Good morning. So I'm here to give my annual suffering lecture. I really love suffering. Not the experience of it, but I like to talk about it. So We all want to be saved from the experience of suffering, disappointments, bitterness, fear of the future, physical pain that won't go away, mental anguish, resentments, our unrequited love for all beings, and sorrow for the earth and its innocent creatures.

[01:02]

And we often do very complicated and time-consuming things to escape our suffering, things that because they're virtuous or high-minded, we think that it will help us escape our suffering. Things will be better. And this idea equating virtue with immunity from suffering is so reflexive to us, maybe because we grown up in a Christian culture where separating behavior into good and bad is just so endemic, so natural to us. But I actually think Buddhism does this too. The Abhidharma, for instance, is a most thorough textbook for attaining liberation from suffering by purifying oneself, by gradually extinguishing unwholesome behaviors and developing wholesome behaviors.

[02:11]

And this actually holds water. If you experiment with abhidharmic practices and purge yourself very patiently of greed, hate, and delusion, this is actually your experience. If you develop an indifference to material wealth you'll be impervious to the frantic acquisition of material goods that this culture is currently going through, and you will not suffer that particular way. And if you make an effort to minimize the number of people that you dislike, the burden of ill will that you carry, which is a particularly devastating factor, form of suffering physically and mentally. The burden of ill will that you carry will be lightened and this is very important.

[03:12]

So it's true, it's true that developing wholesome behaviors and letting the unwholesome ones slide away is a very good way to do this. to minimize your suffering. And Buddhism is radically straightforward about this, taking responsibility for your own behavior. The only circumstance you have any power over in this world is your own inner life, your own speech, your own perceptions, your own behavior. That's the only power that you have. So you might, this is our only access to liberation is here. And Buddhism is so straightforward about that. Not trying to get control of the world, but trying to move through or modulate or even just notice how our own perception of behavior leads to our suffering.

[04:24]

So in objective reality... you might have the situation where someone comes up and messes with you. That's objective. You were just minding your own business when somebody just took a bead on you and came up and bothered you. So that's maybe objective reality if there is such a thing. I don't believe in it myself, but you're entitled to that concept if you prefer. But practice reality. is that you take 100% responsibility. 100%. That is the most useful way to look at the situation. What did I do? How did I draw this person? Not from guilt or shame, not from that, but just what happened here. You can only go to yourself for answers. You don't know what happened with the other person.

[05:26]

So basically what I'm leading up to is I think it's a mistake to take refuge in anything but the present moment from your suffering, refuge from your suffering. And I have a poem here by my dear friend Barton Stone to help make this point. And his poem is called Meditation on Grasping and Clinging. by Barton Stone. He lives up close by me near the Russian River. Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva addressed the assembled beings with great compassion. Birth and death are relentless and you are right to tremble as you behold them. For all things are void of self-nature. Your alkaline diet will not save you. Your workout routine will not save you.

[06:29]

The Beatles will not come back to save you. Organic produce will not save you. Your vows will not save you. Mutual funds will not save you. Poetry will not save you. Zazen will not save you. Tree planting will not save you. Washboard abs will not save you. A clean car will not save you. Psychedelics will not save you. Your teacher will not save you. Big mind will not save you. Your family will not save you. Neither wit nor charm will save you. Rare gold coins will not save you. Jesus will definitely not save you. Virtue will not save you. Solar panels will not save you. Fame and fortune will not save you. Your super comfortable sharper image styrofoam pellet Zafu will not save you.

[07:32]

Not even your mate's love will save you. Hearing aids will not save you. Expatriation will not save you. Degrees and credentials will not save you. Hope will not save you. Extended orgasms will not save you. The great mother's arms will not save you. No amount of vitamins and supplements will save you. Art will not save you. Meditations on grasping and clinging will not save you. Giddy episodes of gratitude will not save you. Antioxidants will not save you. Your grandchildren will not save you. Your reputation will not save you. The people's eventually uprising will not save you. Extraterrestrial entities will not save you no matter how high their vibrational level. Beauty will not save you.

