Help us, having it to see and listen to, to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's word. Good evening, everyone. Lovely to see you all here and welcome to everyone viewing online, live or in recorded format. I want to first thank you all for being here and particularly to thank the participants of this current practice period.

[07:50]

for the heartfelt effort and great teaching that you are all giving with your presence. I also want to thank Ruchin Paul Haller for the invitation to be Chusot and to give these talks. And I'd like to thank my teacher, Rick Sloan, for... me to this moment so if anything that that I have to say tonight is helpful to you I would encourage you to investigate it hold it lightly use it well if it serves you make it your own and I just want to say that this the overall goal of this talk is just to encourage you in your practice so Whatever of what I have to say that encourages you in your practice, wonderful.

[08:56]

And anything that I say that does not encourage you in your practice, leave it be. So tonight I thought I'd talk a little bit about observing my sense experiences and my thoughts and how investigating my personal experience I think helps me investigate myself. And the basic encouragements that I'm trying to get across are to pay attention to your own experience, to not assume that your experience is the truth, and to celebrate the uniqueness of your own experience, of your own perspective on the world. So... If you'd like, you can watch for those points as we make our way through this talk. My own experience of my senses, I notice, is a major part of my idea of myself.

[10:02]

One of the major ways that I experience this self is as the point of view that remembers being the focal point of these particular sense inputs. And this, what I recognize as myself, is this thing that keeps track of what I consider the true story of my experience from this perspective. And I also notice that I generally always assume by default that my senses are correct and that they're true. And yet when I look at the processes of my thinking mind, what I actually do with my sense inputs and my thoughts, I see that a big function there is making small-scale representations of aspects of the world and then using those representations to play out scenarios inside this model of the universe that I...

[11:13]

carry around inside my brain. I have this version of reality that I keep with me all the time where I can replay the past and run possible future scenarios and store all of these ideas about the world to return to later. And this is very useful, absolutely useful. Also often quite beautiful and stunningly complex. And I noticed that in order to make something small enough to fit inside my mind, my model of things inevitably leaves out most of what is actually happening. So all of the time I'm sort of reducing the amount of detail that I experience the world in. in order to make these manageable, useful, miniature representations to guide my actions.

[12:20]

For instance, I can't think about every single thing inside a grocery store when I'm thinking of the grocery store. So I compress this big idea into just a little concept. And I use that concept. And again, it's very useful to me. But it's not the whole story. It's a limited perspective. So within practice, I try or I hope to cultivate an ongoing awareness that what I'm experiencing is not a definitive version of the moment. confuse it or some other kind of truth. And in sort of working with this, some concrete examples sometimes recur to me and I have found useful.

[13:30]

For instance, you may at some point in your life have looked up into a clear blue sky and seen little dots and specks moving around. I suspect almost everyone has had this experience. And what you're actually seeing are the shadows of blood cells moving through the back of your eye, moving across, in this case, particularly across the macula, the area of finest detailed vision. And in fact, all of the light that we see passes through a layer of blood cells as it's making its way to your retina and most of the time your mind just filters out the shadow of those blood vessels but at certain times such as against the background of a clear blue sky you'll start to see the relative brightness and darkness of the red and white blood cells as they squeeze through the capillaries because those capillaries are so small the white blood cells actually go through

[14:41]

single file, and a bunch of red blood cells pile up behind them. And so what you get in a blue sky is a bright white dot with a little dark tail. And this is actually happening all the time, but mostly you have learned to ignore it. Mostly we have all learned to ignore it. For those of you who happen to meditate around dawn or dusk, you may also have seen another aspect of this phenomenon as a ring of light that slowly condenses through your vision to a point and then repeats that pattern. And that, again, is the overall shadow of the blood moving through the back of your eye. In this case, through all of your vision, through the peripheral vision and down into your central vision. But again, even though this is happening all the time, your mind is filtering it out because it's not helpful.

