I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Good evening. Several times today I was surprised when I looked up at the sky and saw how beautiful it was. It somehow seemed like the sky shouldn't be quite so beautiful, especially since hearing the news about the bombing beginning. It seems rather fitting, doesn't it, for us to consider afflictive emotions this evening.

[01:11]

What we are engaged in in the Middle East is the afflictive emotions big time. My first question to each of us is, what do we mean when we say afflictive emotions? Your afflictive emotion of choice may be different than mine, and it probably doesn't feel so much like choice as much as something that comes from somewhere and we often don't know where. That's, of course, part of the problem. What I want to talk about tonight is to sketch out a bit something of the teachings in the Buddhist tradition about the antidotes to the so-called afflictive emotions. As some of you know, I did a retreat this weekend.

[02:19]

The title of it was, Emotions That Sweep Us Away. That perhaps suggests what I mean when I say afflictive emotions. Those emotions which, when they arise, lead to disturbed states of mind, to behavior which leads to suffering, to trouble. And I think for most of us, anger is at the very top of the list. And right under it, perhaps almost always under it, is fear. When I asked the group of us that spent the weekend together considering afflictive emotions for a list, we came up with all kinds of things. Jealousy, for some people, falling in love, for one man, overwhelming despair and sadness.

[03:27]

Grief, in some cases. For some of us, the upwelling of some experience of helplessness. So, perhaps for our discussion, for the purposes of our discussion tonight, we can stay with anger and fear as two particular emotions or clusters of emotions which we can consider together. My first suggestion to myself and to all of us, when I say I'm feeling afraid or I'm feeling angry, is to ask myself, now what exactly do I mean? I think that this term anger, in particular, covers quite a broad spectrum.

[04:39]

And it can be very useful to look at the continuum of emotion that falls under this category. It may begin with waking up in the morning feeling a little irritable or grouchy. This beginning end of the spectrum may have to do with expectation or expectations. Very often, expectations we have not even realized we had. And when we notice the expectation later, after we've gotten into trouble, we realize, oh, maybe it wasn't such a realistic expectation, or maybe my expectation would have been more realistic if I'd let anyone in on it. So we have expectations, and then things don't go the way we wanted them to go, the way we

[05:47]

dreamt them to be. And then we feel frustrated, disappointed, hurt, angry. And then it begins to heat up. Frustration and irritability and anger, and then it goes into something much hotter. We sometimes refer to the hottest end of anger as rage. And we often speak in our ordinary language about the blindness, blind anger or blind rage. It's this end of the emotional spectrum called anger which leads to great suffering. The great philosopher and meditator and teacher from India, Shantideva, does a wonderful description

[06:55]

of all the disadvantages of anger in terms of how we can't sleep, our food doesn't taste good, our friends don't want to look at our ugly face. We start being left alone because who wants to be around someone who's angry? He makes a very strong argument, presents a very strong case against anger as having some advantage. And yet for many of us in our culture, we have some idea that it's good to be in touch with our emotions. It's good to be in touch with our anger and express it and get it out. I think that we come to this notion about anger because we have perhaps not looked carefully enough at the detail of what is going on.

[07:57]

One of the great antidotes to afflictive emotions in the Buddhist tradition has to do with changing our pace, slowing down. Because when we slow down, we're able to notice a little bit more. In the Wheelwright Center, there's that big calligraphy that says ABC. Some of us think it stands for a bigger container. And there's a whole cluster of practices that have to do with cultivating or developing a bigger container. Slowing down our pace is one of them. In a commentary that I've been reading on one of the sutras, there's a line about how if you get too close to a mirror, you can't see anything.

[09:03]

And if you get too far away from a mirror, you can't see anything. You want to be in that relationship to the mirror which is just right. And maybe this notion of a bigger container is a bit like that. The practice of silence can be a practice which provides us with some sense of a bigger container. Certainly a different kind of container than the one we're in when we're in the midst of a big fight and we're yelling and screaming at somebody. And there is the very old and, for me, beloved practice that is a classical antidote to anger which is known as the half-smile. A classical mindfulness practice which is blissfully simple to do. When I introduce this practice at one-day workshops that I do occasionally at UC Extension,

[10:14]

I hear afterwards from people that they often say, a practice that lasts for three breaths as an antidote to anger? You must be kidding. It can't possibly have any particular effect. And my invitation always is, just try it and see what happens. Lift the corners of your mouth and hold that lifting very slightly so that if you looked in the mirror, you would not say you were smiling, but you can feel the lift at the corners of the mouth and sustain that sensation of lifting for the space of three breaths. Not breaths that you control, but just allowing the breath to rise and fall as it will. The problem always is that if I'm in the midst of being upset and angry about something,

