Buddha And The Human Experience

The essence of what the Buddha taught is universal; it shows up in other places, including contemporary poetry and lyrics. He discovered wisdom deep in human experience. Buddhist practice starts with the notion that nothing needs to be fixed. When we get ourselves out of the way, we turn toward difficulties and then relax into them. There's love, wisdom, clarity, and flow with us already.

Transcript

I was looking around for some phrases or images or songs or poetry that would point to the core,

To the essence of what the Buddha taught,

But without using words like karma or enlightenment or insight or acceptance or mindfulness or awakening.

If the Buddha had anything useful to say,

And I think he had a lot useful to say,

It wasn't because it was something that he invented or made up or even put special language on.

It was because of something that he discovered deep in human experience.

So if there's anything universal about what he taught,

It ought to show up in other places.

So I was exploring poetry and songs and images to see if I could find something that expressed the Buddha's teaching without using any Buddhist lingo or cultural trappings.

I came across a song by Jim Scott.

Any of you know Jim Scott?

Rich,

You ought to know.

Jim Scott is a world-class acoustical guitarist.

He used to play with the Paul Winter concert.

He's also a composer and he's written a lot of music and a lot of his own songs and recorded several albums of music.

He was out traveling through California a couple of years ago and he had a Sunday afternoon open in his schedule.

So I said I would set up a little concert for him.

Just before the concert started,

Jim and I were up on stage and we were adjusting the mics and getting his guitar stands in place and all that stuff.

He was talking to me a little bit about his life,

Some of his personal struggles and some of the difficulties in his family and little bits of anguish.

He was very open about all this.

In fact,

The emotions were coming to the surface and there were a few quiet tears running down his cheeks.

Finally I interrupted him and I said,

Jim,

There's about 200 people here watching us and the concert was supposed to start about two or three minutes ago.

He looked at me and said,

Oh.

He sat down and put on the mic and picked up his guitar and for the next two hours gave an absolutely exquisite concert in which he was totally present and completely attuned to his audience.

I remember watching him and thinking was this what it was like to be around Mozart?

Mozart reputedly had a,

His personal life was a mess,

But when he was composing or performing he just got out of the way and the music seemed to flow through him from somewhere else.

That's what Jim seemed to do so easily.

The lead song on one of his albums is called There's a Way.

I would sing the lyrics to you,

But I think maybe I'll just recite them.

I would just assume let some days go by without worrying about things I hadn't done.

I would just assume let some time go by without worrying about battles number one.

I would just assume let a woman or a man live at peace on the land and before we judge the way they lived their lives we'd be prepared to lend a hand.

There is a way and there is an ease to this life we lead.

There's a dream of peace not so far away.

There's a force and there's a flow to this life we lead.

If we would just release and let it be that way.

I would just assume let all wounds heal in time without worrying about who deserves the blame.

I would just assume there be no heroes in war.

Though you win you lose it all works out the same.

I would prefer we find a compromise so no one dies in a fight to divide the earth,

The sea,

And the skies.

There's a way and there's an ease to this life we lead.

There's a dream of peace not so far away.

There's a force and there's a flow to this life we lead.

If we would just release and let it be that way.

I would just assume pass by fashions to life without binding us to all in life that's vain.

I would just assume that passions be for love and not dominance or war for selfish gain.

It be enough for me the beauty of the wild so I might be beguiled without boundaries or lies till I see with the eyes and the wisdom of a child.

There's a way and there's an ease to this life we lead.

There's a dream of peace not so far away.

There's a force and there's a flow to this life we lead.

If we would just release and let it be that way.

When we come to this meditation practice we tend to bring our lives with us.

Our struggles,

Our concerns,

Our anguish,

Our poignancies.

And sometimes when we come to this practice we're hoping that maybe the meditation will fix some of these.

Maybe the meditation will at least shield us a little bit from some of the painful aspects.

But as the practice goes deeper we realize all it does is it just makes us more sensitive without really fixing anything.

Let me touch a few things.

But I think this practice,

As well as practice,

Starts from a much more radical proposition.

