Good morning. Good morning. I was just noticing, it seems like every time I return from Northern Ireland, there's some image in my mind, and invariably I talk about it. So here's the image that's in my mind. It's about a person. Northern Ireland, as you probably know, has been wracked by sectarian violence, which seems to be a big part of our collective consciousness at this time. And a person I knew there, he died recently, had six family members killed.

[01:13]

That's even for Northern Ireland or maybe many places is quite a trauma, quite a disaster, a painful occurrence. But Brendan's response to that was quite unusual. the last person to be killed in his family was his sister and after about three or four of his family members were killed he decided to set up a center a trauma center for people whose family members have been killed and so he did in one of the grittiest parts of time What's in Northern Ireland called an interface, which means the two communities interface. That's the border between them. And usually the interface becomes the point of action, the point of reaction, the point of violence.

[02:22]

So for many years, Branton had run that. And so his sister was killed. And in the Irish tradition, when a family member, or when anyone is killed, you hold a wick, you lay out the body, and then you sit with the body for several days. A powerful way to let the experience sink in. Anyway, while they were having the wake, someone knocked on the door. And Brandon went to open the door and it was two men. And they said to Brandon, we're the ones who killed your sister. And Brandon said, well, you better come in. And so they came in and he made them some tea. And they sat and then they wept.

[03:34]

They wept with remorse and regret about having done such a terrible thing. And Brandon agreed with them that it was indeed a terrible thing to do and that really all we can do is keep moving forward with our lives. you know no matter what we've done and that they had his forgiveness and then they left and and I thought how amazing that Brandon was the kind of person that he was that the killers of his own sister would come to him for for wisdom first compassion for forgiveness so recently when I was in Belfast in Northern Ireland I heard that Brandon had died and I remember that story about him

[04:58]

And in a way, it reminded me of Nelson Mandela, you know, being able to invite his own jailer to the ceremony at which he was made president of the country. And for me, it brings up a question about our human nature, our human capacity to be with all the things that we're capable of as humans. What stirs that capacity? What enacts it? What brings it into being? The contrast between that and our capacity to be small-minded, to be bitter, resentful, unforgiving, preoccupied with little injustices that go on in our life all the time. It reminded me of a line of a poem by Mary Oliver where she said, to live in this world, there's three things you must do.

[06:13]

The first is to love everything that's mortal. And I was thinking, okay, well, that's impossible. It certainly seems to be for me. Maybe in the realm of the gods. Or in the realm of the Buddhas. And yet our teaching is that everybody has a Buddha capacity. Everyone is capable of compassion. Everybody is capable of forgiveness. And what activates that? You know, what brings that alive? So that's the question I'd like to try to address this morning.

[07:18]

And I'd like to start with a piece from Greek mythology, Pandora's Box. As far as I can tell, there's a couple of versions to Pandora's Box, but here's the version I'd like to mention. They just vary a little in some of the details. For a whole series of reasons, which I'm not going to go into, Pandora ends up being given a box by Zeus. And Zeus is out to create something for Pandora. So he gives her a box. And the notion is that Zeus knows she cannot resist opening the box. It's a very interesting, ornate box.

[08:20]

And so eventually, indeed, Pandora opens the box and all sorts of ills and tragedies and traumas leap out of the box and scatter to all the winds. and cause problems and pain and difficulty around the world. And right after they've all leaped out of the box, she slams the box closed, which of course didn't do any good, because they were already eyed. I think of it a little bit like, you know, something happens in our lives, and then after it's happened, We try to go backwards. Even if it's just in our moments of reflection. Oh, that's what I should have said. That's what I should have done. I think for those of us who meditate, many times we've watched our mind try to bring back the past and then rearrange it and then send it back somehow.

[09:34]

It can go back and change events, change the course of what happened, which of course it can't. But it's interesting when you watch your mind, sometimes you just can't resist reliving, replaying. You close the lid after the event has happened. And things are let loose in the world. And they... they have the consequence they have. And in the story of Pandora, it's bringing forth maybe what we would call in Buddhism the first noble truth, the truth of suffering, the truth that we have a propensity towards aversion, acquisitiveness, desire, and confusion. That when we're caught up in our aversion and our our greed, our mind becomes unclear.

