Now, we all have, or we all are, lined up exactly in us, or lined up exactly as us, a Buddha. And this is the fundamental nature of our heart and mind. It's really an amazing miracle that there can be consciousness, and that we can see the beauty of the world, that we can hear the sounds of the world, that we can meet and love each other. And all of this is bathed in the light of consciousness itself. Without this light, nothing at all

[01:12]

would appear. Without this light, we would have nothing to say, we would have nothing to do, we would have no names for things, and there wouldn't be any air or space or music. We wouldn't have anywhere to go, and we wouldn't have anything to complain about. But we have an old habit of covering up this light. We're in a kind of dream, and in this dream, we deeply forget that we are Buddha, and we wander around thinking that we have all sorts

[02:20]

of problems, thinking that we're confused, unfulfilled, unhappy, dissatisfied. And these feelings, these thoughts, are extremely vivid and convincing, which I find in itself remarkable, marvelous, how convincing it all is. So, our effort in practicing the Way is to uncover the light, remove the obscurations and obstacles that cover the light, the light that's always right there in the middle of our lives, identical with consciousness itself, the light that makes

[03:20]

everything, even our misery, even our fear, even our confusion, possible. So I find this, in a way, personally, rather a funny situation. I try to be more serious. I feel, you know, that I should be more serious, being a Buddhist priest and all, which I still can hardly believe, but I just can't help it, you know, because this is a very amusing situation, however painful. And it's also painful, I know. There is a lot of suffering, I'm aware. But even in the middle of suffering, isn't it funny that we run around looking for something

[04:44]

far away to end our suffering, when the end of our suffering is right in the suffering? Where else could it be? So we suffer, and as a remedy for our suffering, we pile up more suffering on top of the suffering. This is our method for ending suffering, to pile up more suffering. So our practice is the effort to come to the end of this stupidity. In our practice, we try to stop running around, piling up more suffering, and simply stay where we are, trying to uncover the light that's already there. This is a very simple thing. It's too simple. All we're trying to do is notice the light that's there, if we look.

[06:03]

And then when we notice a tiny flicker of light, to have confidence in that, to nurture it, so that it will grow and extend into our lives, becoming stronger and more radiant, to become committed to the light in our lives, to allow it, just to allow it, more and more to shine in our lives, until we can see, until it's bright enough for us to see, how our life is connected, everywhere, to everything, how it's impossible for us to be separate and isolated and mean-spirited.

[07:08]

Then, it really isn't such a big deal, whether we get what we think we need or not. Suddenly, that issue, that before seemed so important, doesn't seem so important anymore. And that's why we sit down, the way we do on our little black cushions, because we know that the nature of our mind is light, because we know that this light is never anywhere other than right intimately here, where we are, and because we know that our life is always held by the whole world. So, with that feeling, and that spirit, and out of that feeling, and out of that spirit, we sit down on our little cushion and breathe.

[08:21]

There really isn't too much to say about it, there really isn't too much to do about it. We just sit down, and we let the universe hold us up, and we just breathe with the present moment in light of our life, and that's about it. And I think we're very lucky that we have stumbled into this simple little thing that is so fundamental. And this month, in the month of January, we're all in a retreat, contemplating this, working on this, from various angles, bringing up various teachings of the Buddha that discuss it in different ways.

[09:25]

And I've been talking about the six perfections of the Bodhisattva, the six great practices whose purpose it is to find and nurture and grow and develop this light inside of us, this light that is what we are. And these six practices are the practices of generosity, ethical conduct, patience, energy, concentration, and wisdom. So in a series of talks, I've been little by little talking about these, beginning at the beginning, and I'm around in the middle now, talking about patience, one of my favorite subjects. So this morning, I would like to continue and say a little bit with you about patience, the perfection of patience, the practice of patience as a means of extending and strengthening this light that is in us.

[10:33]

I think patience is the best practice myself. It's very difficult, but it's really a good one, because it takes a lot of patience to practice the way... Actually, I think it takes a lot of patience to be a human being anyway. Patience is the practice that we do when we're frustrated. So we don't run out of chances to practice patience. Plenty of frustration there. I think it's almost impossible to be alive and not experience frustration quite a bit of the time, because there are quite a bit of things in our life that are frustrating. It's frustrating not to get what you want or think you deserve or need.

[11:45]

And it's frustrating to have to get a lot of stuff that you really wish you didn't have. It's frustrating to have a body, because eventually that body has aches and pains, and eventually it starts falling apart little by little. And it's also frustrating to have a mind, because the mind doesn't always work the way you wish it would. We want our mind to be a certain way, and it's not that way, and that's frustrating. It's frustrating to live in a world full of all these people, needing these people, and yet they are not cooperating with our plan for how they should be and how they should fulfill our needs and desires.

[13:00]

And the worst thing is that it's very frustrating to know that none of this, not our mind, not our body, not our world, not the people in the world, none of this is really too much under our control. We're kind of at the mercy of all of it. And all the time we would like things to be a certain way, we have no control over it, and usually they're not quite that way. So it's frustrating. So naturally, in our frustration, we get angry and we figure whose fault is this, and we figure out somebody or other, it's their fault, or our fault, or it's fault. If only she wouldn't be like that, you know, things would be different.

[14:05]

If only he were this way, everything would be better. If only I weren't like this, if only I were smarter or better looking or hadn't done this or hadn't done that. If only I were enlightened or got more exercise or lost 10 pounds or was in a better relationship or something or other, then things would be different and I wouldn't be frustrated. So this is how we think about it. It's even worse if we don't even know that we're frustrated, which happens too. We might be going along thinking everything is just fine, not noticing that underneath our veneer of superficial just-fine-ness is lots of frustration we're not even aware of.

