Mindfulness as Medicine

please let yourself find a way to sit that is comfortable and at ease and listen not so much to remember something of the words but rather if there's anything that resonates in what you know already to be true let that touch you the rest you can let go of leave aside so here we are together we finished the first day of this 10-day retreat in the first days even if you've practiced a considerable number of Retreats before over years there's still a little bit difficult achy and sleepy and wandering and the mind comes in it says well now you know was this the right choice there are other things I could have done with this time might have been more pleasant a poem for you from Lori Anderson in the Tibetan map of the world the world is a circle and at the center there's an enormous Mountain Garden by guarded by four Gates and dragons and when they draw a map of the world they draw the map in sand and it takes months and then when the map is finished they say a few prayers and erase it and throw the sand into the nearest river last fall the Dal Lama came to New York City to do a two-e ceremony called the kala Shakra which is a prayer to heal the Earth and woven into these prayers were a series of vows that he asked us to take and before I knew it I had taken a vow to be kind for the rest of my life and I walked out of there and I thought for the rest of my life what have I done this is a disaster and I was really worried had I promised too much not enough I was really in a panic they had come from tobat for the ceremony and they were walking around Midtown in their new brown shoes and I went up to one of the monks and said can you come with me and have a cappuccino right now and talk and so we went to this little Italian place he had never had coffee before so he kept talking faster and faster and I kept saying look I don't know whether I promise too much or too little can you help me please and he was being really practical he said look don't limit yourself don't be so strict open it up he said the mind is a wild White Horse and when you make a Corral for it make sure it's not too small and another thing when your house burns down just walk away and another thing keep your eyes open oh and one more thing find the right road because it's finally time to go home so here we are having promised too much or too little or whatever but we're in it and I chanted last night in the opening this praise to the Dharma swato D Timeless open-handed immediate visible to all who open their eyes and their hearts to see bringing Liberation happiness the text that teaches the practice that we're doing together most directly in the Buddhist uh in the Buddhist Canon of teachings is the Sati Sati patana sua or the text on the practice or the path of mindfulness and it begins with a invitation somewhat like that chant it says my friends this is the Buddha speaking there is a most wonderful way for living beings to realize purification to overcome directly grief and sorrow to end pain and and anxiety to travel the path of wisdom and compassion the true path and to realize Nirvana and what is this way it is the establishment of mindful awareness In This Very life establishing mindfulness resting in mindfulness allowing mindfulness to be the Abode of the heart now what's interesting about this text and the chanting that I did is they contain a paradox and as one practices Dharma over the years one needs to become more and more comfortable with Paradox because there's sort of wherever you turn there's a dimension of paradox there's the personal sense of self and then the selflessness of things there's the intention and dedication we make on one hand and the EMP of things on another and one of the paradoxes that you get comfortable with these text speak to is the Paradox of sudden and gradual Awakening that in some way they're saying here and now is an invitation to experience timelessness Joy Freedom Awakening it is absolutely possible for you and for anyone who awakens to it and it's not far away it's no other place the journey is not from here to there the journeys from there to here so this is the sudden truth immediate open-handed visible to the wise and one of the things that was beautiful being around my teacher auna was the kind of joy that he exuded because he lived so much in the present moment he wasn't worried about the future or the past and he taught from the reality of the present he said people come here looking for the Buddha they bow they take refuge in the Buddha but what is the Buddha when we see with the eye of wisdom we know that the Buddha is timeless unborn unrelated to any physical body or history or any image the Buddha is the ground of all being the realization of the truth of the unmoving mind so the Buddha was not enlightened in India in fact he was never enlightened he was never born and never died this Timeless Buddha is our true home our Abiding Place when we take refuge in the Buddha all things in the world are free for us they become our teacher proclaiming the true nature of life so he lived in this place of ease and freedom and realization and when difficulties would come which they did as they do in every life things that were people would come with tremendous grief or loss or it would happen in the monastery he would say this is what grief is this is the experience of it it is the way that it is beautiful things would happen you'd say this is what beautiful things are like without clinging I remember being really sick with malaria in my little Hut in the forest and my head felt like it was going to burn up and explode at the same