This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Announcements

So good evening, here the last Monday evening of the year.

One announcement is that for the next two Mondays, we won't meet here at IMC, so hopefully we'll start again on the 16th of January. It just felt like the wise thing to do, to be a little cautious during this time. We don't know what's happening with Omicron, and there's some theory that it might peak in about two weeks. I don't know if it's the right time to open then, but we'll have a little bit more sense. You can look on the website and see if it's open then. I think it will be the 17th of January.

We might require everyone to be fully vaccinated this time; you might need to be boosted as well, so you might have to resubmit your vaccination card. Who knows how necessary all these things are, but hopefully it's good for everyone to know that we're being as cautious as we can be and trying to make everybody safe.

Living Well With Choice

I find it rather amusing that the English word for the current last month of the year—they say it's the twelfth month, right? But the word December comes from the Latin word that means ten. It's the tenth month. So if you know Latin, it must be very confusing. November means ninth in Latin, October means eighth, September is seventh. So we're a little bit confused in the English language about what we're actually commemorating here.

We just passed the solstice, which is a real event in terms of the planets and the sun and everything. But this New Year's Eve that we celebrate, this transition from one year to the next, it's not a thing that really exists. I mean, it doesn't mark anything unique that happens in the stars, the sun, or the earth. It's just an arbitrary day that somehow was used to mark the end of an arbitrary year, where we're confused about the names of the months.

Nothing really will change between the 31st of December and the 1st of January, except the clocks and the computers will mark the time as being changed. But in the non-human world, there's nothing really that happens of any particular import as far as I know.

I think we're fortunate to live in this Bay Area, which is so cosmopolitan, with cultures and people from all over the world. You can kind of go around different weeks in the Bay Area and celebrate different new years. Different cultures and societies celebrate New Year's at different times. Some mark it by the lunar calendar, not the solar calendar.

I like reflecting on New Year's Eve this way, seeing that it's a convention. It's a construct of the human mind. Some people made up this calendar, and we live by it. But I don't want to dismiss it, because the construct is a convention, but the conventions and constructs that we have, we have so we can share our life together. They're made by people so that they can support each other, or be on the same page, the same year, and have the same kind of communication together. If we share some of the same conventions, the conventions link us. They make a connection between us.

I don't know how many of you might stay up until midnight on the 31st, or if people still do this, but when I was young, there were people who would stand on a chair, and when midnight came, they would jump into the new year off the chair. It really worked! They got there into the next year. The people who didn't jump got there as well, but maybe somehow you got there better when you jumped.

Still, it's something that people do together. Some people party, some people come together. There was a time when people came together much more in the last couple of years. I think it's important for people to come together, and I thank those of you who came here today to sit together. I find it precious that we're meditating together. Thank you.

We share these conventions, and they link us and organize our lives. We share the conventions and share life in some ways. But for me, it isn't just that they link us, but rather they're channels of communication. The question is: what are you communicating when you use shared conventions?

That is what I find most interesting about this, and what I'm trying to say today. What are you sharing? What are you communicating when you use a convention? When you simply say "How are you?" to someone. A lot of people in English don't really want to know how you are. They say "How are you?" and they don't really want to know. If you say, "Oh, I'll tell you. Sit down, do you have an hour? I'll tell you," they don't really want to know. It's just a convention to say hello and "I see you." You play the convention, sometimes you say "Fine," and then you can go on to the business you have to do. It's just a little dance you do to get connected. It can be a little communication of friendliness or recognition. There are some cultures where the word for hello is "I see you." Isn't that kind of nice? I see you.

We're communicating through the conventions that we use, and this I find precious. What do you communicate when you use the conventions? When you say "Hi," "How are you?" When you say "Happy New Year," "Happy Holidays," or whatever you say, you're participating in conventions that we share. What is traveling in your words to the other person? Is it friendliness? Is it kindness? Is it recognition? Is it a feeling of shared humanity, that we're in this journey together, accompanying each other? That we're caring for each other, that we are respecting each other? Or is it something else?