[15:06]

So we go through life being kind of half-asleep or somehow disconnected from any vitality, not really there, and not even realizing exactly that we're not there until we get sick or we have trouble sleeping at night. Or we have a pain over here in the necks that won't go away quite... Or we begin to realize that none of our relationships in our life are satisfying or reasonable. So anyway, I think we all know about this and we all know that there is plenty of frustration in our life, plenty of times when unsatisfactory situations inside or outside arise and there's not much we can do about them.

[16:22]

Then, of course, we think, all right, let's do something about it, and we start running around doing things about it. And we do a lot of things, but none of it really touches the source of our frustration. So we have many things going on to improve, but deep down, if we ever had the time to take a moment to look deep down, if we ever had the nerve and the time to take a moment to actually look deep down, we would probably recognize that really none of the things that we're doing to improve the situation or to escape the situation, because a lot of times we just would prefer to escape, none of these things is really an escape, none of them is really an improvement, none of them are really touching the very deep core reasons for the frustration in our lives,

[17:30]

the frustration that if we look long enough and deep enough, we'll see is actually identical with the moment-by-moment experience of our lives. So, patience is a good practice. It's always required, and it's a very radical approach to the frustrations of our lives. To practice patience, or sometimes we call this practice in English, endurance, or sometimes forbearance, is simply to be where we are and not allow the frustration of our life to push us away from ourself, to push us off of ourself. To just be with the frustration and stop the blaming and the self-criticism and the scheming to change things,

[18:41]

and just allowing ourselves to enter deeply into what it is that we're actually experiencing without kidding ourselves about it one bit. A radical honesty with what's actually there. This is what it is. This is who I am. This is what we are together. This is what is really going on right now. This is this breath. This is this emotion. This is this tasting, this seeing, this standing, this walking. So this is how we've been trying to study. And we're finding that, I think we're finding anyway, that it's quite remarkable, quite wonderful,

[19:55]

just to actually allow ourselves to be with ourselves, honestly, with whatever it is that's there. And when we stop blaming and stop trying to arrange the world, we can find peace. And there can be peace even if there's a pain. There can be peace even if there's unhappiness. It doesn't mean we like unhappiness or we seek pain, but even if unhappiness and pain are there, there can be peace. A deep, satisfying peacefulness in being able to bear what must be born,

[21:00]

in being able to be with what we can't escape from anyway. And the miracle is that when we practice patience in this way, we find that very naturally, without any activity or manipulation or desire on our part, things naturally do change. Our hatred falls away. Our confusion clears up. Our desire feels fulfilled or just simply dissolves. So it's a marvelous, marvelous thing to practice patience. Even in practicing patience, we could come to appreciate our frustration.

[22:12]

What wonderful frustration. Without this frustration, I would not have been able to develop patience. Thank goodness, you know, for this broken love affair. How great that I was fired from my job. How delightful that my house burned down. Without that, I never would have been able to find true patience. What a great thing. Now, let's think about this a little more. In order to practice patience, you have to give up expecting anything, right? If you're expecting something, this wouldn't really be practicing patience. This would simply be waiting for the thing you're expecting.

[23:17]

So that's not practicing patience. Practicing patience means, again, to radically just be with what's in front of you. As if it would be there forever. And that you're not expecting something different to happen. And you're not wishing for something else. If you consider what it is, the effect of wishing for something else, you see how stupid it is to wish for something else. Even though that's all we ever do, is wish for something else. Many people have often remarked that when you go to a restaurant, if you listen to the conversation at all the tables, it'll always be about previous restaurant experiences and implying the future restaurant experiences that may happen. So it's very stupid to be wishing for something else,

[24:26]

because you get in the habit of that. When you wish for something else, it becomes a habit. So that when you get the something else that you wished for, you don't notice it because you're wishing for still something else at the time that you receive it. This is not a reasonable practice. It's not a reasonable approach to life, although it's quite common. So you end up never actually having the life that's there, because you're always wishing for one that isn't there. So you have a life that isn't a life. It's a wish for something that's never there. And what is it that we're wishing for? We're wishing for something more pleasant and more exciting than what we think we have now. But, you know, nothing at all is pleasant or exciting in itself. Right?

[25:26]

You can prove this by the tenth ice cream cone method. After the ninth ice cream cone, you see that the tenth ice cream cone really isn't pleasant. Ice cream becomes, if you like ice cream, that's the assumption, you like ice cream, you have one ice cream cone or two or three, and on the tenth ice cream cone you see that ice cream in and of itself is not pleasant. It's our mind in relation to something that creates the sensation of pleasant or exciting, right? So when you have a mind that's constantly wishing for something else, that's impatient and full of frustration, you will never find anything really pleasant or exciting. So to practice patience in an odd sort of way

[26:35]

is to give up all hope and aspiration in that way, and just decide that we will be here now in our lives, just patient with whatever happens. So that's the big secret of the path. Now there's one thing we know for sure, that is that something slightly or greatly different from this moment is going to happen in the next moment, and we have no idea exactly what it will be, or whether we're going to like it or not. This we know. The next moment will be a little bit or a lot different, and we don't know how, and we don't know whether we'll like it. And every moment we have to adjust to this

[27:37]

slight or great difference, not knowing what it will be. This is hard. Imagine if I said we will do an experiment in which every instant, instant after instant, something new and unknown is going to happen, and you're going to have to relentlessly, moment after moment, adjust to this new circumstance about which you know absolutely nothing. And if I said, you know, this is a psychology experiment, would you agree to do it? You might say, yes, but I think no more than an hour. I think I could do that for an hour, and I would be exhausted, it would be too much. But I'm willing to try it for an hour. And yet, this is what happens, you know, to us. Every day of our whole life, 24 hours a day. So there really are a lot of opportunities to practice patience.

