Once again, Yvonne is one of those people, we haven't known each other sort of in chronological time for long, for very long. And yet, it's a wonderful discovery of an old friend, both Yvonne and and Bill, who I count now as dear friends, counselors, and teachers. I think I noticed in some biography of Robert Akinroshi that he is, quote, the unofficial dean of Zen in America. I'm going to embarrass Yvonne. I think that Yvonne is the unofficial mother of Buddhism in America. All of us, at one time or another, have taken advantage of Yvonne Bill's home and center, and found a great deal of rest and wise counsel there.

[01:09]

This is the person, or these are the two people, whenever I have the Dharma Blues, which, if none of you have had Dharma Blues, you haven't been practicing long enough, sometimes known in the Christian sense, right, as the dark night of the soul, it seems to happen on a regular basis to me, that these are two people that I can call and find more than just solace and friendship, although that is important, right, in the Sangha, but a kind ear and wise advice. So, it's wonderful to have a friend sitting up here. Good evening. Was that an earthquake or you were just getting off the platform? Well, this is immediately a very humbling experience because, of course, the lectern, which I've been admiring since last year, is so far away that I can't see my paper with or without my glasses, so this is going to be very interesting because I also said, no, no, I don't want spotlights, etc., because I wanted to be able to see your faces.

[02:26]

I thought that might allow us to have more conversation with each other. Before I begin this evening, I want to echo what Robert Akinroshi said earlier about what a remarkable gathering this is. As far as I know, this is the first time in the history of Buddhism that we have had this kind of symposium or institute or convening together of teachers and teachings from the different lineages. And I think that it's exactly right, as Buddhism comes to the West, that this is the kind of cultivation and broadening that each of the traditions need, and that will benefit us as American and Western practitioners. So I would like to thank Arizona Teachings for convening this event, and I would like to thank all of you for coming here.

[03:37]

During the break, the dinner break, Akin Roshi asked me to say something that he had wanted to say about the Four Vows, so let me begin with that. The Four Vows, for those of you who were here this afternoon, is the four lines that we recited together at the end of the afternoon teaching. And Akinroshi said that probably these Four Vows come originally from India, from Indian Buddhism, although we can't prove that absolutely definitively, but probably so. Certainly we can clearly establish that these vows come from the 6th century, from the Tendai tradition in China, and most particularly that they are recited by virtually all of the various lines in Mahayana Buddhism. I always think it's wonderful when we can have a practice that extends in that way.

[04:48]

And so this recitation of the Four Vows is one of the ways that we can join in a practice together no matter what tradition or school, particularly in the Mahayana tradition, that we follow. looked at the brochure, I've of course looked at the brochure a lot over a little while, and I found myself earlier this week looking at this description of myself and wondering is it really kosher for me to be up here as a Zen person. I could certainly imagine that some of you might ask that question because I have certainly in the description in the brochure and in my own daily practice in acknowledging my teachers and ancestors include both teachers from the Zen tradition and teachers from the Theravadin and Vajrayana traditions as well. And what I'd like to do to begin this evening is to say a little bit about how I understand my wanderings into the other traditions as a way of helping me be more firmly grounded in the Zen tradition as my home path, primarily because I'd like you to have some idea about the context from which I'm speaking this evening.

[06:14]

Then what I'd like to do is to take up the topic of the three topics that we have before us, that of transformation, and to say something about how transformation takes place, and to do that by telling you some stories, some autobiographical stories, but also some stories of some of the students that I practice with, to try to bring it down to the particular detail of our daily lives so that we aren't so much speaking about the great body of teachings and the main thrust of the Buddhadharma, but can bring it into our particular lives. And then I thought I would specifically describe a few practices, several that are short enough, so that you could taste them this evening and see if you can have your own experience of this path of transformation.

[07:21]

And that's of course a lot to do and still have time for questions, but that's what my intention is. And most deeply I hope that I can say something that will be of some use to you, and if I don't then I hope you won't worry about it. So let me just begin then by saying something about am I a Zen person? I began reading Buddhism as an undergraduate at Stanford University in the 50s, in the early 50s. But I didn't really understand that the Buddhist tradition was a tradition which one could actually follow. And in particular, I didn't understand that the Zen tradition was a tradition that I could do more than read about until I met Shinryu Suzuki Roshi, in 1966, who was the Zen teacher around whom the San Francisco Zen Center was formed.

[08:28]

And I studied for almost 20 years, studied and practiced and felt most of that time confused, wandering, began slowly to have a sense of having been asleep and that I was waking up, but not always so clear about what I was doing. And in 1985, at a time when I felt a very dark time in my spiritual life and practice, I had the opportunity to go to India to go on a pilgrimage to the places where the Buddha lived and taught. And as much to escape my grief and sorrow about the way my spiritual life was going and about the way the spiritual life of the community that I'd been involved in for a long time was going, I just said yes. It was actually something I'd wanted to do for a long time.

[09:31]

And it was at that point that I met the Tibetan Buddhists, in particular His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Theratoku, who became a very important teacher for me. So, in the time, the last nine years, I've been fortunate to have had some very fine teaching, particularly from Thar Rinpoche and from His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and also from several teachers in the Theravadan tradition. And what I've discovered in receiving teachings and guidance and practical meditation experience under the guidance of teachers in these two traditions, what I discovered was how to, again with some freshness, look at the Soto Zen tradition and unpack it in a way so that I could begin to see clearly that it was all there. but that I needed a kind of map that I had not been able to discover of the sort that I needed anyway in those many years that I'd been studying and practicing Zen.

[10:41]

And I think to some degree the map that I needed and didn't find was partially an issue that comes up for those of us who are in a Zen tradition coming from Japan. So part of my journey also was to try to begin to separate out what was Japanese culture and what was Buddhism. The Japanese culture tends to be, in my experience, anti-intellectual and anti-psychological. And we as Americans, and I certainly as an American, am very conditioned and have a very active and alive intellectual life and psychological life. And so I needed and in fact benefited very deeply from having some of the kind of mapping and articulation in intellectual ways and in terms of what are the psychological dimensions of what Buddhist practice and Zen practice in particular is about.

[11:46]

So, curiously, I learned a great deal about Zen practice from a Tibetan teacher who, of course, reminded me that the Zen tradition is alive and well in the meditation traditions in Vajrayana practice, not just in Japan or Korea or Vietnam or China. So I have great respect and regard and gratitude to the teachers that I've been able to study with in other traditions, mostly because they helped me understand more deeply and more accurately what I consider to be my home path, path which I have come to regard and be grateful for with every passing day. I also want to say that after having practiced as many years as I have, I would say that in a very real sense I feel like a beginner. I feel like a beginner in the sense that I have some sense about the path that I'm on, and I have some sense about how much cultivation and training I need, but also some gratitude that I have some sense of the landscape.

