Good morning. This morning, just before the first light, I woke to hear the sound of the Swainson's Thrush, sometimes described as a watery flute sound. And we begin the second week of the new moon, and the United States sent Scud missiles to Baghdad yesterday afternoon. A curious context in which we come together to consider the Dharma, full of joy and sadness. Before I begin with the considerations that I would like to bring forth this morning,

[01:12]

I would like to ask Wendy Johnson if she would say a little bit about the context of this morning's talk with respect to a retreat that some of you have been doing this weekend. Why don't you use this microphone, and then everybody can hear you. Round and around, I'll just hold it. This morning's Dharma talk finishes a weekend retreat that we've been planning and dreaming of doing for quite a while. We've called our retreat, The Voice of the Watershed. It marks the weekend end of the first week of an eight-week practice period where we're considering the connection, the vital connection between meditation and caring for the environment. And we've spent the last two days, about 20 of us, in deep consideration, walking, smelling,

[02:18]

tasting, looking as deeply as we can at this particular watershed and seeing how the life and spirit of this place resonates in each of us as a person, as an individual person committed to taking care of our world. So this has been our work for the last 36 hours, and Yvonne's talk gathers together the elements of our time together and makes it complete. We'd like to close at the very end of the Dharma talk with a dedication that came up out of our sitting and meditating and paying attention to this particular watershed. We'd like to offer that to all of you. We'll open the doors of the Zen Dojo at the very end, let in the various and sundry so-called outsiders that are present with us in every moment, and we'll offer this dedication to people from the workshop, we'll offer it to all of you, completing our time together. We'll be going more deeply in the next seven weeks into this topic of the environment and

[03:20]

meditation and how we help one another. And I'm hoping that at any opportunity you will feel very welcome to join us. We have lots of events, Thay will announce some of them this afternoon. We begin this afternoon with a reading from Stephanie Kaz's new book and many other events that come up out of this spirit of looking at meditation and the environment and how they work together. So this is mostly to make you feel very welcome in this topic. We've been planning for more than a year to take a look at the connection, the obvious connection between meditation and the environment, and it's begun. So you are part of it and you are very welcome. Thank you very much. I'm struck by Wendy's optimism about what I'm going to do this morning. It may be her intention or hope or wish and certainly mine, but we'll see.

[04:24]

By way of context, a very important context for me and some of us here this morning and for particularly those of us who received teachings from Theratul Kul Rinpoche, this is the second anniversary of his passing over today, and so a time to remember with great gratitude his great inspiration as a teacher, as exemplar of what the Buddhist teachings can bring forth in any of us, and a dear, dear friend. The particular focus that I would like to propose for us this morning has to do with the specific detail of the relationship that each of us has with all beings and things

[05:31]

in the world, and in particular, in that relationship, the quality of respect. And of course, to be able to have a relationship with anyone or anything, I have to bring to the moment some awareness of the fact of relationship. And in particular, what I want to propose and have us explore together this morning is two meditations which are a way in, if you will. The first is the meditation on forgiveness, and the second is the meditation on loving-kindness. And what I want to do this morning is to ask you to join me in considering these two focuses

[06:32]

in meditation in some detail, and in fact, to actually do a forgiveness meditation together, and to also do a loving-kindness meditation together, and to, out of that, consider how those two practices lead us to be able to consider the interdependent nature of all things and all beings, and our specific particular points of connection, if you will. So let's begin with this quality of the mind called forgiveness. I want to consider three aspects of forgiveness. So perhaps we can begin then with the situation in which I've done something

[07:38]

which has caused some harm for another, another person in particular. If I let that activity which leads to another person experiencing some harm or injury, and I have some awareness of how my behavior has led to that quality of harm, harming or injury for another person, I will have some disturbance in my mind. Perhaps I will have some disturbance in my mind off and on when I sit down to be a little quiet or when I get into bed at night to go to sleep. But most particularly, I will have some disturbance when I sit down to meditate. I anyway, and I imagine that at least some of you have had this experience of sitting down

[08:43]

and then having the mind go to reviewing the past. If only I had said or done X, Y, or Z, regret and judgment and criticism, and in some cases obsessing, going over the fine details of what did happen and what could have happened and what didn't happen, etc., etc. This kind of residue in the mind. So one of the ways to clean the slate of the mind, if you will, is to ask that person to forgive me. Now sometimes I have to go through the motions. I have to do a kind of as-if in order to come to that place where I can,

[09:45]

with some genuineness, some authenticity, ask for forgiveness. What repeatedly surprises me is how much just going through the motions has the effect of softening my mind, softening my heart. And that I can, in each specific instance, discover a way to accept forgiveness from another person. Because, of course, for a lot of us, we get stuck with asking for forgiveness, but we also sometimes get stuck with accepting or receiving forgiveness. And that relates to the third part of the forgiveness meditation. The second aspect or point for forgiveness meditation

[10:52]

is for me to think of someone who has done something or said something or acted from some intention that was for me a cause of harm or injury. So the second practice of forgiveness is for me to forgive someone. I forgive you for whatever you may have done through your deeds or your speech or your thoughts that has harmed or injured me. I forgive you. I remember some years ago when someone whom I had been very, very close to for many years, and then we had come to some event, the consequence of the events around the event

[11:52]

were that there was a break in our connection. And one day, a year later, my friend called and left a message on my answering machine, the blessed answering machine, in which he said, Please forgive me for anything I have done or said intentionally or unintentionally that may have brought you harm or suffering or dismay. Please forgive me. And I remember to this day the quality of response that came up in me as I listened to my friend's message on the answering machine, which was that whatever holding or suffering that I was holding to