[28:42]

So as I said, we're doing this month-long practice period, and we're in about the middle of it or so, or maybe a little past the middle. And in this time we've had a very intensive schedule which has made us all focus on a moment-by-moment basis on our experience. And so for the benefit of those of you who have been in this practice period, I want to interrupt my dharma talk right now to give you a news report. Because you probably have been so intent on your own experience that you have no idea about the news. So I'm going to tell you about the news in the world at large. Which is a little hard for me to do because I don't really know exactly what the world is. I don't know whether the world... They always talk about the real world. I'm not clear on what that is exactly. Whether it's in Washington, D.C., or it's in Paris,

[29:52]

or Bosnia. Whether it's in space. Whether it's only in my mind, only in your mind, or all our minds. I'm not sure. I do read the newspaper sometimes and I read the newspaper columnist occasionally and I'm pretty sure that what they think the world is probably isn't it. Because it seems so small, the world that they... It's just about what two or three people... What they think two or three people are thinking seems to be the world. So... Anyway, despite this, I'm going to still give you a news report. So, here's a news item for you. Last week was the fifth anniversary of the Gulf War. Remember the Gulf War? It was a glorious victory.

[30:55]

I remember it really well because we were in a... I think it started actually on the first day of our fall practice period five years ago and we spent the entire 49 days of the fall practice period meditating on this Gulf War and it was very difficult. So I remember it well. Anyway, I heard a guy on the radio remembering about the Gulf War and said, and I copied these statistics down, he said there were 88,000 tons of bombs dropped in Iraq during the Gulf War. Seven times the explosive power that was dropped on Hiroshima was dropped on Iraq during the Gulf War and that over 500,000 children were killed by the bombs and by the related incidents of bad water, no food, no social services and so on.

[32:03]

So I can't believe that that's true. But maybe it's an exaggeration, maybe it's half that. But anyway, even if it's half that, it's a huge number of children, not to mention soldiers wiped out by the Gulf War which was, from our perspective, such a glorious victory in which very few people were harmed on our side. But we forget, you know, in wars that it isn't just our side who's in the war. Then another news item. Martha told me this. She gets the New Yorker. She said that there was a big article in the New Yorker about the declining state of human sperm.

[33:08]

Human sperm apparently is going downhill. Its vitality, statistically, I think around the world, is decreasing which means that sperm counts are lower on the average than they used to be and the sperm that there are left are not as vital, they're not as active, not as strong as sperm used to be. That's what it said in the New Yorker. Here's another news item. A close friend of mine has a troubled teenage daughter. I think I mentioned a little bit about this last time I talked here. She is an inveterate rave attender.

[34:11]

Raves start around midnight. Well, if you go to raves a lot, it's pretty hard to go to school. Also, I guess they have a lot of drugs at raves. She's not doing that well from my friend's point of view and he's really upset about it and there's not much he can do about it and he doesn't understand why his daughter is alienated from school and from any idea of a kind of hopeful and normal life. I mean, my friend is a wonderful person and he's happily married and he and his wife love their children and are very supportive and understanding and really flexible parents. So they can't understand what happened there. Why is it that there's no communication with their daughter and that she seems to be

[35:12]

in some way quite down about life? So to find out more about this he went on the Internet and he discovered on the Internet that this situation that he is in is repeated all over the country. It's not just in the Bay Area or in big cities. In little cities, in little places all over the country parents are in the same spot and they write it on the Internet and they're communicating with each other like, What's going on? Why is this? I don't understand. How come? It's not a question of trouble in the family or something. I mean, everything seems to be fine. He reported that one guy wrote on the Internet that he's been in family therapy with his daughter and his whole family

[36:14]

for a number of years as is my friend. And he said, It hasn't helped one bit. It hasn't made any difference at all. Except I did learn one thing. I learned, this guy wrote on the Internet, that it's not my fault. There doesn't seem to be anything that we did wrong. I just don't know why this is going on with our daughter. According to the New York Times, and also a recent Newsweek cover story, oddly enough, the cause, apparently, of these blizzards and all that, this terrible, fierce winter weather,

[37:16]

appears to be global warming. Isn't that astonishing? It seems as if when the atmosphere warms more, and just now they see that they've been studying the 80s and 90s, and it's just now pretty clear that global warming is actually happening, when the planet is warmer there's more evaporation of water from the ocean. And that means there's going to be more rain and sleet and snow. And when more water is converted from vapor to precipitation, this releases more energy into the atmosphere, which means that when the storms come, they come with greater force. And in places where the circulation of the atmosphere

[38:16]

means that there's less moisture, then the opposite thing happens. The increased heat makes droughts and heat waves more severe. So, in other words, one of the key effects of global warming is extreme weather of all sorts, snow, cold, and heat and drought. And a recent study, studying the 15 years from 1980 to 1994, there were a lot of extremes of weather in that period, and they did a statistical analysis, and they found that it was way out of scale on the level of chance occurrences. But when they ran through a computer simulation of what they imagined would be happening due to global warming, they found that the pattern of weather was 90 to 95% chance, that the pattern of weather from 1980 to 1994 was due to global warming.

