This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. And I want to just offer a long welcome to our speaker today, Carolyn Grazier. For those of you who don't know, I'll just give you a very brief introduction to her. Carolyn is a Dharaman teacher practitioner with roots in the Pure Land tradition, and she's also a practicing psychotherapist in England, who draws on more than 20 years of experience in incorporating Buddhist approaches to the field of psychotherapy. Carolyn is also a course leader at Tariki Trust, which is based in Leicester. Leicester. and is an author of seven books on nudism, psychotherapy, and echotherapy.

[01:05]

Recently, she's been working with the Turiki Trust in developing a program in echotherapy, and has also been involved in the development of Buddhist health care chancel in the UK. So, once again, it's great to have you here. Thank you for having all this, Fred. Thank you very much. Thank you. And it's wonderful to be here. I feel very welcomed. Thank you. Well, I'd like to talk today about stories. And in a way, you've just heard a story. It's quite interesting hearing a story about oneself, or is it oneself? I listen to it and I think, goodness, who's that? You had that experience? You know, it's like there are many stories that we have about ourselves and there are stories that other people have about us. And our lives are embedded in stories.

[02:08]

And, you know, this is how it's been since time immemorial. Humans have told stories. Stories have been the way that wisdom has been passed down. Stories have been important to culture. Stories have been the way that people have expressed their creativity, their humanness. It's what singles us out in a way that we have stories. Stories have also been the foundation of our spiritual lives and our philosophical lives. They're deeply important to us. They can be deeply influential. And at the same time... Stories can be harmful. Stories can get in the way. Stories can lead us into the path of delusion. So as Buddhists, we need to look at stories. We need to understand something about them and what they can do for us, but also how they can hinder us along the way.

[03:15]

And we need to learn to be skillful around stories just as we are around other things. You know, I'd like to take the theme of stories and talk about various aspects of this today. You know, it's very interesting when I kind of listen to the introduction that I'm given. You know, how do we introduce ourselves when we meet somebody? You know, I could sort of talk about all my professional credentials, some of which you've just heard, you know, and it all sounds rather grand. Or I can come in and say, Yeah, I've got three kids and four grandchildren and, you know, I live in Leicester and I like going to the cinema and talking with friends and that kind of thing, you know. And that's a different story, still me, you know. Or I can tell you about my childhood, you know, I can tell you. I grew up in a family, I have a brother.

[04:16]

My parents are both alive still. When I was growing up, my father was a Methodist minister, and he was chaplain at a teacher training college, and we lived in the college, and so there were always a lot of students around, and I guess I kind of imbibed something of being a chaplain from being there. You know, that's a different story. And probably as I'm telling these different stories, you're having different thoughts about me. Your opinion of me changes as I... tell you different stories about myself. And I could probably tell you some stories that would shock you entirely, but I won't do that here, as this is a Dharma talk. You know, but the stories that we tell, we tell them in order to have effect. We tell them to communicate with other people. And we do it because, in part, we want those people to react to us in a certain way. So, you know, I don't want to tell you all my kind of murky past or anything of that kind because...

[05:20]

You know, I want you to react to me in a way that's at least marginally kind of interested and respectful. Maybe not. Maybe not. Maybe I could find some common ground with some of you. I don't know. But anyway, you know, it's like we are talking to other people in order to get reactions. And then depending on how the people react to us, we then start to build up. our sense of identity. So when we're with one group of friends, we live a certain story, and that story becomes who we are, and we're like this sort of person when we're with those friends, and we maybe dress in a particular way, behave in a particular way, frequent certain places, all that kind of thing. When we're in a different setting, maybe we're at work or whatever, we maybe behave completely differently, we dress differently, we maybe even have different mannerisms, different accent even sometimes. But it's all about kind of settings, conditions.

[06:22]

We behave that way. We live out a certain story in that setting. We get a response back. And in the process of all of this, what are we doing? We're co-creating an identity. Okay? As you've heard, I am interested in Buddhist psychology. You know, this is what I do as my... For my living, if you like. This is how I spend my time. I work as a therapist. I spend a lot of time listening to people's stories. And I often hear how those stories have got them stuck. You know, people have a story that, you know, when they were young, certain things happened to them. And as a result, they are in some way damaged or damaged. angry or useless or unintelligent or uncreative.

