Recording in progress. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. So one of the things I wanted to highlight is that the Heart Sutra begins, Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the Prajnaparamita, perceived that all five skandhas are empty and was saved from all suffering. And I thought, yeah, that's what we're trying to do here is to stop, to end the suffering that we create. You know, there's a situation. How can we meet it and not create more suffering for ourselves? How can we work with it and see through it rather than getting so caught by it? And because the causes and conditions that gave rise to a particular conversation are... Many and varied, they're not fixed, and that means they're workable.

[01:04]

They're actually workable, even though often it's a difficult conversation for us, particularly because we have fixed ideas, which can come from a lot of different places. I can't do this. That person is like that and won't change, et cetera. So being able to see that and question it can be very helpful. I really like that the authors of the book define, I think I said this last week, define a difficult conversation as any conversation that's difficult for you. Not for someone else, but for you. So that can be anything. And I think that in a way, the place where we start is to acknowledge that it is a difficult conversation for us. This is hard for me. So that's really starting where you are. This is hard. This isn't easy. And having some impulse to turn toward it rather than to turn away.

[02:07]

So let's take a moment and just sit and bring to mind or cast your mind around for a particular difficult conversation. A situation could be now or in the past. And what is it like for you when you feel your way into that conversation? What's your experience when you call that to mind, something that's alive now or something that is still kind of with you in some way from the past that you might like to explore? And you might try naming the sensations that arise or the feelings or just kind of noticing the various aspects of your experience.

[03:17]

Noticing what thoughts arise. So I'm wondering if anyone felt anything like fear arise or avoidance or anger or blame. And I'm just curious if you could, you know, just don't have to raise your hand. You can just say, what is something that you noticed about your experience? And we'll do in the present in the room first, and then we'll go to online. If you speak loudly, we won't have to do a microphone. And we'll see if we can. I'll repeat it because this is going to be quick. So I'll repeat it for the online folks. So you can just say it. Tightness in my upper chest.

[04:36]

Tightness in your upper chest. Definitely fear. Anger. Anger. Fear and annoyance. Frustration. Avoidance and tightening in chest and stomach. Grief. Questioning your own honesty. Doubt. Wanting to hide. Skeptical. Heat in the hands. Did anyone online like to share something that came up for you?

[05:39]

Trapped. Say it again. Trapped. Trapped. Alienation. Blindsided. Disbelief. Fear and doubt. Heat rising. I noticed a thought about me and how they were going to view me, like ego. Thoughts about how the person was going to view you.

[06:42]

Right. Thank you all very much. That's a lot of feelings. And at the same time, it feels very much alive. You know, like this is still, this is present here. So I'm gonna talk some, but then at the end of the class, you know, it's in the last half hour of the class, we'll have time to break into small groups and to talk more about this, to share about your experience, and then to have a general conversation in your small groups. I just wanted to mention, I started watching an interview between Gil Fransdahl and Mohsen Madawi, who was the Buddhist Columbia protester who was detained.

[07:43]

And if you haven't seen it, it's amazing. It just got sent out. It just happened recently, and you can find it on YouTube just by putting in Gil's name and Musa Madhavi. Because Gil, he's basically giving a way-seeking mind talk about how he came to Buddhism from the Palestinian refugee camps and ended up at Columbia and what his path was and how he was able, when he was being detained by ICE, to be free from fear, like literally free from fear, and what the practices were that he did. He's an amazing person. I just got to the part where he was saying there are three misperceptions about, especially if maybe among activists, but maybe just generally, like why you shouldn't empathize with people.

[08:44]

The first one is that if you empathize, you're excusing bad behavior. You're justifying it. And the second one is, well, he just points out, when you're acting from a place of fear, it's hard to create a loving world. It's like, why you shouldn't feel love or joy? Because you need to keep your anger up to keep fighting. He's like, well, it's a lot easier to create a loving world from a place of love and joy. And the third one, he talked about demonization and separation. You know, like I can't empathize with that. Because in a lot of ways, this whole process is about empathizing. It's about opening. It's about being curious. So there's two parts. The first part is about the three conversations, turning the light inward.