[08:35]

Modesty will not save you. Invisibility will not save you. Hilarity will not save you. Clever turns of phrase will not save you. The esteem of your colleagues will not save you. Being debt-free will not save you. Hope for one more sunrise will not save you. Many of the assembled beings on that day, hearing these words and taking them to heart, immediately attained complete, unsurpassed, perfect life as it is, trembling and all. Unsurpassed, perfect life as it is, trembling and all. So people often ask me what to do when their pain becomes so great that it can't be ignored anymore. And I advise them, as you've heard me many times say, to turn toward their suffering.

[09:37]

To live a life beyond suffering and delight. Beyond suffering and delight means that we just live this life. right in front of us, whether it's painful or wonderful at the moment. You're going to live it anyway. You might as well stop dividing it into painful moments and wonderful moments, moments you're going to try to run away from and moments that you're going to deeply savor. You can deeply savor them all. It's just that some moments are harder to get into than others. So I know this is bad news, that you're being advised to settle into your suffering. But if you practice already, if you already make effort to get to your cushion, your mind is already refining itself. It's becoming refined over time.

[10:43]

And what I mean by that is it notices your mundane suffering. the kind we have hundreds of times a day. And my favorite example of this is you're following a car for a couple of miles, and they suddenly turn off without giving a turn signal. And not only did they abandon me, but they didn't even say goodbye. So this is just mundane suffering. You might just shrug and not even notice it, actually. we tend to numb out or gloss over that kind of mundane suffering because we're afraid if we notice all the instances of it during the day, probably hundreds, if we actually feel it, feel the suffering that this causes several times a day, we'll be weighted down by it because it happens so often. So we tend to just go back to our reset.

[11:49]

you know, just our usual state of mind and shrug it off. But because it happens so often, I insist, because it happens so often, we ought to notice it. We ought to feel it. Two reasons. One is there's so many moments of our lives taken up by this mundane suffering. this mild offense or injustice or whatever. Somebody rushes in front of you to get to the door first and the door almost hits you because of their rudeness. So we experience this so often, so many moments of our lives are taken up by it. That's too many moments to not actually live through, to not actually feel what arises. when this happens to us. So it's too much to give up that much time to oblivion just because it's unpleasant, mildly unpleasant.

[12:56]

That's one reason. And for two, I really think we should process our suffering. And otherwise, it accumulates and sticks to our bones. It just stays in there, festering. So what I mean by processing, it is actually moving it through our body minds. Having a private temper tantrum in your car when the driver who seems to be driving in a bubble of self finally turns off is very satisfying. It does move things through. After damning that driving, that driver, and all living issue of his or her loins to hell forever, you probably won't think about it again. So I think that practice refines the mind. It enables it to be aware on an increasingly subtle level of satisfactions.

[14:08]

disappointments on a much more subtle level, so that you aren't constantly tuning out and coming back, tuning out and coming back, but you develop some sort of steady staying with and settling. So I think over time, not only do you become more attuned to your mundane suffering, if you already practice, because you become used to Somebody used the word habit the other day and everybody freaked out. Oh, no, not a habit. But a habit of being present is not such a bad thing. You become used to just being present, just needing things instead of taking off for a while and coming back. Taking off and coming back is fine. But if you can get used to staying, that's less jarring. So you become used to living life as it is under your nose, but you're in the great, magnificent, and astonishing process of learning non-preference.

[15:21]

If you can learn to practice regularly, it just goes on without your actually worrying about it. If you're learning that magnificent practice of non-preference. Your preference for delightful moments over painful moments is slowly being neutralized over time as you continue your practice day after day, year after year. And it slowly, ever so slowly, just becomes about what's right here, whether it demands What's right here demands all the internal resources you can muster to meet a particularly painful and anguishing challenge. Or whether you can kick back with a glass of wine and watch a hummingbird feed at your camellia bush. Sometimes you're scrambling and sometimes you're relaxed, but all the time you're engaged.

[16:32]

So this is non-preference. And it's possibly the most satisfying connected way to live that I personally know of. So as I said, if you already practice, your mind is already learning this. You don't have to manipulate it or push it along. It's already learning this from just sitting on your cushion watching the world go by. in a right view, arising, passing away, arising, passing away, already is teaching you non-preference. So if you enter a period of great pain, you already have in place many of the elements that you need to settle into your suffering. And I'll name a few of those elements that I think are so important. One... is an appreciation for direct experience, for having sensual experiences which are unmediated by labels like, this is wonderful or this is terrible.