[10:38]

We lose touch with some innate wisdom and compassion that we have. I mean, who of us can listen to that story about Brandon and not think there's something profoundly appropriate there? That this person had touched something, some quality of humanness that has a dignity to it, an appropriateness. Something in us knows that. And yet it seems to be so easy to forget it, so easy to behave in a way that denies it. A while back I heard David White talking when he was over at the Unitarian Church when we had him here, and he used a phrase, he said, we are being what we will become.

[11:46]

That if we be petty-minded, we will be a petty-minded person. If we be selfish, vindictive, revengeful. That's what we will be. That's what we will become. So these things are let loose out of ourselves. These things are let loose out of us collectively. And here's the rest of the myth of Pandora's box is that then Pandora In the middle of her consternation about having let all this loose in the world, here's a voice from inside the box. And the voice is saying, I'm trapped, I'm trapped in the box, set me free, set me free, let me hide, let me hide. And then in the midst of her consternation, there is aroused compassion.

[13:02]

And so she opens the lid again. And this time, she lets loose a force of redemption, forgiveness, healing. And this force of redemption goes forth in the world, following after all the terrible forces that were causing suffering and trauma. and goes to the very same places and brings healing. So what does that myth say about each one of our personal lives? It's very interesting when you think

[14:06]

that there are few things that we can really tell for certain about our life or any life we're born with nothing we die with nothing I mean not to say we're not born into a set of circumstances or we don't die from a set of circumstances but there is another way We didn't bring them with us and we don't take them with us. And then in between the time and place of our birth and the time and place of our death, we're on this pilgrimage. This pilgrimage of having a human life. Each one of us. And what do we learn from it? What do we learn about living? from going on this pilgrimage so before Mary Oliver so audaciously says there's three things you must do she addresses the world in this way she says look at the trees look at the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light and giving off a rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment

[15:36]

The long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders of the ponds. And every pond, no matter what its name is, is now nameless. Every year, everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leads back to this. Every year, everything I've learned in my lifetime leads back to this. What a great question to ask yourself. What is it everything I've learned in my lifetime leads me back to? What is it to learn from our life? I think these are valuable questions, the ones we should treasure, ones we should pit ourselves against, be frustrated by, be confounded by, be guided by. be turned inside out by every year everything I've learned in my lifetime leads back to this the fires in the black river of loss whose other side is salvation whose meaning none of us will ever know to live in the world you must be able to do three things to love what is mortal

[17:08]

a Buddhist practice you know it's the most in the Buddhist lore of teaching of how to live how to have a human life of how to let a human life be an awakening process an illuminating process a process that puts us in touch with some capacity of compassion and wisdom rather than a process of confining confusion the first step I mean we could say that it has in our personal journey the first step is to embody Now Mary Oliver says, to love everything that is mortal, to hold it against your bones, knowing your life depends on it.

[18:29]

To hold it against your bones, knowing that your life depends on it. What you're being is what you will become. Your life depends upon it. Your life is expressed through it. Your life is the consequence of it. So the stakes are pretty high. So Buddhism offers a simple formulation. Embody, embrace, express. Be what you already are. I mean, what can be a more self-evident truth? You already are what you are. You're already feeling what you're feeling. You're already thinking what you're thinking.

[19:33]

To resist it, to deny it, is quite literally a distraction. And often very painful. To be what you already are. Embody the truth that already is. So this is Zazen. To sit down and be what is. To be the body of what is. Physically and through all the senses. All the senses are open. The eyes see. The ears hear. the body feels smells touches and of course to do that we go on a journey of healing sometimes called purification purification in the sense

[20:48]

That when you take gold ore and you purify it, it becomes completely gold. It's like we stop distracting ourselves from ourselves. That kind of purification. That we adopt a radical honesty towards what we are. It's very confusing to keep telling ourselves we're something that we're not. So when we sit Sazen, there's a stabilization to take our seat on the earth. There's a willingness and a respect to be what we are. And then there's an openness, there's a receptivity.

