Good morning. It's a real pleasure to have as our guest speaker this morning Gil Fraunsthal. It's been a while since he has spoken here. Gil is a teacher at the Insight Meditation Center in Renwood City, a center that he has built up over the last 15 or 20 years. and it's a Vipassana center, but his root is also in Zen. He has Dharma transmission from Sochin Roshi, and he's a teacher, he's a father. His Dharma name is Ryuge Kojun, which means dragon tusk. Sunlight revealed. And I just, thinking about it, I'm just recalling in the 80s, being at Tassajara, when Gil was the Juso, and he had that, the dragon tusk, this kind of fierceness and determination, and sunlight revealed, I think,

[01:21]

What I remember was just how refreshing his Dharma talks were, and this was quite a while ago, just unpacking details of our practice without any mystifications. And that's a quality I think that probably we'll see tonight. Unless today, unless it's gone. Well, now I'm nervous. Thank you for having me. It's nice to be here. Very nice for me to be here. here and share the practice with you and do the Bodhisattva ceremony and share the Dharma a little bit. So this idea of demystifying Buddhism, I suppose that's maybe what I'm going to do today, a little bit, because I'd like to talk about the ordinary nature of Buddhism and Buddhist practice, how ordinary it is.

[02:37]

Did I speak louder, or did we turn up the volume? So how's that? Is that better now? Please just wave your hand again if you don't hear. Does that work for everybody? So I'd like to talk a little bit about the ordinary nature of Buddhism or Buddhist practice. And I do so a little bit as, you know, I've been involved in Buddhism now for 35 years or more. and been involved in Zen practice and study, and Theravada practice and study, and academic study of Buddhism. And it's maybe kind of interesting that someone who's done that many years and much study, how they would kind of encapsulate it. At least I'd like to offer you that in my current state. I don't think, hopefully, it's not much different than what you're taught here. And I've been thinking, as I've been teaching about the ordinariness of it, I also think about this famous koan of the monk who goes to Nansan and asks, what is the way?

[03:53]

And Nansan says, it's ordinary mind is the way. And so the word ordinary is there. So what is it? The Wei is a big word in China. The Wei is the Tao. So what's the Tao? What's the Wei? Capital W. What's the religious path? What's the path of life? And the answer is the ordinary mind. And sometimes when I've heard people talk about this koan, they refer to it as the ordinariness of everyday life. You know, washing dishes and cleaning your house. and caring for your crying baby. It was very nice to have a crying baby in here, I thought. Make it ordinary. But those are activities. And the koan refers to the ordinary mind as being the way. And so that kind of begs the question, how could that be when my ordinary mind is neurotic?

[05:01]

A lot of people are neurotic or have minds that are full of suffering and anxiety and stress. So imagine someone who's anxious and nervous and living a harried life, rushing around doing a lot of different things. They finally get interested in Buddhism and they hear it's the ordinary mind. They say, oh great, I don't have to do anything. I can just continue being carried and run around and being erotic and anxious because apparently that's the point. But I don't think that's what the Koan Dral means. I hope it's not what it means. But it points to, I think there's something very ordinary in the mind, that the mind does, that we're calling upon when we do practice. And the most ordinary thing, there's many ordinary things. So one of the very ordinary things is that if you have a thorn in your foot, in your soles of your foot, and you're walking along, it's pretty ordinary to bend down and take the thorn out.

[06:07]

You're not expected to keep walking having the thorn dig deeper and deeper in, accepting things as they are. And just let's be a quantumist with this thorn digging in further and further. It's an ordinary thing to kind of pull the thorn out. and so in our daily life there's ordinary things we do and so an ordinary thing would perhaps be if you're driving in your car and you're in a hurry to get somewhere maybe a little anxious or in a hurry, anxious to get there and you see up ahead the traffic light And you think it's going to turn red suits, yellow and red. And so you have this desire to get somewhere, strong desire to get somewhere. And so you think, I'll just kind of push that gas pedal a bit more. And so there's a little bit of contraction in the body.

