive. So once I get some access to the particular moment of pushing and striving, if I can appreciate that moment of seeing, spotting that particular reactive pattern, That can be quite helpful.

[42:19]

Leslie? Do you think there are moments to push? Yes, I do. I do. But I think that for most people, in terms of meditation practice, the pushing comes too early. I think there's a time... I actually... Let me take that back. I think that I'd rather frame it in the language of strictness. There is a time when, this goes back to when you yell at me if I move, there comes a point from the inside out when one senses, now I'm ready to explore not moving. that's not pushing, but I'm ready for a kind of discipline or kind of tightening the container.

[43:28]

So, that's not quite the same as, is there a time when it's appropriate to push? slightly different framing. And I've got such deeply set training for pushing that for me a kind of reframing in terms of a more vigorous container helps me not fall into what I can go blind to. Does that make some sense? Yeah. Thank you, that's a very helpful question. Sarah? Would you speak to how to keep these practices, I'm thinking of the centering practice you've given us, keeping them juicy, day to day?

[44:40]

I mean, I can come to my cushion in the morning and set my intention, but I find the further I get away from that initial instruction that it tends to lose some energy. Well, you know, Wendy Palmer addressed this when she said, for me, the breath gets boring. I think that's a phase, actually. and is more about our anticipation that the breath will be born. But it's one of the reasons why she came up with this notion that when you're part of the center in practice where you focus on the breath, what she does is she focuses on the breath coming out of the earth in a counterclockwise direction into the body. and on the exhalation a clockwise direction going back into the earth.

[45:47]

Well, that was just a device for her to kind of liven up a little paprika on the breath part. My experience in doing the centering practice, any of the cluster of practices for coming back into the moment, is that if I do a practice long enough so that it becomes something I can do with real ease, and not even thinking about it. I'm not kind of plotting my way through, oh, center and align, grounded, sense of gravity, breath, field, quality. It's just of a piece on the inhalation, on the exhalation. that the payoff in terms of those moments and increasingly more and more moments of being present is what keeps energizing my willingness to keep practicing, oh, reaction, come back into the present moment.

[47:07]

I'm experiencing some of that payoff. I just find that the mind can also get in there a little bit faster sometimes. Yeah. Well, you know, it's the disaster called thinking. Oh, this is boring. I'm going to do this for two months. Chatter, chatter. Whenever that kind of thinking kicks in and you notice it, come back to body and breath. specific detail. This is why the centering of the head, the heart chakra, and the hara. The actual physical experience of gravity. It's the quickest gross level way to be present in the moment. Sorry. Yes, Anne.

[48:13]

I came late, so I don't know if you said this, but I have been trying the centering technique, and the part that is most difficult for me is setting the field. I'm not sure I understand what I'm supposed to be doing, and it seems counterproductive sometimes. My mind just sort of goes clunk. Yeah. It's interesting. It is that, of that particular practice for being present, it seems to be the most challenging for people. Well, my suggestion is that whenever you're sitting with yourself or with one other person, let's just do it right now. As I'm sitting here talking to you, I immediately set as the energy field defined in terms of the distance between us, that's the yardstick. And I measure that behind me, behind you, this side and this side.

[49:15]

That means through the wall, up and down. So I'm visualizing this as the kind of energy field within which we are together, relationally, sitting in the center. So it might be useful for me to try this when I'm not meditating. Yes, absolutely. And when I'm in relation to people. Absolutely, absolutely. Now, if you were really pissed at me about something and giving me what for, and I noticed myself beginning to kind of shut down, I might then increase the field by five or ten. Power of five or ten. So it was a very big energy field because of this heightened energy in terms of what I'm experiencing coming this way. I noticed that if I'm on the receiving end of a lot of heat, my capacity to stay present and not go into reaction is much more accessible if I set the field quite large.

[50:28]

Yeah, well I think in the summer We had the dramatic and useful experience of my neighbor objecting to our powder blue chemical toilet. It smelled like Johnson's baby powder. Anyway, I do think that of that particular practice from coming back to being present, piece that has to do with field takes a while to have some experiential access to. I don't think it works so much to think about it, try to figure it out. When you're alone, most of my singing I do by myself, and I mean, sometimes the field seems to go way, way out and becomes global and sometimes, I don't know, I don't know how to measure it when it's not in relationship to another person.

