Jizo Bodhisattva

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Sunday Lecture - Includes Q&A and discussion

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he
good morning

thank you very much for inviting me to be here in this morning
i haven't been here for a while
and terry nice to be here
i'm always struck by the coincidence of considering suffering on such a sweet sunny day
but that's of course the way our lives are

about suffering they were never wrong the old masters
how well they understood its human position how it takes place while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

this morning i would like to talk for a little while about
the calling forth and cultivation of compassion as a way of meeting the suffering and our lives
and in particular i'd like to talk about the but he said for j so may have this wonderful image i've jizo standing here
an inspiring and beautiful expression of this particular quality of compassion that is a focal point for are bringing are suffering particularly around the occasion of the loss of a being
through dying a one sort or another through miscarriage or abortion or stillbirth or
since or any cause that leads to the passing over have some being but particularly have a child or a being not yet born
but first i want to say a few things about suffering in the way we meet suffering
my experience in my own life and in practicing with other people is that very often when suffering arises in our lives
something comes into the mind that some thought comes to the mind of i can't stand this
or i want to run away
and it is at those times when i may feel overwhelmed
that i don't know what to do
there's a kind of
description about buddhists and especially buddhist priests in japan as being the ones who get to take care of dying the shinto priests get to take care of weddings and blessings
a dear friend of mine who is a disciple of my zoomy rashi's
great zen teacher who just passed over
i recently
when i spoke to her a few days ago she said my goodness they really do know something about how to do a funeral in japan
and i've always through the years felt a little lamb some funny feeling about the kind of funeral business
but when i listened to my friend describe
the series of ceremonies where the series of chapters to the ceremony for my some hiroshi when i realized was that that focusing that attention for many many many years centuries on how to attend to dying
in japan is a great gift
and i think that the practice that tez a grown up around abortion in this carriage and japan that focuses on jizo there's a very good example of a kind of cultivation that can provide for us
some container
where we don't have a container for a particular kind of grieving and comes up
around these experiences
for one i understand about the ceremony for those who have passed over particularly for children that has grown up in japan it really took the kind of form that it has now
just after the second world war when abortions became legal again
and abortion is the standard means of birth control in japan
so that means that there are many many abortions
and not from any of the sort of officials in the buddhist world in japan but from ordinary people with their suffering there began to be at a kind of grassroots level this going to temples and
standing in a shrine before an image of this bodhisattva of compassion and doing some form of a memorial or funeral ceremony
as a way of holding and being with the suffering that various people have experienced as a result of abortion or miscarriage particularly
so a few years ago when i was in japan i went on a kind of walking trail and i went from one trying to another and saw as many different cheetos and gso shrines as i could find
i remember one point on shikoku island i was walking up in the mountains
very far from any village or city
and after not seeing anything except the forest and the mountains before few hours suddenly i came upon a series of stone shrine houses with a jesus standing in them
one little shrine house after another about every fifty yards
so someone had to carry these very heavy
try and houses and figures up to the top of the mountains
at the base of the tokyo tower there is a very big cheese or shrine with over a thousand
here's some jizo and i sat there one day for a whole day and just was with the tezos and the people who came to offer incense to recite the heart sutra to put a bib or a pair of shoes or toy
or mcdonald's hamburger or a coca cola or whatever offering
some one hand they would bring
and people came and went all day young people couples women by themselves older couples who looked like they were grandparents
all different kinds of people came and went all day long
there's a very famous
temple just near the outskirts of kamakura where there is a jizo garden that looks like i'm a kind of c o g zoe's thousands of figures
and the garden is emptied every month and it fills up again in the next month
so let me tell you a little bit about jizo
as the emanation of compassion but a particular quality of compassion which has to do with nurturance and protection
that quality of compassion to which exists in every one of us at least potentially
because of course this is the way these
jesus and shakyamuni buddha and manju ssri's three three of the figures that we have here in the meditation room are among other things away for us to be reminded that we can bring forth each one of us these qualities of compassion
the or enlightenment or awakening
so jizo is described as the a bodhisattva of compassion who is willing to go into the hell realms can bring beings back out of the hell realms it's the only body santa who has that quality
there's a very beautiful small temple in northeastern part of kyoto which has a small garden that's filled with stone figures that people have gone there and made in remembrance of some being who has passed over
they're not made by great artists that are made by people who come with their hearts full and who are trying to find some container for their suffering and grief
i think of all the places that i went on my walking trip the images that i saw in that garden have stayed in my heart more vividly than any others in particular one figure of the thousand armed avalokiteshvara power
send armed but a of compassion
a three foot cube of granite that had been carved with hands was nothing but hands all over it
terry whooping
anyway at this temple there is a a large to tommy manage room where you can go and sit and have a cup of tea or eight a picnic lunch that you may have brought because at this temple they do the
jesus ceremony frequently and many people go to that temple and so there's this friendly and beautiful space where people can rest and
be with each other and on the ceiling is a wonderful painting of the hell realms
quite vivid
the hot hills and cold towels and there's jizo swimming down into the hell realms pulling beings out of their suffering
there is in japan this kind of melding into this bodhisattva of compassion whole lot of folk religion a lot of folk lore
so jesus carries many things for many people
particularly in kyoto and in the region around kyoto you will commonly find a little shrine house on a street corner on almost every street corner so every neighborhood has a little shrine house with the geezer when
and someone in the neighborhood takes care of the shrine keeps it clean every morning fills a little cup of water or sack hey put some fresh flowers
they're quite beautiful
because of this connection particularly between jizo and children there also are sometimes rather celebratory festivals for children associated with chaser
he's very often called upon for doing something that someone feels they can't possibly do where they have some feeling of hopelessness is a wonderful story that i think captures this quality about a very old woman who was a
widow
and she was so old that taking care of her rice fields was very difficult for her
so when it was planting time she went out and she planted fields and she got to the point where she was able to finish half the field
and she was at that point so exhausted that she couldn't move anymore she went back into her house and went to bed feeling very forlorn because she didn't know how she would finish planting rice
so when she got up in the morning she looked out the window to revealed and it had been finished the plants were all out
and she was so grateful and so amazed that she went to the shrine for jizo crossed the road from her field
to offer incense and to say thank you and feet of jizo and the shrine house were covered with mud
so there are many stories like this about jizo
because of this close association between jizo and abortion in particular
the figures of jizo that have been made in the last fifty years a very often more and more are images of jizo holding a child or holding many children with children coming out of his sleeves and standing around the bottom of this
feet
but of course he has a much older association with tending and caring for anyone who has passed over the matter what their age
so the last time i was that ring so in suzuki roshi his temple
his son knowing how my try like jesus said oh let's go to the graveyard and there was this very beautiful figure of jizo and standing a kneeling actually in his feet or figures of an old man and an old woman
so he was holding a child but standing with an old man and an old woman and that had apparently been a figure that the members of temple and decided they wanted to have present in their graveyard
and in many graveyards the way i crave site it will be marked will be with a figure of jesus
sometimes even the container which carries the ashes of someone who has passed over may be a lotus and then the lotus itself is filled with the remains with the image of jason standing on top
this jizo as with many of them
he has always depicted as a monk with his head shaved with is begging staff
at staff which usually has six rings on it so it makes a clanking noise so that when you go out doing walking meditation or begging especially if you're in the forest the client and thump of the staff will warn creatures that you're coming so they'll get out of the way
so you won't step on them and harm them
and in his left hand he's holding the wish fulfilling jam
that represents
great powerful clear intention

