Welcome. Each line of that... This morning we did ariyoki practice as we do most Saturdays and this time during ariyoki practice I felt, what did I feel, compelled, called. I felt called to, because it seemed like such a sweet little intimate group and I knew them so I thought, that'd be okay, they know me too, to as we were doing ariyoki to kind of go over some of the form of it. And so I would like, I feel called and evidently compelled to do the same with you about that chant that we just did. It keeps getting slower and slower and slower and it's okay, but the form of how to do that chant is that each line is in one breath and I'm at my limit, I think it's the third line

[01:04]

that we do, it's now at my limit, so if you don't mind, can we chant it again but at a pace that moves right along so that you can do each line with just one breath and not for the professional breathers, you know, just for the breath of a common breather. Okay? How does it start? Mujo. Okay. Ready? Go. Mujo jinjin minyo no ho wa, hyakusen mangyo ni mo ayoko to katashi, wa ima ken manchi juji suru koto etari,

[02:05]

this one, negawaku wa nyorai no shinjitsu giyo geshi tate matsuran. Thank you. Thank you. That's it, that's really good and that's a really good volume also. I'm a hearer, I think, by nature and I went recently to the symphony with Michael Tilson Thomas and he did, I've been actually blessed this year to go twice, once I heard the Mahler Ninth Symphony which was wonderful and this time I heard the Beethoven Ninth Symphony and there were maybe at least two hundred and... You were there for the Mahler? The Mahler, right? We saw the Mahler together? Jim? I forgot. Not the Mahler?

[03:06]

We were there, I saw him, anyway. There were at least, you know, two hundred and twenty-five people in the chorus at least and at least, you know, a hundred and twenty-five in the orchestra so what you get in that kind of situation is like a wall of sound and you can just release and relax everything and my experience was my eyes just... You know, usually your eyes are out there, right? My eyes receded. I was looking at the orchestra but my eyes were way, way back and my ears were really open and my body, so I felt myself on the seat and my hands on my legs and almost nobody moved at all for an hour and a half just following Beethoven's mind, you know, and everybody being concentrated. It's a wonderful, it's a real gift. Live music is a wonderful thing for those of us who like that kind of thing.

[04:08]

Oops, excuse me. It's not for everybody. You know, it's funny when you love something you think, well, you know, everybody should love it also but if you're in a relationship you know. It's not a good way to begin. Okay. Tonight we're having a party, I think a little bit of a dance thing and some skits and everybody is welcome to come. And also I wanted to thank publicly Michael and Barbara. I thanked them individually but for doing the practice period last time in this session I felt, although I didn't participate, but from the edges looking in I felt like it was a very lovely practice period and a very stable and wonderful session and they did a shows on ceremony at the beginning and at the end and the whole thing I think developed a very nice feeling and thank you very much.

[05:16]

And while I was at it I wanted to thank the Eno. Eno, are you there? Yes. Is she asleep? I'm thanking you Kathleen. Did you? And I mean it for a wonderful continuing to do so much work for us in support of the formal practice. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. And also I wanted to thank the kitchen who, you know, just day in and day out they work so that we can sit and practice. I don't think the kitchen is not here, they're cooking. Thank you very much. All right. I've been evidently doing a series, turns out, on Right Speech

[06:19]

and I was going to stop that series but I was talking with two people the other day with whom I study the precepts and we were talking about the precepts and we were going to pick out one, we were going to pick out, each one of us was going to pick out one that we were going to work on for the next couple of weeks and as I was talking of my own situation I kept feeling in my own self this resistance to one of them which I kept trying to rationalize to myself I didn't really need to work on. And as I was saying it, of course, my words were falling all over themselves and it was clear, I think, to everybody in the room, certainly myself that it was the very one that I should pay attention to and the one turned out to be, not Right Speech, but close which was harboring ill-will, which is very close