[09:49]

It's like a whole huge part of the book is just about looking at our own stuff and clearing a space from which to operate. So here's the mental formations, right? That's really what we're addressing here is mental formations. The ideas we have and how we perceive people. And there's one sense in which not all the prompts or suggestions are necessarily helpful, but it really widens the field on the things you could look at. And I did find some things that I had just never considered, and I'm like, I should look at that. That would be helpful. And then part two is about creating a learning conversation so you're both in a space to learn together and figuring out a purpose in if you have a purpose that makes sense, knowing when to raise the issue and when to let it go.

[10:52]

I thought, this is amazing. So we go through this whole process and you may end up deciding not to have a conversation with someone because you can see that it wouldn't work or it would make it worse or you just don't, yeah, for many reasons you could think that's not such a good idea. because someone couldn't engage with you in that way. So the three conversations, the reflection part, are the what happened conversation, who said or did what, who's right and who's to blame, and difficult conversations are very seldom about getting the facts right, even though we may think that we have different, we do have often different versions of what happened. But it's really about, it's not about the facts so much as what they mean to each of us.

[11:54]

You know, you didn't show up when you said that you would. We both agree that that happened. But the meaning that it had for the two of us is very different. And that's what can be very sticky. So it's not about what's true, but what's important. And the feelings conversations, so all these feelings that you were talking about, what do you do with them? How do you handle them? Do you share them? Do you hide them? And it's not about whether strong feelings will arise. If it's a difficult conversation, they're probably going to be there. It wouldn't be difficult. It would just be a routine conversation. So it's what do you do with them and how do you work with them? And then the identity conversation, what does this say about me and who I am? And when that comes up, it can feel vulnerable, there can be self-doubt, and it can make it in the moment particularly really hard to engage in a conversation because it can make us lose concentration or be able to really speak well.

[13:08]

I like that they call it an identity quake. You know, it's like being in an earthquake and it's very unstable, unsettled. So that section deals with how to find your ground, again, even in the middle of, you know, like really having doubt about, am I an okay person? So to say a little more about, let's see how we do it on time. Great. Any questions? Please, yes, Jeff. Is it implying that all the conversations include all three of those things or some one, two or three of them or those are three different? Great. Thank you for that question. So know that they've divided into these three different conversations and there may be one, two or all three of them involved. Yeah. But it's just kind of checking in, oh, do I have identity issues at stake in this?

[14:10]

Nope, not really. But the feelings? Yeah. Or any combination thereof. Any questions online? And again, please share any comments or questions you have as we go along, because that's when it's most alive. And... I'm sharing information with you because I figured not everyone had a chance to read that, so it will spark our conversation, but mostly it's about having rich conversations in here, hopefully. So the first what happened conversation, I already said, it's not so much about what is true, but what is important. And then the our intentions, and then getting out of blame. So often we get into arguments, arguing about who's right, who's the right point of view.

[15:19]

And we often think they're the problem, even when we may believe or want to believe that everyone has a right to their own opinion. I remember my mother saying, well, I guess everyone just has a right to their own opinion, don't they? Which managed to convey many things, none of which was what her words were saying. And it really got in there. It's like, well, I guess everyone else has a right to their own opinion, but nobody thinks that I do because no one's listening to me. So, yeah, hacks. My understanding of the three conversations is they're like at play, but not necessarily in our awareness. Yes. And that you just sort of modeled it with this example of something your mom said, and there's clearly an under.

[16:26]

And I wonder, yeah, about that process of discernment. Yeah, I think if we were aware of all these things that were going on, we would be dealing with them in a different way. Or we may kind of know that they're at play, but not have a sense of what to do with it. Like we may feel that our identity is at stake, but we don't want to look at that or label it. It's just like trying to manage it. Managing things is very different than... It's kind of like, yeah, getting away from something and feelings can be like that. On the other hand, we can act it out. We can argue and get into the, like, it's about the facts. It's like, you did this or you didn't do that. And when what's really going on is like, that hurt me so deeply, but I don't want to talk about being hurt. I don't want to acknowledge that, even to myself, much less to you. So, yeah, many layers of this.