so we have this tradition coming to us from another culture
which provide some inspiration for the creation of a container in which we can bring forth whatever suffering we have
especially suffering that we may have historically turned away from
because we felt like we would be overwhelmed or consumed by it
and what we discover when i've discovered and what i've seen for many other people is that in doing some simple practices sewing a bib or a hat or a cape to put on the bodhisattvas
figure
sitting together and making some garment like this in silence
being able to speak about what brings us to come to do the ceremony together
giving the being that we are remembering a dharma name
writing prayers or messages whatever we have carried in our heart unexpressed for a long time
we discover that there is a kind of container which is big enough and strong enough to hold whatever suffering we bring
and of course the great paradox is that in bringing forth in turning towards are suffering we discover our capacity to hold whatever the suffering they be
and we discover in that very process of turning towards are suffering that it begins as with everything to change
maybe even to begin to dissolve and pass away
some years ago the first time i did the ceremony for a large group of people
was at a conference for women and buddhism
and i'd been doing the ceremony for a while but always for small groups of
people usually at the end of a retreat
and i had been so moved by the helpfulness and doing this simple ceremony ceremony of remembrance and saying good bye
that i suggested that anyone who wanted to do the ceremony might meet me in a certain place and a certain time
and thirty seven people
shut up
in that circle of us who sat together that particular morning we represented every possible position on the political spectrum with respect to abortion
there were people who were there because of miscarriages and were people there who had had children die at a young age
there were people there during the ceremony for their own lost childhood there were people who came from many different reasons
and within the circle people who were ordinarily used to being at loggerheads with each other because of their ideas about what is right and what is wrong
but what brought us together of course was what we all shared which was some suffering
and the container was big enough to hold at all

so this bodhisattva of compassion marks this possibility of a kind of compassion the quality of tender nurturing protective compassion that is such that any suffering can be held with this key
quality of the mind
and for many of us even though we may not know quite how to bring forth such compassion especially for ourselves especially for our own suffering we discover step by step how to do it even though we have this thought i don't know how
we discover this quality of compassion by having an image which expresses this quality of presence
of protection
of being with without charging

whatever arises in the mind that is difficult to be with can be met with this quality of
tender attention
the template for how to do this in buddhist tradition is to be with whatever arises as a mother is with her only newborn child
i'm always struck by that as the
the template it's not a mother with her eleventh child
it's a mother with her only newborn child
so there is no priority given to someone who is an expert
someone who is a beginner
so it means there's no gender preference either
it means that this quality of tender attention
interest amazement
but mostly willingness to be present to show up
is what way are going for
and such amazing things happen when we are willing to cultivate this quality of our own mind stream with whatever arises moment by moment
no matter what the thought or emotional state or feeling whatever they experience we discover that we have a capacity to be present
with these qualities
the first step in the cultivation of loving kindness
because of course if we can't begin with the cultivation of this quality for ourselves we are not likely to be able to do that with another being

