Unshakable Deliverance of the Mind | Dr. Larry Ward

(Bell sounds)

(Bell sounds)

Thank, um, you Emily, thank you Shane
for your technical and logistical help.

I feel a little bit like I've just been equipped
to get in the space shuttle or something.

(Laughter)

A poem. You wrote a lot last night.

(Slight laughter)

A lot. Which is wonderful.

I was struck by
your courage of expression,

I was struck by your genuine aspiration
for healing and transformation,

I was struck by your care
for yourselves and for others,

I was struck by your pain,
your discomfort, and your hope.

Is this perfect wellness?

This turning,
this falling into sadness.

Heartbroken, out of control,
lost in time and space.

What a surprise!

Like a giant moon hanging in the night sky,
but where has the Milky Way gone?

Spinning, dizzy and stunned
by the thickness of mystery,

a dark night has entered my soul,
or have I entered a dark night?

Have I failed? Only if I believe
in success, whispers the moonlight.

Falling, and tumbling in to the new again,
like Alice greeting Wonderland.

Old mind dying, new mind rising.

My mother is up and moving
in the cave of my heart with candle light.

She rocks my world.

In the canal of birth again,
I fight to remember to surrender.

Where is my protection
in this great hour of vulnerability?

Unsteady, unsure of how to ride the wind.

Clumsy, like a baby butterfly.

New wings dancing between earth and sky,

bathing in the sunlight of compassion

that carries me through the darkness
in to the morning of a new breath.

So, this talk is not the talk
I thought I'd be giving this morning.

(Slight laughter)

So any of you who have an aspiration
to be a dharma teacher talk to me first.

(Laughter)

It is a great practice of, in the language
of Christianity, unceasing prayer,

and in the Buddhist language,
beginner's mind, constant openness,

and sitting, uh, with your expressions,
your heartfelt writings,

it seems me that I want to kind of
go to the beginning of—

the Heart Sutra you could say is
very simple and very complicated.

There are the teachings

and then there the realizations
as a result of the teachings

and then there's 'so what do I practice?'

This is often the question that comes up.

So I want to start with practice.

and then as we go through
the rest of the retreat

we will look more in to the teachings
and the realizations,

but it's important to know
that in contemplative life

whether there's Buddhism or Christianity
or Sufism, practice precedes insight.

Practice precedes teachings.

The Buddha was not a philosopher,
he was somebody sitting in the jungle

(Laughs)

learning to be with himself,

and out of that practice
with one learning to be with oneself,

and the nature that surrounded him,
within and without, insights came.

Ahas came.

And then eventually
those ahas and insights were shared,

some people remembered them,
some people wrote them down,

and then we had teachings etc etc

but really really remember
the core is practice.

So there are five kinds
of obstacles to our practice

and I really like, I'm really attracted to
old language, and not just old Buddhist language,

old language in any culture,
religious tradition, archeological dig.

I woke up at three this morning
wishing I had a chance to be in, uh, Dunhuang

where they're still discovering manuscripts,

where one of the first manuscripts
of the Heart Sutra was discovered.

So, this talk is about the
unshakable deliverance of the mind,

and that's early Buddhist language for,

what is our goal, what are we trying
to achieve through our practice?

And our early teachers, and masters,
and monks, and lay people, would say to us:

what we're trying to achieve
is a mind that is unshakable,

but not just unshakeable,
but a mind that is also delivered.

Delivered from what? From itself.

so meditation has three aspects to it,
in one way of describing it.

That is, awareness of the mind,

know what's going on in my mind,
what's coming up,

and you know remember mind doesn't mean intellect
in what we're talking about,

mind means consciousness,
which includes the energies of our heart,

the dispositions of our heart,
not just our thoughts.

So this is one area of meditation,

this is how most of us
get introduced to meditation,

is learning to be aware
of what's going on in our minds.

That's the foundation for what comes next.

What comes next
is the next level of meditation development

which is how to shape our minds,

and that's kind of revolutionary:

to discover that what I'm aware of
in my mind, in my heart's cave,

not only is it impermanent
but I can intercede, I can change my mind.

I can reshape the cave of my heart,

toward compassion,
toward kindness and toward love.

That's the second area
of learning skillfulness in meditation practice,

and of course the last one,
and these all inter-are of course,

is this unshakeable deliverance, this solidity.

This is confidence without ego.

