Good morning. Greetings bodhisattvas. Greetings future ancestors. So today we're in the middle of our getting close not quite to the middle yet maybe of our six-week practice period. I guess we've completed two weeks of six and the topic for the practice period is basic Buddhist teachings and I've been thinking that what we're doing with this study this practice period study is kind of like strengthening our core like you do in exercise where you have to keep strengthening your core especially as you get older and that's kind of like

[01:00]

what we're doing and of course in one sense our core is zazen always and we've been talking a lot about zazen but another way to understand our core are these sort of foundational teachings of Buddhism that are pretty much shared by all the schools most if not all of the schools of Buddhism and they're kind of the foundation from which all these flowerings of these different schools have come and you know in during this COVID year I somehow ended up in a few different groupings tackling these really challenging Mahayana teachings and it feels really good to return to these core basic teachings after that. It like a really complicated dance move or gymnastics or athletic task you know or like figure skating it's as if the Madhyamaka teaching is like the

[02:04]

quadruple toe loop of Buddhism or something a really difficult move that you need to have a strong core to perform and you can sort of feel it when you're studying these challenging teachings like you're like whoa I'm going all over the place you know and you and in fact even in these teachings themselves there's often a passage that says if you can listen to this teaching if you can read this teaching without freaking out that in itself is your Bodhi mind you know so anyway strengthening our core and of course one core teaching of Buddhism as you've most of you probably have heard is the four noble truths the truth of suffering that there is suffering sometimes life is suffering or the five clinging skandhas are suffering and then the second truth is the cause of suffering the third truth is that there is a cure where there's a cause

[03:09]

there's a cure and then the fourth truth is the cure in detail which is the noble eightfold path and so with this first truth the truth of suffering it seems like there's two basic responses to when you first hear that teaching one response some people was one response is like you hear that life is suffering and you think oh thank God I thought it was just me or like oh they're saying they're saying the secret out loud like you know like the Emperor's new clothes or something it feels like something's being revealed you know that we kind of all knew but we were afraid to say or something or we didn't know if anybody else felt that way so that's one response and another response is just to feel really turned off like it's so negative so gloomy so life-denying and you know both responses are valid as to me and even the same person can have

[04:14]

both responses at different times for example when I first I took world religions in high school and we studied Buddhism and world religions and I didn't resonate with Buddhism it seemed so yeah dry really dry and yeah life denying you know where was the love the bliss the joy of Baba Ram Dass or like the Sufi dancers which you know is part of those were available somewhat available to me in those years my early high school and early college years by the way I apologize that my camera likes to refocus sometimes it's just a thing it does anyway so I didn't resonate with you know those early that early Buddhist teachings were in world religion Buddhism from the perspective of a world religion Buddhist philosophy and even you know compared to Zen stories which

[05:19]

at that time I didn't exactly realize were the same religion I didn't quite realize Zen was Buddhism in a way you know on Monday Karen sometime was talking about how she first read this first story and this book Zen Flesh Zen Bones which happened to be a book the first book I also read in high school and I was looking at the book this morning and actually the story that she responded to was is the very first story in the book and the story that I responded to that that you know and I've talked to many people actually who this is their first Zen story is actually the third one in the book which is the story of Hakuin and the baby I'm gonna retell it many people know it a girl in Hakuin so Hakuin was like a very important 18th century Japanese teacher

[06:21]

and a girl in his village gets pregnant and she's afraid to tell her parents who the real father is so she says it's Hakuin Zenji she says the Zen master is the father of this baby and the parents are furious you know and they take the baby when the baby's born they take the baby to Hakuin and say okay you you take you did this you take care of this baby and his response is oh is that so so Disney maybe you know in Japanese so then he takes the baby takes care of it and then a year later or in my mind more likely a month later the mother can't stand it any longer and she says she admits to the her parents that actually this other person is the father and they go to Hakuin and they apologize profusely and they take the baby back and his response is oh is that so and you

