Happy Thanksgiving weekend to all of you. I hope you had a peaceful and joyful feast day and what else do I wish you? that your family time and friend time or alone time was nourishing, truly nourishing. So... The... A group of people who are in the practice period at Green-Gilch Farm have been, and others who have come to the lectures and classes, have been studying recently anger or hatred and how to work with anger and hatred.

[01:33]

So I want to continue with that discussion further. this morning. So the text that we're studying is the Bodhicaryavitara by Shantideva, an 8th century Indian teacher, Indian monk, Mahayana monk. In this work, in Chapter 6, he very carefully brings the reader, the listener, closer and closer to understanding how it is that hatred and anger are not skillful, not wholesome, are harmful for oneself and others.

[02:40]

create the conditions for suffering for oneself and others, and then how to work with it, because it's easier said than done. Even if we understand this intellectually, that this is not the way I want to be feeling or thinking or acting, still almost un... unbidden comes great strong feelings of anger and resentment and hatred and ill will and its various permutations and manifestations more subtle, more gross. So recently I was talking with somebody who mentioned that this thought arose in their mind that they really, they hated somebody, and it was like a surprise that that word hate, they probably think of themselves as someone who's stepped aside from hate long ago, perhaps.

[03:59]

But this thought came up, I hate this person. And then they thought, I don't really wish them ill will, I really don't want them to be harmed, but I sort of wish they would die. And I thought, hmm. It was interesting how calmly they mentioned that. Is that ill will? I don't know. But they had no ill will, but they just would be much happier if the person was not existing anymore. So in this subtle way, perhaps something we don't even call ill will, or... not wanting the best for someone, or maybe one thinks that would be the best, really. But I think it, the ways in which this particular human energy works in us, we can fool ourselves, you know, can call it something else, blame somebody else.

[05:07]

One of the... ways in which I think anger takes another form is in the form of resentment. Resentment, I looked it up today, and the synonym is anger. It's a little more of a slow boil and kind of contained resentment, but when our actions flow from resentment, very strong, can be very strong negative effects. And the definition is indignation or ill will felt as a result of a real or imagined offense. Indignation or ill will felt as a result of real or imagined offense.

[06:12]

So I think we can have these very strong feelings, whether it's true or not, but we imagine it to be true. And resentment comes when we're not paying attention carefully to what our own emotional landscape is like. So, for example, resentment, by the way, comes from the Latin synth, to feel with an intensive to feel strongly and the root of it means to go mentally so it's a mental and emotional feeling resentment and hard to locate I think sometimes and very sticky and very long lasting we can carry this for decades you know this book that I've been reading for the last couple of years, Buddhist Practice on Western Ground, by Harvey Aronson, has a chapter in Working with Anger, and he brings up something interesting which I wasn't aware of, but somebody also recently brought this to my attention, which is in AA, in Alcoholics Anonymous and 12-step work, Resentment...

[07:40]

is one of the main issues that seems to be underlying these problems with addiction. So, fear and resentment underlying anger. And if we begin to delve into what this fear and resentment is about, we may be surprised. We often think it's resentment at these actions that have been, you know, these offenses that have been done to us, but real or imagined, you know, offenses. So if we look deeply at where the source of this anger might be coming from, Something happens, for example, here comes the rain.

[08:51]

Someone misses an appointment, let's say, with you or forgets. And we get very angry at them. They're so thoughtless and... selfish and scatterbrained and confused. And, you know, we've got a whole thing about the person. What was the matter with that person? Meanwhile, if we look carefully, we might see that people are disappearing. What's happening? Oh, the setup was outside. Okay, so the tea setup is having to be period, people are popping up and running out the back door. I guess the table is all the printed material. Okay. So where was I? Let's see. Oh yes, the confused scatterbrained person is causing all the problems.

[10:03]

But if we look, we might realize that there's fear that what I'm not worthy. I'm not worthy of respect. I'm not lovable. I'm not valued. I'm not good enough for them to take the trouble to actually show up on time or to remember the appointment. I don't matter. I'm valueless. But we don't... That's so painful to actually entertain those thoughts, to sit with that, that we, as fast as ever we possibly can, say that stupid jerk, you know, or whatever. We all are very familiar with this, I'm sure. And this ill will or resentment is, you know, sometimes people say, I'm not an angry person.

