Good morning. I want to talk this morning about on having a bad day. I figured that was something that at least one or two of you could relate to, but as I've been thinking about on having a bad day, I'm reading Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, and it's about having a bad day. But it's also about not having a bad day under very extreme circumstances. So this is not quite on the subject, but it is. This is a quote. One of the remarkable things about this work is this weaving of history, of fiction, of memoir, beautifully written, and bearable, just.

[01:12]

"One thing is absolutely definite", I'm quoting, "not everything that enters our ears penetrates our consciousness. Anything too far out of tune with our attitude is lost, either in the ears themselves or somewhere beyond, but it is lost." I think it's such a great observation and so apt. I sometimes worry a little bit about repeating the same things over and [...] over again. And when I came up on that passage, I thought, nope. I think not. So the inspiration for this focus

[02:23]

arose for me sometime very late in the day yesterday with the thought, wow, this has been a really hard day. Reaffirmed when I woke up, somewhat uncharacteristically these days, around 11:30 with the same sense, felt sense, And what struck me again is that thought is a generalization and a solidifying if it arises with I am having or I had a hard day. But even the designation of, oh, a hard day, is itself a generalization.

[03:29]

And has the effect, in my experience, of further sinking whatever sinking has already occurred. Energetically, state of mind, you name it. Of course, I'm full of suggestions when somebody comes to talk to me about such a notion as, Friday I had a hard day or a bad day. First of all, let's get specific and descriptive. And for heaven's sakes, try to be skillful about the number of transitions in the day. So I failed on both counts.

[04:34]

The young Tara Tulku, age nine, has been going to a place over near the seaplane and heliport in Sausalito called The Planet, a kid's center, where he's learning how to use carpentry tools. make beaded jewelry, create a little boy mouse, which he's now dressed, which now has its own truck with a fur lined seat, a sailboat, a second boat. Incredibly effective tops. He's having a great time. And of course, learning all kinds of interesting English and meeting other kids, which seems like a good idea.

[05:43]

But it means that there's this kind of taxi cab from your beach to the planet. Take him over at 2.30, pick him up at 6, which is fine if the taxi driver is not the only one driving, if there are multiple taxi drivers. helps a whole lot. But one of my ace taxi drivers, well, both of them are out of town. So I'm it. So I managed to boil the number of trips over the hill yesterday to three. This is the day I promised myself I won't get in the car. Ah, transitions. While I'm over there, I might as well do all the errands so I won't have to do any errands for a week or 10 days.

[06:54]

When I look back on the day, I think, better not to do so many errands in one day because it's too many transitions. I know about that. Oh, the nine-year-old is in the driver's seat, not the adult. Very useful to see that. And so it goes. How much of the conclusion of, oh, this was a hard day, was the consequence of having some expectations about the work I was going to be doing that I didn't even get close to? Sitting out there in that little house

[08:02]

I didn't even set foot inside of it. Ah, expectations. Did I revive my expectations for the day? Nope. And as the work that I had set for myself to do yesterday faded into the sunset, that sense of a kind of helplessness was the arising. And it was only at the point at which I began to note what was arising in the moment, return to posture and breath, that that sense of generalized sinking began to shift.

[09:08]

And of course, it took me until 11:30 last night. I went to sleep at 8:30, so I had a little three-hour nap. At 11:30, I began to just note what's arising, in this moment. Really a variation on the theme of what I mentioned for those of you who are in the generosity class, when I recall the story that Larry Rosenberg tells about being in a three-month practice period and finding out once he was in it that he was expected in the middle of two weeks to not sleep at all for two weeks. And I think I mentioned when I referred to this story that he went to fear and to generalizing.

[10:22]

There it is again, generalizing. I can't do this. But my teacher assured the abbot that I could do this, me and my three buddies, here in the monastery in Korea. And of course, fortunately, he went to the teacher, who said, of course you can do it. Lots of people have done it before. It is doable. But the mistake you're making is thinking about two weeks with no sleep. You're riveted on two weeks with no sleep. A generalization. The only way you can do it is one breath at a time. And when I think about

[11:29]

not just yesterday, but circumstances that I've been in. Some of you have heard me talk about the train ride from hell. I think it was the first time I went to Japan. And I was to take a train and then two or three buses to get to a very tiny fishing village up on the Japan coast, on the Japan Sea. I knew no Japanese, didn't really know where I was going. It was Obon in August when everyone in Japan gets up and goes back to the village that they came from to clean the ancestors' graves and to do these circle Obon dances at night.