[17:28]

So each of us makes the sense of our own story for ourselves, and it makes perfect sense. Like whatever story we have, whatever sense we have, whatever meaning it has for us, it makes sense based on our experience. And this is like pre-reflective story, not the one you come to before, but the one you're kind of operating from that makes it difficult. But the other person's story also makes perfect sense to them on some level. So rather than arguing about stories, which isn't so helpful, the suggestion is to look at a few things about how did we get to have these really different worldviews? such that this makes sense in your world.

[18:32]

It can be because we're born in different places or times or cultures and we have all these different experiences. So we learn from our families and we learn from our friends and learn whatever our education was, our work, whatever body we were born into, whatever culture. Very different kind of values in these different places. And I think we're reasonably well-equipped to think about those in certain cases, but we might not always remember them when our own feelings are high, like how somebody might be really different. And not that we would know how they are, but that we could be curious about how it is for them. We could acknowledge that we don't know completely how it is for them. There have been, well, more than a few times in my life when I've been at some event with someone and we talked about it later and it was hard to believe we'd ever been at the same thing because we had totally different experiences like that guy was so annoying and it's like what guy are you even talking about the band was amazing what band

[19:50]

It's not only that we have these different kind of frameworks, the mental formations through which things are filtered, but we're actively paying attention to very different things. Not consciously, and we just assume that that's how everybody does it because we have no idea what goes on for someone else until we really get in there and talk with them about that. It's like, how did you do that? Why are you thinking that? We also have access to different information than the other person does. In other words, we have access to a lot of our own information, but not the other person's. They're not talking so much about what's going on for them. So I was thinking about... You know, when you sail in a boat out to the midst of the ocean and no land is in sight, you know, Dogen's Genjo Koan, and you view the four directions, the ocean looks circular and it does not look any other way.

[20:53]

But the ocean is neither round nor square. Its features are infinite in variety. So until we're confronted with a difference, we'd have no idea that there could be one. This is just how human brains work. It's very efficient, kind of brings it down to the simplest thing. We'll just assimilate into what's there until we run up against a wall and it's like, this isn't behaving the same way. Now what? Also, the conclusions we come to can be really... colored by our own self-interest. You know, how does this make sense for me? You know, we tend not to disadvantage ourselves. I mean, we could be on the other side, though. Some people take a lot of blame and try to take care of everyone else.

[21:57]

But either one of those is kind of a default where you're going to go one way or the other. So again, the move is from certainty to curiosity. So... Rather than asking, how can they think that? You could wonder, what information do they have that I don't that leads them to think about this in this way? And another way you could shift that is by becoming curious about what don't you know about yourself? You know, there's the known knowns and the... unknown knowns, but there's the unknown unknowns, the things you don't even know you don't know. It's like, I wonder what's in that box. But probably a lot of your friends and people close to you have a good idea, or at least have some idea. They're like, yeah, I totally know that about you, but I just have this insight.

[23:01]

I was like, yeah, I know, I know. Good for you having the insight. So we don't have to choose one story. We can embrace both of them, both our story and the other person's story. And they call it the and stance, you know, my story and your story. And it doesn't have to be that one is right and the other is wrong, but these might be complementary. They might fit together. But at any rate, they both exist. And how can we hold them together in some way? And I was thinking, oh, the five blind men and the elephant. Each person has a piece of the picture. And perhaps together you can come to a more full picture of the situation. And then they bring up the question, what if I really am right and the other person's not?

[24:02]

Like, okay, fine, but that may not end the issue right there. because it may not be whether you're right or not, but the meaning that it has for the other person. There may be something else in there that's really important to the other person that you haven't addressed. But you can, yeah. Dina. I was just wondering, just curious, how much of this is like Western dualistic thinking? like somebody's got to be wrong, somebody's got to be right, it kind of feels like maybe this is also very cultural as well. So is that kind of the filter we're looking through here now? I mean, obviously, we're in a Western culture, but I just was curious about it. I was thinking about dualistic mind, and this is very much a part of this, right? Or am I misinterpreting? No, we tend to go to dualities. We tend to go to black or white to be able to discern things.

