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.

Giving the Moment a Chance

Introduction

I'm very happy to be here this morning. It was lovely. While I was meditating there, my heart was just filling up. I don't know, I was just feeling so happy to be here. And as Martha said, I teach here on Monday nights, so it's not uncommon for me.

So, Nancy has given me the sign that it needs to be louder out there in the community room. Can it be a little bit louder? Okay. How's that? Is that okay? Yeah, great. Thank you, Nancy.

The Dishes in the Sink

I'd like to start by setting a little scenario. Imagine it just might happen that you wake up in the morning, and it's maybe one of those mornings you woke up on the wrong side of bed. Maybe there's a little bit of crankiness, something like this. I know sometimes this happens to me. I don't know why exactly, I just wake up and feel a little cranky, which is okay, crankiness happens. But maybe there's nothing huge that is wrong.

Then you stumble into the kitchen and you see the dishes in the sink. You're like, "Ugh, the dishes." And maybe there's a sense like, "Am I the only one here that cares about this place? And why do I have to do everything?" There can be this reaction that shows up, and maybe you actually were the one who left the dishes there. But there's this way in which just seeing that, there's a reaction that shows up, a protest: "No, I don't want that to be this way. I want it to be different. It shouldn't be this way." This isn't an obvious thing that's in our mind, just a subtle way.

But you can also imagine another morning, not waking up cranky. You stumble into the kitchen—I use this word stumble, that's sometimes how I feel before my caffeine in the morning. You go into the kitchen, see the dishes, and it's just, "Oh, there's dishes." And maybe you find yourself a mug, clean it, and make a cup of coffee or tea, or whatever it is you like to do. It's the same scenario, completely different response. One of them feels contracted, has this feeling of something's wrong and it needs to be different, and the other one is just recognizing this is what's happening right now, and we just do what we want to do next. Maybe that's finding a cup or a mug to drink out of.

Aversion and Proliferation

So there's this way in which aversion—we like to talk about aversion in these Buddhist circles—sometimes is obvious. We know that we're cranky and we know that there's this feeling like, "I want things to be different. Why are they this way?" And maybe that's accompanied with the shoulders going up or tightness in the jaw, or maybe there's this kind of inner growl like, "Why is this happening? I want it to be different." So there's aversion and sometimes it's obvious, but sometimes it's subtle. Sometimes there's a way in which we don't even recognize that we are looking at the world through tinted glasses. And these glasses are quietly saying, "Nope, this is wrong. Nope, that's wrong. Nope, this is wrong. Nope, no, no."

And there's this way that this attitude we don't see. Instead, we're thinking, "Oh, this is aversion." We're saying like, "That person is irritating," or "That thing over there is ridiculous," or "Something is wrong and has to be different." We're seeing everything out there as the problem, and not recognizing that in here there's this quiet sense of, "No, things should be different."

For me, this became really obvious some time ago when I was complaining about something. Now I don't even remember what I was complaining about, but the person with me was like, "Diana, you're complaining a lot." And then I'm like, "No I'm not! You're always telling me that I'm complaining!" I'm complaining that I'm complaining! And then there was some laughter like, "Oh, right. Yeah. Okay. Here it is." It kind of shows up this way. But when we're inside, when we have this attitude, it doesn't feel like an attitude. It feels like we're just pointing out what's wrong. We're just being realistic.

But here's something that's interesting about aversion. Chances are many of you have heard about aversion. Dharma teachers like to talk about it a lot in different ways. But aversion has this second step. It's this sense of, "No, I don't want it to be this way." And then it has this second step that's more subtle. The second step is, "I know how this is going to turn out. I know what this means. I know that now this other thing is going to happen." And that's partly why we feel like we don't want what's happening here.

So practice in some ways is fascinating because it's asking us to know what's happening, and then to not know what we think this whole world that we're constructing based on this uncomfortable experience that we're having. We often hear about this word papañca^[1], about the way the mind proliferates, the way the mind makes stories about something that happens. I remember hearing Gil—gosh, this was a long time ago—telling the story about imagining stubbing your toe and then thinking like, "Oh my goodness, I hope nobody saw me stub my toe. They're going to think I'm not a good walker. And I need to be a good walker, I need to be the best walker in the neighborhood, but maybe I'm not because there was that thing that happened when I was eight years old..." and off we go.