[17:45]

Unmediated by labels, just the experience without the judgment or the conceptualization. And these aren't particularly pleasant experiences all the time. You know, it's much easier to just, you know, look at a flower or a tree or the sun dappling through the leaves and not have concepts. But I think we have a tendency to run to concepts when it's the other way, when it's very hard to have this direct experience of pain, to just let that be pain rather than call it all sorts of things and leap into, oh, God, what does this mean? You know. I'll be disabled or this pain will last a long time. A lot of settling has to happen to allow a direct experience of anguish or pain. So again, a mundane example of this was a student of mine said that when he became an adult, he started drinking coffee because that's what people in our culture do.

[18:54]

You know, he drank coffee socially, and he became a teacher in a high school, and there was a coffee machine in the teacher's lounge, and that's no tea or anything like that. So he started drinking coffee. And then after he started practicing, he realized he didn't like the taste of coffee. He actually got in touch with the direct experience of drinking coffee. And so he realized it was a social thing that he just did because everybody does it. So this is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I talk about direct experience, actually tasting this thing that is offered to us from the time we're a child. If you have children, you know that they want to taste the coffee, this thing that we are so enthusiastic about every morning. Children are taught from very young that this is a positive experience.

[19:57]

But coffee is actually very bitter to the tongue. You have to enjoy that particular taste or put sugar and cream in it. So that's one thing, being able to settle into direct experience. And the second element, I think is necessary to settle into your suffering. I've talked about so much and written about so much that I don't want to go into it in depth today, but I couldn't possibly make a statement about suffering without mentioning it. I think one thing that's very important to be able to settle into your suffering is an ability to receive comfort from mundane objects. If you're in pain, this is actually true of everybody, not just somebody who has physical pain, but everybody has enough pain that they might think twice about taking anything for granted, like the roof over your head, your soft bed, with the comforter and the pillows and the music that you have in your house.

[21:15]

To really appreciate these things is comforts. is so important. Just the comforter that you like. Just the pillow that receives your head. Just the handmade objects that you put in that room that were made by a friend or some particular natural thing that you like. And then you can get into spoons and forks and plates. They're made for human convenience. Coasters and shoes, for heaven's sakes. How would you like to walk down that path of Green Gulch without shoes today? Shoes and rugs and heaters and air conditioners, they're all made for our comfort. And it really is comforting to remember this when you're so unhappy.

[22:17]

So uncomfortable. And fleece, wrapping yourself in fleece, now there's something. Because I had prejudice against non-natural fibers for years, I came lately to fleece. My God. There's a fabric. And then a third element that I think is very important in enabling us to settle into our suffering is creativity. I have meditation groups for people in pain, and when we do six months or a year on creating art, you know, I mean art, personal art, you know, sketchbook, paints, that kind of thing, people, you know, as a practice, people say how much it helps pain. to be able to do something like that. And when I wrote my books, I wrote all three of my books in recovery periods from surgery.

[23:24]

That's the only time I have a chance to write books. And it was just miraculous how it eased my pain to create something. So, you know, that's a special practice, creating art. or writing or something, but I think what people don't realize or give themselves credit for is the problem solving in everyday life is tremendously creative. So it's not only the tremendous biochemical relief you get from creating art, but also the great pleasure of solving everyday problems if you have pain or anguish. For instance, How do you play when you're in pain? When people can have pain consultations with me, I always say endorphins. You have to get attuned to what produces endorphins for you.

[24:26]

Endorphins are the magic of chronic pain. So how do you produce endorphins when you're depressed? How do you produce endorphins when you can't move or every movement or lots of movements are painful. This is a problem to be solved creatively with intelligence and wide view. Time to clear out your prejudices and preconceived ideas and say, how do I create endorphins? I am depressed. I can't move. How do you shop for groceries when you can't walk? How do you have a lover when you have episodes of debilitating back pain. I have a young client who just met a man a couple months ago. She's a school teacher. She spends part of every day lying down on her back when the kids go out to play.

[25:28]

She lays down and does gentle exercises. And these breaks of exercises get her through her day. But then she met a man. wanted to have sex. So aside from the social thing alone, how is she going to be a lover to someone if she can hardly move her pelvis? So she, over time, is working out, focusing on the endorphins produced as the ground of being, rather than the pain that's produced. And so it all mingles together and the endorphins are just beginning to win out. This is creative. This is taking internal, all the internal responsibility that you can for your own liberation.