[11:19]

I don't begin to think of doing the half-smile unless it's already in my bag of tricks. So it's useful to practice the half-smile when things are going okay, so that you get a taste for it. And if you do that, you'll be surprised. After a week or two when you're upset, suddenly the thought half-smile will come up, just at the moment when it could be quite useful. When I first began doing the practice, I started doing it whenever I was waiting at stoplights and stop signs and standing in line at the grocery store. And when I was on hold on the telephone, waiting in a doctor's office, saved my life in airports. So that's another one of these bigger container practices.

[12:26]

Because, of course, in the middle of being angry and upset, you place your attention on the corners of the mouth and your three breaths. And you come back to your present with yourself in the midst of your upset and anger with a slight shift in your perspective. And there is absolutely nothing in the practice that requires you to change the way you're feeling. It's more an opportunity to notice the fullness of what's going on in the situation. You're welcome to continue being angry for as long as that's what's rising and falling. But pay attention to the detail of the rising and falling. Pay attention to the surrounding in the situation. You might at that point pay attention to what a writer who's written a quite interesting book on anger

[13:39]

calls the anatomy of the emotion. How's my stomach? What's happening to my heartbeat? All those ways of slowing down and being able to pay attention to more of what's happening. More of what's actually going on and less of what is happening in my head. Which is often some voice about, you always, you never, why didn't you, why didn't I, etc. We put a lot of emphasis in the mindfulness tradition. In the kind of meditation practice that we do. And ideally, hopefully through the course of the day, on the practice of bare noting.

[14:40]

What does that mean? Bare noting. Bare noting. Noticing. The bare part's very important. Because if you start noticing what's going on and you begin noticing in an obsessive way, that voice of criticism, that voice of judgment comes in. And immediately you're thinking about the past or the future. So the practice of noticing is very particular. Notice the detail of the anatomy of the emotion that's arising. Notice the feeling in your chest. Notice your breath. Pay attention to the look on the other person's face. But don't linger too long in any of the detail of the situation. Just scan with as much attention to the particular detail, descriptively, what's going on.

[15:47]

And always keep coming back to what we think of as home base. Can I pay attention to the detail of my sitting on this cushion? The connection along my leg on the mat and my other leg resting on my thigh. How's my breath? So noticing what's going on around me and coming back to body and breath. There's a book that some of you know called Taming Your Gremlin by Richard Carson, which is about cultivating the habit or practice of noticing. And he says very clearly and I think accurately, noticing is simple, it is not easy.

[16:49]

So in Zazen we spend time practicing noticing. We spend a lot of time noticing the detail of our posture. Paying attention to the breath. And I think we all know what happens when we start criticizing the posture rather than noticing it. We go on a little trip, commenting on what kind of meditator we are or how we're not doing it as well as the next person or maybe how we're doing it better than the wiggly person next to us. Variations on the theme. So the practice of noticing runs like a thread through many of the practices that are classical antidotes to the afflictive emotions. And the emphasis in the practice of noticing is on being specific and descriptive,

[17:57]

not general and judgmental. Out of some description, some noticing of the situation that we're in, we can do a kind of inquiry. I like to think of the process as being a kind of archaeologist going on a dig. Because, of course, archaeologists are interested in everything that shows up. They don't just say, well, I'll take the blue pot or broken pot, but I'm going to leave the brown and red ones on the ground. A good archaeologist picks up everything. Wendy was saying the other day when we were talking about the situation in the Mideast, where are our archaeologists to tell us about where we are,

[18:59]

to tell us about the cultures of the people that we are so engaged with, so we know how we are likely to be read when we act one way or another. I think in so many ways this whole situation in the Mideast is a perfect example of what we all know firsthand in our immediate lives. We want something we can't have, and we don't want something that we have. We get impatient because things take longer than we think they should. We get stuck because we take a position about what's right and what's wrong, and we stop listening. We don't pay attention or take the time to find out exactly in detail

[20:03]

what is the truth of the situation. Not the truth of what we want or what we imagine, but to actually do the work that's involved in finding out exactly what's going on here. The great practice of inquiry. Meditation practice is sometimes described as falling into two types, inquiry and placement. The inquiry part is pretty important, looking into things, looking into the matter at hand. So if I'm angry about the ongoing disagreement and the process of being blamed by my next-door neighbor because I'm parking my car or my guests are parking their cars where they're not supposed to,

[21:05]