[12:33]

It's not the time to travel in Japan. It's also the hot, muggy, rainy season. I had a friend who had been living in Japan at the time for a few years and who spoke quite good Japanese and he said, don't worry, I'll get you a reserved ticket. So you'll not only have a particular, you'll have a seat on a particular car, on a particular train. It'll be fine." Well, of course, we got to the train station in plenty of time. The train was already packed. And the best I could do was to get up on the first step just inside the doors in the section that's in the connector between the two train cars. And then the doors closed.

[13:38]

And of course, it was just packed. People standing as close together as they possibly could. And I knew that this trip was to be basically an all-day trip, but I had no idea beyond that how long it would last. A little bit like what happens the first couple of times you sign up for an extended retreat. Seven days, ten days, two weeks, a month. What happens? I can't do this. Let me out of here. I need to go take a nap. And of course, if we're lucky we don't leave because we then discover experientially, oh, the only way I can do this is one meditation period at a time, and within that, one breath at a time.

[14:53]

On this infamous train trip, I guess with the heat and the sweat, people got smaller. At some point, I was able to step up onto the, into the compartment. Still, you know, literally sardines. And in the middle of the crowd, there was a man quite startling to me in a sweater, a long sleeved sweater. And at a certain point, he passed out. And everybody moved away so that he was able to come to the floor. And nobody wanted to touch him. And of course, the floor, you know, it's a metal floor. It's very hot. The wheels are underneath it, you know, generating friction and energy and heat.

[16:07]

Anyway, on the far side, there was another Westerner, and the two of us caught, we caught each other's eyes, and we kind of jammed our way toward the guy. And the man got him at the feet end, and I got him at the head end, and we were going to try to get him towards a window. There were some windows open. As I lifted my hands under his shoulders, his arm came out of the shoulder socket. At which point, I got very nauseated and knew, if these Japanese people aren't going to help this Japanese man, what are they going to do when I pass out? A foreigner, a foreign woman. And I kind of flung myself over the heads of people towards a window and got some air.

[17:13]

So at some point, somebody pulled a cord, emergency cord. We came to a stop. The conductor got out and came around, stuck his head in the door to figure out what was going on, gave the signal for the train to start again. And just before we got to a small country station, There was some announcement, everybody picked up their suitcases and packages. And whatever was not picked up was put out on the platform along with his passed out guy. Because by then I realized he had a fake arm. That was why he had on this long sweater, etc. But it took a while. We were together on the train for a long time, so I had time to sort of suss out what was going on. So that episode was a kind of diversion. I had no idea where I was supposed to get off.

[18:24]

I kept looking at the piece of paper, trying to listen to the announcements. saved me from this train trip was the experiences I'd had in seven day retreats. The only way to endure and survive the train trip was one breath at a time. And of course, in doing that, I kept interrupting the, what if I get lost? What if I miss my stop? What if I don't know where to go next? I would talk to the conductor who didn't have any English. But unbeknownst to me, there was an older woman on the train who was going to the same little village. And she kept an eye on me during the entire trip.

[19:26]

I realized after we got on the last bus, she had been kind of back there making sure I got off at the right place, got on the right bus, got off the bus, got on the next bus. The guardian angel you don't know you have. And when I realized that she was still on the bus with me, the second bus, I turned to her and gave the name of the little village and she went like this. But by then I had come to my senses enough to just stay with one inhalation, one exhalation, and not let my attention go to all the fear-based thoughts and worries.

[20:29]

This morning when I woke up and I thought, oh, I'm having a hard day. I remembered one time, I think you Betty may have heard me talk about this. A number of years ago when Bill was still working at his law firm in San Francisco, Friday afternoon I was supposed to meet him on a street corner after I'd picked up a projector and screen for a program that we were doing at Green Gulch that evening. But I kept getting stuck in Friday afternoon traffic jams, aggravated by the fact that it was quite a rainy afternoon. An unbeatable combination. And every route I found myself on, I'd hit gridlock.