[11:09]

I don't get angry. I'm not. I don't have hatred, but I think the subtler aspects or the subtler ways this happens is very helpful to look at because it will color, poison, stain, you might say, our hearts, you know? And the The pain of it, the pain of I am not worthy, I am not valued, I am not respected, this is, we would rather do something else very quickly. And I think that's maybe why AA brings this up, because this is the underlying, maybe underlying for drowning ourselves and not feeling this. So one way to work with this is with mindfulness, with kind of slowing down and studying the self.

[12:28]

What's going on for me? What's happening? How am I feeling? What does it feel like? And often Shantideva brings up that there is a discomfort before the mental... this hatred and... Anger is a mental event in its full-blown expression, but before that there is discomfort, mental and physical discomfort. So to be able to note this, what we're feeling in the body and our mental and emotional What does it feel like, this pain? Can we bear it? Can we forbear, you know? Some additional ways to work with these feelings are offered, different lineages, different practices,

[13:43]

where we take those very painful emotions and we, holding them very gently, we realize that all beings have felt this as well. All beings feel the same way that I'm feeling this pain. And using our own painful feelings as a kind of receptacle almost where we have empathy for all beings who have felt this way as well. So it's a way of using our own pain to connect with others and then out of that might come, may all beings be free from suffering. In a very organic way this flows if we're taking care and feeling what's going on for ourselves. And this holding this emotion gently and firmly, I think, means we don't act it out.

[14:50]

We don't retaliate or discharge this uncomfortable feeling by yelling at somebody else or, you know, we're aware of what's going on with us. We feel that. We stay with it. The practice of using our own pain as a resource to connect with the pain of all beings can be a very startling and powerful, powerful experience. So just to go over those steps again, first of all, mindfulness of what's going on with ourselves and accepting that and seeing what actually is happening for us.

[16:00]

And then may this pain that I'm feeling now, I understand others feel this way too. And may this connect us. May I hold their pain in the same way I'm holding my own. And then this wish that all beings may be free, may be free from suffering. So fear and resentment, fear and resentment. During this Thanksgiving time, we have a very manifest practice of thanking and giving, right? Thanking and giving. And I've also been looking at and talking with the Practice Prayer also about the connection with gratitude, which at the root of gratitude means to sing the praises, to gratitude, this offering of thanks for...

[17:21]

blessings received for favors received. Also, congratulations, gratis comes from this. But the root is to sing the praises. So to sing the praises of our life. What are we grateful for? Even the teeniest things we can be grateful for. And at the same time, along with gratitude, there can be grief. Grief and gratitude come up together. And in our grief, one way of working with grief, not to hurry this, but as we stay with the grief that we have, grief in the loss of loved ones, grief in the loss of our climate and our earth, griefs of all kinds, griefs, grief struck because of the loss of an unlived life, you know, a dream we had, a hope we had that will not come to be, or the grief we have that something is past and we have lost our opportunity.

[18:47]

So we have many, many, many griefs And we don't want to hurry, like, just get over it, you know, let's forgive and forget. This is not... Our culture actually supports that, you know. Get back to work, forget about it, it was for the best, things like this. People might say those things to us. It was all for the best, you know. But that doesn't actually get at... the grief work that needs to be done. So as long as it takes, if we hurry it, it's prolonged. We prolong the grief. If we give it its space and time, it has its own life. If we jump over it, try to get back to normalcy, so-called, it can prolong our grief.

[19:49]

So our grief... in all different ways, right in the middle of that grief, do we feel, can we feel gratitude? And my sense is, from looking at this and kind of sitting with it, is that the grief, the depth of the grief, is the height of the gratitude, or vice versa, the height of the grief is the depth of the gratitude. There's this connection. So another book I've been looking at called Healing Through the Dark Emotions has, in working with grief, talks about three, a kind of exercise, three. She uses the word prayers. And I think we can use the word prayer, although we don't use it so much. But the three, it's almost like...

[20:51]

flowings from the heart are these three things help me thank you and I accept so help me as a very basic we all need to say help me We all need help. And some of us might be unable to ask for help completely shut in a way that we will not ask for help. And where perhaps help means I'm weak. I'm not a manly man or womanly woman in this world if I ask for help some proscription to asking for help but this most basic cry of help me please help me and this is the bodhisattva of infinite compassion is listening is responding to help me

[22:21]

And ready to respond. So this is very basic. Help me. And then the second basic utterance might be thank you. Thank you. Gratitude for the rain. For the sound of the rain. What are we thankful for? And then the third is I accept, I accept, I accept, I accept my life just the way it is. Which doesn't mean I don't respond appropriately and make changes and we're not talking about That we're talking about.

