Could we have more light? May we have more light? Is it possible? I'm a living demonstration of old age, sickness and death. It begins with the eyes. Our sight fades. They are. Wow. Okay. Well, maybe between the kindness of my glasses and holding the paper right up close, I'll be able to see what I'm doing. Good morning. This weekend, my Dharma brother, Mike Port, who is here from Minnesota, and I are engaged with a group of followers of the way,

[01:04]

in this case, the way of inquiry about anger and the possibilities for the transformation of anger as a spiritual path. We have been gathered together since Friday evening. So I would like to suggest to those of you who are here just for this morning that you might think of yourselves as eavesdropping on a conversation which has been going on for a while. And I hope that I can say something for this group of us who are looking into anger and, in fact, all of the afflictive emotions and thinking about and considering and practicing various ways of meeting these emotions that arise and the states of mind that are the consequence. I'm hoping that I may be able to say something by way of the continuation of our inquiry

[02:10]

that is also of some use to those of you who are here for this morning. I would like to, this morning, talk about the practice of the cultivation of transcending patience, the quality of patience as that quality which does not coexist with anger or, in fact, any of the afflictive emotions, particularly in their more intense aspects. You want me to speak louder. I can hear a kind of ring, so I was holding back. So do you make me louder or do I speak louder? All right. Tell me if this is not loud enough, please.

[03:17]

You may have to holler since you don't have a microphone. The text for teaching which has been the source of inspiration and guidance for me for a long time, not the only text, certainly, but the primary text, has been the teaching by the great practitioner, philosopher, meditator, monk, whose name is Shantideva, who lived in North India in the 8th century and was a monk at Nalanda University. And his great teaching has been translated into English, translated by Stephen Batchelor, and is a text I would recommend to all of you. I have found it continuously inspiring, sometimes puzzling. Shantideva talks about three different kinds of practice.

[04:30]

He really is separating out three ways into the cultivation of patience, that we might consider together this morning. The first kind of patience that he presents is called that cultivation of our ability to endure suffering. I think that this particular quality of patience called forbearance or enduring of our sufferings can be easily misunderstood. So let me see if I can say a little bit about it that will be helpful. First let me just say the three focuses or aspects of cultivating patience

[05:31]

that Shantideva talks about are this first one. The second he describes as definitively thinking about the Dharma, that is the teachings about the way things are, the truth. And the third is to not practice retaliation. We all know about that impulse for retaliation, don't we? So I'd like to talk about these three ways into the cultivation of patience. One of the things that Shantideva points out, but of course comes up for us from many sources of wisdom, is that we have a certain kind of comfort with what is familiar.

[06:33]

So one of the ideas is that if we practice patience, we will become familiar with patience. And if we become familiar with patience, our capacity for patience is extended, expanded. So there is this idea of practicing this quality of mind, which has the effect of transcendence, being able to move beyond the small cramping container of anger, for example. He says, once we become familiar with something, it can be accomplished without difficulty. A couple of times during this weekend, I've thought of and spoken the words of Heraclitus, one of the fragments from Heraclitus, where he says,

[07:40]

Dogs bark at strangers. And I think we do too. That is, dogs bark at those whom they do not know. And I think that's true for most of us as well. And of course it's curious, isn't it, that sometimes we bark at, or have a kind of pulling away, some aversion to what is unfamiliar, even if what is unfamiliar may be very good for us, may be wholesome, may bring us to some happiness. So I think it's very useful to pay attention to how much of our experience in the world, how much of what we respond to, has as much to do with whether it's familiar or not, and that we aren't necessarily responding to what we find wholesome or unwholesome,

[08:43]

what makes us happy or sad. There may be some correlation there, but there may not be. In cultivating patience with our sufferings, Shantideva and many great teachers propose that it's very useful if we can begin with small sufferings. Stephen Levine talks in his work about how to be with death and dying. He talks about practicing picking up the five pound weights as a way of getting ready for the fifty and hundred and five hundred pound weights that come to us whether we want them or not, like some terminal illness or some catastrophe with someone we love.

