Those words. Good morning. My name is Yvonne Rand and I live and practice at a small practice place a mile down the road. I'm very happy to be here this morning. What I'd like to talk about this morning is a practice that has to do with the cultivation of compassion. And we have here in this room in the Zen Do this wonderful Jizo Bodhisattva and Tara. Both different expressions of compassion.

[01:01]

And in Cloud Hall two beautiful paintings, one of White Tara and one of the Buddha in his aspect as healer. The Bodhisattva of compassion in the Buddhist tradition has the name Avalokiteshvara Sanskrit for the regarder of the cries of the world. And the unpacking of that regarding is sometimes articulated as listening without reaction and without judgment. So what I'd like to focus on this morning has to do with the practice of listening. And this practice of course must be engaged when we are meditating

[02:08]

and cultivating our capacity to listen to ourselves, to whatever arises. But with this quality of without reaction and without judgment. And for many people that's a challenge. Especially the without judgment part which I think interestingly is flagged as distinct but really is it's the reactive mental pattern of judging. But we also have the opportunity of cultivating our capacity for listening when we're off our meditation seat as well. My experience is that I need to cultivate this capacity when I have a minimum of distractions

[03:11]

and then begin to bring the practice into the circumstances where there are more and more distractions that assist forgetting what I'm doing. So someone this morning, knowing that this was what I wanted to talk about this morning, showed me a cartoon from The New Yorker where someone is interviewing someone else and the person being interviewed is sitting in a chair with his briefcase sitting next to him and the person interviewing him is vacuuming the rug. And he says, I'm all briefcase ears. How often in our listening are we waiting for our chance to say what we want to say?

[04:15]

And of course when that process of waiting for my chance to say what I want to say significantly hinders my ability to listen in this deep and open way. In the cultivation of what are called the perfections or the paramitas, the first one, the one that is the ground for all the other cultivations is generosity. And deep, open, spacious listening is a manifestation of generosity. I've had the experience of sitting and listening to someone tell me about their suffering where I didn't really know what to say, where I didn't have any advice,

[05:21]

where no doing arose immediately in my mind, where really all I could do was to be as present as possible listening in some open way. I'm thinking of one situation in particular where the person who was speaking to me about his suffering was speaking about a tangle of suffering that was just hearing about it rather daunting. And this was in the context of a retreat and the next day this person came in and said, I can't tell you how much better I feel. How much our meeting yesterday was helpful to me. But of course I wasn't doing anything except to be as present as I could be and to listen without judging and without reacting.

[06:32]

What keeps us from cultivating or uncovering our capacity to listen in the way that I'm suggesting? Sometimes I think what hinders our listening is fear arising about how will I be helpful? How can what I have to say if I can figure out what to say help my friend? And so we keep ourselves from the experience of discovering the remarkable effectiveness, the remarkable act of generosity that listening can be. One of my favorite we're not supposed to have favorites, I suppose, but one of my favorite practices that's in this

[07:44]

basket of practices about listening is one that I call the 98% rule. And the working hypothesis with the 98% rule is that 98% of what any of us says is a statement about ourselves. For anyone with the habit of defensiveness especially in the face of a reign of you statements you always and you never and you [...] what do you mean? To listen from this perspective that whatever the person is saying even if what they're saying is in the language of what I'm doing or not doing when I listen from the perspective that what this person is showing me whether they are conscious of it or not

[08:45]

is what is difficult for them what they have a hard time with what is so in their mindstream. And I know for myself the first time I listened in this way my reaction of defending myself did not arise. As though someone had turned on a light switch. Oh my. I like that. And my experience in working with the cultivation of listening with this 98% rule sieve, if you will has opened up my capacity to hear and listen and recognize the suffering in the world which has the effect of the heart opening.

[09:51]

And then of course the challenge is am I ready? Can I bear that open-heartedness with the suffering of the world? So my suggestion is to do this practice in very small bits. Don't try to start with climbing Mount Everest. But just try it yourselves when you go outside for tea and are visiting. See what your experience is if you listen to the person you're visiting with from this perspective. And of course the other possibility is that we then begin to listen to a person and to ourselves. Oh. This seems to be what is on my mind. This is the fourth time I've told somebody this story today.

