I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. I'm going to stand. Good morning. Good morning. I'm living proof that there is such a thing as impermanence of the body. Before I came into the Zen Dojo, I was admiring the painting in Cloud Hall of the Zen teacher in the manifestation of skeleton. It's a great preparation. I have some difficulty with my left hip, so I am relegated to sitting in a chair or standing, and I thought I'd stand because I can see you more clearly.

[01:00]

What I would like to talk about this morning has to do with the cultivation of self-confidence and the importance of self-confidence in spiritual practice. But what I want to do is to consider with you some of the ground that we need to, will have to consider if we are in fact going to cultivate self-confidence. Some years ago, I was leading a retreat up in Alaska, and the site for the retreat was an old Boy Scout camp, and the only way in and out was on foot. And when we walked in with all our provisions for the retreat, it was dusk, and we were pretty intent in getting in before it was completely dark.

[02:04]

So I didn't really see the landscape that we were going through so clearly until we were ready to leave at the end of the retreat. And as we walked out, I kept seeing marvelous rocks. I had everybody walking with me with rocks in their pockets. Rock greed. One of the rocks that I brought back, I still have on the altar in the meditation room where I practice. It's a small, quite beautiful rock, and the top of the rock is completely covered with barnacles. So if you look at the top of the rock, all you can see are the barnacles. And what I realized when I looked at the rock is that there are some days when I think of myself as that heap of barnacles and forget about the stone that is underneath them. So I've kept that rock there all these years as a reminder not to confuse barnacles for stones.

[03:13]

And of course, when you look at barnacles and pick away at them, you realize that they can be dissolved and chipped away. So what are the barnacles that keep us from seeing clearly the nature of mind, our essential nature, Buddha nature? Doubt and questioning arises often. And what's interesting to me is that no matter how long we practice, we may find ourselves periodically having some wave of doubt or questioning about what we're doing. We may, after a period of meditation when we feel like our mind was like a rabbit skittering around, or to use the more classical image, like a monkey darting around.

[04:16]

Someone in a class I taught yesterday was bemoaning the fact that often when he meditates, his mind is so busy, so full of the events of the day that he feels very discouraged. But what he had failed to notice, and what I think we can often fail to notice, is that after such a period of meditation, we may actually have some calmness, some clarity. In the cultivation of awareness, we can't relegate awareness to what we like to see, what we like to be aware of. The whole path is about cultivating our willingness for awareness with whatever arises, with whatever is so. One of the interesting things to me in practicing, not only with my own mind stream, but with others, is how often when we have questions, we disregard or ignore or diminish our awareness.

[05:42]

We diminish our questions. Often, often, often, I listen to the people that I practice with ask a question which they immediately disregard, and I can see how much the question holds exactly the focus that is important for them to look at. And I'm really struck by how easily we disregard our own questions to the point where sometimes we don't even recognize what those questions are. There is a quote by James Stevens that I'm particularly fond of. He says that a well-packed question carries its answer on its back as a snail carries its shell. And my experience is that that's a very accurate description, actually.

[06:44]

If we don't try too hard to figure out the answer, if we don't try too hard to get rid of doubt, if we are willing to keep bringing a strong quality of attention and awareness to whatever arises, insight will come. And in the process, a certain kind of dissolving of those barnacles, conditioned reactive emotions, reactive patterns in the mind. And whether we are beginners or longtime practitioners, the qualities of our practice that are necessary remain the same. That is constancy, continually practicing showing up. This morning my husband offered an image which I find quite helpful.

[07:55]

That it's a bit like being on a staple chase, whatever it is, you know, where you're on the horse jumping hurdles. And our conditioned reactive emotions and mental habits are those hurdles. So the challenge is to cultivate attention and awareness that has at least slightly more energy than the emotional pattern or the mental habit itself has. Otherwise we sag when we meet the energy of anger or aversion or of confusion or of clinging and grasping or of fear. The list of obstacles will be similar and different with each one of us.

[08:56]

I think if you stop and think about the naughty places in your experience, you'll see the patterns, you'll see what the emotional patterns and mental patterns are for you. One of the most difficult patterns to work with is that of the critic, the critical mind, the nagging, grouchy, running commentary about what isn't or what should be. There's a lot of energy in that particular habit. What's interesting is that if we bring at least as much energy, and even better, slightly more energy, in the quality of awareness to that cranky, critical mind, there is in time a kind of dissolving of the pattern.

[10:03]

And to the degree that that habit continues, it begins to be more like a kind of whisper and not in the driver's seat. And it is at that moment then that the quality of joy can arise, and out of that the qualities of loving-kindness and compassion and equanimity. But that process does not drop from the sky like rain, unfortunately. Much as we wish that was the way it works, much as we wish that if we keep sitting on our cushion or our chair, we keep showing up in the zendo, the dissolution of these unwholesome and negative patterns will take place somehow magically. And my experience is that that is in fact not so.

[11:08]

That what we are able to do, and if we trust ourselves, discover our capacity for, is to keep bringing attention, keep bringing energy to whatever arises, including what we would rather turn away from. And I think that there is required in that process real courage. What is so interesting to me is that when we in fact turn toward what we have a tendency to want to turn away from, we discover capacities we didn't know we had. So if you think about this process of riding on a horse across the country, periodically jumping over fences and barriers of various sorts,

[12:11]

it's clear that in the process of going over each hurdle there is a particular kind of energy that's required for that lift and to clear the barrier. That's the quality in our attention that we need to cultivate. And constancy makes a huge difference. My dear friend and teacher, the late Tartulku, one time during a retreat said, shaking his head, so many of you think that you are going to start a fire by rubbing the fire sticks together and then stopping, and then rubbing them together and then stopping, and then rubbing them together and then stopping. And he said, what are you getting? You are continually getting no fire. The only way you will have some spark which can then ignite the tinder, which can then start a fire, is with a constancy of rubbing the sticks together.