time and my body was shaking with chills and I was very very sick and um he came to visit and there I was lying and shivering and miserable and he said sick huh and I said yes he said real sick huh I said yes very sick he said makes you think of your mother doesn't it you want to go home I said I kind of nodded he said y that's suffering all right you know it right there this is what it is this is duka this is suffering and then he smiled he said we've all had it because we lived in these jungles we've all had it before we didn't have very good medicine now the elders can bring you some medicine it'll be all right you know you can do this you'll make it through this and he kind of smiled and looked at me he said you know you can do this it's just suffering you know and then he smiled again and he walked out of my Cottage and there was a sense of such both presence and compassion yes he'd been through it all and this was something that was workable even though I thought I was dying I think you're dying don't you yes it's okay you can do this he was he rested in this space of awareness without fear of that which was difficult and without the clinging to that which was pleasant and he didn't cling even to his ideas about things you know there was a nun who came to the Western Monastery that he established um a western woman who ordained and she was one of the first of his Western nuns and she was a great meditator had very deep experiences and also was quite charismatic so other people came to follow her and pretty soon there was a group of a number of young women who' ordained his Nuns with her and they would go and visit aun cha but she became kind of their teacher and the Western Monastery had this group of nuns and monks and after about 5 years she disappeared she left a note saying I this is all I can do I leaving everyone wondered what happened to her well about a year later she showed up no longer in robes she had uh converted and she was a born again Christian and she had come back not only to see her friends but to help them see the light and so she was there and she was still this charismatic person and she was saying you're practicing the wrong way and Jesus is the thing you know that you need to understand and that will liberate you and she knew all the language so it was kind of compelling and difficult and you can imagine they're already having a hard time just living over there in this jungle in this foreign culture and then someone's coming and saying you're you know you're not even doing the right thing and so the people in the monastery became really upset about her that she was coming and doing this and she shouldn't and all all the conflict and finally they decided they had to go to visit auna so they walked the six or eight miles through the forest to the main Monastery and they bowed and a group of them and they said you know she's come back he said I've heard you know this none and she's become a Christian he said I heard that too and she's telling us that we're not practicing right and that we're missing the point and all of these things and you know what do we do about this they were really upset and he looked at them and he smiled and he said maybe she's right and laughed a little bit and they bowed and they went [Laughter] [Music] back he just didn't hold on to things and it wasn't like well we're right and they're wrong he he wouldn't get caught in views and opinions and conflicts where where he abided was a place of Freedom so he wasn't possessed of oh my nuns are better than this nun or something like that and so he could play with whatever was there and you felt it in him this kind of graciousness so that's the invitation of these the sudden way of discovering this reality but at the same time that chant and these teachings and the invitation is also part of the text of gradual development of how to cultivate or develop mindfulness and compassion again and again with breath and body and feelings and thoughts and so forth and there's a whole text of the systematic training that says as I read there's this wonderful way for living beings to realize purification overcome directly grief and sorrow end pain and anxiety travel the true path realize Nirvana so even though it's already here this Awakening this Buddha nature the truth of who we are still also we practice and it says that this is offered first to help living beings realize purification now that's an interesting phrase we don't understand purification very well in the west when you hear the word purification it's as if you're impure if you kind of look at it through Victorian kind of Christian judeo-christian eyes well purification means you're impure and if you go through the right ritual or ceremony that you get purified but the meaning of this purification has nothing to do with sin or your lack of Purity uh you are fundamentally a Buddha what the meaning of purific ation is as my teacher Burmy teacher I sat with he said meditation Retreats are a little bit like going through the laundromat right there's a kind of washing machine thing you go through and I know when I come to sit on Retreat even if I've had months of ease and graciousness and equinity that have grown in me over these years of practice I come to retreat and there's a kind of accumulation in my body and I sit down and part of the purification is just letting go of the collected tensions and memories and thoughts and feelings and all the things that are held there's a kind of release that happens not in order to get something or get enlightened or some something like that but just to let go so that there's