[25:06]

I've heard the definition, information is a difference that makes a difference. That was Gregory Bateson. And I really liked that. Because if it's a difference that doesn't make a difference, it's not information. It's not telling me something. It doesn't have a meaning or a use to me. You know, like Jeff does woodworking. I could look at a piece of wood and be like, I see that this one's darker than this one. It has no meaning. You know, I can see a difference. It has no meaning. Jeff would be like, oh, this one would be very good for this, and this one would not. And I'm sure we can all think of various things that, you know, other people are like really tuned into, like cooking or music or this or that. It's like, I can hear that, but I don't know what to do with it.

[26:10]

So we do this. And yes, and this is a very Western. This was written in the mid-90s. There were a number of books that came out at the same time about communication with slightly different titles. And this started out in international diplomacy and went to the corporate world and then eventually became a very popular book that sold well over a million copies. So I figured, okay. Other people found this helpful as well. But it does have this particular filter. But for me, it helped bridge, like, how do I practice with the Dharma? You know, here's these teachings, but how can I apply it beyond just what the Buddha taught, you know, about right speech? What are some very concrete things that I could do rather than focusing on, is it true? Is it helpful? Is it timely? Is it kind? Is it beneficial? to unpack it for my Western mind, who was alive and adult in the 90s.

[27:16]

Anything online? Nope. Great. There is one online, actually. Mary had her hand up. Go ahead, Mary. I don't know if this is directly... an answer to the cultural question, but I think the five blind men and the elephant raises, if you want to know what an elephant looks like, if they wanted to know what an elephant actually looked like, in order to do that, they would have to make the assumption that they were all right. Each one of them had a piece of the truth. rather than that there was a contest between them about which one of them was right. And to have the idea that there was some bigger picture that you only had a piece of. I don't know how Western that is or Eastern, but I mean, I think that's the only way that they would ever figure out what an elephant was.

[28:26]

Yes. I'll acknowledge that all of them had a piece of the truth. Yes. I don't know if you could hear that, but she was talking about the five blind men and the elephant, and there would have to be some way that they would be able to understand that they weren't just holding on to one piece to be able to put this all together, and maybe just by feeling their way around the entire elephant. You know, be like, oh, oh, I see why you're calling it a rope now. That makes sense. And then, you know, going around and just... Exploring it, feeling it, not just being stuck in their one view. And then the next section of this is disentangling intention from impact. We tend to be very concerned with what people's intentions are, and we are in this culture.

[29:27]

And I think this... This is an evolution in humanity as far as I understand because law used to be just like what happened you were punished for. Like if you had any cause in someone's death, that was murder and whatever would happen. But there was no justification. It wasn't like there wasn't a difference between murder and homicide or something or accidental death. So the question of intention is really important in the courts. And I think it's really important to all of us because we're very aware of intentions. We're a pair of our own, and we tend to project onto other people. But the way that we project onto other people is entirely self-centered because if I'm hurt, then you had a bad intention, and I know that because I'm hurting. If you hadn't had a bad intention, I would not be hurting.

[30:30]

if you tell me that you're hurt by me, I know that I did not have a bad intention, so you're not hurting. And I think many of us have learned that that particular move does not work very well, especially if that's where you're leading with is like, yeah, no. And maybe that can come up, but that's not going to be the first thing. You know, it's like first you have to hear, Oh, I hear that you're hurt. Okay. And in terms of intentions, there's two mistakes that we... Well, I just said this. No, this is a little bit different, actually. Our assumptions about intentions are often wrong just because we don't know. And to assume that someone has bad intentions can create defensiveness, and we can start thinking someone has bad character, not just a bad intention in this instance.