[39:18]

And one of the scientists said, it's rather interesting, we seem to be getting these storms of the century every few years now. Of course, the feedback factors in global warming are very complex. There are positive feedbacks that will increase the dire effects of global warming, and there are negative feedbacks that ameliorate it. So nobody really knows what will happen, what the effects of global warming will be, but that global warming is in effect and that it will have effects seems clear in the scientific consensus. Although in the present age of distribution of information, when everybody can say anything, and everybody believes anything, many foolhardy and crackpot scientists can say

[40:26]

there is no global warming, just as many historians say there was no Holocaust, and this gets reported in the paper, and it's also true, right? So that's a news item. Another news item is that this was a great week for astronomy, did you know? Fabulous things were discovered this week by two local astronomers from San Francisco State, discovered new planets, which if you're ignorant like me about astronomy, you think, well, big deal, a lot of planets. But actually it is a big deal, because before now nobody ever knew for sure whether there were any other planets outside of our particular solar system. They never saw any or had any clear evidence of any. But this past October,

[41:29]

I think it was the first time that they found a planet outside of our own solar system, and just last week they found two more. They are 35 light years away, and they're definitely there. One of them is orbiting one of the stars in the Big Dipper. So when you look up in the sky and see the Big Dipper, there's a planet for sure circling around one of those stars, and this planet seems to have a climate warm enough to support water and probably life. Very good chance. So now astronomers say, you know, wow, there must be a gazillion planets out there that we can discover and learn about. We didn't know that. Also, the astronomers managed to take a picture of a narrow part of the universe with very long time exposures so that the way they say,

[42:31]

they took a picture that could see deeper into space than ever before. And what they found out from this picture was there's a lot more galaxies than they thought. All this time they've been estimating there are about 10 billion galaxies in the universe since last week. And now they say there are 50 billion. So by a factor of five, they changed the estimate. So the world just went five times as big. The universe went by five last week in our mind. Do you feel any different? So to give you an idea, you know, 500 billion galaxies, right? Our galaxy is the Milky Way. In our galaxy there are 50 to 100 billion stars. The sun is one of them. And there are now, they think, about 50 billion such galaxies.

[43:35]

This puts our difficulties in perspective. Also, they said, they were astonished at the different shapes and configurations of all the different galaxies. Some are spiraled, some are linear, some are circular, some are all sorts of different fabulous shapes never before seen in galaxies. Anyway, I thought all of you in the practice period would appreciate a little news report. And just as we have to practice patience with our own body and mind, also we need to practice patience with the world. It's a vast world, and more or less everything is going on in the world. Things are terrible.

[44:41]

Things are worse than they ever were. Things are better than they ever were. Things are I don't know what. Many people say over and over again that the world is faster and more stressful, more difficult in a thousand ways than it ever was. But, you know, who knows if that's really true or not. I mean, we say that. Maybe in the days before the white people came, the Native Americans were very stressed out. They might be from their own perspective, you know. It's pretty hard to compare these things, I think. Whenever we compare one thing to another, I don't think we're really comparing anything. We're only talking about our mind right now. Anyway, whatever the world may be or whatever shape it may or may not be in, we have to be patient with our life, patient with what is inside us and with what is outside us.

[45:45]

Because inside us and outside us are really equally us. We live inside and we live outside. Our mind, this mind of light, is not exactly inside and it's not exactly outside. So we practice equalizing and quieting inside and outside. And that's also important for the practice of patience. So when our mind is troubled, we think of the world and all the things that are going on in the world. We think of the suffering of the world and we remember to put our own problems in its perspective. And they don't seem so troubling anymore when we identify equally with the world around us. And when the world around us gets us down,

[46:48]

and we become discouraged with the state of the world, we remind ourselves that we don't really know what the world is. There's a wonderful Zen story that this brings to mind about Master Dizang who was a master of a temple in the mountains. And some other masters from the south came with him to the mountains to practice with him for a while. So Master Dizang questioned Xushan, one of the masters from the south. He said, how is Buddhism in the south these days? And Master Xushan replied, there's extensive discussion going on. And Dizang said, how can that compare with me here

[47:53]

planting the fields and making rice to eat? And then Xushan said, what can you do about the world? And Dizang said, what do you call the world? So I am one of those people, at least at this time in my life I am, and maybe you are too, who spend a certain amount of time running around and doing various things and stirring things up and trying to help the world and get involved in things and trying to think about things and understand things. Actually, even if you stay at home and don't do much or stay in a temple meditating all the time, you might still actually be running around and doing things and trying to help and getting involved in things. And I think it's important to do this.