a kind of deeper openness or emptiness of body and nervous system and and well-being and feelings and mind does that make sense to you the other reason I sit beside to let things get clean to kind of in washing is for the pleasure of it as things open then to explore to learn to discover to be alive Suzuki roshi calls this a general house cleaning of the mind he said you come not in order to get something but actually to clean the windows and sweep the floors and open the doors and so forth and for aan cha he said you just take your seat this one seat in the center of the world and steady yourself with concentration on the breath in the body as we're beginning and as you concentrate purification happens and the way the purification happens is here you are sensing your breath or sensing your body if that's what you're focusing on and as you're sensing your breath all of a sudden tension arises or pain or or uh energy in the body and you let it come you don't resist it and you still stay with the breath and by staying with the breath you allow all this other to come and release as it will in its own time without reacting against it and without grasping on to it and By and By by the very fact of staying steady and concentrating all the things that want you to not concentrate there you are trying to be on your breath and your body says no no no no this and this and this and you say that's okay there there it's all right I'm staying with the breath for a bit and it comes and it knocks on the door and you don't answer and it pounds on the door and you say I know you're at the door but I'm doing the breath now and then it shakes the house you know and you say Okay shaking the house and you go back to the breath and after a while it goes okay you're really staying with the breath you know and then the unfinished business of the heart comes and the tears that we've carried from the last months of our life of things that we've seen or felt but haven't had time to let ourselves touch deeply the longings we have the love the the visions that we want to honor all the emotional body arises and it knocks on the door and you can bow to it yes this this kind of emotion and that there's tears oh the ocean of Tears yes and here's the breath I'm right now being with the breath and then anger comes no you're not I'm going to get you you know okay here's anger yeah thank you for the story that's it and here's the breath and after a while they all come and go and by virtue of attending to what's here there comes a kind of purification because they lose their power they start to release them their their power over you and here you are and the same with the storms of thoughts views and opinions and ideas how you should be and what you should have done and what other people should do and how you're not doing it right even now remember what Julia Child said she said Just remember this if you're in the kitchen and you drop the lamb you can just pick it up who's going to know right you feel your breath all these things come you lose it for a little bit it's okay you come back to the breath it's not about doing it right but there's a purification that comes simply from your dedication and steadiness and all these things come up and gradually the Mind begins to become collected and centered and steady and the story that I sometimes tell very brief for the moment is this um Scandinavian story of the princess who was wedded I think um she was she was betrothed to a dragon um it was one of those marriages where the king and queen had gotten into a little um debt and the dragon had all the gold you know how those things happen in this world so they said oh yeah he'd make a really fine husband for you you know and there she was and it was a kind of a terrifying Arrangement as far as the princess was concerned um and she didn't know what to do and she talked to everybody and finally someone said you know down in the marketplace there's an old wise woman who who knows about all things including dragons you better go talk to her so she went to see the old wise woman she said my parents they have betrothed me to this dragon and the old wise woman says it's going to be okay but there's a little secret I have to tell you for your wedding night and if you understand this everything will be fine wedding night secret people are listening now right she said on your wedding night the one thing that you have to do is to wear for your wedding and for yourd night instead of wearing a beautiful gown you have to wear 10 gowns one on top of another okay I will wear 10 gowns and then she gave her a second Little Instruction which you'll hear in a moment so they go through the wedding you know and the king and queen are happy because they get this huge mound of the dragon's gold as part of the deal and things are all going to be all right but the poor princess ends up after the wedding in The Bridal Suite so to speak with her and this scaly fire breathing dragon and the dragon says well isn't it time honey for consummation of our and she says absolutely my dear new husband um but first I must take off my wedding gown wouldn't you like that he said I would indeed she said but for me to take off my wedding gown I would ask one small thing of you he said anything my dear that if I take off a gown you also must take off a gown now dragons are used to shedding their skin like snakes they have scales that they so she took off one gown and the dragon with his claws took off a layer of skin no problem okay then he looked over and she was still wearing a wedding gown she said oh yes there was one under that but I will take