[21:51]

A radical honesty. Maybe we could call it a humility. And we take the lid off Pandora's box and let it alight. Someone was telling me recently they went on a retreat. Through good fortune they had this opportunity to go and stay in a small house in a beautiful setting near the ocean, quiet, sweet. Wonderful opportunity to step back from their life and have this precious moment. And they said the first week was just hell on wheels. Without quite intending, they opened up Pandora's box and all sorts of difficult, painful feelings came out.

[23:04]

But they'd set themselves up on retreat. They didn't have a whole lot of distractions. They didn't have any movies to go to or phone calls to get involved and they just had to be there. Of course they could have left. But they didn't. They stayed there. They stayed there with the disturbing emotions. So I think this speaks of one element of embodying our own being. That there are the residues of our own pain and suffering and to enable us to be with that we need a stability so a strong element of our practice is stabilization is discovering quite literally how to hold still how to let the body be the body how to let the body

[24:15]

be open, relax. Let the breath open, relax. This is part of the yoga of sitting. Not that we ever perfect it. It's bottomless. when we give ourselves over to it. The same way our vow says, delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to practice with them. Maybe we could say, the body will always have tension, I vow to relax. It's in the doing that something is created. It's like working our muscles, you know.

[25:18]

They don't gain strength in the abstract, they gain strength in the doing. The engaging, we do Zazen to discover how to do Zazen. We live to learn how to live. So letting the body and the breath open, relax, find their base. And letting the mind do something similar. How was it that when Brandon opened the door and met the killers of his sister, that he wasn't filled with revulsion, aggression, confusion? What grind did he base his being on? What kind of roots had he put into his own being?

[26:23]

That weren't lost in the ferocity of such an experience. This is as in. That way of being. That kind of stabilization. That kind of healing. Or as Mary Oliver puts it, to love everything that is mortal. Can we do that? It's an immense question. And then can we hold it against our bones? Can we take it in? Can we embrace it? Can we connect to it? Can we be transformed by it? Who hasn't suffered?

[27:36]

But suffering is the grind of compassion. You can have the idea of compassion. But compassion is to be with suffering. can have the idea of what practice is, but it's only in engaging the activity that we discover the efficacy of it. We take it from the abstract to the actual. That's when we engage our life. So in the imagery of Buddhism, this is the turning point. Because our human impulse is to move away from pain and in search for pleasure. And the Buddha impulse, the awakening impulse, is to stay still and let the suffering reveal something more in the moment.

[28:54]

It's to open the box again and let loose something more than just suffering. And part of what initiates that is compassion. And part of what initiates the compassion on a human level is a willingness to be with what is. And part of what practice is, is discover how to enable that willingness. In the early sutras, there's three notions. One arises from stillness or what we might call non-reactiveness or what we might call the cessation of wanting to make it different from what it is.

[29:55]

When we just see it for what it is, nothing different needs to happen. When we add some nuance to it, when we add some interpretation, when we add some quality of disturbance to it, then there's something to work with. And we bring to that compassion. And then the third step is the notion of antidote, which is when what's arising is too much, is overwhelming, is too disturbing, is too demanding, that we meet that skillfully, that we bring to that a way of being that's

[31:05]

that loosens it, that softens it, that diminishes the intensity of the pain. This is the patience and skillfulness of practicing with our own life. So the activity of Zazen The activity of sitting upright and being completely open to what is embraces all three of these. The stabilization, the engagement, and letting it soften and open. Recently I also talked to someone else and they were telling me about the fact that a very close friend of theirs their mother was dying and that it had reached a very painful juncture that

[32:25]

As modern science and medicine puts in front of us now, it was possible to keep the person alive maybe for years or they could just let them die. And this person had to make this decision about his own mother. And he made a decision to let her die. And the person I was talking to was this person's closest friend. How do you make that decision? How do you support your closest friend to make that decision? How do you support your closest friend when they've made that decision? And how is it that when we sometimes have these powerful challenges in our life to just realize that really we're just being asked to live through them that there is no way to fix them that that's really not the request the request is to live through them is to stay upright in the middle of the storm

[33:58]

Or maybe not even stay upright, just to stay connected. And right in our meditation we experience this. We discover the way in which often we're just simply not in control. And that the best we can manifest is to just stay with it, with the state of mind, with the state of body that we are. And then it changes into the next thing, when it changes. So this too. And to realize that the image that's used in Zen is that this is to be forged in a furnace.