[23:23]

I accept my life. This is my life. This is the way it is. Resentment, I think, is I don't accept my life. I refuse to accept my life and you made it that way or something. So accepting my life is also accepting and surrendering to is not in my control. I cannot control the way... things unfold. This is not, I let go of my control and I accept. I don't let go of mindfully working with each moment with full effort, but my control, I let it go and I accept. Right now, as I'm speaking, my son, who's 20, is in Ecuador preparing to ascend some giant snow-covered mountain, like Cotopaxi Mountain, which is 19,372 feet.

[24:33]

And what he told me is, we've been practicing in case we fall into a crevasse. And we've been trained. You know, just the word crevasse, you know, kind of sense. terror up my spine, you know. And then he said, and the instructors say, we will fall into a crevasse. You know, everyone does. And I'm picturing him falling into a snow-filled ice void, you know. I saw that movie, Into the Void. I don't know if some of you have seen that. Probably shouldn't have seen it before he went off to Ecuador. Anyway. I cannot protect him. I cannot save him from falling into a crevasse or from altitude sickness or from anything. Can I relinquish this control?

[25:39]

I can't protect him. It's, you know, we can't protect our children, we can't protect our parents from falling down and breaking their hips, and we can't protect our parents from their own foolishness, you know. I accept, I accept my life, but I don't give over my responsibility and my responsiveness, but I accept. This is a prayer. You know, this is how it's described. Help me. Thank you. I accept. And I think those three work with resentments, too, you know, when we feel these offenses.

[26:40]

Other ways to work with the resentment is, you know, these if we can... Notice that it's about, I'm feeling I'm not worthy. They're treating me this way because they don't value me. They don't respect me. And then to stay with that and then ask, is that true? This is a good question. How can you prove that? Is that true? Check it out. What is going on? that the person lost your favorite library book or whatever. Does it mean they don't respect me or what's going on? And Shantideva, in looking at anger and hatred, asks us to do three things. One is, first of all, reframe what's going on and allow ourselves to work with these difficulties that are small and subtle, you know, in the range of human difficulties for someone to be late to a meeting or not choose us to be on their team or in the range of what can happen in a human life, it's kind of mild, you know.

[28:06]

So to reframe and understand that these small hurts, and also he talks about physical things, you know, irritations, annoyances, not just mental, emotional, but insect bites and rashes and sickness, to be... This is working with anger and hatred. The counter to that or the practice that meets that is the practice of patience, the perfection of patience. So patience in all these things I'm bringing up is this ability to not be reactive, not retaliate, not act out, stay with this discomfort and allow it to... move through us.

[29:08]

And the more we can get used to, as he says and others have said, when we familiarize ourselves with these hurts and these discomforts, we actually can accept them. It takes time. This is a slow process. This isn't a quick study. So reframing what's going on. This is a small irritation. Can I accept this? Can I familiarize myself with this? The second is, the second way of working with these things in terms of patience is to have a wider understanding of what's going on. And this means really looking at the causes and conditions. What is happening with someone that they treated me in this way. What's going on with them? And it can be very wide, meaning not just what's happening now in this moment, but how were they, you know, what is their life like?

[30:22]

How were they brought up? How were they trained or bred? What kind of a background? Just in the widest way to understand, oh, they are also subject to all sorts of things and they speak to me that way. And to give ourselves the gift of this wider exploration. And also included in that is the understanding that I too, had I been treated this way, I would act that way too. I'm not somehow... immune to the causes and conditions of this life. And gratitude comes in there too. I was, you know, I wasn't brought up in that way, let's say. This reminds me of meeting, in visiting Colombia on a delegation, meeting people in the military who had...

[31:32]

actively perpetrated or were being documented that they had violated human rights in terrible ways. And to meet someone face-to-face, a human being knowing something about them and then studying these wider causes and conditions. their father was a military man. They were brought up in a civil war. And I, too, would have gone that way, probably. So this is also identity. Identity doesn't mean that we condone or don't try to stop something from happening, but understanding meets, and this patience of understanding meets the anger and hatred that might feel very natural in the face of a human being like that.