that off too since I know you would like me to and she took that off but you too must take off one and they went back and forth one layer after another and after a few layers the dragon was having to actually claw saw the layers deeper and deeper as she took off each gown tremendously painful she said well just a few more gowns to go honey took off another gown and as the dragon began to claw and take off the gowns his form began to change and little by little he looked less like a dragon and more and more like a person 7th 8th nth by the time she took the 10th gown off and he peeled the last layer off there was as in all good fairy tales a handsome prince who had been Enchanted into a dragon or maybe took that on for the fun of it we don't know this moment in the story so this is purification really it's not that you have to do something but your steadiness allows the layers to open does that make sense to you and inner cleansing and it's beautiful to watch from from here because we see you come in some of you a little bit blur some tired some restless all this stuff and as the days goes go on your faces get softer and and more beautiful and you look younger and younger by the end of the retreat I know we could sell this stuff in Hollywood by the end of this Retreat there's this sense of shining beauty that comes out of each of you so this is the the layers of purification then the textt says also you will realize purification overcome directly grief and sorrow Oh nobly born you will overcome grief and sorrow what does this mean one of the beautiful things about the Dharma is that we Face suffering the sufferings of our life and the world we learn about suffering and its end and that's what's so refreshing that we Face the whole of life with its 10,000 Joys and its 10,000 sorrows and joy is like this and suffering is like this and they're both part of the Dharma and by knowing this instead of being afraid or running away there comes the overcoming of it so John kabit in when he started his first clinic in the basement of the medical school in Massachusetts 20 years ago mindfulness-based stress reduction um he went up stairs to invite the other doctors to send patients down to him and did Grand rounds at the medical school and said I want you to send me the hardest patients the ones that you can't help because there's a lot of times in modern Med medicine where it goes just so far and then there are things that that modern medicine doesn't know how to deal with the ones with intractable pain and the ones with you know an anxiety and the ones with these kind of diseases and you've done all you can when you're finished and you can't do anymore send them down to me and then he said as we were talking about it he said that's because we have the strongest medicine he didn't say that to the doctors but he thought it to himself and the medicine was the medicine of the Dharma it was the medicine of the truth that if you're in pain and you come down he would say you're in pain here's how you work with pain if you're in great fear here's how you work with fear if your body is falling apart in this way let's work with this as it is and because we know in the Dharma how to work with things as they are there is an overcoming a Liberation that takes place text it says the Dharma is medicine just as a capable physician might cure a patient who is in pain and seriously ill so my friends whoever hears the Dharma of the Buddha be it teachings explanations marvelous statements or practices sorrow lamentation grief and despair will vanish just as if there were a beautiful pond with a pleasant Shore its water being agreeable clear cool transparent and a man or woman came by scorched and exhausted by the heat fatigued parched and thirsty and would step into the pond and bathe and drink and all his plight and fatigue and feverishness would be o allayed so my friends whenever one encounters the teachings of the Dharma all of the plight and fatigue and burning of the heart are allayed we each have a certain measure of Sorrow that's given to us so when it speaks of overcoming grief and sorrow the sorrow of our personal life or the sorrow of the world the Dharma becomes the medicine for this and I remember when somebody ask the Dal Lama who carries a tremendous burden of the struggles and the losses of Tibetan culture and the Tibetan people how he could be as happy as he is with all that sorrow and he said well you know they have destroyed our temples they have uh destroyed um our sacred texts and burned them in many ways they've tried to destroy our whole culture why should I also let them destroy my peace of mind kind of remarkable thing to say all those things have happened and yet there is another reality why should I let them also destroy my peace of mind when we were together on this panel in Washington DC I guess it was a year and a half ago or so for the Mind life teachings and he was teaching about happiness and the kind of you know bubly laughter that we know from the doy Lama and some reporter went up to him afterward and said you know you had this New York Times best-selling book The Art of happiness it was on the list for a whole year or two and you teach it and you exemplify it even in difficulty could you tell you microphone and you know video camera could you tell our our viewers what was the happiest moment of your life dial paused for a moment looked at the reporter in the camera and said I think now and just broke into this big smile so when it says overcoming directly grief and sorrow it is the medicine of the Dharma that says this is the way things are and it's