[12:53]

softened and disappeared in that moment of his asking for my forgiveness, and that for me to be able to say, Yes, I forgive you, was very easy. It didn't fit my description of the situation at all. Just the facts, man. The facts are very different the closer I get to the specific detail of this relationship with this person. The third, and I think for many of us the most difficult aspect of the forgiveness meditation, has to do with forgiving ourselves. I know over the years in doing this particular practice with people, and some years ago doing the forgiveness meditation in retreats with Stephen Levine, hearing many people talk about how much easier it is to forgive another person

[13:57]

than it seems to be for us to forgive ourselves. And in fact, I've been struck by hearing from a number of teachers coming to teach here in the United States from different Buddhist countries in Asia, their amazement over and over again, I hear this repeated, amazement at the degree, the intensity of self-loathing that many of us hold. And it is, of course, a major obstacle in our spiritual life and in our practice. I would suggest that there's a way in which habitual, much-practiced self-loathing is actually a form of self-clinging. It's just instead of being at the end of the spectrum that has to do with

[15:01]

I'm the greatest around whom the world revolves, this is the perspective of I'm the worst, the piece of shit around which the world revolves. You know, I used to teach algebra to high school students in another life. And if any of you know about number systems and you know about this line which designates the number system, you've got zero and you have positive numbers and negative numbers. Well, we have positive self-clinging and negative self-clinging, but it's all on a continuum called self-clinging. And, of course, what's so interesting is that I cannot give up this habit of self-clinging except by very gently and kindly noticing it. And, of course, I cannot forgive another person, really,

[16:14]

except to the degree that I have a capacity to forgive myself. I think for many of us to accept being forgiven depends upon our being able to forgive ourselves. I don't accept your forgiveness if you only knew in the dark of my room at night what a creep I am. And our ability to practice loving-kindness is obliterated, I would propose, if we are not able to forgive ourselves. I'd like to tell you two stories about forgiveness. Relating to the habit of self-criticism or the judge, as somebody who wrote a book called Taming Your Gremlin puts it,

[17:16]

the gremlin, we sometimes relate to this voice as if it was somebody else. It may at one point in our lives have been someone else, but at a certain point it becomes our own voice, inner voice. I have a friend who is a schoolteacher, and she has developed a computer program for teaching reading to very poor, impoverished, in many ways, not just with the goods of life, impoverished, largely black kids in urban areas. Her sort of test group has been black ghetto kids in Richmond. She's been working on this program for almost five years. And she's developed a program which a child can learn to read by using the program.

[18:24]

A child, if they're ready, can learn to read in one or two months. So the implications of what she's done are quite exciting. And we've talked a lot about all the things she's going through to now find a vehicle for making this program available in poor inner city schools throughout the United States. In telling me about the program, she's told me in great detail about how the program is such that it's the kid and the earphones and the computer. And the student goes from one step to the next only when they're ready. So they set their own pace. And what my friend has told me is that many of the teachers in these poor inner city schools are as abusive of these kids as their parents are.

[19:27]

Out of frustration and the teacher's own suffering, I'm sure. But nevertheless, harsh environments both at school and at home. And she said what this does is that it takes the child out of that relationship which may have been and continue to be very difficult to it's just the child and the teaching program and the equipment. And that at each step of the way, the feedback is only descriptive. This is what you're able to do and this is what you're not able to do yet so far. And I was quite struck one day when we had a very long conversation in which my friend said, you know, I was very careful to have each step in the teaching program be completely free of judgment. And she's quite clear that the effectiveness of the program

[20:34]

is largely due to the presentation of the material free of that quality of judgment or criticism. Now it's also important for purposes of my story for you to understand that my friend has a forever ferocious inner critic. And is extremely critical of herself and her husband and a lot of the rest of us. And has a pretty clear sense that her criticism of her husband and the world has a lot to do with the way she feels about herself. So this particular conversation, at the end of the conversation we've been talking for about an hour and a half and I said to my friend, how interesting that you have developed

[21:36]

this teaching program for these children that you care about so intensely. That you have such a passion to be with in some way that might lead them to a more satisfying and happy life. Do you suppose that the absence of judgment that you are so clear about with them is any different from the absence of judgment towards yourself? She sat on the chair and looked like I'd hit her on the side of the head with a two by four. And in fact after sitting together for a minute or so in silence she said, I think I have to go home and think about that. She was just dumbfounded. Because of course the suffering in the world that she so passionately wants to bring an end to

[22:40]

includes everyone in the world except herself. The second story, if you will, is about another friend of mine who is working with this inner voice of constant self-loathing. And one day I suggested to her that she do writing practice and just write down everything the voice or voices were saying. No editing, no crossing out, just reporting. And she was to do that for ten minutes. She said she ended up writing for closer to twenty and went and had a cup of tea and came back and read what she'd written. She said, I wouldn't talk to my worst enemy like that. I wouldn't talk to my worst enemy like that.