[07:10]

At least for me, if I'm going to rush somewhere, I get a little bit contracted, I hold the steering wheel a little bit differently. And so it's kind of getting involved in that desire. But then I see that it turns yellow. And then I have a choice. I could put even going faster through the intersection, try to beat that light. Or I could let go of the desire. And just kind of stop with the red light. I could see, perhaps, that it's actually painful. around trying to get through the light. There's a kind of a thorn in me, in that contraction, that desire of being caught up in it, trying to rush through. And I can see it's not worth the trouble, not worth the suffering of trying to do this. And so it's an ordinary thing to say, this is not worth it. I think I'll let go. Or one that I like is the supermarket line. Looking for the right line that's going to go fastest.

[08:13]

I don't know if you do this, but scanning which line, and then I get in one line, and it's the slowest one, and so then I move to the other line, and then the first line picks up speed and gets through, and now I'm in the slowest line, and then there's wondering, what are these people doing buying all this stuff in front of me, and feeling impatient, or wondering about the clerk, and feeling my impatience about it all. At some point, I wake up, at some point I notice that the line is not impatient, the supermarket is not impatient, my grocer is not impatient, the impatience is happening in me and at some point I see that it's not worth continuing being impatient, it's painful, it's uncomfortable and it's such an ordinary thing to feel that discomfort and say, you know, I think I may give up or I let go or I'm just going to be here in this line without this thorn in my mind or in my heart.

[09:17]

And so you let go of that thorn. And I suspect that all of you can come up with pretty ordinary examples where you've had a desire, had a motivation, had an aversion that was relatively easy to see, this is not worth the cost, this is stressful, and then decided to let go of it and not do it. That's as ordinary, I'd like to say, as pulling a thorn out of your foot. And I think that, in a sense, that explains Buddhism, the heart of Buddhism. If you have a thorn, you take it out. And there's a lot of elaborations and different angles, different ways of saying that. But if you go back to the earliest teachings of Buddhism, I think it comes to that kind of very ordinary approach to life. But what's unusual or extraordinary is the thoroughness in which that is.

[10:20]

Great. Should we try again? Should I try to speak louder? With that kind of thing you could turn it down? So what's extraordinary, I think, what Buddhism offers, is to take something ordinary that we're all familiar with, and we all do, and say that you can do it thoroughly. You can integrate it thoroughly into your life, into the depths of your life, into the breaths of your life. It's not just a matter only of what happens to traffic lights and supermarket lines. But it's also what happens in your family life, what happens in your work life, what happens in your own existential life in terms of your deepest issues around dying and death, your relationship to other people, your relationship to the world around you.

[11:27]

And if you are sensitive, if you pay attention, you can find the thorns there as well, the thorns that you can pull out. there's a very touching sutra from the time of the Buddha which... the emotional life of the Buddha doesn't come through very strongly in the sutras but there's one where he talks about before he was enlightened how he was disturbed by seeing all the suffering in the world and how people were fighting and struggling and suffering and he was disturbed by that And then he said, but then I saw that in the heart there's a barb. And I saw you could pull that barb out. Pulling the barb out is pulling the thorn out. It's seeing what we're contributing to the situation that is extra, that's causing suffering and stress for ourselves and for other people.

[12:34]

And my feeling is that's a really ordinary thing to do, to see that suffering, and then to see what our contribution is to that suffering. And if we're contributing to it by clinging to something, by being attached, by holding on tight, then it's very ordinary to say this is not worth the cost. If it's possible to pull it out, I'll pull it out. There's a story of a philosopher who came to see a Buddhist abbess, a philosophy professor. And they went for a walk outside the monastery up the river. And after an afternoon of walking, they sat down under the shade, hot afternoon, they sat down under a shady tree to rest. And the philosopher asked the abbess, Can you tell me something about the philosophy of Buddhism?"