[51:31]

And what arbitrarily makes me decide that the field is the statue in front of me or is the rest of the world? Training. Train for the experience of setting field of different sizes. Start with the field defined by the mat you're sitting on. And I mean, you know, for me this is a continual challenge because of all those names over on those altars, where I'm doing practices for people who are sick and doing practices for people who've died, how I set a field energetically that supports attention with all of these beings. All I have to do is read the paper, and my sense of the appropriate field being very big comes up.

[52:40]

But I have to be careful that I don't just fog out. I actually find, you know, those wonderful early photographs, I guess from the first moonwalk of the Earth, I find those photographs very helpful in doing practices that have to do with the planet Earth. But, you know, I tend to be so kind of literal-minded and practical that the more, I don't know, I get a lot of help from artifacts, pictures being part of it. artifacts. Okay, anybody else? Yes, Vicki. Yvonne, two things that you've talked about.

[53:42]

When you say you are more strict with the container when you're pushing, does that mean that you... I didn't say pushing. I took pushing back. Right. What I understood was when you feel yourself pushing, you instead look at? No, I was not saying that as an antidote to pushing. When Leslie asked me about is pushing ever appropriate, I started out going along that track and then went back and said, for me anyway, what is more skillful is having a somewhat more strictly held container within which I'm practicing or within which I'm engaging with some situation or not. For example, to begin to be more strict about sitting still without moving. But to have that strictness come from the inside out, not the outside in.

[54:47]

And for anybody who has a tendency to be very oriented to the rest of the world is telling me how I'm doing, the strictness is likely to come from the outside in. And it's like, you know, layers of cold cream or something. The other question I had was around trust and trustworthiness. You were speaking about that. Do you relate being trustworthy, making yourself your own mind, your own trust, Do you relate that to them being able to trust others more? No, not at all. Because I have no idea what the causes and conditions are operating for someone on any given day or in their lifetime or whatever, you know, and maybe I have the experience that such and such is a person actually

[55:54]

so far does what they say they're going to do. But you know, this is where the poem of Thich Nhat Hanh I think is very useful. We all carry the capacity for corruption. If the causes and conditions are appropriate for a certain behavior, that's very likely to be a possibility within us. And my experience is that the people who don't go that route are the people who know they have a capacity for corruption and put into place the safeguards in order to not act from that corruptibility. But who knows what someone will do given the circumstances? And we have a tendency to generalize about trust I think partially because we yearn for feeling safe in the world.

[56:59]

And my own experience is that my capacity for feeling safe in the world comes from the inside out, comes from a kind of spaciousness and relational cultivation where I'm willing to have someone act in a way that's not trusting is harmful. I'm willing to not necessarily feel safe. But that's not a capacity that we can inflict upon ourselves. It has to arise as a possibility. And I think it has a lot to do with meditations on selflessness. On no inherent, solid, permanent self. For right now, don't go there. That's a whole complicated map.

[58:01]

I can sort of see you begin to glaze over. But I do think that ultimately the experience of there is no permanent, solid Yvonne is very freeing around the very things that we're talking about. Very freeing. I just have one last thing that just came up for me, which is, I remember growing up, the not trusting anyone always came up with a very negative connotation. My mother saying, don't trust anyone, instead of what you're just talking about. And so I think until this moment, I've always carried that other aspect of don't trust anyone, as a negative thing that carried along with it a whole bunch of baggage rather than don't trust anyone and trust yourself, you know, begin to trust yourself.

[59:06]

Very different three words. You see, I also think that there's something very misleading about this idea that we should trust other people because in any given moment who will appear? And just because we think we know someone, or they have a reputation, doesn't mean I have any idea who will manifest in the moment. I'd like to close with... I hope it's in here. Ah, yes. The Buddhas cannot wash our sins away with water. They cannot remove our suffering with their hands. They cannot transfer their insights to us. All they can do is teach the Dharma.

[60:07]

I am my own protector. So much for someone doing it for us. So on that cheery note, I actually do consider it a cheery note. Thank you very much. It's very nice to see you all.

[60:26]

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