Thanks. Wiser Wiseacre. And thank you Mel. And thank you Liz. And thank you Friends. And Bodhisattvas. Is this on? It's on. Good. Okay. Because so many of us have been practicing together for eons, if not longer. So today I'd like to talk about something that we often have to deal with and think about in our lives, and that is when something is wrong. I could probably give about a 45 second lecture on this, which is basically that when something is wrong, there's usually a vast amount of dukkha involved.

[01:24]

Dukkha meaning suffering. And that our job is to give our lives and the situation a sense of Sukkatha, wholesome, down-to-earth process. And so that's the lecture. Thank you very much. So, when something is wrong, and that's about 95,000 times a day, whether it's a tiny little bit wrong or a lot wrong, often it is a very complicated experience fairly quickly.

[02:25]

If we really look at the situation, it becomes complicated when we realize that the feeling of something being wrong isn't just about what's out there. So when something is wrong, when something goes wrong, or when we're confronted with something that feels wrong to us, we have to turn the arrow towards circumstances, yes, but also towards ourselves. That's where skill is involved. Because our tendency, when something feels wrong, is to think that something is wrong. So, when something is wrong, is a kind of shorthand for all the ways in which things can feel wrong, or feel requited or unsatisfying or at cross-purposes to us in one way or another.

[03:37]

I hope this is familiar to you and that it's not just me. So I want to talk a little bit about the experience of something being wrong. And often when we feel that something is wrong, let's say Oh, I don't know. A dog chased our dog in the park, which is supposed to be a pleasant place to be. And why do they let vicious dogs simply run around to chase other more defenseless dogs? And there should be something said or done about that. So that is a fairly typical mental event, or let's say someone cuts across our driving path on the freeway so that they can get to their exit, but they don't give us enough time to really respond in a graceful way.

[04:42]

Or we buy an expensive treat from the store and then someone moves our shopping bag or hits against us and it gets smeared on the outside of the container. I mean, things like this happen all the time and they're not what we expect or want. Or even more subtly, we're moving right along and it's a beautiful day, but it's scarily beautiful because it hasn't rained in so long, or because some place deep inside in our body we can feel the way the environment is changing at a subliminal level. So, so many things aren't perfect all the time.

[05:48]

We can say that one thing after another is imperfect, and so what do we do? So, before walking up these steps, I was in Lori Sanaki's office, and on her wall is a very good question, �How can we live wholeheartedly in challenging times?� So, she has her altar, and then There's this banner that she's printed for herself. How can we live wholeheartedly in challenging times? And then if you look at her altar, and I hope it's okay to talk about this, there's a list of lay bodhisattvas on her altar and pictures of her family close by. And I was thinking, isn't that a beautiful expression

[06:53]

of this issue and how we can work with it. Because the first thing is to state the question in a way that says what we really want as well as what the situation appears to be. To remind ourselves of our allies and our relationships and what sustains us. as we move into a question like this. Seeing that altar reminded me of the wisdom of practice and the everyday ways in which we can help ourselves in a challenging situation, no matter what it is. Let's pick a challenge. Anybody have a challenge?

[07:54]

It doesn't have to be your personal challenge, but a challenge you've heard of today. Just any one random challenge that someone wants to mention about anything. Are there any? Yeah? Someone's partner believing the partner is unfaithful when the partner has not been unfaithful. Okay, so false accusation or false belief of infidelity. So, and I assume that the partner who hasn't been unfaithful finds out because the partner who thinks that they've been unfaithful is acting different. Or has accused them overtly. So, one of the first things that happens in a situation like that, where an accusation has occurred that is not correct, doesn't apply to behavior, is that we receive the accusation and immediately the worldview gets breached.

[09:09]

Okay? So something happens that's outside of what we expected or wanted and our sense of normal life and process is interrupted. My sister was telling me about writing screenplays and screenplays are not interesting when A happens and then B happens and then C happens. The point is to develop a dramatic interruption right away. But when it happens to us, a dramatic interruption, it's not that interesting. Or it's too interesting, but it's invasive. And so there are two things that can happen in that situation. One is that our own assumptions and our own defenses come into play. And another one is that we still have to live in the world of the people who haven't had

[10:11]

this horrible interruption in their experience who are privileged in relation to us. So one thing is that the non-challenged set limits or there's a relationship between the non-challenged and the challenged person in what can be expressed. So for instance, let's say you're living with false accusation and it's hanging over you like a pall and you're erupting in random emotional outbursts, whether it's crying and not being able to believe that that's being said of you, or whether it's anger at that having been said or believed of you, or devastation of various sorts. And everybody else seems to be proceeding just as if this hasn't happened. So one thing is that when a challenge arises the world is still going on, and people still have expectations that you will proceed as if normal, and have expectations that if you don't proceed as if normal, that the interruption in your life will only last for a certain amount of time.

