Turning Toward Life Part A

Buddhism is a way of turning toward and relaxing into what life brings. It doesn’t protect us from misfortune. But it does give us resilience. And it doesn’t fix us, because we aren’t broken. It’s a way of discovering what’s already here deep within.

Please Note: This track was recorded live and may contain background noises.

Transcript

So tonight,

What I wanted to do tonight was see if we can just go right to the core and talk about just what the essence of Buddhism is in very simple terms.

And I thought the best place to start with that is to find something that didn't sound Buddhist,

You know,

Some poetry or passage or song or,

You know,

Maybe something out of popular culture that seemed to point right to the essence of what Buddhism is without using words like karma or enlightenment or insight or jhana or acceptance or any of that stuff.

Because if the Buddha had anything useful to say,

And I think he had a lot of useful things to say,

It wasn't because he invented it or created or made it up.

It's because he discovered it right in the depth of human experience.

And so there have to be other people around who came across similar insights.

So I was looking for something that pointed to the core of the Buddhist teachings without using Buddhist lingo or trappings.

And I came upon a song by a guy by the name of Jim Scott.

Does any of you know Jim Scott?

Besides you?

Jim Scott is a world-class guitarist.

He's just incredible.

He used to play with the Paul Winter Consort,

For those of you who know him.

So he's really out there on the top.

He's also a composer and has produced a bunch of albums.

He was a couple years ago,

He was touring California and he had an empty spot on a Sunday afternoon so I offered to set up a concert for him,

Which I did.

I set this little concert and just before the concert started,

Jim and I were on stage and arranging those guitar stands and making sure the mics and equipment and all that stuff was working.

And as we were doing this,

He got to talking about some of his personal struggles and his family and some anguish and some issues.

And it was very open and there were a few tears quietly running down his cheeks.

It was filled with emotion talking about this.

And at one point I stopped him,

Interrupted him,

And I said,

Jim,

There's about 200 people out there watching us and the concert was supposed to start about five minutes ago.

And he looked up and he said,

Oh,

And he sat down and clipped on his bike and picked up his guitar and for the next two hours delivered this absolutely exquisite concert in which he was like totally present and attuned to his audience and the music seemed to flow through him from somewhere else.

And I was watching all this and thinking,

Was this what it was like to be around Mozart?

You know,

Mozart,

Reputedly,

His personal life was a mess.

But when he was composing or performing,

He seemed to just get out of the way and the stuff came through from beyond.

And Jim seemed to do that just easily,

Just very easily.

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

And I would sing it and play it for you,

But that wouldn't be a pleasant experience.

So I will,

After I've heard Jim Scott,

It would not be the same.

Let me just read you the lyrics.

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

I would just assume let some time go by without worrying about battles never won.

I would just assume let a woman or a man live at peace on the land.

And before we judge the way they live their lives,

We'd be prepared to lend a hand.

There's a way and there's an ease to the 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'd be no heroes in war.

Though you win,

You lose.

All works out the same.

I prefer we find a compromise so nobody dies in a fight to divide the earth and sea and 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 past fashions delight without binding us to all in life that's vain.

I would just assume that passions be for love and not dominance,

A war for selfish gain.

It would be enough for me,

The fleeting beauty of the wild,

That I might be beguiled without boundaries or lies till I see with the eyes and wisdom of a child.

There's a way and there's an ease to the 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.

Most of our lives,

Most of our lives have struggles and concern and anguish and poignancies.

And I think sometimes we come into meditation retreats and hope that somehow meditation will fix our problems.

Or maybe at least shield us a little bit from them.

But what we soon discover is that meditation just makes us more sensitive without really fixing anything.

Buddhism starts from a much more radical proposition.

Perhaps there's nothing that needs to be fixed.

Perhaps there's nothing that needs to be fixed.

There's a love and a wisdom and a flow and an ease that is with us all the time.

It's with us all the time.

And if we can let it come through,

It will take care of things.

We don't have to.

It will take care of things.

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 usually think.

It's right here.

And there's a power,

A force and a flow to this life that we can lead if we just release and let it be that way.

The trick of course is to release and get out of the way.

Not so easy.

Not so easy.

Jim and Erica were standing in our kitchen one morning.

And Erica's a musician and she was telling Jim how much she just enjoyed his music.

And she was saying that she recognized how technically complicated and difficult his music was,

But he just played it and sang with his flow and his ease.

And he smiled kind of shyly and said,

Oh shucks,

I took private.