I get pretty upset about being blamed or being on the receiving end of my neighbor's anger. And yet when we sit down face-to-face and we talk to each other and I ask my neighbor what's going on with him or her and I find out what is true for them, slowly, as I can listen, I can begin to find out some way of coming to some harmonious resolution. But I can't do it staying in my yard by myself. I have to cultivate my ability to put myself in my neighbor's shoes and sometimes ask my neighbor to put themselves in my shoes. But already I'm in trouble if I expect that it won't work out

[22:13]

if they don't do it right also. Maybe I have to give up having control over that parking space. And maybe it's there to be used sometimes and maybe it isn't. Is it worth a war with my neighbor? In my inquiry about the irritation and upset and anger that comes up with my neighbor over the parking, can I bear asking myself, now wait a minute, what's going on? Not what's going on with my neighbor, but what's going on here with me? What's the big deal? Why does it matter? Is there a place here where there's some clinging, where I'm trying to control something that I can't control? Often the process of inquiry is quite difficult, quite painful,

[23:17]

because it rests so thoroughly on my commitment to telling myself the truth. And sometimes I'm not thrilled with the truth. Sometimes what I need to look into is so painful or frightening that I turn away for a while. I have some resistance. I go to sleep. I go to the refrigerator. I turn on the TV. I don't want to look into something. Then can I pay attention? Can I bring this practice of inquiry to noticing that? So a big practice as an antidote to afflictive emotions is the cultivation of patience. Being willing to stay present in the process of looking into the afflictive emotion that's arising. Or not look into it, if that's the case,

[24:18]

for as long as I dwell in that place of resistance or turning away. In the cultivation of the six perfections, before patience comes the cultivation of generosity. And I think that's completely right. I cannot do this practice of patience if I'm not kindly with myself and with others. I'm not so likely to be patient with others or with my enemy if I don't have some cultivation of generosity with myself and with my enemy. We don't usually think of enemies in those terms, do we? And yet Shantideva, in his great teaching on how to be a bodhisattva, says, take your enemy as your teacher

[25:21]

because who else will give you such an extraordinary opportunity to cultivate all of these wonderful qualities? You won't begin to learn patience from your friend in the way that you will learn patience from your enemy. Some years ago, at a teaching that I attended by His Holiness the Dalai Lama on this text of Shantideva's, he gave the teaching really for the Tibetans who were present who had gone to India from Tibet specifically for the teachings and were planning on going back to Tibet to live under what was for them a very cruel regime under the Chinese. And His Holiness said, go back to Tibet, go back to Lhasa or wherever you are from and treat the Chinese who are in power as your teacher.

[26:21]

Practice patience, practice generosity with these very people with whom you have such difficulty. What was so powerful for me in listening to that teaching was that during the breaks and at night I would sit with different people. I remember particularly sitting with women, with children who showed me scars on their fingertips where during the famines that they had gone through the first in the history of Tibet where there was virtually no food where they would cut their fingers in order to have some blood to put into hot water to provide some small nourishment for their children. People who had been tortured, who had been imprisoned

[27:24]

people who had been beaten who were in those teachings and who were nodding their heads and saying, yes, we will go back to Tibet and we will do our best to practice in this way. So this is our great opportunity now. Can we think about our so-called enemy as our teacher? Can we think about this situation which is so frightening? The specific fear that we have about people that we know are children in some cases being hurt or being killed. Our fear of terrorism which I think is real for us now in a way that has not been true before. Our fear that this war may come to us here.

[28:30]

Can we take whatever comes up for each of us tonight and in the next days and weeks and months and who knows how long as our opportunity to cultivate these qualities that allow us to have some balance and some wholeness some wholesomeness in our lives so that we do not act blindly but act out of some wider mind some deeper capacity. Very difficult to do and yet there is some great opportunity in it. It's important for us to pay attention to the kind of language we use. Think for a moment about the difference between saying

[29:35]

I am angry and I feel anger arising. Just the difference between I am angry and I feel angry. In the first case I am identifying I am one with the anger. Another linguistic formulation which I think is troublesome you make me angry. Not so accurate. If we really inquire into what's going on what we notice is something happens and we have a response. Our whole practice is about training our minds so that we have a wider range of possible responses so that we can respond rather than react.