[13:03]

One of the first appreciations of the Zen tradition that came to me was when I did the first retreat that I did with Theravada Rinpoche in Hawaii. And by the second day of the retreat, it was a month-long retreat, and by the second day of the retreat the cook decided to take a trip to India. And suddenly there we were on our own. with no meals. And in fact, some days during our retreat, no groceries in the refrigerator. And I thought, ah, this would not ever happen in a Zen retreat, where the importance of the environment, of what happens in the kitchen, of how the surrounding environment in which the retreat occurs is very carefully taken care of. where there is a sense of spiritual practice happening in the kitchen and in the office and in the area surrounding the detail in the meditation room is all considered as important as what happens on one's cushion.

[14:19]

And it was at that point I began to realize that not only do the forms in the Zen tradition provide a kind of container that we can bump up against, not always with such joy, but that also the tradition provides a container in which we can do the work that we're doing in our meditation practice. And I had this kind of flooding of great gratitude for all of that form and articulation, which I had for many years up until then taken for granted. Tyler Boucher taught me by his example what developed compassion looks like. That is compassion that doesn't take a holiday. I particularly saw that when he had a translator one time that he'd been traveling with for nine months, who spent much of lecture time arguing with what Rinpoche was saying in his lectures.

[15:23]

So we, sitting there waiting for teachings, would hear lots of Tibetan. I remember one time when Rinpoche came to Green Gulch Farm to give a series of talks on the Heart Sutra. We were all very interested and eager to see what he would have to say as commentary on this very central text that we recite every day. And we got out of an hour of Tibetan back and forth five minutes of translated commentary. Frustrating and heartbreaking and I never saw him have a glimmer of irritation with his translator, which I thought was quite remarkable. Suzuki Roshi, who was my first Zen teacher, was a great teacher in the way he showed me how the details of daily life are the ground of practice. And of course, most profoundly, he taught me that in letting me

[16:28]

help take care of him while he was dying. And so I learned most of what I learned from him really in those last four months of his life when I saw how present he could be even in the midst of what everyone expected must be great physical suffering. One of the teachings that I remember most clearly that I got from him was one in which he said that he thought meditation practice was very much like taking everything out of our house and putting it on the sidewalk and looking at each thing and then we might put it all back. I remember one day he said, you might put everything back in exactly the place where it was originally. But the difference will be that you will know, you will know each thing. You will have a certain conscious awareness of each object, each picture, each rug, everything in the house.

[17:32]

As with so many things that I learned from him, to this day I'm beginning to be able to cook with some of his pointers in a way that I was not so ready to do while he was still alive. It sounds so simple. Oh, it's like taking everything out of the house and looking at it and putting it back in again. But in fact my experience is that if we do that slowly enough, we in fact have a different relationship to the house that we live in. we have a different relationship to ourselves and our lives when we bring that kind of cultivation of awareness to the details. The other teaching that came from him that I appreciate every day came in the midst of a sasheen, a retreat one time. And that was one I remember quite vividly because I, after the third day, had to sit on a chair because my knee suddenly got very swollen.

[18:38]

And at about the fifth or sixth day, as he was ready to begin his lecture, he looked at everyone and he said, you think because I've been practicing for so many years that my legs don't hurt. I kind of laughed. He said, you're wrong. my legs still hurt." And I thought, oh, this is terrible. This is terrible news. I thought I was signing up for some liberation from suffering. And of course that's true. But what I didn't realize at the time was that what was different was that his relationship to his legs hurting him was, at that time anyway, quite different from my relationship to my legs hurting me, which was, move, get up. Can I get out of here? He later, in that same lecture, looked at all of us and said, you know, it is true sometimes that I am the teacher and you are the student.

[19:49]

But it is also true that sometimes you are the teacher and I am the student. So I feel particularly grateful to him for that pointing. It's helped me particularly in the years since I started teaching to have some perspective on my limits as I sit in the teaching seat and to be open to being taught by the people that I practice with. Kadagiri Roshi, who is my dear, dear friend, and teacher, and is the teacher who gave me authorization to teach, has been primarily the example, a shining example, of how to be really authentic in one's spiritual life and in the detail of one's daily life. Towards the end of his life he felt like a kind of failure as his end teacher.

[20:54]

he hadn't done all the things that he thought he should have done as a teacher. And he felt, I think, some sadness, but also deep acceptance. He was very willing to be a failure if that's what he was. And that was a very, very important teaching for me. his willingness to be just exactly as he was. And in that willingness, his ability to teach many, many people and inspire many, many people. Some of you may know Natalie Goldberg through some of her books. And there's a way in which Kadagiri Roshi is quite available to all of us through a book that Natalie wrote called Long Quiet Highway, in which she talks quite a lot about her relationship with Kadagiri Roshi. She used to ask him questions that no one else dared ask. And she'd ask them, you know, after lecture.

[21:57]

There'd be a question and answer period at the end of a formal lecture. She'd want to know things like, you know, did he and his wife sleep together? Personal questions that no one would dream of asking. And she went to see him regularly. And she asked him whatever question was on her mind. She was completely unedited. And so part of what she would say to Kadagiri Roshi was how much she didn't like zazen. She didn't enjoy sitting. It was very difficult. She had a very hard time with sitting. And he really encouraged her. He said, let writing be your practice. Don't worry about sitting. Let writing be your practice. Really pick it up and thoroughly and completely make that your practice. And of course what's so wonderful is that she, in taking his advice to heart, was able to transmute his teaching, as she understood it, into writing as a practice.

[23:04]

as a Dharma practice. One time she told me that when she went for an interview with him, she was struggling to try to talk to him about something, and he began reciting Emily Dickinson poems. She said, who is this Zen master who's talking to me in the language of Emily Dickinson? But he knew Emily Dickinson's poetry very deeply and thoroughly and had a sense about how his love of some of those poems was the way he could have some connection with this particular student who was sitting in front of him. More than anything else, I learned from him by watching him walk, by sitting next to him when he practiced. One time when I went to Minnesota to sit with him, I noticed that after the morning greeting, he went to his seat and he took his okesa off. This is a small version of the Buddha's robe, and the big robe is called okesa.

[24:09]

He took it off and folded it up, and after the morning sitting, when everyone else who has an okesa would put it on their heads for the morning verse, and then we would all put our robes on, he did the same thing. And I thought, hmm, this is very interesting. So later I said, Roshi, what were you doing? And he said, well, when I do the morning greeting, I'm doing it as the abbot of this temple and as the teacher. But then when I'm sitting down on my cushion and practicing zazen, I'm practicing with everyone. Then I'm not the abbot and the teacher. I am simply Tathagiri, practicing zazen with everyone. So if everyone else does not have their robe on, then I should not have my robe on either. And then I'll put my robe on when everyone else puts theirs on. And I remember at the moment that he described to me what he was doing, a feeling of a kind of relief, physical body sense, that came up for me because I realized that he had a kind of impeccability about not using his role as teacher in a way that made a false kind of hierarchy.

