monica language
something some of you look like maybe you live in a warmer climate sentence
our dear friends so
the young turks cool and kinda arrived this week from new delhi where it's a hundred and twenty
this is somewhere
even though we've had some last few days they looked like they arrived in the ant or to be something
what i would like to talk about this morning
with the
focus throughout the buddhist meditation tradition
on the cultivation of our capacity for relationality

and of course the
gradual path that is laid out in the tradition
particularly and meditation schools begins with are cultivating our relationship with ourselves
and out of that cultivation being able to then began to develop and extend our relationship with others
not just other beings but all beings and clint

this agenda if you will
is very much on my mind today because of
spending some time last tuesday evening with two young nuns in the tibetan buddhist tradition
who well about a year and a half ago were released from four years plus some extended time in drop cheap prison
ken lhasa
and they are traveling around the world particularly in europe and in the united states to
ask for some help
from us westerners
and they're doing it by describing their experiences
before i went to well as as to introduce them and before i did that and listened to am talk about their experiences i read a report that comes from a young human rights organization in london
there
is a report very carefully done with a lot of effort to have more than one source to have at least three or more resources corroborating the descriptions of what's going on
and this particular document which if any of you wishes to read it be happy to lend it to you
ah documents what is in a sheet of paper i have here but in much more detail
one of the most challenging descriptions of torture and abuse i've ever read
but what pertains to what i want to talk about this morning is what jan one of the said at the end of her talk when someone in the audience asked her about her attitude about the
chinese and tibetans running the prison
the actual torture is supervised by tibetan woman
what is your but as your state of mind when is your relationship with these people
and she said i do not feel any hatred for them
how can that be
a because as she put it because of my buddhist beliefs
but what i actually know about joe
but she meant when she said that
among other things from reading a chapter which i've recommended to some of you and john avalon's book in exile from the land of snows one of his chapters of describes the experiences of the dalai lama's dr dr cho death
who was in a prison camp for seventeen or eighteen years
and who describes in a somewhat more detail the actual meditation practices that he was doing than these two young nuns described but which are in fact the same practices that there they have been doing
which is
a series of practices about staying in a relationship with whoever is in front of thing
to continuously remind myself that even this person wants happiness
and that the consequences of this kind of behavior will lead to suffering in this person's life
and the extension of one's own heart and practices for the cessation of suffering with this person
pretty remarkable isn't it
to think about
developing and capacity to stay in a relationship with someone who is torturing you every day until you lose consciousness
i've crossed wonder could i do that
one of these young women said she actually didn't imagine that she would live until she was released from prison
so there's a certain amount of surprise on her part that she is alive
in fact
able to or practice as a monastic in a nunnery in dharamsala

so this this path of cultivating our capacity for being in relationship with all beings and and things
is his radical
it's not about being in relationship with what i like or what's pleasant her once
easy
it's cultivating certainly over an extended period of time our capacity to be in relationship with what we are used to thinking i couldn't do them
and of course one of the biggest challenges is to be in relationship with what arises in her own mind streams which we greet with a version
i hate that i hate that about myself for i hate those kinds of thoughts or
someone wanted to know why i have this big painting of a mosquito up here
i figured out
can we be in relationship with mosquito
what arises well for many people who come here in one eye over all the beautiful
but tibetan sacred art and then they see isn't it go off a version arises
oh
how do i let myself experience of version as it manifests
and in the process of notice and oh aversion
beginning to change my relationship to that which i habitually react to with hate it i want to get rid of
and of course i think we all have certainly habits manhole and emotional and psychological habits physical habits which we don't like which would like to have gone on in which we like to get rid of
so the invitation in this tradition is to experiment with our capacity to turn towards what we are accustomed to turning away from
next weekend a group of us are going to do well spend the weekend with anger and fear
and see if we can discover our capacity to the present with anger rising or fear arising and see what's possible other than i hate it
aversion in reaction to a version

i of course i'm not able to be in relationship with what arises within me or in
my relationships with others beings and things that were there there's some challenge can't do that i can't stay present in connected relationally
unless i'm willing to be very patient and dog and in cultivating the capacity i may not initially or always realize i have
my experience is that we have nastily more capacity than most of us realize
it's not that we don't have capacity it's that we don't know our capacities
our capacities for spaciousness and open heartedness
with what we find challenging and different