[23:43]

So this third step in the forgiveness meditation, forgiving ourselves, is especially important. And for whatever reasons that we in this culture seem to have a corner on the market, at least it seems that way today, I encourage myself and all of us to pay particular attention to the practice of self-forgiveness. So, once we've done our practice of forgiveness, our forgiveness meditations, then we get to move to loving-kindness. Loving-kindness meditation is not effective

[24:51]

unless there is some genuine desire on my part, on the part of whoever is doing the meditation, for the well-being, the benefit and happiness of all beings. Sometimes we find ourselves saying, well, I want well-being and happiness and peace for everyone in the world except my enemies. Except that jerk. There'll be one jerk in particular. Doesn't work. I actually find that I have a kind of softening in my mind if I can say about that jerk, the person who's the exception on my list of recipients of loving-kindness,

[25:56]

to remind myself that even that jerk wants to be happy. Is there anyone of us that knows anyone who doesn't want to be happy? It, of course, may be that we don't always know how to be happy. We certainly don't always know how to be well, happy and at peace. But I think that what connects us is that we all do want to be well and to be happy and to be at peace. And when we talk about loving-kindness, we're talking about that quality of the mind, that quality of the heart, which is free of possessiveness and is free of lust.

[26:57]

So, very particular quality of the mind. And we begin with ourselves. Oh, but isn't that selfish? No, I don't think so. Because, of course, if I'm not able to generate or bring forth loving-kindness for myself, how will I ever be able to bring forth that quality of mind for anyone else? So, when I say, to begin with, may I be well, what I'm really saying to myself is I want to be well. I want to be happy. I want to be at peace. That is my intention. When I say about others,

[28:04]

may they be well, I'm understanding that they also want to be well. So, there are two ways of doing the loving-kindness meditation. I can do it by location, beginning with myself, going in next to the house that I live in, or this morning, all of us here in the Zen Dojo. And then to all beings, not just us human beings, but all beings. That means the spiders, and, you know, there's pretty clearly some spiders here. And who knows what other kinds of bugs, inner and outer. All the critters, all the beings, seen and unseen, in this room, in this building,

[29:06]

in this valley that we call Green Gulch, in the watershed. I was thinking yesterday about making a great big fish out of some kind of metal that I could paint and hang over Redwood Creek as a kind of totem to let the fish know that I want to remember that they live there too. Everyone who lives in the house where I live, my immediate neighbors, the people who live in this county and in this part of California, and, in fact, in all of California, and the United States, and the Americas, throughout the world and throughout the universe. So that would be a way of doing

[30:07]

the loving-kindness meditation by location. The other way of doing it would be to do it by persons, by way of persons. And I think for some of us that maybe is a place to start. We can graduate to all beings. So, again, I would start with myself and then think about teachers, parents, relatives, friends, the category of indifferent persons, and then the next category, unfriendly persons, all meditators, and then I can go to all beings. So what I'd like to ask you to do with me

[31:09]

is to take some time and actually go through these two meditations together. And what I'd like you to do is we go through each line of the meditation. Say the line that I set forth, offer, to yourself maybe ten times. And in each step of the meditation, think of someone in particular. And please don't start with the most difficult ones. Let yourself begin with someone around a particular circumstance but in the realm of what's possible. Don't start with your divorced husband who after five years

[32:12]

you can't even still say his name, for example. So let's begin with forgiveness, please. If by deed, speech, or thought, foolishly I have done wrong, may all forgive me, honored ones, who are in wisdom and compassion strong. If by deed, speech, or thought, foolishly I have done wrong, may all forgive me, honored ones, who are in wisdom and compassion strong. If by deed, speech, or thought,

[33:39]

who are in wisdom and compassion strong. who are in wisdom and compassion strong. If by deed, speech, or thought, Second aspect, I freely forgive anyone who may have hurt or injured me. I freely forgive anyone who may have hurt or injured me. I freely forgive anyone

[34:42]

may all forgive me, honored ones, To say, to that person using their name, I freely forgive you. And now the third phase of the forgiveness meditation. Using your own name, I freely forgive myself. So now let's do the practice of loving-kindness.

[35:49]

May I be well, happy, and peaceful. May all of us in this room be well, happy, and peaceful. May all beings in this valley of Green Gulch be well, happy, and peaceful.

[36:59]

May all beings in this watershed, west-facing slope of Mount Tamalpais down to the edge of the continent meeting with the Pacific Ocean, may all beings in this watershed be well, happy, and peaceful.

[38:03]

May all who live together in the house where each of us lives, may all who live in our home be well, happy, and peaceful. May all who live here in Marin County be well, happy, and peaceful. May all who live in the greater Bay Area be well, happy, and peaceful. May all who live in Northern California be well, happy, and peaceful.

[39:34]

May all who live in the entire state be well, happy, and peaceful. May all who live in the United States be well, happy, and peaceful. May all who live in the Americas be well, happy, and peaceful. May all who live in the world on Mother Earth be well, happy, and peaceful.

[41:12]

May all beings in this universe be well, happy, and peaceful. May all beings be well, happy, and peaceful. What I notice in doing these two meditations, one after the other, as preparation for meditation every day, is that there is a kind of ooze effect into meditation on the breath, but also during the rest of the day, which is that little insights about some troublesome

[42:31]

relationship begin to pop up. In going through the steps of the forgiveness and then the loving-kindness meditation, suddenly I think of someone where there's some little catch or difficulty, some little trouble spot that I haven't attended to, that I've turned away from or ignored. Oh, let me focus on that particular person and the relationship between us in this meditation. So, one of the consequences, I would argue, is that this is the path towards seeing more clearly, seeing things as they really are. I was struck in listening to an interview with Daniel Shore yesterday in which he commented

[43:38]

on a kind of explosion of violence throughout the world right now, many, many, many instances of violence. His description was quite convincing. The more we practice violence, the more we get used to it, the more we tolerate it. What is it that each of us can do to be present in the world as citizens of the global village as it now comes to be called? What is it that I can do today that will make a difference in my relationship with all beings and things in the world? I find that doing these two practices helps me see more clearly the small, specific, particular

