Truth of the Tathagatas. Good evening. One of the ways of describing what Buddhist meditation is about is to say that it is trying to learn the nature of things. It's our way or a way of helping us to learn the nature of things, which is kind of a big statement. To say that there is a nature of things is already maybe an assumption. a pretty big assumption that there is a nature of things.

[01:00]

So as Ajahn Amaro said when he was here last week, the Buddha way is not for someone to tell you this is the way things are. It's for you to hear things and then to explore whether it's true or not in your experience. So... in that uh with that attitude i put out this statement that one of the ways to describe what buddhist meditation about is to learn the nature of things and further that um because if there is an a nature of things the best place for us to learn about it is as close to home as we can get, because that's where we'll have the most information.

[02:05]

So to learn about the nature of things by learning about the nature of this particular thing, this body, this mind, actually not this particular thing, but these particular things, As we all know, many, many things reside in this vicinity. So many things that it becomes, of course, very confusing to us if we try to figure out what are they. But if we just sort of take them as they arise and don't worry about getting all of them, because we won't ever get every thought, every feeling, every sensation. That's beyond our capacity, at least for most of us, probably all of us. So to just take whichever ones arise and try to study them to learn what is the nature of reality, the nature of reality.

[03:10]

That sounds even bigger than the nature of things. There's at least one, maybe I'll come up with more, but I'll start with one clue to how to do this. And that is that the nature of reality will not show itself to us unless we are open to it. Well, maybe that's a little too. The nature of reality, it would have to be a very dire situation, a kind of shocking situation for the nature of reality to break through our opinion about it if we are not open to it so if we have an idea about what's happening pretty much we can't see anything different than that once in a while something so far outside our idea happens that it kind of cracks our idea you know those kind of things happen to all of us

[04:23]

it's just not usually something we hope for. Something that cracks our idea of who we are or what we are or what the world is, is usually a kind of shocking thing. So for our own sake, for a kind of daily exploration or movement toward more understanding of how things are, it's very useful to... put aside as much as possible ideas about what they should be. And again, doing that with ourselves as close as we can to our sensory equipment is very helpful and also very difficult because the person that we care the most about what they're like is me. I mean, I care about me and you care about you. We really care what this one is like. And then other people, as they get closer to us, you may have noticed, you care more, especially if you have a partner or a child, we tend to care a lot what that person is like.

[05:35]

So as much as possible, at least while trying to look at, which can turn out to be all the time, but start in zazen or a few minutes a day, of just trying to have, instead of an idea of how... how things or i or my feelings or my thoughts should be try just having an open heart about what might be here some curiosity about what might be here leaving some space for whatever arises this is this is a hard thing to do it sounds like it should be easy And, you know, if you have had a small child, you might have, maybe when they were really small especially, have experienced that. You know, just wonder about what is, who is this person? What is this person?

[06:37]

Of course, very soon it starts to, I wish this person was different than this. You know, I wish this person was happy. I used to, I think Keith, my husband, and I did... very well, actually, with our daughters, of wanting them to be whoever they were. However, I did want them to be happy. It's true. And later, when they were teenagers, that got to be a very bad thing because they weren't. And then they felt even more pressured in their unhappiness by my wanting them to be happy. It's really a hard thing to be a parent. It's also a hard thing to be a person. So to turn that kind of acceptance toward ourselves, toward our thoughts, toward our feelings, toward our actions, you might, if you're thinking about this as I'm saying it, you might realize this is a hard thing. We look at our actions and we often wish, I wish I'd done that differently.

[07:41]

I wish I'd said something differently. I wish I felt differently. So to put some effort into setting that aside and letting it be what it actually is, is the best way to find out what is it. Of course, the what is it might not turn out to be... The answer to what is it might not turn out to be in English. You know, we tend to think... Oh, what is it that I'm feeling, for instance? What is it? But the answer might never come in that list of emotions that you're supposed to be able to find. It might, but it might not. To let it be as mysterious, as complex, as unknown as it insists on staying, but to still have that

[08:48]

or try to have, have the intention of having that open heart toward it. And if you can't be open-hearted toward it, if your heart just says, no, I hate this, then try to be open-hearted toward that. It's an ever-expanding possibility of where you can start. You start wherever you can to try to get to a closer relationship with what's actually there instead of what we imagine might be there, if only things were just a little different. If I practiced harder or that person treated me better or many, many things might make us into the person that we think we should be. But to just be open-hearted with the person, the element of a person that is now appearing. I've been debating tonight while I think about this talk about whether to tell you a Zen story that shows a certain attitude toward this or tell you two of the things that I think you'll find if you do this.