so the ceremony that's associated with jizo is about discovering our capacity to meet whatever we carry that may be some old history
old responses to something we have done or something that has happened that has brought about the passing over have some being not yet born or born
and in the process of acknowledging that there has been a life and that there has been a dying we are able to say whatever we have been carrying for a long time in a way that allows us to put it down
so we can have some release from the suffering that we may have carried for a long time

this business of dying is a grave matter and pertains to every one of us
and it's interesting that to
it seems that we all think it's something that will happen to someone else
but not to us
and i think particularly in our culture when we meet dying particularly of someone very dear to us we don't know so much about what to do or how to be with that experience and the responses that arise in mind
we don't really know what to do with fear and those situations when we feel like our heart is breaking
this path of the cultivation of loving kindness of compassion
it is a path about how to do just that how to be with what we think is not possible to be with

some years ago i participated in a conference on healing
and i talked about jesus wadi safra and this ceremony and afterwards a woman came up to me who had just finished her residency as a medical doctor
and she said that during the period of time when she was going to her training whenever she would be in the hospital which was usually for two or three days at a time whenever she would go to sleep she would have the same dream of a young boy child calling to her
she said you know
i never thought about it until i heard you speak about the ceremony today but seven years ago i had an abortion
and i've always felt some great sadness and disease
and i'm sure that that boy child who was calling to me was that baby
so she came to do the ceremony
and she wrote to me several months after that and said i've not had that dream again

her willingness to turn towards what she was experiencing
and to attend
to whatever was arising within her is exactly what jizo
represents as a possibility in each one of us

the first time i went to japan i went to mt koya were there are many graveyards and i remember going to one big graveyard up on the top of the mountain
very long rather narrow graveyard it's probably
so know two or three hundred yards wide and a mile and a half long
filled with these beautiful beautiful figures of gso of all sizes
all bedecked with traveling hats and coats and picnic baskets and mostly with fibs
no bibs piled on top of old ones
providing safe haven for earwigs and spiders and all kinds of creatures
what struck me about that graveyard was the joy that i felt in it
the most joyful place i had ever been it's just amazed
and of course there were many families visiting different grave sites sitting and having a picnic
we don't think of grave sites that way to way
but maybe we could die
have a little revolution
one of my students whose family lives down in the fresno area told me that her in her father's family apparently except for one of the his siblings everyone in her father's family and stayed within about a twenty five mile race
deus of each other and in itself is rather unusual
so there are many generations of their family buried in graveyards around in the neighborhood and on memorial day they all gather and they go to every single grave site and leave flowers
they all go together to all the grave sites within the area and then they have a big meal together
the graveyards and japan have some of that feeling to them
and i think it's largely because
jesus was there and all of them
with his staff and his jewel with his hands in gotcha
protecting and nurturing whatever beings need his protection and returns and calling forth that possibility in the hearts of all those who call upon him
there's a river up in northern japan that in an area that's very rocky
and it sounds a little bit like the river styx
and one of the descriptions of what happens after a child dies is that the children get so busy piling stones on top of each other to make a kind of stairway to heaven for their parents that they get sidetracked
and then they ah
the masters of the hell realms can snatch them away so part of what jesus is supposed to do is to kind of shepherd the children across the river so they don't get waylaid by their plane
so there's this quality in all of these stories about jesus of such sweetness
i've been doing the ceremony associated with jizo for a number of years and not necessarily with people who are buddhists people from many different
religious and spiritual traditions
and what interests me is how consistently when someone sees jizo they know exactly what he's about it doesn't take a lot of explanation
i think that's wonderful

so i would invite each of you to whenever you see jizo here and meditation room or down in the garden in some of the little shrine houses
to remember remember
not only what jizo represents but when jesus was willing to do
but to remember your own capacity to bring forth this quality of nurturing protecting compassion
as a way of being present with the suffering that arises within your life and the lives of others
because of course if we can begin to turn towards what is difficult within ourselves we will in time come to that place where we cease to be afraid of whatever may arise
thank you very much
weighing
equally a penetrate

