Sunday Lecture

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good morning
there's always the great experiment called what will my eyes see today
since i have a but a lectern i have no idea whether my eyeglasses are necessary or not whether my eyes are functioning as partner or not
hey
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 our rain which brings with it a kind of stickiness
everything is sticking to everything else

we all experienced strong emotions and especially strong negative emotions
like anger and fear that arise with such force and energy that we feel overcome
this sets the a 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
it 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 and violence
on a nice spring porting
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 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 sundar twin who until the recent blood das was a final year law student at rangoon university
she and her husband a graduate geologist when mint on flat across the border at my sought
three thai police took them to the local police station locked the husband and a toilet then took sundar out into the suburbs and repeatedly raped her
the incident was not the first case of gross violation of burmese refugees but this one was so bad that the thai authorities had to act
the three culprits are in custody and sundar and her husband have given their evidence they are now again fleeing and in mortal danger because the family a 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 sundar
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 sand are she hasn't had one since the rape she is handling things quite well when mint is more
or shocked but trying to come to grips with what has happened to his wife 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 willy bosquet
he's twenty six
and when i read this story about him i've actually been following his story now for a few weeks
sized that he is exactly the age of my daughter
somehow that put this story into a diff a different perspective for me
to greet a visitor willie bosquet must now let himself be changed backwards to his prison cell door his arms and legs manacled through slots in it then the door swung open with him splayed out aboard
the arrangement was devised last week after mischka mr gay 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 bosquet 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 the dimpled boyish looking mr bosquet offered unusual insights into his enigmatic character he once acknowledged that he had committed more than two thousand crimes by the age of
fifteen including twenty five stabbings and to subway murders
in preparation for the interview guards had unchained mr boss gave 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 seen
it on a stool his arms were still handcuffed behind him the cuffs padlock to abroad leather belt around his waist he spoke through tiny holes and a plexiglass panel his only contact with the outside from time to time as he talked to scratch his nose or poor
she is black rimmed glasses back on his face mr bosquet had to wriggle his arms and banged his head and a houdini like contortion
mr bosquet 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 or hatred 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 and reformatories and prisons almost continuous
lately 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 has already kept he he was already kept in a specially designed solitary confinement area at a far end of the red brick prison for video cameras monitored him and lights
in the narrow corridor facing his cell were trained on him day and night 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 twenty eight years to life in prison
in addition under internal prison proceedings he has been order to spend the next twenty years in solitary confinement
he says i'm willing to die if it will stop the system from producing more willie bass gaze 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 new stories on this lovely day
this is the hopeful story i will read that minute
so
these are stories about
the extreme and
of afflict of emotions to say the least
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 and fifteen minutes took instead two hours
so it was a 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 at had his windows rolled down and was enjoying his stereo system
and sort of be bopping around there in his seat
and after a fairly short period of time he gripped his steering wheel white knuckled is steering wheel and he began to yell this is a cow range
and he proceeded to yell and 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 a last 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 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 last quoting 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 are risings 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
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
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 to more stories that are illustrations of that
one is a story about a canadian hockey player who's a goalie whose name is patrick roy
i just swooned when i read this story
canadians goalie patrick roy is here to say that the standard national hockey league net is no longer six feet by four feet know forget all that stuff you learned in math class get with it patrick roy thinks small
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 twenty four square foot rectangular cage didn't look so big letting his imagination one while for a moment he could see the red metal posts shrinking and the twine growing smaller
before he knew at roy was onto 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 little lilliputian might some goalies talk about having a system relying on anticipation dropping down and butterfly fashioned 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 that a giant among goalies in large part because of this talent of making a mole hill 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 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 adam
the division finals i guess i'd say it's sixty percent a little mental
there is yet another contradiction and watching roy he is not a big man or at least nowhere near as big as he looks in that he's a very lean six feet one hundred and sixty five pounds with the emaciated sunken cheek look of the average
mtv guitar hammering millionaire
standing in front of the net all be it an image enhanced by his cat quick reflexes he seems to tower above over opposing forwards in truth he is only an inch taller than boston's reggie level and
i play a simple game said roy i make the easy play i don't try too much to make the big save they will come i liked to anticipate i wouldn't say i'm not really a technique goalie i save more by and
motion 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 author states all sorts of statistics and averages and bets are know this goalie and his team are going to win etc on it closes with but are these statistics fair after all patrick roy was playing in front of a much so
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 they had two children a little boy i would guess about three and a little girl
earl about nine months
and i thought a dear
this is going to be hectic 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 com about them which was striking in combination with the ages of their children
they had a clearly defined area with wit 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 so
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 everyone on the plane was dying to get a turn at the kids
a
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
a clearly had thought about the plane trip ahead of tongue
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 saying was an example of to people who had a fairly realistic appraisal of what the situation would be like
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 turn
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 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 my mind and those habits
which are troublesome and lead to harm disharmony
imprisonment of a sword
we are encouraged to examine to look into the habit of self cherishing 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 through and 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 in forming every sale 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
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 eighth century by shanthi deva whom some have you been hearing a lot about these days
shanti david has a has some great wines and i'd like to share a few of them with you
in chapter five
he talks about
the benefits of doing one thing at a time
wholeheartedly
i should undertake whatever deed i have intended to do and think of doing none other than aunt
with my mind apply 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 of sir
interesting and
very useful
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 six
in this wonderful text the entire chapter is devoted to the cultivation of patience
and in the very beginning of that chapter
shani davis reminds us of something that we must continually come back to over and over and over again
and 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
trendy dave 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 a the illustration for the text that it's bad enough to be upset
frustrated
impatient whatever but to then get angry on top of it 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 sites the best one being the car and my right which was a beautiful rolls royce driven by a quite elderly couple and filled with huge packages of toilet paper
for the
clearly they had been to the price club or

but i had a very good time playing hide and go seek with the little kids and the station wagon in front of me
i could to 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's 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
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
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
not so difficult to do when things are going smoothly
although i may get lulled into
oh 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
to learn new things through reason analytically looking deeply
stargate 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 but 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
and after reading these various newspaper stories and others equally on cherry
i saw that bumper sticker in a way as for the first time
and i found myself wondering
what will happen
when a
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 effective emotions when we begin to understand that we actually have the capacity to and hook or unbind ourselves from those habits of a lifetime
that in each moment
everything is possible
this process is sometimes described as ironing 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 are certain situations is that i must have left the kloss
in the laundry basket for a very long time so the wrinkles are 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

our intention our ability to imagine the possibility of a com concentrated fully awake to 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
whatever it is that inspires us and helps us remember our dreams is what will inform
and gave forced to our intention or deepest intention
we should end
suzuki roshi used to talk about our hearts in most request
or having grandmother's heart
how would it be in the world if we could imagine
all of us with our grandmothers heart
maybe we could then help willie bosquet in his journey his desire not to have others follow in his footsteps
maybe we could imagine how we could be those three thai policeman
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