Good morning. There's always the great experiment called what will my eyes see today. Since I have a little lectern, I have no idea whether my eyeglasses are necessary or not, whether my eyes are functioning this morning or not. I thought this morning that this was a rain which is kissing the earth. It's so gentle. But I noticed that it's also a rain which brings with it a kind of stickiness. Everything is sticking to everything else. We all experience strong emotions and especially strong negative emotions like anger and fear

[01:06]

that arise with such force and energy that we feel overcome. This sets the theme or focus of attention for a group of us who are spending some time together this weekend considering these strong and difficult emotions that arise and the consequences of that arising and to consider some of the antidotes, some of the practices in particular that come from the Buddhist tradition that may help us with transforming or dissolving or working with these emotions. So this morning I would like to talk about some of these emotions, frustration and anger

[02:10]

and violence on a nice spring morning. And I'd also like to talk about imagination. And the way in which I would like to speak about these things is to tell you some stories. I just hope that I have enough time to tell you all of the stories because I think together they cover the territory rather well. This is what happens when I go away and ride on airplanes and read newspapers. The newspapers are a great source of Dharma teachings. In fact, however, the first story I want to tell you arrived in my lap, so to speak, on Friday morning and comes in a letter that was written by an Anglican priest who is in charge of a church,

[03:21]

an Anglican church in Thailand, which he wrote to a colleague of his. And he begins his letter, We urgently need some help. I enclose press cuttings and personal account of a very pleasant young lady, Burmese student Sandar Thwin, who until the recent bloodbath was a final year law student at Rangoon University. She and her husband, a graduate geologist Nguyen Myint Ong, fled across the border at Mai Sat. Three Thai police took them to the local police station, locked the husband in a toilet, then took Sandar out into the suburbs and repeatedly raped her. The incident was not the first case of gross violation of Burmese refugees,

[04:22]

but this one was so bad that the Thai authorities had to act. The three culprits are in custody and Sandar and her husband have given their evidence. They are now again fleeing and in mortal danger because the family of one of the police, a man who comes from the Muslim tradition and is himself a multiple offender. His family have a promise to kill Sandar. I must move them out of the country with all speed. Can you help? We need someone to sponsor them and to negotiate their way through immigration. They really are a very refined and gentle couple. I'm arranging a full medical check for Sandar. She hasn't had one since the rape. She is handling things quite well. Nguyen Myint is more shocked but trying to come to grips with what has happened to his wife.

[05:29]

He seems very devoted to her. I will enclose some photographs. What can be done? Once more the U.S. is being asked to accept people in peril and in dire straits. What else? The second story that I want to tell you is about a young man named Willie Bosque. He's 26. When I read this story about him, I've actually been following his story now for a few weeks. I realized that he is exactly the age of my daughter. Somehow that put this story into a different perspective for me. To greet a visitor, Willie Bosque must now let himself be chained backwards to his prison cell door,

[06:34]

his arms and legs manacled through slots in it. Then the door is swung open with him splayed out aboard. The arrangement was devised last week after Mr. Bosque, a murderer who is widely considered the most incorrigible inmate in New York, managed to slip out of a chain that held his handcuffed arms to his waist and bashed a guard in the head, leaving a six-inch gash. His lawyer says it is part of the most restrictive confinement of any prisoner in the United States. It is also particularly galling for Mr. Bosque, a paradoxically man of charm, intelligence, and terrifying outbursts of violence, a man who craves control but who now finds himself trapped in a shrinking universe of total dependency. In a rare interview in the Woodburn Correctional Facility in the Catskills where he is incarcerated,

[07:38]

the dimpled, boyish-looking Mr. Bosque offered unusual insights into his enigmatic character. He once acknowledged that he had committed more than 2,000 crimes by the age of 15. including 25 stabbings and two subway murders. In preparation for the interview, guards had unchained Mr. Bosque from his cell door made of iron bars covered by a plexiglass shield with slots cut at waist and ankle level through which he puts his arms and feet to be manacled. The guards then put him in a tiny adjourning cell where he was seated on a stool. His arms were still handcuffed behind him, the cuffs padlocked to a broad leather belt around his waist. He spoke through tiny holes in a plexiglass panel, his only contact with the outside. From time to time as he talked to scratch his nose or push his black-rimmed glasses back on his face,

[08:41]

Mr. Bosque had to wriggle his arms and bend his head in a Houdini-like contortion. Mr. Bosque said that since childhood he had been driven by an inner rage and a shrewd sense of human weakness. There has always been an anger, a hatred, a bitterness, he said of his early criminal exploits. Now I know the reason for it. The impression, he insisted, of growing up poor in Harlem and being confined in reformatories and prisons almost continuously since the age of nine. He has been denied the right to take a shower and to go outside for an hour of exercise a day. He was already kept in a specially designed solitary confinement area at a far end of the red brick prison where video cameras monitored him and lights in the narrow corridor facing his cell were trained on him day and night.