[07:28]

You know, all of us have stories that are embedded in our paths, and some of those stories are not helpful. So one of the things that I am interested in as a therapist is about listening to people's stories and saying, well, Is there another story in this? Is there another way in which we can understand your life? I think it's easy when we start to talk about stories to think of stories as fiction. In a way, they are fictions. They're things that we put together. It's like, over a lifetime, how many experiences do we have? You know, even if you just think of the last day, what did you do yesterday? You know, probably each of you will tell me a story about what you did yesterday. But that's very selective. You know, why do we select? We select in order to reinforce our sense of who we are.

[08:34]

Yeah? We've got a sort of general story running of I'm this sort of person. This is the person I want to be. This is the person I want to be seen as. This is the way I want other people to treat me. And because we're running that story, we go through life all of the time being selective in what we remember, what we reflect on, who we think we are, and particularly just in the minutiae of our experience, noticing things that reinforce that. The Buddhist psychology is all about the way in which our attention is shaped Our attention is shaped by our preoccupation with being a certain way and being seen a certain way. And so therefore, you know, if we start to talk about what we've been doing, you know, what did I do yesterday? Well, I went down into town and we went into Chinatown and we had some nice snacks as we were walking around the streets. And then we went down onto the Fisherman's Wharf and we saw some pelicans flying.

[09:38]

Now, we don't get pelicans in England. So this was a really exciting story for me. You know, these huge birds suddenly came flapping across the water. And I looked at them, and my partner who I was with sort of looked at them and said, I think those are seagulls. And I said, no, there's something bigger than that. Well, you know, they're about the size of a heron, but they're definitely not herons. So I'm sort of matching it up with past experience, because we have herons in England. But... You know, these aren't herons. What are they? So I have this story running about, wow, we're seeing some really exciting birds here. What are they? And then I see the notice about the pelicans, and I was beginning to suspect that was what they might be anyway, just from the kind of shape of the beak and so on. But you see, if I tell you that story, what does it say about me? Well, it says that I've come from England for a start.

[10:40]

It says that I'm... interested in the environment you know i'm interested in birds they're the things i notice i'm also interested in food that's the other thing i mentioned i'm also probably interested in chinatown because you know i'm interested in things chinese and japanese because i'm buddhist maybe so you know it's like my account of yesterday's is really shaped by my preoccupation with my own experiences and a lot of this is is unconscious You know, I assume, as I tell you about what I did yesterday, that that was how it was. We assume that what we see in life is life. You know, we assume that this is what it is and how it is. And we don't realize that actually we're being highly selective in what we talk about, what we remember. We're also, incidentally, being highly selective in what we do. You know, what took me down there in the first place? I wanted to see the water. you know, because I'm interested in open spaces, etc., etc., etc.

[11:45]

So, you know, Buddhist psychology. I work as a therapist working from a Buddhist model. And, you know, how would somebody know that what I'm doing is different from what any other therapist would do? I think this is a very interesting question, actually. I had a new supervisor. I've got a new supervisor when I go back because my current supervisor is retiring. And the new one is obviously a very efficient person because she asked me if I could send something about how I worked. So I sent a copy of a conference paper I'd written a few years back which kind of just summarized my interpretation of Buddhist psychology. And... I should be very interested when I meet her to find out whether actually what I talk about and how I present and the way that I think about my client work and so on actually bears any relationship to what I write on the paper.

[12:50]

So, you know, I think this is, when I start to think about this, this is another interesting feedback loop because this is like a feedback loop of theory. It's like we have ideas about what we're doing and those ideas... are maybe different from what we're actually doing. So we're living in a sort of second level of delusion because we have a sort of interpretation in our head of, I'm doing this, and actually we're not, we're doing that. But that's not what we want to be doing because we have a sort of belief system that says, this is what I'm supposed to be doing. And so we're kind of... hanging on to the idea of what we're doing and the principles of what we're doing and actually might be doing something else. And this is actually really important in terms of Buddhist practice because we can sign up to a lot of good values in our Buddhist practice. But do we actually live them? Do we live them when we get outside the Buddhist center? Do we live them when we're walking down the street, when we're encountering people at work, when we're in shops and so on?

[13:54]

Do we keep that awareness? And, you know, this is the sort of basis of mindfulness practice. Can we be mindful not just when we're sat on the zafu or the chair or whatever it is, but can we also be mindful when we are having those conversations and so on? Can we bring our practice into our activities? So what's Buddhist psychology about? Buddhist psychology is basically about understanding all of the ways in which our minds are conditioned. And particularly the way in which our actions and our thoughts and so on are shaped by our fears, basically. You know, we're running away from... We're running away from the fear of impermanence. We're running away from all this sort of life's uncertainties and so on. And as we run away, we're escaping by building boxes around ourselves.