[25:29]

That he also was taking care of that ground in which we were together practicing. And I was very touched by that impeccability. The other teacher in the Zen tradition that I want to name and thank is Robert Aiken Roshi, who has been, he reminded me the other night, we've been friends since 1968. and he has been a kind of beacon during many times which have seemed very dark, particularly with respect to ethics and morality. Willing to speak out, but also to live with real dedication to the precepts and to the possibility of living our lives with great attention to the very particular detail of how we live and practice with each other.

[26:30]

and a great inspiration for the process of engaging our Buddhist practice in the larger world that needs our engagement so deeply. So I hope that even though I have wandered outside of the Zen world for teachings and guidance, you understand the sense in which that wandering has helped me be thoroughly and enthusiastically and joyously at home in the Zen path. One of the first teachings from Shakyamuni Buddha a great teacher and example that really caught my attention was this teaching. Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations.

[27:33]

Do not believe in anything because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and the benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it." So, for me, reading that quote from Shakyamuni Buddha was the first hook, if you will, because I read those words and I continue to read them with that sense of invitation to have whatever questions I have, to have the experience that I have, even if it's wrong, to be willing to be in the place that I'm in, and to have as many questions for as long as I have them as I have them.

[28:43]

that if a particular teaching doesn't make sense that I am invited by the Lord Buddha himself to examine and question and investigate and look into for as long as I need to to be convinced that it is sound and true teaching. And I find that invitation a very important one. a kind of challenge really for all of us to not accept anything without checking in our own experience. Is this so? And if it isn't so, perhaps to suspend our conclusion until we have a chance to investigate deeply, but to not just say, oh, there must be something wrong with me if I don't understand this. To really honor what is our experience. So we have the promise in the Buddhist teachings and in the teachings of all the great ancestors up to this time that this is a path of transformation.

[29:49]

The teachings which hinge on a description of what is real as the emptiness of inherent self-existence That what is real is marked by the mark of impermanence, that everything changes. That what exists in the world, if you will, is relationality and interdependence. So what I'd like to do is to tell you about four practitioners, myself being one of them, and say a little bit about what we have started with and how I see some transformation having occurred. When I sat down to list the things that I know about myself that are different

[30:59]

than what I knew about myself or didn't know about myself, as the case may be, say, twenty years ago. The deepest and most abiding quality of mind, I would say, that has changed is that of fear. I grew up in an alcoholic family with all of the difficult experiences that so many of us have growing up in such a family. And fear was like the air that I breathe. And of course, as so often happens with fear, often that would show itself in a kind of flare of impatience and anger. Certainly as a consequence of that fear, capacity and habit for hiding. being afraid to show myself as I really am, and very strong habit of judgment, both of myself and of others.

[32:08]

I sometimes thought of myself as having a kind of policeman mind with a very long pointed nose. I can walk into a room and pick out what's wrong immediately. That can sometimes be useful, but as a continual, habitual pattern of the mind, a great obstacle to a calm and happy mind. Judgment and self-loathing. that particular combination which so many of us in our society today know, unfortunately. I also had a very strong capacity for doing what a friend of mine once called driving my ambulance, rescuing and fixing the world as a way of escaping from being with myself. I remember about ten years ago when I was in Norway with my children in a fairly stressful and difficult situation.

[33:16]

My daughter turned to me and she said, this is after we've been traveling together for some while, she said, I am amazed at how calm you are and how you don't seem to get very excited very often. And I remember that moment, that particular conversation, because I was a little startled. It was some change that I hadn't particularly noticed. I remember one day waking up to the fact that a kind of constant quality of fear had left and that I had not felt a kind of pervasive fear for some few weeks. and I remember wondering, where did it go? What happened? But the changes to some calmness or some imperturbability or to some absence of fear or maybe more accurately a rising of some courage that was a balancing factor for fear did not happen quickly.

[34:27]

happened very, very, very slowly. And I would not begin to say that that shift is permanent. There are moments when fear arises for me. There are moments when anger arises. There are moments when I get excited and in anything but calm. But they are increasingly more and more rare. I would say that the practices that have helped me make these transitions have been many and varied. I know, for example, long periods of silence, of changing pace, of slowing down in the way that happens in retreat, of struggling with the cultivation of regular practice of meditation, both sitting and walking. reciting the Heart Sutra for years without understanding the teachings that are carried by the Heart Sutra, but somehow having some understanding slowly begin to arise out of that willingness to keep coming back to the teachings in the Heart Sutra about the nature of reality.

[35:54]

One of the most specific examples that I can share with you has to do with three things. Very early on, one of my teachers pointed out a version of the teachings on impermanence, namely that everything changes. And he also proposed that there isn't anything that is worth sacrificing one's state of mind. And I thought, hmm, that's pretty interesting. Oh, and the third point was actions have consequences. So I took those three descriptions and I asked myself, well, are these accurate statements? And somehow I was trusting enough of my own process to just say, well, I don't know. I'll hold that these might be accurate but with some tentativeness and just out of my own experience try to discover the degree to which these are accurate statements or not.

[37:07]

That turned out to be extremely helpful and was itself a process that went on for a couple of years. Pretty early on, the precepts kind of grabbed me, particularly the ten grave precepts, as we have them in the Zen tradition. And the one that jumped off the page, Akin Roshi was talking about there being bookstore angels. I think there are precept angels also. The precept that I need is the one that grabs me by the throat. So as I looked through the list, the one that jumped out at me the first time I was really seeing the list was the one about a disciple of Buddha does not take what is not given. So I decided, all right, that one looks like it's in bigger print than all the others. I'll work with that one. And I recited it every day as a kind of mantra.

[38:08]

I asked myself, what on earth does this mean? I just kept it as a kind of constant background statement so that it became like a kind of sieve that everything I thought, everything I said, everything I did went through that sieve of that particular statement. Now, I was not suffering from difficulties around actually stealing things from people. But very, very quickly what came up for my scrutiny, for my investigation, was all those interactions with other people that were instances of trying to take what was not given. Trying to take affection or love or understanding or wanting someone to want me to be there, one and only. I was of course not very happy with what I saw, but there was a place in my mind that realized this is very important for me to see this.

[39:12]

I may be embarrassed or chagrined or uncomfortable with what I'm seeing, but this is very important for me to see. I recognized, for example, a lot of the patterning that I had seen in my mother's life. that I had vowed I would never pick up and here it was, deeply integrated. I worked with that precept for a year and a half in that way. The next one that I worked with in that way was the one about a disciple of the Buddha does not lie. And for any of you who are familiar with alcoholic family systems, or for any of you who have grown up in such a family, you may know that lying is one of the ways, as a child, one learns to survive. So that was, again, a very painful and important and illuminating precept. I also discovered the great benefit in working with the precepts in this way and having some company.