It starts from the notion that there's really nothing that needs to be fixed.

There's a love,

There's a wisdom,

There's a clarity,

There's a flow that is with us already.

If we could just get ourselves out of the way.

And when we can it will take care of us and fix anything that needs to be fixed.

We don't have to do it.

There's a way and there's an ease to this life we lead.

There's a dream of peace that's not as far away as we imagine it.

It's just right there.

And there's a power in it.

There's a force and there's a flow to this life we can live in.

If we would just release and let it be it.

Let it be that way.

That's the trick.

Release and get out of the way.

Not so easy.

Not so easy.

Jim and my wife Erica were standing in her kitchen one morning.

Erica's a musician.

And she was saying how much she really,

How much she enjoyed his music.

And that she realized that technically a lot of it was very,

Very difficult.

But you wouldn't know it listening to him.

And his voice and his playing,

There's just this flow and this ease.

And Jim responded.

He said,

Shucks,

I took private.

It's an allusion to high school bands.

Any of you play in high school bands?

Usually what happens in high school bands is the students,

They're given an instrument,

A little bit of instruction,

But they mostly kind of struggle around and try to figure out,

Put it together themselves.

And there's always a few that stand out who are really good.

When they get the first chairs,

They get the lead.

And if you ask them,

How did you get so good?

They say,

Well,

I took private.

I mean,

They took private lessons from teachers who gave them more structure and discipline.

So in the core of this meditation practice is a similar paradox.

It takes discipline to figure out how to get out of the way.

It really does.

So to help us sort that out,

We turn to another artist,

A spiritual artist,

Siddhartha Gautama,

The Sakya,

The Sakya clan.

Doesn't have a website or email.

Died about two and a half millennia ago.

But he left behind these detailed step-by-step instructions about how to get out of the way.

And the essence of his guidance is another paradox.

To get ourselves out of the way,

We don't turn away from our difficulties.

In fact,

We turn towards them and then relax into them.

So in this meditation,

That's what our job is,

Is to turn towards and to soften and relax into whatever's going on.

Here's another metaphor for how that works.

I was born in Boston,

Massachusetts.

I left there when I was seven weeks old,

So I don't remember it too well.

And I actually grew up in Houston,

Texas.

My father graduated from MIT and took his first job in Houston.

Lived there until I was 16.

So on those hot summer days,

Once or twice a week,

I and my three brothers and my sister would tumble into our blue and white Chevy station wagon with these funny curved fins on the back.

And my mother would drive us down to Galveston so we could go out and play in the Gulf of Mexico.

Galveston is 60 miles from Houston.

And Houston is 60 feet above sea level.

So that gives you some clues about the contour of the land there.

It slants down at a pace of one foot per mile.

It's about as flat as you can imagine.

And the Gulf of Mexico,

The ocean floor is not much steeper than that.

So as kids,

We could wander out 150,

200 feet and we'd barely be up to our waist.

So when a big wave would come along,

To try to get away from it was completely futile.

First of all,

Running through the water is exhausting.

And secondly,

The shore was a long way away.

So if we tried to run from the waves,

They would just catch us from behind and knock us flat.

So the first thing we learned to do was to actually brace a little bit against the wave when it came.

And that would work for little waves.

But you know,

Big waves,

At weight is 10 or 20 to 1.

We just weren't strong enough.

So gradually we figured out that what you do is you relax into the waves.

And if it's really big,

You dive into the waves as you relax.

And it worked really,

Really well.

It was very cool.

The Buddha's first so-called truth,

Four truths.

The first one,

Dukkha,

Means suffering happens,

Difficulties happen,

Circumstances change,

Things break,

We get diseases,

Relationships change,

Everything put together falls apart,

We all die.

He didn't say life is suffering.

He said life has suffering.

Anybody here never suffered?

So it seems to be pretty universal.

So the Buddha was saying that life sends us waves,

Waves of delight,

Waves of pain,

Waves of joy,

Waves of fear,

Waves of peace,

Waves of anguish,

And much more.

So sometimes we come to meditation to see if we can get away from the painful waves.