One of the early descriptions of Thích Nhất Hạnh
that is really incredible is, someone asked—

Thầy was being introduced in San Francisco
for— in— long long time ago and said he's a combination—

Thích Nhất Hạnh is a combination
of a cloud and a Mack truck

(Laughter)

and this is what we must be.

This is unshakeable deliverance of the mind.

Though people— people who— oh,
Thích Nhất Hạnh, he's so sweet,

and he is sweet,
but remember the Mack truck.

(Laughter)

You don't go through what he's been through—

and one of the reasons he's my teacher
is that I know what he's been through.

I know it's not an intellectual exercise.

And many of us here have walked with him
in the jungles of Vietnam, where people have died,

and still, every step, peace —
that's unshakeable deliverance of the mind.

And in order to get there—
another great phrase for practice is to—

what we want to do this week
is to develop powers.

You know, we're like preoccupied with like superheroes
and heroines which, you know, is fun, very cool,

but we have superpowers,

but somehow we've just been convinced
that, no, Marvel has them

(Laughter)

Nintendo has them,
you know DC Comics has them,

but we have superpowers too,
and our practice is to develop those powers,

so that we can serve
compassionately in this world,

and we develop these powers
through conquering what's called the five hindrances,

and I talked about these at the university,
in relationship to our racial issue.

I now want to talk about these,
but I didn't say how to practice with them.

So now I want to go in to
how to practice with these.

Not only when you're sitting on the cushion,
but when you're not sitting on the cushion,

as you go about your daily life,

as you go through this retreat,

as you take your
precious steps on the Earth,

and through the languages,
conquering the five hindrances:

that's the old language.

Not being victim to our hindrances,

because there's a great
secret of non-duality:

that my hindrances are the ingredients
in the kitchen of my liberation.

No enemy, because I am my hindrances.

(Laughs)

If I hate my hindrances, I hate myself.

So this practice of conquering
begins with every step.

That's not at the end.

In Buddhism,
conquering is always the process,

not the destination,

and as we do this
the light of our own inherent wisdom reveals itself,

and this is what the Heart Sutra
is trying to teach us.

We have inherent wisdom,
we have the light of inherent wisdom, in us,

but our hindrances
would make us think it's not there.

Our hindrances are...

Peggy and I use the early Chinese Buddhist term
of the red dust, clouding over.

We used to live in Chiang Mai, Thailand,

and part of the year there's an inversion

because of this location in the valley
and surrounded by mountains

and all the pollutants
rise up and cover the city.

Our lives are like that,

but it's important to remember,
um, those are just pollutants,

they're not permanent.

They come, they go.

And so the practice
with the five hindrances

is to train us in releasing
grasping, clinging, and attachment,

and how do we do this?

We do this by becoming
more skillful with our attention.

Now if you look at
all the mindfulness research,

and the books that are coming out,

and there's a lot of things focused
all around attention

because it's measurable,
neurologically now, at least at some initial levels,

and— but in early Buddhism
the language is yoniso.

Yoniso is wise attention.

And ayoniso is unwise attention.

And our skillfulness in these two areas alone
can transform our hearts and minds.

And the five hindrances, sensory desire,

and I want to say something about this

'cause westerners

with our Protestant and Catholic backgrounds

really confuse this,

sensory desire means

what do our eye, ear, nose, tongue,
body, and mind desire in any moment,

but in the west it's easy for us
to go to the eighth grade

and think this is all about sex, puberty,

'cause I do say well we work with kids,

everybody's like doing great until puberty
(laughs) then things start falling apart.

Sensory desire,
and it's not the desire that's the hindrance,

it is the grasping, the clinging,
and the attachment to,

that desire's a normal experience
of being a human being.

So, it's our relationship to our human experience
that the Buddhist practice is about,

it's not a negation
of our human experience.

The second hindrance is ill will, anger.

It's quite popular right now.

(Laughter)

And the thing about— the thing about anger
is that it is so easy,

because of the way
we're made as human beings.

It is so easy to ignite
and its energy is so fast, it's like fire,

and out of the hindrances the Buddha says
anger is the most dangerous,

because it can ignite and set fire
before we know it even happened,

and then it's out of control.

I don't know if you've ever been in a fire,
or around a fire,

or had a little fire start turn in to a—
(laughs) it's so out of control, so fast.

There's a great sutra in our chant book,
Plum Village chant book,

on the five ways
of putting an end to anger,

and when you go through
the Plum Village chant book

and you read the five ways
of putting an end to anger,

please know, that Thích Nhất Hạnh
didn't make that up.