[09:46]

To increase his sense of deprivation, other inmates are forbidden to talk to him and guards may speak to him only when he asks a question. He is serving a sentence of 28 years to life in prison. In addition, under internal prison proceedings, he has been ordered to spend the next 20 years in solitary confinement. He says, I'm willing to die if it will stop the system from producing more Willie Bosques. I'm worried about all those black children out there who are going to end up like me. Why is she reading us all these dreary news stories on this lovely day? This is the hopeful story. I will read that in a minute. So, these are stories about the extreme end of afflictive emotions, to say the least.

[10:56]

I also want to tell you about a man that I met, so to speak, a few weeks ago when I was driving back from the East Bay and there was some road work being done so that the road was reduced to one lane in each direction and a distance I would normally cover easily in 15 minutes took instead two hours. So it was a splendid traffic jam. And the car on my left, which had a Grateful Dead sticker in the back window and the young man who was driving it had his windows rolled down and was enjoying his stereo system and sort of bebopping around there in his seat. And after a fairly short period of time, he gripped his steering wheel, white knuckled his steering wheel and he began to yell,

[12:01]

This is a fucking outrage! And he proceeded to yell in exactly this manner at the top of his lungs for the duration of the traffic jam. I would like to return to this young man in a few minutes. The next story I want to tell you is one that you've probably witnessed or participated in, alas, one way or another. I was on the shuttle from New York to Boston and there was a woman with a very young child. I would guess maybe a year and a half or so in age. And the child was being rather fussy. And as we first sat down in our seats, the mother in exasperation shook this young child

[13:05]

and said, If you aren't quiet, I'm going to hit you. Only it was delivered with a good bit of intensity. And, of course, the baby got even more freaked out and screamed even more. And everyone on the airplane lost, including the baby and his mother. Part of what we have been considering together this weekend has to do with our encounter with ourselves and others. When we have these arisings of intense emotion which leads us to behave in ways which can cause anything from minor to vast and great harm to ourselves and to others.

[14:08]

And to consider how we attend to this aspect of our lives in the context of a tradition which features the cultivation of understanding and compassion. And I think the important piece here is to notice that understanding is what is described as coming first. That compassion does not arise absent understanding of some sort or another. And so the question arises, how do we come to understand that which seems like a kind of mystery to us? How do we understand what's happening when we feel powerless as if something is occurring completely out of our control? Where is the place for understanding and attention when we feel overcome?

[15:13]

And this is where imagination comes in, I believe. I am deeply grateful for what the teachings of the Buddha and the great traditions that follow from those teachings have helped me come to understand about the very real power and effectiveness of the imagination. So I want to tell you two more stories that are illustrations of that. One is a story about a Canadian hockey player who is a goalie whose name is Patrick Roy. I just swooned when I read this story. Canadian's goalie Patrick Roy is here to say that the standard National Hockey League net is no longer six feet by four feet.

[16:22]

No, forget all that stuff you learned in math class, get with it. Patrick Roy thinks small, as small as can be. He was standing in Hartford three years ago when it first happened, the national anthem playing. Roy's eyes fixed on the goal he would soon be protecting. Funny, but from where he stood, that same old 24 square foot rectangular cage didn't look so big. Letting his imagination run wild for a moment, he could see the red metal posts shrinking and the twine growing smaller. Before he knew it, Roy was on to something small, the power of miniaturized thinking. You want to keep the puck out of the net? Then think the way a leprechaun, a munchkin or a lilliputian might.

[17:23]

Some goalies talk about having a system, relying on anticipation, dropping down in butterfly fashion to stop shots, setting up an angle before the shot is even taken. Roy believes in a lot of that too, but today he is arguably the game's biggest player in net, a giant among goalies, in large part because of this talent of making a molehill out of a mountain. No one said anything to me, I found it by myself, said Roy, asked how he came upon such a great little idea. I don't know, I was looking at that net that night and it just felt like it was smaller. You will think for a goalie, concentration is probably the most important thing, said Roy,

[18:25]

who hasn't lost at the Forum this season and undoubtedly will be in net tonight when the Canadians face the Bruins in game one of the best of seven Adams Division Finals. I guess I'd say it's a little bit of both. It's 60% a little mental. There is yet another contradiction in watching Roy. He is not a big man or at least nowhere near as big as he looks in net. He's a very lean six feet, 165 pounds with the emaciated sunken cheek look of the average MTV guitar hammering millionaire. Standing in front of the net, albeit an image enhanced by his cat quick reflexes, he seems to tower over opposing forwards. In truth, he is only an inch taller than Boston's Reggie Lemelin. I play a simple game, said Roy.