We want just a little bit of peace and quiet.

But ultimately running from the waves is futile.

It's like trying to stop the ocean.

We run away sooner or later.

It will just catch us from behind and knock us flat.

Some people say Buddhism is a religion.

Some people say it's a philosophy.

Some say it's a practice.

Some say it's a code of ethics.

And Buddhism has all these things.

But at its core,

I think Buddhism is just an attitude.

It's just an attitude towards life.

It's this attitude of turning towards and opening up.

And if we do that,

Gradually we learn.

It can take time,

But gradually we learn that as frothy and as scary as the waves seem as they're bearing down on us,

If we just relax and dive into it,

Then what happens?

The surf passes over us.

And then we're right in the essence of the wave,

Which is water.

Not so bad.

Not so bad.

And then there's a natural buoyancy that just brings us up into that little trough of peace before the next wave comes along.

And in time,

We actually learn to rest in the waves.

Just ride along there.

So if you thought that this practice would protect you from the slings and arrows of misfortune,

I offer you my condolences.

I'm sorry for your loss.

As far as I've been able to discover,

There is really nothing.

There's nothing that can protect us from the ocean of life.

It's where we live.

However,

Meditation can gradually give us an attitude,

Can teach us a more healthy and wholesome way to relate to these waves that come down on us,

Relate in a way that we don't tumble quite so much.

A number of years ago,

I did a sashin with Santhain,

Who is a Korean Zen master.

And he had this wooden statue of a Buddha about 14 or 15 inches high.

It had a rounded bottom on it.

And he'd taken a piece of elastic and he stapled it to the bottom of this.

And then he took the other end of the elastic and stapled it to this board that the Buddha sat on.

And so Santhain was this little bitty guy.

And he would be sitting up there giving a Dharma talk and every once in a while he'd reach over with his hand and knock the Buddha over.

And it would go,

Pew,

Right on flat.

And then the elastic would pull it up and it would go boing.

And he would say,

He said,

You know,

There's nothing that can protect us from pain and difficulty in life.

We all get whacked.

But he said,

Meditation is the elastic that can bring us back up more quickly.

Meditation can give us a resilience so that we recover more quickly.

So in this practice,

We escape nothing.

Sometimes it takes a while to practice before it really settles in and you just realize it's easy if you don't try to escape anything.

I'm a Taurus.

I'm a slow learner.

So nothing can protect us.

But hopefully this practice will give us a little more resilience.

Maybe even a few surfing tips.

Who knows?

So I want us to pause here for just a minute.

And I just want to make sure that we're all really have a feel for what I'm talking about.

So I'd ask you if,

Just quietly,

If you can remember some time in your life when you were facing some difficulty.

And sometimes intentionally or sometimes just despite ourselves.

You know,

You just relaxed into it and maybe found a little bit of resilience in that.

See if you can think of some time like that.

This is not our usual reaction to stress.

Most often under stress,

People will,

I can think of five ways they respond.

Fight.

Flight.

Of course,

A big one these days is control.

Try to take control of the situation.

The other one is just to go to an emotional turbulence.

And probably the fifth one is to sort of collapse in the sense of overwhelm or defeat.

So this relaxing into is very different than all of these.

It's fundamentally different.

It's not running away.

It's not preparing for battle.

It's not controlling or losing control or collapsing in defeat.

The first time I came across this other approach was many,

Many years ago when I knew more about science fiction than I knew about the science fiction.

One of my favorite novels back then was Frank Herbert's Dune.

Almost became a classic at one point.

The lead character in that had this litany,

Litany to fear.

Do you remember that?

Which was something that he used when he was in a frightening situation.

Litany to fear went like this.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past,

I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone,

There will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

Did you get the tone of that a little bit?

It's not quite the Buddhist attitude,

But it's a very,

Very similar one.

We gently face towards what's going on,

Ground,

Open up clearly,

Heartfully,

And just find some way to be present in the midst of perhaps a tumultuous time.

The actual flavor of that may vary a little bit depending on our makeup and the situation,

Etc.

