January 24th, 2003, Serial No. 03931

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i hate
mdi ice cream room

i'm somebody who don't know who may have noticed that there's something different that the out that i just take a moment explain what's happening behind me is a mountain
and yeah
on saturday evening somebody is going to be stepping down off of the mountain
an ensemble neither person will be stepping up
nothing
i've never been up on this mountain
but i've watched people who had
it has a very good here
but they're also great style
do
and i would like to thank you plans perfectly
a bowl willing to stand on top of a man some

why

how
san center i feel like i'm being squashed a little bit between what i wanna talk about mature and yesterday was an independent i should talk ahmed
and i weekend which is kind of ball this rather important and during the ceremony
and what comey was connecting a to the savings at both have very much to do with authority and a certain way power
and our community has been born a local issue for years
in one way or diving over all of our power to another person to be responsible and many of us in fact davis and our daily lives which is
something and oftentimes early in the person's practice people who come here so what will deal with quite a ball
giving over responsibility blaming somebody else the authority basically me parenting each other
and then what sands hundred did we kind of made everything very egalitarian so we were afraid of authorities have we took it all away from everybody we gay people tremendous responsibility but wouldn't give them any authority to deal with it
i mean the way it was good because ah
we learned a little bit about them me know
the lesson that hierarchy in lot about hey hi santa clara power
and i think maybe now as and center maybe is becoming mature enough to allow people to have real authority to support people in new roles give the rail authority for the responsibility that they had taken on
and i feel strongly that they only way we can do this is by having the courage
to retain our own power
and the able even if we're frightened to give people in authority to continue having a real relationship with people in a thigh and hold them accountable and give people feedback
gently
if we don't do this as a community we will never go up
because relationship and mouse real disagreement really acknowledging what we really feel strongly about where we don't agree
to let things be a little bit messy
took knowledge real differences
and to not you know err on the side of harmony a fake kind of intimacy
people did at all the time and relationship and those relationships don't have a gaping
okay
ruda said that he
the one thing and one thing only
what he said
was that he taught about suffering and they end of zachary
when buddha was teaching there was no such thing as buddhism
they weren't the trappings of priests lay people chance
and all of the institutional accoutrements that we're surrounded with its and center
we don't really need all this stuff
to learn about suffering
and it's cessation
in our own lives and by doing that
being able to try to address suffering in the world

and his very first talk after he was awakened

the buddha describe the illness and gave the medicine
the prescriptions cobb
the four noble truths
and we tend to poo poo them because we think it was in the first dharma talk must pay for beginners
it is for beginners or intermediate and for advanced

so last night was tuesday night and
as many of he knows more he probably had don't aren't residents at sands and but who live outside the san center and the president or president the president of the united states gave a state of the union talk it was very very important talk
and because i thought it was an important target that it would be important to listen to
and
ah ok
i happen to know that it's difficult for me to listen to our president
it was really interesting at the beginning of his talk when you walked into the room the combined house and senate when he walked into the room everybody stood up and applauded a lot
and they made it very clear over the tv
the people who comment peters come into can't go in thank commentators
they made it very clear that the reason why everybody was standing up even people who don't agree with the way his handling things is because they were acknowledging the present the whoa the position of president
i thought i was really terrific
and we should do the same thing for the people who are enrolled in our community as well
the practice that kind of acknowledgement and demotion we don't lose anything when we do that we actually gain when we're able to
but at any rate i know is going to be really difficult to listen to him because even when he's just you know on the evening news and and like one of these little a teeny weeny clips i can barely i usually change it in right away
but
this time i really wanted to listen to him so i sat down and i prepared myself
i started breathing calming myself down
relaxing my body
sitting up straight
i even took paper and pencil
i was going to take notes
i wanted to really understand what he was telling me
to see if i can communicate
while the first noble truth
is the truth of suffering
and the way the buddha says it is there is suffering
he doesn't say life is suffering he doesn't say that that's not one bush and talking about now at the buddha said the buddha said just very quietly he didn't even have to yell i'm sure he didn't he just simply said
they are suffering
and everybody knew at event because it was only talking to five of his very best friends
everybody knew any amen
because everybody suffers an racing or body suffers we all suffer everybody in this room doesn't make any difference if your which poor black white asian american namibian
doesn't make any difference we all share that in common and we all don't want to suffer none of us
if asked we would say no thank you very much not today