There're many other versions of the ways,
five ways, of putting an end to anger,

in the Buddhist tradition,
and they're all very consistent.

The language is a little different...
I'm saying that practice is the core,

of the tradition itself,

and that might be a sutra
we want to read one morning,

yeah, it's a great sutra,

and if you just took that— that practice,

that sutra, for the next year,
it would change your life.

Don't try to practice anything else.
Just take that one.

Ill will, wanting to do someone harm.

On the news this morning
there was a report

of the place where Emmett Till, the fourteen year old,
young African American man was

—boy then, language—

was, er, beat to death,

and there's been a, a plaque there,
where this happened,

and a film student from New York
was working on film about that whole journey

and when he got there yesterday,
it was riddled with bullet holes,

and then he discovered
every month since 1955,

wherever that plaque was,
it's been damaged:

Bullet holes, torn down,
backed over by a truck, pulled up and uprooted.

I'm talking about ill will,

and, what I discovered
about ill will, in myself,

and as I have experienced
directed toward me,

I discovered first,
it really pisses me off.

(Laughter)

But the more I practice with that,
the next level of that, was sadness.

I got to listen to an interview of one of the men
who was in, what's called, the "Negro Baseball Leagues"

and— and he was being interviewed
and someone was asking 'what was difficult about that?'

and you know, he talked about the logistics

—having to sleep on the bus
when other people went in the hotel, etc,

not being able to eat with the team

or going in to the restaurants
where other people went,

having to go in to the stadium after
everybody else was already there—

and he said what was most difficult for him
was the feeling of not being wanted.

And so think of this.

You've had this experience, this feeling
of someone wishing you were somewhere else,

and your own feeling of
wishing you were somewhere else

where you where not where
somebody was wishing you were not there.

And this is described in early Buddhism
as aspects of suffering.

We can have these experiences

but our practice is to train ourselves
not to be defined by these experiences:

to honor them, recognize them,
fully experience them, take them in to ourselves,

and use that energy to
transform ourselves and our world.

Don't be intimidated by ill will,

and one of the ways you learn
not to be intimidated by ill will

is by recognizing it in yourself.

Alright? Learn to hold your own anger,

your own—somebody used the word
in one of the things you wrote to us last night—fury.

Learn to honor that,
learn to respect that,

and then learn to let it go.

Not so easy. Not so easy.

The third hindrance to an Unshakable
Deliverance of the Mind is sloth and torpor,

and we, er, Peggy and I
were a long time ago in Costa Rica,

for vacation,

and we were walking through the jungles,

it was just amazing manifestation
of nature there

but we came acr— we were walking
and we came by a sloth.

(Slight laughter)

And so, you know, we— same pathway,

we come by the second day,
and it's like, did it move?

(Laughter)

Third day, you couldn't tell,
but it was working hard!

(Laughter)

it was working hard to stay in place.

It was moving just a little bit.

In, er, in trauma training we talk about,
you know, flight, fight, or freeze,

and many of us are frozen.

And I've had the experience of being frozen.

I've had the experience
of someone shooting at me

and I didn't move, I didn't—
I— my body was...

I've seen someone else about to be hurt
and I was frozen,

and this was really early in my teenage years,

and this was part
of my motivation for practice,

so that I can move beyond a frozen life,

so I can engage in this world
without fear,

and by without fear I mean with fear,

because you can't have
non-fear without fear.

Indifference, low energy, exhaustion,
waking up spent, restlessness and remorse:

you wrote about all these things,
with your own language, yesterday.

Regret, and I don't mean
the Frank Sinatra song:

you know 'regrets, I have a few,
but then again, to few to mention'.

(Laughter)

That doesn't seem really real to me.

And then doubt, which the Buddha considers
the most dangerous hindrance of all.

Doubt in our own capacity
to be profoundly human.

Doubt in our own basic goodness,
the Tibetan tradition would remind us.

Doubt in one another.

So whatever we do in this world,
especially at this moment going forward,

we must do whatever we can

if we find those who would suggest
that we should doubt one another.

We should have the response
that the Wayans brothers used to have

on one of their comedy shows:
'Homey don't play that'.

(Laughter)

But there are people whose mission it is
to convince me to doubt you,

to doubt the goodness in you,

to doubt the possibility of healing and
transformation in you, in me, and among us.

There are people who are dedicated to that.