[19:29]

I make the easy play, I don't try too much to make the big save, they will come. I like to anticipate. I wouldn't say I'm not really a technique goalie. I save more by emotion and instinct. Ever since I was eight years old, I was always like this. I watched other goalies with great reflexes. That's the way I like to play. And the article goes on. The author states all sorts of statistics and averages and bets on how this goalie and his team are going to win, etc. He closes with, but are these statistics fair? After all, Patrick Roy was playing in front of a much smaller net. The other story I want to tell you about is about a young couple that I sat behind when I was coming home from New York last week.

[20:37]

They had two children, a little boy, I would guess, about three, and a little girl, about nine months. And I thought, oh dear. This is going to be hectic. I wonder what this is going to be like. They divided up the kids. Each one clearly focused on his or her child of choice for the trip. They were very well equipped with juice and blankets and toys and books and games for the elder child. They looked rested. They were pretty well organized. And they had some quality of calm about them, which was striking in combination with the ages of their children.

[21:41]

They had a clearly defined area within which the children could do their thing. And it was an area which respected the boundaries of fellow passengers. But a little bit easy, not trying to get the kids to sit down just so, except during takeoff and landing. And in fact, during one part of the flight, they took three empty seats and covered them with big blankets and made a huge tent under which the three-year-old and someone else's little kid from the back of the plane had a marvelous time playing with plastic monsters. And it was one of the easiest trips I think I've ever taken with young children. And by the time we were established at cruising altitude, as the pilot declared,

[22:46]

everyone on the plane was dying to get a turn at the kids. Stewardesses and fellow passengers alike were itching to hold that cute baby and to read a story to the little boy. I'm not sure how they did it, but I could make some guesses. They clearly had thought about the plane trip ahead of time. And they had thought about their two children and what would be interesting, amusing, satisfying, and comforting for those children. So for me, what I thought I was seeing, what I still think I was seeing, was an example of two people who had a fairly realistic appraisal of what the situation would be like.

[23:49]

They had examined what they were about to get into and considered it. And there was some alignment between their expectation and what actually was happening. I think for many of us, we get into a lot of trouble, particularly around anger and fear, because we have some expectation of how things will be, which is anywhere from a little bit to a lot off the mark in terms of how things actually are. And so we find ourselves surprised or ill-prepared for the situation as it is. This is, of course, where our ability to imagine a situation and ourselves in it comes to play. More and more, I'm coming to understand that in the Buddhist scheme of things, there is abundance.

[25:04]

This is a view of existence, of human life, and the interconnectedness of all life, all beings, in many realms and many times, which has about it qualities of abundance, not scarcity. And is a tradition which carries practices, techniques, if you will, for cultivating beneficial states of mind and transforming those states of mind and those habits which are troublesome and lead to harm, disharmony, imprisonment of a sort. We are encouraged to examine, to look into the habit of self-cherishing

[26:07]

and to cultivate some capacity for selflessness, for not being so locked into a kind of clinging to identifying ourselves as the center of the universe and for cultivating ways of dispelling, transforming ignorance and delusion. When Bob Thurman was here recently doing a teaching, he described compassionate wisdom as a kind of solar disk that resides in the middle of the heart center and explodes, informing every cell of our being. What a lovely image. And since he offered that image, I have, in fact, been visualizing compassionate wisdom in just that way.

[27:14]

And I'm amazed at the kind of warmth and generosity that arises in me towards others as a consequence of sitting quietly, holding that image in my mind's eye for a little while in the morning after I get up. I'd like to mention a few of the practices that we have been looking at. We've been using as a reference, in particular, the great teaching from the 8th century by Shantideva, whom some of you have been hearing a lot about these days. Shantideva has some great lines, and I'd like to share a few of them with you. In chapter 5, he talks about the benefits of doing one thing at a time, wholeheartedly.

[28:30]

I should undertake whatever deed I have intended to do and think of doing none other than it. With my mind applied to that task, I should set about for the time being to accomplish it. Intention requires that we have some cultivation of our capacity to imagine. By acting in this way, all will be done well, but by acting otherwise, no action will be done. He has another piece of advice, which I think is interesting and very useful.

[29:35]

He suggests in a number of verses, when a negative or distracting, or prideful, or avaricious, or lazy, or impatient, or cowardly thought or inclination arises, remain like a block of wood. When in doubt, don't do anything. How does a block of wood act? It's just there. This is in the context of the cultivation of patience as one of the possible antidotes for anger. In chapter 6, in this wonderful text, the entire chapter is devoted to the cultivation of patience.

