I vow to chase the truth about the Bhagata's words. Good morning. I haven't been here for quite some time because, among other things, my mother has been in the last stages of her living and dying. So I've been commuting between here and the Sierra foothills.

[01:00]

And a few days ago, when I was in Sonora, the cloud cover, the smoke cover from the forest fires was very thick. If you left your car parked anywhere for a short time, it was quickly covered with ash. And it wasn't exactly daylight or nighttime, that kind of strange sense of light and time which comes when our usual experience of daylight is interrupted, as it is now, with all of the smoke from these fires. As I was walking here to the Zendo this morning, I once again was struck by how grateful I am that we have this place and how much I think, I know for myself and I think for many of us, this is a kind of home place.

[02:03]

And I'm grateful that we have such places. And I hope that we can all, for a moment, have some thought of concern and care about all those beings whose lives are being disrupted or harmed or ended because of these fires. What I'd like to talk about this morning is forgiveness. But as a way of talking about forgiveness, I want to back into it a bit by talking also about judgment. In particular, that inner judging voice, which is so troublesome so often for so many of us. Before I begin, though, I want to describe to you a scene that I saw as I was driving over the hill from Muir Beach to Mill Valley a few weeks ago,

[03:09]

which I think is a kind of quintessential scene having to do with meditation practice in America. I came up behind a bicyclist, a young woman, clearly on a long bike trip. She had saddlebags or whatever they're called for bicyclists, clearly equipped with sleeping bag, tent, etc. And firmly strapped on behind her seat was her black Zofran. Equipped for anything. She was heading away from Green Gulch. Anyway, it was nice to see. In a passage in the writings of Dogen Zenji,

[04:11]

the great teacher who founded the Sodo Zen school in Japan, he talks about bodhisattvas, and he describes them as people committed to the welfare, liberation, and enlightenment of all living beings. People who are continually finding non-selfish ways of being in the world, and of cultivating, people who are cultivating an awareness of the links between all beings, or the links of all beings, maybe more accurate. And he goes on to describe the integrative methods of bodhisattvas as being made up of giving, kind speech, beneficial action, and cooperation.

[05:15]

When I read this passage in Dogen, I find myself feeling inspired and reminded about what it is I'm trying to do in my life, and what I sense many of us trying to do in our lives, in terms of cultivating our capacity to be such a being in the world. And I very quickly ask myself, how do I do this, and what are the hindrances in cultivation of this sort? Very quickly, what comes up for me in my own experience, and in listening to what other people have to tell me about their experiences, is how much we want forgiveness, especially of ourselves, but also of each other, and how much our capacity to be judging of ourselves and others

[06:24]

is a hindrance in terms of being on such a path as I'm describing. So, one of the comments or flags, advice about how to become a Buddha or a bodhisattva in Buddhist texts, over and over and over again, is some encouragement that we not feel aversion or longing for anything. And I think that for most of us, we run into our capacity to hinder ourselves, particularly when it comes to this business of judgment. The voice of judgment actually has several strands to it, I think.

[07:28]

Criticism, evaluating, approving and disapproving. You may, after lecture, have a conversation with a friend and say, well, I liked this morning's talk, or I didn't think it was so good, or whatever, which is okay, but to the degree that we have this kind of evaluating voice as a running commentary, which is so much a part of our habit that we don't even hear it, it becomes an interruption to being really present and awake to the particular detail of whatever it is that's happening in this moment. Name-calling is another one of those aspects of judgment. So-and-so is a jerk, or stupid, or smart, or a wasp, whatever.

[08:37]

Kind of generalizing and pigeonholing of ourselves and others, which again keeps us from being present in a more radical way, which I think is one of the fruits of Dzogchen practice, or of many meditation practices, actually. Recently I've been looking at a book on communication skills, and the author talks about one of the aspects of judgment as diagnosing. And he tells the story of a friend of his who was a secretary for a psychiatrist, and after a month she stopped working for this person. And when he asked his friend what happened, she said, no matter what I did, he was diagnosing me. If I was late to work, I was being resistant. If I was early, I was being obsessive.