So what I'm going to invite you to do is to turn and get in groups of about three or four people.

And I would invite you to just share some time when you met some difficulty and found it helpful to stop resisting the waves and just ease into them.

Perhaps you learned something that you might not have other ways.

What was it like?

Were there surprises?

What happened?

So get in groups of three or four.

I'll give a bell when we're about halfway through.

And I can take a whole lot of time with this.

So once you get in groups of three or four,

I'll give a bell.

I'll give a bell.

I'll give a bell.

I think most groups look like they're about halfway through.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

So just take about another minute to finish up.

Okay.

Okay.

So this is the hardest part.

We get different groups trying to bring everybody back together.

I'd be interested in just hearing some of the things that came up.

What did you learn?

What was interesting?

What was surprise you?

What were the elements of it?

What was it like?

Well,

I can just say it's like remembering that we're really basically crazy.

I mean,

I've been in all of our situations,

There was a moment of recognition or awareness.

Other people find that?

It's a funny little moment of clarity that's almost like,

Oh,

Something that you used to know a long time ago that just showed up.

I think we used the term,

We let it go,

You know,

Type thing.

And at some point,

If you let something go in those terms,

That's the moment of clarity.

You have that clarity about,

Oh,

Yeah,

Let it go.

It helped or it resembled.

It's a trick in our culture because the phrase let it go sometimes is a version,

But the real let it go is just like let it be and you stop fighting it then.

Because you can't really see something clearly if you're trying to control it.

But if you really let it be,

Then it's,

Oh,

It gets really clear.

It might take a while.

Yeah.

That's what we're open for.

What happened?

The feeling in the body,

You know,

Unusually when you're anxious or there's an issue,

It's in the head.

But it isn't really all in the head.

It's in your whole body and recognizing how it affects your body.

At least for me.

And then you can start dealing with it in terms of how it affects your total feeling.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anxiety tends to run up in the body.

There's a huge charge up here.

So it's actually unstable.

It's like a top that's spinning.

And so there's something about just letting the energy run down into the ground.

Anything else?

Well,

I shared one experience when I first became aware of just being with it.

And I was extremely anxious,

Stressed,

Goal-related,

Couldn't even think straight.

And I was running around being motivated by the Lord knows what.

And I just remembered somebody say just fall into it.

And so I literally got right in the middle of my living room,

Hands in the East Indian style,

And said,

Okay,

What does this feel like?

And I'll never forget the sensation of extreme anxiety to just a calming of feeling the body and the sensations and the peace and calm that came after.

It was pretty amazing too because I was pretty off the hook.

And then it was pretty powerful when I just allowed it to be.

Is this moment going to kill me?

Let's look at this moment.

What's going on?

And just giving it that space to breathe and just allowing it to be just kind of took that energy down against the top down.

Yeah.

Yeah,

I was just amazed on how powerful that was.

I had a client once.

There was this couple.

They were having their first baby.

And they were really into it.

And he took time off work,

You know,

And she did so to both be there and they did all the classes and they did all that stuff.

And the baby was born.

And it was colicky.

And just cried and cried and cried.

And they did everything they could.

And it was just,

You know,

They were beyond themselves.

And finally at one point the husband,

Who was his wife,

He said,

I don't know what you're going to do,

But I'm just going to go in the bedroom and I'm going to sleep for an hour.

And she went out in the middle of the living room and laid down on the floor.

She felt like she was a total failure of all this.

She just laid down on the floor with a baby on top of her and just started sobbing.

And the baby fell asleep.

The baby fell asleep.

It just wanted them to drop down into their bodies and just be there.

And then it was fine.

And then it was just fine.

Many years ago I had a very,

Very quick lash injury and with a pain,

Acute pain,

I couldn't fit.

I had to lie down or stand to work,

Whatever.

And I remember that in the worst time I was lying on the floor and I said to myself,

Well let's just see how bad this can feel.

And I let myself feel how bad it could be.

And instead I felt a moment of relief.

And even though it was only a few moments,

It restored to me some sense that there could be relief.

