Sunday Lecture

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good morning
getting cozy review
there are few more of us this morning and the last time i was here

i was struck this morning
when i tried to figure out whether i need to bring my eyeglasses with me or not about how everything changes some mornings and some print i need my glasses and
there mornings i don't
some of us spent the day
in retreat yesterday
in remembrance of veterans day and armistice day
so we spent the day collecting ourselves and remembering dedicating practices to the memory of those people who have died in wars and to all of those who suffer and have suffered as a result of
wars
and look at eleven minutes after eleven o'clock
on the eleventh day of the eleventh month we rang the big bell outside at eleven second intervals
joining other people around the world who do the same thing at the same time or as close to it as we can approximate
to remember some possibility that we hold in our hearts about laying down our arms that is working for peace and world
today's the day of the full moon and tonight we will do a full moon ceremony which is the time each month when we recite the precepts
and express in some formulaic way confession of all of our
actions
activity of body speech and mind which has caused harm in the last month
in are sitting yesterday sitting and walking and listening to a wonderful talk that was led by robert akin roshi
we were considering together and individually issues that have to do with forgiveness and here
and so those are the themes that i would like to continue with this morning
it seems to me from my own experience and listening to that experience of others that we don't heal unless way can first of all know in some particular detail
what a particular situation is or what the wound is if he will
so we first have to practice our capacity for being awake to things as they are too allowing ourselves to notice as much of what we can bear to notice
and that it is only after that that seeing
that rises the possibility of forgiveness forgiveness of ourselves and forgiveness of others
which seems so simple and yet also seems to be difficult for many of us to do
and yet when there is some expression
of what it is we've done at we want forgiveness for
just the way i understand confession
stating what it is we've done what what what has happened expressing some regret for whatever that is and then asking forgiveness from ourselves and from others
it is out of these various activities these various practices
which we find in many western traditions around the world
it is out of these practices that healing begins to occur

last night eight monks tibetan monks from ganden monastery in southern india
historically the biggest monastery in tibetan buddhist monastic system into that the and again in exile the largest monastery in india
the college short say college from that monastery has sent age of their monks to come to this country to do various practices which are in their tradition that have to do with these very things that were talking about
they're big thing is healing
they do a meditation called the medicine buddha meditation which is about healing
and they do a variety of practices that have to do with purifying and healing the environment that we live in and within ourselves and in the world of human affairs
they will be coming here on thursday evening
and we'll be doing their various practices in the bag
so anyway they arrived at our house they will sleep over the next two weeks
bob anakin and are also sleeping over
and there was a little bit of flurry before the monks arrived beds to be made et cetera
in mrs aiken said after they arrived it's amazing it's so com
how can we suddenly have so many more people but everything seemed so calm
and of course in getting ready for them i was not feeling so calm i had forgotten that these monks tend to bring with them a calm and joyful atmosphere
so we'll see how it goes the next two weeks with our big buddhist slumber party