[48:57]

So if someone were to ask me how are things going at Green Gulch, I might say, there's a lot of discussion going on. We're doing a lot of things. We're busy with this and busy with that. But I look at my own mind and I notice that if I get too involved in this way of seeing things, I might become confused and I might really become enmeshed in my own desires and emotions. I might think I'm running around doing many things to help the world and so on, but actually what I'm really doing is getting enmeshed in my own desires and emotions. I think I'm going outward, but really I'm only projecting myself outward, so I'm really going inward. So I try to remember Master Dizong,

[49:59]

and I tell myself, how can any of this compare with planting the fields and cooking rice? Planting the fields and cooking rice doesn't mean planting the fields and cooking rice. It means just staying at home, taking care of your life moment after moment, remembering that actually we don't know what the world is and we don't really know what we are. And it's so important to remember that we really don't know. So we have to be patient with this really don't know and sit down and breathe right there. And having patience in this way always involves feeling gratitude when we can stop running around and fixing everything

[51:05]

and remember that we really don't know anything and that anyway we really have to be willing to let go of everything. Then we're really impressed with every little thing, every breath, every leaf, every person we meet is really miraculous. Out of this feeling of gratitude that comes from our wide and quiet patience, then we can really do things and we can really sustain things and we can really be helpful. So when we look at ourselves or other people and we see ourselves or others as being mean or stupid or limited, or when we look at the world and see the world as being doomed

[52:09]

or confusing or impossible, we need to remember that that's really what we see or feel but that that's just something that we're seeing or feeling right now. It isn't really necessarily the way things are. So we should stop right there and take a breath. One more little Zen story. I know I've been going on a while, but one more Zen story and then I'll close. One time there was an old lady who ran a tea shop near the base of Mount Tai, which is the holy mountain that was supposed to be the home of the Bodhisattva Manjushri. And so a lot of people went there to make pilgrimages to that mountain

[53:11]

and so it must have been a great place for a tea shop. And there's a lot of these little old ladies who run tea shops in the Zen stories, you know, and they're usually very tricky Zen masters. Usually they make fun of all the self-important monks who think that because they wear robes they know something and these little old ladies always show them up, you know. So this was such a little old lady and the story goes that the monks would come on pilgrimage and stop at the tea shop and say, Where's the road to Mount Tai? And she would say, Ride straight ahead. And they'd say, Okay, thanks, and they'd start trundling off and as they walked away she'd say with some irony, There goes another one. So the monks were getting a little peeved at this

[54:18]

so they asked their master, Master Joshu, to go and check her out and say, Where's she coming from? So Master Joshu went to the tea shop and said, Where's the road to Mount Tai? And she said, Ride straight ahead. And he said, Okay, and he went trundling off and she said, There goes another one. And Master Joshu went back to the monastery and said, Well, I checked her out for you. That's the end of the story. So the joke is that Ride straight ahead doesn't mean off in that direction. Ride straight ahead is Ride straight ahead right here.

[55:20]

See? Ride straight ahead is not about improving or getting enlightened or doing something later on. Yes, you can go to the mountain and meet Manjushri, but only if you meet him every step of the way. And this is the practice of patience, too. It's the secret of the Zen path. Every moment we go right straight ahead, right here, without hesitation. You just do it. It's impossible to go backwards. It's impossible to go forwards. It's impossible to improve and you can't get any worse. What is it that makes us feel uneasy? Really, deep down, what makes us feel uneasy?

[56:22]

It's the feeling that we don't really and truly inhabit our lives, that we aren't actually living this precious life with full warmth and full depth and full appreciation. That's what really makes us uneasy. And what's the one thing that will really satisfy us? To really and truly know that we're alive and to know that we're alive and that we have joined with all of life so that when the end comes and we die, we can give up our life and we can say, Yes, I have really been alive and I have really loved and given all that I could. It's really scary to think that we will die

[57:29]

and we won't be able to say that when we die. The old woman didn't do anything other than sell tea and tea cakes in a little shop at the foot of Mount Tai. But for her, every moment was the peak and every moment she was sitting in Manjushri's lap and she enjoyed her life fully. So I think this is a good practice. Write straight ahead. It's the answer to the question, Where is the road to Mount Tai? But it's also the answer to every moment and every question in our lives. How can I be happy? Write straight ahead.

[58:30]

How can I love others? Write straight ahead. What's the most important thing for a human being? Write straight ahead. Right here and right now, nothing extra, nothing fancy. I'm meeting every condition in our lives with patience and gratitude as if in the whole vast universe we were made only to live this life and only we could live it this way. As if every single thing that happened to us good things, bad things, pleasant things, unpleasant things

[59:33]

were absolutely and utterly perfect. That would be nice. Thank you very much for your patience this morning in listening to such a long talk. May our intention equally penetrate every being and... So, this is a time for discussion, questions and it doesn't have to be about what I presented in my talk this morning. It can be whatever issues are on your mind about your practice, about dharma. Yes, Martin? You talked about patience

[60:41]

and what about making an effort like something is the way it is and let's say you're trying to change something in your life and you surrender to the way it is like you were saying, no hope. It can always be like this. What about setting goals in your life and making an effort? Yes, good question. There's a wonderful... I'm using a text by the 8th century Indian Buddhist teacher named Shantideva and he writes in verse and one of his verses says something like why be frustrated about something in your life if you can change it and why be frustrated if you can't change it which is to say, if you can do something then why don't you do it

[61:43]

and you don't need to be upset about it and frustrated, just do it and if there's nothing that can be done, practice patience. So, the practice of patience doesn't mean that you don't do anything to change conditions when that's appropriate it means that on a fundamental and I was speaking on the most fundamental level of our lives in which the human condition is something that we can't change and ultimately we have to practice patience with it and turn it around through our practice of patience but of course there are many other things in our lives that we can change so if you have a situation that's really horrible and you want to change it and there's a way to change it, then you should change it also, none of these practices really although I discussed today patience as an isolated practice in fact, the six paramitas never exist

