Good evening. Can you hear me? Is it? Okay. Shanti Deva's Way of the Bodhisattva, it seems like it's really echoing. How do I sound? Is it okay? Okay, thanks. Shanti Diva's Way of Bodhisattva begins with this verse. Here I shall say nothing that has not been said before, and in the art of prosody I have no skill. I therefore have no thought that this may be of benefit to others. I wrote it only to habituate my mind. So that's how I feel about my talk tonight.

[01:15]

I'm sure that you have heard all that I have to say before. And you are probably better than I am at applying the teachings. So I'm talking to myself. I'm giving the lecture that I need to hear. And the process of preparing this talk has been very beneficial for me. So tonight I want to talk about the practice of not getting what one wants. The first noble truth is the truth of suffering. The Buddha defined suffering as birth, old age, sickness, death, being separated from those you love, being forced to associate with those you hate or dislike, and not getting what you want.

[02:20]

I find it very comforting that not getting what you want was part of the Buddha's core teaching 2,500 years ago. It means that I am not alone. that not getting what one wants is part of the human condition, a natural part of life, and it will keep going as long as we live. That means that when I don't get what I want, I do not have to blame others or myself or wonder what went wrong or who caused it. It's bad enough not to get what I want without that extra burden. Every day we get some things and don't get some things that we want.

[03:25]

And some of these things are more meaningful to us than others. So tonight I'm going to talk about small and medium-sized experiences of not getting what I want. Because that's what I've experienced myself and what I can talk about. Our experiences of getting or not getting what we want start growing and continue throughout our lives. So as babies, we cried. And maybe our mother came right away to see what was wrong. And maybe she didn't come for a while. But whatever happened, those ghouly experiences and the emotions connected with them got imprinted on our consciousness. Throughout childhood, our parents and teachers let us do some of the things we wanted to do and not others.

[04:30]

And so sometimes we were happy and loved our parents, and sometimes we felt frustrated and and resentful and angry. And we had sibling rivalries, too, both with our real siblings and with our friends and classmates. In school, we began to try out for things, a part in the school play, cheerleading, the basketball team, honors classes, the concert choir. And in the process, we learned something about competition, putting ourselves forward to get the things we wanted, the pain of losing, and the pleasure of winning. Those positive and negative experiences and the emotions connected with them each left an imprint on our consciousness.

[05:32]

We set up our college applications with a mixture of hope and anxiety. Those feelings were also imprinted on our consciousness. Later, we applied for jobs, and the hiring process inevitably involved an evaluation of our talents and qualities and comparison with other candidates. The stakes were high because the results would shape our career path and determine what we'd actually be doing with our lives, at least for a while. We may have wanted marriage and children, and we may or may not have found the right mate and been able to have children. Our marriage may have gone well, or it might have ended in a painful divorce. Most of our experiences of not getting what we want involve other people.

[06:41]

And sometimes there is an evaluative quality as well to the situation where we get or don't get what we want based on some judgment made about us. When other people are involved, there is more potential for negative emotions to arise. We usually don't get too angry if it rains when we plan the picnic. But if someone else is chosen for a part we wanted to play, our emotions are more likely to escalate. The well of our stored up feelings from previous happy and unhappy experiences keeps getting deeper. And those feelings may get triggered when we don't get what we want. We unconsciously replay those old feelings in new situations.

[07:43]

And this can get us into a lot of trouble. When some of these things happen to us, we may feel trapped, helpless, with no recourse. We don't like what has happened, but there is nothing we can do. Our disappointment, pain, and sadness can easily turn into anger, jealousy, fear, hatred, depression, anxiety, despair, resentment. Buddhism calls these the afflictive emotions, the destructive emotions, or kleshas, which literally means that which afflicts from within. The pain of being in a situation we dislike can be a spur that leads us to practice or to deepening our practice.

[08:48]

This is really where the rubber meets the road in Buddhism or any other spiritual practice. And at this point, we actually do have a choice. We can let our old feelings get triggered and rule us and keep our karma going. Or we can get out our Buddhist toolbox and see what we can do to alleviate our suffering, even if we can't change our outer circumstances. Since all of the Buddha's teachings are about alleviating suffering, we have many tools to choose from. Most of us have some habitual way of responding to the negative events in our lives. For example, we may often feel a very, very strong impulse to say something mean or otherwise act out our emotions.