workable no matter what it happens to be it's as if we sent something greater than the Sorrows as Tennesse Williams wrote the violets in the mountains have broken the rocks and that there's some beauty within us that is undeniable no matter the measure of Sorrows we've been given sometimes I read this letter that describes one woman's great personal suffering she said my mother always assured me that unspeakable punishments were bound to befall any child as naughty as I was terrible terrible letter if I was you she'd say I'd be afraid to go to sleep at night for fear that God would strike me dead she would speak these words softly regretfully as though saddened by her errant daughter's fate and then she goes on to describe years of abuse and she says the most devastating words my mother ever spoke to me came when I asked her if she loved me I'd just been escorted home by the police after one of my many attempts to run away so it was bad timing on my part she answered how could anyone ever love someone like you it took me almost 50 years to heal the damage from these ugly words recently I remembered a childhood ritual that I told to my doctor and as I told he began to weep from age five or six until I was in my teens whenever I had trouble sleeping I would slip out from under my covers and steal into the kitchen for a bit of bread or cheese which I'd carry back to bed with me and there I'd pretend my hands belong to someone else a comforting reassuring being without a name an angel perhaps the right hand would feed me little bits of cheese or bread as the left hand stroked my cheeks and hair my eyes closed and I would whisper softly to myself there there go to sleep you're safe now everything will be all right I love you and it's terribly painful to even read this letter and yet it's also true that there are many people who experience this kind of suffering and what's remarkable is not only the sadness of a child treated in this terrible way but the intuition of the heart of this child to crawl under the covers and feed herself like an angel to have that the little green choots of compassion come and say there there you're safe now go to sleep I love you everything will be all right that something in US is inviolable and indominable and in this world with its measure of joy and Sorrows something in US knows that closing down is not the way yes we have our measure of pain and uncertainty but in this vulnerable human life every loss is either an opportunity to shut down and shut the world out or to stand up with dignity and let the heart respond with compassion and we all know this is possible in us it is our Buddha nature I saw it so clearly with my teacher gananda the Gandhi of Cambodia with whom I worked over a number of years and in in recent years um he's gotten quite old and he's lost his memory so almost completely so for years he led these peace marches when the refugees in the camps along the Cambodian border were finally able to go back to their devastated Villages he said you can't go back by bus or the UN wanted to transport them he said we have to walk back and we have to show people that we are people of peace and so he led hundreds of people on peace marches back through the W torn parts of Cambodia chanting peace and loving kindness until they got to their homes and then he'd go back to the camp and get another 10,000 people and walk them back and he did it year after year for a long time in spite of grenades and people trying to shoot them and the whole time he would do this prayer of loving kindness meta and chant as they walked he'd kind of be at the front of the line so now he's lost his memory Alzheimer's stroke it's not really quite clear but he can't even remember how to tie his robe sometimes and yet he still teaches that is some people will bring him to places to teach and he sits up and he looks at people these beautiful beautiful smile and glowing eyes and he chants the Sutra of loving kindness and he just beams meta at everybody who comes and I I had this one very famous Tibetan llama who spent some time with gananda and myself and he said oh I wish he could come and teach at my Center too I just want him around you know he's um and another another uh llama great llama said to me who is that that guy in the bright orange robe who upstaged the Dal llama you you know cuz sometimes they'll be together they were really good friends and what's beautiful about gananda is that he shows the possibility of overcoming grief and sorrow and the Dharma is medicine and it doesn't matter you know even that he's lost his memory the spirit of his heart is so beautiful that he just loves every being that he touches realize purification overcome grief and sorrow the measure of our sorrows with this beauty of our heart and pain and anxiety is the next thing that it says now I'm not sure that the government wants you to end your anxiety they're putting out a lot of notices that you should be afraid really afraid and War on Terror and things like that which is a very strange phrase It's like a war war on fear a war on a mind state I'm not sure that that's going to be a terribly successful Venture um but instead here we are breathing and being with things the way they are taking our seat in the center of the whole world this one seat and letting feelings and thoughts and images and the joys and Sorrows of Life arise and what does it mean to end pain and anxiety the image that the Buddha uses is of the two darts or the two um Spears or arrows one the first arrow is the arrow of the particular pain that we're given maybe it's a disease in our body or maybe it