[11:00]

I hadn't realized that this was some difficulty for me. So we can also use this practice of what I'm calling the 98% rule as an opportunity to cultivate our capacity to listen not only to others but to ourselves as well. There's also the other form, if you will, of listening that's a little more active that comes out of the whole set of skills in building our ability to communicate so well articulated in some of the traditions of Western psychology. This particular way of listening called reflective listening. Not always appropriate but sometimes very helpful

[12:07]

to say back to the person I'm sitting with, this is what I'm hearing. Am I hearing accurately? Very respectful to allow the speaker to help me in my listening so that the message sent is the message received. How often what arises as a hindrance to listening is immediately arguing with what the person is saying even before I've heard them finish their speaking.

[13:08]

And what happens when I can say, oh, I'd like to think about that or I'd like to sit with what you're telling me about for a while. My experience is that the more I can cultivate a sense of spaciousness that includes me and the person I'm listening to the more I can include what arises in my own mind stream without necessarily acting on what arises. I don't know if any of you know the writing of Brenda Ulan. But she has a book which is a little bit boring except for the chapter on listening

[14:15]

which I found worth the whole book. And she tells a story about discovering that if she listened when she'd go to a party if she just listened to people, people started gravitating toward her. She got to be very popular and invited to lots of parties and dinners and etc. Because people had such a good time being listened to. She cut her teeth, so to speak, on a relative of hers, I believe an uncle, who talked all the time. And she decided that she was going to find out if there was a way she could get him to listen to her. Somewhat tricky motivation but I think the outcome was great.

[15:18]

She decided she would just listen to him for as long as he wanted to be listened to. And so they had a kind of marathon that went on for three days plus. I guess they took time out to sleep and eat but she doesn't mention that in her description. Just this marathon of listening. But after three plus days he said, and how are you? And he was ready to listen to her. That's called practice. Training. Training for listening. Now the difficulty with her motivation was that she was waiting until she could be listened to. But what she discovered and what she did was a kind of connection

[16:25]

that she experienced with her uncle that she had never felt before. And her need to be listened to began to fade. I think paying attention to our motivation in whatever practice we pick up is very useful. And usually most easily noticed after the fact. What was my motivation in the way I was or wasn't in that conversation, for example? But the more I pay attention to my motivation, the more I can then begin to set my intention for what I'm going for, what I'm training for. So if I realize in a particular conversation that my motivation was waiting to get my message

[17:28]

into the conversation, it is in the willingness to notice that I'm not listening to it. Notice that motivation open-heartedly without habitual judgment. That I can then begin to cultivate the possible intention of listening without an agenda, without a lot of me in the listening. I've been thinking lately about the precepts in the Zen tradition that have to do with speech. And I'm thinking of including one of the precepts that comes out of the early sutras where the Buddha recommends no idle speech.

[18:30]

And the list of what constitutes idle speech is somewhat daunting. No well gossip. Not talking about kings or governments. The list goes on. And when I go over this list with people I'm practicing with, often what I hear is, gosh, there's not much left to talk about. Maybe the weather. But of course, this pointing out about no idle speech also has the consequence of less speaking and more listening. So we might consider as we pay attention to our capacity for listening,

[19:33]

what is the relationship between this capacity and our developing capacity to show up, to be present. In whatever situation we find ourselves with whatever is happening. I'm talking about listening in a way that has a quality of spaciousness about it. A quality of ease. A quality of resting in listening. And of course, we observe both with hearing but also with seeing. We observe much more fully. Closer to everything and everyone in the room or situation in which we're sitting with someone.

[20:37]

And the whole notion of regarding that quality of the Bodhisattva of compassion begins to be filled in experientially. We begin to have eyes and ears, even in the back of the head. There's a form of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara that we find in many expressions in Buddhism where the Bodhisattva has a thousand arms and hands and in each hand is an eye. There's a wonderful koan in the Zen tradition where the question, the operating question, if you will, in the koan is,

[21:40]

and what does the Bodhisattva do with so many hands and eyes? One time during a session I asked everyone to sit with that question on every inhalation and every exhalation. It's a great way to sit with a question without thinking about it. And in the course of our seven-day retreat, I would meet with people every day very briefly and people would tell me what was arising for them as they sat with this question. And at the end of the retreat, I gave back to the whole group everything I had heard. It was such a full expression of compassion, in particular, not in general.