[30:41]

In the very beginning of that chapter, Shantideva reminds us of something that we must continually come back to over and over and over again. I know you've heard this before, here and in other places. Why be unhappy about something if it can be remedied? And what is the use of being unhappy about something if it cannot be remedied? So, Shantideva also suggests that people who are troublesome may be viewed as our teachers. So, on both those counts, I want to suggest that the young man in the car next to me a few weeks ago was a great teacher and friend. Because, of course, he was the illustration for the text that it's bad enough to be upset, frustrated, impatient, whatever.

[31:53]

But to then get angry on top of it is just making a bad situation worse. And there I had, all I had to do was look out the window and see the living demonstration of the truth of this observation. And I, in fact, thanked the young man under my breath for his great help and teaching. And I relaxed and decided, well, now what? And I began looking around me and saw marvelous and amusing sights. The best one being the car on my right, which was a beautiful Rolls Royce driven by a quite elderly couple and filled with huge packages of toilet paper. Clearly, they had been to the Price Club, right?

[32:55]

But I had a very good time playing hide-and-go-seek with the little kids in the station wagon in front of me. I could do a variety of mindfulness practices. And I could just sit there and hang out with all these people whom I would ordinarily not get to hang out with. And pay attention to all the places my mind went to. All the things I fussed and worried about that I couldn't possibly do anything about. I went through a marvelous exploration about the pros and cons of having a telephone in the car. It was a great two hours. Over and over again, in examining texts and teachings and listening to teachers talking about what to do when we lose it,

[34:09]

I hear the encouragement to not forget about inquiring, always investigating and inquiring into the nature of things. Always remembering, as much as possible, to ask myself, what is actually arising in this moment? What is the situation in which I find myself? And at what point did my discomfort, my dismay, my anxiousness, my fear, my irritation, my disappointment, my upset, my anger begin to arise? There's a kind of tension there, I notice, between what I thought was happening or was going to happen, what is actually happening, what I discover.

[35:19]

Can I sustain that tension? Can I allow it so that I have a kind of hanging out time? Friendly, interested curiosity in my own process and the world around me. Not blocking out anything. It's not so difficult to do when things are going smoothly, although I may get lulled into, oh, it takes too much effort. But it's much more difficult to do when things are difficult or I feel upset. So, my intention for today, and that I want to offer as a possibility for you, is to rededicate myself over and over again.

[36:34]

To learn new things through reason, analytically, looking deeply. To investigate what I was thinking would happen. To hold to whatever my intention is, one day at a time. To abide in this area of tension between what I expect and what actually happens. And to rigorously and radically be willing to be a witness with what I discover is the truth of things as they are. A few days ago, I was driving behind a car which had a bumper sticker on it that said, Visualize World Peace.

[37:44]

And after reading these various newspaper stories and others equally uncheery, I saw that bumper sticker in a way as for the first time. And I found myself wondering, what will happen when a critical mass of us in the world actually believe that we can find peace in the world? And we understand that we must begin within ourselves. What will happen when we find our capacity to imagine some alternative to being locked into the afflictive emotions? When we begin to understand that we actually have the capacity to unhook or unbind ourselves from those habits of a lifetime.

[39:00]

That in each moment, everything is possible. This process is sometimes described as ironing out the wrinkles in a cloth. And what I notice with some of my habits, my mental habits that set my response to certain people or certain situations, is that I must have left the cloth in the laundry basket for a very long time. So the wrinkles are quite tenacious. Can I in fact imagine the piece of cloth of my life and of my mind absolutely smooth? That I can in fact iron out any wrinkle I discover.

[40:04]

Our intention, our ability to imagine the possibility of a calm, concentrated, fully awake mind, our capacity to imagine that is crucial in our ability to cultivate such a possibility. It isn't at all that we will become enlightened and then imagine what it looks like. It's the other way around. It has to do with our ability to trust what we can imagine, what we dream of. And whatever it is that inspires us, a piece of art, a line of poetry, a picture, an image, an act of kindness from somewhere in the world.

[41:11]

Whatever it is that inspires us and helps us remember our dreams is what will inform and give force to our intention, our deepest intention. We should end. Suzuki Roshi used to talk about our heart's inmost request or having grandmother's heart. How would it be in the world if we could imagine all of us with our grandmother's heart? Maybe we could then help Willy Bosque in his journey, his desire not to have others follow in his footsteps. Maybe we could imagine how we could be those three Thai policemen.

[42:22]

But we can imagine not being limited by the causes and conditions that have brought them to this place where they abide. Thank you very much.

[42:41]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