[09:43]

If I was on time, I was being compulsive. I couldn't stand it, so I quit. I think that these are all ways of not being present, of not seeing, in particular, what is in front of us, within us, in each moment. And if what we're talking about is cultivating our capacity to be fully aware, to be awake to things as they are, then paying attention to this tendency, strong tendency or habit for judgment, that I think arises for most of us at least some of the time. It's useful for us to begin to pay attention to the detail of it. One of the things that I notice is the degree to which that judging voice

[11:00]

sometimes keeps me from noticing what I don't know in a given situation. And when I have the presence of mind to be that attentive, I'm always struck by how much trouble I get into when I'm not paying attention to what I don't know. Recently I read about a commencement speech that was given by a man named Arthur Danto, who teaches philosophy at Columbia. And he was in his talk talking about one of the sunflower paintings by Van Gogh, which recently was sold at auction for $40 million. And in his commencement speech he talks about what is happening when anyone spends $40 million for a piece of art.

[12:06]

What is it that someone under those circumstances is trying to own or possess? And immediately what Danto brings up in his talk is something about possession or removing something from our lives in a way that comes up with art, and immediately, as a companion, the restoration of art. And he talks about how this painting, which was at one time a painting of vibrant oranges, is now beginning to become dull and turn brown, the way we are as we get older. And how we have this inclination to want to fix it up fix the paint so that it is the color or colors

[13:08]

that Van Gogh used when he made the painting. How we are trying to restore the Sistine Chapel, or perhaps to take the fig leaves off of Masaccio's figures of Adam and Eve. And in each instance he notes that this is a way of treating art as separate from our lives, which include deterioration, change, decay, and death. That we might enjoy Masaccio's figures, including the fig leaves, which remind us of how these figures, these sculptures, were a kind of challenge, a cause for some upset, a kind of raising of issues in people's lives at a certain point,

[14:14]

such that they put fig leaves over the genitals of the figures. A reminder of a particular time and attitude and condition in human life. What happens when we try to eradicate all of those reminders of change, of birth and death? I was struck when I read this talk, excerpts from this talk, by how much what the speaker was talking about has to do with our getting caught by desire and aversion, wanting things to be a certain way, and when we get them to be the way we want them, we want them to be fixed.

[15:14]

What we desire should stay, and what we don't like should leave, should go away. This has everything to do with that particular judging voice that I'm bringing up as troublesome. Recently I spent time with a friend who has been for some long time having a great deal of difficulty with a mutual friend, and a lot of what she talked to me about was how critical this other person is of her, and how discouraged and depressed she felt. To be continually on the receiving end of this person's criticism and judgment and evaluation of her. And so over some months we talked about what was going on,

[16:17]

and together explored her experience. At a certain point I suggested to her that she do a forgiveness meditation, specifically with the person who is being so critical of her. And very quickly what arose for her was a recognition that she had inside herself a much more fierce voice of criticism. That what she had inside her was what she called the voice of the mean old man. So what she then began to do was to be a little bit friendly in the way of being interested in this old man, and the voice of the old man, the grouchy mean old man. And so our conversation took a little turn

[17:20]

to hanging out with the mean old man. Where did that voice come from and what was it saying? She was stunned to discover that the criticism that was coming up in her was significantly stronger, more intense, more devastating towards her friend and teacher than anything she had been getting from him. I'm talking about all of this this morning because it's so much the stuff of my life these days, as I am living with my mother as she dies. I'm an only child, and my mother and I have had a difficult life together. For both of us, I think. So what comes up for me as I watch my mother fading away,

[18:27]

when I'm with her and also when I'm not with her, because we are together, whether we're physically together or not, to a degree that I find rather stunning. What has come up for me has been a lot of feeling and experience, which I am reluctant to acknowledge or to be friendly with. A lot of aversion, a lot of fear, a lot of wanting to take care of this person, wanting to have some way of expressing the gratitude that I feel and having it mixed liberally with resentment and anger and clinging to ancient history. So I've been looking at and listening to those voices that come up in me

[19:35]

of judgment and anger and resentment. And doing whatever I can to stay present with whatever arises in some way that allows me to also take care of this person as best I can. What I have been noticing is that the more I allow those voices, whatever emotion arises, to arise with some gentleness, some patience, some permission, some attitude of listening, the sooner it not only arises fully, but also in a surprisingly short time begins to fall away. And that I'm completely not in charge of this process.