this afternoon actually it's and center in the city they are going to do a empowerment for the medicine buddha meditation
many of you are interesting
so we were talking about what kinds of figures to you use to help you in doing these practices
conversation we had last night night sent me back again to rethinking what we've been considering yesterday of at
how do we heal and when do we heal and what to we heal
and i remembered again something they have happened to me a few weeks ago
i went to san quentin
with a number of other people for a
demonstration kind of vigil actually
against the death penalty
and we met about five o'clock in the afternoon know it was several weeks ago
pray earthquake
a very cold windy
dusk and there were several hundred people gathered
surprisingly large number of what my daughter calls regular people
men in suits and women who looked like middle class america
not at all who i expected to see and such a gathering
and a surprising number of people who are gathered there from all over the world
there were four part of the vigil there were people who
gave little talks about what they were doing and why they thought it was so important for us here in california too
abolish the death penalty and to work to have that happen because so many other parts of the united states watch to see what we do here in california
and as part of the program two men got up i noticed them before the program started sitting side-by-side on the steps of the house near where the loudspeakers were set up
looking like two old friends
and when it came time for them to do their presentation they got up on a table that had been set up somewhat precarious platform and
each in turn spoke
a first man who spoke described how he had been a victim of an armed robbery
and one man had been killed
he had been shot and severely wounded such that he had lost a kidney and it had some serious damage to other organs internal organs that had left him in the hospital for a long time going through a number of operations
and a paraplegic for several years
a great deal of intense suffering
and he described how the man standing next to him was the man who had shot him
and who had been in san quentin on death row for a long time
and he described how
interesting just then i like their faces just came up for me
he described how at a certain point in his own healing process he realized that it was too costly for him to continue harboring ill will towards this man
that for his own sake he had to find a way to forgive him
and that when he could do that he felt better for himself and for the man who had caused his suffering
and that as a result of that his heart had opened to the suffering of others in the world in a way that has significantly changed his life
and then the other man spoke
i never did find out how he happened to get from death row to standing on that table
clearly not in shackles or under guard
interestingly we were a right near the gate and the guards for the prison were all standing there
at attention listening carefully to everything that was sad
anyway the man who hand
shot the first man stood and spoke and talked about how he would he imagined until he died carry with him his feeling of shame and deep regret for what he had done
and how there was nothing he could do it could take it back
that he would have to live with the consequences of his actions
and there was no undoing that
and he then spoke of his experience of being forgiven
by the man who whom he had heard
and how much that had helped him in his own effort to forgive himself
and so the two of them have devised this sort of mutton jeff
team and they go around together and they tell their stories
and they talk about what has happened in their respective lives and in their relationship with each other
and as a result their relationship with the world
and how much has happened that has allowed them each to live their lives fully and engaged
with the suffering and work of alleviating that suffering for all beings and world
once you knew what their relationship was with each other it almost didn't matter what the had to say just seeing them standing next to each other
watching them afterwards tell each other that was very nice he did that well
i think they understood what we were saying kind of patting each other and going back to their seats on the stairs sitting next to each other huddled close together for a little warmth because it was a cold windy blustery night
pretty mind boggling

not so different from hearing his holiness the dalai lama talk about how
even the chinese
who are
in government
and tibet and are because of extraordinary suffering
torture imprisonment killing oppression
for his people whom he loves even those people he reminds us all want to be happy

and how much
we can treat our so called enemy as our teacher because who else gives us such a wonderful opportunity to cultivate these qualities that we want to cultivate of patience of compassion
of sympathetic joy
of generosity and so forth
so i asked myself and i ask anyone that comes along that looks like they might be able to tell me something how do i practice forgiveness
the buddhist path has many practices that have been followed for a long time
that have to do with the cultivation of forgiveness
aiken roshi mentioned one of those practice as yesterday it is the practice of loving kindness loving kindness meditation which comes from the thorough vodden
tradition
where we meditate on extending loving kindness from ourselves to another person
we're usually advised in this meditation to start with those whom we already love because it's easier and to practice on the people that we already have some loving feeling for
enter then moved to are the people that we have some more neutral feelings for
but the practice that has a certain kind of use genus and richness is when we practice the cultivation of loving kindness for someone we don't like
someone with whom we say
that
because of course it is that person who can help us look into that aspect of ourselves which they are reminding us about
that aspect of ourselves which we want to push away and say get me out of here
go away
there is a practice which stephen the vine talks about it's in his book who dies the practice based on loving kindness meditation practices called self forgiveness
which i've talked about before
but which i keep coming back to because it is so central and crucial in this cultivation of capacity for forgiveness
that at the heart of our capacity for forgiveness rests our capacity for forgiving ourselves that we tend to be unforgiving of others directly to the degree that we are unforgiving with ourselves
and so on this particular meditation what one does is to call forth the image in one's minds i have someone who has done something harmful to you
and you say to that person i forgive you i forgive you for whatever you may have done through your fox or your speech where your actions that may have caused me harm
and you call them by name and say to that person i forgive you
and then the second part of meditation you call up the image of some person
that you want to forgive you
this is the part of meditation that many of us have a hard time with
and so you then imagine yourself sitting in that person's seat speaking to you yourself
and you assume that person's voice and you call your own name and you say as i would say to myself a fan
i forgive you for whatever you may have done that has caused me harm
whatever it may have been true your thoughts or your speech or her actions
i forgive you