[15:02]

And I've been talking quite a lot so far about the way in which we construct an identity and we do it by building up things around us, relationships around us, people around us, events around us, places around us, interests around us, work around us, all of these things, in order to reinforce this identity. And basically, what we're doing through this is trying to create a sense of permanence, trying to create some security. And we do it through a process that's called attachment. We grasp with our senses, and as we grasp with our senses, we build up a sort of continuity of experience that is basically illusory. Experience slips through our fingers. But we are trying to hold on to it. We're trying to, in each experience, look for the familiar, look for something that reinforces that sense of, ah, yes, it is all right. The world is safe. I know about this. And actually, we don't know. So Buddhist psychology is about basically becoming comfortable with not knowing.

[16:10]

So when I'm with my clients, It's about really listening to their stories, hearing the fear behind their stories, hearing the need to build up a sense of security behind their stories, and bit by bit, working with them to have a sense that actually it's okay not to know, that we don't need to be in control. We don't need to be holding on rigidly to things that have actually become out of date. Because that's what people do. And even when somebody comes and they talk to me about the dreadful things that have happened in childhood, the abuse, the suffering, the losses, and so on, even when people come in and talk about those things, actually, there's a kind of clinging involved in that. Why do people cling on to those? Because actually, at some level, it is even more painful to let go and to just not know.

[17:14]

You know, it's better than the devil that you know. It's very scary to actually be in a situation where you actually don't know what's going on. So people hold on to these stories. They hold on to these identities. They hold on to the sense that I'm useless. And of course, you know, these have a payback. You know, if you believe you're incapable, then you won't actually push yourself to do anything. So to let go of that belief that actually I can't opens up the possibility that maybe I can. I don't know. And that's scary. It's interesting, though. I was recently... I do quite a bit of writing. And I was recently contacted by... a journal in the UK, a humanistic therapy journal, which I've done articles for occasionally.

[18:21]

And I've been asked to take part in a discussion on theory of depressive realism. This is something that I hadn't particularly read up about at all before, but when I started to read about it, it was quite interesting. And this is a movement within... the therapy world, which is about looking at the fact that when they have researched people who suffer from depression and they've looked at their attitudes and their experience and so on, what they've discovered is that actually people who are depressed have a more realistic approach to life than people who are normal and happy and so on. Most of us are hopeless optimists. You know, if you were realistic and you went for a job interview, you know, there's six other people there. You've got a one in five or a one in six chance of getting this job. You know, what are the chances?

[19:23]

You might as well go home. You know, this is realism. But most of us will stay and do the interview anyway. So, you know, depressive realism is about facing up to those things. You know, it's very tough. But... You know, it's quite interesting reading this because, I mean, in some ways, many of the things that are written in these papers, which are not by Buddhists particularly, are about things that we would recognize as Buddhists. So, you know, they talk about, you know, life's all about sickness, old age, death, and, you know, you're not going to be around forever, and, you know, what's the point in it all? There is no purpose, and so on. But then... You know, is that actually so? Again, it's a matter of what is the truth? Where do we put our attention? And I think that in many ways what Buddhism does is it teaches us how to put our attention in the right places.

[20:28]

You know, you can go to that job interview and you can say, well, you know, I don't stand a chance. Or you can go to that job interview and say... Well, how wonderful, you know, there's all these people who are capable of doing this job. There's some interesting people who are going to be interviewing me. We're going to have an interesting conversation here. And hey, you know, I might get the job, but even if I don't, it's a good experience. You know, that would also be true. And, you know, this is so in all of the experiences in life. If I think about, you know, what happened yesterday or Oh, goodness, we walked a long way and my feet were quite sore by the end of it. And, you know, when we had to wait a long time for a tram going back up Market Street, you know, I could come up with some facts from yesterday that would make it sound as if I had the most miserable day possible. But those are not the facts that I'm actually remembering. So, you know, we have a choice about it. And, you know, in this context, I'd like to remember...