[07:26]

know I guess you could sort of stretch it and maybe you can see something about the four noble truths in that story perhaps I don't know but to me it's very juicy it's you know Hakuin he's composed but he's not apathetic I mean he's open to what the universe is handing him including figuring out how to take care of a tiny newborn baby and that kind of aliveness is what seemed to be lacking in these the world religions version and then of course later after I'd been flailing around a bit in my late teens and into my early 20s and experienced death and heartbreak getting more and more confused and unhappy then and also connecting with the practice through Suzuki Roshi who's this is a gentle fresh way to to immerse yourself and I had more like the first response thank God thank God we're spelling this out putting the truth on

[08:27]

the table where we can study it and maybe learn to deal with it so by the time I began my Zen practice in earnest I was fully on board with noble truth number one and it's not so much that everything is suffering or that life is suffering as that for one thing suffering is the root cause of all our problems it's what makes us make bad choices which cause difficulties for ourselves and each other and others and you know when they talk about when you learn about the for the first noble truth the truth of suffering they sometimes talk about there being three kinds of suffering and now in the Thich Nhat Hanh's book that we're using for practice period to study he kind of checks that out the window the three types but I kind of resonate with three types I don't know if my three types are the same as the three types

[09:29]

traditionally but to me the first kind is like the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune tragic things sad things harms traumas that happened to us almost everyone has some pain and loss from childhood and some have much more than a little and these leave a mark in our bodies it could be a physical harm it could be an emotional harm could be mental harm or spiritual harm but it leaves a trace traces in our bodies that we have to work through and you know many of these things are from our childhood but then sad things continue to happen into our adulthood various losses that we all can experience they can happen to anyone but they feel unique to ourselves they're part of our story at the same time and the second kind of suffering is a bit more of an

[10:32]

everyday thing it's you know the way that often the things I like or want seem far away and the things I don't like and don't want are often nearby and you know we are built as social beings and we have a need to be safe and need to feel we belong we need to feel our worth our value and we need love and these are built into our psychophysical systems and so in our lives it's we can easily feel bad about ourselves and feel like we're not worthy or we don't belong there's something wrong with us we shouldn't be feeling this way that's a really common one whatever the feeling is I shouldn't be feeling this way so it's so easy to get down on ourselves and that's to me the second kind of suffering and then the third kind is termed the suffering of conditionality which is like just the fact that any of this stuff in the first two could happen

[11:36]

is where our vulnerability and we're aware we're either unconsciously or consciously aware of our vulnerability bad things can happen at any time to me or my loved ones and also I could anything could happen that would make you know make me feel like a failure or an outsider so I'm vulnerable to all of that and even if something good is happening you know I know in the back of my mind that it could end if it will end it could end it might go away so that there's that vulnerability that's the one way to talk about the third type and then there's another way to talk about the third type conditionality that points to something a bit deeper and maybe something a bit more towards these more challenging Mahayana teachings which is it's related to our false division of subject and object so the perspective of myself is I'm like a

[12:36]

fixed point in time and space and all these things are happening to me and even the feelings in my body feel like they're they're happening to me another me not the the body is one me but then the it's happening to me also another me and so we're kind of constantly buffeted by all this outside stuff that's happening or or we're pulled around by the allure of some of these outside things so that's another way to think about the suffering of being subject to conditions there's our we're trying to maintain this fixed thing keep it going and then we're just always like outside things whether they're in our bodies anything could be outside from this perspective okay so that's the first noble truth however you define it and our lives include a fair amount of

[13:38]

unease dis-ease frustration unsatisfactoriness and downright pain you know they they say that newborn babies cry average two hours a day it's hard to be a human being it doesn't always feel so good and this you know this kind of is the main topic of Buddhism Buddha said I teach suffering and the end of suffering period because it's the main cause of the kind of problems we can do something about so then the second noble truth is about the cause of suffering and you know the Buddha the way he lays out this basic teaching he's talking more like a healer than a religious leader actually or almost any kind of problem solver like first we state the problem and we find the cause of the problem three is there a solution to this problem and four what

[14:42]

is the solution in detail so it's really very practical and more like psychological healing than religion in a way we have no cosmology nothing you have to believe in nothing that you have to take on faith you know you don't even have to believe in this first noble truth just study your life and see what you see what is your experience and it's also like the Buddha's giving us the user manual to our psychophysical system you know like you know you get a new device and you don't really want to look at the manual it's like nowadays everything's plug-and-play right and we're like that too we're plug-and-play a newborn baby is totally plug-and-play that's maybe part of the problem here the baby can't look it can't read the manual it can't look at the manual and there's hardly even a manual for the parents that works you know because the baby's so plug-and-play and you know you who has time to look at the manual at