One of the things Martin Luther King used to say,
quietly, in meetings that I learned about was,

we must remember as
as hard as we are working,

as dedicated as we are,

there are people equally dedicated
to the opposite, and working just as hard,

and,

they have more money.

(Laughter)

But that didn't stop him,

it didn't stop Thích Nhất Hạnh when six members

of the Youth for Social Service movement
he started in Vietnam were assassinated,

and they were assassinated because they
helped anybody on any side of the war.

They did not ask 'which side are you on'
when you needed your wounds attended to.

This is non dualism in action,
this is the Heart Sutra in practice.

Now, how do you do this stuff?

Working with the hindrances...

One of the things I like about Buddhism is that
it has a formula for everything it teaches.

(Laughter)

So, I'm kind of an analytic dude.
This always makes me happy,

so I know what to do! And not do.

So, I'm going to— here's, uh,
a great thing to notice:

this is about wise attention
and unwise attention, remember that.

Yoniso; ayoniso.

And anywhere in Sanskrit language you see A,
the word— the letter A is first, it means 'not'.

So, here is— the first thing to understand
about our hindrances is how we feed them.

A great quote from the Buddha,
'nothing can live without food'.

So the first part of the
teaching on the hindrances

is to understand how they are nourished,

how they are fed, how they are cultivated,

and I'll read the formula, urm, to you.

I'll start— I'll just read
the sloth and torpor one.

There arises listlessness, lassitude,
laziness, drowsiness, mental sluggishness.

Frequently giving— this is a new sentence:

frequently giving unwise attention to it,

this is the nourishment of sloth and torpor,
that has not yet arisen,

and for the increase and strengthening of
the sloth and torpor that has arisen.

What's key here is this structure:

there is this experience
—there is this human experience—

of tiredness, laziness, exhaustion,
mental dullness, but that's not the practice,

except this is the awareness,
this is what I'm experiencing.

the practice is to be aware of:
do you frequently give attention to that?

Do you frequently give unwise attention?

Because frequently giving unwise attention,

to sloth and torpor, or to anger,
or to any of the hindrances,

nourishes them, makes them stronger,

and calls up whatever other
reserves there is around that issue.

So the key is:
"frequently giving unwise attention".

It doesn't say not giving attention,
it doesn't say not paying attention,

it doesn't say denying your experience,
it says "frequently giving unwise attention",

and what is unwise attention?

Unwise attention is attention that is
caught and grasping, clinging, and attachment.

Unwise attention is the
ground of identity making.

Unwise attention is the
attention of Miss Piggy.

It is the attention where
everything is about 'moi'.

And so I frequently remind myself
that everything is about 'moi'

—that's unwise attention.

Some of you are experiencing
—well all of us are experiencing—

upset, agitation, anger;

some of you talked about anger
and grief and being overwhelmed,

as parents, as friends, as partners,
as husbands and wives, and lovers and friends.

Part of the key to the practice here
is to have our experiences,

respect our experiences,
recognize our experiences,

but do not own our experiences.

There's a Japanese master who had a great
teaching—has a great teaching—on grief.

His son had died and his disciples
found him one day in his hut crying

and they approached him and said
well, you're the master, how could you be crying,

to which he said: you fool, my son died.

And then he says I am in here practicing
so I can experience the grief

not as my grief, but as the grief,

because when it shifts
from my grief, to the grief,

I ground myself in the
entire human experience.

I don't have to own that pain.

I participate in that pain,
I recognize that pain.

There's a great other language for this,
Peggy likes to use, called Same Boat.

And the more I read
of what you wrote last night,

I was thinking Same Boat.

Some of us are in the same boat,

with our suffering,
with our pain, with our sorrow,

with our feeling of being overwhelmed,
so when these things—

when you experience these things
—my anger—don't own it.

Anger is a physiological
human response in the body,

ground it in
the preciousness of our nervous system.

Gives us information, lets us know
something's happening that is disconcerting.

As I used to say to some people, you—

did you just miss
the truck that just ran over your foot?!

So somehow people
got the idea in Buddhism

we don't experience
what is human experience,

and so we're like indifferent.

these pictures of Bodhidharma

—I have one from China
I got over 40 years ago—

and his face looks to be like,
he's so stern.

That's not meant to communicate sternness,
that face is meant to communicate

someone who's discovered
the Unshakable Deliverance of the Mind.

He's not trying to do
a People magazine cover.

(Laughter)

It is a symbol to
communicate what's possible for us.