[13:20]

Which is why if we have some kind of daily practice and we actually do it every day, whether we feel like it or not, we develop a quality of energy in our attention that arises from that constant practice. But we discourage ourselves when we take on a practice which is too big a bite, if you will. Particularly, I think this is true when people are practicing by themselves. It is much easier to stretch in one's daily practice when one has company, when one is practicing in a center where there are others doing the same thing. But what happens when we are on our own? When we would rather not leave a cozy, warm bed in the morning? Now, what I am about to say on this matter may be a heresy here in this meditation hall, but I will risk it.

[14:35]

It is possible to develop a base in one's spiritual practice by beginning modestly. In fact, if one begins with practicing sitting down for five minutes, whatever shape and form of the practice you are committed to, that you experience as absolutely doable, and you then do it no matter what, what arises is a sense of mastery, of capacity, which you can then build on. And it is not so hard then to begin, for example, with sitting, going from five minutes to ten minutes. I teach an introductory class at the University of California Extension several times a year, and virtually everyone who comes to those classes is coming with some version of how do I survive my life.

[15:45]

More and more, I can count on the issue of stress and pace being the issues that bring people to those classes. And for them, the idea of sitting down, making time to sit down and pay attention to posture and breath seems huge. The idea of actually sitting down and eating lunch and not at the same time talking on the telephone and writing notes or being in a meeting, for some people, seems rather daunting. If we begin with what is doable and we practice whatever the practice is that we're doing, that we've picked up, and we do it with constancy, we are building self-confidence. When we say after a particularly inspiring lecture or retreat or workshop,

[16:50]

I'm going to get up at five in the morning and meditate for an hour, and we might sustain it for a little while, and then there'll be some period of time when we don't get up at five in the morning and sit for an hour, and we feel quite badly. My experience is that that is one of the ways in which we undermine ourselves and erode whatever capacity we have for self-confidence. One of the wonderful things about the basket of practices in the mindfulness tradition is that we can take a practice that may be very brief and small and do it in the midst of our day, five or six times a day, for the space of one or two or three breaths, and be surprised that we experience some cultivating of awareness. I remember one time when I decided to focus on awareness or mindfulness of standing,

[18:01]

and I was really surprised at how easily I noticed standing in the course of the day, having not consciously been aware of standing before, and how from that very simple practice and doing it five or six or eight or ten times a day, some quality of attention or awareness began to develop that was extended beyond those moments of standing. So I want to encourage each of us to consider what it is we're doing in our practice, our spiritual life, that is the core or the thread that we will stay with no matter what, that we be very clear what that practice is that will be the baseline.

[19:04]

Some years ago, an old student of Suzuki Roshi's who went away and discovered that he was an alcoholic and went to AA and went to graduate school and became a professor, he said through many years he stopped meditating, but he always, every day, lit a stick of incense at the altar in his room. Through all those years of wandering away from meditation practices. And he told me some years later that that practice of offering a stick of incense, of being present in that moment, having that intention which he actually held to all those years, was the access, the doorway through which he was able in time to return to other kinds of meditation practices. So what I'm asking you to consider is starting every day with some awareness of what is doable,

[20:22]

what you absolutely are confident you will do, and really doing it, and practicing with this quality of constancy. Let me say a few words about working with questions. I think for many of us the questions that arise, especially in the context of our experience in our spiritual life, are questions we may not even notice. One of the great advantages in having a spiritual friend is that someone else may hear a question that is arising, that I'm expressing, that I'm not hearing, and can help me hear it. But I also think that some willingness to pay attention to our questions can help us hear them when they arise.

[21:25]

And to notice when you dismiss or say, oh, well, excuse me for asking this question, it's a stupid question, but it's the question I have, that kind of undermining of the question. To notice that and be willing to bring it up and ask it anyway. To take on with some clear intention respecting questions as they arise. And be patient with ourselves so that we don't rush to try to find an answer, but just allow the question to be there, to cook us. There's a way in which our questions cook us. Some years ago, someone I know who was a lawyer

[22:27]

spent a year or longer asking this question, can a real estate lawyer practice the Eightfold Path? It's interesting to me how when people start meditating, very often what comes up, pretty quickly, is some questioning about one's livelihood, one's means of livelihood. Because, of course, that's where we often have a kind of gap between our press release and what is so. Or, not to be cynical, between what we would like to be so about ourselves and what's actually so. And what was so interesting to me was that over some extended period of time, a year or so, maybe longer, somehow just holding that question,

[23:28]

just allowing the question to be there as a kind of reference point, the question changed for this person to, how does a real estate lawyer follow the Eightfold Path? Now, that's not always what happens. Sometimes what you come to is, I need to find another kind of work. But sometimes we make those kinds of decisions out of our discomfort with sitting with the question. And I think there's great benefit in not trying to figure out what to do so quickly. We, as Americans, have a lot of conditioning around the doing side of things. And so we need to bring a certain kind of energy and attention to just staying with what's arising without acting from that right away. This past summer, I led a three-week retreat