[35:16]

That this creates its own kind of intensity and that we stay with it. And then also to realize that while it creates its own intensity, it gives an amazing gift. It gives the amazing gift of being alive. You know, Brandon had this enormous tragedy in his life, but in setting up the center that he did and being a refuge for so many people, that he created something extraordinary. He drew the best out of people. He created a kind of a synergy of compassion. That in the midst of sectarian violence and division something that went beyond it was created and he had a part to play in that and he was a beacon of light guiding that and he could also be nurtured and supported by that so right in the midst of the human condition

[36:37]

is liberation. One of the Buddha's teachings says there's two truths. There's what we might call our personal truth and then there's a truth beyond the personal truth. Right in the middle of sitting with everything that comes up for us, in the moment of release, in the moment of letting go of what we're clinging to, we glimpse liberation. We experience it directly. And whether we can believe it, whether we can allow it to be that which is most true for us, that's another question. But we glimpse it. Every moment we let go. Liberation is expressed. And the degree to which we let it register, the degree to which we let it touch our bones, we're being the Buddha that we are.

[37:42]

So this too. So Mary Oliver has a third part to her formulation. To live in this world you must be able to do three things. To love what is mortal, to hold it against your bones, knowing your own life depends on it, and when the time comes to let it go, let it go. Because this pilgrimage from birth to death is just that. And maybe we could say, This is its own kind of existential affliction. But we can also say that it supports us to go beyond our self-centered ways of clinging. No matter what we decide, our life depends upon.

[38:54]

If only I had this, if only I had that. When we look at the bigger picture, the pilgrimage from birth to death, We know that it's just temperate. It isn't a permanent solution to anything. So this way of going beyond. This is the enactment of our practice. This is its liberation. This is its offering. This is its teaching. And how do we come to the place that Mary Oliver leads to? Every year, everything I have learned in my lifetime leads back to this. How do you do that? How do you do that? How do you find that way back to your own wisdom and compassion?

[39:59]

Can you pause a hundred times a day and rediscover it? Or do you find it once or twice every decade? Okay, so let me finish with this poem again. Look. The trees are turning their own bodies into pillars of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment. The long tapers of cattails are bursting and flowing away over the blue shoulders of the ponds. And every pond, no matter what its name is, is now nameless. Every year, everything I have ever learned in my lifetime leans back to this. The fires in the black river of loss, whose other side is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world you must be able to do three things to love what is mortal to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it and when the time comes to let it go to let it go so this is the journey of a lifetime in an awareness practice

[41:33]

This is the practice of a single moment and everything in between. It's the intensity of going on solitary retreat and opening up the Pandora box of your own deeper imaginings and emotions. It's meeting those moments of personal affliction and noticing as honestly As you can, what do I do? Do I harden? Do I go numb? Do I become angry? Do I become depressed and hopeless? And discovering in the most direct and practical way, what is it to practice with it? And to let that question not be, what do I want from practice? but to let it be, what does practice ask of me?

[42:37]

Because it's giving that opens us. It's not grasping. What is it that practicing with this asks of me? Because discovering and enacting our compassion, our wisdom, our steadfastness, our courage, our patience, our humility, in doing that, they become potent. And just letting them float in the ethers of abstraction, they stay impotent. They're just cute ideas. So how can we open Pandora's box twice? let out all the things we're trying to stuff down, and let out the compassion and the healing. Thank you.

[43:44]

May our intention equally extend to every being and place, Here. [...] Thank you. Thank you.

[44:56]

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