(Bell sounds twice)
How wonderful to be together. Gesundheit.
That was Larry, with a sneeze.
Lets start out by getting here.
How was your day, huh?
Find your place on your chair right now.
Let's start out with a little bit of vagal nerve connecting with
so maybe we can just warm up our hands as we settle in
and how was our day?
Hello body.
I am here, and giving some heat.
And we're just going to rub our ears and make little circles towards the top.
We're going to go both directions but not pressing
but just breathing and making a slow general circle.
Breathing, settling down.
Make sure you go both directions.
Feet on the ground for many of us, and bum on the chair.
And then if you can pull your ears,
just not hurting them,
but just kinda a general tug out to the side.
And all the while just kinda rubbing the ears.
My mother had auspicious signed ears.
One of the signs of a Buddha is these really long lobes.
The Vietnamese community loved my mum.
She didn't have to do anything except have her ears,
so I always think of her ears when I do this.
I didn't get the full auspicious sign myself.
Yeah, so just rubbing those ears.
And let's go back and rub our hands a little bit.
We're going to put our hands over our eyes and do at least three breaths.
And then moving your hands over your jaw, same thing, at least three breaths.
Kids I work with call this the "oh my position".
But for us, really feel the warmth on our jaw.
Then moving our hands to our heart.
Let's move one hand to the belly and one stays on the heart,
with a tilting posture.
We're going to do that again.
At least three breaths over the eyes.
And just notice, what you might notice, is your body settles.
And we can talk to our vagus nerve: "Hello vagus nerve".
And then the jaw, back to the "oh my".
And then the heart.
And then one hand on the belly and one on the heart.
And then one more time, hands over the eyes.
Just sending the energy of light, of loving kindness,
giving your eyes a rest.
And then the jaw.
And the heart.
And then the heart and belly.
Then you might decide you want to keep your hands there,
or just take them away just slowly.
I'm going to keep mine here.
And then we're just going to do some more grounding, as we begin.
Aware of the vertical energy that runs through our body, Earth to sky.
Aware of the mid-line of the body.
And just feeling like your your full height, even if your seated,
like your head can touch the clouds.
Our hearts lift just a little bit.
Sometimes our shoulders get reminded to drop.
And then aware of the horizontal energy, the side-seams of our body,
the sides of our feet, our hips, our shoulders,
and as you're breathing and tuning in,
this is what connects us energetically with each other,
as we build a beautiful container,
connects us with people, animals, plants and minerals,
and the miraculous beloved community that came together in this moment.
And then aware of the depth of our body.
Helps me just to tip a little back into my pelvis
and really connect with the whole back side of my body.
Shoulders, spine, bum.
And now tune in to the whole body, and the shape of the body,
the space you take in the room.
And then asking yourself three questions:
Do I feel safe?
And if you don't, just softly open your eyes and turning a little,
so you can gaze in every direction.
Aware of the space you're in and safety.
Do I feel comfortable?
Your body will tell you.
Am I present?
And that's said again with objectivity,
not a judgement, but am I here, right here?
And then invite your body to relax and settle even more.
There's nothing you need to do, no place to go.
(Bell sounds twice)
My pleasure to be with you for the first time or more.
I hope you are doing well on this day.
I want to begin with a poem for you.
Stardust is falling,
falling on both the wise and the unwise, the hopeful and the despondent,
and yet the forest outside my door is smiling.
I remember now, how deep the ocean of forgetfulness can be.
I keep being pulled away from the present moment,
by my experience of melancholy about the past,
or anxiety about the future.
I realize myself and my journey to the bottom of this ocean,
forgetfulness becomes a holy veil, removed.
I find the cave of the blue dragon.
I enter my feelings of wonder and uncertainty,
that are there with me.
I advance in fearlessness.
Fearlessness, fearlessness, on the Bodhisattva path.
This talk this evening is inspired by the discourse on love
in the Plum Village chant book.