So whatever your hindrance is
that you're working on

—and I wanna to do a little exercise with you,
so you get to pick one—

and then the practice here,
they call it Choose Your Working Ground,

chose the hindrance you need to work on
right now in your life,

so that you can heal it and transform it,

and let it—here's the flip—
and let it heal and transform you.

This is non-duality in practice.

Let me read another one,
and then I'll flip to de-nourishment.

Let's see here.

Anger's so popular,
I won't do that one.

A lot of you— a lot of you
wrote about restlessness, and remorse,

to use the language that's here.

Let me see... where'd you go.

Sleepiness... no.

Five threatening dangers.

Ah, here we are:
restlessness and remorse.

Here's the formula again:

There is a human experience happening,

and in this case the human experience happening
is unrest of the mind.

I watched the news the other night.
Bad idea.

(Laughter)

But we have to practice with this world.

So, I didn't have to watch long,
before I was like completely agitated.

I woke up at two o'clock in the morning
really upset,

and, er, there is unrest of the mind
—that's the human experience—

the question now is:
how do we practice with it?

Do we feed it?
Do we bring out miracle grow?

Do we amplify it?

Do we call up everybody else we know
who's having this experience

and give unwise attention to it?

Oh, woe is us! We are doomed.

I'm not doomed. I'm a human being I'll—
birth and death, that's enough doom for me.

(Laughter)

Why would I worry about anything else?

So, here's this experience,

so, frequently giving unwise attention to it,
and some of you wrote about this, also.

So, what did I do? Click. I cut it off.

And then when I got up the next morning,
I decided how to— I decided to nourish myself

by doing something I haven't done before,
—and Peggy hasn't heard this—

we're staying at Les' house,
so I took a walk that morning

and the neighbors next door had put up
a Halloween decoration of a scarecrow,

that was really something.

So, I decided to
meditate on the scarecrow.

And the energy and care
that people put in to

creating that experience for children.

And, I discovered, for adults.

(Laughter)

And so I took a photo of it.

I've never taken a photo of a scarecrow
in my entire life.

(Laughter)

What we give attention to
changes things within us.

That is the nourishment for
the arising of restlessness and remorse.

How do we feed our restlessness?
How do we feed our regret?

You need to know your menu,
'cause we all have them.

You need to know your habits around this.

Now let's go to de-nourishing
—that's more interesting—

in the sense that
the practice is always two-sided.

So, I'll stay with
restlessness and remorse.

So, there is quietude of the mind
—ahhhh—finding quietude,

finding stillness of the mind,
and frequently giving wise attention to it,

feeding it, feeding serenity,
feeding peace in ourselves,

feeding stability in ourselves,
samādhi in ourselves.

Feeding that.

This is why I meditate every day,

because I don't have to meditate
to have the hindrance come up, at all,

but I meditate in order to train myself
how to nourish— de-nourish the hindrance,

to take the power away.

So, I'll just read the whole thing here.

There's quietude of the mind,
there's the human experience,

and frequently giving wise attention to it,

that is the de-nourishing of the arising of
restlessness and remorse, that has not yet arisen,

and the increase in strengthening
and de-strengthening of

restlessness and remorse that might arise.

What a remarkable
understanding of practice.

We have our everyday,
ordinary, human experiences.

We do not run from them,
we recognize them.

Thích Nhất Hạnh would like to say, well,

"hello there anger, hello there restlessness,
hello there regret".

We don't push away, we receive,

and after— as we receive the next step is to
make sure we do not give unwise attention to it.

There's a movie that gives me
a great image of this.

It was called "Little Shop of Horrors".

Remember that plant, Seymour?

(Laughter)

Feed me!

(Laughter)

There's something about that—
I kind of feel like that as I watch the news.

I can hear Seymour. (laughs)

I'm upset, I have doubt
in the future of all of humanity.

Feed me! Make me larger.
Make me stronger.

And so we must practice in ourself,
de-nourishment,

and know how to feed the best in us.

It doesn't mean
the un-best in us doesn't come up.

That's not the issue.

We must respect
our whole range of human experience,

and treat it with respect and kindness.

One more, and then I'll share with you
some of the practical steps to do.

Uh, this, on all five.

But I'll read one more formula
just so you get a sense of—

that was restlessn— let me do doubt,
since that's so popular, also.

There are things causing doubt.

So my first question to you
would be, as a practitioner,

do you know what those things are,
in your life, that cause doubt in you?