is a loss in our family or maybe it is a conflict in our lives that we don't know what to do with it some kind of suffering that comes to you which will happen periodically the second arrow is not shot to us but it's the one we shoot into ourselves we have that suffering or that particular pain and then we add to it our fear our confusion our anger our our outrage our Terror we add to it all the forms of reaction that make it so much worse so so to end pain and anxiety means to Simply Be with the measure of Joys and sorrows and gain and loss and periods of well-being and periods of difficulty they are our Human Condition our human lot and to be with them as it says in the great end text without anxiety about non- perfection this is Enlightenment to be awakened or liberated enlightened is to be without anxiety about non Perfection that it's not perfect and it never will be according to how you'd like it to be it's the way that it is so ending pain and anxiety is really the way that fear begins to drop away and it's a beautiful thing as you practice over the years to sense how fear can fall away and drop away and I see it in gananda and the Dal Lama but I see it in its own way in myself that fears might even still arise but it's just not very compelling anymore they have their story oh you're getting older your body's doing this this is going to happen yeah thank you for your opinion that's a story and it's true in a certain way but that's not who we really are and something in US knows this so deeply and the end of anxiety isn't that that might not still arise but that we begin to rest in a place of fearlessness that is our true nature Annie Moro Lindberg who writes about pain she says go with the pain let it take you open your palms and your body to the pain it comes in waves like a tide and you must be open as a vessel lying on the beach let it fill you up and then retreating leave you empty and clear with a deep breath and it has to be as deep as the pain one reaches a kind of inner Freedom From Pain as though the pain were not yours but your bodies the spirit lays the body on the altar the end of pain and anxiety what happens is that there grows through the deepening of our practice of mindfulness and compassion a trust a trust in healing a trust in opening a trust in something so much bigger than the small fears that we have about life there's something so much more amazing that's going on you know it said that in one scoop of soil there's I don't know a million little microorganisms bacteria and viruses and you know parami and every kind of thing that there's more life in one spoon of soil than there probably than there is on the whole you know the planet of mars or some other place that the life is so woven into the fabric of this particular planet that it's everywhere and it's teeming with it and we're just part of this amazing dance and we kind of get separated and think well we're just this little part the small sense of self and what the Buddha invites us to do is take this seat and feel our connectedness with everything and I love it when I kind of read these wonderful sto stories of um animals that we think of as different than ourselves I I have a friend who went to visit this parrot in New York named inesi who has a vocabulary of 1200 words and he said yes I sat down with enesi and Ki said oh you're wearing a nice vest you know and I thought wait a second who's you know who's feeding this parrot lines you're vest is like uh George who comes over right and um I was reading about this parot as well because some researchers from MIT came down to kind of check out that it wasn't some hoax or something like that they actually had a parrot in one of their Labs at MIT also that could talk about different shapes and things like that but this parrot was raised as a kid so it had a much better vocabulary than you would if you were raised in the lab at MIT which isn't good for anybody really and it's just so amazing that here is this bird that actually you know welcomes you and talks to you and has a little bit of a conversation or this place in Tennessee that I'm sure a lot of you have heard about because it's been in the news the elephant Sanctuary a woman who really loved elephants and bought at first a couple hundred acres in Tennessee for the old circus elephants and zoo elephants that were being let go because they couldn't work there so much anymore and now it's grown she's about thousand couple thousand acres and many many elephants but anyway there was in the early years an elephant that was sent there named Shirley from Baton Rouge Louisiana I think in the zoo old elephant had been there for quite a long time and they wanted to get a couple of new elephants and so Shirley arrived and they put the elephants one of the people that worked there told me about the story they put the elephants in a kind of holding pan before they let them go out with all the the other elephant so that they can see if it's how they're going to relate and this elephant was in there and the other ones all come by and stick their trunks in and kind of sniff the elephant and say hello and whatever elephants do for Greetings but then one of the elephants came there and reared on her hind legs and trumpeted and beat the bars as if to break them down and so did Shirley beat on the bars and so forth and the owner of the place got really upset like what's happening with these elephants and this happened a few days in a row and she made some phone calls back to Baton Rouge and has she ever acted this way and then finally discovered that Shirley and the Elephant that was there had