Here in Redwood City, I've heard terrible things be yelled out of car windows to people walking on the sidewalk. That communicates something else. If you do not say "How are you?" to someone you know, maybe that communicates a little more indifference, a different feeling. So what are we communicating in the conventions?

One of the things that happens when people practice Vipassana^[1] mindfulness practice, there's a kind of deconstruction process that goes on. We're slowly deconstructing the conventions we live in. Some of the conventions get claustrophobic, some of them are not helpful for our own hearts and minds, some of them are burdensome that we live under, and some of them are just part of our lives.

As we sit and get quiet in meditation, calmer and calmer, the calmer mind is no longer participating in all the conventions. For some brief moments perhaps in meditation, a good percentage of the usual constructs of the mind—thoughts, ideas of who I am and who other people are, what I'm supposed to do and what I'm supposed to accomplish, my to-do list—is forgotten. My concerns of work are put aside for a few minutes. We experience a calmness or peacefulness and a letting go. We experience our life, our world, ourselves, to some degree free of all the constructs, the ideas, the beliefs, the to-dos, and the identities that we live by. It can be a relief to put it all down.

The more we can do that, the more we can recognize when we reintroduce the conventions. When we reintroduce interpretations, thoughts, ideas, projections, assumptions, and judgments that we have about ourselves, others, and the world around us. That's a special place, to be able to watch how these things come back in.

If you feel pretty calm in meditation, pretty peaceful, and things are pretty good and quiet, and you leave meditation to go out here to find your shoes. You see your shoes, and probably none of you have these kinds of thoughts, but you see your shoes and you say, "Oh, they're those old, tired shoes of mine that really are an embarrassment to humankind. I hope no one notices." You've now introduced a whole series of conventions, constructs, and ideas.

To watch it come in, to watch the mind pick it up—"Oh, they're my shoes, they're tired and old"—and watch it as thoughts coming up. Be quiet enough to see it arise and say, "No thank you." Say, "I don't need to go there. I don't need to pick that up. This is optional." You could just drop it, be quiet, and put on your shoes; they probably will get you home.

Another option you have is you can see your shoes, recognize that you're going to spiral down in some kind of self-loathing around your shoes, and say, "I'm not going to do that." Instead, you can look at your shoes and say, "You know, I've had those shoes for a long time. They've taken care of me in many, many places, and we've been through a lot together. Maybe I'll just thank my shoes. Thank you, shoes. I'm grateful." Before you put on your shoes, you bow to them.

Maybe that's a silly thing to do, but what a world of difference it is to live in a world where we look at our shoes and have loathing for the shoes, ourselves, and embarrassment, versus when we feel grateful for our shoes. What a difference! Which world would you rather live in? If those are the two options, I'd prefer to live in the grateful one.

So we come to New Year's Eve, another convention. There's a lot of things people do for New Year's Eve that don't interest me whatsoever. There was a time in my life where I maybe would have been a little bit dismissive of what people do. I think some things people do are probably not so healthy for themselves, but I don't want to dismiss people anymore. I don't want to live in a world where I'm judging people and what they're doing.

I'd rather live in a world where I appreciate people and value them, and I say, "Oh, look at that. People are having a chance to celebrate. People are coming together." Humans need to be together. Some of them do, and I wish them well. May they be well, may they be safe. If those are the only options—to be dismissive or to think well about them and wish them well—I'd rather live in the latter. I think it's better for me, and it's the kind of world I'd like to live in.

This idea that we live in the world of conventions, ideas, and constructs, an idea of what's going on—some Buddhists want to dismiss it all and say it's all empty, it's all not real, we want to stay close to what's real. Some Buddhists will say, well, maybe they're not real in some kind of absolute way, but they're real enough in the sense that we have a choice how to use them, and to use them well.

You make choices like that all the time. You sit down at a meal, you could probably eat your soup with a knife or a fork, but it's a little more useful to eat your soup with a spoon. That's a convention, it's a choice we make. So we can make choices with how we use our words, how we use our evaluation of people and circumstances. That is one of the powers that comes from meditation.