[44:45]

things that I can do that have who knows what kind of ripple effect. For all of you who have driven to Green Gulch in a carpool, something very specific, a little troublesome, but of benefit to the atmosphere. Instead of taking two or three or four trips to Mill Valley to do errands this week, can I do one? Can several of us go together, or can I offer to do some shopping at the grocery store for my neighbor? Do I remember to have the cloth shopping bags in the car, or do I forget them in the cupboard

[45:47]

in the kitchen and come home with yet more paper bags? How is what I'm eating contributing to the sustainability of the world? Am I eating things that are local and in season? Because of course, if I'm eating tomatoes from Mexico when there are no tomatoes here, think of all the fuel, fossil fuel that's used just getting them here. There are so many little things that we can do that will make a difference, that do make a difference. What we eat, when we eat it, what we drink or don't drink, how often we drive the car. You pull one thread and the whole sweater unravels.

[46:53]

We have a particularly dramatic example of that because of the consequences of Caltrans repairing Highway 1 between here and Stinson Beach. All you have to do is go out there and see all the effect of a major cut into the side of the mountain. What you may not be able to see so easily is the extraordinary numbers of acre feet of dirt pushed into beautiful and fragile areas here at the bottom of this valley. Suddenly, in thinking about the reestablishment of that lagoon, we begin to pay attention to Green Gulch Creek, to what we do here in this valley and how it affects Redwood Creek and the coast. There's so much that we can do right here. There's so much each of us can do in our lives that will help us sustain life on this earth.

[48:01]

We don't have to go all the way to India to do good works. My experience in doing the forgiveness and loving-kindness meditation is that I am more and more, each day, more present in the detail of my daily life and how I live it and how what I do or don't do affects all beings. Small things affect how I walk on the path. No person or society stands alone. What I recommend is doing this practice of forgiveness and loving-kindness every day, if you can, and if you do it specifically, it may take you 15 minutes, and what I would

[49:11]

ask is that you try it and see what happens. You may be surprised. So may we have our dedication, please? So this dedication is the effort of 20 people putting their hearts and minds and bodies and awareness into an offering, which includes a small pot of flowers on the altar and the opening of all the doors. Hopefully it can happen from inside. May we begin? Okay. And then we'll begin the second page, I guess.

[50:12]

I'll read the first page, and then Kevin will read the second page. May all... Uh-oh. Oh, may all awakened beings extend with true compassion their luminous, mirror-like wisdom. With wholehearted awareness, we have come to this valley of the green dragon and listened to the voice of its watershed. We have walked and sat mindfully, listened to the dawn chorus of the many birds, praised all the elements of the earth, given thanks for this particular sacred place, expressed and offered our vows of compassion, confessed and studied the limitations of our practice in understanding, made offerings of flowers, incense, light, and the stories of our relationships with our environments. And we have chanted the wisdom scriptures of the gentle Buddha, the merit and virtue

[51:19]

of all this we dedicate to. All the spirits of the watershed, to our mothers, fathers, grandmothers, and grandfathers, our husbands, wives, and lovers, our brothers, our sisters, our children, our successors, all other Buddhist groups throughout the world, all the animals and plants of the earth, to those who will never come here, to the healing of all those suffering beings, visible and invisible, with whom we are connected throughout the world, may we together with all beings in boundless worlds and ten directions realize complete peace and harmony as soon as possible. May our end...

[52:28]

Again. Again. So, my friend Stephanie Kaza is here. Stephanie has been teaching with Wendy during this first week of the practice period and was very pleased to be able to be here with her. She's very much involved in the leading of this workshop this weekend. So, please, whatever is up that you'd like us to talk about. Yes. Did you do a roll hammer? Is there a hon the last few times? There hasn't been a hammer for the hon, so that's possible, please. Yes. Could you say the phrases again? There are two meditations, so we can run down. Oh, sure. There's a particularly beautiful version of this meditation. It's always, of course, requires the eyeglasses, right?

[53:30]

But I like this verse. Let's make sure, because I fiddle with the language a little bit. If by deed, speech, or thought, foolishly I have done wrong, may all forgive me, honored ones, who are in wisdom and compassion strong. So, that's the first step. Could you say it? Sure. If by deed, speech, or thought, foolishly I have done wrong, may all forgive me, honored ones, who are in wisdom and compassion strong. And then the second step is, I freely forgive anyone.

[54:34]

I freely forgive anyone. Anyone. And the third, who may have hurt or injured me. I freely forgive anyone who may have hurt or injured me. And the third is, I freely forgive myself. Now, there's some tricky words in there, like that freely business. And my experience with doing this meditation is that letting yourself go to a particular person with whom there's some knot or difficulty, and addressing that relationship and that person and that specific experience is the way to move in on oneself in the cultivation of forgiveness. And that one of the consequences of doing the meditation is that a kind of noticing, bringing attention to areas of our lives where forgiveness is the opportunity, that

[55:44]

that attention or noting actually is one of the consequences of doing the meditation. Now, another way into it is to do bare noting, to notice and then do forgiveness. For a lot of people, I think that's very hard to do. Yes? When you were doing the one on everyone in your house, well, I live alone except for I've been inundated with fleas lately. And, you know, I want those fleas out of there. And I have made a conscious choice that I'm going to kill them. And that troubles me. And a couple of years ago someone told me that I would have trouble killing a flea. But now it does. But I also, I don't want to live with that. But yet I am choosing to kill these critters. I have the same issue with the rats that get into the walls of the house and eat the insulation off the electrical wires, which my electrician friends tell me will lead to a fire and burn

[56:51]

us all down. So, you know, one of the things that this brings up is that in our very living, one of the consequences is killing, is dying. And that we're part of this cycle and that we begin to be more aware of the detail of it so that we aren't just indiscriminately killing where we don't need to. I mean, for example, years ago this came up for me around the garden snails. And I discovered that one of the things I could do would be to put more energy into not having all the little environments that they are drawn to and breed in, that I could put, somebody in fact recently told me about putting a ring of horse manure around certain plants that the snails love because they won't go over the ring of horse manure. So I've, there's a way in which the snails and I have worked something out short of me doing, you know, kind of jumping up and down on the snails.