Do you know what the conditions are,
that cause doubt in you?

Do you know what the language is,
that causes doubt in you?

Do you know what
the emotional experiences are,

and physical experiences are,
that cause doubt in you?

Do you know what the relationships are
that cause doubt in you?

'Cause a lot of you also
wrote about relationships.

Actually most people
wrote about (laughs) relationships.

And relationships are not easy.

I discovered that when I was really young,
when I was like, unhappy with myself.

Just being in a relationship
with myself is a lot of work,

which I always seem not to be
quite good enough at.

That's the training, of being human.

There are things causing doubt.

We must all as practitioners know
what those things are in our life at this moment,

and frequently giving
unwise attention to them,

investing energy in them,
spending time with them,

will nourish the arising of more doubt.

It will feed more doubt,

and it will call up the doubt
that hasn't even come up yet.

The other image is, er, just popped in my head
is like Ghostbusters, that Pillsbury Doughboy, (laughs)

doubt is like that.

It's like starts getting bigger,
and starts to engulfing everything,

until you're inside doubt,

and you cannot see
anything outside of that,

you cannot see
the whole picture of your life,

you cannot see the whole game,

you cannot even remember
that your heart is vast and wide.

And to de-nourish doubt there are things
which are wholesome, nourishing, noble.

Frequently give wise attention to them.

What are those things in your life
that are noble?

Wholesome?

And wholesome
doesn't mean Mary Poppins, people.

Yeah, I don't have
anything against Mary Poppins,

but my point is,
it's easy to get too narrow here.

We live on a farm now, which
when I tell my sister, she'll like faint.

She doesn't know yet,
but we live on a farm and—

which means we mostly live
with thousands of blackberries,

and deer, and the raccoon family
I just met last week, who're hiding out in our shed.

That's what— I saw them
go through the yard, and I followed them,

and they went to our shed
and climbed up in the roof,

so I went in to the shed and I could see
these little eyes (laughter) looking at me,

and every eye was saying
'are you going to hurt me'?

So we had a little chat, I was like
'hey guys, cool, don't panic, don't run, it's OK'.

So, I went back the next day,
I'm gonna scientific method,

I went back the next day
to see what happened.

You know, test, evaluate, blah blah.

So, I went back the next day,
they were still there. (laughter)

They got the message,
and the deer came back,

also we told them don't panic, don't run,
we know deer season is coming,

hunting season is coming, and so they are
finding yards where they will not be hunted.

Deer are smart enough
to nourish themselves,

they are smart enough to pay
wise attention: where should we be now?

This is hunting season, we should
not be here, we should be over here.

Can we not do that for ourselves?

Can we not do this for ourselves?

And I just didn't write out
the rest of this 'cause it's the same.

And if you want access
to this whole thing, just let me know.

There's several versions of the five hindrances,
and how to practice with them, online.

This comes from the Pali tradition
and sutras and commentaries.

Here're the things we must do
to pay attention to practically.

There's a long list,
I'll just highlight some of these.

Doesn't matter to me.

You need a stretch?
Or are you OK for 10 more minutes?

You OK. OK.

So...

If you are struggling,
if you decide that you're—

the language here is
choose a working ground,

so decide for yourself

which one of these five hindrances
is most 'up' for you right now.

And some of you already
identified it in what you wrote, ey?

What's 'up' for you, what— what is—

what is the working ground
emerging from your heart and mind?

Asking to be healed and transformed,
in terms of these five hindrances?

It's mundane—
some of you even talked about,

uh, should I get a car,
should not I get a car?

(Slight laughter)

What kind of car should I—?

Life is mundane, people.

Our practice is grounded in 'mundanity'.

That's an important decision.

That's a valuable decision
to consider in your life.

How to work with your children,

how to spend more time with your children.

What's enough time?
What's too much time?

Oh, yeah, and how about you?

(Laughs)

How do you take care of yourself?

And your job, and your family,
and your partner, I mean it's just,

no generation in human history
has had so many opportunities

for distraction
and depletion of energy as ours.

Learn how to meditate.

So, I wrote down the car thing 'cause
I always have this experience every time:

you think about getting a car,
and then you go to look at them, and then—

but you don't want to get one,
not a new one,

'cause you know the minute you drive it off the lot
something bad's going to happen to it.

Some clown is going to scratch it in the parking lot.

This is how to meditate on getting a new car.

Yes, some clown (laughs)
is going to scratch in the parking lot.