And then,

I mean,

I couldn't sustain it but nonetheless I would periodically do that.

Just let myself feel how painful it was and then release.

Yeah,

Because we find that pain of fighting at this level.

We can't handle it.

And I think with a lot of fears,

It's been sometimes just calling their bluff.

Okay,

Do your worst.

And you get there worse.

And then it gets worse and you imagine.

But then you find that your capacity is much greater than you imagined.

The Buddha,

He talked about this relaxing into,

Not because it's easy to do.

And I don't think he recommended it because he thought it would be a snap.

But he talked about it because it is so incredibly effective.

Even if you can do it just a little.

It brings a clarity and a kindness and a wisdom to bear upon what is ever going on.

And he turns that into it.

So the Buddha.

.

.

Yes?

And I was going to add to that is this issue of equanimity that Dennis often talks about.

You know,

You have to let it be.

If it's cold,

Then you live with that.

If it's hot,

You live with that.

I mean,

That's a simple explanation.

But then you can start thinking in terms of.

.

.

And you realize that you have to live through it,

But there's not much you can do about it except inside yourself.

Right.

Right.

So sort of the sense,

Well actually this is what's going on.

I may not like it,

But reality doesn't seem to particularly care whether I like it or not.

You know,

So let's just see what this is.

And then the edge comes off it.

And yes,

Equanimity is often times not what people think.

What equanimity is,

Is the capacity to just be open and let things pass through so that a whole lot can happen.

But you feel a kind of stability behind it.

And if you're fighting something,

Then you actually become kind of brittle.

You may be able to hold it for a while,

But when it goes,

It comes apart as opposed to just letting it flow through.

And so the Buddha,

I think in lots of different places,

Talked about lots of different techniques,

Practices,

And ways to just actually cultivate this relaxing into.

And so I thought I'd spend just a little bit of time tonight talking about just two of them,

And then we can maybe practice a little bit.

And we'll see how much time we've got.

The Buddha's first successful teaching,

Wasn't his first teaching by the way,

But his first successful teaching was to some of his old meditation buddies.

And the wildlife refuge in Sarnak,

Which is a little town about 13 or 14 kilometers from Varanasi in India.

And in this teaching,

He laid out for the first time what he meant by the middle way,

And what has become known as the Four Noble Truths.

And I know many of you are familiar with these,

And so I'd just like to look at the first three of those four truths from this perspective.

So the first truth is what?

There is suffering.

Suffering,

Yes.

I've talked about it before.

There is suffering.

There is suffering happens.

It's there.

The second truth,

Yes,

And what is the cause of suffering?

Because he names it.

Pardon?

Tanah.

Tanah,

Right,

Right.

So Tanah,

As Bhikkhu Bodhi translates it as craving,

But Tanah is actually a much broader term in Pali,

Which refers to an instinctual,

Precognitive,

Preconceptual tightening in the body.

That's what it is.

It goes like this.

And we experience it in a lot of different ways.

Sometimes we experience it as a kind of craving,

As a grabbing thing.

Sometimes it's more in the aversion of pushing away.

Sometimes it's more we just cloud over.

But it always has that tightening behind it.

And the third truth?

There's a way out.

Pardon?

There's a way out.

There's a way out.

What is the way out?

For the noble truth or the equal path?

Yeah,

So specifically the third noble truth is neuroticization.

And it's not just pointing to it,

But it says that it is possible to relax that tension and to experience freedom from it.

And the fourth noble truth is the path.

We'll just do these three for now.

So there's dukkha,

There's suffering,

There's tanha,

Which is the root of our experience of difficulty,

And there's marauda,

Our cessation of this.

And I don't think that the Buddha intended these,

We talk about as four noble truths,

I don't think he intended them to be similar to statements of faith.

They're not like the Buddhist version of the Nicene Creed.

You know,

We just buy into this and we'll be there.

And I also don't think,

When I first learned these in this practice,

What I was told,

These are things that we need to try out in our experience and see if we can verify them.

And I think what he was after was something that was even more specific than that.