[57:53]

But, you know, so if I kill the fleas or ticks in order to take care of the dogs and cats that live in the house or in order to take care of my own well-being, can I also have some sense of asking permission and expression of gratitude and regret that this is what I need to do to take care of this environment. So it's not so kind of just mindlessly trooping in with want of awareness. You know, I recently went by a house that was all tented. So we want to kill some critters, so we're just going to do the scorched earth. There's some measure short of that which allows us to take care of what we have to take care of and gives us a much more vivid sense of interconnection. I mean this is something I think you speak to very well in terms of the chain of being

[59:03]

and the food chain and all of that. I think I would say welcome that uncomfortableness. Each one of these instances is a particular struggle and you might figure one out. Well, okay, I'm not going to eat bacon. I've gotten that far. And so then you sort of relax at some level. Or, well, I can get along with a few mosquitoes just so that I don't have a yellow jacket nest. And at each point you sort of relax into some level of comfortableness and that's the danger zone. That's where you go to sleep and think, I've worked this out and so I'm kind of ecologically cool. But the truth is the struggles are endless in this realm. They're absolutely endless. So if you can welcome the uncomfortableness, you know, make a little flea altar somewhere. I've read about flea circuses and I've never been able to figure out how to, you know, in France people did flea circuses.

[60:05]

I have no idea. Maybe they just let the fleas do what the fleas do. Like I said, a few years ago this would not have been an issue for me. And now I'm wondering am I going to wind up and I have this image in my mind of seeing Janes in India with these people. You're headed in that direction. And I say to myself, they are weird, I don't want to be weird. But that's where I'm going. And so it's like I'm putting on the brakes and I'm saying goddamn those fleas, I'm going to kill them. So tell me about weird. It seems to me that a lot of times we go much too far and we lose the whole point of what it is that we're doing. And if, for example, the Janes are sweeping the path before they step onto a bug on the path or covering their face with a mask so they don't breed organisms.

[61:08]

I also wonder, well, what are they cutting themselves off from in the rest of the world? And by doing this it also brings up, you know, a kind of a holier than thou. If you don't know a Jane, you don't know that. That gets back to me. But it gets back to me. Am I a better person now that I'm worried about fleas? No, I'm not probably a better person because I'm worried about fleas. But what do you notice about the difference in your state of mind? I'm certainly a lot more conscious. I mean, I know that my state of mind was much more disturbed than I was willing to acknowledge when I was doing wholesale snail murder. And that at the point at which I began to see if I spent a little more energy, that I didn't have to kill the snails. Maybe I draw the line around fleas and ticks. And I put screens up because I don't want to coexist with the mosquitoes if I can help it.

[62:13]

But that I don't have to kill snails in order to find a way to coexist. And I notice a difference in my state of mind, making that energy to see what my relationship with snails is, is different from fleas. Let me add something to this too. Who defines what is weird? I think it's very important to see that the killing mind is quite popular in the United States and in the Western world. And so, if you feel like to kill will make you more normal and accepted by everybody, yeah, I think that'd be good to question, especially if you're going to continue with your Buddhist practice. Now, you have to kill to live, but which killing are you actually willing to participate in? So, I would like to radically invite you all to consider dismantling the dominant paradigm which says killing is normal. If we started there, we might make a lot of decisions quite differently. And not to be swayed and manipulated by somebody up there somewhere

[63:14]

in some hierarchy of values who has said, this is how we think it really ought to be. And question it with the integrity of some moral strength on your part. I want to recommend a book. Those of you who've heard me speak recently, please forgive me. I'm pushing, you know, Yvonne's always pushing some book. The book I'm pushing this month is Bandit, Dossier of a Dangerous Dog by Vicky Hearn. She teaches philosophy at Yale and trains dogs and horses for 25 plus years. And it is a very serious, it's talked about as a dog book, but it isn't. It's a Dharma text. It's totally about what you just talked about. She's talking in this book ostensibly about the so-called Pit Bull Wars in the 80s when thousands of Pit Bulls were killed by people who had loving relationships with their Pit Bulls and believed the propaganda, if you will, in the media

[64:19]

that all Pit Bulls will turn on you, it's just a matter of time. Besides, they have jaws which are hinged such that they can clamp and chew at the same time. And what she's talking about is how language affects our state of mind and our experience of what is true. How the generalizations that are popularly held, if we follow them, can lead us to turn away from our actual particular experience. And the basis of what leads to racism and genocide, totally the same territory as what happened during the Second World War in Europe. It's the same territory and it has absolutely to do with our beginning to be more and more aware of our conditioning and how we can be aware of our conditioning through noticing how language affects the way we think about things and what we think is true and what we think is not true.