before we begin i want to wear
do a little commercial
i think this is the great sleeper of the month this book by sharon salzberg called loving kindness the revolutionary art of happiness
it's a
deceptive for
and my recommendations superb share it has been on her focal point in her own practice for twenty five years has been
the cultivation of loving kindness she's an extraordinarily good teachers and she's a fine practitioner herself and the book is very clear and very fresh and my suggestion is that you don't try to read it in the usual way but you use it as a kind of practice manual and let the
what she presents guide you so you read a little section as a kind of contemplation and then i think beginning in the second chapter she has a practice exercise with meditations so she really unpacks the loving kindness meditation into smaller
the elements and in the sequence which allows you to build what you're working with her last name is salzburg as a l z b origi it's er it's a fine book is a divorce trial
i didn't have my glasses on so i can tell you it was all a little bit of a blur but if it's not in the office you could ask her to get thrilling to the title loving kindness
the subtitle is the revolutionary art of happiness and it's published by chanel so that's the end of my commercial and analyst and i'm not getting a cut
so i wonder if there are some things that any if you would like to bring a breasts document hi linda
yes yes play on what a beach towel i never really knew about shack
gizo gizo
j i c o
he's in the japanese system
a combination of kind of blending of the body sad for in sanskrit called ship eager by the earth's store bodhisattva and a certain aspect of avalokiteshvara but it's a a blending of the to and in the tibetan buddhist tradition the bodhisattva of compassion the form that
is most comparable to jizo is the forearmed have look at cash vera who has the work of guiding subtle consciousness to amida buddha at the time after death and guiding beings through the bardo states so forearmed i have a look at cash for and
jizo have the same function if you will and in terms of aspects of compassion and part of the tigers guanyin money you money and is is has some of the characteristics in terms of who you call upon
when you're endanger
calm and compassion in the midst of a great storm so there's some of that quality in jizo and of course crimean is so is feminine
jesus is and drive your business
and also somewhat fell like a lot of the images of jesus in japan are quite phallic
with the shaved head and when you got is this kind of stump of a body with overhand hand and i'm sure there's some aspect of what's going on that's not altogether just an accident how and
the feeling tone of a jizo is often quite feminine not even though he's described as a monk is the mail monastic the feeling tone of the images of jesus are consistently quite have a feminine quality of
he has a hard to me i noticed that mostly when going to get into the that's a different subject
so even though he's overtly
male
the the town of the images of jizo i think are not
strongly masculine or feminine but a kind of blending of
both qualities
that may not be a correct use of androgyny but

