Is That So: A Teaching Story On Meeting Hostility

This talk is based on the well known Zen story of Hakuin and how to meet conflict, disagreement or accusations. We all have habit patterns that we have consciously or unconsciously have put our trust in. This talk supports listeners to look at where we put our trust and perhaps questions if these are wholesome and beneficial for us.

Transcript

So I'd like to begin today with a well-known and often told Zen story that I'd like to share with you.

The parents of a village girl stormed into the hut of an aging monk named Hakuin and they kind of thrust into his arms their daughter's newborn child and they blamed him for fathering the baby,

Kind of mocking his esteemed reputation and calling him a dirty old man.

And so he's awkwardly cradling this squalling baby and Hakuin makes a deep bow and responds with equanimity.

Is that so?

Is what he said.

Is that so?

And later that night,

You know,

The wind is kind of rattling the hut,

Penetrating the hut and he's holding the baby against his body to warm the baby and trying to offer her protection.

Like nourishing and nurturing this child as a daughter.

He stitched clothes from his own robes and shared his meager meals of broth and rice with her,

Later schooling her in poetry and brush painting and the wisdom of the Dharma.

And when the true father is revealed,

The girl's parents appear once again at Hakuin's hut and this time it's to claim the child is their own and take her away.

And they praise Hakuin for his generosity,

Ask for forgiveness for tarnishing his name,

His image as a monk and instead name him a great benefactor.

And as he kind of lets the beloved child go to these people,

He makes a deep bow and again with equanimity responds.

Is that so?

So isn't that something?

This is what I'd like to share and talk about a bit.

What an aspiration to be able to handle accusations in this way,

You know,

Being called a dirty old man and then later a great benefactor.

Both he met with no attachment to those identities that were kind of thrust upon him.

You know,

In his world,

Like the world that he knew was completely overturned and then he was delivered these quite opposing identities.

What a feat to hold steady,

To be unshakable.

I look at myself and,

You know,

I'm pulled by my enthusiasm or my hurt or the thirst for validation.

To have such freedom from the addiction to identity,

It does not come easy.

What I've learned,

However,

Is to not trust my neurotic mind.

Not that any of you have a neurotic mind,

Of course,

But there are people who are neurotic minds,

And they are but there are people who have minds that are a little bit out of control,

And they're spinning stories.

There's a strong preoccupation,

Fantasies,

And a lot of repetition,

You know,

Kind of ruminating over the same thing over and over again.

And what I've noticed in my mind is the more time I spend caught in spinning in my thoughts and my ideas,

The more I do it,

It's kind of like something I trust doing.

You know,

I think it's safe to say that it's all of us in some way.

We think that we can think our way think our way out of all these situations in our life.

All this thinking is what I'm supposed to do in order to be safe or in order to find my way in life.

Thinking is where the solution is going to come from.

All my life's problems,

If I just think about them some more,

Then I'll find the solution.

And if I didn't find the solution today,

Then I'll just pick it up again tomorrow and keep trying and keep thinking and thinking and thinking.

I mean,

I've done this in my life,

Trying to solve things or figure out problems and conflicts.

And most of those times,

The things I'm ruminating about,

It has this anticipatory outcome,

Like something is going to have to happen at the end of this,

Or all the thoughts were contingent on certain things happening.

And so then if the thing doesn't happen,

Then it's like,

Wow,

Look at that.

You know,

All the time you spent planning for a future that never came,

Planning for something that didn't happen.

And slowly I've learned to not trust this neurotic mind.

I learned that that's not where my trust goes.

My body is very trustworthy.

The body lets me know what's going on,

Like right in the moment.

The body is always just right in the moment,

And it knows.

It provides so much more information than the spinning mind does.

I learned to trust,

Trust the mindfulness itself.

It's,

I think,

One of the,

One of the things I have the greatest trust in,

Mindfulness and attention.

I trust letting go,

But I can't always do that.

But I can always practice mindfulness.

I can always stop and pay attention.

I can always notice,

Oh,

You know,

What's happening now?

I can always drop into the body and say,

So now what's going on here?

What's happening now?

And feel it.

I've seen this over and over again,

Where my mind has absolutely no solution,

And I don't know what to say or do,

But I could get interested in what's happening in my body and stay present to the sensations and the feelings that are arising.

And noticing the pull to do something so as not to feel the sensations arising.

Sometimes what we feel in the body is so uncomfortable,

So uncomfortable to feel that we pull away from the experience,

You know,

Kind of leaning into,

Let me do something so I don't have to feel this.

But if I stay present and mindful,

Something opens up,

You know,

It changes.

There have been times when I've been in situations,

Not on the scale of Hakuin and the story that I told,

But where I've been entangled in somebody else's gossip,

Gossip,

And my whole body wants to respond immediately and kind of set the record straight,

You know.

But I choose to practice like Hakuin and not to do anything with what I'm hearing,

You know.

I just,

So what I,

What I've done in this situation is I went into the body,

Into my body,

And whenever I wanted to send a nasty response via email or text,

I went into the body and then I experienced,

You know,

The hot rage of anger in my chest,

The tightness that was there also.

So just that alone,

Those sensations were enough that I didn't need any more evidence that my mind was not clear and that I couldn't do anything until I saw more clearly.

What needed to happen was I needed to be compassionate with myself because I'm still training to meet difficulty with the grace of equanimity with this,

This phrase,

You know,

Is that so?

So I have this amazing trust now,

You know,

In staying aware and listening to my body,

But many,

Many people don't trust their bodies or they,

They simply haven't been trained to listen to it.

You know,

Society,

Our culture has sent the message that there's something wrong with our body.

The culture says that the body isn't valued in some way.

You know,

It's not firm enough.

It's kind of crepey.

It's soft in places that are supposed to be hard,

You know,

All these cultural filters that I'm not meeting.

And we get this message from society and our families that somehow it's not enough.

It's not enough just to be alive and breathing and attentive to what this world is about.

We have to fix ourselves.

We have to fix the world.

So this is what we trust.

We trust fixing.

And if you like being a fixer,

Well,

You're in a good place,

You know,

Being born a human being because there's never going to be an end to things needing fixing.

Sometimes we put our trust into escaping,

You know,

Finding an epic movie or a series on the television that we can get captivated in so that we don't have to feel ourselves.

We trust being distracted.

When I came back from retreat,

The level of distraction was the first thing that I noticed.

Distraction is truly the opium of the masses.

Some people put their trust in blaming others.

You know,

We see this right now,

In particular on the political stage.

If I can just blame someone out there,

Then I'll feel better.

Because then I don't have to be present for myself.

So from this perspective that I'm offering today,

You might ask yourself,

Where have I put my trust that's not really working?

Where have I put my trust that's not really working?

So I hope these words that I offer encourage you to do some reflection,

Some thinking about this topic of what you trust and what's not wise to trust.

And my intention is that this reflection may help you be more settled and calmer,

More resilient as we meet the challenges of this life.

So thank you for your kind attention.

Reviews

Many thanks for sharing this. Wishing you an enjoyable day 🌟