what buddhist said about sufferings very interesting
what he said was radical a complete reversal of our usual approach which if you're honest with yourself is a total and complete failure
a usual approach is
get me out of here
denial blame
destruction of whatever they think is causing r p
distraction
basically avoids in its natural on a problem
but it doesn't bring liberation it doesn't bring peace and freedom
so what did they do to say
but his head understand saffron
acknowledge it
study it
don't turn away

why why are we willing as buddhists to turn toward suffering
when it's painful
for one reason one reason is because and if you practice long enough and begin to get the gist of it you know that if you turn away from suffering and cut it off
you cut off your life we limit life we limit huila we fail contract contracted and the truth and matter is if you listen if you are very sensitive intended to yourself
when you avoid
and separate from something it hurts it's painful
so i didn't want to separate myself from i president
i wanted to include his reality as my reality in my life because in fact that the matter is we are totally connected his truth is my trip whether i want it or not nowadays it certainly is
we can't afford to cut off anything anymore
not our own suffering not the the not the little disturbances that other people cause us both unintentional or intentional
and we can't cut off people who disagree with us in the wider community
and you know excuse me plans so but president bush
ought not to be cutting off people who you know really disagree with how the united states you know is in the world we have to listen to those people
just as we have to listen to ourselves and two others were in relationship with
anyway he gave a really interesting speech
the end of it was the most interesting to me
oh for heaven's sake
the end of it he did this kind of very ancient
ah kind of sermon six harmonic is there such a thing as harmonic
ceremony ash and happen
kind of in a call and response repeat after me kind of thing and it listed he listed these horrific possibilities
they have an aunt you know for for president bush everybody in iraq now is they write so therefore we can kill them
some paper
anyway
sudan has no six hundred pounds and i hope i'm not gonna scare anybody but i was really scared and of this six hundred pounds of anthrax and he did not show us that it was destroyed and he lets see know he did
not destroy it and he did not show he didn't right now
he didn't it was not destroyed and hit know we don't i forgot what he said that now but it's something the thing that was repeated was
i can't read my nerf eight yeah i should now when i type this out and printed out i should do it and like the fine should be like fourteen instead of twelve a meanwhile i can't feel it
anyway it was something like around
i didn't even know hundred for a page
brainerd
eh
destroy a destroyed show
nor has he shown that it has been destroyed nor has he shown that it has been destroyed and he has a hundred thousand pounds of rice and poison one itsy bitsy bit of it can kill you know thousands and hit he asked not found that it was a stray do
not say that it was destroyed it is now didn't show that it was destroyed didn't show over and over again didn't show it was destroyed didn't show by the end of it it was frightening i was scared to death and i was ready to say would you please destroy it for me you know
and and i'm sure that's what he wants us to feel in that fear
but i was sitting upright i was paying attention to my breath my body was relaxed
and i was afraid my heart was pounding very fast and muscles were tightening
who's afraid but there was space around my perception of what i call fear
so i had the choice of responding not out of that place
but from a place of stability and
in my judgmental opinion anyway sanity this point