If you in meditation have learned to get quiet and peaceful enough to have put to rest some of the judgments, some of the ideas, some of the projections, some of the activities of your mind—just enough so you can see them when they reappear. And see them as reappearing: "Oh, there it is. It wasn't there, now it's come." And don't give it authority, don't take it as being real—the thoughts, the judgments. Rather, see them as thoughts, see them as judgments, see them as evaluations.

The fact that you see your shoes as old, tired shoes—maybe they've been around for a long time. But to follow that in the wake of, "Oh, this is an embarrassment"—is that true? Just because I think it doesn't make it true. It's not so much whether it is true or false, but in that I think it, is it helpful or not? In that I think it, how can I use it for something that's beneficial, that makes this world a better place?

This tireless or continuous dedication, love, and devotion to making this world a better place, why not? Why not do that? I believe that there are people who seemingly are continuously doing the opposite. Maybe they're trying to make a better life for some people, but they're making other people miserable. What if we make this world a place where we care for people and try to make it good for everyone? You might say that that's a moral choice. I'd like to say that it's not a moral choice exactly, but rather it's the more healthy choice for our hearts and our minds.

Even as simple as how you go to put on your shoes as you leave here. If by the time you get to the shoe rack, you remember, "Wow, if I rush home right now, if I really race home and gun my car and hopefully there are no police on the freeway, I'd get back just in time for the beginning of the TV show." That's a choice.

Or you can see those thoughts arise and say, "Wait a minute, what world do I want to live in? Do I want to live in a world that's rushing and dangerous, or are there better things to do? Are there healthy things for my heart and my mind? A healthy way to drive, a healthy way to leave, to stay connected to myself." That kind of questioning is the kind of questioning that I believe comes from doing Buddhist practice.

Buddhist practice is not a magical pill where you just do the practice and everything will be glorious and wonderful. But Buddhist practice is one that gives us the knowledge, the material, the capacity to see what we're doing moment by moment, to choose the healthy option in the words we speak and the actions we do, and even the thoughts that we have. To do that in a regular, ongoing way begins to change the inner and outer environment. There's less stress. There's less fear and anxiety. There's less tension that we carry with us.

And there's the opposite. The rewards are huge, the benefits are fantastic to live in that place in the present moment, where we can see how we live, the choices we make, and to choose the ways that are healthy for ourselves and for the world. Do things beneficial for self and others, in all the conventions we use, the communications we have. To never dismiss anything, but always to see: how can this be used? How can this be a channel where I can spread goodness, freedom, kindness, compassion, love?

So we come to this end of the year, the beginning of the next year. We have all these conventions that we do, and one of the conventions is to kind of review the year and to set an intention for the next year. That can be a nice thing to do. What I hope is that we keep making that resolve, that intention, over and over again. It's how we live our lives; it's not something we do once a year. A Buddhist life is a life of making choices, resolves, and intentions all the time.

Not in a way that's tiring, but in a way that's obvious. It's so obvious that if you're going to eat soup, you do it with a spoon. To try to eat the soup with a knife—you know, maybe once a lifetime it's okay to try, but which is the easy choice? The spoon. It becomes that natural, that easy, to live this life of choice. To live the life of being in the present moment, to care for what we do each step along the way.

So New Year's Eve—if what I've said today had any meaning for you, maybe you can imbue New Year's Eve, in whatever way you're doing it, alone or with people, with something new or more dedication. How can you live this New Year's Eve intention, this New Year's Eve event, in a way that becomes a channel, a canal, a doorway for the best in you to come forth? Always choose the best in you, and live by that. That's the opportunity that we have.

So thank you very much for being here, and being part of this and sharing this sitting. I don't take it for granted, after this year and a half of the pandemic, that we come together and sit this way, and to me it feels very special. Thank you for sharing this with us and this time, and I look forward to seeing you again, having a chance to do this again, hopefully in a few weeks. You know the information about it will be on the website, so just keep an eye on the website under what's new or the calendar or something. So thank you all very much.