[40:17]

And I have since those first two precepts been involved with a group of people letting the precepts work us in this way ever since. And to this day I will say that the precepts are continuing to teach me. And of course what I've discovered is that if I can see that moment of line that moment of taking what is not given, or if not doing it, having the thought, that ability to see what is so is about 95% of what I need to do for that transformation to occur, where the habit, the pattern, can, as I'm able, begin to dissolve and fall away. So that's what I mean by these practices as having the capacity for transformation.

[41:19]

As one of our teachers said earlier in this week, the practice of silence is a great way to find out what is so about the nature of the mind, especially if we don't have a lot of music going on. I've been particularly aware of the music here in the hotel I guess at a certain point, if you spend some time in silence, the musac ceases to be a comfort and a distraction and becomes a discomfort and a distraction of another sort. So I certainly think the practice of noble silence can be an extraordinarily remarkable, revealing and transforming practice. It certainly has been for me. The practice of zazen has certainly been a powerful and central practice for me, but I have to say that as important as sitting has been, periods when I have not been able to sit have also been very important.

[42:27]

I had a back injury and didn't sit for a couple of years, and I learned a great deal about other practices that have to do with the breath, and that have to do with a mindful awareness that were in themselves extremely beneficial, but that also that period of not sitting was important in being able to come back to sitting with ease rather than pushing and forcing and harshness. One of the things that I have come to understand is that the longer I practice it's not that the precepts cease to be important but that the screen becomes finer. That more and more of my attention is with thoughts and less and less with actions. That I'm attending to more and more subtle details of the mind and of my daily life.

[43:31]

I certainly, in the years that I spent with Suzuki Roshi, saw him be increasingly more exacting with himself. That was a very helpful model. Let me tell you about one of my students as an example of someone for whom Zen practice has been transforming. Please turn over here without rewinding to continue. She is someone who has, by the time I got to know her, we first began practicing together about, maybe about four years ago. Met each other. She was, as I came to know her, a person who was convinced that she deserved to be abused. And she, in fact, has a very unhappy marriage and family life in which

[44:33]

her family members sometimes can be very abusive of her. She, of course, has a terrible sense of herself, has an intense habit for the judge, the inner critic, and the projection of that out onto others. When we first started doing the loving-kindness meditation, she couldn't imagine doing it. She said, I cannot imagine in particular the instructions where you begin with yourself. She said, I can much more easily cultivate love and kindness for others than I can for myself. What is described in the meditation as the place to begin was for her clearly the place to end. So I encouraged her to do it as if. She had a very, very hard time with that.

[45:36]

She did, though, allow me to become her friend, and we became quite good friends in our practicing together, and she came to trust me in a way that she clearly didn't trust herself, and she also came to have a great deal of loving kindness for me. So, one day, her dog whom she adores was quite sick and she was quite sure her dog would die. We were in the middle of retreat so she was in a great deal of anguish about whether she should stay in the retreat or she should go home and hang around the vet's office and worry about the dog. So we did a loving-kindness meditation. There's in the Tibetan tradition meditation on loving-kindness where the Buddha is called forth in the emanation known as the healing Buddha and he is described as having a body the color of the blue black of lapis lazuli and he sends healing light rays from his heart to the heart of the person doing the practice and then that person sends the same healing light rays from their heart to the hearts of all other beings and

[46:58]

So I said to my friend, let's do this healing meditation, a form of loving-kindness for your dog. So what she could tolerate was that we would both visualize the Buddha as healer and that I would receive healing light rays from the Buddha and from my heart I would send them to her heart and to the heart of her dog. And she got it. We sat together in my little interview room, which is tiny, tiny little hut. And I could, I could palpably see her heart and mind open. And she was willing to accept the loving kindness that I certainly genuinely felt for her and for this animal that she loved so much. And she at that point began doing this form of loving-kindness meditation for her dog.

[48:06]

Something changed for her. She then began to have a little glimmer that someday she might be able to develop loving-kindness for herself. And that has in fact happened. She's focused on the cultivation of loving-kindness. She's focused on the teachings about everything changes on impermanence. She practices zazen with great constancy every day, morning and evening. She has been reciting the Heart Sutra every day for at least as long as I've known her. And she came to see me a week or so ago. She said something clicked. She said, I finally understood that all of my self-hatred, all of my self-judgment doesn't make any sense if there's no inherent self.

[49:09]

The teachings about selflessness suddenly made a kind of sense to her, and she realized, this is just, there's no point to this. I'm sort of barking up the wrong tree. And again, I had this sense of her letting all that negativity a drop away. Her constancy with the practices that she's been doing led to a kind of opening at the time at which she was ready, and it was certainly not something she could program or control. It was only a transformation that she could allow. And of course, what I think both of us understand is that that opening will change. but she had a glimpse of some liberation from this suffering of self-loathing and judgment of what is sometimes described as the I am habit in the negative form.

[50:17]

I have another student who when we first started practicing together had a lot of difficulty with anger. She is in an administrative position as a nurse midwife in a big hospital in San Francisco and was very taken with working with language practices. So I want to read a section from the Brahmajala Sutra which describes the the speaking of the Buddha, which was a source of great inspiration to her. This is the passage. This is Sutta 1 in this wonderful translation, Thus Have I Heard, translated by Maurice Walsh, which I recommend. Abandoning false speech, the ascetic Gautama dwells, refraining from false speech.

[51:26]

A truth speaker, one to be relied on, trustworthy, dependable, not a deceiver of the world." This is the section that my friend got caught by. Abandoning malicious speech, He does not repeat there what he has heard here to the detriment of these or repeat here what he has heard there to the detriment of those. Thus he is a reconciler of those at variance and an encourager of those at one, rejoicing in peace, loving it, delighting in it, one who speaks up for peace. Abandoning harsh speech, he refrains from it. He speaks whatever is blameless, pleasing to the ear, agreeable, reaching the heart, urbane, pleasing, and attractive to the multitude." So she said, after we read that passage in the sutra together, she said, well, I want to have a capacity for that kind of speaking.

[52:36]

And so she took that section that describes the Buddha's speech as, he does not say here, what he has heard there to the detriment of those, and he does not say there what he has heard here to the detriment of these. What in our little practice community we call, among other things, no third-party information. And she took this practice on, particularly at work, in her relationships with people at work, And she said it was completely amazing to her how much of a kind of reactive speaking out that she had been plagued with for so much of her life began to disappear. And how much she found herself in a situation where she was not only not speaking in these ways that caused harm and difficulty,

[53:38]

but that she was able to begin to listen to herself and to others in a way that was very conducive to harmony and helpfulness. I have a particular positive feeling for language practices because, of course, what we say has such a strong effect on how we think. And if we pay attention to how we speak, we can bring about transformations in the way we think and the way we behave very quickly. And because as Americans we're in such a rush, what I notice is that people are encouraged to stay with the slowness of meditation practice if they have some practices that have a little quicker payoff. This kind of language practice is the sort that I mean. The last person I want to tell you about She's a very interesting person.