[15:42]

that point so our Buddhist practice is like admitting okay we need to look at the manual now I've tried this plug-and-play way and now it's not working so well so I'm just gonna get out the manuals that's Buddhism and I thought the most mind-blowing part of the Thich Nhat Hanh reading which I think was actually not in the part if you if you saw the one that came out on the email the pages it was not in that part I think but anyway his take on the second noble truth I thought was really mind-blowing and you know the second noble truth is usually phrased something like the cause of suffering is desire and anyway to me whatever you say it's like the cause boils down to one thing that's the way I was always taught whether you call it attachment or clinging you know sojourn use the phrase being caught by things in this you know the cause of suffering is being caught by things being continually caught or repeatedly caught or even just always being a little off-center but

[16:47]

Thich Nhat Hanh actually he says you know and thing I love about Thich Nhat Hanh I don't know how you feel about this he is so confident when he defies a traditional teaching and it's not it's not hubris it doesn't have any feeling like that he's just and he doesn't say I've been to the mountaintop and I see you know he says we can all see that this makes no sense he'll say you know that anyone can we can all see that this makes no sense so his framing is like the years in desire as the first of as like shorthand for a list of things the cause of suffering is desire maybe like the five hindrances maybe I think the first the first of the five hindrances is desire or the three poisons greed hate and delusion so he's he's saying it's not this one it not it's not like it boils down to this one thing and he's so he's basically saying don't use this

[17:48]

spoiler alert you know mode and actually look at your own suffering one by one study it and see see what the cause is for you of this one and this one and this one and then when you do that you know you can you can investigate and then you can use these teachings to cross-check you know like I'm blaming my mom but Buddha says it's not that you know or something like that so it's a conversation with the teaching and your own study of yourself what you get you know feels a little bit more like our our Suzuki Roshi style practice or dog in practice so in this case though you know we can look at some of the causes of the three types of suffering I outlined and so the first type the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune could maybe even more simply be stated

[18:51]

as trauma and there's a huge conversation in Western psychology right now about treating trauma this even came up at lecture last Saturday and it came up at the priest meeting it's it's bubbling up around us it's the new way to understand our suffering from the Western psychological point of view and the approach actually is something like sensory awareness it's it's to with the right kind of help and support to see where these traumas are held in our bodies including intergenerational trauma and you know some kind of mindful awareness of the body is what they're using and so I mean this is a really gross oversimplification of what's happening in the in the conversation of Western psychology and there's a lot available about that so and we can if

[19:53]

you can't find it on your own we can help you find out more about that if you're interested and you know of course trauma has all kinds of different levels of of cuteness or whatever I think sometimes for me the pain of session does help me work through trauma emotional trauma um you know it's like the pain kind of a free associates me to my psychic pain mice you know and so it's right there and just by holding holding it holding my suffering with the kind of friendliness and respect and appreciation that is part of what can metabolize it it takes time but I think that's one thing that can happen with our Zen practice however we also know from experience of 50 years that it can

[20:54]

be really counter-indicated to sit sauce in especially facing a room you know wallow in a quiet silent room and all sort of the accoutrement of our Zen practice can really be too triggering for people's trauma and so I think the takeaway is really like don't go it alone you know that's why we talk to teachers and talk to our friends you know you don't have to go alone whatever you're going through get help informally formally in whatever way you know try different things there are many many ways of healing and digesting and metabolizing what happened so what about the cause of the second kind of suffering which is the everyday being buffeted by the range of feelings and disappointments and anxiety and about whether we belong whether we have value

[21:58]

whether we're loved whether we're safe and I think again to not Hans encouragement to investigate for ourselves however since I have to give a talk and I have to give some causes to explain the second noble truth we could say that one possible cause the way we talk about in Buddhism is you know ourself it's so easy to be caught you know by appearances outside by our feelings our perceptions our preconceived beliefs that we're going into the situation with and there's some way we get into this echo chamber of ourself and we're turning around and the the metaphor that used in some scriptures is like a silkworm where you're wrapping yourself tighter and tighter and tighter if you start down that road you know you just keep wrapping yourself tighter and tighter and tighter into a little cocoon and it feels tight