What he,

I think,

Intended was that they're part of a training program.

And because each of the truths has a verb,

Has a practice that's associated with it.

These get brushed over,

But they're actually right there in the text.

They're called the four noble truths,

But they are not actually noble.

There's nothing noble about suffering and root canals and broken bones and shingles and all that sort of stuff.

And there's nothing particularly noble about tightening up.

And there's nothing even noble about relaxing.

What he's saying is that if we engage these truths,

I like to call them observations,

If we engage these in a wise way,

It will ennoble us,

It will lift us,

It will free us.

So it's very important to look at the practices they had associated with each of these.

So the first one is dukkha,

Suffering happens,

And what's the practice,

What's the verb that goes with that?

Do you know?

Oh my goodness.

Oh my goodness.

Okay.

It's right there in several suttas.

It is to understand that suffering is to be understood.

That's the way we're supposed to engage it.

You can't understand something if you're busy getting out of town or trying to control it or fighting it or something else.

But to understand something or a situation,

You have to kind of stop,

Turn towards it,

Open up,

And see what's going on.

And so that's what he was saying,

There is suffering,

And it's real important to understand how it operates,

To kind of get it.

So you have to open up to it so you can see it and learn how it operates.

And if we see how it operates,

What we begin to see is that the suffering actually comes out of tanha,

This deep tightening.

And so there is a verb,

There is a practice that goes with tanha.

Does anybody know what that one is?

The verb that goes with it?

It's very dramatic.

You know,

When I look at the suttas,

I likely have three or four different translations to see how different scholars translate these terms.

They're usually different.

But on this one,

They all translate the Pali term the same way.

The word is abandoned.

There is tension,

And what he recommended is that we abandon it.

And I don't think in Pali that the term abandoned has connotations of leaving a baby on the doorstep to the church.

It's just a dramatic term of you walk away from it,

You leave it,

So how do you abandon tension?

You relax.

So when you practice,

You see a tension come up,

And he says,

Relax it.

And that's there throughout all the texts in his meditation instructions.

You know,

When there's a distraction comes up,

You notice the tension and to relax it.

And when you relax it,

What happens?

Well,

You can see this right now.

Just tighten up for a moment.

Then relax.

Feels good,

Right?

So when you abandon the tension,

There is the cessation of the tension,

There's this little bit of relief that comes out of that.

And there's a practice that goes with the relief.

You realize it.

You realize it.

So it's not enough for there just to be the relief.

You have to see what happened.

To feel it,

To embody it,

To be present,

To realize,

Ah,

This really works.

Otherwise what happens if we don't realize what happens is we don't,

Well I felt better because I got the chocolate candy bar,

Whatever it was.

We think that the peace came from getting what we want rather than what it really is from releasing the wanting.

Not like the other meaning of that too,

Is to make it real.

Yeah,

To experience it and integrate it.

Yeah,

So that it becomes very real.

Lao Tzu said,

You're rich when you know you have enough.

So it's kind of getting that enoughness.

So the subjective experience of all this is very similar to that feeling of relaxing into a wave.

And it's not relaxing away from the wave.

You see,

The suffering,

You understand it,

The tension,

And it's almost like relaxing into the tension.

You're not trying to get away from it.

And then right out of that,

As you were talking about,

Is this feeling of relief.

A little moment of freedom.

And if there were more time,

We could actually go through the fourth noble truth,

But that's eightfold path,

And that's got too many moving parts to try to do tonight.

So there's the same thing.

But I wanted to move on to another teaching the Buddha had around this,

Which I think is very important.

The Buddha gave very explicit instructions of what to attend to and what to ignore when the wave is crashing down on us,

When there's something that's overwhelming.

For example,

You sit in a meditation and you have a big thought storm,

You know,

Maybe about a difficult job or relationship snafu or something,

But you're caught up in it.

So the question is,

What do you attend to and what do you ignore?

And he said,

And I know I've heard it here from other teachers,

Is that you don't pay any attention to the story line,

To your thoughts,

To your concepts,

To your beliefs about what's going on.