[13:39]

And she said, we don't have a philosophy in the monastery. And the professor said, oh, but certainly everyone has a philosophy of life that makes sense of life. And she said, no, no, we don't have a philosophy like that at all. And he said, no, no, you must not even have a philosophy to tell you why you don't have a philosophy. And so the abbess said, let me explain to you, it's like this. When we were walking down the river on a hike, we both at some point felt tired and hot. And it was completely ordinary for us to sit down in the shade of a tree to rest and cool off. If a baby's crying for food, it's an ordinary thing to go and feed the baby. If you put your hand on the hot stove is an ordinary thing to pull it away. You don't need a philosophy to tell you to rest in the shade. You don't need a philosophy to tell you to pull your hand off the stove.

[14:42]

You don't need a philosophy to tell you to feed the baby. What you need is to be attentive. You need to pay attention and notice what the situation needs, what's required in the situation. And what I see in Buddhism is a call or an offer to say there's a phenomenal opportunity available for you if you start paying attention more carefully and develop a heightened sensitivity, a heightened awareness to what's going on in your life because then you'll see something as obvious as resting in the shade if you're hot or feeding the baby or pulling a thorn You'll see your contribution to suffering. You'll see what you're doing. You'll see where the clinging is, if you're doing it in yourself. You'll see where the attachment to anger is, or to blame.

[15:44]

You'll see the various ways in which we have compulsion or we get contracted. And a big part of Buddhist practice, as I understand it, is taking responsibility for your contribution. to what you're doing, your suffering, to the problems of this life. And if you're sensitive, you'll become more aware of what your contribution is. If you're less sensitive, you won't be so much aware of your contribution, but you'll feel uncomfortable, you'll suffer, or you'll cause suffering to other people. So a lot of what Buddhist training is about is to become more sensitive, heightened awareness, so that what's obvious is something we want to do. We don't have to have a philosophy to tell us or some great mystical teachings to tell us what we're supposed to do. I think it all can flow and come out of the heightened attentiveness, the heightened awareness that we can cultivate in zazen or cultivate in mindfulness practice, cultivate in just being present for our life, being present for our activities of life and being there more fully for what we do as we do them.

[16:57]

And so what I found, my years of Zen practice, sitting in the Zen dome, sitting Zazen, doing the work at the monastery, living in community with other people, that the whole training of Zen was a training in cultivating a heightened sensitivity, heightened awareness, so I could see more clearly what was needed in the situation. And not that what was needed was a requirement, I don't think, for me, that Buddhism has any obligation as part of its religious teaching. But it does point to an opportunity we have, if we're sensitive, to pull the thorns out, or to respond more fully. I remember once when I was in Tassajara, and Sojin Roshi came down just to visit, I think, during the practice period. And we were crossing each other, across our paths, across to the paths of Tassajara. And I turned to him and said, just spontaneously, I wasn't premeditated exactly, and I said, I'm beginning to feel like a response machine.

[18:09]

And machine is kind of a mechanistic kind of idea, it doesn't seem so savory. But how I felt was that as I was kind of becoming more sensitive, more attuned to life and letting go of some of the thorns, My capacity to respond was becoming spontaneous, or seemingly spontaneous, or just open. It was like, if I was going to identify with myself, who I was, it was the response that came out of me as I was sensitive and attentive to the situation I was in. Outside of that response, I wasn't inclined to find myself or to hold on to myself. And I don't know all that was going on with that, but one of the thorns One of the deep thorns that a lot of people have is their attachment to self. Attachment to self-image, how they want to be seen by other people, attachment to identity, attachment to their personal history, attachment to their personal aspirations and directions they want their life to go to.

[19:18]

There's so much attachment around a sense of self. None of those things, the sense of self is not wrong and bad, but it's one of the places where there are thorns, very deep thorns. And if you're sensitive and attentive, you'll see the thorn that comes into play around the sense of self. But you need to be very, very sensitive to see the depth of how that works. So, in order to take this very ordinary capacity we all have, this ordinary activity we all of pulling out the thorns to a thorough and deep way in our life, Buddhism calls upon us to be more attentive, to pay more careful attention to what's going on, and to be still, to be stiller. A still mind has a chance to see some of the subtle but very influential thorns that we carry in our hearts. And so when we see them, there's no obligation to take them out at all.

