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Introduction

Getting back into the swing of things after not having been here for a number of weeks, it's great to be back. And maybe I'll say a few words about what we can expect going forward. Excuse me, hold on a second.

Okay, so going forward, starting next Monday, Gil Fronsdal^[1] and I will be sharing this Monday night at 7:30 time slot, and the meditation hall will be open. It'll be a combination—we'll be both on YouTube and live in person. How we're doing live in person right now is individuals sign up to attend, just so that we have control over the amount of people here so that we can maintain some social distancing. They ask that you upload a vaccination card, and once that's done, then you can sign up for Monday nights and Sunday mornings. I think the limit is about 25 people. I'm looking around the room right now; there's little blue tape on the carpet where individuals can sit so that there's plenty of space. For those of you who have been here to IMC, just to give you a little frame of reference, 25 people is a little bit less than half of what it would be if this room were filled. So just to give you a little sense of that. Perhaps I'll be seeing some of you in person, but otherwise, we'll still be here on YouTube.

Guided Meditation: The Push and Pull of Experience

So a really warm welcome to everybody. What a pleasure it is to be here. We'll begin with a guided meditation. In general, I don't like to have too many words during these meditations, but just an encouragement to maybe incline the mind a certain way.

Taking an alert posture. A posture that reflects your intention to meditate, to be present. As well as having some ease, having some softness rather than too much stiffness.

And then checking in with the body. What is it like to be in this body at this moment? Can we sit and know we're sitting?

Maybe the body is a little bit tired, a little bit restless. However it might be, can we make room? Can we allow the experience as best we can?

And allowing our attention to rest on the sensations of breathing. Without pouncing on the breath, without ignoring the breath, but with some gentle noticing. Gentle in the sense that we're not grabbing on, but we are connecting with the breath. The movements of the body associated with breathing.

Connecting with feeling the expansion, the contraction of breathing.

We can characterize our experience of when we're not on the breath. This may be either being pulled towards something else that seems desirable, or being pushed away from something that's not desirable. This push and pull.

It can be helpful to just acknowledge, "Oh yes, there's a pull towards something I want, or I push away from something I don't want." Sometimes just noticing that movement, push or pull, can help weaken the pushing or pulling. Make it a little bit easier to come back to the breath.

We might notice what is the habit: to do a little more pushing or a little bit more pulling? Are we moving towards something we want or away from something we don't want when we're no longer being mindful of the sensations of breathing?

It can be empowering to notice our habits of mind. You don't have to make a big story. It's just a habit of mind.

This idea of noticing whether the mind is pulled towards something or pushed away is just a tool to help us understand our minds, the habits of mind. A way for us to tune into the movements of the mind so that we might understand ourselves better. Understand the way this particular mind works or likes to work.

So then we might be alert to some of the ways in which we might not be seeing clearly. If we're always being pulled towards something, maybe that means we're not noticing fully what's present here in the moment. There's this idea that something better is out there. Or if we do feel like we have to get away from something, is there a way we might look to see if there is a sense of security or safety or stability already here?

And whatever we discover is perfectly fine. The practice is to just notice. And as best we can, do not have a big story about it. Just notice, "This is the habit of this mind," so that we can have some more ease. And if we have more ease, we can show up in the world in a way that supports everybody—ourselves and those we come in contact with.

So maybe this practice that we share, this practice that we do, may it be for the benefit of all beings everywhere.

Antidote to Self-Delusion

So welcome, welcome. It's nice to practice together. Today I'm joined by my good friend who's here in the hall with me. The two of us have this whole hall together, and all of you there on the other side of that camera.

With this practice, you might have heard—or sometimes I know that I've said in different settings—that part of this practice, the goal of practice, we might say, is to see things as they really are. Yathābhūtaṃ^[2], as they really are. The truth of the moment. Not how we wish that they were or that we're imagining how they might be, but how they really are.

And the tradition tells us that the way things really are are impermanent, unsatisfactory, and without a self at the center of it all. Anicca^[3], dukkha^[4], anattā^[5]. And then the teachings are—and certainly this has been my experience—that when there is this recognition of the truth of how things are (impermanent, unsatisfactory, without a steady self at the center of everything), then there's just this natural letting go that arises. It just doesn't seem to make sense to hold on. It's less maybe a logic and more just a recognition like, "Yeah, it just doesn't make sense to hold on." And so there's a letting go, and this letting go can bring greater freedom.