Rather,

You turn your attention to the mood of the thoughts,

The feeling tone,

The energetic sense of it.

It's very,

Very,

Very important.

And the place where he talks about this in exquisite,

Almost excruciating detail,

But just incredibly fine detail,

Is actually dependent origination.

Say that again?

Dependent origination.

Dependent?

Dependent origination.

Dependent origination is actually the backbone of all his teaching.

Dependent origination,

The core of it,

It's about causation.

It says that everything arises,

Has causes,

And those causes have causes,

And those causes have causes,

And there's this whole chain of events.

Going into dependent origination,

We could be done maybe by midnight if we wanted to do that.

It's a huge topic for another time.

But let me just give you a nutshell that kind of points out how it works in relationship to what we're talking about relaxing into and ignoring the story lines,

But just noticing the feeling tone.

So you can think of dependent origination as a line of dominoes.

And the first one falls and hits the second and knocks it over,

And knocks it over to the third and right on down the line.

The only difference is that in dependent origination,

Each domino is a little bit bigger than the one that knocked it over.

So as the chain reaction goes on,

They get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

So in dependent origination,

The first dominoes are very,

Very subtle.

Very difficult to see.

They are,

You can experience them directly,

But sometimes it takes a lot of training to get the mind quiet.

But down at the far end is a huge domino,

Which is pain,

Suffering,

Grief,

And despair,

The whole catastrophe.

So what happens is you go down,

This domino is bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger until you have a disaster on your hand.

So the domino of thoughts,

Concepts,

And ideas is down very near the end of the line in all this.

So when we're into thoughts and ideas and that stuff,

It's a very big domino.

It's like,

You know,

Imagine a steam engine running down the rails at 100 miles an hour.

So thoughts,

Ideas,

Concepts,

And beliefs are large,

They're easy to see,

And they're almost impossible to stop.

As we all know from sad experience,

Sitting on a cushion trying to stop our thoughts,

It just doesn't work.

So that's down at the end.

Right in the middle of this string of dominoes is a much smaller one that is called,

Guess what?

Feeling tone.

Feeling tone.

Yeah.

There's another one right next to feeling tone right after that.

Tana.

Feeling tone runs into tana.

The reason I want to look at tana is because it's large enough,

It's strong enough,

The feeling tone sometimes is hard to see,

It just sort of comes up on its own.

But the tana,

This instinctual tightening,

Is big enough,

Has enough energy in it,

Has enough force behind it that we can see it.

But at the same time,

It's actually small enough that we can relax it.

The feeling tone that comes before that is a little bit harder to see,

Just kind of see the after effect,

And before that it's contact,

And then you get back down into the two very,

Very subtle works.

But the Buddha said that the place where we have the most leverage to interrupt this whole sequence before it gets down to catastrophe is actually with the tana.

Again,

It is,

The bad news is that it doesn't have a whole lot of energy to it,

So it's kind of difficult to see,

But you can see it.

But the good news,

It is small enough that if you can see it,

It's possible to relax it and to stop this whole chain reaction before it gets up,

The concepts,

And falls into the whole catastrophe,

Pain,

Lamentation,

Grief,

And despair.

So the implication of this is that while meditating,

It is really not wise,

It's kind of futile to try to control your thoughts,

And it's also not helpful to analyze,

Intellectually,

What's going on from this perspective,

Because that's just thoughts.

Rather to take your awareness off of the content of the thought,

And again,

Notice the feeling tone of them,

The mood,

We experience that as this mood,

Texture,

Etc.

Is that clear?

Does that make sense?

Okay.

So the process,

It feels like,

Again,

Like relaxing into a wave.

We're not trying to change the wave,

We're just relaxing the tana,

The tension in it.

We're going to try it a little bit.

So we'll do just a short guided meditation.

And what helps,

Before we go into this,

Is just think of some situation in your life where there's some difficulty,

Some concern,

Could be large or small,

Just something that you can use to practice on a little bit.

And then you just close your eyes,

Let them relax.

Use whatever technique you use to just get a little stability,

A little bit of openness in the mind.