[21:32]

I'd like to talk about, like, there is a Buddhist therapy, a Japanese Buddhist therapy called Nican, which has actually come out of the Pure Land School, which is a school that I practice with. Nican therapy is all about basically shifting your attention. You know, as Westerners, we often have the idea that somehow we've grown up suffering. We've grown up suffering. with all sorts of hardships, and our parents didn't get it right for us in all sorts of ways. In NICAN, in the traditional form, you spend a week sitting with three questions. The first question that you sit with is, what did my mother do for me? You start off looking at age naught to three, and as you look at age naught to three, you are told to focus on the concrete things. Never mind what she was feeling, never mind the psychology of it.

[22:34]

How many nappies did she change? What food did she give me? What did she do in terms of singing me songs or entertaining me? How many clothes did she wash for me? So you can make lists and lists and lists of all these things. And then the second question, what did I do in return? Well, not a lot, age nought to three. Might have brought a picture home from playgroup or something like that, but not a lot, really. And what trouble did I cause her? Well, I'll leave you to fill in the answers to those questions. But, you know, these questions. And, you know, I would recommend this as a practice. Give it a go. Very simple. What did she do for me? What did I do in return? What trouble did I cause? And you can do it in relation to your mother, you can do it in relation to people at work, you can do it in relation to your partner, you can do it in relation to friends.

[23:38]

You know, you don't have to just stick with the childhood stuff, but traditionally it works through childhood. But what's the outcome? The outcome is basically a shift of awareness. You know, when we work with NICAN, we change the story. We change the story by changing the facts that we give attention to. And as we change the story, we start to feel differently. And typically, people who do Nikan, you know, you might think you end up just beating yourself up at the end of it, and probably you go through stages of regret. But most people at the end of it come out of it with a great softening of the heart, a great feeling of love, and a great feeling, more importantly, of having been loved. You know, because actually... when we start to think about it, all of us receive way, way more than we ever give back to the world. You know.

[24:43]

One of the areas that we work in at Tariki is in ecotherapy practice. And something that we've started to use is to use those NICAN in relation to the planet. What has the planet done for me? What have I done in return? And what trouble have I caused to this planet? It's a powerful process to reflect on these questions. Our lives are supported in all sorts of wonderful ways. We are not even interdependent with the world. We are dependent on the world. No two ways about it. If any one of us disappeared, how much difference would it make to the planet? If the planet disappeared, make a heck of a lot of difference to us.

[25:46]

I think one of the problems with modern society is that we've become too individualistic in our thinking. We've started to imagine that somehow we can perfect ourselves as individuals, that somehow we can escape from the whole system that we are a part of. Well, maybe in the ultimate, we can in some way. but actually that escape is not into individuality. The escape is something different from that. And as long as we are in this ordinary world, we are connected. We are deeply connected. In fact, you know, I talked about the way that the mind is conditioned, the way that our mentalities are conditioned. We are interconnected in a deep, in such a deep way that actually we can more easily think of ourselves as just the meeting point of conditions.

[26:58]

You know, each of us is just a collection of history, circumstances, accidents of birth, accidents of meetings along the way. You know, we are not self-created. We might think we are. We might think that we've achieved things, but actually it has a lot more to do with the things that have just happened to us as gifts. You know, I'm a Pure Land Buddhist, and it's wonderful to be sitting here at the side of Amida Buddha. It's the focus of our Pure Land practice. We often talk about Amida, like the universal quality of Buddha, Buddha's presence here now, always accessible, always holding us as an experience of grace. The personal and the collective are deeply enmeshed with one another.

[28:07]

In Ten Directions, we work from a Buddhist psychology perspective and we start by looking at personal conditioning. We look at the way that when somebody walks out of the door and they see a tree out there or the sky or the pelicans or whatever, they see it with a personal perspective. We look at the way that that is conditioned by history, by childhood, by things that we've learned, by our interests, by our relationships, by our enthusiasms and so on. But we then look at also how... all of that is embedded within a culture. You know, what do I see out there? I see it partly because of my own history, but I also see it because I'm a Westerner. You know, if I came from somewhere on the African continent or even somewhere in Asia, I might have a completely different perspective on what's outside the door.

[29:13]

Some things would... interest me some things would not interest me i mean for me my interest is sparked by the fact that i see something we don't have at home no so the collective deeply important and in the collective stories you know we have cultural stories the stories that we have somehow come into our mentality you know when i saw that flock of pelicans flying over the water. The experience I had wasn't just a sort of ornithological interest. It was also, I'm sure, conditioned by stories that I've read about great birds coming over the waters. You know, I mean, this is stuff of fairy tales, isn't it? And so as I stood there watching them, it's like this is something that has a sort of mythical quality to it.