[11:33]

They'll have standards for how cheerful you need to be during that situation. and how long they're willing to tolerate your lack of cheer. So that's one thing that occurs. And so I actually want to read a little section on what this book is called, What Psychotherapists Should Know About Visibility. And it's by Rhoda Olkin, a psychotherapist who practices from her chair. And she talks about a lot of the assumptions that happen in situations of physical or mental privilege. And I think these assumptions are just as good if you're talking about the sudden devastation, sudden devastation to your whole life and your main relationship. That is a kind of a social wound that happens or a relationship wound that happens. And from that moment, you have an actual disability like a third of your

[12:38]

a third to 99% of your consciousness is there just to function. That's one of the first things that happens. It's a wound, and so the body begins to go into shock mode and into healing mode, and that process takes a lot of your attention. So that's one of the first things that happens. This therapist says, the able-bodied community imposes restrictions on the behaviors and affect of people with disabilities. These restrictions include the encouragement of pluckiness, the prohibition of anger, and the presumption of mourning. And in addition, the chapter that she's doing, she's talking about the disability experience, affect, and everyday experiences.

[13:44]

She says, in addition, this chapter discusses the effects of having a disability on one's privacy and personal power and control. So we should know that all of these impacts are real. I just want to read a couple sentences of this because it's really excellent. I highly recommend this book, not just for therapists. but for anybody who wants to think about or study our own behavior in relation to varying mobility. So I just want to talk about one of these things. Anger among the disabled, or also the wounded, is a complex issue. First, we are mindful of the bargain struck by Franklin Delaro Roosevelt's social contract that the disabled must remain cheerful, never be despondent, despairing, or angry. Second, in the same way that impairment is viewed as residing within the person and not in the environment or society, so too, anger is seen as a reflection of the person and of the person's disability.

[14:57]

It is said to be either a stage of adjustment and patronizingly tolerated by others, or as a failure to appropriately grow through the stages to reach the final plateau of adjustment and thus pathologize. Anyway, this is a sample of this book. If you have a, when something has gone wrong and there's a wound, either your view or your social life, There are limits, and that's what this section is pointing out. There are limits, there's a time frame, and so on that others are willing to give you. But besides the limits imposed by the environment, when something goes wrong, it's only supposed to be a matter of time before you've absorbed that.

[16:03]

and things are right again. There's also assumptions that one has towards his or her own woundedness that we need to look at. So, again from this book, there are several models. So, do you feel shame or embarrassment about having been accused? Does one feel shame or embarrassment, let's say, in this false accusation situation? My experience of being falsely accused is often I do feel shame, as if I had done whatever it was. Or if someone doesn't see, even a minor example, like I stop at the stop sign, and there's someone crossing the street, so I wait for them, and then the person behind me leans on the horn, which is in effect a false accusation, like, get on with it, what's wrong with you? I see the person who's crossing the street and they don't.

[17:06]

So do I feel shame or embarrassment and start inching forward to let the person know that I'm actually going? Do I take that on as my own view of myself? Do I try to make my my letting the person go by something that it isn't. So anyway, that's a kind of a moral model of when things go wrong, or when one deals with a wound in some way, that it lessens us in some way to have had that happen to us. And then there's kind of a medical model. Let's say the falsely accused then is minimized.

[18:10]

I'll just go to work as if nothing has happened, I'll try to act as if nothing has happened, and then I'll take care of the situation in special meetings. But other than that, it's an abnormal thing to have this, so I'm going to act as if it didn't occur as much as I can. So it's kind of medicalized or pathologized that something has gone wrong. So we think of it as having gone wrong. We don't realize that false accusation often is part of life, that we can expect false accusation, we can expect people to blam on the horn behind us, and we can expect variations in our abilities in relation to other people that are based on things that happen, on things that so-called go wrong, or are wrong.