There are other versions of this discourse throughout Buddhism,
but this is the one in the Plum Village chant book,
which I will read to you now.
Anyone who wants to attain peace
should practice being upright, humble, and capable of using loving speech.
They will know how to live simply and happily,
with senses calmed,
without being covetous or carried away by the emotions of the majority.
Let them not do anything that would be disapproved of
by the wise ones.
And this is what they contemplate:
may everyone be happy and safe,
may their hearts be filled with joy,
may all beings live in security and in peace,
beings who are frail or strong, tall or short, big or small,
visible or not visible, near or far away,
already born or yet to be born.
May all of them dwell in perfect tranquility.
Let no one do harm to anyone.
Let no one put the life of anyone in danger.
Let no one out of anger or ill will wish anyone any harm.
Just as a parent loves and protects their children
at the risk of their own life,
we should cultivate boundless love to offer to all living beings,
in the entire cosmos.
We should let our boundless love pervade the whole universe:
above, below, and across.
Our love will know no obstacles.
Our heart will be absolutely free from hatred and enmity,
whether standing or walking, sitting or lying down,
as long as we are awake
we should maintain this mindfulness of love
in our own heart.
This is the noblest way of living.
Free from wrong views, greed, and sensual desires,
living in beauty, and realizing perfect understanding.
Those who practice boundless love will certainly transcend birth and death.
So this talk, each talk organizes itself, however it wants,
the same as like writing a poem.
So I just kind of follow what's happening,
and this talk organized itself in to twelve points,
so that was interesting to me.
And so I'll just get right to it, with one overarching statement of context.
The kind of capacity to live in the world with one's heart undisturbed by the world
is not a capacity of hiding, it is a capacity of embracing.
Not only is the whole word a stage as has been said before
but so is our own mind.
It's a whole stage: that's the first point to remember,
and that I'm learning over and over again to practice with.
When I encounter any form of media, information, text, book,
any incoming data stream in to my consciousness and in to my body,
which we need to remember
that our data streams don't just impact our thoughts,
they impact our neurology, our hormones, our chemical balances,
but what I have learned, after realizing that
the information I receive comes from a character on a stage
in that person's mind, or that institution's mind,
and it's important that I remember
it is my mind meeting that mind, and that mind meeting my mind.
Theater.
If you want to look in to the deep teachings on this
you can look at Thích Nhất Hạnh's master degree
on Yogachara Buddhism,
but it is, in summary it is,
nothing can happen without our mind being involved
(Laughter)
in the process,
of what goes out or what comes in.
It's impossible.
It's also impossible to attain some kind of purity in data.
When I was studying and learning Sanskrit and Pali to translate sutras,
I learned that everything that you're translating
has already been translated seven times at least before you get it to translate.
And so many of us look at words as if they're solid.
Our words are full of the universe and can contain all kinds of energy.
The second point I want to make
about how I interact with data, news, media
—and I watch the news, every day—
and it's a discipline for me to listen to the world.
Part of my vow to myself has always been,
before I knew it was a vow, not to hide from suffering.
Not mine, and not yours.
So every day I take a journey around the planet
with the news I can find
and what I've been learning is
when I am observing someone else's voice
someone else's pain, celebration, break through, breakdown,
presented to me in data form
it is a chance for me to experience more knowledge about Larry.
So I know we've all be conditioned to think we're listening to the other
but actually (Laughter) we're listening to ourselves.
And so the first thing about understanding
how to be undisturbed with the world and it's nature
—of a moment of thicketed views, cacophony of opinion in which we live—
is to understand it's all mind.
There's nothing solid there, unless we think it is.
It is information: it is a flow of life.
And the third thing I've been learning in light of that
is to be aware of my own agenda.
When I watch a news program, or an update on there, or a documentary,
I have learned how to pay attention to where that impacts my nervous system.
The music, the sounds, the drama, the choreography,
whether it's a news cast or a movie or a TV show.