[21:48]

After the third or fourth gridlock, I thought, pull over. And I pulled over and let my attention drop into the physical sensations in the body. and the breath. And what I realized was, I'm anxious, I'm upset, I'm afraid I won't get the projector and the screen, and I won't get to Bill before he drowns. And once I did that, dropping back into the body and the breath, I could see this cascade of fear-based thoughts, not helpful. But there was one thought, one insight, I'm not making good strategic decisions about my route.

[22:53]

Oh. I then figured out how to go around the downtown traffic to get to where I was going. Got what I needed, found Bill half an hour later than I was expected to pick him up, leaned against a post with an umbrella reading a book. Totally fine. Late? You're late? Oh, I didn't notice you were late. I'm glad to see you. It's wet out here. So, no matter how much we may practice periodically noticing our state of mind, no matter how much practice we may have interrupting that snag of certain lines of thinking, no matter how many times we practice bringing attention back into specific body sensation and breath,

[24:18]

There are times when we forget it all and collapse into what is habit, habitual, generalizing, worrying, what is sometimes referred to as sinking mind. And of course, sinking mind takes our energy, we get sinking energy following right on the heels of sinking mind. I think it's very useful language. Sinking. Helpless. There's nothing I can do about this except just endure. I don't know if any of you are practiced at enduring, but I don't recommend it. And for those of us who got a lot of training at becoming good at enduring as kids, it's a much more readily available fallback position than we may realize.

[25:31]

That was one of the observations or insights that came up for me last night was, oh, I went to what was early and old and deeply set. And how much some soft quality of mind, soft in the sense of kindly, how important and useful that quality of mind can be. Oh, look at the briar patch I got myself into. Oh, look at how long it took me to realize, oh, in the prior patch of the mind. So that's what was on my mind last night and seemed

[26:51]

relevant this morning. Because of course, whatever the causes and conditions for a kind of checking, checking into conditioned patterns, it's another way of talking about checking out, checking into familiar reactive patterns. is, I think, crucial for us to be willing to notice when our ability to notice arises, whenever that is. So I wonder if this... Am I the only one this happens to?

[27:59]

I've been having a bad week. I started suspecting yesterday maybe because I doubled my dose of sleeping pills about two weeks ago. So last night I didn't take any. I didn't sleep much. But I actually feel different today. But for a whole week I've been a metaphor I heard years ago is of a dog whose gums are bleeding and he keeps licking his lips thinking he's being nourished. And that metaphor has just been with me all week. I've been wallowing in self-pity and loneliness and enjoying the feeling of it. And last Saturday I was here and wallowed in it a lot on the cushion and went to Muir Beach after lunch, and coming back from Muir Beach, I watched the thought, I should be doing better than this.

[29:06]

And then I realized I was... Just keep breathing. Don't hold your breath. I was watching my mom. I was frequently seeing this story, and I was seeing how attached I am to the story. And I was coming back.

[30:09]

So I changed the judgment and kind of assured myself it's okay. At least I'm coming back sometimes. One of the studies is that we reach for to give someone Kleenex as it can have the subliminal message of I want you to stop crying. So, anyway, yes. Yeah, sure. So, this morning, I, last night, when I couldn't sleep, at one point I read Ed Brown in the latest, whatever it is, Shambhala, and he was just, he talked about Suzuki Roshi saying, count to ten on the exhalation. And so,

[31:12]

all morning sitting here, I counted to ten on the exhalation, and I stayed more present than I have in a long time. I had come with the story, I didn't sleep much last night, I wonder if I can stay awake in meditation, and I stayed more present than I have in a long time. I also didn't take the drugs last night. But it's been really interesting to see. I feel like I've gone to an emotional state I haven't been in in a long time. Well, not sleeping well. I've been sleeping with a drug. I have gotten six solid hours of sleep in the last two weeks, pretty consistently. Six hours with medication? Last night I kept waking up every two hours. Well, you know, here's another instance which I certainly know from my own difficulties with sleeping.