[22:59]

you know we feel boxed in we feel like an animal in a trap or a fish on a hook or you know what does it feel like to you what's the metaphor for yours and it seems like we are boxed in from the outside and you know maybe we are but a big part of it and the part that our practice is addressing is that we're being boxed in by our own mistaken beliefs about ourselves and about the world we're so wrapped up in them that we can't see beyond them and this includes the third kind of suffering the belief or perception perspective that I am this fixed point which is being bombarded by all these happenings and you know there's some truth to the self perspective but the other perspective to explore is that we ourselves are just like these things we're another momentary happening just like all these things we're not like standing on the

[24:00]

bank of the river being splashed by the waves but you know our molecules are part of the molecules are some of the molecules of the river and so the third truth the so-called end of suffering would be the cure of suffering would be to develop this other perspective and not that we get rid of the self perspective although the self perspective can evolve and mature and heal and soften and one of the main ways that happens actually is by developing the other perspective we develop this wide spacious flowing fresh alive perspective where we're just part of everything we're part of the huge everything we can step back into big mind for me it feels like it's behind maybe that's not true for you but I step back into something that's

[25:03]

holding everything that's our big mind that's our Buddha nature it's holding all the individual things all the sufferings all the experiences and it's holding them with friendliness and respect and appreciation so lately I've had a little bit of a I don't know what to call it kick I've been on or something which is based on noticing oh I remember now that I can go to gallery view thank you I'm a little tired of looking at myself there Ross hi everybody ah so what I'm noticing lately is that we have the same word for feelings that we have for practices so like is it that we're supposed to feel patient or we're supposed to practice patience are we supposed to feel compassionate or feel

[26:06]

generous or is it that we practice patience when we're not feeling patient it's so easy to we judge ourselves by our feelings I you know if I feel impatient I immediately think oh I'm such a bad Zen student how could after all these years of practice how could I feel whatever it is I'm feeling we judge ourselves by our feelings but that's not what we're talking about actually it's the same word and that's I wonder if that's a problem or if that's fine but we need to wake up to it you know maybe we should have different words for the practices than for the feelings I don't know but it's the actual practice is not about trying to change our feeling directly like you know push it down push it away all those things that we tend to want to do possibly cultural baggage but also maybe just human I don't know but you know I shouldn't be feeling this way

[27:11]

I mean how often do I think that you know and so it's really it's in that moment to do the practice when when we're feeling impatient it's not that about the feeling it's about what we do in the next moment which is what we do if we're practicing patience we might pause we might take a breath we might not do the thing that we were about to do which feels exactly like the feeling I mean until you slow things down there's no gap between being bugged by somebody and punching them in the nose it's the same thing but if you slow it down you'll see that it's not the same thing there's a there's a space in there and the space is not to whitewash the feeling or cover it over or get rid of

[28:11]

it the feeling is okay now I'm feeling this what shall I do what was that practice I said I was going to do in this situation can I remember what I said and not with this one with any sense that the feeling is wrong you know feelings are just simply results and in no list of Buddhism no study of Buddhism is that ever the point where you introduce change to change the feeling it's after that it's even a couple steps after that usually to grasping the cleaning the reacting and of course our feelings are changing all the time and they may evolve with practice we may be less impatient perhaps but again there's that gaining idea we're not worrying about that the causes and conditions are coming together for this feeling to be occurring and we have very little control we may have some control over

[29:12]

those it could turn out if I go to the Zen Monastery I'll feel less irritated and then sometimes you find out actually it doesn't doesn't work that way I'm just as irritated here as I was there it's a good way to learn so we do so it's not that we want to ignore the feeling and move on to the practice it's like we hold the feeling and then we remember what the practice is which has usually something to do with breathing feeling where it is in my body feeling what it's about perhaps something old maybe reminds me of da-da-da my mother my father my sister my brother whatever or maybe not maybe it's not that deep maybe it's just momentary but don't just don't go forward from there go forward from the pause go forward from the space in between what's happening