yes i feel a little off such as during your top talking about been facing what you hear what you're running from from and i just started jack horner
for her
or getting a lot out of that and in the beginning he was talking about how the blue roars that that the things that are distracting him one sitting
that seems like i'm really kind of aggressive stance to state and then i think about how to reconcile that with the idea of compassion about and then that comes your way or other parts of us
well but you know sometimes i think it depends entirely on motivation if the roar is coming from compassion and wisdom it's not harmful it's a gets your attention it's making a statement there's a boundary their stop that
and you can yell stop that as an expression of anger or clarity
so i think the question always is what's the motivation what are the causes and conditions that lead to a particular expression some her passion isn't necessarily rephrasing your weaknesses
in in the various practices for being with what you consider a weakness or an aspect where or say an emotional state in which you feel quite vulnerable
what you're really going for is a kind of curious combination of qualities a kind of neutral tenderness
being present but without clinging and grasping without either a possessiveness or version so there's an almost neutral tenderness if you if you will
otherwise we get caught in our own stories
so very often the practices that you do at least in the beginning for being with what is difficult our practices that in emphasize brief attention
not trying to stay with what is difficult for a long time but very briefly so for example in meditation that i like very much i find very helpful for working at fear and anger you stay with the emotional state for the space of an inhalation
or an exhalation not even a whole breath
anybody can stay with anything for that long
and most of the time when we feel overwhelmed is because we're trying to hang in with something for hours or days or weeks or years not for an inhalation
and often we're focusing in a way that that is the kind of generalization i always feel such and such rather than noting what i'm aware of arising in this moment
i'm trying to think about them in practice on
and after the threat then there's another breath after the inhalation there's an exhalation but if your frame is the duration of attention described by an inhalation
and then an exhalation and then an inhalation you just take it one half breath at a time
on surprise yourself
if as or going on the same feeling
i finding out that up for the first time i'm facing a sphere that i have faced market shots her everyone's faces and he handled
but i find myself caught up in the fear that i can't let anything come in that's going on to help me and i don't know how to do that and i current life
fearful of a fear because i'm i really just to take care of myself i have to face this situation and handle
well i always think the language that we use and talking to ourselves about this kind of thing that is very revealing
the candle it suggests doing something about it
and that's the great american religion is doing we know a lot about doing and we don't know so much about being with just hanging out
and so we end up working a lot harder than
whatever i'm aware of with their emotional state including not only the ocean but the body sensations that seems to accompany it for the space of an inhalation
and then an explanation and so
not thinking about the the situation that was the trigger for fear arising that with what's my response because of course our lives are made up of you know stuff happens people do things that they don't do things they say something they don't invite
me to the birthday party whatever it is there's all this stuff that happens i can't do anything about the stuff that happens apart from why i do
but what in addition to things happen then there's my response to what happens my work is with my response
and i think for most of us are coping mechanism is is often thinking about the situation try to figure if i could just figure this out if i could just understand what was going on everything and be fine
my experience is that that's a pretty stuck place and i too easily then get caught in whatever story i have about the stuff that happens
people do what they do we all do what we do and we're so busy commenting and responding to what somebody else should or shouldn't do as a great distraction from what we can actually do something about which is my own mind strength my own responses that's where i actually have a chance
to cultivate certain qualities and gradually learn how to dissolve certain habits
the rest of it
there's often very little i can do much about
and the more i pay attention to what's coming up for me in this moment the more i realize i've got plenty money to take care of here
and when taking care of is very often mostly cultivating my ability to rent to cultivate awareness of what is so there's this five part transformation meditation and in the first step what you're doing is being with what is so
i don't know something between may be ninety and ninety seven percent of the transformation process happens in that first step
the practice of the cultivation and or awareness leads to an ability to allow things to be as they are rather than fighting they're being millennia
so rather than trying to handle the situation
what you might imagine his handle in the sense of hold holding
your response whatever it is particularly if it's fear
not hanging on to it and not failing it but with that quality of tender
attention
and you might be surprised what happens the fifth step is a kind of intellectual analyzing what are the causes and conditions that have led to whatever it is i'm working on and most of us want to go from step one to step five as fast as possible we'd rather think of
about what's going on than be with ourselves with whatever stuff is coming up
and most of us have capacities we don't begin they have much sensor
so i wish you well
yes no
ah i am thinking about comes to be talk name
a lot of experience at a cairo personal level up thinking that proud and working with and practicing was the strangest you talk about overwhelmed period of
i won't comment and that's what we're all my am almost all night
experience was to like for a long time i've been thinking about
how we connect that level will work with finding compassion for ourselves so
and this page
social public political levels where it's really it seems that some more just exactly the same room and at other moments it seems there's some important difference where it becomes acceptable to kill babies and lot of other people for independent way in iowa
in pounds and mercies and how the other places whose names you know
the start of fully formed question but i just want a little sharing about
same or different for how'd you begin to speak about