[20:24]

Thou shalt take out all thorns. And you are not a good person if you don't. The Buddhism doesn't say that. One of the very powerful lessons I got from Sojon Roshi was, many years later I found out that Suzuki Roshi told that to him. But we were in the mid-70s or something, and he was driving me across the Bay Bridge from St. San Francisco to Berkeley in his old Volkswagen bug that he picks himself. And he asked me about my life and what I was doing and I told him what I was doing and a little bit. And at some point he turned to me and he said, just to be alive is enough. And that was a very impactful statement for me. And of course, just being alive wasn't enough. I had all these neurotic desires and wishes and things I was trying to accomplish. But that statement was such a powerful koan or statement.

[21:27]

It rang so true, it touched something very true in me. And so it helped me to see the thorns that I had, the way my desires, holding on to desires, I'm going to be this and that. And Buddhism offers a lot of these kind of little succinct teaching statements that can help you flush out the thorns that you have. Another one that's been very helpful for me, that comes from the Buddha, is the statement that nothing whatsoever is worth clinging to. So try to argue with that, wrestle with that question, because if you come across something you're clinging to, and then come up with all the arguments why you need to, why it's and debate with that statement, nothing is worth clinging to. Or nothing is worth being anxious about. That's another one.

[22:27]

What do you think of that statement? And how might that statement help you recognize where your particular thorn is? The belief, the feelings, the intentions that you're holding on to and clinging to. So there's teaching that Buddhism is so simple as ordinary as pulling a thorn out of your foot or lifting your hand off the hot stove, I think is a simple way of understanding the four noble truths. The first noble truth is there's suffering. The second noble truth is there's a cause to suffering. And the third noble truth is that it's possible to end that cause, to let go of that cause, and thereby let go of that suffering. You're impatient at the traffic light, that's the suffering. You're clinging to the desire to get somewhere is the cause and then if you let go of that impatience, let go of that clinging, if you let go of the clinging then the suffering, that impatience goes away.

[23:38]

That's pretty ordinary. It can sound pretty lofty, it can sound pretty foreign to us when it's kind of offer any kind of Buddhist garb, but so much of the Buddhist teachings are trying to express ordinary things we already do. And one of the things I find very useful in looking at Buddhist teachings is to not see them, not assume when you first hear them that they are esoteric or strange or foreign, but start with the assumption that they're talking about things that you already know. And then ask yourself, how do I already know this? And then from there, and say, now that I know it, recognize it in my own life, how can I make it more thorough, more complete? How can I apply this into the corners and different aspects of my life? So the Four Noble Truths, how can I apply this in my life? How can I apply this in the details of work and family?

[24:42]

sitting in the Zen center. Anywhere at all. How does this work? So those are my, that's my thoughts. I thought I would say today. And if you have any questions about that or anything else, you're welcome to ask. Hi, Gil. It's been a long time since I've seen you bow, and your first lesson to me is to accept how much slower our bodies move 30 years later. Which is something that I wrestle with a lot, because I'm used to being quick. And so, you have a little a little mantra or a little gotcha or something that you say in order to accept this aspect of getting older? I don't. Yeah, you know, I don't.

[25:54]

I mean, nothing whatsoever is worth clinging to. Or, just to be alive is enough, is a wonderful Gata to say. Here it is. Things have changed. Just to be alive is enough. There was a beautiful... About 15 years ago, there was a friend of mine who had her 75th birthday. I think it was. And for 40 years she had been a choreographer. She had a dance troupe. And she had spent her life dancing. And for her 75th birthday, she put on a dance show for lots of people for her birthday celebration. And she had this one dance that was so meaningful for me. It was an all-women's dance troupe, so all those women were dancing. And they were dancing four stages in women's lives. And first, there was a large group of women in their 20s who danced kind of like

[26:54]

They were prancing around the meadows like nymphs or something. It was beautiful. It was inspiring to see this youthful exuberance and sensuality of that age. And then she had women who were maybe about 40. And they showed this kind of beautiful, earthy kind of dignity of a 40-year-old woman. And then she had, I think, the dance of someone who was in their 60s. And they had a whole different way of being in the world, much slower. But she captured the beauty of that age. And then she came out to be the last one to dance. And she called herself the crone, the old lady. And she danced alone. And she was so much less flexible and able to dance than the 20-year-olds. But she captured this phenomenal dignity and beauty of someone at that age. Every age is beautiful.