[24:39]

in which we were working with reactive emotional patterns. People were not thrilled at the beginning of the retreat. Somehow I hadn't announced the theme until we all got there. And I wasn't really meaning to trick anybody, but in hindsight I realized that I probably would have been sitting alone if I had announced the focus. So for three weeks, we did practices that had to do with developing our capacity to be aware of negative emotional reactive patterns. And of course, everyone easily knew what the patterns were. That was not the issue. The issue had to do with the willingness to turn towards

[25:43]

and actually experience the territory. Not think about it, but to actually experience it. And to, at the same time, be cultivating the ground of attention and awareness that is stable and strong, that in time develops with enough energy to meet anger or fear or whatever. This is, of course, what happens when we practice tsazen. Out of some regular attention brought to posture and following the breath, awareness of the physical body in this aspect called posture and breath, we are developing stable, clear attention. There were two people in the retreat who,

[26:48]

in one case almost in spite of this person, stayed with or kept coming back to the territory. And at the end of the retreat, what I saw was, particularly for one person, the experience of confidence in her capacity to be with this very territory in her life that she had tried to avoid for 60 years. And such joy and lightness arose in her and has continued. I feel quite inspired to see someone stay with this kind of focus and have that experience, which is, of course, what we mean when we talk about liberation from suffering.

[27:53]

Thank you. Right now I'm living with a young Tibetan boy, he's four and a half, who lives with us with his monk attendant. And they've been with us since the end of January. And the plan is that they will stay with us for two years. And we've been together long enough now so that the honeymoon is over. And I see more clearly some of the characteristics of his training and life as it is happening now and will happen for a long time. And I feel enormous grief and sadness for what I see in front of him. And I notice arising some tendency in me

[29:01]

to send them back home. Am I willing to stay present with the suffering that I see already in this child's life and to continue being with him in the ways that I can? Or will I say it's too much? It doesn't have anything to do with him or his circumstance. It has to do with my own capacity to be present with my own suffering. And unless we're willing to be with our own suffering, unless we're willing to be with our own grief, unless we're willing to be with our own stuff that is the fallout of patterning and conditioning,

[30:05]

we will never discover our remarkable and extraordinary capacity to not only be present but to have the dissolving of what is unwholesome. And it is only when we can be present with our own suffering that we can be present for the suffering of others. They aren't separate. They are one. One of the things that I find very interesting is that the kind of courage and commitment that authentic spiritual life is about isn't instead of fear or dis-ease

[31:13]

or that arising of wanting to turn away. There is this paradoxical possibility of all of it together. For a long time, especially when I was young, I thought that courage was instead of fear. And I was so startled to find myself in situations where I was quite frightened and was able to have some quality of courage also. It's that way with joy and sadness also. They actually, in some remarkable way, go together. So in respecting questions and doubts, in a way, what I'm suggesting is this is the opportunity to be present with what is so in the process of discovering more of the whole picture.

[32:14]

That when I'm present with dis-ease or discomfort or suffering within myself, I am also then more open to joy. It isn't at all either-or. The piece that I guess we don't want to say because maybe we're afraid everybody will go away is that it's hard work. We want it to be easy, but it's also hard, at least initially. And then after a while, some lightness comes. As we see our own limitations and those of others, there is a capacity not only to see but to laugh. So my friend who was in the retreat this summer

[33:34]

who emerged liberated from some suffering she had packed around with her for decades has a kind of self-confidence in herself and her spiritual practice that I've never seen in her before, and she tells me she hasn't either. Not puffed up. Not puffed up at all. Quite authentic. Because she knows herself. And she's able to not get caught up by thinking that the person who has this behavior that comes from conditioning is her authentic self. She sees that's the barnacles. That's the barnacles. And after a while you even get to think barnacles are beautiful. Not so you keep building more,

[34:39]

but as the possibility or opportunity for the erosion, the dissolving, the fading away of aversion. There's a dedication verse which I'm very fond of. It's actually a statement about the wish for the four immeasurables. For all beings. And there's one line. May all live in equanimity without too much aversion or too much attraction. And what I appreciate about that statement is it's not saying without any aversion or any attraction. Somehow seems more possible if we can start with less. So I'd like to ask you to join me in dedicating whatever is wholesome

[35:39]

and useful and positive from our spiritual practices this morning. Particularly to hold in our hearts the people who are suffering so extraordinarily right now in Central America and in the Balkans. And throughout the world. So may we dedicate this energy that all beings may have happiness and the causes of happiness. That all may be free from suffering and the causes of suffering. That all may never be separate from the sacred happiness devoid of suffering. That all may live in equanimity without too much attraction or too much aversion. And that all may live in the equality of all who live. Thank you very much. May our intentions equally

[36:41]

misunderstand the teachings to suggest that we should forget about ourselves in order to be of service to others, in order to be available to others, etc. And in fact, I think if you look closely at the Buddha's teachings and at the whole tradition, we are not authentically acting with generosity or patience or compassion or loving kindness or joy if we aren't doing what we do in a way that includes ourselves. And at least for people growing up in this culture, not everyone of course, but for many people, we had some early training about don't be selfish. And so we have some very deep and early conditioning that can make it easy

[37:44]

to misunderstand how important it is to begin, for example, with the cultivation of generosity with oneself. The difference is that the long-term intention is in order to develop an authentic capacity for generosity with all beings. But we have to start with ourselves. And my experience in doing various versions of loving kindness or generosity practice with people is that often people have a much harder time developing these qualities in relationship with oneself than with others. That what gets excavated is a lot of negative, what might be technically called negative self-clinging. Clinging to a sense of self that is negative, which is at least as problematic

[38:46]

as clinging to a sense of self which is positive. Clinging to me, [...] me as the center of everything is at a very deep level the source of a lot of our suffering. But we often don't think of negative relationship with ourselves as a form of clinging to self. And when you start doing practice on the cultivation of generosity, for example, or the cultivation of loving kindness, those obstacles begin to show themselves. So it's not a matter of there being anything wrong with taking care of yourself, especially in circumstances where you've had some injury or some physical limitation or condition. What often comes up in that situation is the challenge of being on the receiving end of help when you're used to being the helper.

