I vow to taste the truth of the Thakata's words. Good morning. My name is Yvonne Rand, and I am a disciple of Suzuki Roshi's and Dainen Katagiri Roshi's. I was part of the Zen Center, San Francisco Zen Center for 28 years, and am now a mile down the road at a place that is dedicated to Buddhist practice called Goat in the Road. And I'm very happy to be here this morning. I'd like to begin by inviting you to bring attention to your posture.

[01:10]

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle. What I'd like you to do is to explore the possibility of allowing the torso to come into alignment, rather than holding yourself up, and to let the head center, the heart center, and the hara, three very important energy centers, just in front of the spine, be centered and aligned with each other. To let yourself have some sensing of gravity with the sense of weightedness in the jaw and arms, and then let your attention rest on the breath. In my experience, one of the great things about refining my awareness of the body when

[02:25]

I'm in attention, and how the body's arranged, and how the body's arranged when I'm out of attention, can be quite interesting and useful. And of course, that coming back into the physical posture that accompanies attention is something that I can do anywhere and at any time. This morning, I'd like to talk about a pathway, if you will, a pathway of characteristics of the heart-mind that can lead to what Buddha Shakyamuni promised is liberation from suffering. I think that for most of us, if not all of us, we experience suffering when we're out

[03:34]

of attention and in reaction. And we tend to have a whole cluster of reactions to our reactions. A lot of aversion and occasionally some attachment. Someone recently said, I'm right, and I always want to be right, and I'm not interested in anything else. And if someone challenges me about my rightness, I can be sarcastic. And what my friend acknowledged was that he actually enjoys being right and being sarcastic. Not so sure he wants to give those reactions up. So, the pathway that I want to look at with you this morning is something like this.

[04:44]

First, the cultivation of our capacity to observe, observe, identify, name in the sense of describing. And of course, the mind is continually doing that, observing, identifying, naming. It's sometimes called in the Buddhist psychology texts, the way the mind tidies the mind. I've always been very fond of that description. Our capacity to be present enough to be able to observe and describe what's arising, both internally and externally, is crucial. And sometimes the observing mind doesn't begin to come forth, manifest, if you will, until

[05:52]

later, after the fact. But I want to encourage all of us to not get impatient and not feed the judging habit when we don't notice what's been going on until later. My experience both as a practitioner and in practicing with other people over the years is that if I am willing to see what I see when I see it, without judgment, the lag time between observing, seeing, and the moment of whatever that I'm seeing will begin to shorten so that I begin eventually, if I'm patient and persistent, to be able to see clearly in the moment.

[06:53]

Someone I've been practicing with for a long time said in a discussion that we were having yesterday that she had recently had the experience of looking through some binoculars, looking through the binoculars at her reactive patterns, and finally finding the button that dials for focus. I thought, that's very useful. For any of you who are bird watchers, you know the difference between looking through the binoculars before you found the focus button and after. And of course, as we get older and need things like eyeglasses, we know a lot about the difference between in and out of focus. Now, I would propose that part of our capacity to observe clearly rests on our willingness

[08:06]

to see whatever is arising. And of course, this is where our habit about picking and choosing what I like and what I don't like gets to be potentially a difficulty. And in particular, as we bring increasingly more and more capacity for being in attention in the midst of some reaction, mental reaction or emotional reaction, is noticing what we turn away from. And we can turn away in a lot of different ways. So then, what I would hope is some interest and curiosity in when do I turn away? What's the detail of how I turn away?

[09:07]

Particularly for us as Americans, we do a lot of turning away with distracting. I think we've really refined distraction to a high art, if you will. So, the willingness, the characteristic of willingness to see whatever arises, whatever our actual experience is, late and eventually in the moment, is, I think, crucial. And out of that willingness to see whatever is so in any given moment, as much as possible, arises then the possibility of cultivating interest and curiosity. As some of you may know, Zen people are very fond of talking about two things, shit and

[10:25]

death. I'm inordinately interested in both, actually. In the days when I could still hike up in the hills, which I certainly hope I'll be able to do again, one of the things I enjoyed doing was looking at what's called scat. Because of course, you get to know who's living here in this watershed. And not only who, but what they've been eating. Some of you know Brother David Steindlrast. Some years ago, when he was up at Hope Cottage working on a book, he went out for a walk and he brought me a present. He said, I know you're going to just love this. It was some big piece of dried up shit with a lot of hair coming out of it.