So we might ask, "Well, why is it if there's the truth of impermanence, not-self, and suffering, why can't I see it all the time? Why do we have to do all this meditation and dharma talks and study and all this work?"

Well, maybe I'll say a little bit more, because we also have this idea of the Four Noble Truths. Maybe some different truths here: the truth of suffering, but also the truth of its cause, its cessation, and the way, the path leading to this cessation. And these have this title "Noble Truth," so these feel like really important truths, and certainly they are foundational to the Buddhist teachings and Buddhist practice. And these truths overlap with some of those other truths about anicca, anattā, dukkha—impermanence, not-self, suffering.

So we might begin to think that this idea about truth is an integral, important part of practice. Recently I've heard in a number of different settings this story, or that the tradition holds, that the Buddha had countless past lives before he became a Buddha, and he's reborn in all these different venues or settings. And it is said that despite these hundreds, thousands, untold number (I don't know how many, nobody knows), the Buddha never told a lie throughout all these rebirths. Because truth is so important, even though he might have done some other transgressions, he didn't tell a lie.

I've heard this a number of times, including just recently. Just as a little aside I'll say, that itself is not actually true. There is a Jataka^[6] story, Jataka 342, where when the Bodhisattva—before he was a Buddha in that particular life—was a monkey, he deceived a crocodile in that story. So just as a little aside, it turns out that the Buddha in one of his past lives according to these Jataka tales in fact did lie. But nevertheless, the tradition believes and holds that it's so important that they have this tradition that he didn't lie.

So we might be led to believe that this practice is about getting to the truth. And certainly that feels good, right? We want to know what the truth is; we don't want to be following lies. And maybe we even have this idea that it's the truth with a capital 'T'. The Truth. But this type of thinking lends itself to the idea that there's a truth that's out there somewhere, and that we have to discover it and find it. And it's certainly that the practice is about that, but one way that if we were to do this, it can leave us feeling disconnected. That there's some great truth out there, there's me over here, and out over there is something that I'm supposed to discover.

This is a legitimate way to consider Buddhist philosophy certainly, but in this tradition we're really highlighting practice. So the truth is naturally, necessarily subjective. It's the truth of things as we experience them. We can try to say how things are "out there," but the mind always makes sense of the world through perceptions and through the lenses of conditioning. So my experience at any moment is not going to be exactly the same as anybody else's experience.

And in early Buddhism, the Buddha is not concerned with the ontological status of things—that is to say, how things exist independent of any humans interacting with them. Instead, this practice really focuses on the truth of our experience, the truth of the moment. In fact, we might even say that mindfulness practice is really a practice to help us tune into and align with this moment, the truth of this moment, the reality of this moment.

So instead of approaching this idea of truth from the idea that it's something to be had out there somewhere, turn it around. Think about it more as the truth as an antidote to self-delusion. As a way to help us see our experience clearly. Help us see ourselves clearly. We might say that the practice is really just a commitment to look deeply into whatever is arising.

I appreciate very much Matthew Brensilver^[7]. Sometime last year he gave a talk about this idea, and he highlighted that when we're beginning practice, the question is, "What is it like to be human?" What is it actually like? Not what do we think it should be, or how we imagine it might be, or how we have been told it should be, but what is it? What is the truth of this human's experience?

And in this way, practice is to stop fooling ourselves or wishing that things were different, but to really see that truth truthfully about our own minds. We can ask ourselves, "Are we really seeing ourselves truthfully?" Instead of trying to go find the truth out there, are we really seeing ourselves clearly? And this is what practice is about.

So when we look in this way, we might discover, perhaps to our surprise, that we're doing a lot of rationalizing. Rationalizing our habits, rationalizing our preferences. Maybe this is one of the humbling aspects of practice, to see how much of our lives are rationalizations of our conditions and our preferences. It wasn't until Matthew highlighted this that I really saw it, but I think I have to agree.

