Good morning. Good morning again. For the last few days, as I have been considering a theme for our meeting together this morning, I have had this terrible sensation that I wanted to give the talk that I have given before. And because I have been traveling around and giving talks here and there, I have somewhat diminished confidence in what I have said when and to whom. So if you have heard this before, be patient. When I mentioned this to Reb this morning, what we both came to was that at some point

[01:05]

perhaps what we do is we just keep giving the same lecture over and over again. Distilled teachings of the Buddha boils down to everything changes, so we can just go for a walk in the garden. I would like to begin by locating myself with you a little bit, and to do that I want to say a little bit about where I have most recently been and where we all are right now. It has struck me that as the days grow shorter, as we have more darkness, there is a quality of light which is very peculiar and particular to winter. Clear, luminous winter light.

[02:07]

We get to have less of it, but what we have is so marvelous. And as I lay in the grass the other day in the sun after lunch, feeling like some kind of wizard, I remembered again how delicious the sun is in the winter when I forget less easily what it feels like to be cold as well. This is also the time when we note and remember and are inspired by the enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha, which we attend to on the 8th of December. And it is the holiday season, which for many of us brings with it a mixture of sadness and longing for joy.

[03:09]

And for many of us, querying ourselves and our friends and family about how to go through the holiday season and feel sane with it all. I just came back from spending six days in New York, in Manhattan, and the contrast between life in Manhattan and life in this valley is extreme, to say the least. And I once again am reminded that I am most fortunate to be able to spend as much time as I can in this wonderful valley and this wonderful place. For those of you who were here a few weeks ago when the monks from the Guto Monastery

[04:13]

were here and were chanting, you know a little bit about who I was hanging out with in New York. The Guto monks went to New York in order to do their chanting in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, a rather remarkable experience. The Cathedral is a magnificent, vast cathedral in the Gothic style, and I don't think you could put a toothpick in the room that evening. Some few hundred people standing, three thousand people in seats, it was just packed. And, of course, as it should be, the people who were standing in the cheap seats and standing room in the back had the best sound, because the monks' voices hit the arches and bounced

[05:18]

back down into the room in the back of the cathedral with a wonderful fullness that those sitting in the expensive seats up front missed. I thought it was great. I found myself seeing the United States and New York in particular through the monks' eyes as we traipsed around on the subway and did things like visit the Statue of Liberty, which I had never done before, and I thought, what better opportunity to visit the Statue of Liberty than to do it with my friends, these sweet monks. It was quite marvelous to be up inside of this beautiful handmade figure which represents liberty and freedom and has for such a long time.

[06:19]

I was struck by the handmade-ness of the figure, and we had a wonderful time. We also went to the top of the World Trade Center, an icon to our society's interest in money and the material things of the world. Interestingly, what the monks were taken by when we went to the World Trade Center, which we did just at sunset and early night light, was to look through the telescopes out onto the surrounding landscape of the city and to see all of the sparkling lights. And they said, come, come, come, look through the telescope, see what we can see. And it looked like a kind of dense, star-filled sky.

[07:20]

And once again, I was struck by how much they look at things as a source of inspiration for the visualizations which they involve themselves with in their practices. This was, for all the world, Indra's net filled with jewels sparkling in the first darkness of night. But they also wanted to know how much money did it take to build this hundred-story building. And we noticed, of course, how many tall buildings there are. And they, of course, wanted to know, well, what are these buildings used for? And it has a lot to do with making money, making it and spending it. I was also quite struck by the occurrence of homelessness in New York.

[08:23]

I've just recently finished reading Rachel's Children, which is Jonathan Kozol's book on the homeless in New York, in which he lets the homeless speak for themselves in a very powerful way. And, of course, monks are traditionally considered homeless, home leavers. So here I was with this group of homeless monks who are filled with joy and attentiveness with everything. And meeting people living in doorways and in the tunnels leading into Grand Central Station and subway stations and at the airport and sidewalks here and there, everywhere, people who looked like they were hanging on to life by a thread. I found myself being a bit more willing to see all of it without picking and choosing,

[09:34]

I suppose partially because of the company I was keeping. I've been quite struck by the time I've spent with these monks in the last couple of months because they so much are about a life of restraint and a life devoted to cultivating mindful awareness and to the dissolving and transformation of the negative emotions, the afflictive emotions. In order to bring peace within themselves and for the whole world. And I think that for many of us, probably deeply for all of us, what they are about in their lives is not so different from what each of us is yearning for. I have been struck in this recent six days in New York,

[10:42]

again, by how much there is a commingling of joyfulness and sadness. And noticing that if I close myself in order not to see or feel the suffering that is around me, that I also diminish my capacity for joy. What I'd like to do is to tell you three stories on myself, if you will, to illustrate three particular practices that may be antidotes to negative states of mind. And I'd like to begin by quoting Shantideva, the great 8th century saint and meditator and scholar