[19:23]

So for people with disabilities, the third way of seeing it is a minority model that just focuses on the fact that there are social differences among people of various abilities. And that it's a normal part of life and that we have to deal with differences through sharing information about boundaries. Let's say we have another challenge. I was putting a quarter in a parking meter one day and a wall from a construction site fell on my head. And so the construction site wasn't marked and so suddenly I found myself unable to read or speak very well. I lost all my languages and I My neck was very badly damaged, and I was at risk in a number of ways. So I understand, and oh, it was so wrong of them to drop the wall, right?

[20:33]

So by the way, of course it was that something went wrong. They didn't mark the site, and they dropped their wall. Something went wrong. And then my experience of myself was that I was wrong. because I couldn't read, and I couldn't speak, and I couldn't move, and I hurt, and just all kinds of things. So how do you deal with that? Well, I'd like to say that the Buddha has a very, very good way to deal with that, and it includes both the process of dealing with the environment around us, the social environment around us, expecting to be the same. And it also helps us take care of our own assumptions about our own disabilities, our own woundedness, and that is called friendliness and compassion.

[21:35]

Friendliness and compassion is the way that we, in our practice, understand the normality of things going wrong and move through a difficult situation, whether it's compassion or friendliness to ourselves, whether it's compassion or friendliness to others, whether it's compassion or friendliness to the world. And so it's not an easy practice. It's easy as long as it's divorced from actual things going wrong. Or actual people who have hurt us. Then it's an easy practice. But when it's linked to actual challenging situations and actual big issues of the world, it is not at all an easy practice. And it carries challenges and has stages in

[22:41]

our ability to do it. So, let's say, yeah? I just was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the desire to correct and the relationship between people who, as soon as they see something's wrong, they just want to correct it without being friendly? Yes. Yeah, it's a form of denial. It's aversion towards suffering and desire for normality, you know. So how to deal with it is to, for yourself, acknowledge the difficulty and for the other person set a boundary. So basically what it is, what you're describing is a defense. person can't tolerate the fact of something being wrong and tries to mow right over it, right?

[23:50]

And so what one can do in that situation is to name the thing that's wrong in a neutral way. And it takes about seven repetitions of an unwelcome message before a person actually gets it, right? So an example of this is, let's say I can't speak on the phone for more than five minutes, or couldn't at that time, and someone wants to have a conversation with me, and they say, hello, how's it going? And I say, it's going okay. It's a little bit difficult today, but I think things are great, and thanks for calling. I really appreciate your call. And I'll see you next week or whatever. And then the person doesn't pick up on that cue and acts as if it never occurred. So, I wanted to tell you about blah, [...] you know, and then there you are with that limit that you've just stated that the person is running right through.

[25:02]

Okay? But that's probably not the situation you had in mind. experiencing some early dementia. And my family members keep trying to do something about it. And there are things you can do. But also, I keep saying, oh, well, you should just spend time with her. And it's like, I don't want to, because I can't deal with the fact that she's not who she used to be. I can feel that, even if they don't say that. They want to deal with the problem instead of being with her. Yeah. So that's an example of losing the person, defensively using a category and losing the relationship with the person. So people are defended against things going wrong.

[26:03]

When things go wrong, it hurts, right? And thinking of dementia as something that goes wrong is a defense, right? We will all have dementia if we live long enough. And she has lived long enough to have dementia. So I think the first thing is to be friendly to that person and to oneself. to know what's important in the situation. Like, is it important to have mother squared away? Or is it important to have mother? Which one's more important? Maybe that person has an actual safety issue that you can reflect. You can be friendly towards their concern. You can say something like, it sounds like you're concerned about her safety.

[27:09]

and that how do we keep our relationship and make sure that there's safety for Mother. So I think the first thing is to state the concern and state the intention. that arises in that consent. When there's a challenge, it's very easy to focus just on the challenge because that's the painful part. But it's much more satisfying to focus on the intention and what's important and what surrounds the situation. Like, this is my mother. This is my mother and you are my ally. is satisfying, and let's do X, Y, and Z, unless it's in that context, may not be satisfying.

[28:19]

People may have different emotional speeds of working through a situation like that. So I think one of the first issues is how do we recognize our own impediments to be friendly to the person who's manifesting that behavior. Because there's their difficulty with that situation, and then there's our difficulty with them. Things get complicated very quickly. Hi. Hi, Peter. For myself, I tend to unpack wrongness in an interesting way, which is when I identify something as wrong, it's actually that act, that mental process, whatever you want to call it, is actually my attempt to alleviate pain by disconnecting from it.