i had an experience yesterday in the market
where i am unexpectedly ran into someone you like ever
quite significant connection with
but who because of certain circumstances in our lives for the first time ever in our a connection with each other turned away
someone who has always greeted me with warm heartedness and a hug
for whom on this particular morning or at afternoon
there was some danger in his mind stream
about even being seen in the same aisle in the grocery store listening
and what was so interesting to me was that i felt a kind of body blow as i saw this person to a kind of body block turn away
as i moved towards him to greet him affectionately
and when it was
also relief to me
was simultaneously
i understood the causes and conditions that led him in that moment in that situation
to great me in this way or not greet me
i could not have had that simultaneous mix of reaction in response
without this path of cultivation and training of the mind
and believe me this capacity did not come quickly
or even easily

we have to begin with the cultivation of open heartedness in kind lena's with ourselves and with whatever arises within us
because until we are able to do that in our relationship with ourselves we will find circumstances and particular situations and relationships where something gets mirrored of what is within
us in another person in another situation
and whatever that turning away within ourselves is will manifest in are turning away from another

as we were doing the eight pieces of brocade i heard a bird singing
you may have heard him also
is a lot of what birders call behavior going on right now
code for sex
so there's a lot of court fins
carrying on
someone reminded me of last weekend that term
i one time saw or heard a bird and when i found out it was only a robin was a little disappointed so when i heard this song this morning and i that oh robin
how nice to hear the robinson

i think come
we have to or at least we have the opportunity to keep an eye on when i don't wanna be in relationship with that comes up
as i was coming out of the house
i was counting summer
dark purple achalasia that i had offered one of you
and when i last counted there were nine
i think we're down to two or three
because of course as i was counting or to think i'll go here is this quivering plant with this extremely healthy furred gopher
brazenly
devouring betty's relief sherpa
oh i when pope the handle of the right down his whole and hopes of discouraging him for a few minutes but if that's all it will be as a few minutes and i noticed i don't feel like sharing all of compliance in the garden with you this morning
to which you know he thumbed his nose in

but along with the mosquito
and the gopher
and the person that i have been used to thinking of as my enemy
i have these opportunities to cultivate my capacity to expand mind you
and explore what's possible not in general but with that particular gopher
the mosquitoes don't usually arrive in ones
but
there is that opportunity
even to attend to to be interested in
all beings and things

but first start with what arises our online stream
especially the patterns that are out of our condition
what is referred to by
the buddhist tradition as the untrained mind
i find some of the
metaphors for the untrained
mind
in the tradition quite to interesting
perhaps as on kind of gearing up for anger a weekend working with anger one of the metaphors that comes up is the am
wild elephant of my mind
which of course is referring to a male elephant in rat
that behavior business again
people who live with elephants know you just get out of the way

because they just charge through everything

i think go we often feel by challenged to be interested and curious about those are reactive patterns that arise in our lives
curious and interested
give me a break
and yet in inquiry investigation interest
can be m
remarkably ravine
first one i recommend is just noticing
when some
reaction of aversion arises you can just observe identify name oh a version and shift your attention to her neutral body sensation and then a breath in breath out
so you don't linger with the reaction long enough to get caught in the content
some of you may be tired of hearing me talk about the bear noting practice spent in my experience it still works
even after doing it for a long time
and only after i have a sense of oh here's a pattern can i then begin to do other kinds of practices that help me be prepped more and more present and open to actually experiencing some particular react
ocean
moment by moment not generalizing but in particular

for those of you who came this morning for meditation instruction i didn't mention but i want to how important it is in whatever kind of meditation we're doing to do the practice with ease
that if we can cultivate our capacity for ease in our practice we then begin to have the experience of ease and attention
attention which is not a strict or rigid but has some quality of spaciousness

it doesn't do to force ourselves or at a corner ourselves we're trying to berate ourselves into noticing what we find difficult for lives

so i'm also advocating
interest and curiosity respect for resistance
if resistance arises with respect to a particular practice get to know all the faces of resistance

so maybe this gives you some
since i'm what i'm talking emails
i have some my postcards to wear
send to the woman and drop shape prison is organizing torture and abuse if anyone wants to send a postcard
and some petition sheets
and some descriptions
of what the political prisoners in particular in the prisoner going through
and i'll put them out and we're done this morning
one of the most heartbreaking things for me in reading they report that a mentioned was the description that of for the tibetans in tibet from feel
that the west to no longer
cares about what is happening to them

i want have some sense of
relation relationship
interestingly the chinese so regime in tibet on
fairly recently released three political prisoners
and largely because they received such extraordinary amount of email and letters about these three prisoners
and they weren't thrilled with thea bad press they were gay
sam we think gosh
no i have to figure out how much postage goes on a postcard to lhasa
what difference will it name but you know if there are enough of them
thanks a difference