[11:44]

who lived and practiced at Nalanda University and who was the early presenter of the Serenity Prayer. In his great text, The Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, Chapter 6, which is on patience, verse 10, he says, Why be unhappy about something if it can be remedied? And what is the use of being unhappy about something if it cannot be remedied? Pretty good for the 8th century. Of course, the trick is to know the difference, isn't it? So I want you to keep that in mind. The first story I want to tell you, and this is the one I have some lurking fear you've heard

[12:44]

before, but bear with me, occurred during October when I was in the middle of Sashin in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And we began sitting on Thursday night, and on Sunday night my daughter was to arrive by airplane from Europe at Kennedy Airport. And I had originally expected her to arrive at 4.30 or so in the afternoon. We had not had any contact for some weeks. So my overly developed mother muscle began to sort of crank up somewhere in the latter part of the afternoon, worrying about her safe arrival. And I, in good time, was sent word that in fact she was going to be arriving on a later plane. And I figured out the timing of it all and imagined

[13:47]

that she would call me from the airport just about the time we would be finished with the evening sitting. So I didn't think about it anymore, and I went to my room after the day's practice, expecting to hear from my daughter within a short time. And it was four hours before she called. By that time it was very late. And I had called home a number of times and managed to conjure up every dreadful possibility that I could imagine. And the consequence of it was that I didn't sleep very well that night. As I had expected, my daughter did call me at her first opportunity. She had made decisions about when to stop long enough to call that were based on being careful about riding around

[14:50]

on subways late at night, etc. She had in fact exhibited good judgment. Meanwhile, I, all by myself, had conjured up some version of her leaving her senses and getting into all sorts of trouble with muggers, rapists, and the like. So with a couple of hours of sleep, I got up the next morning and went to the kitchen for a cup of tea where I encountered Maureen Stewart, who is the teacher at the Cambridge Sendoh. And she greeted me and said, How are you this morning? And I said, I'm not sure. I look forward to the day with some apprehension. My idea of a hell realm is to have a day of sitting without much sleep. And I imagined that it would be one of those days. And she said, Why didn't you sleep?

[15:52]

So I confessed my night of worry. And she then told me about D.T. Suzuki's last words to his disciple just before he died, which were, Don't worry, be grateful. So I thought, hmm. And I went into the Sendoh and sat down. And during the first period of Zazen, I did a little exploration on all that I feel grateful for that has to do with my daughter. And there is a lot. So it was a very easy object of meditation. And in the middle of it, this voice came up and said, You forgot. You have no control over when death will come to you or your child or to anyone. And I was amazed. I'd forgotten that.

[16:59]

I'd spent all those hours worrying about something that was completely and utterly out of my control. And it all fell away. And with it, the fatigue from not sleeping fell away. I had an experience of a kind of lightness in my physical posture as I sat that day. And an arising of clear energy, which surprised me. So much, once again, for expectations. I'd expected a phone call the night before. And I had expected miserable Zazen. And in each instance, my expectations were not met. That experience brought me to pay attention to practicing gratitude as an antidote to worry

[18:02]

and anxiousness. And I have, in the time since then, been using this practice of placing my attention and my mind on that for which I feel gratitude when I feel myself lurking towards the habit of anxiousness and worry. And it's a very effective antidote. I am struck by the physical effect to say nothing of the effect on my state of mind. I think I lose 50 pounds when I consider that for which I feel grateful. And with it comes a wider sense, a wider, more clear-eyed sense of what is arising in front of me. So that's my first story.

[19:03]

The second one I imagine I haven't presented to you before because it occurred this last week when I was in New York. I've been doing a meditation on specifically having to do with dissolving and transforming afflictive emotions and, in particular, anger. And it's been a reasonably fruitful practice. So I was stunned when one evening when I was speaking to my husband on the phone and presenting some outrageous negligence on the part of some hosts of the monks that there came a kind of firestorm of anger that welled up in me as I was talking about how our dear friends were not being taken care of properly. I was completely amazed at the intensity of emotion

[20:13]

that swept up through me and I know not where it came from. It just arose. And I stomped into the kitchen of my friend's apartment where I was staying, threatening to write dire letters to the board of directors and and in the middle of it I suddenly realized that I'd been caught and swept away by anger of the sort that feels like going a little mad. And in a few minutes I noticed out loud to my friends, I don't know where that came from, I feel surprised. And I hope that my outburst did not cause you some grief or unhappiness or harm.