[10:16]

That's kind of cheating, right? You're supposed to be looking at it yourself. But still, you don't have to believe me. So maybe I'll start with that and then go to the Zen story if there's time. So I think from my experience that two of the things that you will find if you can do this, or to the extent that we can do it, it's not do it or don't do it, it's how much can we do it, how much can we be open-hearted with ourselves. There is a continuum there from perfectly open-hearted, which... who knows we may never get to, to really closed to what's appearing here. So if we can move over just a little bit, you know, there can be a little crack in our certainty that this is wrong. Whatever is appearing here is not the right thing. So, well, maybe, you know, just a little curiosity about it. So...

[11:17]

Two of the things that I've discovered that you might discover are that they are, so far, I think in my experience, without fail, connected to other things. They don't come from nothing. They come from the past. They come from what somebody said. other people, they come from my foot stepping on the ground and there being a rock there. There's a connection to other things that appear in this body and mind as something. If my husband insists on cooking the onions barely, barely cooking them, so they're those big, globby, slimy onions.

[12:24]

My response to that is irritation, gagging irritation. If the kitchen here does the same thing, I don't have quite the same response. I don't like it, but it's here, it's Tassajara, you don't have any choice, you're just supposed to eat what they give you. But he's supposed to know. It's been 30-some years I've been telling him I don't like it. I take it personally. So you can see how it's connected to who he is, what the food is, what my response is. So it's connected. They're connected. And the other thing that I've noticed, I think, This one's not quite as for sure, but I think it is. It is that they change.

[13:28]

None of them hold, never change, even though a number of them come back. So we may get the feeling that they don't change, like the big globby onion, slimy onion thing. It's pretty familiar, the response to it. But I think most of them actually do change a little bit over time, even when they return. They're not quite what they were before. And they certainly come and go. There are days that I don't think about that feeling, that particular feeling. And even the more sort of basic pit of your stomach feeling that may be like... It might be that each of us has one or two of those that are particular to us, having something to do with the chemicals in our stomach or something, or our past karma, or any number of things.

[14:31]

Even those are not always there. They come and go dependent upon other things. some of them it's a big surprise to see that they come and go because we tend to think that they are when we're in the throes of them it feels like they're always there so again this is these are good ones to be open-hearted with what is this you know what is this nature what's happening here now it's it may be hard to ask that question without getting into a certain kind of mindset of trying to figure it out. That's why I say it may not speak in English and why open-hearted is maybe a good way to describe the feeling of it.

[15:40]

It's not dissect it and write up what the parts are, display all the different parts and have it add up to something. It's a softer feeling than that. Or, so here's the Zen story that I think illustrates this attitude, one of them. One day the world-honored one was walking with the congregation. He pointed a finger at the ground and said, this is a good place to build a sanctuary. Indra, the king of the gods, who just happened to be walking with him, picked up a blade of grass and stuck it in the ground and said, a sanctuary is built. And the world-honored one smiled.

[16:41]

So the world-honored one is the Buddha in this story, and he's taking a walk. with his congregation. Kind of like us, you know, all day long we're walking with our congregation. We may not recognize them, we may think they didn't really belong here, or we didn't really belong here, but actually we're walking all day long with our congregation. And so at any moment, we could point our finger at the ground and say, this is a good place to build a sanctuary. This is a good place to consider sacred. And also to... This is a good place to be safe. Sanctuary is kind of both those things. It's a sacred place where there is safety. Enough safety, at any rate, to be open-hearted to what's there.

