So welcome,
Everybody.
It's Judy.
This is Wake Up Call 544.
I just wanted to name that if you would like to be on screen.
That would be lovely.
I love seeing you.
And I know that not everybody wants to be on screen and that there's lots of reasons for that.
So just an invitation.
I would love to see you.
So what a week.
Our grandkids called.
They were in southern England,
So they saw the eclipse.
Up here at Tahoe,
I'm at Tahoe,
We're surrounded by fires.
They're not closing in,
But there's fires ringing the lake in all the counties.
Tornadoes and floods and war and then our elections.
So I hope you're safe.
I hope you're engaged with the election.
And I hope that if you're seeing something amazing,
That there's some joy or maybe some awe.
So we're on chapter 12 of the Dhammapada and Gilfransdale and Thomas Byram name it One Self and Your Self,
Respectively,
And Sri Ma names it Ego.
So get to that in a minute why.
If you remember last week,
Chapter 11 was about old age,
But what it was really about was not wasting time,
Right?
Being diligent about practice until the very end,
Until our last breath.
Remember,
Everything that has been done is always nothing compared to what remains to be done.
Right.
And Shreema offered another line,
Which I didn't share,
Which is do not look behind,
Look ahead,
Always ahead and go forward.
So chapter 11 about not wasting time,
Maybe it's about diligence,
About not being lazy or deterred or complacent about practice.
And then chapter 12 makes sense as either oneself or ego.
So Byram and Ram Dass,
Their first few verses,
And I'm paraphrasing as usual,
Or stringing some lines together.
Love yourself and watch today,
Tomorrow,
Always.
First establish yourself in the way,
Then teach,
And so defeat sorrow.
To straighten the crooked,
You must first do a harder thing,
Straighten yourself.
Willful you have fed your own mischief.
By your own folly you will be brought low as your worst enemy wishes.
Dhammapada is kind of,
Yeah,
Pretty intense.
How hard is it to serve yourself?
How easy to lose yourself in mischief and folly?
But virtue is also yours and purity.
Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.
So I really love this.
And what I'm understanding is we have work to do always until the end.
So that's chapter 11.
And then what is the work?
And for each of us,
It's different.
So maybe we frame our work as learning to stabilize our attention.
For me,
That was the first task,
To know that that was possible.
And then to do that work,
Which is ongoing.
I'll be doing that my whole life.
Just awash with thought,
It's swept away by emotion,
Or it's distracted by a completely unverifiable past,
Or it's seduced by an imaginary future that will never come to be.
So it takes me time and I mean like sit down on the cushion time to remember that I've just sat down to meditate and not to ruminate.
And it takes a minute or a few minutes and then to find the breath.
And then to locate the body and the breath in the body.
And remember what's next and then stabilize the mind.
And I can say that I get there more quickly,
More nimbly,
Maybe more reliably than I used to.
And sometimes it's even automatic.
It's a default mode,
But it's worked.
In the good sense.
Or maybe we frame our work as being with what is without reactivity.
Still working on that as well myself.
Also still working with the three poisons,
Greed,
Hatred,
And delusion,
Working on preventing them from arising and abandoning them when they do arise.
So they,
Well,
Are really,
So I don't cause harm or don't cause so much harm.
Also still working on cultivating the Brahmaviharas and the Paramitas,
Love and compassion and joy and equanimity and generosity and patience and so on,
Right?
So chapter 12 is this reminder that not only is this lifelong work,
But no one can do it for us,
And if we're not diligent,
Then these unwholesome states of mind and heart,
Which are leftover from work we still have left to do,
Are gonna end up infiltrating,
Right?
They infiltrate our words and they infiltrate our actions.
And then this chapter says,
You know,
We have to do our own work,
We have to straighten ourselves,
And then teach.
Which the chapter names as the harder thing to straighten ourselves.
And this is where I think Sri Ma's take on the chapter makes sense and calling it ego.
Because I mean,
I don't know about you,
But it's not so hard for me to tell myself that I've done that piece of work.
I've conquered this,
Or I've reduced it sufficiently,
Or I've cultivated that or cultivated it well enough.
And that's the ego to which Shreema is referring,
The part of ourselves that imagines that we're separate from everyone else.
We're doing our own work.
We're getting somewhere.
And in fact,
In fact.
Uh we're doing what we can in each moment and there's always plenty left to do including letting go of any sense of um sort of individual accomplishment apart from the truth that we're all in this together and that really that all boats rise together,
Right?
And this is what I think the chapter means when it says,
First establish yourself in the way,
Then teach and so defeat sorrow,
Because I don't think it means teach necessarily as in,
You know,
Get in front of a blackboard or a PowerPoint or a screen.
I think it means teach by living example.
You know,
Teach presence by being present for everyone.
Even the people that we don't feel that we have time for,
Or we don't want to be bothered with,
Or we don't want to have anything to do with.
So teach the abandonment of unwholesome states by doing that work ourselves.
And working over a lifetime with the big buckets.
Of greed,
Hatred,
And delusion,
But also with the you know,
The small fish and all the way down to the minnows,
You know,
Greed,
But also wanting just a little bit more,
As Nelson Rockefeller said,
Or hatred,
But also irritation,
Which is certainly human,
But it can be really impactful.
Or delusion but also the slight tendency to turn away from the truth of interconnection.
Yes,
There's interconnection but not with that person.
And teach the cultivation of wholesome states by practicing love and practicing compassion for everybody and engaging in joyful effort even when the task is tedious.
I practice this a lot with the dishes.
I was just like,
Oh,
Wait a minute,
This is what I'm doing right now,
And putting joyful effort into it.
And then having patience with ourselves and with everyone else,
Kind of no human left out.
So I think that for me,
This and many other things too,
Is establishing ourselves in the way and then teaching.
And so to do this,
This overarching to discover our work and then with all our heart to give ourselves to it.
To do this,
Shreema says is to let go of egoism,
To let go of I,
Me,
Mine,
Not to the extent that we can't do the work of being powerful advocates or any work that we have,
But let go to the extent that we see that any objections that arise to simply opening our fists and clenching our fists and opening our hearts are probably based on that misunderstanding that we're separate.
And probably based in forgetting the truth,
Which is that we're all in this together.
And we belong to one another.
Okay,
So also I'm not saying I can do this.
So,
You know,
Don't take any of this as right for you,
But do try it out.
You know,
Take what resonates and be intentional about trying it out and,
You know,
See what happens when you substitute love for impatience or generosity for ambition.
See what happens when you focus on the question,
How can I help?
And discriminate a little less about who's worthy of the inquiry,
You know,
As long as they're not causing harm.
And then see what happens when you discover your work.
And then with all your heart,
Give yourself to it.
Okay,
So let's sit.
So find a.
.
.
Your posture for this sit.
What will best support you in settling in.
And then make that invitation to yourself to settle in.
Feeling the body sitting or standing or walking or lying down.
And locating the breath in the body,
Just the body breathing.
Just notice the sensation of breathing.
And just give yourself a few minutes to stabilize the attention,
Settle the body.
Settle the mind.
And then begin to very gently drop in the inquiry.
What is my work right now?
What is my work right now?
Something,
Some bite-sized piece.
What can I give my heart to?
And really lifting that up.
That piece of work.
As something beautiful to point towards.
And if you get lost in the inquiry or discursive thinking,
You can just come back to the breath,
Breath in the body.
Discover your work,
The work of this moment of your life.
And then with all your heart.
Give yourself to it.
Thanks everyone for being on the wake up call.
It was really nice to see you.