[39:47]

For any of us who are long-time helpers, being helpless is a big teaching, big challenge. I was diagnosed with a cancer last year and had surgery and am fine. But I got to visit that territory of being on the receiving end of being helped, on the receiving end of people doing prayers for me. And it was very powerful and challenging. I mean, I've been out there for three years and I'm good at it and I have a really good ambulance. But it's out of balance if there isn't also some openness to being the one who is helped, who is prayed for, who is held. So I wouldn't pose it between being compassionate and being the victim. Yes? I am originally from Chile

[40:52]

and I have various friends and also brothers that were initially Catholic but they're no longer Catholic and they are in very much suffering. And I've been practicing meditation and I'm a student now for four or five years and they have seen some positive energy going in the right direction. So they asked me for help. And hearing you talking about doing like five minutes or ten minutes, it sort of gave me the idea that maybe I can tell them just to sit, you know, trying to follow their breath. And I was thinking also of maybe translating to Spanish some thoughts of Suzuki Roshi and Dr. Dogen, etc. so they can read after that.

[41:53]

Is that a good idea? And also the next question is, can they practice without a Sangha? You know, can they do it individually? Yeah, it's hard. What's most important is the absence of some guide or spiritual friend. And I think that you can get a lot from books but I don't think it's all of it because most of the teaching that is transmitted is basically coming out of an oral and body-based tradition. So even if you look at the instructions for Zazen at the beginning of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, which is translated into Spanish, there's something missing that you get when you actually sit with the teacher and see how the teacher is sitting. There's some communication that is non-verbal and is not just in the mind but is more heart-to-heart and mind-body.

[42:55]

So I think it's difficult but not impossible. There are, I'd be a little surprised if there isn't someone in Chile. I know there are Buddhist teachers in Brazil and in Argentina. There are some Tibetan people that they do practice meditation by chanting, continuously chanting. Mantra. Correct. It's not just mantra though, it's also visualization. It's a combination. It's much more a heart-centered practice. There's a young woman lama in Buenos Aires, well, I don't know if she's in Buenos Aires. She's near Buenos Aires who is down there who is, I think, a good teacher. I don't know any Zen people down there but I can't believe that there isn't somebody. I'll have to think about how you might

[43:58]

ferret out such a person. But start with Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind in Spanish. There are a couple of other books that are commentaries on the Mindfulness Sutra. What you might do is, if you want, I'll write out the titles and you might see if any of them are translated into Spanish. I bet they are. There was one book that was translated as Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh. My mother read it all and she was very happy. Yeah. I think that the Theravadan texts, if you're going to be learning meditation through a book, the Theravadan texts and commentaries are more accessible as a teacher, as a teaching guide. In Zen, particularly in Japanese Zen,

[45:01]

we're told as little as possible and then we're kind of thrown out there to figure out how to swim. I think Westerners actually do better with a little more coaching and a little more mapped territory. When you get that mapping from the Theravadan tradition, it goes with Zen practice very nicely, but in a way that kind of fills in some holes. There are a number of really fine texts, commentaries. There's one that I've been studying now for a while that's written by a man who teaches in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His name is Larry Rosenberg. It's a commentary on the sutra on mindfulness with breathing in and with breathing out called Breath by Breath. It is superb. It basically lays out the practices that the historical Buddha did leading to his enlightenment. It's a brilliant commentary.

[46:05]

May I have the name again? Yes. Breath by Breath. Pretty easy. And the author's name is Larry Rosenberg. Larry Rosenberg. Yes. Music to the Heart. Yes. Speak a little bit about Tibetan Buddhism, please. I don't think it's possible to speak a little bit about Tibetan Buddhism. The two teachers that I've studied with primarily have been the late Tara Tulku whom I mentioned and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Tara Rinpoche used to describe the Tibetan tradition as the Baroque part, but basically loving-kindness meditations because all the deity practices are really loving-kindness practices, receiving and sending. So you do the meditations of the emanation of these qualities of compassion

[47:06]

or purification or wisdom or whatever. And then you do this sustain this visualization of an archetypal emanation of the quality with a mantra receiving the energy that's in the practice from the emanation to your heart and then from your heart to the hearts of others. And there's so much to do that it's a way of developing concentration and focus. Your mind can't wander if you're doing a visualization, a mantra, a recitation, ringing a bell and a drum. So for people who are used and the practices the really authentic practices are quite potent. For example, the meditation on the Buddha in his manifestation

[48:07]

as a healer where you are visualizing the Buddha with his body the color of lapis lazuli and with healing energy coming from his heart to your heart in this stream of lapis the color of lapis lazuli and then from your heart to the hearts of others. It's extraordinary. So when I was going through the surgery I went through this just a year ago most of the time I was very fortunate I got the medical team to be willing not to sedate me because I wanted to do practices. So they numbed the surgical area. So I was doing a breath practice that really comes out every 40 minutes. I would do this focus on mindfulness of body sensation of sensation with long inhalation and long exhalation. And then I do about 10 minutes of the medicine Buddha practice

[49:07]

visualizing everything that was being done to me in the surgical theater as in this stream of blue light and then I sent it from my heart to the hearts of everybody else in the hospital. And I got very deep and very concentrated and very relaxed. The anesthesiologist was just she said I had no idea it was possible to control heart rate, respiration blood pressure you know all the vital signs. She said I just I didn't know that. But then what would happen when I did the medicine Buddha practice was a kind of expanding of the mind. So the mind got very broad and spacious. So the two practices together were extraordinary very powerful. Now I know a doctor who works a lot with people who have conditions that the medical profession says we can't do anything.