[62:44]

in an isolated form so the twin of patience and balance is energy and these are balancing factors so energy, in other words to apply ourselves to our life and our practice and to activate things is the balancing factor of patience patience is accepting things and being with things and energy is activating and changing things and doing things so we have to keep these in balance and sometimes in some situations we might go more one side than the other depending on the circumstances there's different levels and there's different times in our life but definitely we should change if you have a terrible job that is driving you crazy and doesn't seem like a good thing to be doing anyway I don't think the Buddha would say please keep that job forever and be patient

[63:47]

however, if you can't get out of that job and you're forced to stay with that job for a period of time then practice patience with it so yeah, I think this is all very practical we do change things in our lives but how do we change things and what kind of effort are we making and are we changing things realistically without overestimating the meaning of the change some things are the same always, like we're human no matter what job we have so there's different levels and I think mostly today I was speaking about patience on the level of being patient with being a human being with the fact that we don't get what we want usually and that we can't control our mind and we can't control our body and that that situation is the fundamental root of all of our frustrations and that we need to tap into and be patient with but other things, yeah, we can do something if there's a leak in the roof, why not fix it sure, I have a leak in my roof

[64:52]

and so I ask, please let's fix this definitely yes yes yes yes yes, right

[66:01]

yes yes well I think it helps to have a clear to think this through clearly to start with it helps to know that when we fear change and when we feel a lack of control and when we resist our life because of these things it helps to be clear that there is no remedy for this situation this is very different from what Martin was bringing up a situation that you can do something about this is a situation that's very intimate and that you really can't do much about this in other words, you might not like it that things change but they're going to change anyway there's really nothing you can do about it you might not like it that people that you love die but they will, that will happen

[67:14]

so it's very important to be clear about what the situation really is because we may automatically without thinking about it, imagine somehow that it could be different so you have to really be convinced that this is the situation and it can't be changed so this is why we teach about this and talk about this and discuss this and remind ourselves over and over again of this so that's very important to make an accurate assessment of the situation that we're in and then the next thing is to become honest about and familiar with what it is that actually arises in us in response to that situation so again, Shantideva has a wonderful verse where he says something like everything by familiarity becomes easier so he says, so why don't you start practicing patience with small things

[68:19]

get used to frustration and patience with little cuts and bruises and little things so take little things in your life and work on those things work on seeing how frustration arises and how you can be patient with something very small and work your way up to bigger things but the way to do that work and this is the radical part, you just recognize this is fear, this is resistance, this is I hate this this is what that feels like our usual way is when those things arise in us even before we feel them, we're already avoiding, distracting running away, watching television, complaining we almost can't bear to feel what we are actually feeling that's difficult to do, but that's where it begins you begin with actually experiencing, this is fear this is how I feel in my neck when I'm afraid

[69:19]

these are thoughts that come up when I'm afraid this is how I feel in my chest when I'm afraid this is what my heartbeat does when I'm afraid this is how I try to avoid it, all the different things associated with those mental states we are with and we observe and we study and we understand, and of course right away our mind is thinking but now how do I get rid of this, how do I get rid of it this is wanting to get rid of it, this is wanting to get rid of it I want to get rid of it, I want to get rid of it we just notice that because we can't get rid of it so we have to do the very hard work and the intimate work of just being with the states that arise and being honest about what's really there and when we do that, that's where the magic comes in because if we can really do that and really stay with that and it's very hard, it's not easy and it's not natural to us that's why we need to have all the support that we have in practice because if I go to somebody that I just meet and they ask me this question and I give that answer I know perfectly well that it will mean nothing to them

[70:19]

because how could they do that, how could they do what I just said the only way that you could do what I just said is if you had a lot of practice and a lot of support, you meditate meditation opens up a bigger space inside your heart you can see more, you can accept more, you can feel more support from others, friends you can talk to the million things that we do in the spiritual path are all about giving us the support and the basis to do this very difficult work which is virtually impossible unless we have support to do it so you need to think, ok now this is very difficult and it's very intimate can I make sure that I do some meditation practice can I make sure that I do the things that I need to do to get the support to be able to do this work and then that's what you do and then little by little with the patience to stay with the fear and stay with the resistance the space inside of us opens up a little bit

[71:21]

and we have some insight and some help and it becomes a little easier and then we can move more into the space of our lives and live our lives in a little more free way and then maybe by and by something else comes along that brings it up again on another level, on a more subtle level on a deeper level and then we go through the same thing again until we feel comfortable with that level and then we keep going and then it happens again, there's no end to this sometimes I think of the Buddha as just being the person who is adjusting to circumstances instantaneously it's not like the Buddha escaped from pain it's like the Buddha is instantly adjusting to pain on the moment that it arises we're a little slower, right? we have to remember and then pull ourselves up but the Buddha is so close to it that he's right there all the time all of which is to say that we don't expect some kind of blissful ease forever

[72:23]

we know that things happen in our lives, conditions arise that give us difficulties but now we feel in the path we feel like now I have a way to practice with these difficulties and I have a way of even viewing them as challenges and ways of driving my understanding deeper but don't say complete lack of control was such resentment say it like, oh wow, complete lack of control, that's wonderful it's like sliding down a mountain no control, fabulous no, you have to have ego how would you have breakfast without ego? it's not that you don't want to have ego

[73:24]

you just don't want to have ego push you around that's lovely, you need to have ego but just don't let ego, small-minded ego be the boss ego works for you, you don't work for ego so think of what a terrible world it would be if you could control everything you don't have that much imagination, you're only one person so suppose you could control the conditions you can't control the world you think so, but think about it more, you'll see anyway, I wouldn't like it and she wouldn't like it anyway then you get a lot of enemies how come she's in control of the whole world? I don't like this, I want her to be in control so anyway who knows, this is just how it looks to me

[74:29]

you have to think about this and see if you're convinced of this and the truth is, you really have to be convinced in yourself it's not good enough for me to say this is this and so on you really have to be convinced and as long as you think that you really would like to be in control and maybe, just maybe, you know it's unlikely but just maybe it's possible as long as you feel that way, you have to keep feeling that way and sometimes it has to get worse you may have to suffer even more until out of the desperation of your suffering you say, well, finally I give up I finally give up this quest for control because it's been miserable, you know, trying for it so, I don't know yes yeah, this is, I think that, isn't this the the verse of, what do they call it?