[07:21]

because if you harbor ill-will, it's not too far away that you talk about the person who you're sure, you know, is in the wrong in some way, right? So I've been watching it and I thought I'd talk about it a little bit today. Okay, I must say that when you practice, I think, I think it's inevitable if you practice for a while, you've got to develop a lot of compassion for yourself because if you can't, if you don't, then how can you possibly keep looking at who you are and what you do? So I'm going to talk about ill-will today with enjoying myself and my foibles. So the first thing I want to note is that when we talk about harboring ill-will

[08:31]

what is written is harboring ill-will. What is not written is just ill-will. It's harboring ill-will. So there are two things about that that I want to note in the first case. The first thing is that we're not in control, whoever wrote this understands this, that we're not in control of the kind of feelings that we're having. And if you sit down and look for even a few moments, it's pretty clear. So if ill-will comes up, no problem. It's just that it's a very uncomfortable feeling because it's a feeling of either righteousness if you're not ready to give it up yet, which there's always that distinct possibility, and it would be good if you know that that's the case. It's better to know that you're resisting giving it up than to deny that it's there in the first place. Because as I've said before, and I think Reb mentioned many practice periods ago, that denial is actually, and I think he actually said,

[09:34]

the definition of evil was denial. Because if you deny what you're actually feeling, then you can just go right out and either consciously be unkind to somebody, or more likely it can leak out in passive-aggressive behavior, which is common behavior. So we're not in control of what we feel. The idea is to be aware of what we feel, and of course, in order to do that you have to be present. So the point is to not harbor ill-will. So how do you do that? You know, if ill-will keeps coming up, what does it mean to not harbor ill-will? It means to not hold on to it, to not grasp it. And in fact, the bottom line, I think, of most of our study is not grasping. That's key. It is said all over the place in the teachings to cut there.

[10:39]

To cut at ignorance is very difficult. Ignorance is extremely subtle, so it's difficult to cut at ignorance. But it's very possible to cut at grasping. So the point is to not grasp onto, to not hold onto ill-will, to allow the feeling to come up, blah, [...] blah. You know what to do with it? No? Oh, the feeling comes up. The feeling comes up. First of all, you're present. Then you acknowledge that such and such a feeling actually happened. Then you feel the feeling. It's a sensation. Feelings are emotions. We call them emotions. But they're feelings, they're sensations in the body. You feel what it feels like to have, to be ill-will, which for me feels nauseating and contracting, separating. It feels slightly angry.

[11:42]

See, now that's an idea. That's not what you feel. That's an idea. Slightly angry is an idea. No, it feels like tightening in my muscles, that kind of thing. For me, that's harboring ill-will. You feel it. Then you keep breathing into the body and let those feelings go. If you keep thinking about why it's appropriate for you to have this feeling of ill-will for someone, that's called harboring ill-will. Okay, clear? Okay. Actually, anger and ill-will are pretty superficial feelings. If you go underneath them just a little bit, it's usually what's there is hurt. Somebody probably has hurt you. Or a very likely case is that you've taken something about yourself that you don't like and you've projected it out onto somebody and you then decide that it's okay to not like them because it's easier to not like them than to acknowledge something about yourself that you're uncomfortable with.

[12:47]

And another twist on that which is very close is it's just something that you don't want to feel yourself about yourself so that you see it in another person and so you can decide instead of being that yourself. And how is that different from the one I just said? It is a little bit different, but I can't see now what it was. One is unconscious, you just project it out. Well, the other one is kind of unconscious also. One is a feeling that you don't want to feel out on the other person and then the other one was a way of being. I guess maybe that's the difference. When you see somebody being in a certain way that you don't particularly want yourself to be, you don't like, you have difficulty with that with another person. It's easier to work on this kind of thing

[13:58]

if the other person you happen to be feeling this ill will about is willing to work on it with you. It's way easier and it's also easy if you know that it's your event. This is already many steps forward. If you know it's your event and you can say to the other person, you know, I am really sorry, but for me you happen to be the one and then they don't have to take it personally but that they can help you kind of be there while you breathe, you know, and feel your feelings and so on and so forth. Sometimes even the person lets you kind of talk about it, maybe, if you're careful and you keep it on your side. It's a possibility. But if the other person is not there for it, it's more difficult. It's way more difficult because you left yourself to process you're not holding on to ill will and being really attuned to when it comes up for you and making sure that you're not holding on to it