[50:10]

And he does he's kind of he's just followed his intuition in developing visualization practices for people to do. And what he does when he works with someone is he asks them to tell him what color do you associate with healing. And different people have different colors. Then the next week the person comes back and the color's changed. Then the third week they come back and the color's a little different. Eventually everybody comes to blue. Compassion can be with different aspects of Avalokiteshvara the Bodhisattva of Compassion of which Jizo is one a form that we find in Japan. But one of the most beloved forms of compassion is the female Buddha Tara.

[51:14]

21 different varieties of Tara with different emphases. And it's a very beautiful practice. Some years ago one of my students instead of making one of these small robes when she did the Bodhisattva ceremony she put the practice that she does with the Tara visualization and mantra to music and then she sang all the parts. Takes about 20 minutes. Just listening to it so there's a very wonderful practice for purification. It's the practice visualizing Vajrasattva. And long before I knew anything about Buddhism a friend of mine introduced me to a drug dealer who was importing Buddha figures filled with drugs. And he had all these figures that he was a little nervous about.

[52:16]

What for? For what he was doing. And I said in particular the figures you're using are particularly dangerous for you to be doing this. You are messing with some very, very, very difficult energy. Scared the living Jesus out of him. Which was my intention. So I dragged home this beautiful image of Vajrasattva. I had no clue what the figure was about. I didn't know anything about the iconographic system. Only later when I studied the iconography of Tibetan Buddhism which is the most consistent in Buddhist sacred art and quite powerful I realized this was exactly the practice that was wholesome for me to do. And it's about purification. And it's extremely powerful especially for people who've had terrible experiences for purifying the kind of imprinting

[53:20]

that happens to us when we've had really unwholesome experiences. And it's the practice in Tibetan Buddhism that you do before you start any other practice. You start with honoring the ancestors taking the refuges and then you do this purification practice. So it's the way you kind of clear the ground. Now the other dimension that interests me a lot as a practitioner in the Soto Zen tradition is that there is a lot of tantra in Soto Zen which I would not have understood, would not have seen had I not had some training in tantra particularly with Tara Rinpoche. And to the degree that I want to understand my home path I'm very grateful for having some illumination about that. Now I'll give you an example. When we sit when we're sitting in Tsa Zen we are manifesting as Buddha.

[54:22]

We are taking the body-mind of awakened, the awakened one. That's completely a tantric practice where you manifest yourself as some emanation of awakeness or compassion or wisdom either fierce or peaceful, etc. So particularly Keizan who did a lot of the ritual and ceremony side in the development or founding of Soto Zen with Dogen he came both of them actually came out of traditions which were heavily influenced in Japan by Tibetan Buddhism. And I'm very interested in understanding all those streams as they come together because I'm also interested in ferreting out what in Zen is Buddhist and what is cultural because we're not Japanese. And being able to make a distinction

[55:23]

between what's cultural and what's Buddhadharma is something that I'm very drawn to. So that's a small but longer answer than maybe you were interested in. And the Zen where I teach doesn't look like this. There are Buddhas all over it and there are paintings all over it because I find them very inspiring and quite beautiful. And in some particular cases I will actually suggest to one of my students you might be interested in looking into this particular Vajrayana practice as a way of opening up something that's not opening up for you in Zazen practice. So I particularly selectively use some of the practices in particular the Healing Buddha meditation the Purification practice with Vajrasattva and the Tara practice. But I also do

[56:23]

occasionally will teach someone meditation on the Buddha on the emanation of wisdom on Jusri and Avalokiteshvara in a more classical mode. And those are all iconographic reference points in Zen. They're just not amplified so much. The heart-oriented practices are implied in Zen and I think we need to do more than imply compassion imply open-heartedness we need to do more than imply warm, friendly open-heartedness. Zen folk can be a little on the chilly side. We have to be a little careful about that. Okay? Yes, hi. I particularly appreciate your statement about starting modestly and I started

[57:25]

modestly but I'm still there like 10 minutes a day calibrating. I've been doing that for 5 or 6 years. Do a retreat. Do a retreat. I have no problem coming here which I do every Sunday and sitting for the 25 minutes or whatever it is but at home I don't seem to be able to do that and then every now and again here they'll announce oh we've got a one day sitting next Sunday and the voice says you really ought to do that you should move beyond this and I have great resistance no, I can't do that I couldn't do a day let alone a week or a... But you don't know and I would suspect that can't for you means either I don't want to or I don't know how and in either case I think it's very useful to respect both I don't want to and to just keep that I don't want to