that gap work on
well i think paying attention to what we practice and reaffirm and solidify as the group or as a society was very important
mean in in our culture what we
there's certain things we practice
that seem to reiterate some of the buddhist observations about what leads to suffering
i can't remember in what context in the last couple of days somebody sent at one time when someone was asking
check nahan about what is the realm of hungry ghosts that came up yesterday i guess who's actually believe insurance won't sell em spectrum cheaper was converted into the realms of was can you explain what the realm of hungry ghosts is why he answered both work very
so when we have a kind of mechanistic view of how things are particularly about our lives it leads to certain conclusions are the way we practice medicine for example and what comes
up for me as an experience i had recently i did a weekend on
death and dying for medical school students
you see medical school really and through the inspiration of one doctor on the teaching faculty had it for the first time in the history of a medical school in the united states this semester just ending a course on death and nine
yeah that's rather remarkable
some years ago when i first started doing some seminars for doctors and medical students the first time i did it with a group of doctors who were colleagues who work together they had never talked with each other about their experiences and responses to their patients die
it was an unexamined and unexplored aspect of our human life well one of the things that came up in this weekend that i just recently did
was that the students talked about their experience as first year medical students when which is when everybody gets to take anatomy
which means you can to have a cadaveric work with
and it is definitely the initiation into a more mechanistic relationship to the people you work with and a kind of splitting between if the work you do when your response to it and they without exception was the first time they'd ever talked about it
they went out exception describe incredible grief and anguish and questions about their relationship with the cadaver who was dispersed than what the circumstances that lead to somebody being
they all their body being available to be studied in an anatomy class with people know knowingly will their body to science if they knew in fact what was gonna happen to their body all this sort of stuff but it was a very
complicated conversation about their individual responses to that situation and they had no up to that point had had no container to even talk about what was going on among themselves it just you just don't do that
and what i thought was interesting was
the degree to which they agreed that
they they weren't convinced it was necessary
as a learning tool the for you will
that's a very small example but
there's a kind of radiating ah
consequences to their half way of looking at our physical being in this kind of mechanical way emanates out to all kinds of decisions about what we didn't win don't do in the way medicine is practiced for example that's just one little
then
the what would happen if a large segment of the poor population just stopped watching television
believe me one's inner landscape changes enormously
really enormous
because we keep practicing we get accustomed to violence we get accustomed to anger we get accustomed it we begin to think oh this is just you know normal
how does the amount of fear that is arising in the collective mind what what are the causes and conditions of of fear horizon
there are lots of them
anyway i think the question you're raising his is a very important one because it's it's in asking that question that it's pretty easy to say oh i'm just one person i couldn't do anything that would change things
so other things are sharon a talks about in her book in the early part of the book she talks about how king ashoka who lived
some time after the buddha
and you know he was out there slaughtering and conquering this and that
and one day walking out on a battlefield after a battle it ended walking through the carnage of a battle human beings animals in just blood and gore and corpse is everywhere and across the field he encountered a buddhist monk who was just
radiating equanimity and joy
and he wanted to understand how that was possible and so the monk oh gave him the buddhist teachings and he at that point vowed to change his intention like the kind of ruler that he would be
but along the same things robert mcnamara said oh state now i'm with vietnam
my reaction to it was how could you just and the i haven't read the book yeah it's like he knew what was wrong and he didn't have
the a scientists
equal no courage now has their faults mistaken it may be found like homeless people are can all of the destruction destructive people i meet an hour for her telephone pace used to be middle class
for fans and it's like a wonder if he sees people were a the same thing you see what he was doing
well this is where i think the story of a joke is very important because in this encounter with this one monk
he changed this vast empire and was the that which was the cause of the introduction of the buddhist teachings too many other countries to sri lanka to burma thailand is one monk who was inspired by the buddhist teachings and who taught a sugar
so was not just the the awareness of what is so with all this carnage but a the teachings are about how to proceed proceed in a way that leads to different consequences
mcnamara is not kane yoshioka know i'm sorry to say you know and yet not yet and yeah and i moved down the case
i just seem to be no as taught and talks about and i better place to know what to do and even discuss but my my my point is
how do i become that monk
how do i cultivate those qualities within myself that bring about some inspiration for another person that i may come into contact with
hurt ourselves by looking at what someone else is doing that is wrong as a way that bleeds our energy away from what we actually can do something about
an and get discouraged because with this message about oh but i'm only one person
one person who's really awake makes the difference
even in this vast complicated speeded up world we live
i i guess i'm trying before that way even at work right
work relationships people so decided on separate pump if i can just
held up so i thought that okay i can do something i cannot participate
mr cat i'm not upset on it and even if i am not like nice and like for a second and then go it's just as well
if by not everything's made because it was becoming
i fight or flight and
but i've had to do that to survive away
but i want to i want to caution you about mis understanding this possibility of being with what is so
isn't with denial at all