so i wonder if anything arises for any of yoga this notion of cultivating our capacity for
relationality with that which way don't like her age or want to get away from whenever cheney i i just wanted to
recommend to things about that issue when so it would be calmer for shoot her first book she talks about him
cultivating a quality that you think would be very helpful team is so so we use a right to become cultivation of curiosity and then it was reading a book by elliott pattison called the skull mantra which is about a prison camp in tibet
and i found a great application of curiosity rover some of the monks had had their thumbs cut because the chinese prisoners were sick of hearing them do the montreux practice on your views so they cut their thumbs up somebody came into them
the campaigns of how i haven't you thumbs and i don't know are separated you some scripts i don't know to nice would it take them instead of the whole story of like these guards cut off my photos i have no idea where with them is no i thought there was a great example genuine curiosity in the moment instead of
i'm i'm a gamer thing and also come
there's a wonderful movie right down that maybe because of our age where i am extremely so we wouldn't normally run across because it's a youth oriented movie i found in the video stores called waking life inspired director of the movie called dazed and confused and slacker
so his target over since she was like eighty and nigerians
waking life is brilliant
it's a brilliant movie about
consciousness and then i think you might people might know enjoy it
and thank you know
home
i'm interested restoration
how about relationship worth
that about return conscience
you are you
i'm like a better methodology more she their riches true
find myself in the midst of the consequences know that and unconscious for it
watch a ball
that i'm willing to notice when i notice and not been up on myself
the noticing actually begins to happen sooner and sooner and sooner and sooner to the moment of
out of it asleep unconscious but i think particularly when we're working with patterns that are really old that closing the gap may take quite a while and if my experiences if the
there's any shred of judgment any shred of criticism self criticism in the interim between what i when i up some may happened
it then my compare my willingness to wake up to where when and how i've been habitually asleep ah dimensions
so you know what i hear in what you're bringing up his
am i the challenge around am i willing to experience the suffering my own and that of others in the face of oh i must have gone unconscious
because i think that's what's required is to be willing to be present with suffering my own and that of those around me
and i i i just i think that's not easy to do
to develop a taste the willingness you know
particularly for those of you were not
experienced in sitting with your legs crossed her however you meditate almost doesn't matter because sitting still in any posture after a little while some discomfort something between discomfort to real pain half henderson
and i want it to go away i want to get rid of it i want to move on one what dressed
and of course people think what is this a masochistic tradition when there's this notion that well here's a chance to cultivate interesting curiosity in water rises in the mind with physical discomfort
and i can begin to not only see what my reactions are but begin to open up to the possibility of a relational way of being with discomfort
this is where inquiry interest investigation can make an enormous difference in what we were thinking of a pain i have to move
and whether we cultivate that capacity to be with what is hard to be with or not our lives will provide us with the circumstances in which
challenge will arise
i'm i'm about to go visit again and old old friend
who are is time
and doesn't like anything about it
doesn't like being helpless doesn't like having to rely on other people doesn't like the fact that she sleeps all but about four hours a day max doesn't like the fact that she can't walk that doesn't like any of it
doesn't like having to rely on other key
doesn't like being
out of control helpless
guess what
that's what's arising
it's what the whole dying process is about his
being out of control and having to rely on others who help you do what you can no longer do

and all that reactivity in the mind
is not going to go away
until we are willing to be present with whatever the specific arising of reaction is
and it's only in that load of being willing to actually experience reactivity that we stumble into it's what i sometimes referred to as being accident prone we stumble into our capacity to be with what we didn't think we could
be with
we stumble into that and all of a sudden we just we've stumbled into a capacity we didn't yet know we have
that's what you know we talk about meditation practice we talk about practicing doing certain things over and over and over again
one way of understanding that is as a way of being a little more accident prone

millions of vancouver petty
i'm picking vertical than one but bill brought up an edge that i'm watching my own practice
i'm noticing a reactive pattern or mine state i'm not to wrong with and the edge between the noticing yeah
the
an impulse to make it different
no
which i'm
also noticing is yet another pack of pattern
what's the specific detail of aversion yeah
and i think that when we can begin to recognize all the different faces all the different manifestations of know
ah i wanted to be different i wanted to go away i don't want this to begin to get smart about all those
variations can be extremely useful
i think that part that what i have had the habit of doing it is too
what i call making it like the picture
can you give me an example of