[54:43]

She has been practicing a quite difficult eating disorder for 27 years. She is someone who practices what is called binge eating and purging. So she'll eat a great deal of food and then make herself throw up. So one of the things that she's taken on, which I find quite remarkable, is the cultivation of awareness in the midst of behavior that is everything about checking out, numbing. I don't want to feel what I'm feeling. Nearly five years ago, we started practicing together focusing on the cultivation of kindness and in particular of kind speaking. So she began with this setting her clear intention every morning to speak to herself and to others with as much kindness as possible.

[55:54]

And of course the great challenge is when she engages in this behavior which she doesn't like. doing, but which kind of takes her over, which she has this extraordinarily strong habit with. And I've watched her over these years become increasingly, but very slowly, more and more awake in the midst of the very behavior that's about asleep. But the ground she keeps going back to is speaking kindly to herself no matter what she does. She may have some intention to, as she can, give up this behavior, but while this is what she's doing, she is going to speak to herself kindly and is going to be willing to be present, as present as she can be.

[56:56]

And what is remarkable to me is that she has developed a capacity to be present with the most remarkably painful life experiences and memories. She's someone who was quite severely abused as a child. She has, through this practice of focusing on speaking kindly in her thoughts to herself and speaking kindly in her words to others, developed a kind of stability and strength that has allowed her to be increasingly more present. And slowly this pattern of 27 years has begun to subside. She's begun to have longer and longer periods of abstinence, as she would say. and to be more and more awake of what her own history and patterns are in a way that allows her to be present with what is so and not always act on what arises in the moment.

[58:01]

I think that in meditation practice, I know this is particularly so in Zen practice, what we develop is our capacity to be present with what is so, without either stuffing it or expressing it. So, the very practice of meditation itself opens up this third alternative, and it is a remarkably liberating alternative. So, even with the most intense negative emotions, the most difficult and disturbing thoughts, we begin to develop a way of staying present without hurting ourselves, without shutting down, or without reacting. The very practice of sitting down in this posture with our back straight, relaxed, stable, following the breath, this particular

[59:13]

form of meditation carries an enormous amount of wisdom. If we take this posture and this practice of attending to posture and breath, we begin to have a certain kind of confidence because we discover our capacity for stability and strength and flexibility and openness. As Akinroshi said earlier, this is a challenging practice because, of course, in this posture, here we are. We're not doing anything. We're not distracting ourselves. So whatever is up, we get to be with. What I particularly regard, appreciate and regard about the cross-legged sitting posture is the wisdom in the posture such that we develop our capacity to open up in exactly in relationship with our ability to develop stability and strength.

[60:30]

So there is a kind of built-in pacing in the very posture itself. all that difficulty we have with our legs and our back. Helps us keep our attention with the physical posture as the pathway for developing stability and strength, concentration. Zen practice is very picky. As my poet friends would say, it's all in the luminous detail. I think it's in the picky detail. So, there is this sitting. And after a while, as you have a little more experience, you begin to realize that the placement of the chin makes some difference in how much activity there is with thinking or with sleepiness. That there's certain physical posture that goes with a busy mind, with the chin or with the hands.

[61:38]

My chin starts to drop, my hands begin to fall apart. This coming apart of the thumbs very often is what helps me realize that I'm getting a little sleepy way before I would say, oh, sleepy. Slowly, as I'm ready to be open to what is so, I also develop the capacity to be present with what is so. In the detail, and Therananda was showing us about how to come to our sitting seat and how to leave, there's a great deal of attention to the detail in when you bow as you enter the meditation room, how you place your feet, a whole series of specific details that lead to the cultivation of mindful awareness. that lead to the cultivation of a capacity for intimacy with ourselves, with the back, with the stomach, with the heartbeat, with the breath, the remarkable and extraordinary breath, where we do walking meditation with the contact between the bottom of the foot and the surface we walk on.

[63:05]

So many of us think that intimacy only happens, you know, when we fall in love, or between parent and child, or maybe between two good friends. But there is great intimacy that is possible with ourselves, but with everything, every being. Sometimes during retreats, we have a quite wonderful wooden floor in our house, so when we do retreats for walking meditation, we have this wonderful quite beautiful floor to walk on. There's a kind of caressing almost with the foot as it comes to the floor that helps... helps me have a liveliness and awakeness in the bottom of the foot. That intimacy that I experience in that moment of placing the foot on the floor

[64:07]

helps me understand the nature of intimate connection in many other situations. One of the most to be cherished aspects of Zen practice is the attention to the sacred in the most ordinary detail of our daily lives. Not just formal, Zen sitting, but in walking, in preparing a meal, in taking a bath, going to the toilet, driving a car, washing the dishes. So what begins to be possible is that our daily lives, the detail of our daily lives, becomes the pathway for spiritual practice, no matter where we are or what we're doing. When we take on this cultivation of awakening in the detail of our daily lives in that way, that is a path of transformation, because it means we then have the capacity to turn whatever situation we're in, whoever we're with, whatever we're doing, into the opportunity for our capacity to be awake.

[65:30]

Last night Tipton Children referred to teaching from a great Shantideva who teaches, he lived in the 9th century and did this wonderful teaching on how to be a Bodhisattva. And in particular in the chapter on the cultivation of patience, it's in that section that he talks about using our so-called enemy as our teacher because, of course, who else is going to give me such a great opportunity for the cultivation of patience as my so-called enemy? It's a bizarre idea, isn't it? But very effective. Sometimes when one of my students comes to me with a particularly troublesome relationship I'll suggest that they take a picture of their so-called enemy and put it on their altar. Give me a break.

[66:37]

You can't be serious. But I've never once not had some thank you later. Sometimes quite a bit later. And, of course, out of that practice what we begin to discover is that there is no such thing as obstacle or difficulty that doesn't carry with it the opportunity for cultivation. And, of course, in the Buddhist tradition, throughout the entire tradition, there is this notion that the mind can be trained and that, in fact, the only way we can transform the world is to transform ourselves, the only way we can transform ourselves is to transform the mind, to train the mind. All those years of my trying to rescue and save and fix everybody as a way of getting away from my own mind, and lo and behold, the only mind I can do anything about is my own.

[67:42]

So all of these practices that are embedded in all of the great traditions are about how to show up and be present with ourselves and our minds and attend to our state of mind for the cultivation of kindness, of non-violence, of non-possessiveness, all conducive to being awake. The student I told you about whose dog was so sick. It's an example of what I think is critical and often not talked about, particularly not talked about in the Zen tradition, which is the relationship between teacher and student.