so i'm likely to get into some trouble if i say i am not angry i am this calm cool collected zen practitioner how i don't claim that well i've been known to fall into that particular trail and that kind of
turning away i will not be angry who doesn't leave me with anywhere to go when water rises his anger and what i'm talking about is finding a way to be present with anything that arises whether it is anger or joy
now i think your decision to not participate in a lot of acrimonious stuff at work sounds like a very wise thing to do on a way to take care of yourself once you do that then you stand in a field that has some other possibilities
you know try at work taking on the practice of not talking about anybody who isn't present in the room will totally revolutionize your relationship with keep open work
suddenly the weather will look like a very good topic of her
well start start somewhere but have a variables like i have certain a more expensive
well i think that's that's very wise it's very wise s
your story about the medical dissection to the story of leonardo who spent the morning talking to build a dying man died around noon leonardo proceeded to cut him up and make something beautiful and com
drawings the desert will be made some really interesting the action gets the relationship
stomach it's the motivation again yeah i think that's true
often a given action can lead to very great harm because of some unwholesome motivation or the same action motivated by clarity and compassion and wisdom will have very different consequences
yeah as from you started to talk about ways to
draw the line three
tracing a feel and drawing upon for percent with you're breathing
hybrid real time a brief not dwelling on which you drop more it is a rather have benefits of it's a rather complex few very different aspects for example
sometimes the times and between those things can be just repression mob their advantage of the aspects of what other things in addition to say to be cautious to develop a consciousness to know words what is really basic things you and when you place your to management myself
a guy work
like the
well
you know this is where in the buddhist tradition among many different ways of practicing one of those ways is called the graduated past and you start with certain practices that establish a certain kind of ground that then you can stand on to
do other practices so for example before you work with morality or ethics or virtue you begin with the cultivation of generosity
because that quality of generosity when the mind is suffused with generosity will affect the way you work with
conduct issues
now in terms of
particularly difficult emotional states most of us think in terms of either suppression or expression and one of the things that happens when people begin to do a meditation practice of one sort or another but particularly breath focused meditation practices
is the discovery of a third option to suppression or expression which is the possibility of being present completely fully present with what is arising without stuffing it but also without expressing it
that's that's a third option which means we less and less find ourselves having done something that we regret later
now i think that one of the
very fundamental practices that's particularly emphasized in kind of beginning meditation in the terrified and tradition is a practice sometimes called the practice of fair noted
that is a moment of awareness of something that you are wanting to pay attention to but you do it very briefly very briefly that's the bare part and you then shift your awareness to a neutral body sensation
and then the breath
so neutral thing with suppression know it's what happens is you notice what you notice you observe identify and name and then shift your awareness to a neutral body sensation which is the quickest most straightforward way of bringing
yourself into the present moment not the past or the future
and it means you shift your awareness in such a way that you minimize getting caught in a story which you just keep going over and over and over and over which is not awareness it's sinking
now if you actually practice their noting let's say
well
one of the habits of that i attend and probably will to my grave is the habit of judge it
noticing what's wrong
note judgment and immediately shift to the sensation of my lower right leg against the fabric of the cushion and then breathe in breathe out
if i hang out with the judging pretty soon i am examining every picky detail of what's wrong in the room and there's judgment piled on judgment piled on judgment that's a stuck place
i'm not trying to get myself to stop the judging what i want to do is cultivate my my ability to notice that particular pattern or habit but not get caught by the content note the powder not the content
so if i do that practice of bear noting thoroughly with a number of different habits or patterns are qualities of the mind i begin to have a taste for the effectiveness of brief noticing
and what happens out of that which is the kind of allowing of insight rather than trying to go for with my big stick in my flashlight
proper and i begin to cultivate a kind of ease and i cultivate allowing and i begin to see how much more effort thing on putting into my inner life than his skillful or effective
and and there are certainly times when we see clearly this keeps coming up i need to look into this i need to really sit and think about this situation
but not as the first order of business
maybe it's the fifth staff not the first one
if you apply the same thing to an emotional up
yeah
now there are certain situations particularly if they are not killers if they're not great big challenges where i might look into so for example in sitting meditation in the way that we practice zazen and those and tradition one of the things we are although you may not know it when you first start since
and you discover fairly quickly one of the things you're cultivating is your capacity to sit still with discomfort
and you do begin to investigate certain kinds of discomfort one of the ways of being working with discomfort is to get to know more important than what am i mean by the pain in my left ankle
where is it is it constant or intermittent is it down deep in the in the joint itself or does it seem to have to do with muscle or flesh i begin to have the room for that kind of inquiry now it's not going to work with some really intense debilitating
in pain i start with small doable discomforts that i can begin to cultivate some ability to investigate
and i begin to discover all i don't just because my lake falls asleep i don't have to move i can this is this isn't terminal
i can even sit with my legs still to labelle runs and i might wiggle the first year but in time i discover my capacity to sit still
and i move but maybe the moment between when i start sitting and moving begins to get a little bit longer because my capacity to be present with what is difficult is beginning to develop