But what we don't recognize is when the papañca, when the story-making, is about this way in which we feel some certainty about what's going to happen next. Of course, we have a sense of what's going to happen next. We're not completely naive. Of course we recognize patterns. Of course, we can predict. But that's different than knowing. There's a knowing that's experiential: "This is what's happening right now." For example, I can feel aversion: the shoulders going up towards the ears, tightening in the jaw. Our prediction about what's going to happen next is a different type of knowing that's completely, one hundred percent made up in the mind, as opposed to what's actually being experienced that moment.

Knowing Versus Not Knowing

And so this practice is asking us: can we tease apart the difference between these two different types of knowing? To know what's happening right now, and to not know, in some kind of ways, what's going to happen next. And I'm using this expression "not know" just to be kind of cute—to know and not know. But maybe we can say another way to say this is to recognize the difference between what's actually being experienced, being felt somatically in the body, what's happening right now, from what the mind is fabricating. I mean, it's making it up based on past experiences. To recognize the difference, because there is a way in which we have this prediction about what's going to happen next which really limits our freedom. And I'll talk about that more in just a moment here.

But before we go there, I want to ask: is there a way in which we can not get swept away by what the mind is saying the next moment is, this proliferation, but instead, can we give this moment a chance? Can we give this moment a chance to reveal itself to us, instead of saying, "Okay, I know what's going to happen. It's going to be like this and it's going to be awful," or, "It's going to be like this and it's not what I want"? Because the truth is, this actual moment hasn't happened precisely before.

And there's this way in which when we give the moment a chance to unfold, instead of saying, "Okay, I know what this is going to be. That person's going to be nasty again," or "I'm going to yell again and I don't want to yell," whatever it might be. There's a way in which if we allow the mind not to run away with its proliferation, we're giving ourselves a chance to show up differently. We're giving ourselves a chance to show up with more openness. Instead of already determining how things are going to be, we're giving ourselves a chance to respond differently, to be open to something different arising.

So again, I'm not suggesting that we be completely naive and pretend like we don't know anything. Because sometimes that particular clerk at the grocery store is actually slow, for example. Or maybe there's this person that we have a relationship with, and maybe they have done that thing twenty times already. But maybe there's a way we can say, "Maybe I don't know everything about this yet." Maybe we can not make this moment be a verdict about the next. We often try to say, "Okay, I know how this is going to happen." We do this because we want to feel safe. We feel like it's easier if we can predict exactly what's going to happen, but that kind of restricts us.

Introduction to Poetry

And to point to that, I'd like to share a poem that I've enjoyed. It's by Billy Collins^[2]. He was the Poet Laureate in 2001 to 2003, and he was a professor of English and poetry. So he would teach Introduction to Poetry to students. This was part of his job. And he wrote this poem that's called Introduction to Poetry. He's pointing to the same thing in a playful, whimsical way that I'm pointing to here.

This is called Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins:

I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

I love this image of forcing a confession out of a poem. There's this way we're kind of doing this for our experience sometimes. "It means this because I feel this, because they said that..." There are so many ways in which we are doing this in our life, in our experiences. Sometimes there's this way in which we're barely giving experience a chance to be experience before we're demanding it to give us an explanation, or before we've assigned it an explanation.

Curiosity and Investigation

And this is where curiosity can help. Curiosity isn't saying, for example, with the dishes in the sink, "Why are these here?" Or curiosity isn't saying, "I need to make this aversion go away. I need to be a nice person. I need to be curious." Curiosity is more just saying like, "Hmm, I wonder what's here. I wonder what's going to happen next. What is actually here right now?" Not what should be here. Not what it means that this experience is here. Not what was here last time, or what we think is going to be here next time.

So curiosity is a kind of willingness, a willingness to let experience show us something rather than immediately telling the experience what it is.

Some of you might be familiar with the Pali term dhamma vicaya^[3]. It is often translated as investigation. It's one of the factors of awakening. So the Buddha was pointing to this as a really important part that supports more and more freedom.

So this curiosity isn't figuring it out. Curiosity isn't analyzing things. Even though figuring things out and analyzing has a role, I'm not saying don't do this. I'm saying: can we bring some openness to an experience? Curiosity is more like, "What's happening? What is this like? Let's see." It's more of that, as opposed to, "What does this mean about me? What does this mean about the world?" Curiosity is more about becoming available to what's happening right now, becoming available to what might be happening next. It's becoming available to what can actually be known, which of course can only be in the present moment, what's actually being experienced and known.