[15:47]

It's not useful information. And I suspect this may actually be part of the process that babies and children are going through. They're getting the full stream of information and have to take a little time to, through trial and error, sort out information. What is useful? What's helpful information? What's the important part there? And all of our senses, all of our experience is like this, where some things are being edited out, some things are being added in, and everything is being sort of massaged a little bit by the efforts of the thinking mind, or in some cases, the unthinking mind. And my senses are really monitoring a limited slice of what's happening. There's this small range of frequencies that I think of as light, another small range that I call sound, and so on.

[16:54]

And I take those approximations that I make of these electrical and chemical processes, and I dump them into the sixth sense, the thinking mind. And here I really have to commend this Buddhist notion of including thoughts in this system as another of the senses. The five physical senses that we often think of plus thought. And when I look at it, thinking, like these other senses, is also basically abstracting and approximating and simplifying complex stuff. So that I can take action and react to the conditions around me in a reasonable amount of time. Again, if I had to think about every item in the grocery store before I did anything in the grocery store, I would never get my grocery shopping done. And like my other senses, I also notice that I tend to believe that the perspective of my thinking mind is the truth.

[18:08]

making up some of these parts of my experience and my experience really is exclusive to me. And one of the major ways that I can notice my assumptions is to bring my bubble of experience into contact with other bubbles of experience. If I'm paying attention as I'm interacting with other people, I might notice that inside my personal model of the universe, I'm also making models of other people's models. I'm imagining what other people are thinking, imagining what they're experiencing, imagining what they're thinking about, what they're experiencing. I'm even imagining what I think they might be thinking about me. And as I sort of describe the depths of likely inaccurate and certainly incomplete models that I pile on top, it starts to really highlight the ridiculousness of this.

[19:24]

However, when I look at my own experience, I also see that very often I'm taking those imaginings, those layers of models, and I'm using them as if they are true and solid objects in my own model. I have this sort of default assumption that if it's the way I'm imagining the universe, then that must have some connection to truth. For example, if someone doesn't say good morning back to me when I say good morning, I might, in my mind, create a version of that person as someone who doesn't like me. And then with that assumption running inside my model of the world, I just immediately take that to be the truth. And with that as my default assumption, then I may start filtering out friendly things that they do.

[20:29]

I might ignore their kind actions. I might If I do notice them, I might assume that they're doing kind things, seemingly kind things for some sort of manipulative intent. And then my model of the world starts to really tilt in that particular direction. And it could be that they didn't hear my greeting or that something else totally unrelated to me was going on. Or maybe it really was related to me in that particular moment. I think it's really not so important. where something like this starts what's important and what i actually have the ability to work with is how i respond and how firmly i hold an idea of this person from that from it onwards will actually affect what happens between us so i can see that i set a pattern and then maybe i

[21:32]

I get tense every time I'm around that person or I act rude or I avoid and then I am part of or maybe all of actually creating what is this bad feeling that comes up between us. And then maybe if I'm lucky in the context of community and other bubbles of experience to bounce around with, someone else may show me their perspective. I might say something unkind about this person and someone else says, oh, well, that's not how I think of that person at all. And if I'm lucky, maybe that glimpse of someone else's perspective can jolt me out of my assumptions a little bit. And by actually seeing these patterns of my mind, maybe I can hold them a little more lightly and have some choice in how I react.

[22:44]

So what fundamentally am I saying here? I think a few points. that my senses, as I understand them, are imperfect and particular to me, that my thinking is another sense, and that that thinking is often fueled by imperfect input from the physical senses that's then further altered to suit and match my experience, that paying close attention to my senses can show me some of their limitations and tendencies, and that as a result of all of this, I would like to try to hold my point of view lightly, to also hold it respectfully, to really see that it is the world, according to me, but to use it as a guide rather than as a document of truth.

[23:55]

It is really my experience. It's what I have available to me and what I have to go on most of the time. But that doesn't make it objectively true. It's not exactly real, but it's also not that it's not real. So I thought I'd give you a poem on this topic, which perhaps is more memorable than the rest of the talk. And if that's the case, wonderful. This is a poem by Lucille Clifton. And this is a poem that she wrote for her husband. It's called The Death of Fred Clifton. November 10th, 1984. Age 49. I seemed to be drawn.