[28:02]

So one of the things that I tell myself as I age, my capacities and abilities are going away, is I look for two things in it. I look for where am I still clinging to? What am I holding on to? And I don't try to do that abstractly, I try to feel into it. sense for me, in a kinesthetic sense, where in my mind, in my heart, in my body, am I clinging and holding on, or resisting, or something. Because when I'm going to find it in a physical way, then it's a lot easier for me to kind of understand how to let go. But abstract, just ideas, for me it's a little bit harder. So I look to what I'm clinging to, and as I get older there's a variety of things that I didn't even know I was clinging to, that because it was so easy, it was kind of visible, I didn't know I was clinging to these things, but then, you know, they're not there anymore. And so then I can see, oh yeah, in fact I was. So that's one thing I looked for.

[29:02]

The other thing I looked for is I looked for the joy. Because I found that if I let go, and there's no lightness, if there's no, some kind of light joy, simple joy that comes from not letting go, I'm going to get, God's going to come around and bite me. Because I've noticed, I'll sometimes let go. I think I'm supposed to let go. It's helpful to let go. And I kind of let go, but not really deep enough. If I just feel neutral after I let go, then I haven't really touched what's deep inside. And so I try to see, as I get older and my capacities are dwindling, can I find some way to be joyful about that or light about that? And go. Please go. I don't need any of this. Go, go, go. Yes? Sometimes letting go takes other people off. Yes, it does. I lost girlfriends because of it.

[30:04]

Only later did I find out that I was able to let go, but I didn't have any compassion. And so I think that compassion is very important, or attention, or sensitivity. also is directed to understand the other person well. And if you're tuning in and paying attention to the other people, then you have a sense of what they need as well. And maybe sometimes it's not appropriate to let go. It's going to cause them a lot of distress. Or perhaps you can let go, but then you can also take care of them, to reassure them. So it comes to mind right now that there are some families where worrying is an expression of love. And if you don't worry properly, then people don't feel like you care for them. As people practice, I think the clinging and desire to worry lessens. But then it's confusing for the family system if that's what they expected to see. So, it'd be sad if you decided to go back to worrying for the sake of your family.

[31:11]

But as you let go of worry, you realize the family has a need to feel like you care, that you're part of the system, you're connected. And so then your compassion, your care would... Look, what other ways can I do it now without worrying? Maybe I just tell them, I love you, but I'm not going to worry. I don't worry anymore because I've realized the cost of worrying. Or other things. So I think that compassion, tuning into them and seeing what's needed and how to support them is a very important support for you to be a Palenko. How does that sound? That's very interesting. I actually had to stop at a yellow light. My truck is heavy, so it takes a while to stop. So I was blocking a crosswalk. And I was cursed at very, very angrily by the pedestrian who was crossing the crosswalk with me, blocking it. And I had to ask myself, what kind of kind thoughts can I feel towards this very angry person?

[32:18]

Or am I going to respond back, yes, you're you too. So what did you decide? I think I decided both. And was that helpful for both? Was that helpful for both? I think that definitely the compassionate response was the more helpful one. It's very interesting when we do something with the intention was pure. We weren't trying to do anything wrong or bad or harm anyone. But what we do gets someone else angry at us. Or maybe even we've done something wrong. But anyway, someone's angry with us. And how do we not claim then, take it on personally, but still respond in a way that is not aloof or cold to that person? And I've been challenged many times. I've done something where it's very embarrassing.

[33:21]

Or I didn't get the right... If I can tell you a story, can I tell you a story? A personal foible like this. Some years ago I went up to Abhayagiri, which is a Theravadan monastery up in Ukaya, with a group of people. And I'd never been there before. And often when you go to a Theravada monastery, the monks who live there, it's a custom of offering them food. And so we were up for the weekend, and we brought, the group of people I was with, they all brought food. And I thought, well, we're going up there, and for the weekend they have lots of food. But during the week, there are no visitors. So I'll leave all kinds of dry goods for them in the kitchen. And so they have food during the week. I thought it was a good idea. So, then we went up there for the weekend, and then we were going to have the meal, and the way the meal worked was the monks got served first, and then the lay people, the people who are not the Theravada monk types, would eat in the same room afterwards, serve themselves after the monks did.