I pay attention to how it impacts my body.
That gives me a lot of information, and what I mean is:
is my aggression activated
when I read or hear or see this information?
Is my immobilization, is my collapse encouraged?
My body wants to just stop and freeze when I hear this, read this or see this.
Do I want to fight? Do I get aggressive,
when I encounter this flow of information coming in to my frame of reference?
Do I experience peacefulness when I receive this data?
—in my body that is.
My nervous system remains calm, remains even, remains solid as a mountain,
even in the midst of horrifying information.
So, to learn to be aware,
where what I see or hear is actually my own voice,
my own pain, my own suffering, my own confusion.
So in a question and answer session with a Hindu master many years ago,
at the end one student asked "what do we do about the others?"
And the master said: "what others?"
This is how we have to learn to listen,
not that there's something out there,
disconnected from me, that I have nothing to do with,
that I'm here to judge, I'm here to evaluate,
I'm here to debate, I'm here to argue with.
I was asked many years ago
—'cause my wife sitting here,
she may have a different story about this—
but I was asked years ago
"why didn't we fight as often as some couples?"
and I said because early we realized we were both wrong!
(Laughter)
And we have trouble coming to terms with our minds,
and by mind I mean to include our heart energy.
In the Buddhist tradition mind and heart are the same symbols,
at least in the Chinese version.
So this is called—for sutra reference— practicing with the body, in the body.
Learning to practice mindfully with our nervous system:
how it gets activated, how we can soothe ourselves,
how we can calm ourselves,
how we can uplift ourselves without harming ourselves.
It's just a set of skills.
Our ancestors had them, they're already in our bodies.
We just need to remember
and to retrain ourselves in our own genius.
Be aware of your own agenda when you are listening to others.
No blame, no judgement, just awareness.
Be aware of what would be called "the mind in the mind".
When you get this information,
whether it's watching the January 6th Committee report,
or any other piece of information following this year
in the US politically and the years before it,
pay attention to
what seeds or impulses in your consciousness
get activated when you listen.
I haven't got to a point —where I tell you the truth—
I could not see Donald Trump's face without getting activated,
but I knew I was being activated,
and so I decided
I wasn't going to let that clown activate me.
(Laughter)
So we can master our bodies and our minds if we decide to take charge,
and not just operate out of our conditioning or reactivity.
Every piece of news, every word or smile, or look, or sound,
can activate seeds of wholesomeness in us as well as seeds of unwholesomeness in us,
as well as neutral seeds, as well as memory capsules can open,
and sometimes they are beautiful and blessed when they open,
and sometimes we remember pain and agony, in our bodies and in our minds.
So understand when you—
when I'm listening, I am reading, I'm studying, I am interacting with my own mind.
Third
—this is number six if you're keeping a list—
is something I call society in society.
We have got to learn —or I'm trying to learn—
how to look at society from the inside out,
and for me that means learning to recognize the patterns of our conditioning:
learning to recognize the assumptions that we've been taught about how to live,
how to date, how to love, how to work, how to pray, how to celebrate,
and be aware of those assumptions,
and then you can make a choice about those assumptions.
But we are so wired for reaction, we seldom, or not often, reflect.
I find myself learning to reflect, to pause, to wait a minute
and not be in a rush to come up with a response.
That's very important.
This is true in your relationships as well,
'cause a relationship is constant communication,
and communication's not just what's said.
This is the other thing to —number 6 on sociality—keep in mind,
when you hear news about your society,
societies of the world,
pay attention to what is said
but especially pay attention to what's not said.
Pay attention to whose voice you hear
and pay attention to whose voices you do not hear.
I saw a—
I had a memory capsule open this morning thinking about a friend of mine.
We were working together in India when the Peter projection map came out,
that actually showed the true size of Africa and for
(Laughter)
hundreds of years people thought Africa was the size of, you know, Connecticut.
(Laughter)
and that's information
that conditioned thousands of minds about Africa and its value.
