So Tuesday as a way of introducing our topic this week of courage I spoke of discouragement and at the end of the talk I concluded by speaking a little bit about the content of our experience.
The feeling of discouragement that arises in us.
That experience isn't as important as how we relate to it.
To switch from the experience to how we relate to the experience that's that's what matters.
And many of us are experience oriented.
We want an experience that we can claim as our own.
But the real freedom of this practice comes from learning how to hold any experience that arises lightly.
So courage I love this description by the poet Diana Ackerman who wrote,
One can live at a low flame.
Most people do.
For some life is an exercise in moderation.
Best China saved for special occasions.
But given something like death.
What does it matter?
If one looks foolish now and then or tries too hard or cares too deeply.
So think of a time in your life when you've given your full heart to something.
When you gave yourself fully and how that felt.
That energy that wholehearted energy is really courage.
We move beyond the body of fear and give ourselves fully in the midst of insecurity.
It's like saying yes to this moment to this person to this circumstance as fully and as wisely as we can.
There's a real courage and being willing to practice with what we're given.
You know we all have some opportunity to work with our difficulties to what has been given and then to relate to our experience differently.
This is from the Zen teacher Carl Fried Durkheim who wrote,
The person who is truly on the way when they fall upon hard times in the world will not as a consequence turn to those friends who offer them refuge and comfort and encourage their old self to survive.
Rather they will seek out someone who will faithfully help them to risk themselves so that they may endure the difficulties and pass courageously through them.
Only to the extent that a person exposes themselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible arise within them.
In this lies the dignity of daring.
That last line,
Only to the extent that a person exposes themselves over and over again to annihilation can that which is indestructible arise within them.
In this lies the dignity of daring.
There's a lot there.
It's good.
So Monday we honored the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
And he was an exemplar of courage.
What a human being.
It takes a lot of courage to bring forth a vision that so many people are not quite able to see.
You know,
Keep questioning are we living in a nation where people are not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
Like are we living in that nation yet?
And it takes courage to allow that vision to incubate into the depths of our soul.
There's a story that I heard around the time of the civil rights movement.
This practitioner,
A white civil rights worker,
She had gone down to the south and she and her friends stood on a street corner doing nonviolent protest against racism down there.
And at some point a pickup truck came by with a bunch of white men who were opposed to them standing there.
And these white men they jumped out of their pickup truck and started to beat them up with their fists.
And the next day she and a hundred of her friends went back to the same place and protested again.
And the same pickup truck came with the same men and they jumped out and they beat them up again.
Third day she said they jumped out.
There they were again the same men and there was this man who came and was standing over her and he had his fist like poised to strike her again.
And he looked down into her eyes and they looked at each other.
They saw each other and he stopped.
And he said,
What in the world are you doing?
And that after that day,
That day there was no more beating up.
That was the day that the beginning of a dialogue,
A conversation began.
And I don't know the outcome of that,
What followed up,
But the idea of being able to change someone who is violent and hateful through our willingness to be present for it and to protest it,
That takes courage to be present for it.
So what becomes clear when we sit and we meditate is that we are the people that refrain from causing harm.
And to have confidence in that,
To validate that's where strength resides,
That's where personal power resides.
This is what becomes clear when we sit and meditate.
When we start awakening to our inner life,
The heart becomes more and more clear about what's going on and we start to really feel the impact of things like hostility.
And maybe we start to feel like it's not worth it.
Hostility isn't worth it.
We shouldn't act from this.
There's a better place to come from.
So to allow our humanity,
Allow these emotions of discouragement,
Of fear and courage to come and to learn not to resist any of them,
Not to hold on to them,
Not to cling to them or get involved in like the sort of the discursive commentary that often follows,
The judgment about it.
Our practice is the simplicity of just letting it flow.
It's one of the deepest Dharma lessons that we can learn.
Letting it flow.
So thank you for your kind attention this morning and this week on the practice of courage.