[24:58]

to the center of myself, leaving the edges of me in the hands of my wife. And I saw with the most amazing clarity, so that I had not eyes, but sight. And rising and turning through my skin, there was all around, not the shapes of things, but oh, at last, the things themselves. So, Seeing more clearly what my sense experience and thoughts are, I think helps me focus beyond them while still including them.

[26:12]

I'm not pushing away my experience or denying it or trying to change it, but observing it and trying to suspend my judgment about it. and quietly, maybe instead of just seeing things, I can see some of my experience of seeing. I can see what the thing is that thinks it's doing this seeing. My senses and my sense experience is not itself ultimate reality, but ultimate reality does include my experience of my senses. And in this practice, I think I'm trying to make the activities of my mind visible to myself and thereby, by contrast, maybe also make visible some of what is not the activity of my mind.

[27:18]

Noticing this actual experience of my senses can encourage me to loosen my belief in in my version of the world. With my perspective loosened, I hope, I think maybe there is some space for me to admit that others are having their own experiences, which maybe are not the same as mine. So in seated meditation, as my body relaxes, I can feel parts of it settle and slow down. shoulders and the neck, the jaw, breathing, heartbeat, digestion. And perhaps in time, thinking and judging, story-making, blaming, worrying, some of these things maybe can slow down a little bit as well.

[28:23]

And for me, I notice that when body agitation slows in the same way that calm seems to be what emerges, as mind agitation slows, I find that compassion is often what emerges. A feeling of involved awareness. Being concerned, but not in the sense of being worried, rather a feeling of I'm involved in what's happening. If I can let go of the dominance of my senses, let go of my certainty about their truth, I can open up to being in this moment with my whole body, which does include my brain and my thinking mind, which are part of this mind-body package.

[29:27]

patience for, and care for others' experiences. So instead of looking at a clear blue sky, I look at a blank white wall. And instead of seeing the blood cells in the back of my eye, I see some of the deeper patterns and processes going on in my mind. In both these cases, I don't go on seeing that thing forever once i've glimpsed it but with this knowledge that there's something happening all the time that i'm usually blind to i hope maybe i won't be so immediately convinced that i'm right all the time so i filter some things out i add other things in i condense i simplify i turn these complex systems into shorthand stand-ins so that I can think about them.

[30:31]

And it's really necessary activity. My mind is not malfunctioning by doing this. This is exactly what it's supposed to be doing. If my mind didn't do this, I wouldn't be able to do my taxes, read books, maintain relationships. This is the way my mind contributes to keeping this body together and functioning. And I am everlastingly grateful that my mind and body are cooperating like this at the moment. And I notice that if I let my thoughts be the only truth, then I get trapped inside that space. simplified stand-in for reality that I have, and I just live there. And I also notice that inside my personal model of the universe, inside the world according to me, I'm seemingly sort of hardwired to notice and strongly experience the negative things, at least the things that I habitually judge as negative, because

[31:52]

this mind developed to protect this body from negative experience. And the whole time that all of that is happening, this big, real, actual world is where I really am, where all of this is really happening. I'm just blind to it because I'm living inside my own version of things. So here I want to be really certain to not be dismissive of the sense experience. I noticed this was something that came up for me many times, has come up for me many times in my practice, where I can develop this subtle or not so subtle judgment and negative feeling about

[32:55]

my sense experience and about this experience of being an embodied human being. But being in a body is incredible. It's beautiful, sometimes enjoyable, always amazingly, alarmingly complex. And so along with noticing limitations and patterns that sort of run habitually in my particular system, I find it helpful to also notice the beauty and the pleasure of my sense experience and the uniqueness and utter indescribability of my own perspective on existence. No one else gets to experience the particular view of the universe that I have, and there's no way I can really adequately convey what this particular experience is.