When there's curiosity present, things might actually start to feel physically different. I've talked about aversion with the shoulders going up, but aversion is a certain type of contraction, a certain amount of tightness. But curiosity allows some softening, some opening, maybe even some levity, like in this poem, this full of possibility. I'm not talking about bliss, I'm not talking about some huge spiritual experience. I'm talking about how curiosity allows us to be a little bit less clenched, a little bit less bracing, or a little bit less disconnected. Which is often how we find ourselves living our life or going through the world: clenched, braced, or disconnected. Which is okay, it protects us from things, but then our life passes us by and we start to feel this dukkha^[4] of somehow not being quite here, feeling like we're missing out or something.

So curiosity towards aversion, towards anything, helps us to have a different experience. And not only that, there's a way in which the attention starts to narrow with aversion: "Okay, there's this and it means that about me, and it means this about the world." Curiosity is about opening up the attention. We can start to notice what else is happening. Maybe there's aversion there. The aversion doesn't need to go away. Curiosity notices that there's the tightness in the body. But maybe curiosity also notices that it's the morning and the birds are singing outside. Maybe curiosity also notices, "Oh, I like it when I wear my comfy little robe in the morning." Or maybe curiosity just notices something mundane like feeling the feet on the ground or the warm water when you're washing the dishes.

These are mundane everyday experiences, but our life is just really a lot of mundane, ordinary experiences. Why not be present for them with some openness, with some lightness? So curiosity opens up our experience, our attention, and allows other things to arise, to be known, to be noticed.

Curiosity also interrupts our patterns. We may just be in this pattern of, "Okay, I don't like this, and then I'm cranky, and then I'm going to yell or shut down or disconnect." All these ways in which we show up in the world a little shut down. Maybe we attack, blame, withdraw. These are patterns so many of us have. Of course, we've learned to do this, but maybe there's a way in which things can be a little bit different. We can interrupt some of these patterns with the introduction of some curiosity.

Creating the Conditions for Curiosity

So then the question might arise, "Well, how does curiosity show up? Sounds nice, Diana, but how is that going to happen?" It's more about allowing. It's more about creating the conditions in which it can arise. Part of it is just noticing when the mind is contracted. For example, in the example I'm giving this morning, just being present and noticing, "Oh, right, there's this general feeling of crankiness or disappointment or frustration." Just whatever tinted glasses we're wearing, whatever color the tint is of that morning, to just notice that.

And then maybe this can just allow a little not knowing. "I know that my shoulders are up. I know that my jaw is clenched. What else is here? What else is happening here?" We don't have to see the whole picture. We don't need to know the whole picture, but just what else is happening here. So notice the sense of knowing: "I know that this experience has been happening now." And can there be a little bit of not knowing, some opening up? Maybe curiosity begins when we're just willing to give the moment enough of a chance. Give the moment enough of a chance to surprise us, to delight us.

Curiosity With Others

In this way, curiosity changes how we relate and respond in the world. Maybe this is especially powerful with other people in the world. Maybe there's someone that we've decided is just impossible. [Laughter]

There's this person like, "No, this person is just impossible. I've given up on them." And we have this sense that we already know them. We know what they're going to say. We think that we know what they think and what they want, and we even feel like we know why they're doing what they're doing. Or we may even know what they're going to say next. And probably some of what we know is true, based on our experience with them, how they've behaved in the past.

So I'm not saying let's pretend that people aren't predictable in some way. I'm not saying that. That's ridiculous. That's not helpful. I'm not saying let's be naive. I'm saying: can we notice when we kind of close down a little bit when we think we know, and can we open a little bit and still remain curious? Because there's this way that this opening up to something curious, in particular about another person, can show up like, "Is there something I don't know? What is this person protecting? What is this person afraid of? What's really important to them? What matters to them?" And the point here is not to find the answers and interrogate them, but just this openness to what matters to them, what's important to them.