[32:23]

The generalization of not sleeping, I won't be able to do the day tomorrow. So it's the generalizing about I'm not sleeping, I'm not sleeping, I'm not sleeping, I'm not sleeping. I'm focusing on what I'm not doing and worrying about I won't be able to do the day tomorrow. I actually have felt better all week having gotten six consecutive hours. So it hasn't, the sleep hasn't been the problem this week. It's been that licking my blood. Yeah. But I want to stay with this in terms of last night. What I uncovered was if I can rest, if I will allow myself to rest, even if I don't sleep, I have at least so far had enough energy for whatever the day brings.

[33:32]

It's the worrying mind which arises out of the generalization about, oh, I won't be able to do what I have to do tomorrow, like, you know, go to work and function. I started doubling the dose because I was forgetting to go to meetings at work, and I've never forgotten to go to meetings at work. I was so exhausted from not getting six consecutive hours that I decided to double the sleeping medication. So I was getting frightened at work, missing meetings with my boss, and my boss's boss is not professionally wise. So I went from that state to, okay, I'll level my dose, and sleeping, and being stuck in a state of But that may be extra.

[34:39]

Not necessarily tied to not sleeping or sleeping. Medication or not. That habit of, oh, for me, I can't. It's been, I have a big birthday coming and I don't know if that's triggering it. More should and ought? Where am I in my life? Well, as I think you know, I have this collection of words that I think of as red oil light words. You know, when your car needs oil, a light comes on and you damn well better pay attention to the light or you'll burn out your engine. That's what I mean. Should and ought are way up there on the list. Should, ought, always, never.

[35:46]

What I've been watching lately is that I'm breaking one of the precepts. I've been wanting a quality of attention from my partner and not getting it. Ah yes, the second precept. And I remember you saying years ago, it's easy for me not to steal material things, but I have been trying to steal a quality of attention, and I've been tormented. And of course, in that circumstance of trying to take what is not given, what one isn't getting becomes, it's very, it's easy to get into this kind of trap of taking what is really the other person's state of mind as being about me.

[36:50]

All my stuff about I'm not good enough, et cetera. And of course what I found in working with that precept for a long time, the first time around maybe a year and a half, what I finally came to was it's not possible to do, cannot take what is not given. And what gets more clarified is how often what I'm doing is trying to mind somebody else's mind stream, trying to get them to want what I want them to want to do or whatever. So my invitation is for you to unpack the statement, I've had a bad week, with as much particular and descriptive language as you can.

[38:00]

It's a way of opening oneself to one's actual experience. Anybody else? Orlin. Thursday night I said, we said goodnight to each other. And I said, all I wanted to do was go home and go to bed. I was also concerned about my mother. And when I got home and I saw the lights on upstairs, I went right up there. And I hear her saying hello to me from the bathroom. And she's lying on the bathroom floor. And she says to me, this is the most, like she's totally, totally alert, was the firefighter's description. This is the most comfortable bed I've been in in years.

[39:12]

But she was on the floor. It took me an hour and several phone calls to friends to break down a call 911. And because the assignment for the week was to be generous with ourselves, after spending an hour or so at the emergency room, I said, oh, it looks like you're going to keep her. And they said, well, we didn't know. And I said, well, I'm going home. And you call me if you want me to come back and get her. And so I can't say that I slept a whole lot, but I did sleep a little bit. And then I woke up, and shortly later, the phone rang. And I asked the woman, I said, what time is it? Because when I don't sleep, I don't look at the clock. That's my rule. And I break the rules sometimes. But so, she says, she's ready to come home or she can stay for a couple of hours till six o'clock.

[40:17]

And I said, well, I'll come now. I said, but is she walking? Because it had taken the firefighters to get her up and out and she lives alone basically. I just happened to be there. And she said, and I said, you know, can she walk? She says, well, I'll call you back. She didn't call me back. I called her back. Well, she didn't want to put weight on her leg. I mean, if I hadn't asked, I'd have driven out there and then been stuck with somebody who was going to need my constant help and attention. So anyway, she's in the hospital. She finally at 10:30 last night, she got moved into a real room. And I did not get that message till this morning because I just and I mean, I was Oh, this is amazing. I didn't worry about the not sleeping. And a friend said, could I not go to work in the morning? And I said, no, I had to go to work in the morning.