[68:45]

I actually asked Akinroshi what he thought about this the other day because my own Conviction is that we actually can't practice unless we have a teacher or a spiritual friend. Someone who has some reliable amount of training and experience and cultivation to be a good friend and guide. One of the most important things that happens in this relationship is the cultivation of some trust and intimacy with another person as we're in the process of cultivating that relationship with ourselves. So very often the person sitting in the teaching seat is holding that quality of trust on behalf of the student, for the student, until he or she comes to the place of knowing themselves well enough to begin to trust themselves.

[69:48]

And certainly for that student, I feel like that's part of what has happened in our relationship. She was very much more easily able to trust me before she could trust herself. That's of course very dangerous, because who's to say that I'm trustworthy? But that's also my responsibility. And she is now beginning to trust herself. And over and over again, when I see effective teachers I can tell how effective they are by looking at their students and the degree of confidence and trust that they have in themselves and in their teacher. That relationship is a very, very important part of the whole practice tradition, and it's critical in the Zen tradition. So if I can develop this trusting, intimate, connected relationship with the teacher, and with myself, ultimately I will be able to enjoy that sense of connection, that great intimacy with all beings and all things.

[71:01]

Well, I could probably spend another week. Let me tell you about three practices that have been very helpful for me and some of the people that I enjoy practicing with. The first one I'd like us to do together, and we can do it very briefly. It's a very old practice. It's called the practice of the half smile. and I would invite you to think about it as mouth yoga. Mouth yoga. It doesn't matter how you feel. You can feel whatever you're feeling. In this practice, you're all kind of getting yourselves all sort of squared away, you can slouch and hang out. The glory of this practice is you can do it anywhere under any circumstances and in any posture.

[72:17]

You lift the corners of the mouth, but so slightly that if you were looking in a mirror, you would not say you were smiling. And you hold that sensation of lifting for the space of three breaths. That's it. You've now done your meditation practice for the evening. This is classically taught as an antidote to anger. It's very interesting. It's a classical mindfulness practice in that it includes some reference to some specific body sensation and the breath. So mindfulness practices have those characteristics.

[73:20]

You're not ever going to think of doing the half smile when you're furious about something, unless you've been practicing it a lot at other more cool times. So when I first began doing the practice, I began doing it whenever I noticed I was waiting. So I would do the half smile when I was on hold on the telephone, standing in line at the grocery store, at stoplights and stop signs, any kind of waiting. So that meant that during the course of the day I would do the half smile five, six, eight, ten, twelve times a day. And within three or four days what I noticed was that the thought of the half smile began just occurring. So at that point whenever the thought of the half smile arose I would do the practice. At that point, the practice began to be one that I would think of doing in the midst of feeling irritated or upset or angry about something.

[74:26]

I think it's extremely important to understand that this is not a practice about changing the way you feel. It's a practice which is about, it's what I call a bigger container practice. If you think about some time when you've been angry, it's often, if not always, a little bit like being in a little crowded dark room. And when you do the practice of the half smile, you have a sense of spaciousness as a result of moving your mind from whatever it is you're upset about to the corners of the mouth and the breath. And then you just go back to whatever. But that shift of awareness expands the state of mind, so that we have the capacity, or at least the possibility, of being somewhat less reactive and some possibility of being more responsive.

[75:30]

This is an example of a specific way in which a meditation practice can be the agent for transformation. The other practice that I'd like to go through with you and then I'll stop and there may be some things you'd like to bring up to ask about or have us talk about. There is a meditation called the transformation meditation specifically for the transformation of anger that has five parts and I would actually like to only do the first part with you. But let me just name, describe the five parts so you see what the context is. Step one, you either with sitting or walking meditation, center and ground yourself. Because of course, this is one of the great benefits of a breath meditation, sitting or walking.

[76:34]

It's a way of stabilizing and grounding ourselves. So either one for a few moments, a few breaths. So what I've noticed by the way with this meditation is that it's effective with any negative emotional state. It can be used with fear or anger or whatever. So after you have settled a little bit You then either visualize or actually make the gesture of holding at the heart with the tenderness of a mother holding her only newborn child, holding the emotion. And you then, probably more focused if you have your eyes closed, you then, as you breathe in, note, breathing in, I note anger within me.

[77:38]

Breathing out, I note anger within me. And in that noting, I want to include not only awareness of the emotion, but whatever specific physical sensations I'm aware of that seem to accompany the emotion. So with anger, for example, you may notice some sense of pressure at the throat or tightening in the stomach. Whatever you notice, And you just, in that way, breathe in and breathe out with as much awareness as you can bring to what you're aware of in that moment of the inhalation and that moment of the exhalation. It's a way of being present with what is so. And the difference between feeling angry and feeling overwhelmed with anger and being with anger in this way is that it's a doable amount to be present with because it's what you're aware of only on this inhalation, only on this exhalation.

[78:48]

And in that particularity you move away from the realm of overwhelm. Now the instructions in the meditation are that you do not want to go from step one to step two until you feel that you have thoroughly exhausted that first step. So it may be that you will do that first step for a few weeks or months, depending on what the stuff is that's coming up for you. Step two, you, again on the breath, note the causes and conditions of this anger are within me. The causes and conditions of this anger are within me. By that what one means is I recognize that something has happened and I have a response. So often when someone does something we have this way of speaking.

[79:52]

You make me angry when you do such and such. It's a troublesome way of speaking. because it's a way of speaking that clouds, that keeps us from noticing stuff happens and I have a response. So the you who's doing something over there will just do whatever they do and I have my response. And if you stop and think about it you may realize that some days somebody does something and it doesn't bother me and on another day I get very excited. What's the difference? My state of mind. So this second step is a recognition that my response is what I have some say about. That's where I have at least the potential of some control, some possibility for training. I can't make another person do or not do anything. The only thing I have any say about is my own state of mind.

[80:57]

So that's what that second step is a way of noticing. The third and fourth steps somewhat go together. Step three is breathing in, I calm anger. Breathing out, I calm anger. Step four is breathing in, I ease anger. Breathing out, I ease anger. So in each case I would just keep saying that to myself on the inhalation and on the exhalation. Step five would be a kind of intellectual thinking about and inquiring, examining what are the causes and conditions that led to anger coming up in me in this situation. Now, of course, most of us want to go to step five as quickly as possible. We don't want to feel all that upset and anger. But we short-circuit a very important sequence that is in the realm of transformation that actually has some lasting effect.

[82:10]

And what is so remarkable to me is how much happens in step one if we're willing to do that. How the process of bringing full awareness to what is so is as much as I need to do. that a kind of loosening, easing, dissolving just happens as a consequence of my willingness to be present with what's actually coming up in the mind. Now, of course, in the practice of zazen something like this happens if we spend enough time meditating. This particular meditation is a way of making that process a little more explicit and focused with this particular area of our lives called the afflictive emotions. Some years ago in the early years of Tassajara I remember there was one student there who I could sometimes almost see the smoke coming out of his nose and his ears.