[14:59]

and creating the other person as your projected event because it's really unkind to another person when we do that. So then maybe you're at a point of forgiving. Well, how do you do that? My experience is you can't even come close to forgiving unless you really deeply in every single facet feel completely how hurt you are about whatever it was. You've got to do that before you forgive, otherwise forgiveness just slides right off. So first you have to, I guess, be patient. You have to first feel your pain. Then you can forgive. And sometimes for deep things you have to forgive again and again, which is nice. Forgiveness is a very nice feeling.

[16:02]

And in the same way, if you're not ready to forgive, you should know that. You should know that about yourself. So when that's the case, don't harbor the ill will. Just know you're not ready yet to forgive. So maybe avoid the person for a while, till you're ready. Then, when you're able to forgive, you can take a look at the dependent co-arising of the whole event. And when you can do that, you're really beginning to turn, you're transforming your consciousness. Because the truth of the matter is, is you and the other person and the relationship are all arising according to conditions of that person's family, of your family, maybe it's the same family. It's nobody's fault, really, ultimately. And with that, there's a wide and easy forgiveness for yourself and for the other person. So who are the people often who are easy targets

[17:22]

for this kind of harboring or this kind of projecting? Well, I want to talk about it. And the reason I want to talk about it is because last week, while you guys were sitting, I was, a bit anyway, it overlapped with a workshop that I went to with Jeffrey next door. And it was about helping people in many ways, in their own personal way, in interpersonal way, in institutional way, in cultural way, to address, what can I call it? Oh, what they called it was oppression. And to create, and the way they defined oppression was very interesting to me, and I'll tell you. But to create a more culturally diverse Zen center. So let me tell you how they defined oppression first.

[18:23]

They defined oppression by something like it was doing something, can we just say mean? To someone you've chosen who has no choice about being that particular whatever it is. They were more specific about it, but I make kind of a large... In other words, what we do is, in this case, we're choosing someone who has, as a something, who has no choice of being that thing. And that thing is defined as no good, or whatever, dumb, or sinful, or whatever it is. I thought that was a really interesting definition. And, of course, they called them target,

[19:24]

target people, target groups. The target people in this culture, anyway, that they picked were, and we all are, probably something, age, older people, race, sexual orientation, women, class. I think those were the main ones. And the workshop was really interesting to me because what happened for me was they gave us all kinds of intellectual ways of addressing this difficulty. And the difficulty, in my opinion, is profound in our culture, profound.

[20:28]

And if we can't figure it out, I don't know, we have a real good chance in the United States because we're a mush, right? So we have a good chance to address this and to continue to address it again and again and again and not forget that we need to address it over and over and over again. Because it's so hurtful to each other. And, well, so what happened for me was intellectually I was kind of resistant to the intellectual, you know, this vocabulary and that vocabulary and so on and so forth. But as soon as it came to people telling their stories, how could you be resistant? So I'm going to tell you two stories that I've changed because I want to respect people's privacy.

[21:30]

But I think they're not unusual stories. So I'm going to tell you. Maybe I'll tell you three. One story actually didn't happen this last workshop but I'm going to tell it to you anyway because it's a group that I just forgot to include. And the group was... I forgot the politically correct name. I think it's Differently Abled. I would have said Disabled, but I think that's not correct now. I was once at a... I think I might have told you this too. I was once at a... Oh, no. I have to get to the Dharma part. This is all about Dharma. So I'm going to tell you quickly. The first story was I was at a Tibetan meeting,

[22:32]

big meeting in a very large... in a very large like coliseum. Many, many, many people there. And lots of women. And when it came time to go to the bathroom, of course, women go to the bathroom way more than men. And they were... That's an assumption on my part. Anyway, there were only two bathrooms available for like hundreds of women. And there was... So during the intermission, everybody got up and went to the bathroom and the line was huge. I happened to be on line right in front of somebody in a wheelchair. Not right behind. The person in a wheelchair was in front of me. And I knew how much I had to go to the bathroom. So I was sort of assuming this person being in line had to go to the bathroom at kind of, you know, a certain amount. And the line was really long. And as the line was moving toward the stalls, I was having to go to the bathroom more. So I thought maybe this person was too.