[41:18]

I had the best morning at work. I told a few people what was going on, but not too many. And I work with kids, and I just was just, it was amazing. And my afternoon job had said, I'll see you Tuesday. They said, don't even bother to come in. So it took somebody else to remind me that I could ask for something that I needed and take care of myself. And then this morning I got the message that my mother was in a room and that us, whatever surgeon wants to talk, that he wants to talk to me. But you really get the rigmarole run around on the telephone. I've had this coming here on my calendar for a long time, and so I had to worry about which was being generous to myself, and could I even really be present if I was here?

[42:22]

And I got lost. I made like three wrong turns getting here, and I was practically on the bridge back to the East Bay. I said, well, if this happens again, I guess I'm just going to go back to the East Bay. But somehow I got here. And it was just so amazing. Because, you know, I'm not going to accomplish anything there until this afternoon anyway. So at least I got to come and be readier when I am able to hopefully be of some use. the expectation thing, you know, expected to go home and go to bed, and when I got there, there was just 15 steps I had to do before that was possible. Oh, and then hearing the story about the not sleeping was so good because it was like, I'm just going to take this... Rest.

[43:23]

Yeah, right. And I'm just, you know, I know that it's possible without actual sleep, and instead of getting, you know, so I didn't let any of it just spiral me out. I just still keep showing up for what's important. Well, you know, I also think what's so interesting is that sometimes we think we're not sleeping, but we are sleeping. And one of the things that I have done, I have a clock in the bedroom where I sleep, which chimes on the hour and on the half hour. I know that I've been asleep because I haven't heard the clock chime. Otherwise, I would swear I had not slept a wink all night. Except, you know, I haven't heard the clock chime for since whatever. Right. And I think it actually takes the actual direct experience that if I rest,

[44:28]

I can get up in the morning with real energy. I think it takes the actual experience. The mind. The busy, worrying, fear-based mind. Yeah, I mean I had plenty of things I could have worried about. How old is your mother? She is... I got in a fight with her in the ER. I mean, why do I always have to be right? She's 86. She thought she was 85. But I had to get the validation from the other woman. She's, you're right, she's 86. And, I mean, we're, you know, ideally we would be leaving in two weeks to go to Australia. So, there's a lot in this package. And I'm just, just taking care of today. Today. One breath at a time.

[45:32]

Keep me posted. Oh, you'll be the first to know. So, and I'm not labeling it a bad day. You know, a lot of important things have happened, but they weren't on my calendar, but... Bill, as some of you know, is a great train buff. Doesn't matter what size the train is. It can be this big or it can be big enough for him to get on and go somewhere. So one of my trips over the hill was to take him to the Emeryville Station yesterday morning so that he could get on the train. It was to be there an hour ahead of time for an 8.15 train, which finally left at 12:15. So instead of being able to see the train ride of his childhood into Union Station from about Santa Maria South, it was pitch dark, and he finally got into bed at our friend's house at quarter to four.

[46:53]

So he said, I'd do it again. It was terrific. And when I finally left him at, I don't know, 8:15, and it was quite clear. He'd sit there looking at trains going by all morning, and it didn't much matter when he got on one. So keep in mind expectations and generalizations. Yeah? I guess I'd like to hear a little bit more about expectations. It sounds like there's some proposition about expectations, which most people here may know. I had a fairly rotten week. It started with very high expectations.

[47:56]

I got a piece of one of those brilliant news, which turned out to have a couple of... I was wrong in part in my expectations. There were some kind of rotten features that required making of a decision and trying to tease out more information. A couple of days into this, I was an anxious wreck. And I tried to say to myself, well, let's pay attention to what you're feeling. And what I was feeling was anxious, you know, and unhappy about it. Unhappy about feeling anxious. Very. And feeling, you know, that I was behaving in an anxious and unproductive way. I wasn't getting forward or with other work that I had to do,

[48:57]

and I wasn't quite sure how to go about making the decision. And I felt that I was sort of trapped or I didn't know how to make my nascent meditation practice work for me. And once I had figured out that I was anxious, I couldn't take it any further. I didn't know how to make much headway in terms of, you know, if I focused on my breath, it was very anxious breath and therefore, you know, unpleasant and unwelcome and confirmation of this, you know, condition. Well, of course, one of the things that happens after you've been meditating for a while is that you begin to really know experientially what the characteristics are of breath that goes with anxious state of mind, and the characteristics of breath that goes with a more calm and steady mind.