[65:20]

Basis of a whole inquiry into prejudice. It's a very, very useful, well-written, and sometimes hysterically funny book. Vicki Hearn, H-E-A-R-N-E. I'm going to write to her and say, I want a cut on your Royalty. But it's a, it's a, she's written two books, she's written a lot of books, but the two books that are on this subject, an earlier one called Adam's Task. But in this book, Bandit, she's talking about friendship, she's talking about relationship, and something about the kind of relationship that people have with dogs and dogs with people. And she talks in one chapter about brutishness, and she presents a pretty powerful argument that people are much more inclined to brutishness than dogs are. That any self-respecting dog wouldn't stoop to certain kinds of behavior. Anyway, I recommend the book. It's quite stimulating.

[66:21]

What was this book published? Last year, maybe? I mean, I ordered it from my first husband's second wife, who owns a bookstore, and she got it in two days. Yes. What were the words in the second, the meditation on loving kindness, the three words that you used in that? May I be well, may I be happy, may I be at peace. Because I was thinking of what Stephanie just said. There was something in that, that, it seems to me that when we're not well, when we're not happy, and when we're not at peace, or as Stephanie said, when we're uncomfortable, that those are almost more blessings than when we are the reverse. I mean, I know that they, but somehow or other, it seems to me that that,

[67:22]

I almost see when somebody is uncomfortable as being a really positive sign, as opposed to when they're comfortable. Not if they're oblivious to their discomfort. That's called suffering. And what we're really talking about is intention. If I understand that my intention is that I'm going for well, peaceful, and happy and peaceful, then my discomfort will help me wake up to see what leads to those conditions of mind, and what doesn't. And in that sense, I think you're completely right. But I'm already on the path at that point. I mean, what we're really talking about is the teachings in the First Turning of the Wheel by the historical Buddha. Hey, folks, there's something in the world called suffering. That's news to a lot of people. Like the woman I told you about, who has done this program to help kids learn to read.

[68:28]

Who has turned away from herself in terms of really knowing how much she suffers because of her self-loathing. If it's not in the field of awareness, then I wonder, is it such a good friend, such a good opportunity? I think one's motivation here is really, really critical. And I'm not so sure that we can say we all want to suffer. I mean, it's not the same kind of connector, point of connection, as everyone wants to be happy. I mean, suffering is unavoidable. No. No, suffering is not unavoidable. There are certain kinds of suffering that I can do something about.

[69:34]

Certain kinds, but I mean, it's not going to always be either you or somebody else. I guess there's this point at which it sounds so, I don't know why it's so passive, but there's this point at which I want to say, when we're talking about the world, I mean, you were talking about, you know, the Karmic Conference, and I just got a letter from Jacque Stokes, you know, pinpoints, said the world is on fire, basically. It's the same kind of thing, and you get all of these activist groups who are really trying to, people or whatever, who are trying to deal with it. And it seems to me that there's a point at which, you know, I can say, I'm thinking of Joanna Macy when she says that, like the rainforest, when she says that John Seed says, you know, I'm not John Seed, I'm not John Seed speaking as John Seed. I'm John Seed speaking as the voice of the rainforest transformed into a human expression

[70:46]

and trying to protect itself. There's this kind of thing of, you know, when you're uncomfortable, it seems like the appropriate response is to cry out, you know what I mean, to have a response to it. I don't want to see a reaction, I want to see a response to it. And so, I don't know, but there was something in that that to me sort of was, you know, I wanted to see where does the part that you really want to object to or take action, what is the pivot point of taking action? See, my objection to emphasizing that is not that I object to taking action, but that we as Americans in our culture emphasize action to such a degree that we don't know anything about how to be present with what is so. And so, we act from ignorance. We don't act from clear seeing. And so, sometimes even though our intentions are honorable,

[71:46]

we act in ways that aren't effective for bringing about peace in the world. And that the place to begin is to begin by being present in a way so that we begin to know very deeply and clearly what is so. And it's not that I'm saying, no, don't act, but that's like a knee-jerk reaction for us culturally. We emphasize doing in our culture to such a striking degree. And there are times when what we really need to know about is how to be present, fully willing to see what is so. But the difference between reacting and responding, I was actually thinking of it. I'm just making a different point. I'm making a different point very consciously for this particular group of us who are Americans who know a lot about doing. We know a lot about doing. And sometimes our doing doesn't come out of clarity, clear, wise, compassionate seeing.

[72:53]

I was thinking of the Lutheran Vasa treatment, the thoughtfulness, the courage, and the compassion as being very deep in terms of informed thought. Being very deep in terms of the point of view. Let me add something from the point of view of an environmental activist. It doesn't take you very many pieces of junk mail before you realize what a wrecked state of affairs we're dealing with. There is some exaggeration to get you to give money, but basically you can keep up on environmental news pretty well if you read your junk mail. Why I'm mentioning this, if we take Joanna Mase's work a little further, is that you are not going to be a very helpful agent of social change, whether it's recycling your brown bags or getting rid of your automobile, unless you can sustain your effort over time.

[73:55]

It's guaranteed you will sooner or later hit a wall of despair that's bigger than you can handle. Maybe you thought you could manage ozone and acid rain, but then all of a sudden you got low-level nuclear waste, and that just put you over the top. It is more than we can understand because it is global. All these pieces are much bigger than our frail little perceptual systems were designed to understand. Doing a loving-kindness meditation for yourself as well as for others is a way to evoke compassion for the enormity of what is in front of us, and your genuine desire to stay well enough to continue to be willing to face it. It takes a very positive effort. It's not something that you can kind of hope on some day she'll wake up feeling good.