note of saying that and harboring ill will toward a specific person and then noticing that
this is pretty unsavoury and i don't like this about myself
and then judgment or aversion about a certain arising years and then substituting where i think is a more wholesome state of mind
but i think in fact what's happening as a turning away from looking at what's actually so
so one might say inflicting what you think is the right state of mind yes
and how's it working
that's okay
and chance right
well i think work what i'm noticing now more than moving him to that
honking what i think is right is the impulse great that's great
so that's getting closer to the moment of don't want to yeah
ah
this is where they shouldn't he gave a admonition about my so-called enemies and obstacles are my teacher
and that
possibility can often have the effect of opening up what feels solidified in some aversion to a so called the enemy because then i'm pulling my energy from that person i hate that person that person's a bad person
the energy back to what smiles what what are the reactive horizons in when i think of this person or seen this person's
well as long as that's news it's extremely useful to keep doing whatever one came on to realize oh this has to do with my mind's you
and you know in the in the press but the practice with a particular relationship which i happen to know tiny bit about
ah might be the cultivation of sympathetic joy and what is the first step and they sequence of practices for the cultivation of sympathetic joy can you imagine sympathetic joy with this jerk
an occupation
right the first step is to notice self cleaning and home
me me me me me neither however
oh well self climbing the i am noticing layers of
yeah
got it now
self is just a part of the glue
velcro you with a velcro of the mind
well that's where you know this is where i think the bear noting practice can be so helpful because i do these glancing blows of noticing and then i shift i get out of dodge i asked myself to linger long enough to get caught in a lot of story
and for you to begin to have more and more sense of presence in that moment of impulse that's that's terrific
current yeah
i have a client of working with cool
hello
six from years of practice and this week
came through wrong conclusion elements in authentic and boss
and
get more urchin so forceful and so clear and then because she didn't notice that she judge to response there was no way you choose
so i was just thinking at it for me angry that is i know i have the wrong set of my try me you sconce with can really negative thinking about personally think that if i stay with my opinion about myself that comes from
from that noticing then there's no way that's right green and turned into changing
which is why the beer noting practice is extremely useful and there are times when simply picking one's mind up from one grove and putting it on another group may be in fact the most wholesome thing i can do and the antidote to that kind of beating
oneself around the head shoulders is quick ten specific things i'm grateful for
because of course the quality of mind when i drop into what are ten things i'm grateful for is expanding
you know you've heard me tell the story of the young woman who used to come and see me every week and give the laundry lists about everything or has been doing wrong and i asked her to do this practice of quick ten things you're grateful for it he said it works damn it happen and of course what then began to arise was
how attached she was j having somebody she could blame about her life
and she wasn't thrilled with quick ten things i'm grateful for
she finally stopped coming to see me because i kept you know proposing the ground of gratitude and kind lameness can open up all kinds of possibilities
i don't want that
so then i get to be present with that arising of no i don't want can ice can i be present with that
john and you get so i want to come of was opened get on her and ask your question about relationship to what does it i'm taking a relationship terms of of people to go and never look back on what i mean so to join her i still say
no i don't want to spend time with
trump
if there were structure for crazy room
it may not fit this week i got too much on my plate i love you dearly and i'm not available to see you until june twentieth i mean there can be all kinds of race or maybe that i am not interested in emma
before i got a relationship ongoing relationship a person
but what about or women can go home i don't know about my mind because i'm not saying i don't like this person i hate this person i still wish them well yes and big book or now yes once been found
does are not mutually exclusive but you know here's where again we go into either or thinking what is possible when we consider both and i can both respect my own boundaries and limits and stay in
in in relationship in the heart with this person
but i do think that if i haven't cultivated that capacity that quality of mind in my relationship with myself i'm betting of much more difficulty doing it with others
and they they go together
you know the whole vow about called a the cultivation of our capacity for full awakening
for the benefit of all beings and staying in the world of suffering until all beings have that same capacity cultivated of full realization
gets translated
particularly in this culture
ah maybe more widely in the west i'm not sure
and can become a translated air so but he sought the door mat
means i don't ever say no i always say yes i always do whatever everybody wants me to do etc etc
and i think that's really a misunderstanding
just been passed but she's since i started well as been i've been practicing said no
but no
looking to see on being kind of myself fuel
saying no mostly appliance construction which experience
the top of turn now
bnl
boundaries and limits of the an offer
what the terms or another side of from the principles of that serves some fear was like service but there will be my or under the corporate moves out for well of money whatever
well maybe that's true
but it's interesting to watch and so if you want to work fourteen hour days six or seven days a week as the antidote to rule be a pauper
it's also where the warming being present weren't being with myself him to keep the sure
he's
thank you