[09:54]

The first verse of Shantideva's Way of the Bodhisattva, Chapter 6, Patience, warns us against acting out our anger. This is how it goes. All the good works in a thousand ages, such as good deeds of generosity and offerings to the blissful ones, A single flash of anger shatters them. And the third verse says, Those tormented by the pain of anger never know tranquility of mind. Strangers they will be to every pleasure. They will neither sleep nor feel secure. I think it's good in any circumstance where anger either has arisen already or is likely to arise to take a time out, to just hit the pause button.

[11:09]

We can take that time to notice our feelings and try not to add anything to them. If we feel an impulse to express anger, or harm someone, we can just notice that. We notice how uncomfortable and painful that feeling is, and how much we want to relieve that feeling by saying or doing something. At this point, we need to consider whether this is our habitual response. and whether it has worked for us in the past or not. We should consider all the effects that might come about over time if we express or act out our negative feelings. Then we can consider the long-term effects of behaving in the opposite manner.

[12:12]

If I am angry or afraid, behaving well... may feel like selling out. I may feel like I have been wronged or treated unfairly and that I shouldn't give in too easily. The impulse to lash out in some way may be very strong. But if I can keep my mind on the long-term effects of my actions, I will know that that although expressing my negative emotions may temporarily relieve the uncomfortable feelings I'm experiencing, I will suffer much more later on. I have found it very helpful to let these uncomfortable feelings be a trigger for curiosity. What if I were to try something completely new? What if I were to relate to this experience in a way that is completely different from what I've done in the past?

[13:24]

What will happen then? I can get interested in the possibility of behaving differently, of not acting out my habitual behavior, and watching to see what happens. It can be kind of a game with some interesting suspense to it. And already I feel happier. What I have just described is actually the first step in a process that His Holiness the Dalai Lama outlines for bringing about change in oneself. This is from his book, The Art of Happiness. The elements of the process are education, conviction, determination, action, effort. Education means that we need to learn that our habitual negative behaviors are ineffective and cause us further suffering, whereas positive emotions are helpful and healing and make us happy in the long run.

[14:41]

Once we learn that, we can develop a deep conviction that it is so, which will spur our determination to change. Next, we transform our determination into action, applying our best efforts to implement the necessary changes. This is a very organic process, which can lead to great enthusiasm. and a sense of urgency to change. We are apt to seek out whatever helpful teachings we can find to help us accomplish our goal. If I find myself going over and over the painful details of some situation I don't like, I think it's useful simply to notice the complexity of all the causes and conditions. that led to these circumstances.

[15:45]

It's important to stick with what I know to be true instead of making guesses about other people's motives. There is no such thing as a true story. There are innumerable stories about everything that happens. How did I contribute to this outcome is a question I might ask. Once I have explored as deeply as possible all the complex causes and conditions, then I think the best thing is simply to stop thinking about it. There are happier things to do with one's time and energy and effort. Emma Chodron makes an excellent suggestion that I have really enjoyed for cultivating happiness in the face of adversity. She advised us going through the day, noting each thing that pleases us.

[16:51]

A taste, a pleasant breeze, the sun on our cheek, a friend's smile, some encouraging words from a friend, some lovely music. any pleasant experience, however small or fleeting, just make a mental note of it. And at the end of even an average day, there will probably be many, many such moments that you've noted. And this realization helps us to notice our underlying happiness and which is not dependent on circumstances. It also means that we spend a good part of the day in mindfulness, noticing our pleasant sensations and feelings. I have found this to be a wonderful antidote to disappointment and depressive feelings.

[17:58]

There is a popular saying that if you can't get what you want, then want what you have. And to take it a step further, give what you have. This is definitely in line with Buddhist teachings, and it can be very healing and energizing, especially the last part. What can I do in my present circumstances that's useful and helpful and makes me and other people happy? This challenge can pull us out of our doldrums. In order to keep some perspective, it's good to notice that getting what one wants is also suffering. Things never turn out quite the way we imagine they will. So getting what we want will probably not be as good as we had hoped.

[19:06]

And not getting what we want will probably not be as bad as we had feared. We're still going to have problems either way. What will actually result long term from getting or not getting is completely unpredictable. There's a story I like about this. And I expect many of you have heard it, but it's been so helpful to me so often that I'm going to tell it anyway. Once upon a time there was a farmer and he had a beautiful little mare. And one day his son left the gate open and the horse ran away. And He asked all his neighbors. He looked all over the hills and asked all of his neighbors, and no one had seen his mare.