[50:11]

So one of the things, and I don't recommend this in very many instances, but I do with the arising of anxiety, don't try to sit still with it, walk, and see if you can slow your breathing down so that it tends to be a little longer and more extended, because that's the kind of breathing that goes with a more calm mind. But what I'm struck by, and you certainly don't have a corner on the market, is what I would describe as the tendency that we can often have to solidify and identify with the state of mind and state of the body that we're experiencing. So if anxiousness is arising, the solidifying gets revealed with the statement, I am anxious.

[51:13]

Any statement that starts with I am is a kind of identifying Oh, this is who I am in this moment. Over against, in this moment, anxiousness arising. Anxiousness arising, coming and going. So I have a better chance then of being able to experience the even anxiety as coming and going rather than being this kind of steady state that keeps going on but I fail to recognize I'm keeping it in ascendance with storytelling and expectation and worry and what if, et cetera. Now let me just say a few words by way of boring the rest of you a bit about expectation. Having an expectation is not necessarily the source of difficulty or suffering.

[52:23]

But having an expectation which we've not looked into, is this expectation realistic given who I'm working with or the situation that I'm about to go into? Is this expectation based on some sense of having some information about the circumstance I have an expectation about. If I'm going to meet with somebody who, in the last 15 years, has been in our meetings consistently angry and abusive, and my expectation is that I'm gonna go meet a settled and warm-hearted friend, My expectation about who I'm going to meet is not informed by my experiences with this person, what I call know your audience.

[53:27]

So it's the unexamined expectations that lead us into the feeling of disappointment or oops, I wasn't paying attention. to my expectation in this situation. So when I get, receive some news and I generalize, oh this is good news, before I've examined the details of the news and allowed myself to sit with, well I don't yet know what the consequences of this are likely to be, to cultivate the ability to sit with the mind of don't know and not feel like that's terrible. Well, I should know. I should know how this is going to be, if this is a good thing or not. But the more I'm caught in the language of generalizing, the less likely I'm going to be present with whatever is arising, including

[54:41]

well, I don't know yet how this is going to play out. Does that mean I want more information or what? And that's where meditation practice can be very useful in terms of cultivating our capacity, actually training for our capacity to actually be present in a situation no matter what the details of the situation are. The details of, oh, I'm, Yvonne, I'm gonna go home and get into bed and have a good night's sleep. The expectation that your mother was already in bed having a good night's sleep. That's an expectation. Well, maybe, maybe not. So the more I can notice expectations that I haven't examined.

[55:44]

The more I can recognize, oh, I have an expectation about what this afternoon is gonna be like, and I can rest with, do I have all the information? Well, maybe it'll be the way I think it is, and maybe it won't. So-and-so said she was coming for an appointment, but you know, will she get here? Will you get here? Whatever. So that ability to come back into the present moment and to hold what we see tentatively so we don't crash when we think, oh, this guy's just some cranky old Japanese guy wearing a sweater when it's 120 degrees to, oh, just open, present open.

[56:50]

The present open is, I think, delightful and easy to apply over in the lower range of life. unexpected and not necessarily welcome turns, but if you notch it up a bit and you get it through. That's right. That's why if you train for coming back into the present moment, physical body and breath, you begin to have that capacity with more stability for those more notched up moments in our lives, because the notched up moments in our lives will happen. I mean, does anybody doubt that? Now, embedded in this argument about the benefits of practicing our ability to return to being present,

[58:04]

is the possible discovery that we don't have to be ready knowing what we should do until the moment has arisen. That out of presence, we can begin to have more confidence in our ability to respond or react appropriately, skillfully, with intelligence and wisdom, without figuring it out ahead of time. That can be the fruit of being present. And very few of us have confidence that we have that deep ability to be effective and appropriate. Especially if we've grown up in a family where our training was to be vigilant Anticipate trouble and be at the ready with your loaded gun.