Or that clown may be you.

(Laughter)

We had a friend like back through
their own garage, right, I mean...

So, when you want something
'cause I'm in the sensory realm,

and when you want something,
meditate on its imperfectibility.

Literally visualize it.

My grand mother used to tell me
when I was like in junior high school

"oh, yeah, you may fall in love with that girl,
but remember, in 60 years she'll look like me".

(Laughter)

Don't get too excited.

(Laughter)

Learn to be even, in your mind,
and how you approach people

and how you expect
and condition and perceive.

So there's all these great— in—

in Buddhism, this is under the category
of meditating on impure objects,

but that's like way over the top for us westerners

so I'm just making this
really mundane, but it's the same thing.

The other ancient practice

—you can find this one in
Blooming of the Lotus by Thầy—

is the charnel ground meditations:

the meditations on the disintegration of the body
and going to the cemetery, which I have done.

This is a great practice,
to go to the cemetery,

take a nap, walk around,
read the gravestones, look at the dates,

and I was doing— doing this once,
and I came across this grave stone with somebody,

it was like "Larry Ward"

(Laughter)

It's like, oh, my God, I'm dead already!

(Laughter)

For I got somebody forgot to tell me.

So this is a skill: learn how to not be seduced
by illusions of perfection of objects and relationships.

Some of you are dealing with relationships,
some of you want relationships so bad,

er, when I used to mar—
do weddings for people

which, to be honest,
I'm more comfortable with funerals

(Laughs)

(Laughter)

'cause things are like really clear.

(Laughter)

Er, I used to remind—
this is from my own experience.

I used to remind young couples, OK,
I know you love Henry now, to no end,

but in about 9 to 18 months,

you're gonna wake up before him
and look over there and go Aaaaaaahhhhh!

(Laughter)

It doesn't mean you shouldn't get married,
but you should be prepared (Laughs)

for the human experience.

And— and— you know a lot of Buddhist teachings
and the structure of monasteries and robes,

all of these things are trying
to protect what we encounter

with our eyes, our ears, our nose,
our tongue, our body and mind.

So pay attention to what you read
in terms of what it does to you inside.

Pay attention to what you see
and how it impacts you inside.

This is what guarding sense doors means,

and there is nothing
that doesn't impact us inside,

that's the Buddha's
profound insight about this.

Moderation in eating
is part of the practice,

to— to deal with all of these.

And I don't mean you shouldn't enjoy food.

Thích Nhất Hạnh really enjoys food.

Peggy and I, and many of others,

we have been in all kinds of
countries and places and menus

with him at the table
and he just smiles, says "it is good".

Enjoy our life!

This does not mean not to enj—
it means to enjoy our life profoundly,

but to enjoy it in ways that do not create
suffering for other people or suffering for ourselves.

Noble friendships. Noble friendships.

And this is really important:

it's very difficult in our western, 24-7, we-know-
we-have-value-because-we-work-'till-we-die, culture.

Do we even have time for noble friendship?

Do we even have time
to experience the fact that we are loved?

Or to give love? Or to share love,
however mundane that might be?

Noble friendships. And noble friends
are friends that have your back.

Noble friends are friends
that respect you for who you are.

Noble friends are friends
who have no agenda to fix you.

Noble friends are friends
who are intelligent, thoughtful, considerate,

all the things your grandmother told you
about going to junior, er, to kindergarten.

Be kind, be nice, be respectful.

Speak kindly, listen deeply.

And suitable conversations is a key practice
in terms of conquering the five hindrances.

Do you have conversations
that actually help you

become, and be in touch with,
your own inter-inherent wisdom?

Or do the conversations you have
pull you away from your own inherent wisdom?

Do the conversations you have

—to use an image from the New Testament—

pull out a bushel and put it over your light,
and shut you down?

Suitable conversations may be one of the most
important practices available to us, in our lives,

because it can happen in a small group.

It doesn't need to be
thousands and thousands of people.

Margaret Mead used to say
only small groups change the world.

It could be one other person,
it could just a couple of other people.

What's important
is the quality of the conversation

and the energy, and the images,
and the language, and the metaphors,

it nourishes in you.

And am I elight— enlivened by this,
am I lifted up while I—

there's this great song
that Josh Groban made famous

but I like the original version
of "You Raise Me Up".

This is what we must do with—
for one another, with one another.

This is the practice of our hour,

to raise one another up,
in goodness and in compassion,

and our conversations
can help facilitate that.