[30:18]

that's the cure in a way that's one that's one cure okay so the fourth truth and Hosan trying to learn how to call him that Hosan sensei is going to talk more about the fourth truth the holy eightfold path on Thursday so please come on Thursday and I'm just going to do a short introduction and I kind of already have started about talking about the cure because the third one really is just that there is a cure and as soon as you start talking about what the cure is you're already out of the third one in a way but in my introduction I'm going to divide the path into three categories our attitude our conduct and meditation so first our attitude and our basic

[31:20]

attitude can be summed up by Suzuki Roshi's no gaining idea in fact a lot of what Suzuki Roshi's everything he's teaching is kind of about our attitude a lot of it is about trying to you know an attitude adjustment just our attitude from the usual attitude of what's this going to get me or how can I be safe or how can I avoid this no gaining idea you know have no designs on becoming a Buddha big mind you know our practice our basic practices to express something something big and vast and indescribable just by being by sitting by pausing when we're angry we're expressing something there that's the point of the practice not anything else at least not at this point in the attitude stage so that's our attitude and the second category is our conduct

[32:26]

and it's you know quite simply put in the precepts the and I think also there's going to be a class taught by Andrea that's in the 16 bodhisattva precepts I think it's two weeks after this Thursday maybe anyway check the schedule but the precepts are vast and why the precepts are a huge practice it's not just you know not to do harm learning not to do harm myself we we have to prevent harm it's not just learning how not to steal it's we have to prevent stealing you know like of land and resources and labor it's not just working to be honest learning how not to lie myself it's how can we create the conditions in our sangha you know and in our society of truth and honesty it's it's it's a very

[33:28]

it's a lifelong practice the precepts so then in this scenario the third the third category is the meditation so I mean the interesting thing about the Eightfold Path approach is that actually those first two are the precursors to calming our minds in this you know it's it's wonderful to develop our attitude and clean up our conduct and in this scenario they are like that's how you settle your mind by doing those things by changing your attitude and your conduct you know when I first started sitting I think maybe for the first year I don't know I've never heard anybody else describe this and I mean maybe I've never mentioned this I had all in my zaz and I had these memories floating up of mean things I've done has anybody else you can tell me you know just little things little thoughtless mean things fortunately I'm lucky I

[34:33]

wasn't conditions were not such that I you know did much more I don't think than hurt people's feelings and maybe even badly but still but I kept they just kept coming up they just naturally it was we were not studying the precepts at that point in 1980 it was just what happened in my system I kept seeing these faces these hurt he's hurt feeling faces that I had not absorbed at all the first time but it was in my memory you have and I had to sort of metabolize all that and you know except myself except what happened apologize maybe in a few cases but and then you can start to settle and your mind can settle and when your mind can settle then you can step back as I said for me or whichever way

[35:35]

this step goes for you step back into big mind and hold hold all these little wonderful and horrible things that are happening in the world of happenings and so in a way after that you circle back to your attitude right that helps you with your attitude when you can calm your mind and see the emptiness see this thing about how the subject-object divide is not real then you do you develop your attitude differently your attitude towards others towards yourself towards the suffering of the world so you keep looping back around and once you have that insight from the inside about your attitude then you might even have inside more things about your conduct the subtler things that no one

[36:38]

else thinks are wrong but you know they're just off they're just off especially right after you do it so best way to tell sometimes and then the idea would be in here I mean I it's really hard not to introduce a gaining idea I have to say it's really really hard to give a talk about Zen practice without introducing a gaining idea so now here I'm doing that which is you circle back around and then you your mind can calm even more and when your mind calms even more you have more insight into this big mind and that helps your attitude which helps your conduct anyway ad infinitum hopefully that's that's what I had prepared to tell you and now I would like us to have a conversation good song as usual I invite you we invite you to raise your

[37:46]

digital hand and I encourage you just to get straight to your question from the heart I love how I love how Blake says good song I just that just every time anyway please questions anybody raise their hand and one thing hey go go Lori would you like to okay okay to sit quietly too is all I was gonna say but go ahead hey go thank you Lori for bringing it down to the ground really really easy to understand really really easy to see the sprouts and the seeds in granularity in terms of