[59:09]

When my kids were little, they used to say, oh, she's got her elephant gun out. And the description was alluding to their description that I was shooting mice with a gun built to shoot elephants. Well, that's one of the consequences of what growing up in an alcoholic family system when you had no idea when the proverbial shit was going to hit the fan. You have your elephant gun at the ready and shoot anything that moves. Well, that ceases to be one's best possibility at a certain point. Does that help unpack the issues around expectations?

[60:19]

Yeah, I think it would take quite a lot of working with it to... Well, what is required is curiosity about, oh, I had an expectation when I left the house this morning that I knew the way to Goat in the Road. And after a couple of wrong turns, oh. So I begin by noticing something about expectations after I've had an expectation, and in hindsight I can see what I didn't include, what was off. in the expectation I had. But gradually, if I can see where an expectation was not fully conscious and attended after the fact, I begin to notice, oh, going into this meeting or going into the plan I have for the afternoon, I have this expectation.

[61:34]

Is this expectation, can I look at it and see, examine, is this expectation based on some consciousness about who I'm going to be meeting, where I'm going to be going, what the possible derailments might be? Because the difference between an expectation I'm not aware of having and an expectation I am aware of having is huge. I think most people understand when they look at an expectation, they understand, oh, I'm not taking into account who I'm about to have lunch with. I'm caught in the wish, fulfill, you know, wishing, right? So paying attention to our expectations is one way to begin to have some choice about suffering.

[62:39]

Right? Could you just spell that out? Unpack it? If I recognize, oh, I have an expectation about meeting with this person that is not including what my experiences have been up until now. For example, I have the expectation that I can get to the yoga room for the Thursday night class. If I leave here at 6.15, it'll take me an hour, gives me 15 minutes to find a parking lot. That expectation includes the expectation that there won't be any accidents on the San Rafael Bridge, or they won't have started their construction stuff so that it takes 45 minutes to get onto the bridge.

[63:48]

Or the expectation that there won't be an accident between when I get on the freeway and when I get off of it. But now the part about choosing whether to suffer. If I'm conscious, if I bring a level of awareness about the expectations I have, I'm more likely to readjust them in terms of my actual experience instead of having an expectation I'm not aware of having and walk into a kind of buzzsaw and then afterwards saying to myself, how come I didn't include the possibility of a buzzsaw? I have enough information if I thought about it to realize maybe I want to leave at six on a Thursday night before Memorial Day weekend, I'm gonna leave a half an hour earlier than I usually do.

[65:07]

In other words, the more conscious I am of an expectation, the more likely I can readjust the expectation to what is appropriate because I'm conscious of having it. Sometimes one can be very attached to the expectations. And the more I bring some awareness of having an expectation into view, I'll begin to see, oh, I'm even attached to this turning out this way. You know, we have that ugly truck out there. I told you the story about the truck. When I went to I got into the truck and I could see the street through the floorboards. It's so rusted out. I was all ready for us to junk the truck and get a new old truck. And then we went to pick it up at Tom's gas station.

[66:17]

He said, it's fine. It just ran out of gas and the AAA guy wore the battery down. You got another year or two on this. What is it? 1967, 1967 truck. I had a certain attachment to, you know, it's ready to dismantle it. So seeing where we've got some of this is, the seeing of it helps us be more conscious about the gamble. It's a gamble. Yeah. Could you talk about the attachment to the taste of the blood? Yeah, I think it has to do with our attachment, our sense of the stickiness, the velcro with what's familiar.

[67:23]

And if suffering is more familiar than the absence of suffering, That's where there's going to be what I call Velcro. And you know, if I'm used to seeing myself from the perspective of poor me, well, do I really want to give that up? You would think? I would think. I would. But I don't seem to be ready. Well, that's in the thinking mind. That's why just being as present as possible with what arises and noticing, hanging on, is so revealing because we begin to see something we're holding on to that we intellectually would think, why would I want to do that? Well, it doesn't matter why, I am. And seeing where we're attached to a pattern that leads to suffering is really, really useful.

[68:37]

Okay, well, Mark Twain weather out here. Okay, nice to see you.

[68:50]

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