And as you do that,

If it hasn't already appeared,

Bring up the issue or concern that you have,

And just see how it presents itself.

And if there are stories and opinions and ideas that show up with it,

Just let them be.

Don't fight them.

Just let them drift out into the pasture.

Let them run around if they like it.

And said,

You just notice the mood of your thoughts,

Notice the attitude in your mind.

That is the tone,

The feeling tone.

Just see any tension in that and release it and let it relax without trying to push it away.

Just let it be at it as it is,

And just relax into it.

And notice any tension in the mind,

Heart,

And the body,

And just let them soften and relax into it.

And if they fade,

Just enjoy the little quiet that comes up in their wake.

Savor it,

Realize it,

Savor it,

Without holding on or pushing away.

Just realize that moment of peace.

And then let that peacefulness radiate to you and to out in the world a little bit.

And if the thoughts return or grab hold of your mind or attention,

That's okay.

Just recognize them,

Release them as before.

Ignore the story lines,

Notice the mood,

Soften,

Smile even.

Just trying to change or get rid of your issue.

Just releasing it,

Relaxing,

Attention.

Realizing any ease that follows in its wake.

It's okay to repeat this process as often as you need.

It's a practice.

It's a practice.

Thank you.

If you want to stay with it for a little longer,

That's okay.

Just in the last few minutes here,

I want to read you a blog I wrote a couple of weeks ago about this.

Walking through the fields along the American River,

My mind ambled off into little vignettes about different people and situations.

All the stories had a similar outline.

Someone was treating me badly and I was calling him out for it.

I thought,

This is interesting.

So I shifted my attention from the plot to the feeling tone of the thoughts.

There was a sharp bitterness behind all of them.

Forgiveness is wiser than bitterness,

I thought.

So I sat down and I closed my eyes and I began a forgiveness meditation.

Mind,

Heart resisted.

It preferred bitterness to manufactured forgiveness.

I thought.

I kind of trust my mind to know how to untangle itself for me to just get out of its way.

So I didn't push it in any direction it didn't want to go.

Instead,

I got out some writing paper and I began to list all the people with whom I held a grudge.

I didn't write about why.

I stay away from the stories about them.

I don't believe my stories anymore.

Instead,

I just relaxed and wrote about the feelings that arose.

Underneath the bitterness was hurt,

Our loneliness,

Our poignancies.

I let go of the labels and just softened into those tones and textures.

After doing this for a short time,

I noticed I was smiling.

There was still heartache,

Lonesomeness,

But there was a glowing well-being that caused me to beam unconsciously.

As I became more aware of that glowing in the back of my mind,

It spread out.

Soon it was difficult to remember what had been so upsetting or even who the difficult people were.

Back home an hour later,

The glow still suffused my awareness.

It was as if my mind heart just wanted me to notice those negative feelings without judging them.

Simple awareness was enough to allow them to release and for a natural buoyancy to surface.

It's a lesson I have to learn over and over again.

I'm a Taurus.

We don't have to fix the mind heart,

Push it into a spiritual mold,

Grab hold of the gusto,

Or grab hold of the holy.

We just relax into a guileless,

Kind,

Open awareness.

The trick is to ignore the stories that we tell ourselves and open to the tones of textures with that preference.

Senpang wrote,

The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

When the mind exists undisturbed in the way,

Nothing in the world can offend.

And when a thing can no longer offend,

It ceases to exist in the old way.

All we have to do is get out of the way,

Take care of awareness,

And awareness will take care of us.

Thank you for your practice.

Thank you for your presence.

I'd love to hear more of your thoughts,

But I've noticed the clock.

Some people have to do things like work for a living.

Thank you for coming.

I will be around.

Just take whatever peace,

Whatever well-being,

Whatever even moments of ease have come up for you,

And just let them radiate out into the world.

Holding on to them just makes them smaller.

Let them radiate out into the world.

Out to the train.

See what it did?

Out to the people,

Out to the creatures.

They're in the trees and the grass and stuff around us.

Let it flow out.

Namaste.

Sweet dreams.

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