anyway ask him to hand here's the point
i was gonna say fear of separation we have to understand separation when you understand it deeply enough you understand what do you understand you understand when you say suffering really deeply you understand that everything is moving and changing it's just perceptions on and when you understand that everything changes you don't really feel like grasping after it because when
new grasp you know that it costs us up
in seventies and so forth is no really self in there any way we just create an idea of self and we grab onto him that create separation
and then i was gonna say fed separation is an illusion and then i was gonna show you my homepage
how my computer
to prove to you just in case you don't know that we live one live there is nothing separate from anything we all live one we are one life
so i'm gonna prove it
in this way
most of these i'm going to pass around actually so you can see them up close
and you can even take them home if you wanted because i saved one of them and am
am i my homepage happens to be the universe so
ah i get a shot of the universe every single time i open my computer which completely blows my mind apart
which is a good thing
so i have the is called the astronomy picture of the day and i actually have pictures of the universe so i will start you first
at home pitches the earth and if you're standing on the earth and looking out you see the sun not very long ago we had a total eclipse of the sun
and so what they did with this picture is they blocked out the disk and the sun and you can see a blue sky with a blocked out son and the crown of the sun not just the corona a little light right around the circle but the crown of the sun okay
that's what that one is
k
can pass room
and then they took a closer picture of the sun itself
now this is outrageous
because the only thing that's happening are these massive it's just completely nuclear explosions by constant nuclear explosions there's not the sun is not this solid thing the sun is this kind of mushy
looks machine may kind of just exploding thing it's just exploding all over the place and that's this picture
no pass it around that would flip just as agency and that when we get to that when it with that when it
man i just did this one because this is the southern hemisphere and i've never been to the southern hemisphere it says different looking sky
and then they had a picture of the atlantis challenger exploding off of their into space
so we're going to go on a trip so here you are
that's the challenge challenging exploding often the pad shooting up into space
and then this picture is a shot of the moon from space we're now in space
shot of the moon it's a moon rise over the earth and you can see a blue earth the clouds that little teeny weeny bit of atmosphere that we depend on it's just a little bit in the scheme of things you can like somebody to go on
a blow it and which is blow right on
it would be a problem and behind it is the moon
coming up over the earth
and then from space
we now have the hubble telescope and we can take pictures of things that we have never seen before closely so to start with this is just close to us these are just some of the stars in our immediate area these are the pleiades which are just beautiful up in the night sky these are the pleiades a little
bit bigger
k
have you like that judith like for creative
and then a little farther away we have a
up from ryan's net mariah in the constellation orion we have the horsehead nebula
so we're getting a little bit farther away and the universe is getting a little bit bigger
so this is the and star in orion's belt that when there and then this other years the horsehead nebula the little black patch in the red

k and then we have our first shot of the galaxy were getting much farther away
in this galaxy is very much like the galaxy we live in
and if it were our galaxy will will be in about here in one of the arms
not too close to the center but not too far away and of course as you know the a galaxy there are billions and billions and billions and billions of stars in a galaxy okay our stars just one of em
stay with me
the ones sorry did i pass the last into that way
i can have an answer now organising okay now we have a picture a little bit farther away still and i'm gonna show you the picture first
this is a picture
not have a group of stars okay
this is a picture of a group of galaxies
that the hello took a picture
k this is a group of galaxies
oh and you can see one of them is a beautiful little spiral galaxy just like ours
only it
billions of light-years away
it's big
where we live his big and the reason that you're laughing it i think is because in this next picture the word that they use is enormous okay but now i'll show you the picture first february
this pictures and when i walked back
this is a picture
it's called i think able number sixteen eighty nine and it shows a warp in space and the reason it shows a warp and space and this is by the way billions and billions of light-years away two billion light years away
is because it's a picture of a but i mean really really large nazi the reason why say it's because the reason why our life is inconceivable is because words don't touch it if i show you this picture i caught and i say
say like it says over here it says the power of let me tell you what the patient shows first it shows a band in the universe because there's so much mass hear that space is curved just like einstein predicted
so what they say about it is is the power of this enormous gravitational
lens that this bandit that this gravity makes distorts the galaxies it on the edge of it and you can see it it it makes a kind of a circle of galaxies and they call it and not the enormous bend warp well you know the word enormous
yeah
but it's the same thing when we say flower
it's just as ineffable
what we are experiencing in our life is so beyond what words can catch
and yet we use words to separate and make
that
the the suffering that we could have the smallness that we live in it's not small it's enormous
so this is that picture these are bunches and bunches and bunches of galaxies two billion light years away from us two billion light years away from us that and you can see a circle that bend
they bend space and so the galaxies are kind of shown like this instead of straight on like this

anyway

so it's our job as i
buddhist practitioners to wake up
to wake up to the mystery that is us that is life itself
no separations no boundaries there no little countries
drawn on the earth from space
we're all one event
and being asleep to that
believing the separation
pushing away pain excluding things that are uncomfortable in our daily life
islam is a misunderstanding
it is ignorance and it's our job to eliminate that misunderstanding and live from a place of connectedness
and
aah peace
so it's longer than i usually talk
so if you want yourselves to me
your mind to be just smithereens
daily you can take one in the pictures but give me back the one that shows the enormous
ben in space