[26:28]

It's very touching to me. So I just got an email from a student of mine who has had a stroke many years ago. She's been in a wheelchair. And she has recently had a very mysterious addition to her disability, which is that she's much more immobile. And here is someone, valiant heart, she volunteers. to take care of and teach other people who have had stroke, gets all around. You know, comes up to the Russian River to do a calligraphy workshop at the Russian River Zendo, goes over to San Francisco Zen Center to serve on the Disability Committee of the Board. She gets all around. But recently she had some difficulty, which hasn't been figured out yet, which makes her more immobile. but I got this email from her last week. We figured out a new way to get me in and out of the van, and we are planning to come to Green Gulch this Sunday for your talk.

[27:36]

Can scoot everywhere here in Sonoma as nothing is further than 15 or 16 blocks, and it's all flat. Can still get in and out of van if terrain is absolutely flat with zero incline, which means I get to... San Quentin every week, where she volunteers to teach meditation. San Francisco Zen Center, my son's accessible apartment. Laguna Honda, where she teaches stroke patients and more. My brother widened the door to my bathroom so I can scoot into it and shower and use toilet. Looking at the above, She tells me she always checks her emails for spelling errors. Looking at the above, I am filled with gratitude for all I can do and my wonderful planning mind, which on occasion is very helpful. It pushes me to investigate, to try new ways. Now, I would call that, you know, a planning mind, compulsive mind.

[28:39]

We all are visited by that during Zazen, right? Where you just compulsively day plan and You know, what am I going to do after this period's over? And what am I going to do tomorrow? How can I control absolutely everything in my life so nothing is a surprise? Compulsive mind, I call that. But I think the mind she's referring to is the upside of compulsive mind, which is creative mind, solving problems. You know, I will be in this situation tomorrow. How am I going to handle it? So she says... I am a blessed woman. I agree. So a monk asked Yang Shan, can people nowadays realize enlightenment? Implying, you know, our collective delusional mind. Now I think this question was asked anywhere from 500 to 1,000 years ago.

[29:41]

I didn't look up Yang Shan, but that's my guess. So it's excruciatingly relevant to us today. Can people nowadays realize enlightenment? So Yangshan said, it's not that there's no enlightenment, but how can we deal with falling into what is not essential? How can we deal with falling into what is non-essential? He doesn't say don't fall into it. He's probably an elderly gentleman and is quite realistic. So it's not that we don't fall into what is non-essential. How do we deal with falling into what is non-essential? How do we decide what's non-essential? Do we need to decide it?

[30:43]

Can we just feel it when we fall into it? Maybe we don't have to decide ahead of time. So it's not that we have to rid ourselves of greed, hate, and delusion. We have to penetrate our greed, hate, and delusion with mindfulness. So what's the most helpful way to make a particular commitment to our practice? Let's say you've already been able to get yourself to a cushion on a regular basis. And you need direction for your practice. By the way, just as an aside here, I think that we need direction for our practice. And I think we need to challenge our practice continually 20, 30, 40 years of practice. You know, we adjust to practice or we adapt

[31:45]

to practice in the same way that we become accustomed to everything else. We need stimulation. We need actual intention. And our teachers help us with this. Classes help us with this. Taking the precepts help us with this. But I think we need to constantly, well, not constantly, but intentionally become aware of where we are in practice. You know, what is important to us. I try personally not to be more than three or four months out of phase with my deepest desires because I have allowed myself to be booked ahead for a year for about 10 or 15 years now. I realized this past year that I don't want to do that anymore.

[32:48]

I would love to do spontaneous things. I would love to go to friends' birthday parties. I would love when someone says, well, why don't we just go to dinner to not say, oh, I have a meeting, I have a commitment, I have a lecture, I have a class. I would love to do that. But 2008 got away from me. And so now I'm several months out of phase. But starting in 2009, I'm having a spontaneous year. And I'm not going to accept any long-term invitations. So you may not see me here. I understand that Green Gulch is booked way ahead for lectures and workshops. But if any cancellations come up, I'm very willing to do things at the last minute. So the reason I mention this is I just don't want to do that anymore. I mean, it's part of realizing how I'm feeling.