[20:10]

But his neighbors said, I am so sorry that you've lost your horse. That is very unfortunate. And the farmer said, well, we shall see. And three weeks later, after the farmer had long ago given up on getting his horse back, She came back with a beautiful stallion. And when the farmer told his neighbors about this, they said, oh, you are so lucky. That is so fortunate. And the farmer said, well, we shall see. And his son loved the stallion and loved to ride. And he one day fell off and broke his leg. And the neighbors said, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that your son broke his leg. That's so unfortunate. And the farmer said, well, we shall see.

[21:12]

And the war broke out, and all the young men in the village were drafted, and they had to go off to war, and they were all killed. But the farmer's son didn't go to war because he had a broken leg. So all the neighbors said, you are so lucky, you are so fortunate. And the farmer said, well, we shall see. And that's the end of the story. But of course, we don't know the end of the story. The story goes on and on. There's lots of psychological research that suggests that there is not... really much correlation between our outer circumstances and our general level of happiness. People who have had potentially life-changing experiences, winning the lottery, getting cancer, going blind, losing a limb, becoming paralyzed, after some period of adjustment seem to go back to about the same level of happiness

[22:28]

that they had before. And more trivial events that can elate us temporarily or put us in a bad mood for a short time, we eventually return to our baseline happiness. And it is this baseline happiness that can be cultivated through training the mind in patience and tolerance. I think it's really just wonderful for all beings everywhere that the Dalai Lama is so interested in science, so curious. Over and over again, he has partnered with scientists in a wide variety of disciplines to seek the truth, and especially the truth about mind and consciousness. And while I was preparing this talk, I listened to a set of CDs called Destructive Emotions, a Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

[23:36]

And these CDs described the results of a variety of tests conducted on a very advanced lama who had practiced Tibetan Buddhism for over 30 years. And two of the tests especially interest me, so I'm going to tell you about them. In one of the tests, the Lama's brain activity was monitored on a functional MRI and an EEG, while he rotated through a resting everyday state of mind and several distinct types of meditation. a visualization, one-pointed concentration, generating compassion, a meditation on devotion, a meditation on fearlessness, and what he called the open state, which sounds to me like Shokantaza.

[24:40]

The tests showed that the Lama was able to generate a distinctly differentiated... pattern of brain activity with each of the different types of meditation, and that he was able to repeat precisely the same patterns over and over by rotating among the different types of meditation. It was shown also that when he did the meditation to generate compassion, his brain activity showed the pattern of an extreme wake This is scientific support for the Dalai Lama's frequent claim that meditation on compassion for all beings is especially beneficial for the person doing the meditation. In another test, the same Lama was asked to view a videotape of

[25:47]

faces lashed on a screen for one-fifth or one-thirtieth of a second, so fast that if you blinked, you would miss it. And he was supposed to identify which of seven emotions could be seen on those faces, such as contempt, anger, or fear. And this lama and another very advanced Buddhist practitioner who was also tested scored far above any of the other 5,000 people who were tested. The test results were interpreted to signal the lama's capacity for accurate empathy and for really being able to see how people were feeling. I find it encouraging, actually, to learn that the benefits of meditation are measurable and that meditation appears to produce lasting and positive changes in the brain's circuitry.

[27:05]

We have known for a while that drugs can produce these changes, and now we have evidence that mind training can also produce very favorable results and have the advantages of mind training over drugs at the same time. Much suffering can come from comparing mind to comparing our abilities to those of others, our circumstances to what they used to be, what we received to what we hoped to receive, etc. If we continually compare ourselves to others and end up feeling jealous or bad in some way, a good antidote is to consider the misfortunes of others. So one day when I was feeling that or sorry for myself, I looked up Johann Sebastian Bach on Wikipedia.

[28:14]

And his family story made a big impression on me. Bach married, and the couple had seven children, four of whom lived to be adults. And the Bachs were happily married for 13 years, when Johan, who had been traveling abroad, came home and found that his wife had had a sudden illness and died. And he was heartbroken. And a year and a half later, he remarried again happily. And this couple had 13 children, six of whom survived until adulthood. his second wife in her spare time. She was a gifted musician from a musical family, too, and she arranged musical evenings at the Bach home, which all the family members participated in.

[29:26]

So I was very struck by their losing seven children plus another three from... Johann's first marriage. And I suppose maybe that was common at the time. But so much grief is hard for me to imagine. And yet, it probably happened to many people before modern medicine and birth control. Still, they managed to be happy and... to make a joyful, soaring, wonderful offering to the world. Sometimes we don't get what we want because more than one person wants the same thing. I think of Hillary and Obama. It was absolutely guaranteed all along that one of them was going to be disappointed.