So those of you who don't recognize it,

It's an allusion to high school bands.

I played trombone in a high school band.

And what happens is you have a band director who gives new kids that come in just a few lessons on their instruments.

And both of you kind of stumble around and try to figure out how to do this stuff on your own.

But there's always a few kids who really stand out.

And they usually get the leads from the first chair and all that stuff.

And if you ask them,

How did you get so good?

They say,

Well,

I took private.

Meaning they were taking private lessons from teachers who gave them more discipline and structure.

So in the core of meditation is a similar paradox.

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

You'd think it would be so simple.

It takes a lot of discipline and sometimes some training.

So to get some help in this,

We turn to another artist,

Spiritual artist,

A member of the ancient Sakya clan,

The name of Siddhartha Gotama.

2,

500 years ago,

He left these very detailed step-by-step instructions about how to get out of our way.

And the essence of this guidance is another complete paradox.

In order to get out of the way,

We don't turn away,

But we turn towards.

We turn towards.

Whatever disturbances come our way,

Rather than turn away from,

We just open up to them and relax into them.

In meditation,

That's what our job is,

Is actually to turn towards,

Open up,

And relax into.

Again and again and again.

It's a practice and a discipline.

Yeah,

Over and over and over.

So here's another metaphor for turning towards.

I was born in Boston,

Massachusetts.

Boston lined in hospital.

I don't remember it very well.

And my family left Boston area and moved to Houston,

Texas when I was seven weeks old.

So all my early memories of home are in southern Texas.

And I remember on hot summer afternoons,

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 weird fins on the back of it.

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

Houston is 60 miles from Galveston.

Houston is 60 feet above sea level.

So that gives you some clues about the terrain.

It slats down at a rate of one foot per mile.

It's just about as flat as you could imagine.

And the Gulf of Mexico is not much steeper.

So when we went out into the Gulf,

We could go out 150,

200 feet,

Even as kids,

And only be up to our waist.

So when a big wave came along,

Trying to escape it was completely futile.

You know,

For one thing,

As we've all tried at times,

I'm sure,

Running through water is not very easy.

It's kind of exhausting.

On the shore,

It was so far away.

So if we tried to run from the waves,

It would inevitably just catch us and knock us flat.

So instead what we did,

When the waves would come in,

Is sort of plant your feet and brace yourself for it.

And that worked fine for small waves.

But big waves,

You know,

They outweighed us 20 to 1 or something like that.

So for big waves,

We just weren't strong enough to stand up to them.

And finally we learned this trick.

When the wave came,

You just leaned into it.

And if it's really,

Really big,

You're not only,

But you dove into it.

All you've done that at times is.

.

.

So the Buddha's first truth was dukkha.

You know,

Suffering happens.

Things change,

Relationships shift,

Everything falls apart,

We all die.

He didn't say life is suffering.

He gets mistranslated that way.

He said life has suffering.

Anyone here never suffered?

Yeah.

So life has suffering.

It's pretty universal.

So the Buddha was saying that life sends us waves.

Waves of peace,

Waves of suffering,

Waves of joy,

Waves of angst,

Waves of ease,

Waves of restlessness,

Waves of chatty mind,

Waves of relaxation.

Sometimes when we come to meditation,

We're trying to get away from the painful waves.

The other ones are okay,

But we're trying to get away from the painful waves.

We want just a little peace and quiet.

But running from the waves is futile.

It is simply futile.

It's like trying to stop the ocean.

If we try to run from them sooner or later,

They will catch up with us and knock us flat.

Some people say that Buddhism is a religion.

Other people call it a philosophy.

Some refer to it as a practice,

Others as a code of ethical behavior.

Buddhism has all of these things,

But I think at its core,

I think Buddhism is really an attitude.

Its core,

Buddhism,

Is this attitude of turning towards and relaxing into.

When we do that,

We gradually,

It takes a while sometimes to really believe it,

But as we learn that,

As scary and frothy as the waves may seem as they come towards us,

If we just relax into them,

So what happens?

The surf goes over top of us,

And there we are right in the very essence of the wave,

Which is water.

Not such a big deal.

And then there's a natural buoyancy that just brings us up to this little trough between the waves.

John Cavendish,

Then,

Has this.

What are you going to say to that?

Oh,

You can't stop the waves,

But we can learn to surf.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can also learn to,

Surfing is also learning to rest in the waves.

Yeah,

You can do all those things.