[83:20]

He was just furious. The first year he was at Tassajara he was just furious. It was so wonderful because nobody minded. That's just what was coming up for him. He was in a situation where, because of the nature of the practice life, he wasn't expressing it, he was just grumping around. He was, in a very real way, being present with himself just the way he was, discovering this possibility of the transformation even of grief and sadness and fear and anger. So maybe that's enough. And I wonder if any of you have some questions or something you'd like to talk about. The session continues on the second tape.

[84:25]

That's great. It's about working with significant movie characters and movie directors, respectively. Right. With success over time. And so I want to assume that you are also instilling, or the person has instilled patience I just wondered if you've also experienced, I don't like to use the word failure stories, but where possibly nascent personalities or other situations like that arose and became beyond something that you worked with and crafted. I may not exactly answer your question, but I think this is relevant. We did an eight-day retreat this summer.

[85:30]

It was a retreat which I felt kind of... I was very moved by what happened with the people in the retreat. There were three people in the retreat who had real kind of awakening. happen in a way that was quite remarkable. But there was also a woman in the retreat who was quite determined that she had no problems, that she was completely aware of what she was doing, even though she regularly bumped into people, didn't abide by the guidelines for the retreat. had so much of an inner dialogue going on and so much habitual judgment going on that she was not open to any kind of external feedback. And I would say that the retreat was for her, and for me, a kind of failure.

[86:34]

She really needed to be in a situation which was much gentler a much bigger field than a retreat is by its very nature. I've come to the point, at least tentatively right now, that the only diagnosis that is effective for transformation is self-diagnosis. And that I can only be of some assistance or guidance to someone when they are ready for that in themselves and willing to be of some assistance and guidance to themselves. And it takes great courage, it takes great, great courage to be with ourselves because initially what we get to meet is this great gap between the press release and what is so. And for a lot of us we're not thrilled. we feel a great deal of grief and anguish when we see that gap.

[87:42]

If we hang in with the process long enough, we come to discover that the what-is-so is completely perfect with, as my husband says, lots of room for improvement. One of the ways he introduces me is, my wife is perfect with lots of room for improvement. But I'm really, I've struggled with this question a lot, particularly around the question of what to do, because a lot of students who've gotten into harmful relationships with teachers have come to me. And so I've struggled and worked a lot with what do we as teachers do about some of our colleagues whose behavior is very harmful. And what I've come to is that what I can do is to do what I can to keep an eye on my own capacity for corruption, to have some friends around who will tell me the truth, to try to encourage students and would-be students to keep your eyes open and take your common sense in the door, but that the bottom line is that none of us can change until we're ready to.

[89:06]

I also think that, as Akinroshi said also earlier today, that formal sitting meditation may not be the appropriate practice for everybody at all times under all circumstances. I have four or five students who are all people who have gone through horrendous childhood abuse. And there are times when all that memory and experience comes up with such intensity that sitting is actually not a good idea, but moving practices are very wholesome and very helpful and the source of the person developing some confidence that they can ground themselves and center themselves. So, The Buddha way is very wide. There's just this extraordinary array of paths and practices.

[90:12]

It's what makes this gathering so wonderful because we have a sense of how many different ways there are to study and practice these insights about the nature of our lives and the nature of the mind. So I'm answering your question in a bigger way, but I think this sense of what is our limitation really comes down to, I can't do anything for someone else. I can keep people company. I can say, you, little to the left, and, you know, and we keep each other company, which is a lot. That's a lot. Yes? Well, when I first picked that description up, I really picked it up as a kind of question.

[91:18]

Is it true that there isn't anything worth sacrificing one's state of mind for? And what I came to was that there was very little that seems to be worth sacrificing one's state of mind. And that when I do sacrifice my state of mind and I know that's what I'm doing, it's not quite the same thing. So, for example, a couple of years ago, a young woman who lived with me and my family for several years had a baby who was born dead and was then revived. but he had been deprived of oxygen long enough so that he was brain dead. And the mother and father and baby were about an hour and a half drive from where I live. And it was on a day when I had a very dense day. And the mother wanted me to go and be with them.

[92:18]

And I knew that to do that which was going to be three hours of driving and I couldn't imagine that I'd be there less than two or three hours, I knew this is in the category of sacrificing my state of mind. It was very clear to me. It was also very clear to me that I was totally willing to do that. What was interesting was I wasn't such a wreck at the end of the day, actually. even though there was this whole big event on top of what was already enough of a day. So, for me, working with that description helped me begin to pay attention to how often I sacrificed my state of mind, what was the motivation, and how infrequently it was appropriate.

[93:20]

Because, of course, what I began to see was how much my state of mind affects everything else. Affects how I experience things, how I behave, everything. Does that help? Okay. Yes? I think it's crucial. I think that to have a situation, a container in which it's possible to work with whatever is coming up, that relationship must include confidentiality. The only time I can imagine Well, maybe this is another way of answering what you're asking about. For a number of years, I was one of the teachers on what we called the practice committee at Green Gulch Farm.

[94:27]

And we would meet once a week for several hours. And part of our responsibility was checking in and talking together about how different people were doing and how was their practice going, et cetera. Because Green Gulch is a center where there is a certain training program going on. So, of course, we would be talking about, each of us would be talking about students that we knew primarily in our private interviews. And it didn't take a lot of imagination to notice that there was a certain amount of student anxiety on the day that the practice committee would meet. Oh, what are they going to say about me? So, partially because of my experience with taking quite literally the practice of no third-party information, I decided that I wouldn't say anything about a student's practice in that meeting unless I had had that conversation with the student.

[95:29]

And I actually had their explicit permission to make whatever observation I had to make. Now there were a couple of things that happened as a result of that. What I discovered was it gave the student a chance to give me some information I might not have had about what I was perceiving about what was going on for them. So they had a chance to correct the basis of information that I was working from. But I also noticed that I was quite careful to be very accurate in the way I would express what I was observing. And I found that very useful. If I have to say to the person directly what I'm observing before I say it to someone else, and I'm more careful, then the way I speak in this other situation is informed by that carefulness.

[96:31]

Yes? Well, I think there is a great deal of resonance between Western psychotherapy and the teachings in Buddhism. I think there's actually very interesting resonance between some of the traditions of Western psychology, some of the focuses in feminism, and some of the focus in Buddhism. And I think that, again, I certainly wholeheartedly agree with what Akinroshi said earlier about how in some situations for some people, what is most skillful and appropriate in working with certain kinds of patterns and habits and conditioning in our lives may be more effectively worked with in therapy along with one's meditation practice.

[97:50]

So, for example, I have some students who are incest survivors and I wouldn't dream of working with them if they were not doing significant psychological work. but there's no question but that some of what that work is about shows up also in their meditation practice. I think that there is a crucial difference between Buddhism and psychology. I think that the possibility for not only seeing clearly but for transformation is an integral part of the meditation path and of the teachings of Buddhism in a way that, in my experience anyway, goes deeper and wider than is what is addressed in psychology. I also think that there are a lot of practices, if you will, that are really Dharma practices that come out of Western psychology.