[32:49]

And the third way of working with patients is developing tolerance. And Shantideva has many different ways of talking about developing tolerance, but in another chapter he talks about remaining like a piece of wood as a method, maybe, as a skillful means. You know, things, people speaking to you a certain way. And before we... get back at them in a reactive way, we remain like a piece of wood, not dead, but still and mindful and accepting what we're hearing and metabolizing it. And it takes our full effort to do this. And another way of working with this tolerance is understanding that the person who is causing us, that we feel is causing us to feel these ways, which is not true, actually.

[34:16]

Nobody can make us feel angry or make us feel resentful. Resentful, really. This is our own response. Nobody can make us feel Try as they may, they can't make us angry. Anger arises in us. So remembering that in the situation where we can feel the possibility of great anger arising in the face of somebody speaking to us a certain way or an action, or even hearing about an action, somebody hurting one of your loved ones, and we feel so justified, using that as an occasion to practice and deepen our resolve and our vows, really, to not harbor ill will.

[35:23]

It doesn't mean we don't have some strong counteraction to something. But it does not need to come from hatred, ill will, resentment, anger. Anger in English we use for a lot of different things. The anger we're talking about here is wanting to cause harm or shunning somebody or getting back at them in some way. There's different kinds of anger. The anger In English, we use anger for strong dislike. You know, I hate traffic or something like that. We also use it for setting boundaries, strong delineating our individual space. And we also use it for feelings about social injustice, anger.

[36:27]

So those... We have to be clear about what it is that we're feeling. And also, are the feelings of social, around anger about social injustice, is that laced with ill will, resentment, hatred, and so forth, or not? And I think many people came to Zen Center during the Vietnam War, realizing that their marching and protests and so forth against the war and for peace were so filled with anger that they couldn't sustain it anymore. Something was off. Here they were marching for peace and they were ready to kill somebody. So I think we have to be honest with ourselves if there's and in drawing boundaries too, is there also some ill will there creeping in.

[37:32]

So these traditional ways of working with anger, we may feel like it's missing something or... Because these traditional ways are really talking about observing the process of anger in body and mind. And out of that observation and mindfulness, refraining from causing harm. And there may be a step in there that is leapt over which is, there's the observation, and I think that takes a calmness, a vow, especially in the heat of the moment, if we don't feel calm, a vow to refrain, but also accepting.

[38:48]

I accept. I accept what I'm feeling. It is all right. This is human. I can feel this. This does not mean that I'm not a good person, that I'm feeling all these feelings, and to have compassion for ourselves. And help me. Thank you. And I accept about our very own most negative of what's called negative. It's basically energy flowing in various habitual channels. But the energy is life energy. And compassion for ourselves for feeling what we feel is, I think, a really important point there. Not just observing, but accepting also. I do feel this way. I am angry. And yet, I vow not to do harm. I vow not to harbor ill will.

[39:49]

So I think that's what I wanted to talk about today. I think I wanted to... A story that I wanted to end with, a Thanksgiving story, which was one of the earliest stories that I ever heard. It was a Zen story. And you probably all know it. It's... in one of those earlier books, Zen Flesh and Bones. And now I'm forgetting who was the monk. I can't remember who, but anyway. He was in his hut, you know, the Zen practitioner, monk, and a thief came. A thief came to his hut. and took everything, took all his stuff. It was probably winter. He probably took the firewood, too. And as the thief was leaving, he said, I wish I could give you the moon, too.

[41:21]

Goodbye. I picture this thief sort of slinking off with his knapsack, this is my version, his knapsack over his back going across the snow. Somehow it's cold, and there's a full moon. rather than resentment and anger. I'm just a poor monk. What did I ever do to you, buddy? I don't have anything anyway. Go get a job. What are you stealing from me? Or whatever. He says, I wish I could give you the moon. Sends him off. That spirit was so... It seemed so... like nothing I had ever encountered before, that story, when I heard it or read it. How could someone feel that way? How could someone completely give, feel no rancor, no... What freedom?

[42:32]

What peace? What... What a life, you know. I want to live like that. I wish I could give you the moon. This is Shantideva, you know, also wanting to offer beings everything that he can possibly think of, you know, offerings, material and mental gifts. So in this season of giving, you know, What kind of real gifts are we giving each other? We can give each other the moon in our minds, in our hearts. We can offer even the moon, or as Dogen says, the flowers in the field.

[43:34]

Anything you can think of, you can offer to beings. So when we buy our gifts or make our gifts or bake our gifts or get out of town so we don't have to give any gifts, with the spirit, even getting out of town, we can offer it with the spirit of, I wish I could give you the moon. you very much.

[44:21]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_97.84