[09:44]

So we begin with cultivating our ability to be patient with discomforts, being a little too warm or a little too cold. When we practice sitting meditation, we are of course exploring our capacity, cultivating our capacity to sit still even when our legs begin to hurt or the lower back begins to hurt, the knees begin to hurt. And we have the opportunity to see what the response in our particular mind stream is when discomfort arises, when we have that direct encounter with what is unpleasant or difficult. And we can in fact discover and cultivate and expand our capacity to sit quietly

[10:49]

with a calm mind when we're warmer than we would like to be or colder than we would like to be or when our legs are hurting. Whenever I think about this practice of enduring our suffering, I very quickly come to remembering the tenth verse in Shantideva's chapter on patience where he says, why be unhappy about what I can do something about and why be unhappy about what I cannot do something about. Those of you who know the Serenity Prayer can hear the heart of it in this quote. And of course we get into trouble because we often do not know what we can do something about. We often are busy trying to do something about someone else's behavior

[11:53]

which we cannot do something about instead of paying attention to our own mind stream, our own behavior which of course we can do something about. There's the crux, right? So when I'm sitting, am I in a situation where I can do something about my aching legs? Well, I've walked in here voluntarily and I've agreed to sit as quietly as I can. Somewhere during the period of meditation comes the question for some of us, should I move? Is it all right to move? I can't move. What will they think of me? They might come and hit me. I've heard there's a stick somewhere. I don't see it but I bet they have one somewhere. Maybe they'll kick me out. This is not the path for cultivating patience.

[13:00]

This is the path for cultivating worldly desires. Praise and fame, fear of censure. What will they think of me is taking me away from what is the range of my capacity for sitting quietly and calmly that is authentic. And I may be somewhat inexperienced and so it may be that for me to move after five or ten minutes to quietly adjust my posture is what is appropriate and what fits for me. And in time, I discover that I have a capacity to sit still with physical discomfort that isn't quite what it was a month ago or a year ago. And so I develop my capacity for patience with this fairly minor level of discomfort.

[14:07]

I begin to discover that I have a capacity for stillness and equanimity in the face of discomfort that I didn't know I had. We have, in the summer, when we're in the mountains and the mosquitoes are swirling around, we can put on bug off or whatever. We can wear a long-sleeved shirt. But then there will always be that one creative mosquito who finds his way or her way. Perhaps to skin and bites. Do I react scratching until it's a bleeding sore, gets infected? I could consider this insect bite my opportunity for cultivating some patience.

[15:10]

His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a hardcore practitioner in this department. He actually walks around with his arms bare in mosquito land and offers his arm to the mosquitoes. But I think many of us are not yet ready for that practice. I think very often when we hear a teaching like this, we immediately go to a practice that is too much. We're not yet at the point where what we take on, being patient with the suffering that we experience with some big enemy, may not be the place to start. In fact, it isn't the place to start. The place to start is with what is small and what is doable. And to be as kindly and gentle and generous with ourselves

[16:20]

as we enter into this cultivation of patience as we can be. In other words, to include practicing patience with ourselves. We have this weekend been doing mindfulness practice, which includes letting ourselves be present first with the breath and then present with what is so with respect to emotion arising and falling. For example, anger. Going through a five-step practice that is about the transformation of that emotion arising and falling, arising and falling, arising and falling, that leads to a disturbed, unhappy state of mind. This practice is very effective for old anger and anger which arises in the moment.

[17:31]

The cultivation of patience in the way that Shantideva and other great teachers talk about patience is more the preparation of the ground which is not so friendly to the afflictive emotions. This is more that cultivation of the mind which will lead us to be free of anger. But of course, even in doing a practice where we are attending to, present with, noticing, identifying, naming what is so which may be disturbing or unpleasant, there will very quickly be a call to be patient with ourselves because the process of being able to do this practice, to have the practice begin to be in us enough so that we can do it increasingly in the moment, not just after the fact.