So if you had any thoughts,

Any illusions that meditation practice would protect you from the slings and arrows of misfortune,

You have my condolences.

I'm sorry for your loss.

As far as I've been able to discover,

There is really nothing that can protect us from the ocean of life.

It's where we live.

It's where we live.

But what meditation can do is give us a healthy and a more wholesome way to respond to the waves when they come towards us.

I did a Sashin many years ago with the Korean Zen master,

Sang Se-in.

And he has this wooden statue of a Buddha,

It's about,

I don't know,

14 to 15 inches high with a rounded bottom.

And he took a piece of elastic and he stapled it to this rounded bottom and he stapled the other end of the elastic to this big board that the whole thing sits on.

So he'll be sitting there and he's giving a Dhamma talk or an interview or something.

Every once in a while he'll reach over the back of his hand and just swap,

Swap this Buddha and it goes,

Bong,

Lies down flat.

And the elastic pulls it up and you're,

Boing.

Yeah,

Like a bobble head.

And then he says,

He says,

Nothing can protect you.

Nothing can protect you from what life brings along.

We all get whacked.

But he says,

Meditation is the elastic that brings us back more quickly.

Meditation gives us resilience.

Gives us a resilience.

So in this practice,

We escape nothing.

We escape nothing.

But hopefully it gives us a little more resilience,

Some way of coming back,

Some surfing tips.

So what I'd like to do is to pause here.

And I just,

I want to,

Just to make sure all of us really kind of have a feel for this,

You know,

What it's like in your life.

And ask you if you can remember a time when you found some resilience by simply relaxing into a difficulty.

It's not the most common response to stress.

The most common response to stress are fight,

You know,

Flight.

Very popular one is to try to control it.

Another one is to sort of thrash around,

You know,

Emotionally.

And another popular one is sort of collapse and defeat.

But this whole thing of turning towards and relaxing into is different from all of those.

It's not preparing for battle.

It's not running away.

It's not losing control.

It's not trying to gain control.

And it's not collapsing into defeat.

You know,

I actually first had a hint at this attitude many,

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

And one of my favorite authors was Frank Herbert,

Who wrote Dune.

Are you familiar with Dune?

And if you remember,

The lead character in there had this litany of fear.

So let me just read this litany of fear to you.

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.

The eye will remain.

Not quite Buddhist in the last line,

But you get the feel of it.

So what Frank Herbert was talking about,

Again,

Is sort of gently turning towards grounding,

Opening up,

And just being present and kind with whatever comes along.

And the flavor of how that appears in our lives will be a little bit different for each of us.

We have different conditioning and the different circumstances and all that.

So what I'm going to invite you to do is to turn to one or two people and I invite you to share some time when you have met some difficulty and found it helpful to just stop resisting and just ease into it.

So perhaps you learned something that you might not have found so easily if you had been prepared to fight or to get out of town.

So it could be a big difficulty,

A small difficulty,

I don't care.

It's just some place where it felt like you were embodied this attitude of just turning towards and relaxing into it.

What was it like?

What did it feel like?

What were the surprises?

What happened?

Okay.

So just find one or two people and share that a little bit.

I'll ring a bell when we're about halfway through the time.

So make sure each person has a chance to share.

So we're about halfway through the time or are you about halfway through?

Okay,

Well we'll take what time we need but we'll get on to other people.

Reviews

Wonderful talk. Resonated so much with me. Since learning about buddhism I always feel it's exactly the idea that resonated with me and my beliefs. This talk was simple, meaningful and emotional even. Thank you. 💞🙏

A charming talk with an unforgettable metaphor about facing & relaxing into life's waves. Because I used to visit Galveston Beach with my family, too, this reached a special place in my heart 💕 Thank you 🙏🏻

I love the analogy of leaning and diving into the waves. I live on the other side of the gulf so I have experienced the same thing. It's a perfect visualisation for leaning into difficulty.
Namaste 🙏

Listening "There's a way" by Jim Scott right now. Thank you very much. Love your talk, it represents a great support and inspiration when I listen it.

Doug is a wonderful teacher. This is a great talk.
Thank you😁🙏❤️

I much enjoyed this. I seem to always find something of a pearl.

Excellent insights thanks Doug

Appreciated the practical imagery of the waves and how we choose to respond. Also, the reminder that nothing can save us, that meditation does not spare us, but gives us an opportunity to turn towards.

Thank you. I found your imagery very on point. I look forward to part B.