[74:58]

You have to make it part of your daily practice to cultivate that. First of all, I heard you talk today with a group in Dallas who dealt with very specific issues of mine. And I just want to emphasize in this group today that there's another gathering going on in San Francisco. It's the Gay Freedom Day in March. And the issue of self-loathing and the inner critic is very much part of that community of which I'm a member. And I find myself being a very fiercely critical, judgmental person. And I struggle with that, and I struggle with it in a number of different ways, this being one very important way. In fact, when people hear, my friends hear that I'm involved in Buddhism, it's kind of a laugh because I'm so atypical to what a stereotypical Buddhist is supposed to be.

[76:01]

And I do know, I mean, there's a term that gets banded around, but it's called internalized homophobia. And it's something I struggle with. And I love other people too. My encounter with the gay community has been there's a lot of self-loathing going on. And that's acted out through alcoholism, excessive sexual behavior, inappropriate sexual behavior, drugs, and just trashing one another. And that's recognized within the gay movement. And there is some very strong efforts to counteract that. I did go to the march in Washington a couple months ago, where it was very heartening to see a lot of young gay men and lesbians in their 20s and their teens who didn't have the attitudes and the assumptions that I had at their age because there's so much more information, so much countervailing thought going on. Whereas at that age, all I was fed was just the mainstream stereotypes about what a gay man is supposed to be. And I had to deal with that image.

[77:04]

And what I've had to deal with over the past few years is trying to come across with counter images that I can see myself as. So I don't know whether I have a question, but I just want to bring... I mean, this is a day that I want people to be aware of. What you're talking about is an issue that specifically addresses not only this community, but I've read about Afro-Americans who deal with their self-esteem issues. And I've dealt with... I just recently read a book about Native Americans who are dealing with alcoholism and suicide rates because of this. So this whole image of self-loathing and esteem issues and inner-critic. Yeah, it's very big. Yeah, and it deals very much... I mean, we often take responsibility for it, even though we're not consciously being unkind to other people that we're aware of. Just by the accident of what's going on, if we don't make a real effort to protest or to fight against it, we're promoting that behavior, we're promoting people from being denied their full potential.

[78:10]

Correct. I want to make a suggestion, if I may. Notice your language of fighting against self-loathing. And what I want to suggest is that that's the point at which we're caught. When I have in mind fighting the inner critic, I'm in the soup. That if I can hold even that voice of self-loathing that arises at the heart with this gesture, as though I were holding my only newborn child, without denial, without clinging, without grasping, just holding as I follow the breath in and the breath out, that that's a completely different way of being with the critic, the self-loathing, and something begins to be possible.

[79:11]

When if I have the notion of I'm going to fight it and get rid of it, I'm really talking about a kind of violence, a kind of internalized violence. And that difference between being willing to be with even self-loathing, with a kind of gentleness or kindness, is a very big difference between that and this is something I can get rid of. It's really interesting that you express it that way because that's exactly the issue I deal with. I see this thing as almost like being possessed by a demon, a lacerating demon that is my enemy and it's going to destroy me if I don't destroy it first. I hear this over and over and over again and I know it from my own experience. And the difference for me and from what I've seen with the people that I practice with in discovering, oh, you mean being kind even with this voice? It's a radical idea, totally radical.

[80:14]

And that's right, it is radical. But all I can say is consider the possibility of not saying, get out of here, but please sit down here in the corner. If you keep talking, I'm just not going to pay attention to you. But I'm not telling you to go away. I'm not telling you to shut up. I'm not going to cut you out with a knife. I'm just going to continue doing what I'm doing, putting my foot down and then my other foot or following my breath or cutting the carrots, whatever it is. There's a wonderful, the shortest chapter on the editor, which is a form of the critic, right, in Natalie Goldberg's book, Writing Down the Bones. It's two-thirds of a page long. And in it she talks about what a killer the editor is if you're doing creative work like writing because the minute that voice says, oh, you're a terrible writer, look at this piece of shit you're writing, this is boring.

[81:18]

And the minute you hear the word boring, you stop writing. The end, you can't write. But what if the voice is boring and you just keep writing? And she likens it to imagining this voice as laundry hung up on the line, flapping in the wind at a great distance, and eventually someone else may take it in. It's a great image, isn't it? Sort of free dryer. And in our language and the way we talk about what we're talking about is the way to begin to see I really have a kind of war mode in my mind. You know, I think in the Dhammapada where the Buddha says violence leads to violence is so true.

[82:19]

It's what came up for me yesterday afternoon listening to President Clinton's announcement of the missiles sent to Baghdad. How, you know, and he invoked one of the first flags for this country, don't tread on me. What we're engaged in is retaliation. Does that really stop terrorism? Will this really be effective in terms of what we want? Anyway, we certainly don't need to have that kind of internalized warfare, and for a lot of us, that's what we have. So I wish you well, and thank you very much for reminding us about the events of the day and the suffering of our friends in the gay and lesbian community. Anyway, thank you very much. Good luck. Thank you. You have a lot of company.

[83:19]

You have a lot of company. I know. Yeah, but it helps to know that. In the meditation before your talk, I had an insight about a feeling of fear that I was experiencing at the moment. And the insight was about how familiar that is to me, actually, but unknown to me. And then what I got in touch with was another layer of fear about that fear. And I noticed that I start criticizing a lot when I feel that kind of fear. The fear of my fear. And that it's really difficult to allow myself to feel that. And it centers around the fear of my inadequacy.