Don't mis-under estimate any of these things.
That's why it's used in advertising
and people pay millions of dollars to have people interact with our minds,
with their own intent.
So always have your agenda, is what I've learned, and I keep learning,
always have your agenda.
I don't mean a fixed rigid thing, I mean have an intention.
I decided to spend some time
listening to the interviews of people who were just at the Wallmart shooting,
and I spend sever hours just listening to this woman's agony and pain and tears,
and I could feel her experience of not knowing how to be human again.
That lived the shock of what she saw
—she was in the break room— hiding under the table.
The shock of what she witnessed discombobulated her nervous system.
She could barely speak.
Her face was contorted,
and I could feel that contortion inside of myself.
It was not unfamiliar to me.
So the more we can practice media interactions,
whether that's a game or a conversation or a movie
—all of which I enjoy—
or a book —for god's sake I have too many—
I am learning over and over again too about Larry's mind.
I'm learning what ideas I'm attached to
(Laughter)
and what ideas I never thought of.
I'm learning to pay attention to the mind of the author
whose sending me this.
And as a person who likes to study —it's just, I'm neurotic that way, but—
I learn the author's mind, not just their words,
and so they become friends for me.
They become mentors, they become companions.
And you have books or poems or people in your mind space and memories
who do that for you too I know.
Remember them.
You know our brain is wired such, is really hard wired such,
that we can have a wonderful day for 12 hours
—wonderful day—
and one person, in one car, with one gesture can ruin it.
Our brain is wired to hold on to negativity,
and it's wired that way as a safety precaution
(Laughter)
in case you meet that car again
(Laughter)
So, it's important —in neuroscience we've discovered that
it takes, for every negative unwholesome encounter a person has,
moment by moment,
it takes five wholesome encounters to re-balance the brain
in terms of what it remembers and how it's wired to respond to life.
So we've been taught we shouldn't be happy, really,
we should strive to win, regret losing, and not find joy in our lives.
If we do, there's something wrong with us.
So you must watch out for the context of the information that is being given.
Whats the story behind this?
Think of every piece of information as a visit to the Wizard of Oz,
(Laughter)
and you want to look behind the curtain.
We live in a world in which
spell-casters and magicians and goblins all work on the Internet.
Hello!
You can make up anything and get a group next week to believe it.
This is how disoriented our minds have become
in terms of not being trained how to handle information,
in what ever media form that information may come.
You know society
—I heard a great quote from Caroline Myss, a few weeks ago—
society used to change at the pace of literature,
society used to change at the pace of philosophy,
of theology, of a new scientific breakthrough,
and now society is changing by millions of opinions
gathered in a neural space online.
That's a big shift,
and we don't have a collective mechanism for functioning this way.
This is why we experience things being fragmented.
We don't—we're at a place we've never been as a human race—
and part of this is just beautiful
because people around the world are standing up for Iran
and they're not Iranian,
people are standing up for the women and men in the streets
with blood and tears.
People are standing up for the protesters in China,
around the world
and holding up blank sheets of paper representing the desire for free speech.
So also
when you receive information and news don't get sensationalized about it,
'cause that's a gimmick.
You know, it's like somebody says "there'll be a train wreck at 12 o'clock"
(Laughter)
"on this corner"
and at 12 o'clock there'll be hundreds of people there,
waiting to watch the train wreck,
whether a train comes or not.
We don't have time for that.
Remember to look at society from the inside out.
What are the archetypes that are operative in that society?
And if the rivers don't rise, my grandmother would say,
I hope to next year
do some work and retreats on the four core archetypes of Carl Jung
and relate those to the hidden forces of social change.
The anima—animus.
Oh boy, we've got to miss
(Laughter)
we've got miss there.
It sounds funny until you see young men everywhere killing people...
then you begin to recognize the imbalance of that archetype.