[18:35]

We get discouraged. We think, why can't I do this? Why can't I do this more effectively? Why can't I do this the way the teacher said I should be able to? Here is the moment for being patient with how slow we may be. I have a... As some of you know, I love to find Dharma teachings in books and magazines and newspapers and wherever that don't have the B word on them. So my Dharma text these days is the December 28th, January 4th double issue of the New Yorker magazine. And in fact, during a Sashin, a seven-day retreat that some of us did just after Christmas and through New Year's,

[19:40]

we used the letters in remembrance of William Shawn that are in this issue as the source of some of the focus for our retreat. The first time I read these letters, I wept with joy and appreciation for William Shawn. These letters were written in remembrance of him by many of the people who worked with him, particularly writers, during the 35 years that he was at the New Yorker magazine. And in many of the letters, he is quoted. And so you begin, after a few pages of reading these letters, you begin to have a sense of what kind of person he was. And in reading these letters, I had a sense of him as the kind of person that Buddhism aspires to cultivate.

[20:41]

The kind of person that the world enjoys having around because we feel better when we're around certain people. I want to read a section from a letter by John McPhee in which he quotes William Shawn with what I have come to feel is one of the great exhortations to the cultivation of patience. And I quote, he, referring to William Shawn, or as everyone called him, Mr. Shawn. He was a rather formal person. He understood the disjunct kinship of creative work, every kind of creative work, and time. The most concise summation of it I've ever heard

[21:42]

was seven words he said just before closing my first profile and sending it off to press. It was 1965, and I was a new young writer, and he did not entrust new young writers to any extent whatever to other editors. He got the new ones started by himself. So there we were, hours at a session, discussing reverse pivots and backdoor plays and the role of left-handed comma in the architectonics of basketball, while the New Yorker hurtled towards its deadline. I finally had to ask him, how can you afford to use so much time and go into so many deep things in such detail

[22:45]

when this whole enterprise is yours to keep together? He said, it takes as long as it takes. As a part-time writing teacher, I have offered these words to a generation of students. If they are writers, they will never forget them. And I would propose that as practitioners of the cultivation of patience, we will not forget that either. Anyway, this edition of the New Yorker has some pith teachings in it, and I recommend it to you. I think in the cultivation of patience with suffering,

[23:48]

not just my own, but with others, one of the things we may begin to discover is how particularly with that suffering which we cannot do something about, like the suffering of fading of one's eyesight, for example, there is a way in which if I fight against what is so, my suffering increases. And so as I cultivate patience, I begin to discover that at least I'm not adding insult to injury, if you will. For anyone who has ever had the experience of chronic pain of one sort or another, an opportunity, if you will, to explore one's relationship to pain, we very quickly discover how the kind of fighting or tensing up or resistance to pain simply makes it worse.

[24:52]

And how paradoxically when we turn towards physical pain, when we begin to be interested in the detail of it, when we begin to do a kind of inquiry about exactly what am I experiencing in this moment, when we begin to discover our ability to describe the pain not in language which is loaded with coaching about how to react, but use words like physical discomfort rather than pain, we can move to description which helps us discover more accurately what's actually going on. And we develop some patience. We begin to see how much we're afraid of what might happen rather than what is happening right now in this moment. And the more we do this cultivation of patience

[26:00]

with our own suffering, the more we will be able to do that in keeping company with others as well. And out of this practice arises the capacity for compassion. The second kind of patience has to do with what Shantideva calls thinking about the Dharma. One of the central teachings in the Buddha Dharma is the description of the law of causation, that things don't just drop from the sky. Remember the story about Chicken Little. We sometimes think, where did this suffering come from? It just happened. The Dharma teachings suggest that whatever happens has causes and conditions.

[27:05]

Another way of talking about the law of causation is to also notice that actions have consequences, for example. And I know for myself, asking myself when I'm in a situation where I have some deep discomfort or I have some difficult situation or I'm angry with someone or they are angry with me, if I ask myself, what are the causes and conditions that have led to this particular situation, just asking myself that question alone begins to open up the landscape in a way that helps me begin to see more clearly what's going on. And I'm much less likely then to rush to blaming and judging and shame. I've noticed that the teachings,

[28:11]

the Dharma teaching about the impermanent nature of everything, that whatever arises passes away, has been particularly helpful, especially when I'm in the midst of the suffering of some afflictive state of mind or emotion. To remember, or at least intellectually remember, even this will not stick around. We, of course, suffer because what we like, what we want, doesn't stay and what we don't like stays too long. But after a while, after we have done meditations on considering out of our experience this description of the way things are and have come to some certainty about the truth of the teachings on impermanence, those teachings can be a source of patience.