[34:33]

But as the food got carried into the dining room, it was announced who had made that offering that day. So somebody made the lasagna. Nancy made the lasagna. This came from her. So all the people I came with, they all had brought dishes for that day. It didn't take long for me to realize that my name wasn't going to be mentioned. I was the only one there whose name wasn't going to be mentioned, because I didn't bring any food for that day. I brought it for later. And I could feel welling up inside of me. I could almost jump up out of my seat and say, wait, hey, you guys, wait a minute. I thought something, too. I didn't want to be recognized as someone who did an offering. I wanted to be not recognized as the miserly one. And so I realized right away, there was no need to be seen by anybody. I didn't need to prove myself or do anything. Let them think what they want. And there was no bad consequence.

[35:36]

I thought too much. And so my task in that situation was to let go, just sit there, and let people think what they want. If they think it was miserly, then it's my job to sit there and try to be relaxed around that. I don't know where that following anything went. Yes, please. Thank you so much. About, there's nothing in the world worth being anxious about, it's kind of related What about, it's funny to let go of getting someplace in a hurry or being recognized in that setting, but what if somebody you really love, like your child is extremely sick and you're sitting at their bedside in the hospital or something and you're extremely anxious about whether the doctor, the right doctor will come or whatever, just like that, where the stakes are a little higher. Thank you for the question.

[36:40]

How I would work with it is I would not look at my feelings, any of them, as being wrong, anxieties being wrong, but I would use that question, nothing's worth being anxious for, or just be alive is enough, as a lens through which to try to be more sensitive to what's going on in me. Because the functioning of our mind is often multi-faceted. Many things are going on at once. And so can we ferret out that which is extra? So the word anxiety is different from fear. Anxiety sometimes has to do with projection into the future, imagination. And so there's a lot of things people can be anxious around in being a parent, around the child being sick. And some of it might not be really having to do with what's going on. For example, it could be all my friends are going to think I'm a bad parent because my kid is sick.

[37:44]

Part of the anxiety is, my child gets worse and worse. People are going to judge me for not having made the right decisions medically. And so part of the anxiety is not about the child per se, but around how people are going to see me in the decisions I've made. This may be a silly example, but actually I think many times there's a lot of different issues that come into play in family situations like that. The more closely we're connected, the more complex sometimes the inner workings are, the identity, the history, the meanings and all that. And so can I bring my attention, my mindfulness, to begin looking more carefully at what that anxiety is, and to separate out that which is not needed. And if some of it's needed, or some of it's a natural response to the situation, let's leave that there. But we have the capacity, if we're sensitive, to see what's not needed, see what we add to it to fill. And I think I've seen it in myself, that it's possible to be very concerned, very compassionate,

[38:51]

very actively involved without being stressed. Even with a child who is very sick. And I think sometimes people don't have enough confidence in their compassion and their care that that should be enough. So they feel if they're anxious, sometimes it's kind of a subtle thing, if I'm anxious, I'll do a better job. I'll take care of the situation better. I think that must be behind it a little bit. What do you think? That answer? I don't know if I can do that. I definitely think you can separate out extra stuff. But then this basic part that... Maybe it's more fear. It's hard to let go. It's hard not to be stressed. But I can work on it. Yeah, I think we're taking an ordinary thing and applying it thoroughly in our life, which means there are plenty of situations where it's not going to be easy.

[39:58]

But it can be done. So you talked about being sick. There was a person in my community down south who was always anxious. And the thing he was most anxious about was getting cancer and dying. At some point, he got cancer. At some point, it was clear he was going to die. And when it was clear he was dying, when he was clear to himself, this is when he stopped being anxious. And he was peaceful the first time. It was beautiful to see him. Oh, yes, the signal. Thank you very much.

[40:41]

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