[58:25]

right here so I don't keep I don't let it out of my sight but I'm not forcing but I also think you could do you anybody can do a long retreat if they feel safe to listen to some inner voice about when to move to be realistic about the length of time you sit to feel safe to say move from a cushion to a chair I mean our meditation hall looks like a a hospital you know I'm in a chair and somebody else is lying down but you know one of the things that was so mind boggling to me was when I said in the meditation room one day at the beginning of a retreat please don't not move because you're afraid of what I will think of you you have to be the authority for when

[59:26]

it's appropriate for you to move now I interrupted you you were going somewhere else excuse me but I just couldn't resist my question is sort of the two voices in my head say it's fine you can just meditate ten minutes a day it is better than nothing a day so don't push it if you're if the answer is I don't want to do a day of retreat then don't do it am I a worse person because I'm not doing a day of retreat I don't think so so I can say I'm wanting your approval of my staying in ten minutes a day immediately saying go on a retreat I know I say that because for me the boundaries that I have always drawn much too close in in terms of my capacities get re-articulated in retreats

[60:26]

and I discover capacities I had no idea I had and I see that happening to other people capacities for staying with something difficult but I also am a great believer in not everybody wants meditation isn't everybody's dish and there are many ways of practicing the teachings of the Buddha other than breath-oriented meditation practices you know there's a wonderful Burmese teacher named Dr. Tintin who's starting a center up in Sebastopol area and she's written a marvelous book on mindfulness practices and daily life and she periodically goes to places like Spirit Rock and gives these lectures in which she says you know you can become fully awakened without ever sitting at all and of course people who've been committed to sitting for twenty years go oh she can't be

[61:28]

speaking the truth you know she is upsetting every apple cart there was when she says that but there are lots you know this strange expression there are lots of ways to skin a cat and this is where I think working with the ten perfections or working with the six paramita the six or ten perfections or paramitas working with the precepts working with mindfulness practices in the midst of one's day those are all ways of training the mind in much the way that we can do in more formal meditation practices that are quite viable there are some people whose path is that of being a scholar and in the United States maybe in the West the only true dharma practice is cross-legged sitting and cross-legged sitting

[62:29]

has gotten to be a bit of a tyrant it's not the only way to train the mind it's a very effective way very, very effective but it's not the only way this is heresy in this very spot but I'm convinced that that's so I think my practice is gardening because when I think of a one day retreat I say I'd just much rather be in my garden and when I'm gardening I'm totally mindful I'm totally present I anxiety goes away all those things but I'm just totally there I'm just so happy and fulfilled and I think well I guess I'll just keep going the one question that comes up for me has to do with am I in some kind of a feedback system because I can delude myself about the qualities or conditions of my mind

[63:29]

and having a good friend someone that I can check in with can be enormously helpful and having some sense about the side alleys that I'm not seeing I think I think that that would be the one piece I would be very interested in cultivating but there are lots of ways of doing that I mean I have a couple of students who practically never come to retreats but we meet on a regular basis and I see significant changes in their lives and in their the degree to which they know themselves and their work is very much in the midst of their daily lives one woman in particular I can think of whose his life has changed dramatically and her focus is around the places where she gets caught the obstacles that arise in her work she has a very challenging job and

[64:30]

she's turned 180 degrees in 5 or 6 years of really attending to what shows up I don't think she could have done that all by herself she has benefited I think she's told me this from the dialogue that we have in which I can reflect back to her what I observe when she describes something and to give her make a suggestion about a focus that she can then put in front of her of herself in the midst of her daily life and I do think that in the Buddhist tradition this isn't true across the board but it's certainly true in Zen we tend to not emphasize the importance of having a teacher or a spiritual friend or a secret and in fact I think we need that kind of company someone who has more experience as a kind of guide

[65:32]

and companion and a person with whom I can I present my practice to myself differently when I have a witness and when I don't have a witness Winnicott talks about this in his very seminal work in child psychology that so much in the development of a child has to do with does the child have a witness for what the child is doing is learning and I think that's true in our spiritual lives we do present ourselves differently when we have a witness and in a lot of ways that's really what a spiritual friend is for is to be our kindly witness now finding such a person is another task but it's possible especially in the Bay Area yes I have a question about if you could talk about your self confidence

[66:33]

and how and sitting with the daily and what success might be on dealing with anxiety and fear well the self confidence that I'm pointing to is the confidence that emerges from experience so for example very early on in my own practice I spent quite a long time about a year just working with the teaching that everything has the mark of impermanence but I picked it up with the question is this really true can I find anything that is an exception to this so I was doing that kind of testing that the Buddha

[67:34]

himself talks about don't take anything on the say so of the elders and of the texts and of the local authorities but only after you have checked and examined and looked into for yourself to find out if something is true and sound and of benefit to one and all then pick it up I think that my being drawn to the Buddha's teachings was really initially because of my response to that invitation to include my questions and doubts and my own common sense that invitation I found very important so I worked with this business about everything and everything has the mark of impermanence for quite a long time with the agenda that I wanted to test is this accurate and at the end of a year or so I was quite confident that this was

[68:35]

an accurate description of things as they are but that was experiential it was not intellectual now included intellectual work but not primarily so what emerged for me was confidence in my own process and some beginning confidence in the Buddha's teachings there's a very effective practice for working with fear that comes out of the sutra on mindfulness with breathing in and breathing out it's a kind of combination of some aspects of the meditations in that sutra and some Buddhist psychology where it's a five step practice and instead of turning away from fear you turn towards and hold fear at the heart at the heart