We have destroyed the capacity of some of these young men
to recognize their own feminine energy inside
—if I can use that word—
their own soft energy, their own kind energy,
and no training in how to handle anger, or frustration, or fear.
Also we have to take a look at the persona
(Laughter)
which really has, in the last 25 years, become a business.
Now Hollywood left Hollywood and came in to the house
and so now all of us are on TV, all of us are on a screen.
We're all in the world of flat screen consciousness,
and that means
everything on the flat screen appears of equal value,
and it's not.
This is why discernment is an important part of spiritual practice.
Not everything is worthy of your time, you energy, your thought.
Use that for your own agenda, for your own sense of purpose,
for your own sense of destiny,
for your own sense of healing, and justice, and a better world.
Don't just waste your energy.
So I do look at a lot of different news reports, on purpose,
but I make a conscious choice I'm going to do that,
and some news reports I'll only look at for certain reasons,
to get certain kinds of information.
Be selective in what you decide to invite in to your mind:
the content that will come flooding in,
the emotional energy that comes flooding in to your mind.
And if you want to look deeply in to a topic or an issue
because it's aligned with your vocation, or your sense of work in the world,
or your purpose in life, do so,
but look deep.
Look in to the causes and conditions of these things.
You know, if one is to look at, for example,
the reaction going on in the streets of China,
the reactions going on in Iran
—and these are just two big things we keep track of—
but this is going on around the world, it's going on in Mexico,
and what is it that's going on around the world?
People are rejecting patriarchal ideology.
That's what's happening.
If you want to know why men are upset, that's why.
They're loosing their mind hold over the planet; loosing a sense of power.
This is archetypal energy, it's not just personal,
and so we have to work at deeper and deeper levels
in order to reach places where we can and are ready to heal.
A shadow, oh boy.
(Laughter)
That's a life of work.
That's my biggest critique of the world based on my own experiences,
the most difficult thing is to admit that we are not perfect, in a healthy way.
We have this,
what in Buddhism Thích Nhất Hạnh liked to call the Self Esteem Complex,
where I am better than you or you are better than me
or we are equal
or I'm up and you're down or I'm down and you're up.
None of that is an adequate description of the miracle of being a human being
so we have to just stop being stupid about it,
if we are to understand our own wholeness,
at least in part enough to create the nuance of wholeness our planet needs,
and then that journey will continue through generations of course.
We're not the penultimate
(Laughter)
solution to things,
we're not saviors, we are adventurers, learning how to navigate our inner worlds,
because I'm convinced learning to navigate our inner worlds is the work of the future.
It's certainly the work now,
but is the work of the future, we just don't know it yet.
We are creatures of 10,000 capacities,
and many of us live our whole lives,
if we're lucky enough to live long in this world,
operating as if we only have 10 capacities.
We get trapped in to thinking everything is material,
and we forget it is not just material.
The universe is not just material, it's also energetic—it is also energy.
Don't get trapped in to the Newtonian paradigm
that everything is separate
and nothing really affects anything else unless it's in direct physics.
Everything affects everything.
This is part of what we're experiencing in the world.
That's why it's crazy.
(Laughter)
That's why it is —we don't have a story to hold this.
We're in a place we never imagined as a species,
over the last 200,000 years,
but because of the 200,000 years
we have within ourselves what we need to take the next stage of evolution,
with courage, which is what this is, people.
We are in a metamorphosis journey, we're in the cocoon
(Laughter)
and trying to figure out the next shape we are becoming
with no instructions that appear clear,
but there are instructions.
The first one is to, if you see some news and it's not beneficial to you, ignore it.
That's what I do.
(Laughter)
If you see something, hear something, read something,
that is beneficial to you, take it to heart.
Make it a part of your practice, or your journaling,
or your music, or your dance, or your art.
Make it a part of your life,
so that you continue to be nourished by the good,
because we live in a world of tabloid media as an art form,
we are presented constantly, and daily,
no matter what we're talking about, as extremes.
Just look at our language.