[29:29]

That's really good. a little bit more insidious, which then involves other people in ways that are complex. And as you say, it gets more and more complicated. The more I disconnect from my basic, sort of, just, you know, the pain of that interruption of normalcy or whatever it happens to be. And so I think the wrong thing is kind of like, it's our mental process I feel like I can just get back to unpleasant as a story. Yeah. But sometimes things are actually wrong. Like what would you do if a young person very close to you was picked up for a DUI, for instance? That's wrong. DUI is wrong, right?

[30:33]

Driving under the influence is wrong. Oh, yeah. There's lots of things that impact me in an unpleasant manner without hearing it. And I feel like there's things to do about my relationship with that person. There's ways in which I want to communicate with them about my concern for their safety and the various other needs that I might have for them. And take responsibility for my own. And in that context, And what you're saying, it sounds like Peter and I have been practicing together for our whole adult lives. And I respect him and his life very deeply and for a long time.

[31:33]

But it sounds to me like what you're saying is that the supposition that something is wrong is extra. Yes. It's extra because it creates a whole mental set of disturbances that add to the original suffering. It's not that something doesn't have to be addressed. That's right. With urgency perhaps. Yes. But that step we make, you know, I'm not saying There's a time for evaluation and judgment and all of that. But we often make our situation worse. That's right, we do. By perhaps indulging in it. That's right. That's right. Thank you. So I think I was a little surprised when you started with the example today. Because not to minimize all of the annoyances or wrongness in the course of a day,

[32:35]

When I immediately went to the bloodshed in Syria, the Congo, you know, I go to much bigger, deep, deep pain. I feel the sorrows of the world. And again, you know, I have a sister who has advanced Alzheimer's. You know, I have to face that pain, et cetera. But I would love you to address some I don't know, sometimes I feel like I notice myself even putting myself down or feeling some shame because it's so grand in my thinking. You know, that I'm going to be criticized for my grandeur as though I personally could cure the sorrows of the world. And yet unless you do, What chance do the sorrows of the world have of being cured? And to answer your question, which is an amazing question, it's amazing.

[33:39]

I want to draw a link. I know everyone talks about World War II, and I'm going to talk about World War II for a second. But what I want to say about World War II and the genocide was that it was incredibly banal. It was composed of a thousand extremely everyday decisions went into that incredibly huge wrong. So if you read Hitler's Willing Executioners, that book analyzes three institutions by which which were turned to the service of a great wrong. So, the police went from being protectors to being collectors, the extermination camps and the death marches, which every single

[34:52]

piece of that was justified as right or good because the value that was being upheld was racial purity. Racial purity and kind of just punishment of of a culture that was, the legend about the culture was that Jews were Jesus killers. So that the social norm became centered around the commission of great wrong, based on completely false assumptions that were very coherent. And so there were thousands of completely banal activities that were completely justified by that set of assumptions.

[36:02]

And we do this all the time. So because of the assumption, for instance, that someone has betrayed us with someone else, let's say we have that assumption, then certain behaviors seem right and appropriate to us. and we act in certain ways. Because of the assumption that someone is just stopping without a reason in front of us, we feel justified to blast the horn or to inch up and do various things in relation with them. The difference isn't a qualitative difference, the difference is a quantitative difference. So the issue is the same issue. And the cure is the same cure. It's impossible for us to act on completely erroneous assumptions about people who we're friendly and compassionate to.

[37:07]

The more we practice friendliness and compassion, the more our lives and the lives of the people we're with turn into one continuous field of blessings. So, yes, please be concerned about the genocide. Please be concerned about Syria or about world peace or about the environment, because unless you're concerned and create that friendliness towards those issues and the people who have received that impact, unless each one of us drops our own privilege in relation to those wrongs and our own unquestioned assumptions about what it's okay to do, they won't be healed. And luckily the Buddha gives us tools of imperturbable friendliness and compassion by which we don't have to kind of blindly go places that we would rather not go if we looked at the situation.

[38:11]

If we are really friendly and really compassionate, we will understand that when we make this choice A that we make all the time about some consumer vote that we use, that that actually assumes our ignorance of condition B by which it's produced. Right? So the world is connected in that way. So your caring about Syria means that someone is noticing Syria. And you might be ashamed about feeling grandiose and that shame could actually be wholesome. If you don't want to let yourself down by being concerned about issues that are too big, but rather want to focus on the pieces of it that you can control, or if you don't want to let other people down by talking or acting in certain ways, that those concerns set wholesome limits on our behavior, or the ways that we feel okay about thinking.