[31:40]

And if we start thinking that someone has a bad character, then it makes it very hard to actually connect with them, because it tends to change our relation with them. We start to lose trust and faith, and that can have a whole cascading effect. And these questions Jeff? Maybe we'll get to this later, but what if someone has shown that they are not necessarily worthy of trust? Well, that's another matter. Yes, that can definitely happen. We're watching that happen in real time these days. So that's not to say that everyone has good intention, but we often assume that and kind of roll with it when we feel hurt or betrayed and And don't check it out. So there's an old Chinese story about a farmer who lost something of value. And he decided that the boy on the next farm had stolen it.

[32:45]

And he watched the boy very carefully. And he thought that boy looks like a thief. He walks like a thief. He acts like a thief. And a little while later, he found the object again. And the boy went back to looking like an ordinary boy. So we have these filters. And to become aware that we have filters, positive and negative. My friend introduces me to their best friend. And I'm like, I am so predisposed to like you. Even if they may not be trustworthy. And that's different than if, in that story, if... the man had caught the boy stealing 14 times before. Exactly. Exactly. And, yeah, if you're watching a pattern happen or you have evidence, you know, that's something else.

[33:47]

This is unfounded assumptions or not jumping to conclusions too quickly. Do you have your hand up, Hex? I did, and I'm trying to figure out if it might relate even to what Jeff brought up. But I was going to say, I was really struck by the way that even in our colloquial speech and little, you know, someone cuts us off, we'll say, what's your problem? And it's sort of like, in a way of like, I don't need to think about what's going on for you. But actually we're saying, oh, there's probably something going on for this person. And it's a really interesting, like, dual, like... We kind of do know, and yet we, I think that's kind of where the book really wants us to be honest with ourselves. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Yeah, and the other one is, the second mistake is, your good intentions don't sanitize bad intention.

[34:52]

I'm sorry, bad impact. Like, just because you had good intentions doesn't mean that you didn't hurt someone. And it can be hard to look at that. But being able to sit with it and receive it is very helpful for actually having a conversation rather than just shutting it down. And, of course, this happens between groups, too, which we have evidence of currently. So avoiding these two mistakes. disentangle impact from intent. Just consider them separately and then look at how they might interweave, but don't just mush them together. And in terms of the second one about being defensive, to listen for feelings and actually reflect on your own intentions. And sometimes there can be, you know, it's like...

[35:54]

There's been times when I did mostly okay, but there was a piece in there that I just didn't want to look at about my intention. It was like it didn't go terribly, but there was a place where it didn't quite feel upright. And then take just a few more minutes. The next one is about letting go of blame and mapping the contribution system. So having two stories. two different people's stories with three stories. So each person has their three stories, the three conversations, to explore what each person's contribution is. And it's not like there's no idea that it's going to be an equal contribution. It's 50-50. It could be any proportion. It could be 95-5%. But just looking, how did you contribute to this? What was something about how you were or what you did or what you said a part of this whole picture, intentional or otherwise?

[37:04]

And it helps to differentiate blame from contribution. And it says blame is about judging and it looks backward. What happened back there? Contribution is about understanding and looks forward. What can we look forward? What can we do looking forward? And contribution is joint and interactive. So rather than being in your separate camps, it's like how do you actually... It is having the communication. Yeah. So let's break into small groups and we'll be in groups of... Four, basically, or three. How many? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. So I guess we'll have four, three, and three in here. And online, that will happen due to the magic of Zoom.

[38:14]

And we'll have, I'll say all this first, then I'll give you the prompt. So each person will have a turn to speak. You'll have three minutes each to speak, to go around. And then there will be... So that'll be a total of 12 minutes. If you're in a group with three, you can do four minutes each. If you're in a group with four, you can do three minutes each. So that'll be 12 minutes. No, that's... Yeah, that's 12 minutes. And then we'll have eight minutes after that. So I'll have a total of 20 minutes to just have an open conversation about what came up for you. And the prompt is that you can use the... the situation that you considered at the beginning, or you can choose a different one if that's not something that you want to share anything about. And you can talk about that in whatever way you wish to that feels okay to you. But to share what feels alive or tender or that you're curious about or...