so
what does it mean to be in relationship with myself with other beings and thanks
i think that's a very useful question to sit with not in general but in particular
ara even yeah say in relationship is there not a implication that relationship and a positive way because or week including in relationship with anger hatred
on yeah
ara one of our skipper keys one of the two sisters the young ones now seventeen passed last week with great difficulty in on thursday night when
during class and down
i get something wrong when i got home and i paged the vet who had her at his place
so i don't know a punch something so he never got my message
and
he was able to while she was convulsing while battling so he was able to bring her son he is shared a temperature of one hundred and seven point for one so we had are packed in ice seems really hard
so when i got ready to leave to go teach the class
the vet said well all all
oh state with her and done and we agreed i'd call when i got home and that didn't happen
and then
he stayed with her until she died about a quarter of one and worn it
and he kept saying what would even do
so he did what he could imagine i would do with this animal and he just kept stroking her
ah because she could she breaking she was she regained consciousness and oh
seemed responsive to being penitent having his hand resting on
i'm
but i was so touched when i spoke with him early the next day with his effort to be with this animal who he knew why
cherished in all the ways he could imagine i would do it so there was a way in which he was with her in a way that included me being with her as well
and
this is somebody who not that many years ago
i didn't have any idea about how to be with an animal ones the animal was dying and who now
won't euthanize animals
and
has taken on this practice of saying present with an animal and said
passive
and of course whenever there's a guy that affects all of us
with respect her around
impermanence

so as i said during the instruction period this morning before we started sitting buddhist path here sir
in many ways
simple
but it's not easy
one has to wear find one's interest and willingness to be with what we're accustomed to send a not for me
mtb kindly with that arising of other
that's not for me
how to be with that arises
for example in is a wonderful twelve steps me upstairs with this program this path is a simple have concrete people
yeah
that's nice
so i know some of you brought lunch and maybe be a little chilly to eat lunch in the garden but you're welcome to eat lunch at near she liked to
and then happy to see you all taken care of yourselves
am
we are around can we don't need this on tape
what we say and how we speak and what the consequences are of those patterns which we are more or less coaches a
and there
particularly in the territory of our patterns of speaking that come out of our conditioning
that territory is significantly under the radar screen of attention
but this whole path is not about changing ourselves to be you know good this is about being awake to what so which is the whole gamut of human possibility
ah if i speak about someone who's not in the room and i begin to be more and more conscious of that pattern i'm more likely to then begin to be more observant about what are the consequences of that kind of training
angulated speak
i saw whole territory of actions have consequences speaking being a kind of action opens up
so i appreciate you bringing this up because i have the sense from some of you that you're kind of slapping your hand stop that
and
you know that's the judge stop it
ouch
the of cape were having an example of under saturation of that's awesome sort of lots of layered motivation or complexity when my uncle was dying of cancer in being at home and people would call my aunt and f or how are things and
ooh that's a good and so part of her good was or she would say we had a good day will a good day to hermit something totally different than what it meant to the person who was calling so people who were calling didn't have any idea that he was so
il the he was so close to death good for her man you know he got up in of didn't really have meal
a still eating pain free and of like that you can put on such as
so you it was the under drama for her conditioning of underdrawn she wasn't supposed to reveal
this
the terror
it was going on in her daily life to social
friends with them for she didn't get the help that jimmy as well absolutely and it was very complicated
well of course there are consequences to not speaking accurately and when we make a statement like whoa things are good we had a good day
the person on the other end of the telephone doesn't have much sense about what's actually going on from such a statement
right
and i don't think it's at all surprising to have ah
that kind of dynamic that you're describing occur around a dying in our culture and our tongue
oh carolina and i were talking about this yesterday
in a steady group where we're working with impermanence i asked everybody to read tolstoy's short story the death of ivan ilyich which is vivid i mean hardly the same barry fonts to our things lots of quite as
accurate detail
ah but of course tolstoy was writing at a time when dying was happening you know in the middle of the dining room table or upstairs in the hamsters bit a bedroom to everybody all the time so there's a context in which to speak
or perhaps more accurately more particular
well
release you all from the suffering of lying or hope that you'll stay percolating and observing am looking into
the class in may and june will be a continuation of this one and will do we will do more on other forms of lying but will also do some work with the wonders of slander praising self by disparaging others and
ah other language patterns that are fruitful to it and change you and my strong recommendation for all of you is so
focus from the class and stay with it for some extended period of time and if you can rope somebody and keeping you company
even better thank you won't be disappointed in what happens
and if any of you feel like writing a little weather report on whatever practice here are working with i'd be tickled to know how it's going
there i have a few calendars and i brought i'm going to be doing a retreat in the middle of april on
construction and pain and one of the end of may on working with anger and fear