Something that I learned from this compassion training that I did a number of years ago with Stanford was this way that we can really humanize people, be open to people, with this very simple question that I find myself asking often: "Hmm, I wonder what their favorite vegetable is?" [Laughter]

It just completely humanizes a person. Do they like Brussels sprouts? It just makes this recognition that just like us, they eat vegetables. Maybe they don't eat vegetables, I don't know! But that kind of shifts everything. That kind of makes them a human. Can you notice that when you ask this question, "I wonder what their favorite vegetable is?" you feel a little bit more grounded and you feel kind of like, "Okay, I'm here having this experience, and they are there having their own experiences," instead of this way in which we're trying to change people or make them be different or shove them away.

There's a part of us that knows we can't control other people, but sometimes we forget and we keep on trying to control other people, or try to make them behave a certain way so that we can have something. So curiosity doesn't necessarily tell us who they are, but it reminds us that we don't know everything about them.

So again, I'm not saying this is passivity. With curiosity, we can still say, "No, that's not okay." And with curiosity, we can still say, "I'm setting some boundaries. You can't treat me that way." I'm not saying let's just pretend that we don't know anything about people. I want to reiterate that's not what I'm saying. And we can ask people to do the dishes when we see it in the morning. But can we do it from a place of, "I think it would be helpful for you to do the dishes," from a place of us being centered and grounded and neutral as opposed to filled with aversion? And then that just feels like a whole different unfolding, a whole different dynamic than, "Am I the only one here that cares about this place?"

A Taste of Freedom

So there's this way in which bringing some curiosity is a recognition that we don't know exactly what their future is going to be. We don't know every person in the way that we sometimes think we do. And curiosity is a way that reminds us. Dhamma vicaya in the Buddhist language.

Is there a way that we can recognize that this is more than just a helpful attitude? There's a little taste of freedom here. There's a little taste of opening. It's not this grand, ultimate freedom, it's just this recognition that I don't have to believe the first story the mind makes up. The story can still be there. The aversion can be there. But there's a way in which we don't have to follow it and make it the "truth." We don't have to build a case or rehearse the argument, all these ways in which we get stuck in these dynamics with individuals or with reality.

Instead, recognizing this little bit of freedom, this little bit of openness, is a way in which the heart and the mind start to recognize that it feels a little bit better to be a little bit more open and relaxed, instead of, "Okay, I know how this is going to go." It's just a little taste of freedom. And I'm pointing to something subtle here: just the sense of, "Oh, I wonder what's going to happen here," being settled and grounded. But there's something that happens when we have these small little moments of freedom. The heart and the mind start to like it. And the heart and the mind start to orient towards that more and more. And the heart and the mind start to recognize, "Oh yeah, this little bit of freedom, the sense of openness, is different than this clenched, braced way in which we're often meeting the world."

And then we start to notice there's alternatives to the ways we've been showing up, because maybe we've experienced for ourselves the difference. We know what contraction feels like and we know what happens when that grip relaxes a little bit. And to be recognizing that difference is really powerful.

And I would even go so far as to say this can take you really far on this path of practice. Just recognizing: when is there this contraction and when is there opening? When is there closing? When is there opening? When is there a softening? When is there tightness?

Yes, it's helpful to know a lot about Buddhist stuff, but it's a trap if we feel like it's just about knowing more stuff. It's not. I certainly fell into that trap. I went back to school and got a second graduate degree in Buddhist studies because I thought, "Okay, if I just know everything, then I'll have more freedom." I mean, I enjoyed it, it was interesting, but it's not what led to more freedom. It's more about just becoming familiar with these mundane ways in which we might be limiting ourselves versus when can we just open to what might be happening next.

Let's See What Happens Next

So maybe tomorrow morning you walk into the kitchen and there's dishes in the sink. Maybe it's not dishes, maybe it's an email you receive. Maybe it's a discomfort in the body. Maybe it's a thought that you've had a thousand times. This way that you just feel plagued by a particular thought. And maybe our first response is, "Oh, not this again." And maybe that's something to know like, "Yeah, here's that sense of aversion, this sense of disappointment, this feeling of frustration." But maybe we don't need to know so much more. Maybe there can just be, "Oh, there's this again. And let's see. Let's see what happens next."

From, "Oh no, not this again," to "Let's see. Let's see what happens next." And to feel that little bit of freedom right there, that subtle movement of openness, that can take you a long way, all the way to more and more freedom.

Thank you. And I'm wishing you a wonderful rest of the day. Enjoy the tea and safe travels home. Thank you.