Of course, through our conditioning we have certain ways in which we like to be seen or experiences we like to have; we have preferences. And often we're just not noticing some of those maybe unflattering things that we might see in ourselves. Instead, we might rationalize, "Oh yeah, but I'm just that way because..." We have a reason, of course we have a reason. But there might be a way in which we don't really see all that's going on in our minds.

Maybe we have this idea that we're like scientists. Scientists have a hypothesis like, "I wonder what's in the mind," and then they conduct experiments to see. They conduct these experiments not necessarily knowing what they're going to find. They set up something like a clinical trial, and then when the experiment is finished, they look to see what the results are.

So many of us might think that we're doing this with our own minds, our own experience. But I chuckled when I heard Matthew say that what happens is that many of us, instead of being scientists, are more like lawyers. In the sense that lawyers have a conclusion that they need to have, and then they find the data to support it.

So we all have conclusions about ourselves. Ideas that we think about ourselves: "I'm a good person," "I'm a bad person," "I'm a kind person," "I'm not so kind," "I'm generous," "I'm selfish." Whatever these ideas that we have, they're all about this self and our ideas about ourselves. And so often, of course, when we look in our minds, when we look in our experience, we are seeing data that supports the way that we think about ourselves. Whether that way we think about it is flattering or unflattering. So we're not maybe seeing the truth of ourselves, the entirety of ourselves, perhaps.

And maybe we would say specifically, we often don't see the expression of some of these unwholesome roots or defilements. I'm not so keen on this word "defilements." It sounds pejorative, and to be sure, unwholesome roots are not fantastic. But it is part of what it means to be human, to have these unskillful roots. The Buddha recognized this, and he gave the simile of the cloth as one way to describe it. It goes like this:

"Suppose a cloth were defiled and stained, and a dyer dipped it in some dye or other, whether blue or yellow or red or carmine. It would look poorly dyed and impure in color. Why is that? Because of the impurity of the cloth. So too, when the mind is defiled, soiled, an unhappy outcome might be expected."

So the Buddha is pointing out that as long as we have these in our minds, then the outcome is not going to be as if it weren't there, of course. To speak a little bit more specifically, the Buddha gives this long list of these unwholesome roots, or you can say imperfections, that stain the mind. And I've looked at a number of different translators looking at this long list, and it's fun to see how different they all are on some of these words, because they're not so common and maybe we don't quite know how to translate them into English. So hold these loosely, but to give you a sense of what's being pointed out here.

This list of sixteen kilesas^[8], defilements, unwholesome states: unbalanced greed, anger, resentment, contempt, spite, envy, meanness, deceit, treachery, stubbornness, rivalry, conceit, arrogance, vanity, longing, and carelessness.

Sometimes if we were to see something like this in our minds, there can be this dance between revelation and denial. "Oh, I see, I have this quality—no I don't!" Or it can be a flicker, "I see this... although I don't see it... maybe I do have this, maybe I don't." It can also be the opposite, right? Where we can see that we have some of these states and then we just grab onto it and take on a new identity. "I'm the one who is filled with envy. I'm the one who has rivalry," whatever it might be.

So many of you know that we can simplify this list to three: greed, hatred, and delusion. These are the unwholesome roots of all other defilements. And maybe we can say that delusion is a way which helps us not see our greed and our hatred, and all the different forms that it takes.

So this practice of working with truth can be an antidote to self-delusion. There's a way in which we can really understand ourselves better. Not so that we can beat ourselves up better. Not so that we can finally find that data that proves that we're a bad person or something like this. Just so that we can wash this cloth that has some stains on it.

And so one way we could play with this analogy is that there are some pre-treatments before we do some of this washing. Like, there used to be this product—I'm not sure if it still exists—called Spray 'n Wash. You put it on the cloth before you put the cloth into the laundry, into the wash.

So some things that might help with some pre-treatment if we find some of these states in our minds: loving-kindness practice. Because it takes a lot of warmth, care, and compassion—not to mention courage—but warmth, care, and compassion to do this work, this mindfulness, and to really see how things are. That sometimes we do have flickers of anger or flickers of conceit. It doesn't make us a bad person; it makes us human. And part of this practice is just to help loosen up some of these stains, some of the ways in which the beauty of the heart and mind might have a little bit of soil on them. So loving-kindness practice, compassion practice, any of the heart practices—fabulous pre-treatment to help these come out.