[30:15]

And that is partly what charges my enthusiasm. You know, I am watching something that is timeless, that is embedded in all the layers of story that I've listened to throughout my lifetime. And here I am witnessing it at this moment. But also, you know, These experiences are embedded in a third layer, and the third layer is something about our presence on this planet. As I watch those birds flying, I am a part of the ecosystem seeing another part of the ecosystem. And as I watch them, I have my responsibility. I am aware that in order to be here, I had to come in a plane. I haven't flown for quite a few years now. And I certainly felt some discomfort at the fact that I was going to fly to get here.

[31:23]

And I went through quite a process in my mind of whether I should or not. Because, you know, the act of flying, I am part of the problem. I'm part of what may or may not. cause damage to those birds. You know, at the moment I gather they're doing pretty well around here. But, you know, things change. Over my lifetime I have seen changes. You know, we were having a conversation over breakfast and we are now seeing egrets in our area of England. We never used to get egrets there. I think I first saw one about ten years ago. Before that, never, ever. in England. Things are changing. There are real substantive changes. We used to get lots of sparrows. Hardly see sparrows now in our part of England. They used to be so common.

[32:25]

Nobody ever thought about conserving sparrows, but they're disappearing. They've become a relative rarity. So things change. I think all of us are aware that climate change is probably one of the biggest issues of our time. Well, I say that. Maybe we're not. That's an assumption. I assume that you and I kind of maybe have the same background assumptions, the same culture. Certainly people who don't think that. But in my view, I'll own it, climate change is one of the... big issues that is facing us, the biggest issue. And I think many of the other problems that are facing the world are in some way or other a derivative of that huge issue.

[33:29]

And just as with individual processes, collectively, I think that humans are responding to this level of threat that is behind us with all the same processes of attachment that we as individuals use. Humans are interested in identity, in creating different ways of developing illusions of permanence, you know. You see the national borders becoming more reinforced, you know, as threat mounts, We close our borders now. We go over to France now from England. You can see great fences now around the ferry ports. It's scary. It's like entering a prison camp. And that's because there are migrants arriving on our doorstep. People coming away from most atrocious bombings and just unbearable, unthinkable conditions, running for their lives with their children and families.

[34:37]

And they're arriving on our doorstep and we're putting up the fences. I am not proud of my country. Instead, we chase answers. We try to create a delusion of control. We look to science. Science is the new source of... They can sort it out. Technology will solve the problem. At the same time, we consume more. We see the answers in terms of growth, in terms of promoting the economy and so on. We split the world into us and them. This is a basic psychological response to difficulties, splitting, separating good and bad, me and you, dualistic thinking. Joanna Macy talks about there being three responses to climate change.

[35:47]

She says that humans have a response of business as usual. They get into denial. They just carry on, pretend it's not happening. This is avidya in Buddhist terms, not seeing, ignorance. I don't want to know. Or they just say, well, it's impossible. What she calls the great unraveling. You know, there is nothing we can do, so we might as well just go down with the ship. In a way, this is depressive realism. You know, nothing that we can do. And I think in many ways, this is kind of like the last stage. This is non-becoming. This is the last stage of delusion that Buddhists talk about. Or the third choice that she... talks about is the great turning. And this is what she promotes as spiritual change, looking into the situation and finding within it spiritual solutions to address it.

[37:08]

There needs to be a change of heart. In our approach to therapy, we call our therapy other-centered. Other-centered therapy is about reconnection. Other-centered therapy is about a spiritual change, a shift from being focused on developing ourselves into being focused on connection to others. Connection to others as with other human beings. and connection to others in terms of the planet, connection to the environment, connection to the spiritual, connection to the values that are deeper and wider than any of us. And we can only really be other-centered when we stop being self-centered.

[38:11]

And particularly when we Stop thinking that we know the answers. Being other-centered is the path of curiosity. It's the path of interest. It's the path of not knowing. It's the path of recognizing that people are different, wonderful, infinitely varied and creative, and that we cannot do this on our own, that we need to connect, and we need to connect not just with people in this room who to some degree have a like-mindedness with us, because otherwise I assume they would not be here, but also to connect and to understand and to appreciate beyond these walls.

[39:13]

and to reach out to be interested, to be respectful, and to, without being naive, appreciate the potential in everyone. So, thank you very much. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

[40:02]

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