[30:37]

And the beginning of that is for us to notice that what we can do something about has to do with the nature of the mind. And that when we identify too closely with our feelings and with our thoughts we feel attacked. We go blind. We are afflicted. And we miss many possibilities. I have been struck over the last few years as I've focused more and more on paying attention to the language that I use how much changing my language affects the kinds of thoughts I have and how changing my language has brought about the possibility of a change in my state of mind. So that if I speak to myself more accurately

[31:43]

if I say my neighbor calls me up and says your car is parked in my driveway and I go out and look and it isn't my car then I have many more possibilities of responding. If I understand that my neighbor calls me up and expresses something and then some feeling arises but it also passes then it rises and it passes. It's like dropping a ping-pong ball. The first few bounces are pretty high and then it slowly bounces lower and lower until it's still. That response of anger is very much like a ping-pong ball if I just pay attention a little bit more closely. For me, one of the most

[32:45]

central areas of practice with the afflictive emotions has to do with doing impermanence meditations. Noticing that in fact it is accurate that the nature of things is that they are impermanent. The nature of feelings, the nature of thoughts. Even the nature of who is my friend and who is my enemy. Some while ago there was a very interesting editorial in the New York Times by Germaine Greer about who are our good friends, the Kuwaitis. And she talks about the Kuwaitis' dreadful history of human rights abuse and slavery. Our good friends. But they're not our enemies now, they're our friends. And right now Saddam Hussein is our enemy.

[33:50]

And if we're not careful, if we don't pay attention we can have all of the Iraqis, all of the Iraqi people be our enemies. Think of all the enemies we've had during the Second World War, the Germans and the Japanese. I thought about that a lot this fall when I was in Japan. And I thought, isn't it amazing these people are so kind to me when I saw so much evidence of the war. Everything changes. The impermanence meditation that's helped me a great deal which some of you know, but which I would like to offer again is the one that goes, birth will end in death, youth will end in old age,

[34:53]

meetings will end in separation, wealth will end in loss, all things in cyclic existence are transient, are impermanent. So when I think about my friend's son who is in Israel, who recently got his gas mask, I think about meetings will end in separation. Not that I want anything to happen to him, but it is in the nature of things that we will all die and we do not know when or how. So if I remember that, then I take great care and attention with whoever or whatever is directly in front of me. And I'm not surprised when death comes,

[35:57]

when something comes to an end. The Dalai Lama has said that it is possible to cultivate a calm mind even when one is facing the dropping of a nuclear bomb. It's almost impossible for us to imagine if we just think about it briefly. But what are we really afraid of? Aren't we afraid of dying, of suffering? And aren't we afraid of that in a way that must be true for everyone? So these impermanence meditations, these meditations that help us see the impermanent nature of every aspect of our life and the world we live in, can help us come to a place where we understand our connections and not our separations.

[36:58]

Training the mind is what it is sometimes called. There are verses in some of the early texts that describe the wild elephant of the mind. When I've read descriptions of wild elephants going on stampede, especially during rutting season, apparently everybody just gets out of their way. There's no stopping them. So in our tradition, we are aiming at something like if the elephant of our mind is tightly tied to the post of awareness with the rope of mindfulness, then we can easily tame it. Great. I've been thinking this evening earlier about Thich Nhat Hanh's poem

[38:10]

about please call me by my true names. I think it's extremely important for us to understand right now that we are both saviors and enemies. That wonderful verse in his poem that goes, I'm a 12-year-old girl. See if I can get it absolutely right. I always misquote it wrong. I'm the 12-year-old girl refugee on a small boat who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I'm the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. We think, oh, the afflictive emotions belong to the pirates of the world, and that's not me. But when the causes and conditions are right, it is me.

[39:10]

And who is to say that I don't have all the same capacities for harmful actions and bad behavior? What keeps me from taking the action that my enemy has? What keeps me from acting from those blind emotional states? Paying attention and understanding when my capacity to do harm arises, acknowledging it so that I can then take the precautions that will keep me from acting from a harmful state of mind. So if I'm angry, can I be silent for a while until I calm down? If I'm fearful, can I stay with my fearfulness but not feed it? Can I look into it in a kindly way so that I don't act from fear?

[40:19]

Most of us don't act very well when we're frightened. I'd like to close with a dedication of our practice. I suppose I want to close with this dedication as much because I think this is the time for us to keep in mind our connection with the people who are living in the Middle East, not just our friends and fellow citizens, but the people who live in Kuwait and Iraq and Jordan and Israel and Saudi Arabia and Panama and Tibet and China and Lithuania.

[41:22]

By the power and the truth of this practice, may all beings have happiness and the cause of happiness. May all be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. May all never be separated from the sacred happiness devoid of suffering. And may all live in equanimity without too much attachment or too much aversion. And live believing in the equality of all that lives. May our intention equally...

[42:19]

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