[33:59]

So if I don't enjoy it, who will? And again, though my experience is not itself fundamental reality, that fundamental reality does include me having this experience that I'm having. So I noticed that if I don't or try not to, if I don't identify with my sense experience as the definition of myself, then noticing and enjoying my sense experience, I can actually feel as a devotional act. And this I think is part of my own enjoyment of taking a walk or looking at a landscape, making music. It's wonderful not that those things are happening to me, but that those things are happening at all. Amazing how this, this moment and a body that is able to be aware of this moment are happening, are happening because they are both there to be there in that moment.

[35:15]

And so if my body mind is not separated from this, essential divinity, then the activities of my body and mind are not essentially separated from this essential reality and divinity. And to notice that my mind and body are having an experience and to notice that that experience is a pleasurable one can be a way to honor the complexity of everything that contributed to this body-mind being in that moment. So I think it's all right to enjoy sense experience. I think they are wonderful experiences for what they are. And I find it helpful, especially in a practice context, to frequently remind myself that there is much more

[36:24]

And then in the midst of having these individual body-mind experiences, as human beings, we then layer language on top of this. And I find for myself that putting words on things and experiences often encourages my mind to... grab some aspect of something and to assume that that aspect that I have called out is actually the whole truth of the thing. I might, in my mind, label someone as an enemy or a friend, and then I don't keep my experience of that person alive and fresh after I've made that judgment. So I'm squeezing these big ideas about An even bigger world, even bigger world down into tiny little words that are supposed to unfold into the same thing when they get into your mind.

[37:34]

Except that you have a different pool of ideas that you're working from and you're inside a different world. It's a beautiful and ridiculous and I think impossible process. An unending process. delight of this human experience, I think, to have and use language. It's, yeah, I think a marvel, really. But words are not the things themselves. An actual carrot cannot fit into my mind and be used in there, but the idea of a carrot can. Both those things are wonderful in their own way, but to not confuse them is, I think, an active, lively part of my practice. So in this context, I find it helpful sometimes to really make an effort to not put words on objects and events.

[38:44]

And I will note that this is extremely difficult for me. I think on a on a really good day, I might have a moment of pause before my brain jumps into the putting words onto things. For instance, I might hear a noise outside and immediately I think that's a garbage truck driving down the alley. And it turns out that I had a whole bunch of judgments attached to many of those words and those elements of that really quite short story. So if I don't put words onto that experience so quickly, there can be a moment where that garbage truck can include the people inside it, can include their lives, can include the connections from them and all of the trash in that truck to the rest of the city, to the rest of the planet, and to the ongoing

[39:53]

unfolding of this universe. If I don't force things to have these solid edges, then each moment or object has more freedom to include and connect to the rest of existence. So having just talked about the difficulty of using words by using a whole lot of words. I'll try to bring it down to the fundamentals again. Really, again, what am I talking about here? I'm advocating paying careful and non-judgmental attention to our own experience in order to learn from that experience. Our own direct experience is a teacher that is always with us.

[40:54]

And so finding ways to work with it and have my experience support my practice is something I can engage in in every moment. Also, I'm encouraging, I hope, compassion and making choices that reduce suffering and pointing out that I think one source of compassion, certainly a source of compassion in my own life and practice is recognizing the limitations of my own perspective. And I'm promoting this embodied human experience as a devotional act towards this inexpressible unity that is things as it is. So what do we do with all of that?

[41:59]

I would say make a vow and try to live it. I don't really know what more we can do. Set an intention and then do my best. Do the best with what I have to vow to try as often as possible to remember. what this body-mind really is and what this experience of being alive is, to vow to try to reduce suffering and to promote peace. And when I notice that I have forgotten my vows, to simply vow to try again. So I'll leave you with this poem one more time. The Death of Fred Clifton.

[43:08]

I seemed to be drawn to the center of myself, leaving the edges of me in the hands of my wife. I saw with the most amazing clarity, so that I had not eyes, but sight. And rising and turning through my skin, there was all around, not the shapes of things, but oh, at last, the things themselves. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[44:26]

I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to enter them. The dharma days are boundless. I vow to enter them. Without those waiting in the sunset as well.

[44:57]

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