[11:26]

I still have it to this day, framed. A member of my family says, do you have to talk about shit when I'm eating my lunch? But of course I've become, and I think it's one of the consequences of practice over a long period of time, willing to talk about anything under almost any and all circumstances. I'm fooling around a little bit, but I'm also proposing that this quality of mind, of interest, arising with it, curiosity, is crucial in the process of, first of all, studying what

[12:33]

our reactive patterns are. Because of course, we have no access to our capacity for choice about our state of mind, our states of mind, if we don't begin with studying what's so, in the so-called untrained mind. I would propose that our reactions are not at all about what's happening in the present moment. They're entirely about what's happened in the past. But every time some of our favorite reactions arise and we go along with them, what we're doing without quite realizing it is regenerating that very pattern, feeding it like a hungry demon food in the form of energy. So, I'm proposing a kind of peculiar version of benign neglect, that is, notice what's

[13:50]

arising, but don't then flip into the storytelling that so often accompanies reaction. And in fact, this pathway of cultivating our capacity to come back into attention, to notice when we're out of attention and come back into attention, is crucial in the process eventually of developing an ability to dismantle and dissolve reactive patterns. Suzuki Roshi used to talk about, well, it's simple, it's just not easy. So what I'm aiming towards is to be able to be in attention in the moment of reaction arising, but not get caught with that, feeding it with storytelling or whatever is our version

[14:52]

of feeding our reactive patterns. And of course, what happens is we have the experience of arising and gone. Even our reactions have the mark of impermanence. But what I want to really emphasize and invite you to look into for yourselves is what happens when you're interested in what you are not historically accustomed to being interested in. The arising of fear or anger or frustration, for example. The arising of the mental reaction of judgment. That's the killer for a lot of us.

[15:55]

We have this wonderful Tara here on my left. In the Buddhist tradition, there are many manifestations of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara in Sanskrit, the regarder of the cries of the world. And Avalokiteshvara's name carries this description. To be present with whoever or whatever arises in the moment without reaction and without judgment. Reactions and judgment in particular kill our ability to be interested in whatever is arising internally or externally. And of course, what I mean by that is literally interest

[17:05]

in whatever arises. So sometimes if we're doing a particular practice or we're doing a particular practice or a teacher suggests a particular practice, and then what arises is, I don't want to. Don't tell me what to do. Resistance. Oh, resistance. How often do we go along with resistance rather than have some interest and curiosity in the resistance What's it look like? How does it arise? What's the manifestation? What's my experience when I have this sense of no, blocking, whatever the face of resistance is that one experiences? I recently had a conversation with a colleague of mine who's going through a very difficult

[18:14]

time with some suffering in her family. And she said, you know, I am stunned. I don't know what to do. And she said, well, you know, you have to be present with whatever is arising. Anger, heartbreak, revenge. You know, after a certain number of years of practice and being identified as a card-carrying Buddhist practitioner and teacher, one has a certain, can get caught by a certain press release about, well, I don't do that anymore. And then something happens and we're in the pit of suffering just like everybody else. But what struck me as I was with my friend is that she, there was always this quality of observing what was going on and having the sense to know when she needed to quarantine herself from

[19:18]

being with other people. She said, I realized that there were some days when I simply wasn't trustworthy. I didn't spend time with other people. I didn't answer the telephone. Quarantine. Accepting the limitations arising with her states of mind on any given day. But also this capacity for both observing and being interested in what she was noticing. And very quickly being able to see the mind heading into revenge. Oh, revenge. I don't want to follow that pathway. A choice. And of course, because this person is quite experienced as

[20:29]

a practitioner, she has some sense about where to place attention most days, these days, on being kind to herself. Being kind to this out-of-hand mind erupting regularly out of heartbreak. My suggestion is that we practice, if you will, the cultivation of interest and curiosity, not by starting with what is hard to be interested in, but what's easy to be interested in. You know, think of it as training wheels on the tricycle. We so often have expectations

[21:34]

of ourselves about what we should be able to do. And so I would propose that keeping in mind always that our mind training program, if you will, will bloom wholesomely if I'm always coming back to standing on the ground of kindness and generosity. And to begin to cultivate the capacity for observing, being interested in, not just with what's arising in the mind, but externally as we are in the world. And of course, our ability to see clearly

[22:40]

externally and internally rests on our willingness to be surprised. Someone said to me as I was coming in this morning, I can't speak in public. And I proposed, up until now I have not felt able to speak in public. And I could see my friend's body relax a little. There's a little door open. Up until now, I've not wanted to look at this or this or this. Please don't start with Everest, whatever your Everest is. Start with a not very high speed bump

[23:47]

maybe. And I actually want to propose that practicing cultivation of my capacity for observing and describing externally will in time lead to my having increased ability for observing and describing what arises internally, especially reactive patterns and their accompanying body sensation. And my experience is that out of observing and describing externally, what I'm doing is cultivating my capacity to be interested in what I'm observing and to awaken the capacity for curiosity. I have for a number of years been very interested

[24:56]

in the relationship between the Buddhist meditation tradition and contemporary art. Actually, not just contemporary, but these recent years, specifically contemporary art. And I would propose that both in the act of creation and in meditation, there is a relationship between what we are really uncovering and cultivating is the mind of don't know. And of course, we immediately begin to buck a lot of traffic in terms of our cultural conditioning, which is I better hide what I don't know. I better hide mistakes. I better pretend I know. Or they'll flunk me, whatever your version of being flunked looks like, since most of us

[25:57]

are probably out of school. Resting with that don't know mind can be crucial in the allowing and nurturing of interest and curiosity. Oh, what's this? For many of us, we gyrate, if you will, between what we like and what we don't like. Attraction, aversion. You might let yourselves take on a little experiment, since it seems not to be raining this morning.