[22:47]

And the fullness of that articulation about what we mean when we talk about the cultivation of compassion, inseparable from wisdom, has to, in my experience, arise, in particular, in our relationship with ourselves and subsequently in our relationship with all beings. All beings and things. Someone recently was sending me an email, what she and I call weather reports, about her meditation. She lives in a house on a very busy street in the East Bay, and even early in the morning there's a lot of traffic noise. On her street. And what she reported was a lot of aversion arising.

[23:53]

All that noise. I can't meditate. All that noise is disturbing my meditation. Some version of, don't they know I'm meditating? I suggested to her that she let her attention rest on the breath and on the silence within which that noise arises. And a few days later, I got another weather report. Wow. This is a practice that I enjoy very much because where our meditation hall is located, Highway 1 does a kind of hairpin around us. So at 11 minutes to 8 every Sunday morning, about 100 motorcycles go by.

[24:55]

And especially when we're in the meditation hall in retreat, those motorcycles raise a lot of reaction. How interesting that we are at ease listening to the birds or the sound of the bell, the wind and the trees, but motorcycles don't like that. Years ago when I first began meditating, when the Zen Center was still on Bush Street, which was then and still is a very busy street, even early in the morning, I learned to meditate in the midst of the noises of the city.

[26:00]

And then later when the center moved to Page Street, the Zendo, as those of you who know that meditation place, backs on Lily Alley. And at the time, there were a lot of non-meditators living on Lily Alley and frequently repairing their cars just outside the back windows. So the late afternoon meditation included a lot of bang, bang, bang, shit. Bang, bang, bang, damn it. A great opportunity to study the mind and our reactive patterns, to notice the whole display of aversion arising. And if we do that long enough, we then can begin to have some relationship with that arising of our

[27:07]

reactive mental and emotional patterns that is observing, but not getting caught in story, not getting caught in criticizing and judging and, don't they know we're meditating in here? Don't they know that 50 of us are in here listening to everything they do and say, nope. So that kind of listening where I notice, return to some aspect of physical body sensation, breath in, breath out, allows me to begin to have a different relationship to those reactive mental patterns called thinking about thinking and emotional patterns. Not that I get rid of all that reactivity, but that I change my relationship to reactivity

[28:13]

so that in a way all that stuff begins to fade a bit and cease to be the driver. The kind of listening that I'm suggesting as a practice path is in service of this cultivation of changing our relationship with what arises in the mind, rather than getting rid of what arises in the mind. Because of course, if what we're focused on is getting rid of what arises in the mind, we're practicing aversion. If we get caught in judging what arises in the mind, then we get caught in judging the judging. And we have a kind of reactive chain that we begin to create anew each time.

[29:22]

Familiar, but creating each time. I don't think that it's possible for us to listen in the way that I'm suggesting to others, unless we're also cultivating the capacity to listen to ourselves. The capacity has to be both and. So notice what interferes with this quality of listening. Wanting to get my pearl into the conversation. Judging, blocking, arguing, I'm sure with this many of us, we could come up with quite a list.

[30:29]

How often does our listening become compromised by fear about what we are expected to do or say from the person we're listening to? And then what arises is, am I willing to say, I don't know, or just, oh, or I'd like to think about this. How much of clinging to the false sense of self arises in the way we listen? A lot of me, [...] me as the center of the universe arising in the way we listen. When we can finally recognize that arising of me, [...]

[31:46]

we may be appalled, we may be stunned, and we may realize, oh, this is worth noticing. Begin, please, with listening to yourselves. And out of that cultivation, see what happens when you sit with someone and listen in a more open way, letting your agenda both rise and fade away. And see what happens. In the end, the whole path of practice, of cultivation of the mind,

[32:54]

of studying and training the mind in the Buddhist tradition, rests on what is our actual experience when we do a practice. Please don't take what I'm suggesting on my say-so. So find out for yourselves what your experience is. Listen with the qualities of interest and curiosity and see what happens. So I think that's enough for now. So let's have a cup of tea and see what listening is like out there in the lovely day. Thank you very much. May our intention...

[33:55]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