both been together in the circus 25 years before for two years and they hadn't seen each other for a quarter of a century and they just were happy to see each other so when they let Shirley out this person that works there was telling me now you see the two of them walking along with their trunks together like this and and somebody who's sitting on the retreat who just came back from an elephant camp in far north of Thailand as part of her travels and Adventures said that she was riding on the head of the elephant like the mahoot um with some instructions um and and she said you know the elephants Rock a lot and it felt a couple of times like she might fall off and as she started to slip a little this big 50-year-old elephant um could feel that and flipped her ears back and kind of pinned her legs in so to hold her to make sure that she would be steady when she was slipping she said and I could really feel it wasn't just once it was every time I got a little slippery she would kind of hold me in place make sure it was okay that we were going to get there safely so we live in this extraordinary World which brings to us a river of joy and sorrow and and light and dark and gain and loss and praise and blame and all of those things keep coming to us and yet there is in the practice of mindfulness and compassion The Awakening of our Buddha nature a deeper and deeper trust that we can be with this River this mystery that we're in I mean how did we get here in these bodies and live in joy as the Buddha says live in joy and love even among the those who hate like gananda or the Dal Lama live in joy and health even Among The Afflicted live in joy and peace even among the troubled look within be still free from fears and attachment know the sweet joy of the way and so we learn this we discover it we remember it we come back to it and it's a wonderful process of opening and un layering and trusting and as we do there comes more and more a trust in the reality of the present that we don't have to fix things or make them different I mean I remember being with this person that I was working with individually um and she had gone through all this trauma and we worked with the emotion and the stories and so forth and she said I feel like if I let myself feel the level of grief and rage that I have fully that it would just destroy me in the universe and we did a lot of work to get to this point finally I said okay let's see if it does because as you practice in Dharma you get it it's like initiation or Midwifery or something you get a sense that the dissent and the allowing of things is actually what brings freedom so she closed her eyes and meditated and we did this kind of guided visualization together and she let this huge amount of rage and grief and so forth and after a while she said it's it's terrible it's done the whole universe is just I said how big is it she said it's like a nuclear explosion and everything is black and dead and will never come back to life in me or anywhere she was kind of weeping as she said it I said okay just stay with this this is your worst fear and now it's happened and live with it for a while so we sat with it and I said now let some time go by she said well how much time I said I don't know since we're doing this a guided meditation 100 years a thousand years how much time it needs said that's pretty short a million years you're just here and the universe has been destroyed as far as you can tell it's black and it's ashes and there's nothing in it and it's devastated 50 million years 100 million years this is 5 minutes or something like that 500 million years take as long as it takes and all of a sudden I noticed she shook her head a little bit I said what's that she said nothing okay another 100 million years another 500 million years just rest here so now it's 10 minutes shakes her head again I said what's happen happening she said well she said there's something over there I said you want to see what it is she said not really I said well you could wait a little bit longer another 100 million years okay so he waited a couple more minutes she said it's still there I said well take a peek said way at the far edge of the universe there's this little green light I said find out what it is oh it's a little green planet and things are just starting to come back the day my mother died tikn notan says I wrote in my journal a serious Misfortune of my life has arrived I suffered for more than a year after the passing of my mother but one night in the highlands of Vietnam I was sleeping in the Hut in my Hermitage and I dreamed of my mother I saw myself sitting with her and we were having a wonderful talk she looked young and beautiful and her hair was slowing down it was so pleasant to see sit there and talk with her as if she had never died and when I woke up it was about 2:00 in the morning and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother the impression that my mother was still with me was very clear and I understood then the Buddhist teachings which are very different than ordinary understanding it's the understanding that birth and death are Notions that they are not real the fact that we think that they are true is a powerful illusion that causes our suffering when we understand that there is no birth and no death we are liberated from Fear so then I understood that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea it was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me I opened the door and went outside the entire Hillside was bathed in moonlight it was a hill covered with tea plants and my Hut was set behind the temple