Another one: concentration practice. I don't know how this works exactly, but if the mind has an opportunity to settle, and we have an opportunity to feel some well-being, to feel some happiness, to feel some contentment, even if it's just a little bit, that's a way which helps everything else come out in the wash, so to speak.

So one way to work with these kilesas, these defilements, these unwholesome roots, is with loving-kindness practice, concentration practice, as well as mindfulness practice. And it can be helpful to work with just one at a time, instead of feeling like, "Oh my gosh, I see everything there! That whole list of sixteen I've maybe at times seen... or maybe not, too." Maybe just choose one. "I'm going to notice rivalry. Just when does that show up for me? Is it a habit of mind? Maybe it's something that I learned long ago and is no longer helpful, just doesn't make sense anymore." So maybe just choose one, if you notice it, and just notice how it shows up in your daily life, it shows up in meditation.

With a warm heart, right? This is so key. This practice is not about beating ourselves up, it's not about making ourselves feel bad. Getting this cloth clean is freedom, complete freedom, and it is possible. So we can just work with these a little bit as we see them, in a warm-hearted way.

In the same way that we're looking at some of these defilements, we can and should also ask: are we acknowledging what is wholesome? The practice is to be what is it like to be a human. Humans have wholesome qualities, too. So sometimes we might not be seeing the unwholesome, and sometimes we might not be seeing the wholesome. Just to acknowledge that there's both sides, and the practice is to see maybe the breadth of our experiences. And to keep compassion as a companion in this investigation.

I'd like to share this poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer^[9]. I appreciate Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer very much; her poetry is touching, it's beautiful. This is a poem that she wrote on January 24th, 2021, and it's called "Choosing Truth." And it goes like this:

And if I find I'd rather not meet the truth, then I can notice the little girl in me, the one who hides in the closet when she is afraid, the one who plays dead, the one who ends all her stories with happily ever after, and I can choose to love her.

I don't need to drag her out or force her to look, or to tell her that sometimes the villain wins in the end. Instead I can remind the rest of me how alive I feel when I meet it all, when I choose to enter the day eyes open, ears open, hands open, and let the world in.

That is how on this day, when I know the truth of how cruel we humans can be, I can lean into that pain. At the same time, I watch the sky turn pink behind the white aspen and feel the cold air kiss my cheeks, my breath rising in visible prayer. Meeting difficult truths, I walk right through.

This is practice. I think this is a beautiful way to describe practice. We discover things that are uncomfortable, difficult, about ourselves, about others, about life. And we don't beat ourselves up. I appreciate very much that Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer writes, "Instead I can remind the rest of me how alive I feel when I meet it all." There's a way in which, if we're not telling the truth, or seeing the truth, or holding the truth intentionally, there's a secret somewhere that we're trying to keep away from others, keep away from ourselves. And when we hold secrets, there's a little bit of a deadening, maybe something that we're trying to lose contact with. But Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer writes:

I don't need to drag her out or force her to look, or to tell her that sometimes the villain wins in the end. Instead I can remind the rest of me how alive I feel when I meet it all, when I choose to enter the day eyes open, ears open, hands open, and let the world in.

...If I find I'd rather not meet the truth, then I can notice the little girl in me, the one who hides in the closet when she is afraid, the one who plays dead, the one who ends all her stories with happily ever after, and I can choose to love her.

So truth as an antidote to self-delusion. Maybe love is another antidote to self-delusion. Maybe if we have love and compassion, it's a way in which there can be an opening to see that which might be difficult to see, to hold what might be difficult to hold.

So we might have all these different ideas about truth, and we might have this idea that we want to find the truth with a capital 'T'. And this belief that we're going to find it somewhere, and it's going to make us happy. We may not know what truth with a capital 'T' is, but we do know what honesty is. And that's what this practice is asking of us. To be with our experience, to see the truth of our experience, and to be as honest as we can. Bathed in care, bathed in love, bathed in compassion, bathed in warmth. To increase the capacity to see everything, and use a little pre-treatment on any cloth that has a stain that needs to be cleaned.

In this way, we can show up for our lives, we can show up for others, we can show up in this world. That is a benefit and support for all beings everywhere. Thank you.