[27:05]

You might go down in the garden and walk around and just let yourself notice, like on the ground, what you don't like. You might go for pleasant, unpleasant, neutral. And then go back and do the same loop a second time. What happens for me when I do that is what I said unpleasant the first time, the second time or third time slips into neutral or even pleasant. It's what I observed yesterday as people were going from one dead critter after another. For some people who've been looking at this collection of dead critters for a while, what a while ago was significantly unpleasant has slipped into neutral or even

[28:12]

pleasant. Oh, interesting. And for a number of people, what arose was, these now passed over beings, their remains are quite beautiful. And for a number of people, what arose was, their remains are quite beautiful. I have the mummified body of a mouse that got caught in one of the bathrooms we have at our place, which was much more hermetically sealed than I had realized. So I had stashed some boxes that I needed to go through at some point in the bathroom, and some months later went back to the task, and there on the windowsill

[29:12]

was this already quite mummified mouse with its little tail sticking straight out. So I can pick up the tail, and the whole mouse comes with it. I think it's so that when being a long-time meditator, what we begin to be much more at ease with is a kind of loose mind. You know what I mean by loose mind? It just goes bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop. So when my neighbor came over for a dead critter viewing, I picked up my mouse and I said, this is the only mouse I know that I can pick up by its tail like a handle on a teacup. I tell you that because I want to encourage you to consider that the process of cultivating

[30:28]

interest and curiosity does not always lead to looking at what you think is dreadful. The more you can stop feeding the habitual judge, the more you may be surprised at the lessening of reaction and the increasing of response in any given moment. And the possibility of in being more and more aware of and able to describe any given reactive pattern, the ability to see how this particular reaction was my best effort to take care of myself when I was little, and may no longer be serving me. So that I can both be aware of and be both appreciate the ground from which a reaction has arisen and be realistic about the consequences

[31:37]

of a given reaction these days. Interest and curiosity in what arises in the mind without editing, without judging, is absolutely crucial in the meditation path. Not feeding, not going to getting rid of, but developing the ability to be with. And to know when to move attention away from what I'm noticing back to the alignment of the body, the experience of gravity, the breath. We live in a culture that so emphasizes thinking that we often have little access

[32:47]

up until now to the absolute reliability of what we can come to know through the body and the breath. Initially, we may be less than thrilled with what we begin to notice. But even that has the mark of impermanence. I'm not thrilled. But, of course, how often is that reaction of not thrilled tied to our attachment to being somebody or having a certain description of who I am? I'm not thrilled. [...] The I am habit. I think that often we get to a place in meditation practice where

[34:05]

we begin to, by accident it seems, stumble into a moment of recognizing, oh, even this sense of me, what a friend of mine calls the me-ing habit. Even that is coming and going, coming and going, coming and going. And we can have a certain amount of fear arise with those experiences, but that's usually because we've stumbled into experience that we're not used to. We're much more used to the me-ing habit. So, what I'm really talking about is the cultivation of these characteristics of the mind for the process of dismantling

[35:08]

our reactive patterns and uncovering and developing our capacity to be present, to be surprised, to rest in spaciousness. For many of us who have been practicing for a long time, we get quite attached to being special. I'm a Buddhist meditator. I was recently in Chicago where I was teaching at the University of Chicago in their art museum, and I met a quite remarkable person manifesting as a taxi driver. We had quite some experience

[36:23]

of connection, so I kept calling him up and saying, well, now I need to go so-and-so, so-and-so, so we could keep talking to each other. And the day that he drove me out to the airport, we had a long talk. Actually, I listened and he talked. He is someone who understands the possibility of being present and awake. He's someone who understands that the only mind he can train is his own mind. And he told me a number of stories of having various people in the back seat of his cab in the category of what one might call difficult riders. It turns out that he actually knows quite a bit about Buddhism, and he's a very

[37:25]

good Buddhist, and understands what this tradition is about. I could tell, not intellectually, but in his actual everyday life. It was an incredible lesson in being willing to be surprised when you get into the back seat of the cab. Actually, since 9-11, whenever I've been in a big city in the back seat of a cab, I've been interested in having some sense of who's driving and what's their life like these days. And I've been continually surprised that if

[38:28]

I get into the back seat and am open to whatever arises, more times than not, I feel met by the person driving the cab. I've had the same experience walking down the street in San Francisco when I pass someone who's homeless. What happens when I can tolerate whatever fear arises about, oh gosh, that could be me, and can just look someone in the eye and say, hello? Our reactions so often keep us from stumbling into these moments of experiencing the fact of the relational aspect of the world. And I think these days, the world needs more

[39:39]

of us to take the risk of being present than has been true, or maybe has been true for a long time, but feels like there's more request these days. So let me invite you to dig around, be interested in your own experiences and your reactions. You can dismantle and heal what you know. What you ignore will grow like topsy, or at least sometimes that may be the case. So thank you very much. It's nice to see you all. May our intention equally penetrate

[40:48]

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