[20:36]

I can be present and participate, but I'm not in control or in charge of this inner event which has such profound impact on the detail of my daily life. So I have been thinking about and practicing in whatever small ways I can meditation on forgiveness for myself and for my mother and for others in our confused and troubled family as much as possible. I've had experiences in the past for myself in watching others of forgiveness and the practice of forgiveness meditation as an antidote to judgment. So it has been somewhat less difficult for me to go back to that practice this time.

[21:46]

I'm grateful to have established some ground so that I'm a little more willing to, even if I can only go through the motions, go through the motions of forgiveness meditation and to allow whatever is possible, no matter how small, to occur as it arises. There are several aspects to a forgiveness meditation which I'd like to talk about for a moment as a way of inviting you to practice a forgiveness meditation if you find yourself at all drawn to doing this. Let me say that when I first began doing a forgiveness meditation I had some hunch that it would be useful for me to do,

[22:54]

but I also noticed that I had enormous resistance to doing the meditation. So I made an agreement with myself that I would do the meditation for ten days no matter what the experience was, no matter how I felt about it. So I in fact did the forgiveness meditation and I was amazed at what came up. This is a stupid meditation. This is boring. This isn't for me. This is a corny rendition. On and on and on. But I decided that I was going to keep to the agreement I'd made with myself and just see what happens. After about a week I felt like some wall began to crack open a little bit and some of what I began to touch as I was doing the forgiveness meditation

[23:58]

went very deep in terms of feeling. And I realized that in fact what I had stumbled onto was what I've come to call my red oil light. The red oil light in your car tells you when you've run out of oil and you better not drive until you put more oil in the car or you're going to blow up your engine. There are certain kinds of patterns of resistance which I've come to identify as some version of a red oil light. And maybe the engine isn't going to blow up but certainly what may happen is I may miss some opportunity to get into something that I'm actually ready to get into if I pay attention to certain kinds of resistance. What I did was to take a forgiveness meditation

[25:00]

and to rewrite it in language which is my own language, language that I experience as being of my voice. And I in fact made a cassette tape and read the meditation onto a tape so that I could then use a forgiveness meditation in my own voice to guide myself through it. And I would take between 12 and 15 minutes to do the meditation. After doing it once a day for about a week when I began to notice that something was opening in me I began to do it more often. And at the end of the 10-day period I was actually doing it three times a day and continued to do that for a couple of months and found that I began to touch places in myself,

[26:00]

began to be waking up to voices and habits in myself that I had avoided for a long, long time. In doing a forgiveness meditation in the last couple of months I've noticed the same thing again. There are basically three aspects to forgiveness meditation. The first is to think of someone from whom you do not expect to be forgiven. Someone who is upset or angry with you because of something they think you've done which has caused them harm or upset. And to ask that person to forgive you for whatever you may have done in your actions, in your words, in your thoughts,

[27:03]

intentionally or unintentionally. A way of allowing yourself to be forgiven by such a person. The second step or stage of the forgiveness meditation is to forgive someone whom you've experienced as having caused you some harm or hurt. Again, for whatever action or words or thoughts they may have intentionally or unintentionally done. And thirdly, to forgive yourself. To allow yourself forgiveness for whatever actions, words or thoughts you may have done which have caused another person or yourself harm or upset.