yes behind center to happen back and live wonder where to begin and that daily a long well
this is the first time i've been invited ha ha how well it occurred to me that i had been teaching here for a long time and hadn't actually been invited to teach
so i stopped
and i've been teaching had gotten the road this
i live over the fence and i have a meditation room and meditation garden and and teach there
it's not so useful to teach unless you're invited
no nothing short of directors or good much the weekend
well i don't know i haven't have been a little removed from the workings of since then arrest an institution
so i don't quite i don't quite know
anyway i was i was invited to come and do the jesus ceremony and analyst invited to do the lecture and i said yes a are happy to them
but you know as happens our lives become very fall
and
i'm working on writing a book about language practices
so i'm doing my best to wrote my foot to the
desk
because i really want to do it i think it will be useful and language practices paying attention to what we say as a way of getting to know the mind and changing what we say as a way of training
noticing what the feeling tony as when i say i can't
and when i say i don't know how or i don't want to hurt example one little paprika
a
goofy smile
after we know if you
yeah well i do too it's a meme i've been teaching language practices for a long time and i think it's an area of focus it's very good for us as americans because we're so impatient and the trade-off the the the sense of
getting somewhere the same side of effective change is so quick with working with language not like as as in array of the payoff is much slower much more subtle a guy figure this is skillful doorway
so i don't i'm gonna have to be isolated in a cave somewhere to get it done but i really i really want to do it and i'd like to do with this year i don't know if i can but i'd like to do it this year it's sub-state i mean all the material is there the problem as i got too much i got too much mostly
thanks to all the people i've been practicing with three years because i've got a wonderful stories about what happens when you take on a practice like not like
very powerful changes one's life
yes was more than a general contract
well let's see as well
hmm pronoun disorder
a eliminating you and we
i marked i love mark twain quote
the only people who can use the word we are royalty and persons with worms
haha yeah i appreciated at one time when i had worked for for the afternoon until this gift is this gets taken care of i can honestly say way
but for example
my husband and i i each
the same what i've observed as he seems to be focusing on this particular pronoun we and i do also and i would say that the consequence of not using we has been entirely beneficial in the relationship that i
i have with my husband
i feel a lot of room to be
to have my own particular experience and to share the richness of the particular experience i have in a situation that he's also in or he has the experience he helps
and that
is very rich and quite delightful
and i experienced that level of attention that comes from the language practice as as varied as beneficial
i also heard of the producer revert to be
i'll have to think about that navy at some another focus or
it's called the prime
oh yes somebody told me about the gave me a short description at this language practice where are you use everything in the active voice in and you make everything a verb
yeah it's definitely about the same and has the same effect so for example of i torture the people i practice with whenever anybody uses the word it the great it
it makes me upset it makes me crazy
it's what i've noticed is we use the passive voice when we want to distance ourselves from our actual experience in the moment
and when we begin to listen to the occurrence of passive voice construction and notice when that's happening it can be very very revealing
fair agreement this is the practice you have to do on thanks
it helps enormously can i have about a hula yes i think that's right we know i think that's right so for example with the language of the carries judgment
one of the practices that i attribute to my husband really is noticing that comparisons are a sub category of judgment that leads to trouble
so what he proposed and the two of us engaged in first some extended period of time was the practice of not using any comparative or superlative adjectives or adverbs with the question is there anything i want to say that i can't say if i eliminate that
not only did i discovered that least so far i haven't found something i can't say
but what arose as a possibility was more attention to descriptive language and that i could say things that were were potentially not so easy to say much more effectively and haven't actually be
possible in the sense of two people continuing to talk to each other the more i develop my capacity for description which is what happened with the subsiding of comparative adjectives and adverbs could you give an example him
ah the breakfast we had this morning was the fit there's way and pronoun disorder the breakfast i had this morning was the most delicious breakfast i've ever had
the superlative
watch this morning bill fixed breakfast warming of fresh
muffins toasted and a fresh boiled eggs
so i'm describing in detail
but you didn't say if you enjoyed it negro safe was delicious of a well i might go on
i enjoyed
i'm i experienced with the breakfast i had this morning a fresh toasted muffins with very fresh boiled eggs was was a delicious breakfast
the difference between saying i have an old car and i have a nineteen fifty two pink cadillac convertible
much more vivid picture
but what i've discovered is there in a conversation with another person and out of that in a conversation with myself more i stay with describing the more detail and awareness i'm cultivating
that that i have a kind of sloppiness with habitual comparative adjectives and adverbs glass thinking about the the whole question of awareness like you someone said to me were not aware i would say that's a lie but the truth is that in every moment i'm not a
where as i would like to be and your practice of the breathing how you describe the in breath and out of breath and light on for me because i use breath a lot google and the concept i have is that i take something again when i breathe then but when i breathe out it's like i'm getting beautiful
i'm toxins so the idea that i could get rid of this hot is and gorgeous is a judgment when i agree that i could get rid of it plays like a like you are right now there's a very great of a commentator
and that was a
that can i say great i guess i have a great
i'll tell you one of the things that happens with the language practices because you go through increasingly larger comparative periods of silence
the or
no i started to say something
it's only last for a few days
there's a commentator name guiana muhly
normally i apparently was introduced to the buddhist teachings when he was in his forties he was born in great britain and within a year had taken himself off to sri lanka had taken a monk's vows and lived another i think twelve years
he had a relatively short dharma life but during that time he did a lot of translations and common commentaries
very insightful commentaries and he's done a lot of commentary material on the buddhist psychology texts he suggests that the impulse to get rid of is an act of violence
that their impulse to get rid of a thought or a certain emotional state is a kind of violence against an aspect of one's own minds during
and that what is more to the point is bringing awareness to the thought and allowing it to fade or dissolve or change as it will since everything changes
that's a very different
a goal if you will are or attitude there's a rather strikingly different tone in the mind i'm really glad that you picked up on my language disorder and because breathing out is certainly different now there is classic
glee the meditation on purification where you breathe out or visualize moving out in a in a black or dark gray cloud sometimes on the breath all impurities
it's as visualizations can be very effective but i think that paying attention to that thought i want to get rid of this is the way we express in our language which is of course thoughts are all about language
that is a kind of turning away rather than being with and it has a kind of energy of doing which is part of our habituation part of our conditioning in our culture
it strikes me a lot because of the work i've done over the years and being with people while they're dying and i think one of the reasons that we as americans have such a hard time with the dying process and with death we get to that point where there's nothing any more to do and we don't know how to be in a situation where there isn't anything to do so
so there's this frantic fluffing pillows and windows up and down and oh dear don't you need another haynesville because where we don't know how to just hang out
so part of what meditation practice is about his practice and hanging out just hanging out i'm doing in
ah now one of the
important factors useful factors in working with awareness of our language
noticing will our capacity to notice will increase to the degree that we are not judging what were noticed
the habit of judging is a great obstacle to awareness and to being present
so for a lot of us the initial piece of work is bringing up to some consciousness the degree to which we have a judging habit and it's like asking the proverbial fish to describe water because for some of us anyway the judging habit
is so much part of our atmosphere or environment it were not at all aware that this that so
one time when i did a weekend retreat on the judge
we did some writing exercises and what began to happen for people that they would write out the inner dialogue they began to get you know right there in front of them my goodness i have no idea i talked to my stuff like this one woman said after one writing x
sighs she said i wouldn't talk this way to my worst enemy
there was like lose
this is where i think your point linda that it helps enormously to have a swarm body is is really so but it has to be someone who will do the noticing with my permission and will do it with great kindness if there's if there's any element of gotcha i remember
at least until one's gotten into the fun of it
which may take awhile
in in time it becomes great fun but it tick i think it takes the well yes how to comes that buddy idea work with the eternal wrong on that are self country
well that's where the kind of writing practice that natalie goldberg trucks about in writing down the bones can be a way of beginning to bring that inner dialogue up to some place of awareness there two books that i find quite helpful the thought of writing down the bones and the other is a
book about
richard carlson called taming your kremlin
and one of the exercises he has you do is to draw pictures of the critic
the critic the inner judge that can be another way of beginning to
those curves that are sitting on power lines are there you go from our shoulders or you know the committee
in a workshop on this theme of we did a drawing exercise and one woman who said i don't have a judge i have a committee
and when we got to the drawing exercise she drew the committee sitting at a table
the tablecloth on the table was a little short so you can see their the lower leg and feet and they're all drawn you know with suits and buttoned up and ties and really very serious very formal but what she did with the legs and the shoes and the for crump
socks and all of them was when i could tell by the time she got to the legs she was beginning already to change her relationship to the committee so wasn't that she was getting rid of the committee she was changing her relationship to the committee
and for a lot of us especially with judgment when we begin to have some consciousness of the effect of that habitual critic we wanna get rid of it it doesn't occur to us to put her arm around the critic and say it's okay you don't have to leave the room i'm just not gonna pay attention to
i'm not gonna listen to you
to very different
wait a go at it
i ever since you turned he described how crazy this book written and performed on her face admitted for piping fulham difficult i've been scheming about how to get you don't know if it's not that it looks like it will be difficult it has been
can i tell you my scheme please
i'll go away
after the first idea which i think is the to have an idea was for you to commit to do articles that represent draft of each of your chapters to some of the buddhist terms of my second idea responded to this woman's feeling a real happiness to have you mustn't and heavy discussing and that is ranch
just as a set of monthly presentations among a circle of people who love to listen to you know where you present the track of each chapter one month for six months