[39:19]

just want to surface. This could be something that you want to work on going forward or just to consider something that happened in the past more deeply and let go of it. So is that clear? Are there any questions? Okay. So if you break people up into small groups online, and I think you have to do something to make the sound proper, so it doesn't. Okay, they're joining breakout rooms now. Great. And if you would all just, so there'll be three groups in here, and you can just move to different areas of the Zendo. They'll time themselves on here, and I will, oh. I guess if you could time yourselves, that would be good, because some will be three, and some will be fours. Thanks for asking. And I'm going to go around and kind of listen in a little bit to the groups.

[40:26]

You shouldn't have felt that, but then I started to feel like I'm not going to hurt you. Then I got through it, and then they started to calm down a little bit, and then I got to be like, so I know I hurt you, and I'm not like, I'm not a follower of anything, but we don't know why I hurt you. That was amazing, but, like, we are, like, are really, like, survived that. It's very strange.

[47:29]

Thank you. Yeah, there are juicy stories underneath. Yeah.

[50:38]

Yeah. Wait a minute. And then acknowledging that, and it doesn't have to be like on Thursday.

[52:55]

word yet In my story, definitely a mutual acknowledgement that there is a something worth talking about. And, you know, We just laid out the ground and we'll call each other out.

[54:39]

They'll be like, why don't we go home? Or be like, Yeah. Yeah.

[56:16]

Which works. I think that's like. But he's missing. and I think about it is I've had conversations with certain people where I don't work there.

[57:44]

And so even if I'm like trying to be like measure and be like this really work and I don't play a reasoning, I'm not like anything. And they're like, yeah, you know, that's great. And I, those are, that's, those are things like, I'm angry, but I'm trying to not let my anger get done in propositions, but then I don't. Even the sum of my feelings isn't. I'll go.

[58:49]

Thank you. I don't think I'm open up like, okay, now I know what it is, so I can't. each of my friends.

[60:37]

Yeah, I think it's the best people who I haven't already seen. I haven't been a designated project. The Zendo is muted.

[61:55]

We can't hear Zen. Can you hear me now? Yes, thank you. Great. . Okay, so we're just about at time, but does anyone have anything pressing that they would like to share that's alive for you now, either online or in the room? I listened just a little bit to each of your conversations in here, and it seemed really rich and wide-ranging in terms of the kind of difficult conversations that people were bringing up.

[63:05]

Anything online? It's so often this way. The liveness is in the group and it's not like reporting back. Cool. Oh, Judy. Thank you, Linda Roshi. In our group, one of the things that was very touching to me is that we didn't seem to have any grand conclusions to events that either happened a while ago or recently. There seemed to be commonality both happening and expressed that the shared vulnerability and the shared witnessing is very healing. And that feels very encouraging considering how many truly difficult situations are going on in so many places right now. Yeah. Thank you. Could you all hear her? Excellent. Julianne.

[64:07]

Even though I wasn't having the direct conversation, just talking about the conversation was difficult. So one person here shared that it was difficult just to talk about the difficult conversation, even though it wasn't happening in the moment, but just to speak about it was hard. Did it feel helpful at all? Yeah, okay. Excellent. Also true for hacks, yeah. Okay. It's a conversation that for me, it's an issue that's going on in the present place. It was a clarification about whether it was an ongoing issue or has been resolved or has been addressed. And Libby.

[65:15]

Thank you. One of the things that came up in our group and that I am wondering if will be touched on is power differential between the conversant in a conflict situation. Yes, that's a wonderful thing to bring up, and I'll talk about it in a later one. That is not really covered in this book, but it was something that... I'm familiar with from working on the whole thing about difficult conversations at San Francisco Zen Center, and definitely the power differential and the roles was a big thing to consider, especially if there's mediation or whatever going on, and especially if there's wrongdoing or accusations of wrongdoing in there, how to bring that up. So thank you for that. I'll talk about that in a subsequent class. Okay, so we'll chant.

[66:21]

Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Thank you all very much. Have a good evening. Thank you. Good evening. Nice to see you all. Thank you. Nice to see you too, Peter. Thank you. Take care, everyone.

[67:09]

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