Later turn on the television, and look at our language
across networks, across countries:
it is doom, it is savage, it is—
I'm talking about words used today to introduce clips in the news,
and so learning how that word, savage, doesn't get stuck on me.
It just goes straight through.
Learn what to hold on to and what not to hold to,
when it comes to you.
So many of us actually have been living our lives in extreme exhaustion
because we have been carrying other people's anxieties.
You know it's like the old joke about Atlas,
who's holding the world, runs by you and says "hold this",
(Laughter)
and without thinking you hold it and he's gone.
Literally many of us are just exhausted holding other people's fears and anxieties,
and what we need to be holding is each other's broken hearts,
and brilliant minds.
If we want to hold each other accountable lets hold each other accountable
for a higher calling in this world.
There's discipline involved in how we, how I, learn to read, interpret, reflect on, the news,
but I just don't ever watch the news by itself.
When I get up in the morning,
before I even get out of bed, I have a meditation I do.
It's about aging.
(Laughter)
So, before I put my feet on the floor,
I don't forget who's putting their feet on the floor,
and then I, I have options,
I spend some time just in listening to birds,
watering plants, walking slowly on the Earth,
saying to myself "Mother Earth, here I am".
Greeting this blue sky, letting it fall on me,
'till I can feel myself standing on the blue sky,
and standing under the blue sky at the same time.
I study other people's insights, teachings and learnings,
so I try to keep my mind as —life long learner is a popular phrase—
across disciplines: evolutionary psychologies, astrophysics,
Buddhist psychology, sociology, anthropology, mythology.
All these things are of interest to me, what can I say.
And it keeps my mind from getting fixated,
'cause at least once a week I read something or I study something from someone else,
and it can be from long ago.
It can be Plato and his allegory of the cave which I think everybody should read again,
because that's what we are experiencing right now,
We've been conditioned so well
that we don't even know we've been conditioned,
now that is skill.
And I don't mean somebody sat down and planned this out.
I'm talking about a natural occurrence
that happens in society, in any organization, in any group.
It's fine.
We just have to be mindful
that our minds and our bodies are not separate from our social existence.
So many of us have been conditioned
to believe when someone walks in to a grocery store
and starts shooting people
there's something wrong with them.
And there is.
But in order for something to be wrong with them like that,
there is something wrong with the rest of us too.
There's something wrong with our minds,
and how we condition ourselves to be violent, how we glorify it,
how we worship it,
We're not much further from really just
(Laughter)
primitives,
unless we do the spiritual work to learn to live without doing harm,
as our first response to frustration, to fear, to being alive.
There's a word from —I learned from my research training—
it's called, you may have heard, it's called titration.
So whatever input you're going to get, whether it's a book, a movie, a TV show,
a friend, a conversation, take little bits at a time.
It's the old phrase:
"How do you eat an elephant? One spoonful at a time."
When your looking,
especially some place that your curiosity has been piqued,
don't give up your curiosity, it's a very important quality of you,
but take a little piece at a time.
And the same if you want to look in to
the causes and conditions that created suffering.
Know what you can handle emotionally without getting re-traumatized yourself.
Okay. Take care of yourself.
Take things a little bit at a time but take them deeply:
that's the difference in consumption, in transformation with information.
Recognize your own heart and mind in what you hear, in what you see,
and the more I work with this,
I realize this is how I'm learning to practice with all phenomenon.
The bee, the bird, the tree, the fox:
I am learning to recognize what is there, in a non-judgemental way: it's just there.
I had a great professor in my PhD work, the name of Dr Lawki (?).
He passed away by now but he was a stickler on methodology
and the one word he used in every class
—he wrote it really big on the blackboard—
was evidence
(Laughter)
and he says:
"don't turn a paper in to me with no evidence"
(Laughter)
"I don't care what you believe,
I don't care what your teacher told you to believe,
I want evidence for your thought,
and why you reached the conclusion you reached."