[38:52]

my own causes of suffering and as you went over the different things I had to laugh and had to sort of understand because it was so right on for me the thing I'm left with is not a question but the gaining idea and I really appreciate that although we do come around and around and around and each time we get back to that seat and we see for example that face that we heard or that thing that we know about we can recognize that there is a different attitude or we find I found in my experience openings to new attitudes as I come around and that is just such a realistic message of hope and oh the comment I was going to make was yes when I'm people say thank you for your patience I respond I wasn't really being patient and I guess I would say I

[39:57]

was practicing but thank you for opening and taking me a step back with you thank you I saw there was a message from Charlie Blake I saw that one which is our aren't feelings just thoughts or was it just our feelings thoughts and I don't think so and there's a there's different ways to talk about feelings in Buddhism I am going to tell you which is not exactly maybe the the party line feelings are the are things that happen in your body and your mind together so they're kind of a bridge to me they're a bridge between the body and the mind so I can have various thoughts and I'm not having a feeling with all of them if I look at Joe right now who's right under my square and I think does he like me or I worry that he doesn't like me I might have a feeling then but I could

[40:59]

have another thought about him but I wouldn't have a feeling so feelings are in our bodies and that's a good place to study them because they have all sorts of stories and beliefs and they run out in the mind they run feelings they run whole movies you know one time I've told this story before I was sitting in Zaza I was upset with somebody when I sat down and I thought I had a such a vivid imagination of what I was gonna say and then they would say that and then I would say that and they would say it and it fortunately five minutes before the period ended I realized what I was doing and I thought it was exactly like a movie I was watching I may I played a movie for myself and it was feelings running it and you know turning them up more and more you know and fun but as soon as I realized that oh like you know how when you watch a movie you have all these emotions right and then when the movie's over they're gone it's not you

[42:03]

know it was like that I think that was just gone it's like oh you know I you know I still had to deal with that situation but this thing with the feelings but again I'm not saying they're wrong it's just their evidence their their outcome their results but I don't that to me they're not thought to me thoughts are another thing even though they're close everything's closely related right and there's something artificial about separating them out but also there's something helpful for our study in my mind my beliefs Peter Overton Peter oh you're can you unmute you have to yes Peter unmute thank you thank you Lori this has really been interesting I wanted to follow up a little bit on what you were just saying because I've been thinking about that since you started talking about impatience and whether or not

[43:07]

impatience you felt impatience and whether that was the same as being impatient and sometimes I think it's useful to examine the way we talk to ourselves about what's going on like I am impatient is I sort of classified that as a judgment about exactly what's going on with me or if I say I feel impatient that's something about something going on in my body and so it's sometimes the way we talk gets us in trouble because we're not just making a distinguishing about how we're processing the experience and yeah and I think you have to be pretty quiet to even notice that difference right it might be I mean I hope everybody here no matter how long they rush could notice that right away but it's you know it's when I get really quiet that I think oh

[44:08]

I'm talking to myself I mean I can't even hear that because I'm feeling how I'm feeling from the talking you know bad about myself downtrodden or something yeah there's lots of stuff that happens after you have to become aware of your feeling right it's sort of like you know it's another way it's another world really yeah yeah study the Buddha way is to study the self to study the self is to forget the self don't forget the self before you study the self and you know it's okay for us to sit quietly Karen one of our actors you know Karen Dakota's was saying that and I don't know how well this is going in her group but they were working on just if there aren't any questions sit and then maybe the really quiet people will have the nerve you know if we leave enough if we leave enough space and if they and if nobody does that's fine too

[45:14]

but you know it's okay for us to leave a little space it feels like it'll hurt the speakers feelings if there are no questions you know and I can relate to that I might it might feel that way afterward but what I'd like to say is let's just try feeling that inner prompting you feel an inner prompting even if you're scared please come forward Ross plum Ross hi there so I am here now okay thank you very much for bringing up the Western psychological model for helping us with our traumas and realizing herself I've heard it said that you have to have a healthy self to

[46:16]

forget the self and I'm wondering how do we discern the difference in our practice to you utilize a psychological model or paradigm versus just sitting as you mentioned in your talk sometimes sitting activates things and we revisit past traumas in our life so how do you discern or what encouragement or advice do you have for us to when we're sitting how to move forward yeah good question I think I think it's a process and it might involve talking to people and describing I mean I think I think it's everybody sits down and there's pain and discomfort and we have to sit through a certain amount of that and I