[29:14]

One of the central teachings in Buddhism and maybe the central teaching in Buddhism, the teaching which is both challenging and difficult and primary, is the teaching on the emptiness of inherent self-existence. And the other side of that teaching, another aspect, if you will, which may be somewhat easier for us to begin to understand, is the teaching on interdependence. And in fact, if we do meditations on interdependence, which many of us do, for example, before we eat a meal, which we can do whenever we get dressed in the morning and we ask ourselves, where did this robe come from? What are all the factors and elements, all the beings, work and activity and lives

[30:30]

that have come forth in the form of cloth and sewing and being taught about how to sew so that I now have this robe which I'm wearing? So I can, over some period of time, begin to have a direct experience of interdependence. And again, this teaching on the nature of existence can help me be more patient when I come up against the suffering that arises so often from aversion or attachment or possessiveness. One of the teachings of the Buddha is that we all want happiness. I find that I am a little bit more patient

[31:35]

with somebody that I'm feeling cranky with or even a so-called enemy, if I can remind myself of that. I find myself that even this jerk wants happiness, just like I do. So in the third territory of the cultivation of patience that Shantideva talks about, where he talks about not engaging in retaliation, he puts forth a teaching that I think is quite challenging and wonderful. I always feel a little like a bug that's been pinned to the wall. He suggests that we use our so-called enemy as our teacher because, of course, our so-called enemy or enemies are the ones who give us the opportunity for cultivating patience. It sort of throws down the gauntlet, doesn't it?

[32:38]

There's a wonderful story about the great teacher, the great master, the great practitioner, Atisha, a Bengali who took Buddhism to the high mountains in the Himalayas to the land of the snows, who had a very troublesome disciple, very troublesome. He was particularly troublesome in the way he treated Atisha, and all of the other disciples kept saying to Atisha, Oh, we must get rid of this person immediately. Atisha's response was, Oh, please do not say that. This man is very kind to me. He serves as my object of patience. Without him, could I ever practice this transcending perfection? The first time I heard this teaching

[33:49]

was in the winter of 1985-86 when I went for the first time on a pilgrimage with India to the places where the historical Buddha lived and taught. I didn't really quite know what I was getting into. I went with my friend Bob Thurman who had lived and studied and practiced in India off and on over 20 years and knew exactly what he was getting me into. We went to Bodh Gaya, which is the site of Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment, where His Holiness the Dalai Lama was doing teachings. And as a prelude to the big initiation that he was doing, he spent a week giving the teachings that I'm referring to here from Shantideva. There were 200,000 people gathered in a very small village

[34:51]

with no infrastructure. I mean none. It was, in physical terms, a trying circumstance and also extraordinary. There were some 30,000 Tibetans who had journeyed from Tibet, gotten across the border in whatever way they could, just walked out, stood in the back of flatbed trucks for a week in order to get to Bodh Gaya for these teachings. And they were all planning on going back. And remember, of course, that these were people coming from their land under the Chinese regime where they were suffering extraordinary sufferings, imprisonment and torture, killing, many, many sufferings.

[35:52]

They came specifically on this long journey to hear His Holiness give this teaching and initiation. And he directed his teaching specifically to those people present. And I remember listening to him say to them, I want you to treat the Chinese in power in our country, governing where you live as your great teachers for the cultivation of patience. And he went into some great detail. And, of course, what I found so extraordinary was their readiness to take on that practice, their willingness to say, yes, we understand that this is our opportunity for the cultivation

[36:55]

of this great transcending perfection. It had a profound effect on me. If they could take on this practice of letting their enemy be their teacher, perhaps I might consider that as well. Again, my recommendation is that it would be useful, it would be skillful to begin with a lesser enemy. Maybe start with a small enemy or a small irritating friend and work up, you know, get your muscles in tone. I remember one time, some of you may remember also, a few years ago when Taratulku was visiting us and he had a particularly troublesome translator. He was, during that particular visit,