[99:01]

So, for example, everything we know in Western psychology about how to train for what we call clean communication skills are very much in service of what is called, in Buddhism, right speech. That is, that speaking which is conducive to harmony and clear, accurate communication and wholesomeness. I have a friend who's a therapist who said she would rather work with meditation practitioners than anyone else. She said they're all like butter. So open to and responsive to doing the work they're doing in the therapy work. So the yogic side of meditation practice is a very important piece in being able to do psychological work that may be quite difficult to do.

[100:05]

But, you know, the spiritual realm is bigger than the psychological aspect of our life. It's not the whole show. Certainly in our culture we emphasize the psychological aspect. It's very important for us. I think it's one of the reasons why, for me as a practitioner, at a certain point I really benefited from some exposure to Buddhist tradition that included the psychological realm more overtly and explicitly. And I could then go back and see some of those same elements in the Zen tradition, particularly from Japan. Yes? Yes. Well, one of the things that I find quite interesting and very helpful is that particularly

[101:38]

coming out of the community of teachers in the Insight Meditation Society, a number of those teachers also are trained as psychotherapists. And so there's beginning to be a different kind of dialogue between the Buddhist teachers and psychotherapists because there is that kind of overlap. And in fact they're now, just this last March, we had a conference in Los Angeles on Buddhism and psychotherapy and are organizing another similar conference in the San Francisco Bay Area for next year. And the dialogue is very rich and very interesting on both sides. Because also I think that my own experience anyway is that for Buddhist teachers to be working as this is I would say particularly true for American Buddhist teachers working in this culture we each have to be doing our own work including some psychological work as well and I noticed particularly for teachers who have trained primarily in Asia or in a kind of subculture at a certain point they still have to come home

[103:22]

and do their work as Americans, do their work in psychological and emotional terms, before they're going to be able to not get caught by some of the dangers that arise in Dharma practice in the West that has to do with students' tendency to idealize those of us who sit in the teacher's seat or, you know, all of that sort of trouble. So, it's a very interesting time. when there is a lot of resonance and quite interesting dialogue. There seems to be less dialogue with the psychoanalytic, psychiatric practitioners, except for Jungians. I know a lot of Jungians who are very, very interested in Buddhism and who are very sympathetic and enjoy working with Buddhist meditators. Anyway, there are some problems, I think, for people who are coming from a more analytical framing.

[104:26]

And, of course, I think what you say about therapists is true of Buddhist teachers, too. And it's very helpful if we know what our own limitations are. Thank you. Yes? I'm going to be going out in a world where I'm going to want to talk about this. I'm excited about it. And I'm going to have interested friends and I'm also going to want to or maybe to tell it to people that don't want to hear about it. And it's that kind of meaningful experience.

[105:28]

Well, one of the things that I love about Shakyamuni Buddha's teachings is this notion about not proselytizing. And in fact, the advice in the tradition is don't answer anybody asking you a question until they've asked you at least three times. Your friends will be just sick of you very quickly if you rush out there and tell them about this great discovery that you've made. And of course, The other thing I would caution you to pay attention to is that you can leak away a kind of energy in talking about, and that's energy that you could benefit from by picking up some aspect of Dharma practice that has your name on it.

[106:31]

we can talk ourselves away. And I know particularly after retreats, but I think it's true in a gathering like this where we've been having such wonderful teachings. That leaking process is one I would hope we would all be a little cautious about. I also think that one of the things in time, although it takes a while, is that we begin to discover that there is a way to be interested in and talk about the mind and an inner life with just ordinary people. But what we need to do is to develop the language and capacity for listening so that we recognize where there's resonance. I remember one time after my husband and I had been away on a trip and we got back to the San Francisco airport pretty late at night and we took the bus that took us to the long-term parking and the bus driver greeted.

[107:42]

It was just at the time when a lot of the airport personnel was clearly the end of one shift and the beginning of another. And so all these tired people were getting on the bus and the bus driver obviously knew a lot of people. And he greeted them, and, how's your kid? Is she feeling better? And, oh, did your husband find a job? And it was just this incredible, kind, friendly, joyous person driving the bus. And, you know, I didn't have any reason to believe that he'd ever heard the Buddha's name. But he was certainly completely expressing and being the kind of person that the Buddhist path is about cultivating. And it's one of the reasons why when I go to a city I've not been in before I sometimes like to just ride the bus because you discover the most remarkable and kind people when you get on the bus.

[108:44]

So, initially you may feel more isolated and lonely and then there comes a time when you realize that there are a lot of people in the world, either with an open heart or with a yearning for an open heart. Good luck. Before we close, I want to say, I want to piggyback on a question that someone asked Akinroshi this afternoon about women and Buddhism. I think it's very important to understand that Buddhism gets affected by and shaped and changed by whatever culture the tradition has moved through. So to the degree that the tradition has moved through cultures that have been historically patriarchal, then that's what we get to see.

[109:50]

But the other piece I think we need to keep in mind is that the history of Buddhism, a lot of the scholarship And the record, the recording, has been done by men who have been conditioned by a patriarchal view. Which does not mean that there have not been great women practitioners and teachers. And for any of you who are interested, and I would invite both men and women to look into this work, there's a book called Passionate Enlightenment by a woman named Miranda Shaw. Miranda's ability as a scholar is quite impeccable. And in this book, she looks at the role of women in tantric Buddhism and Hinduism in India and in Tibet around the 6th to the 11th century. Is that about right?

[110:51]

In the very early formative stages. based on original scholarly work that she's done. And it's a thrilling story, a really thrilling story. And what comes out is a picture of men and women practicing together, women being very important creators of practices, important teachers who had both men and women students, quite inspiring, quite inspiring for all of us. Because, of course, when there is a kind of imbalance of the sort that is beginning to be called into question these days, it affects all of us. It doesn't just affect women, it affects both men and women and the way we practice together. And my own experience is that the actual teachings are bias-free, that women have a wonderful opportunity for practice in this tradition, as do men, and that we should be very careful not to get too discouraged when we read the history books, because that's only one piece of the picture, in some cases not even an accurate picture.

[112:20]

So, I'd like to close with a dedication practice which I'm very fond of and which those of you who are familiar with this particular verse, I hope you'll join me. In this practice of dedication what we can do is to consider all of the positive energy and consequences of our practice of listening to teachings, of doing meditation, of being together in this inquiry about the Buddha Dharma. And what I would like to ask is that we dedicate all of this positive energy and consequence that all beings may have happiness and the causes of happiness, that all may be free from suffering and the causes of suffering, that all may never be separate from that sacred happiness which is devoid of suffering, that all may know equanimity without too much aversion or too much attraction, and that all may live believing in the equality of all that lives.

[113:36]

Thank you very much.

[113:38]

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