[47:20]

think I probably need to talk to more people I have a couple friend I have one friend who stopped sitting because she had such a traumatic childhood that it didn't make sense to her and she tried for a long time and judged herself badly for a long time so that's don't do that that would be one thing we could say don't let it go on for a long time without asking anybody without talking anybody and and just trying to power through or whatever you think the Zen students are doing in Japan or whatever so and they can go hand in hand you know and so find and I think we could you know to some degree you you find an inner prompting about what healing modality you could explore in tandem with Zen practice it's they don't have to be either or and you could pause pause do a little you know and you know I think people who have intergenerational trauma you know from racism or family you know family violence in the family

[48:23]

you know I was so lucky I had no male violence in my family really my one uncle could lose his temper a little bit I had a lot of absent men but you know now that I've talked to people it's amazing how many people have experienced violence in their childhoods you know from family members so you might know and some people will minimize if you find yourself not wanting to tell anybody or or thinking it can't be as bad as I remember it or trying to make it like other you know all those kinds of things I would say have a deeper conversation with someone and you know I think the BCC senior students were trying to up our game a little bit about this be more be more aware of other options that we can point people towards and be more aware of maybe what the signs are but I mean I think a lot of us felt some kind of relief pretty early on in

[49:30]

our sitting and and it's not if you don't feel that it's not there's nothing wrong with you it's not wrong it's just a different the different psychophysical systems response you know I don't know if other people even I wouldn't if other people have more insight about this that they want to answer I'd be open to that thanks Laurie yeah we're not trained therapists so what's our trick our training event practice is what we can offer people when they come here so there's a place where maybe this person needs another kind of help to supplement or encourage them that they're not getting wholeheartedly with just sitting and as you said plowing through it because we don't want to we don't want to plow through things we want to experience things and be with them and work with them it's a very different kind of mindset thank you so thank you yeah Jeff Taylor I invite you to ask a question hey Laurie hey Jeff it's always so good to see you in the seat I was thinking

[50:35]

that same exact thing that's because you can see yourself you did a couple of things that I really wanted to point out that resonated for me and when you told the story of Hucklebean and the baby you pointed at something that I think is really important to me which is this idea of the warm blood of Zen of warm hand to warm hand of the aliveness of practice I mean it's it's easy to use the overused meme of staring at a blank wall as a very dry and sterile experience which couldn't be farther from the truth when [...] Mel used to talk and he would kind of riff on on the ineffable where he would sit just a little way beyond our conscious mind and call us into that interplay of light and dark it would conjure very alive and very human experiences that are that are really articulated in a dimension that's

[51:40]

hard to speak about because it's it's it is that ineffable thing that we can't really wrap our hands around touch say or otherwise concretize and and and that story points at that for me and thank you for sharing that the other thing that you did that I thought the baby's important in the story because if he had just if someone had told him oh you're a jerk and he said oh is that so and then they came back and said I was wrong you're not a jerk who cares you know but he actually took care of a tiny newborn baby you know what's it hey deadbeat dad yeah and when you said he wasn't apathetic that's that's that's where the warmth kind of enters the story that he took the baby he cared for it and and in the compassion of very human and warm way he was he was really present for the experience both sides of it deadbeat dad here's your baby and oh by the way we'd like it back please yeah the second thing that you did well the other thing

[52:41]

that you did that I that I personally represented with as you talked about the difference between an internal experience of how we experience ourselves in our internal world and how we experience the external world kind of coming at us and and having all of those experiences comfortable uncomfortable and otherwise and and again Joe Cohen which you were just talking about really calls that for me right I mean the study the self is to forget the self but you can't separate those two experiences you can't forget the self before you study the self it doesn't work and and so I think the ganjo Cohen in that particular instance is saying something that's really very true so forget the second part study the self but when you study the self how is it you'll do that how do you hold that idea and how does it change for you over time that's a really interesting question but the thing that I was going to talk about in relation to what you said is that when when when we when we talked again Joe Cohen also talks about the idea of when we carry when we carry ourselves forward