[17:44]

So at any time, we can point... our finger at the ground or point our finger at ourself or point our figure at our heart or our stomach or our throat or our head and say, this is a good place to build a sanctuary. This is a good place to build a sanctuary. And then try to treat that place like a sanctuary, like a place where something sacred is appearing and where something safe is appearing. So a good time to say this is when it feels like it's not a safe thing. This is not a safe thing that's happening. That might be a good time to find that thing that's not safe and point our finger at it and say, this is a good place to build a sanctuary. And then, so Indra happened to be walking with Buddha,

[18:49]

I'm not sure who's walking with us, but it's probably going to have to be another part of ourselves, right? Some Indra, the king, queen of the gods, picks up a blade of grass and sticks it in the ground and says, a sanctuary is built. The commentary to this says, repairs will not be easy. LAUGHTER So we pick up, you know, whatever, and then the poem about it, which I read to you last time I lectured, was taking up what comes to hand. He uses it masterfully. So whatever there is, you know, whatever appears in our sanctuary or around our sanctuary or, you know, in the vicinity of our body and mind, to plant it right there in this sacred place. And call it the sanctuary.

[19:52]

Have that kind of feeling about it. And then the world honored one smile. So maybe we'll get to smile somewhere in that process, depending upon how painful it is. Two people recently have talked to me about... situations with their partners. One was saying that she felt she and her partner were in a kind of negative habitual thing that happened and was wondering how to break out of that or what to do with it, you know, and they would get irritated with each other. And the other one had broken up with her partner and was wondering what to do with the guilt that because this he was he was unhappy these two were women he was unhappy and when she would hear from him or anything she would feel guilty about it I was wondering what how to treat that guilt or what to do with it and you know I've I've often said that relationship intimate relationship is is really good practice and also really hard practice

[21:20]

And tonight I was thinking, oh, you know, maybe some of us who have those supposedly intimate relationships, you know, where we have a partner or something like that, maybe we focus more of our attention on that relationship because we are all very, very intimately connected. So if we don't have what we call an intimate relationship, Maybe our sensory equipment, our emotions and our minds have to get triggered or activated as much by other people or by other things. It's not like people who are single have fewer nerve endings. You may have noticed. So our nerves are out there.

[22:22]

And it might be that those of us who have partners, we just dedicate a whole number of our nerve endings to them. And they're kind of dead to everybody else. They're just waiting for that person to do the slimy onion thing. Or something better than that. But anyway, so the point is, I think we all have this opportunity of being activated by our environment. So these two women talked to me, but I think it's really just as relevant to anybody. Whatever kind of relationships we're in, in our body, they are extremely intimate. They come into our body. We experience them in our body. We have a reaction to them in our bodies, whatever we call them, intimate or not. What I said to both of these people in different situations was really just the same thing.

[23:25]

The same thing that I just said to you. Try to find your reaction and try to make some space for it. Which does not mean defending it. It doesn't mean make some space for it and say, this is my sanctuary and it's safe and sacred and don't mess with it. And it's right. It's the right response because obviously what you did. No, it's not that, but it also isn't turning away from it or denying it or trying to imagine it out of existence or beat it out of existence or talk it out of existence or any of the things that we normally do to try to get away from it. It's rather to turn toward it and try to be open-hearted. Just try to be open-hearted with it, not defending it, but not blaming it either. So that practice, that particular practice, actually is never-ending because we keep responding to things and we keep changing.

[25:07]

Our bodies keep changing, our minds keep changing, we keep having different responses to things. It's an ongoing exploration of the nature of this thing. And then as we begin to see an experience, whether we can say it or not, what this thing is, what the nature of this thing is, I think my experience is we begin to see that similarity Wherever we look, actually, as we get familiar with what is defensiveness over here, that's a wonderful thing to learn. What is defensiveness when it shows up in this body? To start to recognize defensiveness. And what happens when defensiveness appears?

[26:09]

I learned it when I was the president of Zen Center because people kept coming to me with their thoughts about what was wrong. They would come and tell me, oh, this should be different, and this should be different, and this should be different. And defensiveness arose regularly. It's like they were talking about things that I cared about and loved or at least didn't want to deal with. So they'd come and say, this is really blah, blah, blah, blah. And defensiveness would come up. And then, so if I would say anything from that defensive place, they would never be satisfied. They would almost always come back with more force, more trying to convince me of what they were saying. Or if they did turn away and go away, it was clear they were not happy. And there was almost always mop-up to be done afterwards. So it was very much a learning situation. Like, this is not working.