[33:51]

I want to do spontaneous things closer in time. I love to come to Green Gulch. I love to go to Sacramento. I love blah, blah, blah, and so on. Well, there will be things. I do want to go to Tassajara next year. But to realize, to come into your feelings about what your deepest journeys and what it is you want to do now is very important and that's why I mention this. So I was about to say what's the most helpful way to make a particular commitment in our practice and I got kind of distracted by the particular commitment thing because I think it's important to continually make commitments throughout the length of your practice. So you've established a discipline And now you want to touch yourself, to touch your deepest yearning with your practice. So look to your suffering for a focus for your practice.

[34:56]

Ask yourself, how do I suffer? What is the source of my suffering? What are the ideas specifically that lead to my suffering? can I watch how this operates in my life? It's very hard to watch how this plays out because we have ideas that we hold so dearly. Let me give you an example. A student of mine told me how much anguish and she was really tortured by her hard feelings toward her husband's relatives. They... have been married for almost 20 years. And all these years, she has held such hard feelings toward her husband's relatives. She finds that luckily they don't live nearby, but they visit a couple times, holidays.

[36:00]

And her sister-in-law, sister-in-law and the sister-in-law's husband, does live nearby. And that is the most hated relative for her. So she said, what can I do about this? So I suggested that she should notice whenever her relatives violated a view that she held. In other words, they just did something that offended her. Can she locate? that view, that point of view, that value, can she say this is what they have violated? That's very important to make that conscious so you just don't go around being injured and offended without knowing what it is specifically, what idea you have.

[37:01]

This has been very helpful to me. So she said, After she first started this practice, she said to me, oh, this is terrible beyond belief. I hate them much more. She said, they do this, they do that. I said, well, what are the values? She said, well, first of all, they don't know how to treat a daughter-in-law. They should honor me. She's a sister-in-law also. They should honor me as my husband's wife. Well, what exactly should they do? They should bring food over, you know, and it should be food that should accord with my diet, not just, you know, sweet stuff. They know I shouldn't eat sweet stuff. And they should ask after our children.

[38:03]

They should bring our children's presents on their birthday. She had this long list of of things, of how relatives should be treated. And she treated them this way. They just didn't get the hint. Maybe they felt that she was too, who knows, right? Who knows how they interpreted her offerings. Oh, not only that, but need I say that they weren't grateful for her offerings? So, oh, also there was an issue of family birthday parties. She didn't get a long enough ahead invitation to the family birthday parties, which she took as a slight. So maybe she'd only get a week notice that so-and-so was having a birthday. So she noticed she was very good. She noticed the values that were being violated. So then after a while, after she'd been practicing for a while, of course, being able to actually count the values that were violated at first just increased her anger.

[39:14]

But after a while, she was able to soften these things a little. Well, I asked her, what do you really want? Do you really want to be invited two weeks early, or do you want to get along? with your husband's relatives. What is it you want? Now, that's part of why it's valuable to notice what offends you. You know, there's a whole paramita about this. Kashanti paramita, you know, how do we deal with injury and offense and harm that others do us? Well, first, you have to start with the perception process. How do we perceive offense? So what is it you want? I asked her. And she said, well, I guess I want to get along with my husband's relatives. She was able to take value by value, offense by offense, and make a decision about it.

[40:20]

Some she never was able to give up and continued to be irritated. But in the main, She was able to see that she had a lot to do with the tension between herself and her relatives. So you actually need some sort of stabling force in your life if you're going to penetrate your suffering deeply. So this is why the Sitzhasa. Tremendous body-mind stability. So that all our values and offenses can take place up here while our body is thud. Thud. So all this can just go on. So I think we do have to decide what we want our life to be about. Then return to it again and again. Just as I said about my spontaneous year.

[41:23]

What do we want our life to be about? And no matter what you decide is important to you, you'll always be in this swirling mass of greed, hate, and delusion. This will always be the case. But if you want anything else, anything in addition in your life, like neutral space as opposed to clinging and pushing away, or compassion and connection, you have to find it where it already is in your life. You have to get refined enough to notice the connection that's already in your life, the comfort that's already in your life, the compassion that's already in your life. So I wish you luck in this endeavor. I really do. Thank you so much.

[42:21]

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