there is a practice in my wonderful beloved text by shanthi deva a guide to the bodhisattva way of life
a practice that some people i sit with on friday mornings have been doing recently called the practice of praising your enemy a kind of generosity practice
it's pretty hard to praise someone i haven't forgiven
and what i've noticed is that if i can find something it doesn't matter how small it is that i can pray that i can appreciate
in the behavior the activity expression of someone that i feel i just don't like that person
if with such a person i can come up with something i can praise
it helps me find a way to forgive that person for whatever it is in them that i find troubling or hurtful or difficult

i also find
that if i repeatedly say to myself
remember everyone in the world wants to be happy
even so on so whom i don't like that person also wants to be happy
but i notice when i remind myself about that is that something in me softens a little
because there is that place where i know we're not so different from each other

of course there is this voice of the inner judge that comes up in this arena of forgiveness this area of practicing forgiveness there is this voice that tells me about how i'm creepy or that person's
creepy or such and such isn't done the way it should be etc
so in the realm of cultivating forgiveness and in the realm of developing our capacity for the transformation of suffering to hailing
we become necessarily engaged with whatever capacity we have for judgment
i recently met a woman whose name is natalie goldberg who is a writer and a long time zen practitioner is written a book called riding down the bonds and she has a one page chapter on the editor which i would like to read to
you because she is a fresh way of talking about the editor which i think you might enjoy
she says it is important to separate the crate creator and the editor or internal sensor when you practice writing
i think that in this book that she writes about writing you could really read it with reference to any creative activity and i'm just writing
so she suggests that
if you want the creator to be free to breathe freely to have some space
to be able to explore and express the creative aspect
then you have to meet the editor or the internal sensor
if the editor is absolutely annoying and you have trouble differentiating it from your creative voice sit down whenever you need to and right what the editor is saying give it full voice you're a jerk whoever said you could write i hate your work
i'm embarrassed you have nothing valuable to say and besides you can't spell
sound familiar
the more clearly you know the editor the better you can ignore it
i want to underscore that sentence
after a while like the jabbering of an old drunk fool it becomes just prattle in the background
don't reinforce its power by listening to it's empty words if the voice says you're boring and you listen to it and stop your hand from writing that reinforces and gives credence to the editor
that voice knows that the term boring will stop you dead in your tracks so you hear yourself saying that a lot about your writing
here you are boring as a distant white laundry flapping in the breeze
eventually it will dry up and someone miles away we will fold it and take it in
meanwhile you will continue to write
so this is the latest quote that i found to tack up on the bulletin board right in front of my nose to remind me about a possible relationship with the inner sensor
treat that voice like laundry
flapping in the brains but i particularly like the thought that it will not only dry up but that someone with kindness will gently folded up
skype

there's another aspect of this process of forgiveness and healing
that our old friend take them home has talked about in his very moving poem please call me by my true names
which has to do with our capacity to know
the capacity that exists within each of us for all of the possibilities of human behavior
that the most dreadful behavior in the world
is the kind of behavior we are each capable of given the right causes and conditions
one of the verses in his poem which i recite over and over again which has always stayed with me so powerfully
is the verse that goes i am a twelve year old girl refugee on a small boat who throws herself into the ocean and drowns after being raped by a say pirate
and i am the see pirate
whose heart is not yet open
to seeing and understanding
over and over again i am reminded how easily i can
believe that i'm the twelve year old girl and how deeply i do not want to look into my capacity to be the say pirate
i find myself wondering about those two men at the vigil outside the gates at san quentin
how much in the process of forgiveness did the man who was wounded
how much of his process depended on his not staying separate from the man who had shot him
how much of his capacity for forgiveness depended on his understanding that there were causes and conditions that led the man who had shot him to be in that place behaving as he did
not that that behavior should be condoned
but to understand
that
there are causes and conditions that lead people to behave in these ways that cause such harm
and that if we can look deeply into the world we live in the society we live in we can see how deeply connected we all are and how our behavior how what we consume
how the way we live affects others
who are not so fortunate
who's causes and conditions lead them to become robbers and murderers
to act out
the psychosis of our shared culture