Why you reached that view, why you appreciated that practice,
explain, understand how you are interacting and changing with all the phenomena of life.
So everything
—I met four small, almost baby, doves today—
they were sitting on our fence watching us
and I appreciated their communication of safety.
They felt safe enough to rest here,
and so I was able to ask myself "How's my safety meter today, Larry?"
and not being disturbed by a disturbing world is the essence of the practice,
and it does not mean being indifferent.
It does not mean turning your head aside, it does not mean hiding from anything.
It means fearlessly looking at the whole of life,
and understanding that you are at the center of it.
There's some great comments years ago by Stephen Covey, coming to my mind,
to know the difference between
your circle of concern and your circle of influence.
Those are two different things in his thinking —and I heard about this a long time ago—
and the thing I want to remind myself and you of:
that you're not just a circle of concern, though you are;
not just a circle of influence, though you are;
but you are a circle of energy that can go in either direction.
Understand this about yourself:
You're not just a clump of matter
with the visitation from a train of thoughts from time to time,
you're cosmic being,
and boy oh boy what would happen if we started to act that way?
Think that way? Care that way?
Approach justice that way,
and wellness that way, and community that way?
We are cosmic beings.
We are manifestations of a reality we don't understand.
We cannot even get our mind around, and we don't have to.
All we have to do is to learn how to be present.
Peggy and I had the luxury of having breakfast
with Thích Nhất Hạnh one time when he received difficult news.
This was a time he was still exiled from Vietnam and could not return.
He had a family member pass away
and he could not go back for the funeral ceremonies.
And we were with him when the phone call came
and the information was passed on to his ear,
and we watched his energy change.
He slowly got up, bowed to us, and went out and did walking meditation,
slowing everything down, calming everything down.
Stepping in the wonders of noble silence.
He came back in thirty minutes or so a different person;
face different, energy different,
and Peggy leaned over to me and said "that would have taken me six years."
(Laughter)
This is the benefit of practice.
This is why I do it every day.
It's not that I don't get disturbed, but this being disturbed never becomes me.
You understand what I'm saying?
We were just in Minneapolis a few weeks ago,
working with Zen centers and Buddhist dharma communities there,
and went to the places of the riots and George Floyd square,
and I cannot even think about that without being activated,
but my activation now moves me even more
in the direction of 'what does it mean to have a well society?'
Most of our language about everything is prescriptive
and analytical and we're sick,
(Laughter)
and we have very little feedback from our media,
from what we read and what we write —most of us—that affirms our existence,
that affirms our right to be here on this precious planet.
So when you interact with the media,
and when you interact with the news, don't be taken at the flood.
The flood of opinion, the flood of misperception.
You know it's like the women in Iran
and the people in the streets of China and Colombia and France,
and you can go around the world, are like they're waking up from a trance.
It's like one morning people woke up
and went "Hey, wait a minute, this doesn't make any sense,
to live this way, to be treated this way, to be harmed this way"
and so what is happening is the world stands up
and people from everywhere stand up for one another,
like we belong here together.
Places that think they're in power are shaking.
It's like deer in the forest
that can tell a new wind is already in the air.
So please my friends put your energy in to the new wind.
I had what I thought was an ear infection here
and a friend of mine took me to one of his ear specialists
—a very funny Cuban physician—
who did all the tests, cleaned my ears and everything,
and he said "you don't have an ear infection, that's the good news,
the bad news is you have something worse"
(Laughter)
and he started laughing and so did I
and what he said was "you have, you know,
there's a bone in your ear that's connected to your balance,
it's disintegrating."
So I thought, well, that goes along with the rest of me
(Laughter)
so I don't have a problem with disintegrating, that's why I'm here.
The question is, what do we emit?
One of the things in the Yogachara tradition
is they talk about our energy, and our words, and our thinking,
and our behavior perfumes the world.
The question is: what are we perfuming the world with?