halfway up walking slowly in the Moonlight through the row of tea plants I noticed my mother was still with me she was the Moonlight caressing me as she had done so often very tender very sweet wonderful and each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me I knew this body was not mine alone but living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents of all my ancestors these feet that I saw as my feet were actually our feet and together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the dab soil in the Moonlight purification realize purification overcome grief and sorrow and pain and anxiety and discover or travel the true path Thomas meron again who says of what Avail is it if we can travel to the Moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves and this is the true path to come back to trust the reality of the the present the reality of the present there is says Alan Watson Art of Living that's neither drifting carelessly on one hand or clinging to the Past on the other it consists in being completely sensitive to each moment regarding it utterly new and unique having the mind and heart open and receptive wherever we are so the path is really the path where we are each moment and when you look in the mirror there's this amazing experience because you look older right and yet at the same time there's a part of you that's saying I don't feel older and the reason that happens is that it's only your body that's getting older your body ages but not the one who sees not the one who knows a friend of mine works in the hospice at the gahonda hospital the Zen Center hospice and she said that she was working there and then they brought in a man who was close to dying or quite sick um who was a prisoner so he was Shackled to his bad they let him out of prison to come to the hospice and she'd spent some days with him over course of some weeks and he didn't never had any visitors and she said don't you have any family and he said I have a I have a mother who lives down in San Jose but you know since I got in prison 10 12 years ago I mean I don't I don't write to her I don't want her to see me she'd be so ashamed of me she'd be so ashamed of me and they talked for a while for a long time actually about it and little by little this hospice vol ER said you know maybe she'd be ashamed but here you are and you're sick and you might be dying and don't you want to give her a chance in case she wants to see you once more he you said I don't know I don't know she'd be so ashamed I don't want her to see me she'd be so angry too and upset with me but finally the hospice volunteer helped him write a little note to his mother and sure enough she called back called the volunteer and volunteer picked the mother up and brought her to the hospital and she said it was a amazing thing cuz this little old woman walked into the room and there was her son on the bed with the handcuffs thinking that she was going to be angry and ashamed of him and she stood in the door and just looked at him looked him in the eyes for a long time and then just went over and kissed him my son and it's this when you look in the mirror and say yes your body has gotten older but it doesn't feel like I'm aging because your body isn't who you are and also the identities we take are not who we are they're just temporary to travel the true path is to awaken the spirit of who we really are you the richest person in the world it says in the Buddhist text have been traveling around begging forgetting who you are your own Buddha nature when we know this we realize Nirvana Z Master Suzuki roshi says when you realize the fact that everything changes and find your composure in it there you find yourself in Nirvana or buddhadasa my teacher who wrote this little booklet called n n for everyone says we have experiences of Nirvana all the time but we discount them in any moment when we're not afraid or clinging or caught up or where we've been caught up and then there's a moment of seeing Oh we were caught up it's a coolness a sweetness that comes to the heart a looking at a tree a taking our seat a holding a cup of tea in our hands looking in the eyes of someone that we love a moment of taking taking a step is a moment of Nirvana a moment of Awakening and you know this you know this freedom and you know the path thus shall ye think of this fleeting World it says in the diamond Sutra a star at dawn a bubble in a stream a flash of lightning in a summer Cloud an echo a rainbow a dream life changes so much and here we take our seat in the River of Life and are invited by the Buddha and by all the awakened beings and by The Awakening in ourselves to realize purification to overcome grief and sorrow to end pain and anxiety to travel the path of wisdom and compassion and to realize Freedom that we already know in ourselves so somebody came to Zend Master Suzuki roshi a psych psychologist and tried to question him about higher Consciousness could you please explain Enlightenment and higher States Of Consciousness and Suzuki roshi smiled and said I don't really know anything about higher States Of Consciousness I just try to teach my students how to hear the birds sing such a paradox that we are here and we do know freedom and then we do the practice of reminding and letting go and opening and reestablishing the center of freedom I hope you enjoy your practice doesn't have to be a grim Duty it's really a beautiful thing to be able to do it and as you practice May you more and more deeply come to learn what it is to live freely in the present moment to live here and now in the reality of the present