[37:58]

one of the things Tara Rinpoche did was to give some teachings on the Heart Sutra which became forever inaccessible to all of us with very few exceptions because every evening during the lectures he and the translator spent most of their time talking to each other in Tibetan. Rinpoche would give his teaching and then the translator would argue with him about something he had been saying. So out of an hour of teachings we might get five or ten minutes of spoken English which we may or may not have understood. Well, prior to that, a group of us had done a three-week retreat when the same kind of thing was going on. From my standpoint, this translator was a giant pain in the neck because he was the obstacle to our being able to understand the teachings that you could feel were just there on the other side

[38:59]

of this thick plate glass window. And of course the most important teaching that was going on was Tara Rinpoche's relationship with the translator which I must admit I missed for some time. I then, after the three-week retreat and the week of teachings here then went for more punishment to Hawaii for more of the same. I got a very long experience of watching Taratulku and his translator do a version of what Atisha was doing with his disciple. I never saw this teacher lose his patience or his temper with this man. I saw him have great concern for his state of mind,

[40:00]

concern for the suffering this person must be in to be caught by his insistence that he knew the truth, the true Dharma. At some point, someone in our retreat who knew Tibetan helped us understand that one of the problems was that Rinpoche kept talking about what kinds of practices we should do every day and the translator already had so much more to do than he could do that he was kind of freaked out at the possibility that he might have to do more. And so he kept arguing because he didn't want to hear about yet another practice he should be doing. And of course the true teaching was this continual expression of patience, of listening, of being sympathetic to this other person.

[41:02]

What might be going on with this person? What might be the causes and conditions that lead to this person behaving in the way that he is? So in the process of taking the translator as his teacher, Thay Rinpoche was also demonstrating similarities with the practice of sympathetic understanding, very close integral factor in the cultivation of patience. How often have any of us discovered our patience with another person expanding when we find out what's going on for them? How many times do we feel impatient with someone

[42:03]

until one way or another we find out their story? How often does impatience arise because I don't have all the information about what's going on? So this practice of taking my so-called enemy as my teacher gives me the possibility of cultivating patience, sympathetic understanding, practicing my ability to not jump to conclusions, noticing when I have some assumptions about what is so which I may or may not have checked out. It's very rich. I remember some years ago when I was having a very hard time with her husband. He wasn't particularly sympathetic

[43:07]

with her practice of meditation. I think he felt a little bit like there was a lover had come into her life because she kept disappearing. He didn't know where. Upstairs to the attic where she'd made a little meditation room. And I suggested to her that she put his picture on her altar. She said, Do I have to? I said, Well, no, of course you don't have to. I just think it's a good idea. Well, all right. This friend of mine lives in New York, and after a month or six weeks she wrote me a letter and she said, Even without doing anything else, just having a picture of my husband on the altar presented me with the possibility of including his concerns and his fears

[44:07]

in my practice. And slowly, she said, my mind softened and I was able to be much more patient with his response to my meditation practice and to be more skillful about how I was doing what I was doing so that he could begin to relax and not feel like I would disappear. So out of her patience with the situation that had arisen between them, of course, came the possibility of working it out. And that process didn't happen very quickly, but it did happen. Even those we love the most dearly arise, even for a moment, as a kind of enemy, a source of irritation.

[45:09]

Not doing what we want them to do, the source of our unhappiness. So whatever situation or person arises in our lives where we have this kind of response of difficulty, we can see as our great opportunity. I find that it helps a little to let ourselves be amused by the kind of vice we are willingly putting ourselves into when we take on this practice. Because it is a challenge. We're not used to reacting, responding to the so-called enemy in this way. When we're driving and someone tries to cut in in front of us, so often we think, ah, step on the accelerator, I'm not going to let that person get away with that. And so we don't notice what the cost is

[46:17]

in terms of our state of mind. We could be a little patient with that person who is in such a hurry that they somehow feel they need to get in front of me. Will I really get to my destination that much later if I slow down? I think that one of the difficulties with the kinds of practices I'm talking about is that it's very easy for us to misunderstand and to think, oh, this means I should put up with all suffering. I should just endure with a long face. What I call hair-shirt practice.