[75:29]

which is almost exactly the same as as what Shantideva says, except the Serenity Prayer adds the idea of give me the wisdom to know the difference Shantideva doesn't say that, although I think everything in his teaching implies that so, yeah, where is the wisdom to know the difference between those things that you can change and those things that you're stuck with and again, I just, I think the wisdom to tell the difference just comes with your experience and practice and your, you know, over time why don't we know the difference? We don't know the difference because of our attachment or our confusion you know, we don't see the situation clearly so we can't tell, you know, whether this is something that we can profitably and reasonably work to change and how to work to change it, or whether it's something that can't be changed and so, the more that we're clear in our own mind

[76:33]

about what our life is and what our practice is and what our own way of being is you know, we think we know ourselves, but you know the more you sit, the more you become very, very intimate with little ways that you have of messing yourself up everybody has their own way, you know, of messing themselves up and you don't really know how you do that intimately but as you sit and you sit and you sit, you get to see, you know the repetitive nature of your own confusion and you get to see the shape of your own confusion and you say, oh that's how I... so maybe I don't have to fall for that every time and then you get to see how sometimes when you think you can change things that gets activated, your old habits and patterns that are not really profitable get activated and you can see through it, you say, oh well, no I'm not going to do that, I know what happens I'm very clear about what happens when I react like this or when I do like that or when I practice like this, I know what happens I've seen it so many times, I've seen it in my life and I've seen it very, very intimately on the cushion I've seen that when I think like this or I do like that

[77:34]

I get more pain and more suffering and my back hurts and this and that and the other thing and I see that if I let go of that, it doesn't so, oh, ok, so then you just know yourself better and you know conditions better and you know the Dharma better and you make your best judgment, and sometimes you're wrong it might be wrong, but then when you're wrong you're right there to test it out, ok, that was wrong, good ok, I'm not going to do that, I don't need to beat a dead horse now stop there, change paths here so, you can, I think, just do a better job we can all do a better job of living our lives than we do I mean, it always, to me it's so marvelous that people don't think, you know, oh, living our life in clarity and compassion is something that I would like to do and it's difficult, I should study that people don't think that way, they think living your life is automatic

[78:34]

you know, we've got to learn how to fix the telephone but living is just automatic well, it's not automatic, you know, we have to work at it we have to give ourselves to the process of our lives and that's a lifetime that's a lifetime quest, right, a journey to try to understand something like this so, yeah, when we have this is, you know, when we have Dharma friends and when we have relationship to the teaching and when we have meditation practice we have a way of sharing, getting advice getting, you know, talking over with somebody thinking about it in the light of the teachings we have ways of processing and working on this and then we can maybe, you know, do a little better yes isn't cultivating any kind of spiritual seeking any kind of compassion

[79:36]

isn't there a wanting and a hoping in that that keeps us attached to that outcome yes, there is but it's a different kind of wanting and hoping we can have a wanting and hoping for compassion that's very stupid and that makes us confused it doesn't help, it's possible to have a grabby, like, you know, when you really mean it I want to be compassionate because then I'll be better than him or smarter than her, or something then our effort to be compassionate can be very counterproductive but this is the light speaking in us when the light in us speaks and brings us toward the path, this is different from wanting to beat somebody up or wanting to get rich it's just different yeah, it is, but it's coming from a different place in us so it doesn't have the attachment and the grabbiness and the painfulness

[80:40]

that is associated with other kinds of more limited desires and it's not that it's an unalloyed pure desire it gets mixed up with all these other things too and we have to be able to refine it but it is a desire, it just comes from somebody else besides us is producing that desire not us, you know, Buddha is producing that desire it just happens to be located right here at the moment so it's different yes? the idea that if we practice specifically today learn how to adopt patience

[81:40]

and just like you said first you do it with little things and then this will become more familiar familiar is something from memory what if what if the problem with our life is only that there's a constant feeling that we need to intervene we need to change we need to bring in patience or something we become convinced of aren't all these activities simply a movement of what is? yes, I didn't say this in my talk this morning but the word, the patience the six practices of giving morality, patience, energy concentration and wisdom are called the six perfections

[82:44]

and the word perfection means to go beyond you can say patience beyond patience and energy beyond energy in just the sense that you're saying as long as there's a sense of I'm practicing patience now in order to then there's the same problem so we practice patience and we perfect it we let go of patience the ultimate practice of patience is letting go of patience and just being there, just like you say just being there without any need to change or improve that's ultimately the practice of patience and we let go of the practice of patience as long as there's something there as a thought or an idea or a desire in our practice then we have the same problem as before we may pick up the practice of patience in that way provisionally