one of the things that a can work she brought up yesterday and our discussion
was the possibility of looking deeply into what he called the qualities that exist
in each of us
what is sometimes in some traditions called a person's essence
the essential nature that exists in each of us so when i see someone who is anger angry can i see deeply underneath that that here is a person who has a capacity for passion who has energy has a capacity for enormous energy
that someone who is lazy has a capacity for enjoyment
that someone who is passive
has a capacity for equanimity and for patients
can i look into my capacity for stubbornness and see that deeply underneath my stubbornness lies the capacity to stay with something that is difficult so that that quality which i initially trait with such judgment and aversion if i
re-frame the way i look at that quality i see there is a way and wench this quality is my good friend is my best shot at being in the world in the most wholesome way i can understand in any given moment
it gives me a completely different way of responding
in the face of the behavior that i mean by virtue of living in the human community

so what we're talking about is how we transform ourselves our mind our responses our attitudes
so much of it depends on how we look at things so much of our response to what happens in our lives has to do with how much information we have
we think our fellow worker is not carrying his or her share of the work load is lazing off
we get angry at that person because he or she is not doing as much as i'm doing
but do we really know all of what is going on for that person
what happens when we find out after the fact that that person has in fact been very sick and doesn't have a certain kind of physical energy to sustain himself or herself through the day and so is doing as much as he can
perhaps working shorter amounts of the work day but doing extra things at night which i don't even see or know about
how often i have the experience that if only i had trusted another person
enough to believe that they were doing their best that i just couldn't say what was their best because i didn't have all the information

tess eleven fifty two
a watch which has not been turned back because i don't know how
the
a few weeks ago our friend jenny growth sent an announcement about her calligraphy show this beautifully calligraphic piece of an ancient riddle
which is about transformation
this is the riddle
once i was water full of scaly fish but by a new decision fate has changed my nature
having suffered fiery pangs i now gleam white like ashes or bright snow
this is a riddle describing salt
so let me read it i can once i was water full of scaly fish
but by a new decision fate has changed my nature
having suffered fiery pangs i now glean quite like ashes or bright snow
when i read this again the few days ago i was thinking about of the no relationship we all have to the earth since the earthquake
somebody said this morning isn't it amazing when the earth starts to move as if someone had taken a big rug and flapped it
and wendy johnson who's the head of the garden talked about being out in the garden seeing the ground begin to act like the waves on the ocean pence not the way the ground is supposed to behave
so when we were walking yesterday i felt a kind of vividness as i placed my foot on the earth
because for that moment at footstep the earth was sustaining me but who knows at any minute it could change and i know that this week the way i didn't know what a few weeks ago

having suffered fiery paintings
i think that is so often how we experience the process of change the inevitable changes change that goes with our very existence
shakyamuni buddha have said at the bottom line everything changes and that's the only thing that doesn't change
and we fight tooth and nail

so this morning on the twelfth of november
on the day of the phone
join together in renewing our intention
too quiet
the inner critic to let that voice flap like so much laundry on the clothesline how's that for an outdated image
and to turn towards the truth of ourselves and our nature or essence
so that we can forgive ourselves when we act in ways which cause harm or suffering
and can see how even in those actions which we see afterwards as a mistake there is some opportunity for transformation for healing for learning from that experience to move ahead
out of our intention to become free of suffering for ourselves and others
i'd like to close with their
poem of rochas
which i read the first two lines of some while ago and then i found the rest of the poem
out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field i'll meet you there
when the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about
ideas language even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense
out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing there is a field
i'll meet you there
they are