[28:10]

Whether you intended to do that or not. My experience is that for many of us we do all right in forgiving another person. But the aspect of this meditation that has to do with forgiving ourselves is much more difficult. What I would encourage and what I keep encouraging myself with is to think about forgiveness in the midst of whatever is difficult. To not get caught by such and such conditions must be present before I'll be able to forgive myself or another person. But to be willing to work with the situation and with myself in the midst of all of the mud and muck and garbage that arises. So that if what is arising for me these days is anger or resentment or grief

[29:17]

then that's what I must be working in the midst of. So that I am working with forgiveness in response to pain and fear and not acting out of fear or pain. Can I have some forgiveness for whatever is arising including some deep sense of fear or aversion towards my mother? Am I willing to acknowledge that that's what's arising in me? And also be open to the possibility of letting it go, of dropping whatever reference to the past may be coming up. And what I notice is that the more I'm able to do that, the more I'm able to notice what's coming up in this moment and to let whatever has to do with the past go,

[30:21]

the more I am actually capable of doing a reasonably heartfelt caring for my mother or whoever else is around me, including myself. That I have to start with whatever is difficult including all of the negative range of thoughts and feelings. With some gentleness and friendliness. So I'm talking about bringing forgiveness into the center of whatever discomfort arises, whatever I am experiencing as discomfort or dis-ease. To remember that it is possible in the midst of such discomfort,

[31:24]

in the midst of some habitual judging voice, whatever, to be gentle, to note the detail of what's arising in a descriptive way, to be as careful and listening and attentive as I can be, but also to accept that there are times when I'm not as gentle or noting or attentive as I might wish I was, and for that to be okay. The more I do that, the more I can pay attention to what is needed right now, in this moment, in this situation. What is possible for me to do as I sit in this room next to an old frail woman

[32:32]

who is confused and frightened. What I noticed a few days ago was that when I stopped feeling badly, as I experienced a kind of pushing away that my mother has a habit for with me and with others, when I stopped feeling badly about it in some personal way, I could begin to remember what I know about this person who has been afraid to be close to another person all her life. And almost immediately what came up in me was deep compassion and forgiveness and understanding with respect to the way she behaves today as consequential of a life of deep suffering. And as that happened, I found myself able to be present and taking care in a way that was not an effort.

[33:43]

I could drop whatever worry I had about wanting her to let me help her, and simply be present and pay attention to providing the surrounding circumstances so that she would have whatever care she could accept. I'm talking about this practice of forgiveness as a crucial practice in the cultivation of understanding and of loving-kindness. Thich Nhat Hanh talks often about how much we cannot love if we don't understand. My experience is that our ability to forgive ourselves and others

[34:48]

profoundly affects our capacity for understanding and for love. And if we're patient, this process can bring about a kind of melting or dissolving of very old, stony walls that we have built up in our hearts and minds over a lifetime. And what I'm talking about is not something that happens quickly. It happens slowly over time. If I'm not craving thanks or recognition from others,

[35:49]

if I'm not busy worrying about or thinking about whether this or that is good or bad, I like it or I don't like it, I can be present and awake to what is possible in each moment. This is what Dogen talks about when he talks about being a Buddha. We all have this capacity, moments or flashes of a kind of presence and awakeness. I would invite you to do a forgiveness meditation. Try it for a week. Make a promise to yourself that you will take 10 or 15 minutes a day

[36:55]

and guide yourself through a forgiveness meditation once a day. No matter what you feel about the actual experience of doing the meditation, just do it for a week or two and see what happens. Listen as carefully and attentively as you can. Be willing to note and touch whatever arises in a descriptive, friendly, careful way. And if it's difficult, be willing to allow whatever your experience is of difficulty. Whatever that difficulty is, if you're willing to explore or hang out with the experience,

[37:56]

it will in fact begin to open up. You will begin to hear yourself as my friend did when she began to hear the voice of the mean old man. She, after beginning to hear the voice of the mean old man, was able to sit him down over in a corner of her inner room. She didn't tell him to go away, but she did ask him to sit down over there quietly. She was able to, with some kindness, recognize where the mean old man had first arrived. She began to be open to the causes and conditions which gave birth to the mean old man in her. And slowly, he began to fade, and his voice began to be a little dim.

[39:04]

I remember seeing her a couple of weeks after she stumbled into the mean old man. And she looked transformed, open and bright, and freed from something that she had struggled with for months and suffered with for months. We are capable of this kind of freeing or liberation if we will be quiet and careful with ourselves and others. Thank you very much. May our intention...

[40:03]

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