And more and more people around the world are stating to realize
"You know, we don't like this smell, this death, this violence, this horror,
this oppression, this rape, this casual murder, this brutality.
We don't like it, we don't need it, to be fully human."
We've somehow been convinced
that we have to guarded by giant gorillas not to become giant gorillas ourselves.
That doesn't make any sense.
A new sensibility is in fact emerging,
and so when you receive information hold on to yourself,
hold on to your precious soul and heart,
don't lose yourself,
because whatever the information is
—this is probably
the most uncomfortable thing I realized about learning something—
whatever it is I learn I will one day forget, permanently.
And that helps me from getting too wired about stuff,
to uptight about things, too fixed about things,
too extreme and certain about things.
The other wonderful thing that I've been practicing with
as I go through the world we live in,
which the Buddha sometimes called the world of a thicket of views.
We live in a world of billions of opinions.
Now we have 8.9 billion people
and (?) most of us have difficulty sorting the opinions in our own head.
To imagine that we can together sort our way in to the future,
lead each other in to the future, for me, is why were here.
It's why we were born.
This is our great work.
We will not finish it, and we are not supposed to.
We're supposed to be the bridge,
so that our future ancestors
and past ancestors, who are always along for the ride,
(Laughter)
can finish it too.
There's a discipline involved in not being disturbed by a disturbing world.
And the most important part of this discipline for me is silence.
I start the day by silence.
I start the day by listening to the sounds of the world.
So I don't think I'm isolated,
so I'm in touch with the wonders of life,
and then noble silence throughout the day, just here or there,
taking time to stop running around for whatever reason, and pause,
and as this happens
we become more and more stilled in ourselves,
and that stillness in ourselves, that solidity like mount Fuji within ourselves,
it's what we need to transform our world.
It's what protects us from falling in to hate,
as a motivator for changing our world.
Equanimity guards us
from using the energy of jealousy in the hopes of changing our world,
or the energy of greed,
though all of these things are in our own consciousness.
It is our skillfulness in learning to recognize ourselves
that will free ourselves from ourselves,
and as we free ourselves from ourselves
we become more capable of freeing each other.
In neuroscientific terms we become capable of profound coregulation,
which is the ground of co-creativity, which we are wired for,
we have just been convinced that we are not, that we are only shadow.
I'm talking about the fourth archetype now, the soul, wholeness.
We're not just this, we're not just that,
we're the whole of life in the present moment.
The tears I cried watching the women march in the streets of Iran
were my tears and their tears.
And as I realized that I went beyond cause,
I went beyond politics, I went in to depth humanity,
and it's from this depth
—which we all... it's a well we can all fall in—
is available,
but you have to develop a discipline
—and many of you have I know—
of nourishing this, nourishing this, nourishing this,
but nourishing yourself
please minimize your judgement upon yourself.
So many of us—there's a friend of mine who wrote a book many years ago.
His name was Marty Selman.
It was on communication —he was a super-salesman kind of guy—
and his research showed that the average person
speaks to themselves over two thousand times a day.
You talk mostly to yourself.
I talk mostly to myself,
so it's very important to know who we invite to have a conversation with,
who we invite in,
and how we receive our guest —in thinking of Rumi—
how we be the host.
And sometimes being the host means to let things be.
You know this.
(Laughter)
Sometimes being the host means to let things go,
and sometimes being the host means simply to let things flow.
So we don't have to grasp after information, images,
as the definition of our lives.
We endure our experiences, of our senses, our sights and sounds, and movements,
of our body and our mind, but we don't intend to be lead astray.
I want to end with a favorite poem of mine that is connected
to what I think is the core practice
of not being carried away by the world, suffering and craziness.
Pablo Neruda
It's called 'keeping quiet'
Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth, let us not speak any language;
let's stop for a second, and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines;
we would all be together in a sudden strangeness.
Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt would not look at his hurt hands.
Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers and sisters in the shade, doing nothing.
If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death.
Now I'll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go.
(Bell sounds four times)