[30:29]

And in the end, Hillary had to face a second big disappointment, not being chosen as Obama's running mate. Of course, I don't know how she felt, but it's hard to imagine that she wasn't a little angry at Obama. And everyone was wondering and speculating about how she would behave at the convention. Would she pull herself together and do the right thing, wholeheartedly and convincingly? And as far as I'm concerned, she did. I thought she looked and sounded terrific that night. Not like a loser, but like a very strong person. What she did seemed heroic to me. And I found her response to her very disappointing circumstances quite inspiring.

[31:33]

I also think of Jimmy Carter, who was unpopular at the end of his presidency and lost the election to get a second term. However... Because of his charity, compassion, and general good works and helpfulness and usefulness, he has become an extremely popular post-president. He behaved well in adversity, and we love and admire him for it. Our Buddhist teachers persistently advise us Instead of looking outside, wishing that our circumstances were different, what actually helps our lives is to look inside and train our minds in patience and tolerance. To try to protect ourselves by controlling our outer circumstances is analogous to covering the entire earth with leather and

[32:47]

to protect our feet instead of wearing shoes. Our difficult circumstances are actually a precious gift. They are our life. And difficult circumstances have three virtues. They humble us, they help us to develop compassion, and they encourage us to seek out the Buddha's teachings on patience and tolerance. We have all heard these teachings before, but when we are in pain, they become precious healing medicine, and we may hear them as though for the first time. I want to end with one more verse from Shadi Diva's Way of the Bodhisattva. There is nothing that does not grow light through habit and familiarity.

[33:50]

Putting up with little cares, I'll train myself to bear with great adversity. Shani Deva is encouraging us to practice with the little irritations that come up every day so that we can bear whatever life brings us. There are innumerable opportunities to do this practice. When we come down to eat dinner and it's something we don't like. When we lose our keys. When we leave too late to go somewhere and then get stuck in a traffic jam. When we forget to pay our credit card bill and get charged a late fee. Pamela Chodron quotes someone who calls these bourgeois sufferings. but they're good to practice on nevertheless.

[34:52]

Every day counts. Every moment counts. Every opportunity to practice patience and tolerance counts. All of our good efforts count toward the perfection of patience. We have a couple minutes if you have any questions. Yes. Let me think. Every day, I'm sure there's something, but, um, um, Nothing. I don't want to.

[36:00]

What? Anything else? Yeah. described a tendency that I have when something goes wrong to kind of what when I said that I feel like I like it's selling out there's some little feeling that doesn't feel quite right about just going on with life you know and yet just going on with life I think And you have to pay attention to your feelings and what matters. It's not that you ignore it, but you do basically get on with life.

[37:05]

And it's joyful. There's a lot of underlying happiness, even when you're unhappy, is what I find. Yes. I've learned... that it's detrimental for us to get caught up in self-help ideas. What do you draw the line between making these happiest things work and making some of the ideas? And when do you cross over it? How do you know when you cross over and just talk about it? Well, for example, what comes to mind when you ask that is the Pema Chodron thing about noticing little things that make you happy. For me, that feels very organic because I found myself not quite doing that, not quite making a metal note of all of them, but noticing what felt good, what made me happy.

[38:11]

Noticing that even in a difficult time, that those things were there. You know, there was still a beautiful day. My feet still felt good on the sidewalk. that sort of thing. So I guess I was trying and was trying to pick the things that felt organic to me, that felt real, not the things that felt like something out of a self-help work, but the things that are meaningful. It seemed that way to me, too. I just wanted to support you on that. But I could just see it approaching other ways I used to think, what the minute you just now said. Awareness about awareness that. I think special where. Yeah, thanks. Anything else? Yes. Thank you.

[39:39]

Sinead. Thank you very much. It's the sense that what we might identify as what we want is often so small in relation to what we do. It's a small kind of localized scripture. I'm thinking again, And it makes me think of this quote that I wrote, that said a lot of those, and he said, it's not your desire to be that word, but your desire to be so small. And one of the reasons I did that is it's not the right thing to stop being in service. It's incredible. And I thought a lot of work that .

[40:49]

And that story out there sequence . It's not really going to carry my own life. So it's practically more catastrophic and more aglorious. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. We just had to do it. That I feel to have deteriorated myself.

[41:57]

And so often the things that we're trying to work with, like what we think then in their lives. That's the thing that other people before they're at. Like, how we're working around that. And sort of like giving off something, everything, and just the worst part of our life. Thank you. So should we go to bed?

[42:30]

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