[21:14]

And later in the evening my friend and I went out for a walk and as we walked we talked about the danger of anger and how careful we have to be in doing a kind of investigation in this territory of the emotions, the negative emotions. And as I went over that brief time, a period of 15 or 20 minutes perhaps, I was struck by the effectiveness of noticing out loud that I had expressed anger, that I was feeling angry and that I'd acted on it in my speech and that I had acknowledged the possibility of it having some effect on the people around me and that I expressed specifically some regret or sadness if it had caused some difficulty

[22:20]

for my friends in the room. And what I noticed was doing those things seemed to be useful in dispelling or letting go of the energy and difficulty of that upwelling of anger. It was gone in a relatively short period of time. The last time I spoke, which was in October, I talked about one of the ways we can undercut our tendency to reaffirm a habit of anger is to practice regret if we in fact get carried away by anger. At least afterwards we can have some regret or remorse for having exploded or whatever. And since then I've thought, now what do I mean by remorse or regret? Because the language of

[23:26]

remorse or regret can be a little problematic. And I think what I mean more particularly and what this experience helped me see more particularly is something more like noticing in detail what actually happened and attending with as much care as possible to the possible effects of whatever action I may have taken intentionally or unintentionally. The third story that I want to tell you about has to do with one afternoon as the monks and I went into the subway from downtown Manhattan to go up to the cathedral

[24:29]

where we were going to take apart a big painting that they had made with colored sand and to take the sand back down to the downtown end of the island and throw it into the ocean where the East River and the Hudson River come together. And as we went down into the subway there was a woman sitting at the bottom of the stairs, relatively young, although it was hard to tell her age exactly because she looked quite tired and worn, a young woman who looked old. And she had a sign propped up in front of her that said, I'm pregnant, I'm homeless, and I'm hungry. Two friends of ours were with us and they each put some coins in a cup.

[25:35]

And walked on to where we would board the subway and I walked past the woman, hardly able to look at her. And I realized that I was turning away from suffering, that I didn't want to look at her. So I stopped and I turned around and I went back and I looked in my purse and pulled out some money and gave it to her. And we held each other's hands. And we looked at each other deeply. She didn't say anything, but there was a way she held my hands that was so kind.

[26:44]

What I noticed in those six days riding the subway was how many signs there were about numbers to call if you had some blankets that you could give for homeless people. Places where you could go if you wanted to do some work to help with the epidemic of homeless people. Lots of notices and information about what to do if you felt some call to respond as an individual. Reading the paper yesterday about the man who died in San Francisco who was put out on the street because the security guard thought he was another drunk. And who was found some hours later having died.

[27:57]

I've been thinking about what do we do because I think for many of us we feel a kind of helplessness to do something in the face of the incidence of suffering, this particular kind of suffering in the world. It seems on such a scale that we don't know what to do. And what that young woman taught me in the subway was that if each of us does something in a particular situation when we see some small thing that we might do and if enough of us do whatever arises that is possible, we will indeed figure out what to do. That we turn away from suffering when we look at it in terms which are too general.

[29:01]

And that if we allow ourselves to look at the individual in front of us and we stay present, we don't turn away from them and we don't turn away from ourselves as we see ourselves in that person, we will find something we can do. And I hope particularly during this holiday season we will find some occasion to remember the suffering in the world and to find some small particular way of acknowledging that suffering and seeing something we might do to ease someone's suffering in a way that includes our own. Thich Nhat Hanh has in his rendering of the precepts

[30:10]

these wonderful descriptions of how a wholesome life looks. He says, do not avoid contact with suffering or close your eyes before suffering. Do not lose awareness of the existence of suffering in the life of the world. Find ways to be with those who are suffering by all means, including personal contact and visits, images and sound. By such means, awaken yourself and others to the reality of suffering in the world. Our friends, the Yudho monks, have shown me something about what it's like to be willing to be present

[31:12]

and awake with whatever arises, not picking and choosing, as willing to be present and at ease with what is unpleasant as with what is pleasant, and to continually do whatever we can to work for peace within ourselves and for the world. I think one of the reasons that for many of us hearing them chant, we feel deeply moved is because what they are doing touches some deep intention that we all have. We are resonated deeply together with our yearning for peace and harmony in the world. We so easily forget that if we close our hearts to suffering, our own and others,

[32:17]

we are also closing our hearts to that capacity that we have for joy. They are of a peace with each other, not different. So please pick up, as you can, this practice of turning toward and allowing yourself to know the suffering that arises before you. Enjoy the practice of gratitude and be patient in the ongoing suffering of others. Enjoy the ongoing work and practice of dissolving and transforming anger within ourselves and in the world. I don't know how kosher it is, but I also want to let you know that the monks will be chanting in Marin County again before they go back to India.

[33:21]

So if any of you are interested in hearing them chant again, I will let the office know about time and date. It's a great experience. I think for those of us who enjoyed their chanting here, we were blessed because they responded to the hours of practice which this building resonates with. But it's also interesting to see what they do in places which are so-called secular. A big auditorium can become a temple also. And it helps me understand and remember that the whole world can become, and in fact perhaps already is, a sacred place. I wish you all a happy holiday. Thank you.

[34:18]

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