[39:35]

So those are wholesome emotions, if you don't lean into them too much. But I would say There's plenty of room for being involved with Syria in a wholesome way. And we're talking about our brothers and sisters in Syria. We're not talking about things that don't matter. We're talking about human beings and their welfare. So yes, it's important. This is an unformed question, but I hope it will form before our very ears here. Sometimes the assumptions on which our idea of wrongness are based are themselves incorrect, as you pointed out. That we should have a pure race, and the Jews are evil and not really human, that's a wrong assumption on the basis of which terrible things happen.

[40:46]

An unjust accusation of infidelity is a wrong assumption. But sometimes it's actually true. Somebody maybe did do that thing. So actually, these are different cases that I want to distinguish between. When something really happens that's very harmful, we actually have to think about how relate to that in a different way than when it's just a wrong assumption. That's right. Yeah. That's right. And the last thing I'll say, and I'm sure you have stuff to say. I want to recommend another book called Beautiful Souls. And the subtitle is something about saying no and stepping forth in terrible situations. And it tells four stories at length of people in situations like either Nazi Europe or the Serbian Civil War, or corporate America, or Israel-Palestine.

[41:51]

Those are the four cases where there was really, really something very, very terrible going on. And a person, through ways that we learn about, understand in that book, was able, at banal levels, and then it sort of broke through, to respond to it in a compassionate, in a way that lives out the Buddha's teaching. It's just not easy, simple. Never mind, you go. Beautiful Souls. It's called Beautiful Souls. The author, his last name is Press, P-R-E-S-S. And his first name is E-something. Beautiful Souls. I know it's also responding to this question of how to relate the small, the microscopic situations in our personal lives to some big situation that you were talking about.

[42:55]

It's difficult to do, but it can be done. Well, yes. So to do that, I think that what we have to look at is the relationship between friendliness and discernment. Discernment is what allows us to understand whether wrongness is a false assumption or a reasonably true description. And so, yeah, Alan. What occurs to me is that I was going to ask you to read that short section from what therapists should know about disability, because there you're coming back to the nuts and bolts the kind of thinking that leads to small problems and huge problems. And you're really looking at it in a granular... She's looking at it in a granular format. I'd just like to have it... I'd like to hear it.

[43:58]

So that's, say, that little section again? Yeah, because I think it's relevant directly to this question. It begins in granularity. So was it the part where the able-bodied community imposes restrictions on the behaviors and affect of persons with disabilities. These restrictions include the encouragement of pluckiness, the prohibition of anger, and the presumption of mourning. In addition, this chapter discusses the effects of having a disability on one's privacy and personal power and control. And she does, she goes into that, like the example of everyone feeling perfectly fine about commenting on your limp, on my limp, for instance. I used to have these conversations with people in rehab about how everyone wanted us to be brave and plucky and would praise us if we could eat without drooling.

[45:01]

So, those mental processes you're talking about are common to small and large issues, and the process of friendliness and discernment, I think, is the cure. It's so down to earth that it seems like nothing is happening. But even a question like, to what extent is that true? suspend disbelief to create a space in which something can actually be examined. Mel is always saying, don't react, respond. And what allows us to respond is discernment. We tend to think that we have to decide what to do about something. and we go really quickly.

[46:04]

But if we take the time to discern instead of decide, then there has to be a questioning process. There has to be genuine curiosity. I'm reminded of your fact-finding missions, where you don't just jump into a situation and decide what to do. You go to the place and talk to people. and then it becomes clear what you have to do. So, I think we could talk about this for a really long time, and I have no idea what time it is, but I have a gut sense that it is time. It is, right? I think we should stop, and I really appreciate your interest, and your presence and practice in my life. You're my allies and my family to practice friendliness and compassion instead of assumptions and projection.

[47:22]

And it is a practice that is necessary to being awake in the world. and is necessary to our being able to live in peace and harmony with all beings and invite them to live in peace and harmony with us. So, I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. So, am I supposed to do something now? Oh, I put my hands in my gush out. Let me put my book away and then I'll put my hands in my gush out. Someone say something wise quickly, OK? No takers? Wonderful thought.

[48:08]

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