[84:27]

So, being interested in Buddhism, I sometimes actually have a problem with the Buddhist ideology of being fearless, or not having feelings of possessiveness, and a lot of things. Because I do. But the Buddha doesn't say that we don't have those feelings arising. He's suggesting some ways of working with those states of mind and emotions, and the consequences of them. I mean, you know, when I was expressing my feelings for my teacher, Tartuku, who died two years ago today, part of what I was expressing was my gratitude for having known and been able to study with someone who showed me

[85:37]

what fearlessness and non-possessiveness looks like. And to see the quality of liberation that that quality of mind brings about. But you know, as with what we were just talking about in terms of the inner critic, I can also hold fear in this way, which is a very different alternative to having fear of the fear, or judging the judge. And it seems to me that the whole meditation path is about discovering a different way of being, other than either expressing or suppressing, but being with. There's a third alternative, which for many of us is a real piece of news. And the minute I start fearing the fear, or judging the judge, there's something extra. I'm not just present with. So the fearlessness you speak about then is not to be without fear, it is to be with fear.

[86:46]

To be with fear. In fact, one day I had quite a startling discovery that to be courageous maybe didn't mean to be without fear, but to be willing to be present and act if that's what needed to happen, even including fear. You know, there's a wonderful verse, which I unfortunately don't know by heart, talking about the Bodhisattva as a mighty warrior. Fearless with the inner enemies of greed, hate, and delusion, of grasping, disturbed states of mind. So there's a quality of fear evoked, a quality of description of fearlessness as a willing to turn towards.

[87:51]

Now I may be able to develop that capacity to turn towards what I fear and have a lot of fear coming up. Ah, there's a puzzle. And you know, something that you just alluded to, which is, well, does my fear come up around my press release? Or is it okay for me to be a man in this culture and in this world and admit that sometimes fear arises? You know, there we are struggling with press releases again. You know, that's really what you were talking about. It's meaningless to say we're courageous if we don't feel fear. I want to add something on this, because I was thinking about this earlier and talking about language.

[88:55]

One of the classic environmental put-downs is, you're being too emotional about this situation, right? And I'd like to point out that that language, emotional, is usually associated with the sort of lower forms of life. In other words, women. They're the ones, so don't be like them. Don't show your fear. Don't show your anger or your grief. Don't show it, because if you show it, I might have to respond to it. I might have to recognize that your experience is actually valid. Now why this is so important in terms of environmental work is because emotions are often sources of moral cues. That your first level emotional response is actually based in a genuine, compassionate experience of interrelatedness. And if you can listen to that ouch that goes off when you see somebody kicking their dog and you think,

[89:57]

gee, should I say something? Actually, internally, your emotion is telling you, I don't think that's right. Something seems wrong there. Kicking a dog maybe isn't something we should accept in the world. But you can't even have this fear and grief and so on. If I grieve over the loss of huge forested lands that have been clear cut, if I wail, if I write poetry in books, I take a huge risk that somebody's going to put me down for that. So I think in examining the language, we have to see all that comes behind it and how one sort of dominant set of values has managed to marginalize very effectively emotional and moral response around issues that are critical to our life support. So this practice of compassion for self is a terrific support and kind of inroad to your own moral response. So please, be emotional, is what I would say.

[91:03]

It reminds me of reading Women in Wilderness and her making the correlation between wildness and the wildness and women. This experience keeps coming up for me as we talk here today about earlier this year of going over White's Hill, coming from Point Reyes and going into what we call the other side of the hill. And coming up over White's Hill with the big signs that say there could be a delay, we meant delay to get over the mountain. Coming up and coming into the valley, Woodacre and San Geronimo and having these piles of earth, just humongous piles of earth that were on this valley road that were there in boulders and huge and being just startled,

[92:06]

just so afraid and enraged and how did this happen while I wasn't looking and powerless and driving through and realizing for years I've been saying things about White's Hill and about how can they keep going back and obviously this mountain, this hill is not going to be put in order. Every winter the thing slides down. Why don't we just drive smaller, this one lane road through there. Why do we have to keep going back? So here are these huge mountains of earth and then going through and having these caterpillars just scraping up this stair step. And I come to my friend Victoria's house and I was crying. I said to her, you know, I feel like I can't go anywhere anymore. I'm just a mess. I said, you know, this sounds crazy to me, but I just came over White's Hill and I could hear her crying.

[93:08]

And I was thinking about what you said about being weird. One of the, you know, of thinking, you know, and then correlating down as I felt this here today and thinking, you know, this is symbolic of my own wounds and my own helplessness and my own propaganda, you know, press release of these going back in there and telling me how it's going to be and reading this stuff and saying this is how it's going to be. We're going to go ahead and do this no matter what you feel. And I realized that and hearing the action stuff and thinking about how inept I feel and how frightened I feel, what action to take and how I get home. I go over the hill. I cry. My friend, I think, oh, God. I go into my area.

[94:10]

I go back to my house and forget and go back to my life. But how it keeps showing up for me, it keeps reminding me. And one of the things that comes up here today is that what helps for me about the ritual of bowing into those places, of loving kindness and forgiveness and acknowledging those places for myself and for White's Hill and for the people who are working on White's Hill. And what it does is it stops the perpetuation for me of being angry, of being really raged and then suppressing, going home, you know, forgetting about it. You know, one of the things I think now is, you know, stop the car and get out and sit on that hill, sit all day on that hill. I mean, that's something that I could do for myself. But the idea of just taking these rituals and asking myself to be present with what comes up

[95:16]

and having the courage to go through my day, to drive over White's Hill, to...

[95:20]

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