[23:33]

And this is, you know, projecting like this is not a good thing to do in life usually. But anyway. So anyway, it was a long time and we finally got up to the two stalls. And one of them... They were small. Both of them were small. And she was in front of me, so I had to watch this. And what I saw was she wheeled the wheelchair up to one of the booths and she opened the door and she couldn't shut the door because the wheelchair couldn't fit into the booth. And I was humiliated. I just didn't know what to do. So I stood there while she tried to go to the bathroom. And it was an experience of seeing something from another person's point of view. And when we do that, when we can see something from another person's point of view, almost always we can't harbor whatever thoughts we had that separated us

[24:37]

because we're all human. We all have these same wantings and needs. That's one story. Another story was a young five-year-old person who came to this country speaking a different language. And her mother took her to school. Kindergarten, I guess it was. Took her to school and she was kind of scared. It's funny, it's the same thing. It's about going to the bathroom. Well, the end of the story is, to cut to the bottom of the story is, is that she didn't know how to ask to go to the bathroom. So she went to the bathroom in the middle of the class and the kids saw her, and the teacher was wonderful and kind, but the kids started talking something

[25:39]

and she didn't know what it was, and this experience of being different in that way has stayed with her for years, the humiliation of not being able to simply ask to go to the bathroom. Well, I'm going to... go to the end of my talk. But before I go to the end of the talk, I just want to say one more thing. And there was another story told that I kind of can't get out of my mind, and it was about a racial event, and I'm not going to tell you the whole story, but I will tell you just a poignant kind of part of it. Let's see, how can I do this? You know, I don't even think I want to tell you the story

[26:46]

because the word that was used was a really, at the end of the story, was a word that is a word that is a negative word toward a racial group, and there are lots of them. And when this woman was telling her story, her own story as a child on her own side and said this word, even that, just the story about it was enough to cause tremendous pain to a person of that racial group who was just listening to the story being told. So I'm not even going to tell you the story. But what I do want to say that gets down to what the Dharma part of it is, is that, of course, in the Dharma, in the Buddha Dharma, in differences is the way that we find the truth of our connectedness. We have to have differences,

[27:47]

and differences are valued equal, are valued equal. That is the awakened mind, a mind that sees differences and sees, sees differences and sees past differences to the connectedness of everything. So it's not just at an interpersonal or personal or institutional or cultural level that it is our responsibility to work on this. It's at the level of our own awakening that we work on this, for ourselves and for all other people. Dogen has a fascicle in the Shobo-Genzo called Juki. It's called, it's translated as affirmation. And what it means is, is that all life

[28:52]

is affirming us all the time. All life, we are being confirmed always, all the time, as who we are right now, just this. Perfect as it is, first and foremost. Perfect, just the way we are. One total dynamic working. That is what we are. We're not part of that. That total dynamic working, no. We are that. If any one of us is removed, it's different. We're not part of it. We are all this one life.

[29:54]

And this is the way Dogen talks about it. This is from One Bright Jewel. Sometimes it's translated One Bright Pearl. Being thus is the one bright jewel which is the whole world in the ten directions. This being so, then, though it seems to go changing faces, turning or not turning, yet it is a bright jewel. It is precisely knowing that the jewel has all along been thus,

[30:58]

that is itself the bright jewel. The bright jewel has sound and form. In being already at thusness, as far as worrying that oneself is not the bright jewel is concerned, one should not suspect that that is not the jewel. Worrying and doubting, grasping and rejection, action and inaction, all are all but temporary views of small measure. Isn't it lovely? Such lustres and lights of the bright jewel are unlimited. Each flicker, each beam of each lustre, each light, each light is a quality of the whole world in all ten directions.

[32:06]

Each one of us, each flicker, each beam, each lustre, each light is a quality of the whole world in all ten directions. And let that little light shine.

[32:36]

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