[83:46]

but in the end, you're right but the end implies later or tomorrow it seems like the problem is that if I have any scheme or strategy whatsoever that the only way the scheme or strategy can work is based on a supposition that something exists separate from my present experience and I somehow exist separate and apart from this experience and that entity can come in and say be patient, do this, do that, later someday, tomorrow, next year hopefully not the people in this room, but others next lifetime all this seems to me as profoundly dangerous because the people in this room have really come to the end of their tether with this nonsense any more formulations, plans and schemes to manipulate the legitimate expression

[84:48]

of the life is a disease and this is what we're doing here we're adding the lesson to the problem in fact, everybody's going to leave and they're going to be thinking the thoughts because now they think these are more powerful they're sick of the thoughts they got from their parents and their teachers and their clergymen, but now they're listening to these it's only adding momentum to the problem thank you he's right what you're offering is just a step forward and we're going to keep going forward this is not the end result, this is one more step and those steps lead nowhere you're chasing your tail, we're chasing our tail well, you find out no, I agree, I think he's right great, he's got fire I already have moment after moment I quit

[85:51]

I give up you're welcome, thank you I was in doubt as to the interpretation of that story you were telling about the farmer who was planting the rice and the when it was said that what is the world or what do you interpret as the world would you repeat what you interpreted that point because it eluded me at the time that was not what I was thinking you say it again and say why well the story goes at that point where he said what do you call the world so at first he says how is Buddhism in the south and the teacher from the south, Shushan says

[86:55]

there are many discussions going on and then he says Dijong says how can this compare with my planting rice planting the fields and cooking rice and Shushan says what can you do for the world and Dijong says what do you call the world so when he says how is Buddhism in the south and the response is there's lots of discussion going on this is from the point of view of we understand what Buddhism is, we understand what the world is we're making effort, we're doing things we're fixing things, we're understanding things we've got a lot of new members blah blah blah so Master Dijong feels that

[87:57]

that's fine but is there something deeper what is the basis of that if that's all it is, what is it it's only more fuel on the fire so Master Dijong brings up the other side how can this compare with just planting the fields and just cooking rice just being here in the present moment without any devices or fancy tricks just completely accepting what our life is how can this compare with running around doing a bunch of things so the monk from the south hears that but is that enough Dijong if you do that, are you helping the world so he says, when Dijong says just be here, in effect the monk from the south says how can you help the world and Dijong says, what is the world after all so I was trying to say that

[88:59]

if we stay here in Green Gulch for four weeks and just think about our own experience and we're constantly worried about our thoughts and feelings and what's in our heart and so on and we think that we've removed ourselves from the world no, if we on the other hand go to the other extreme and run around in the world doing a million things forgetting about our own heart, that's the other extreme I think Dijong is pointing to the fact that the world is neither our thoughts and feelings nor what's outside our thoughts and feelings it's just being present with inside and outside when we're here right now we're existing in the inside and the outside because we're taking in air, we're seeing other beings we're hearing things from the outside we have thoughts and emotions inside we really live at the juncture of inside and outside and that's the world, we can't forget either side so that's how I interpret that story that's why we tend to think of inner life

[90:03]

and outer life and so on I know that's how you were doing it and it had a slight added meaning to me which was that our world is let's say me my friends, my family, my city my state, and it goes on and there are moments when my world is this big and there are times when it's that big and I thought it was a very poignant point because you need to be on top of what you're defining as your world if you're out there trying to save the whales then your world is expanded to a bigger place if you're back here trying to save your family's structure whatever it is that's driving you right now then what you have to find is this you have to be conscious of what you're doing that's the other side, what is it, do you know are you clear, what is the framework in which you're working now

[91:04]

I think you can be in several worlds yes, and we all are several worlds at once the real world I kind of equate that with Alan but I've always kind of liked that old song about how to go I'm doing a blank here what I was getting at is is consciousness something that is in other words, is awareness consciousness part of all being, universal kind of thing or is it like I'm trying to remember what time Einstein or somebody of that equivalent said time was something that man made up so everything wouldn't happen at once I wonder if consciousness that quality there is no such thing as time

[92:06]

in reality there is no such thing as time everything is happening at once but with regard to consciousness I got the thought this morning consciousness was kind of an invention of man or a quality peculiar to man and my question is I tend to think that that's not so that maybe the Indians and others like a stone man's consciousness universal kind of thing that we share with everything yeah I think that's right in Buddhist philosophy that's the idea that consciousness is human consciousness is a manifestation of consciousness but it's not the limit of consciousness in Indian and Buddhist philosophy material things are also manifestations of consciousness it's interesting they say that material things are simply slower it's consciousness slowed down quite a bit

[93:08]

and so therefore it has some different characteristics from consciousness that's more quick but it's not fundamentally a different thing so there is no dichotomy in Buddhist philosophy between mind and matter there's a stage of human development where we distinguish between mind and matter but that distinguishing between mind and matter is only a distinction that arises out of this consciousness which is one thing so the distinction between mind and matter which in Western philosophy is a big philosophical problem in Buddhism it's a non-problem because it's just everything is one of one substance or non-substance mind and matter are just different aspects of that so consciousness is one thing different degrees or transformations or shapes of the same

[94:11]

thing although it's not exactly a thing yes the world of old patterns sort of made me think about something that I've been meditating for the last few weeks throughout our life we had various different problems or traumas or pain also mostly through our childhood or teenage days that created big dents in our life and because of this we protected ourselves in a certain way now we are older sometimes we keep using these old patterns to protect ourselves when a similar situation arrives throughout my practice

[95:14]

I've been learning like you say increasing and expanding my heart increasing and expanding my heart increasing and expanding my heart I've been learning

[95:22]

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