[53:46]

and experience myriad things that's the illusion that's actualizing and reifying a sense a self that doesn't really exist that myriad things come forth and experience themselves that's awakening some say enlightenment and I don't I don't like that word so I don't use it very often so so when when these things are actualizing themselves this idea of how do we experience reality and where's the separation between who we are and what experiences I think this is something really important to point at how do we experience the reality around us you talked about that space so nicely anger is energy your body vibrates with it but how do you get that breath in front of punching somebody in the nose where is that breath for you and where is where is your practice in that and and and these are both jewels to be turned I mean one of the one of the sutras I

[54:47]

tortured badly I mean it's probably heretical but back when the Buddha was you know still hosting cocktail parties in the park and lots of you heard me say this a hundred times somebody came up to him and said what happens when we die and the Buddha turned around and said how the hell when I go he said what are you gonna do next that's a really interesting question and so whether we're working with trauma from childhood or whether we're working with an uncomfortable conversation from yesterday what are you gonna do next that's where the right conversation lives for me how do I experience and how do I convey compassion or how do I experience and and how do how do I convey wisdom what am I going to do next that's where encouragement comes in not that I live in the past and I'm constantly addressing my trauma that's not necessarily a really productive experience more productive is Laurie how do we help you do whatever the thing is you're really hungry to do let's talk

[55:48]

about that and if there's something that's getting in the way fine we'll talk about that too anyway it was it was a rule as you can tell I'm kind of moved by your talking and you've inspired me you're on you're on you're launched can now I invite you to unmute yourself and ask a question hi Laurie hi going back to that same Hawk win interchange I think that if if we put ourselves in Hawk wins position there's a thing that we were talking about the difference between thoughts and feelings I think obviously his first thought would be this woman is mistaken when she says this is my baby and that's an accurate

[56:53]

thought it's not just something floating through his mind but that doesn't mean I assume that he's thinking to himself and thinking would that be like what we would do in that situation we would say no I'm not the father where are you where did you get that idea from and what are you talking about but he presumably at least in the story is thinking well if if she thinks I'm the father this is going to be comp you know it's gonna maybe the daughter said this or something what am I gonna do this is not going to be a fruitful response to say that and so given this situation I'm going to respond in a different way I'm not going to say that's true but I'm also not going to say that's not

[57:55]

true I'm just going to say oh okay that like that is that so it's not quite a good translation because in English that always has a little bit of a oh is that so you know it usually means no that is and I think in the Japanese it's probably a soka which is neutral it's like you just told me something and I say oh is that right it could be oh that's interesting I didn't know that or like okay okay yeah but not with no undercurrent of oh okay yeah you know it's like oh you're giving me the babel take care of okay I mean it could even be like mmm which again it is ambiguous you don't know if he's he's not admitting

[59:01]

anything but he's just saying okay I heard you and I hear what you say and so oh okay I'm gonna take care of the baby but that's the we can assume that his feelings even though he had the accurate view that she was mistaken what he's going into there is like I'm not going to bring up that conflict I'm just going to accept this and given that I'm going to accept it I'm not going to make any issue about it I'm just going to say oh okay so this is a subtle thing and it's exactly that distinction you were mentioning between thought and feeling it's like he may have been thinking oh she's wrong but he's reacting to say how am I going to you know do the best you know response to this thing for all

[60:07]

concerned and so the best response is to bring it on okay and then when we get to the end of the story a similar thing like he doesn't say well I told you you know I wasn't you know maybe have you learned a lesson from this he's just say exactly the same thing like oh okay well here's the baby anyway it's it's it's interesting to make that distinction of thought and feeling there and the the response has to be like he has to make himself feel or just be feel like this is okay okay not just that I'm putting up you know making the best of a bad situation it's like all right that's enough I mean you went to his ego I went

[61:09]

to I it was a big turning point in my practice when I thought he might have felt oh shit no I don't know how to take care of a F star star star baby and but you know that could have been the feeling right the feeling might have been oh my god no way in hell can I do this you know but again it was like okay that's my feeling right now that I can't do this you know but the response I want is okay universe you gave me this I'm taking it okay take it away Blake

[61:42]

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