[47:20]

For some of us, we think, oh, I guess I'm going to learn how to be a good doormat. And I don't think that's at all what this tradition is talking about. So I want to reiterate again the practice of remembering chapter 6, verse 10. Why be unhappy about what I can do something about? And why be unhappy about what I cannot do something about? There's one last practice and then I'd like to stop because this is long enough for any one person to be speaking. That has to do with the practice with

[48:27]

a kind of antidote practice for jealousy and resentment. And that is the practice called rejoicing in the success of others. Here's another place where your enemies will be a great help. Because it's, of course, pretty easy, isn't it, to rejoice in the success of those we love? But what about rejoicing in the success of that jerk, that creep over there? Someone the other day told me about someone very dear to him who has a very hard time whenever she thinks somebody's getting away with something. And so she sees the so-called success of others very often as a kind of getting away with something.

[49:29]

It isn't fair. Very often those kinds of responses come up because we don't see that the actions, the consequences for someone's actions, we don't see those consequences. We don't realize that sometimes the consequences of our actions may not arise for a very long time. So we get caught, don't we? We get caught by wanting that person to get their due right now when I can see it and enjoy it. This is not wholesome for our own state of mind. And can become a habit, can be something we get so used to that it becomes the dominant mode. And, in fact, my friend, in telling me about this person he loves very much, was describing to me

[50:31]

someone whose state of mind was dominated by a sense of not wanting to let anyone get away with anything. So I have found for myself practicing rejoicing in the success of others even when I have to clench my teeth and go through the motions very helpful. In the process of doing that practice, particularly when I have some aversion to doing it, some resistance to doing it, helps me see where I'm holding on to some negative state of mind. And if I'm patient, I will in time loosen my grip on whatever that afflictive state of mind is that I've been holding on to. There is one last letter in this collection.

[51:36]

If I can find it quickly, I'd like to close with it because it's... Yes. I'd like to close with this passage. When Mr. Shawn was removed, this is after 35 years at the magazine, when Mr. Shawn was removed by the New Yorkers, then fairly new owner, he was hurt and hurt badly. But in his usual reasonable manner, he seemed to be trying to understand the owner's action. As time went on, he would say he was trying not to feel bitter. Bitterness serves no purpose, and it corrodes the soul, he would often say. Once he gave me a sheet of paper

[52:39]

on which he had just typed a few sentences, I read the following. I have never experienced or even permitted myself to contemplate a vindictive action. I would rather carry around pain or disappointment or even the residue of bitterness for the balance of my life than to entertain a moment's vengeful thought. Little bitterness remains, but that little is far too much for me. The truth is I cannot bear it. If I cannot love my enemies, I cannot breathe. So these teachings on the cultivation of patience can help us come to see, come to understand what the afflictive states of mind are costing us.

[53:43]

The answer which the teaching brings is exhortation to watch with patient fortitude the way in which the process of undergoing experience actually takes place. For through the practice of careful observation, we may come to see what is actually going on. And based upon that understanding, begin to find a way beyond the round of experience to a mode of living within our experience that produces enduring happiness. So, please, explore, examine, be curious about, allow the possibility of the cultivation of patience

[54:49]

and the subsequent arising of joy and happiness. I'd like to close this morning with a verse of dedication. In particular, my practice these days has been to dedicate the energy, the virtue and merit that arises from whatever practices I'm doing to the well-being of a baby who was born a week and a half ago. During the birth process, he did not have any oxygen for seven minutes, so he is very badly damaged. And for that baby and his mother and father, it is a time of great travail. His mother lived and practiced here for some time and is very dear to many of us. And so we feel the suffering of these three beings quite deeply.

[55:52]

And I would like to dedicate our practices this morning to the well-being of these three beings in particular, but also to all beings, including ourselves. The virtue and merit of our practices lead all beings to have happiness and the causes of happiness, to be free from suffering and the causes of suffering, to know that sacred happiness which is devoid of suffering, to cultivate equanimity without too much aversion or too much attachment, and to live believing in the equality of all that lives. Thank you.

[56:45]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