[69:35]

chakra on the breath in and out even if it's just for one inhalation and you only need the experience of being able to do that in the face of emotion that you're used to experiencing as overwhelming I can't stand this helpless falling apart you have that one experience of your capacity to be with what you didn't up until now believe you could be with that's the beginning of the ground of self confidence the confidence that even fear I can be present even with fear and whatever is your waterloo emotionally if you find a way to develop your capacity to stay present with the emotion experientially again a certain kind of doubt and fear of

[70:36]

the fear just dissolves but you can't read about it the only way you can enter that territory is through your own actual practice and liberation from fear of fear is the for those of us who are dominated by fear is a huge liberation huge you know it's like I'm still here I didn't die and it's so radical to think of holding fear at the heart chakra with the tenderness of a mother with her only newborn child I mean that's a very far out thing to do to do

[71:36]

that with anger to do that with anxiety and if you can't do it sitting get up and walk do walking meditation you can still hold the anxiety at the heart chakra on the breath in the breath out and you're not asking yourself to do it for very long in the beginning you just do it for what's doable for just even an inhalation or an inhalation and an exhalation and then you can just stop oh yes

[73:08]

I have a question um my first visit here I see the basic commonality of the spiritual truth of who we really are coming through it's very clear to me I want to thank you for that but what what I'd like to know is what does Buddha say about recognizing the Christ consciousness within you it seems to me that that is a common pattern of understanding who you are spiritually and whether you can recognize it from a Christ consciousness level or from a Buddhist teaching is what I'm really curious about where is it common right there can you help me out well there there's a lot of resonance resonance between the teachings of the Buddha and the teachings of Jesus enormous resonance um but there

[74:08]

are also some very significant differences and in the Buddhist tradition um particularly the meditation traditions you start with silence and in Christianity you start with the word um I think particularly in the esoteric streams of Buddhism what we have really is not a religion but much more an articulation about the nature of mind the nature of reality the nature of suffering and an articulation of a path for the liberation from suffering a kind of systematic descriptive how to live your life the closest place where there is some resonating has to do with this pointing

[75:09]

hinting at our essential nature is virtuous and pure this pointing to Buddha nature or sometimes in the way that the essential quality of mind as clear pristine and spacious and boundless is probably where you have the most kind of resonating but I think there's a significant difference when you have a kind of philosophical and psychological and scientific descriptive system that doesn't have any very clearly no discussion about creator or beginning and end there's some very real differences between the two traditions and we do a disservice to both streams by not acknowledging and knowing what those differences are the biggest in terms of the world we live in now the biggest

[76:09]

resonating has to do with the incredible focus on the cultivation of compassion in both Christianity and Buddhism and His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been saying now for some time that's what the world has to be focusing on it's what we desperately need before we blow ourselves to smithereens you might take a look at the book he's done on Buddhism and Christianity because he talks about some of this stuff very movingly yeah yes yeah I in my family right now there are a number of people who are really suffering mostly mentally mostly mostly mentally my parents are very old people actually they're handling it the best I think but it's

[77:10]

harder for the rest of us I have a sister who's just really not doing well and my children and it's the young people I think that I really am having the hardest time with I've gotten to a point of realizing I'm not totally responsible for their suffering but as a mother it's still difficult a lot of these things that you try to sort of remain calm and listen which with two of my children I can do they'll talk to me the other one won't figuring out how to help them I mean I don't want to just say well they won't just come to a

[78:11]

Buddhist day with me or whatever the mere mention of it makes them like that but how to help them to understand some of these things now I realize too you did mention then you have to look in yourself what you're dealing with but the how to interweave these things or what can I do what can't I do what can't I understand what can't I understand is at this point especially in terms of my family a constant question in my mind well I think the question you bring up is one that touches a lot of people that when we encounter our helplessness in the face of seeing the suffering of those we love there's a there's a

[79:12]

kind of bitter poignancy to that and we fight it in this wonderful teaching from the 9th century by Shantideva in his teaching about the cultivation of patience verse six chapter six verse ten why be unhappy about what you can do something about and why be unhappy about what you cannot do something about and many of us get caught particularly with the ones we love by wanting to mind someone else's mind and the only mind you can mind is yours the only mind I can mind is mine my experience with my children is that what they notice is what they see happening in my life the minute I open my mouth you know

[80:12]

as Stephen Levine said one time his kids said put it on tape unless you're invited for commentary critique advice I mean if you have any children who are interested in what you think about things that's really nice but you know after they're about a year and a half or two years old you had your chance and that's it and of course you probably are much wiser than you were when they were a year and a half or two so you then get to suffer with the long term consequences of your own limitations when you were a young mother and I think that can be quite painful but I also think that the world we live in is really challenging for our young people somebody told me a story about an

[81:14]

Indian tribe somewhere up off the coast of British Columbia which has on the reservation a vast forest and all the timber companies are interested in coming in and buying off the forest a very disaffected community very high suicide rate very high alcoholism rate and terrible suicide rate especially among the young people and I don't know where the impulse for this came from but some of the elders in the tribe took the young people out on a wilderness trip to reintroduce them to their heritage if you will just to go out with nothing and to find out how to survive in this

[82:17]

vast forest which is their inheritance and it apparently turned what was happening for the young people 180 degrees around so that the whole tribe has been mobilized with the energy from the young people to stop drinking and to reclaim their old ways so you know I think what we have in front of us is an enormous challenge for creativity about how to work with our kids and I think that many of us forget or maybe we never knew that we always can pray for them and that keeping our hearts open and praying for them can have some effect that we have no notion of. But I think