Just a couple more
mundane things to practice.

OK... friendship, eating, conversation.

Learning to practice true love.

These are the meditations and contemplations
on the Brahma Viharas: the practice of loving kindness.

That's a meditation, it's a contemplation, it isn't just a mantra.

That's part of it, that's one piece of it,
but you can actually go decide tomorrow:

I'm going to spend the whole day
practicing loving kindness,

everywhere I look,
and every encounter I have,

and then be in touch with
your experience of doing that:

it's not a one way street.

What happens?

I tried this with
the elk the other day, out in the yard.

I was just walking by, do de do,
and it was just eating, do de do.

So I just started sending the energy of loving kindness
from my heart towards that elk.

It looked up, no big deal,
do de do, back to food.

(Laughter)

Meditate on compassion the same.

It's not just what we do on the cushion.

We train ourselves on the cushion,
so we can go throu—

you know, what would it mean
to watch the news with the state of compassion?

I have learned how to do that,
in the midst of my agitation.

A friend of mine who's a professor wrote me,

I mentioned this last night,

that he finally fell in to compassion
around our entire political process.

You have to remember! We're children!

We have missiles,
and bank accounts, and skyscrapers,

but in the scope of history,
we're just coming out of daycare, people.

And I know it's easy to get upset
'cause we don't act like adults,

we don't act very mature,
and in some ways we're not,

but on the other hand
the wisdom of children is often just enough,

if we can get beyond our hindrances.

Look at some of the interviews people
have been doing with children about the world,

and about economics, and around the globe,
and about politics, and listen to these kids.

And every time I go through one of these

—I get a chance to listen in to one of these—

I think oh this is—
this is who we should elect. (Laughs)

(Laughter)

I don't care she's only eight!

(Laughter)

'Cause the wisdom is there.
It hasn't been destroyed yet.

It hasn't been
conditioned out of our children yet.

So those of you that work with children,
remember, the wisdom is already there.

The wisdom of the entire
Heart Sutra is already there.

In the other Brahma Viharas,
practice meditation—

there's a practice of meditation
I want to come back here and do sometime

that actually opens us up
to the experience of rapture and deep joy.

And actually, in early Buddhism,

one of the reasons it can be difficult
to achieve concentration in meditation,

actually, concentration comes after joy.

The happy mind
is an easy mind to concentrate.

The unhappy mind
refuses to concentrate.

Well I can come back to the rest,
we have a few more days.

But choose for yourself right— think right now,
which of these is your working ground?

Sensory desire, and 'member sensory is
eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind.

That's a human experience.

That's not what I'm asking you about.

I'm asking you,

where do you need to focus your practice,
on human exp—

with the human experience you're having?

Er, is it ill will, anger? Fury?
Is that the working ground?

You need to de-nourish.

And the flip side,
what do you need to nourish?

Is it a feeling of indifference, of sloth or being
shut down or being frozen, in time and space?

And not knowing what to do next
with your life, is that your working ground?

Is it restlessness, remorse,
things in the past that still haunt you?

Because either by commission,
omission, or some mission,

you did the wrong thing,
you supported the wrong thing,

you ignored somebody else's suffering,
or you could have made a difference?

You caused some suffering?

I remember the first time
I ever became conscious of causing suffering.

It's around Christmas.

I was nine, ten years old,

and our next door neighbor Richard Robinson
had gotten a toy for Christmas,

that was some kind of air— air gun,

and he and I were playing— he was showing me—
showing this to me in the driveway

and— and I pulled the trigger
and then handle caught his hand.

And so my first response

—remember the nervous system,
flight, fight or freeze—

flight.

I saw this blood coming out of his hand.

I— it was just right next door
so I just walked through the back yard,

I went in to my house
and my mother said "what happened"?

And I explained what happened,

she says "OK, now you go back,
and take care of your friend,

and explain to his parents what happened,
and let them know we'll pay for any hospital costs".

And so then I began to learn
how to practice with regret,

and we stayed friends forever.
That's amazing.

And doubt.

Yeah, she's always doing this, so...

(Laughter)

It's part of her function.

In early Vaudeville you know the hook that would...

But is doubt your working ground,

are you doubting yourself,
are you doubting the rest of us,

are you doubting your practice,

are you doubting the Buddha,
the dharma, the sangha, as the path?

Is that your working ground?

We all have a working ground
and that's wonderful.

(Bell sounds)

(Bell sounds)