[27:12]

This does not lead to me not having to think about this. This leads to me having to deal with it even more. So what's a different response? And what is the thing that's happening in me that's causing this? So on a visceral level, I got pretty familiar with my particular way of manifesting internally and externally defensiveness. And then could work with, okay, what might work better? what worked better for me in those cases, quite a few of those cases anyway, was to ask them questions about what they were saying. It gave me some space from their, kind of the emotional push of what they were saying. And let me understand better what they were trying to say. Let them back off a little ways from the way they were saying it and try to say it in a different way. Anyway, it That worked fairly well, but the main, looking back on it, I think the main benefit to me was learning to recognize defensiveness when it arises because then there's a chance to like, oh, where is this?

[28:27]

Can I soften around it? Can I be open-hearted to it in a non-defending way, non-protecting way, and yet experience it? One last thing I want to say about this is that something that we often misunderstand about this practice is that it might turn out to be passivity. That if we were going to be open-hearted to what comes up in us, we would never be trying to change anything. Which might be true. We might not be trying to change something in a particular way, but just by our being... we if we are open to that we actually do change things there isn't any possibility of passivity because we are an active part of the whole so if we open to this we will be even more of who we are and that has an effect on the nature of things because it's it is connected

[29:37]

So I'm wondering if you have any thoughts or questions. Anybody? Yes. Say that again. Yes. Yeah. Same way. You know, like find... I recommend you try to find it in your body if it can be localized at all. Maybe it can't. Maybe it's just like everywhere. And then try to open your heart. It's helpful to take a stable position, physical posture, you know, like sitting, standing, walking, or lying down to do it in some stable way. And with some... emotions especially but sometimes thoughts too you actually have to lie down like sitting is not stable enough you need to like be on the ground if it's a big enough emotion but yeah same same thing there's

[31:02]

No real answer. Well, it's not exactly an answer. It's understanding its nature, which might partly be how it changes, that it changes, and that it's connected. And maybe some other things, too, that just like one of the things that we sometimes learn if we do this is that I can live through it. Because we often have a feeling, especially about emotions that we've had before that are unpleasant, that if I go there, if I let myself feel that, I'm going to drown in it. But it's not really true. Actually, the emotions are smaller than we are. They're inside us somewhere. So if we can open to them and feel them, one of the things that we... probably will learn is that I can actually live through this and and that's it's big it's big because really without thinking about it in a kind of unconscious way we think I can't I'll die if I feel this one and then we spend a tremendous amount of energy making sure that we do not feel it

[32:22]

Yeah, Rick. In general, you mean? Obstacles in practice. Well, there certainly are things that we experience as obstacles. But I think if we can do this, that they turn out not to be obstacles. Do you have something in mind? like feelings? Yes. [...] It's just a kind of basic, general annoyance at certain times.

[33:38]

Yeah. Yeah, and then we might tend to think, basically, I have to get rid of this for my life to work in order to practice, even maybe. I think I'm really glad you asked that because I think we don't know how to get rid of it. You know, that really when it comes up, the best response to it, and I know this is like counter to our intuition, it's... It's very, very hard to do, which is why something like zazen, something where we spend some time kind of quietly sitting with, either with that if it comes up, but sometimes it doesn't come up in something like zazen, right? But nonetheless, we get more solid in and balanced in our body so that it's more possible over time to meet it. And I think that this open-hearted thing, open-hearted, you know, that's just a word for it, something like curiosity, acceptance, giving up, giving up that I have an idea that I should be a different person, but no, this thing is really here.

[34:55]

I don't think there's really any other way to go. But I might be wrong. I think if we get to the bottom of it, it's definitely a vehicle. And before we get to the bottom of it, you know, I mean, if we can let go of it and it goes away, that's fine. But that's not what you're talking about. I mean, I'm sure you've tried that and it hasn't worked. Tried things like just letting go of it? No, like... Feeling it. Like, well, it is what it is. Do you have any idea what you've done lately that makes it work a little bit? Yes.

[36:17]

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's as real as things get. Yeah, right. And that has made it... Who would have thought? Thank you. Okay. Thank you all very much. We are in tension.

[37:07]

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