[83:18]

the situation you're in is very painful when we see our children suffer and particularly when we have a sense about the things that might relieve their suffering which they don't see but which I as an adult as a parent can see is very painful. I'll take a few more questions but before I do I want to just say what time is lunch? Oh, great. I just want to mention this because afternoon at two I'm going to do a ceremony for miscarried and aborted babies and babies who die, stillborn babies, which focuses on this emanation of compassion in Japan known as Jizo. And we sit together, we're going to do it up at the yurt, and we sit together in silence making a bib or a hat for any one of a number of figures

[84:18]

I've brought that are different expressions of compassion. And then after we've sat together and made whatever we're going to make, then we do a simple ceremony, kind of memorial ceremony, which includes an acknowledgment that there was a life, an acknowledgment of a dying, and a letting go of whatever holding there is around the particular being that is being remembered. So if any of you would like to join us, you're welcome to. So, yes? I have a comment and a question. First, I'm really touched, as I always am, by your providing the opportunity for me to give myself permission to have my own reality of practice. I want to thank you for that. And my question returns to the idea of a spiritual friend, because this is something I've thought about over the

[85:19]

years. And I don't feel like I've been willing or able or trusting enough to or that I'm the right person or whatever to make that step. But I agree with you. I feel like it's a really important thing. It's something that I feel is missing. And I wonder how to practice that. At least do what you would do if you were going to buy a used car. Shop around. I'm serious. I'm absolutely serious. If you read the history of spiritual practice communities in the United States, it is a long history of our being duped by charlatans. And it's completely the consequence of not listening to our own experience. I'm a great believer in what I call the sniff and stomach test. And you

[86:19]

can go into the most established, beautiful practice center and you just feel like it doesn't smell right. And virtually no one trusts themselves when they do that. And I think it helps a lot to look around and get a sense of a fairly broad spectrum of teachers because you begin then to have a sense about what's possible. I also think that having some inner sense of attraction to work with somebody is trustworthy up to a point. The Tibetans are great about this. The advice in the traditional texts is you then work with the teacher that you've decided you're going to check out and you spy on them for 12 years to see if what they're teaching is what they're living. Now,

[87:19]

when in meetings with Western Dharma teachers, with the Dalai Lama, we've talked about this issue. And he said, well, you know, everything is speeded up in this modern era, so maybe spy for three years. And I often have the experience of somebody coming and saying, oh, I want to be your student, and I'm not up for it. I say, okay, you can come and practice with me, you can come and join us in what we're doing, but I want you to check me out for some long time. And I make it very easy for people to spy on me. I'm really interested in people knowing exactly who they're getting into bed with, if you will. I don't mean that literally. But there is such a great intimacy in spiritual friendship, and it is very easy to have that relationship go awry. And when it does,

[88:20]

it is devastating, especially for the student. And I've given up on trying to educate my colleagues about how to conduct ourselves, so what I've decided is to try to educate the students about what to do to find a sound relationship in which you can do those trust falls that at some level your spiritual growth and development requires. There has to be some point at which you're willing to be obedient to a teacher, but you mustn't do that too soon. You have to be sure the teacher is reliable. And I have certain criteria. When I go to a center and I'm working with a teacher, are questions okay or do I feel like there's some taboo about asking questions? Does the teacher have a teacher? That's been very important

[89:20]

for me for a long time. It really makes a difference if you're a teacher if you periodically and regularly sit in the student seat, because then you're in a feedback loop, which really makes a big difference. At the same time that I'm saying that I think this spiritual friendship relationship is really crucial, I think we also need to pay attention and be intentional in the process of finding someone and also to be open to practicing with someone as one spiritual friend for some while. And at some point you may move on to another teacher, to a different circumstance. Your development will influence what you need. Does that open it up a little bit? It's a very important question. Thank you for asking it. Yes?

[90:22]

How do you feel about the steeplechase? Yes. And how do you find the energy to be a little bit ahead of the things that pull you down? Well, this is where the constancy of an awareness practice pays off because it is with, you know, we use this word practice. If we keep practicing cultivating awareness, mindfulness is the ground, and as we are more mindful, for example, of posture and breath, awareness at times, not just when we're on the cushion, begins to be more stable, more reliable. There's a kind of energy in the quality of attention. And that builds. During this retreat that I was referring to earlier, one of the things that I was encouraging everyone to do was to have, say,

[91:23]

an hour-long period when we would do 20 minutes of settling and primarily stabilizing awareness practice. Then we would do the focusing for about 20 minutes on whatever afflictive emotional pattern each person was working with. And then we would do another 20 minutes of a pretty straightforward awareness practice. We were not hanging in there with the devil for an hour. Maybe in the space of a half an hour you might do that focus on the afflictive emotional pattern for 5 minutes out of 30. Well, one person pushed and pushed and pushed and hung in there with, you know, the hell realm and just burnt out. She learned a great deal from that about how much she pushes. And for

[92:25]

any of us who have that tendency pushing in the face of seeing where we need to do some work is probably not sound. There's got to be some balancing and continually establishing and cultivating awareness. And my experience is that this is where constancy pays off. Some regular steady bringing myself to this ground of cultivating awareness. And, you know, you can really see the difference if you look at your capacity to practice over a period of several years. If you don't compare your characteristics now with last week, but, you know, what qualities do I see having developed within me

[93:26]

over now and, say, two years ago, I'm likely to have a much more realistic sense about where I am. But, again, this is where having a spiritual friend is very helpful. helpful. But, But,

[93:40]

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