as such as someone crying and you know we tend to think that we have appropriate reactions to these things yes but a sound arises a baby crying and then how do we what happens sometimes we may be angry or distressed we may be anxious we may be calm or quiet so we don't know quite what will be so many things happen in our life you know I wonder how you're doing at noticing what happens in your lives there's sights and sounds and smells and tastes sensations and it's

[01:00]

not very easy to be with them is it and so then there's all the reactions to what happens to our thoughts I like it I don't like it it's pleasant it's unpleasant and on the whole we believe that it might be possible to control things so that we have a more pleasant time so one of the things we do is become angry sometimes if something is annoying that's pretty interesting isn't it so I thought today we could try it out you know let's all get angry now and see if it helps we can all get angry and directed at whatever is bothering us this moment are you ready okay it's really helpful if you make your face grimace and

[02:09]

you look mean or upset or distressed and then you can see if things get quiet or you know respond to your emotion and how do you feel while you're being angry do you feel happy then or do you start to really feel angry not just Buddhists have noticed this you know that becoming angry is more effective to the person getting angry it making them angry than it is in producing the desired response in the object of awareness that was misbehaving so should we try the opposite should we just try smiling there's noise and there's feelings

[03:13]

there's sensations and we could try smiling are you ready did you do that first one did you do the angry one okay now wasn't that sweet even just for a moment we practiced smiling and I don't know about you but to me the room just felt a lot better felt like a nice place to be there's a lot of things

[04:14]

going on so like right now I feel a little confused and I'm a little uncertain about what to do or to try talking or not talking or you know what might be useful so we tend to believe that you know it might be possible to control what's happening have you noticed that in your own life and then world affairs let's control them and if they don't do what we want let's destroy them very simple isn't it no problem and how well is it work for any of us not very and the other thing about this is that various things happen and the other

[05:32]

thing is we tend to believe that the things that are happening do that to us so we say that noise makes me mad or your behavior makes me sad or the way you're talking to me is really upsetting so we tend to blame our own experience on the object on others rather than noticing that we generate responses to things that we could respond differently often teaches in this fashion by the way can you hear me in the back of a microphone to practice smiling it's not a big smile necessarily but to begin to realize that you don't have to anything nobody makes you anything nobody makes you angry nobody makes you sad nobody

[06:38]

makes you disappointed nobody disappoints you anything they're doing what they do and you react and if you're disappointed you could have a slight smile for someone who's disappointed you could have a slight smile for somebody who's angry. You could have a slight smile for somebody who's upset. So in this way you could begin to be free. You could practice smiling, a slight smile. So when I do this, I start to feel happy, a little bit. It's not a big happy, it's just a little happy. A slight smile for someone who's confused or uncertain. I think this

[07:45]

is very challenging. You know, partly this is a question of what's, you know, some people distinguish between, and Suzuki Roshi brought up the question, what's the most important point? What's the most important point? Do you know? What's most important to you? So, you know, finally when we think about it, what's important is that we love one another, that we feel loved, that we're able to love and feel loved by someone, especially those who are close to us, our families, our brothers and sisters, our parents, our kids, that we can love and feel loved, that we can listen to one another, that we can accept or have a slight smile for somebody who's not always perfectly behaved, that we could begin to

[08:46]

be kind in that way and we could allow someone to be sad or upset or frustrated or disappointed or ashamed or scared and our heart could go out to that person and touch that person with a slight smile. Our efforts to control, if we study carefully, our efforts to control other people's behavior through our emotional reactions have never worked and we don't actually ever win or gain love that way. We might, you know, command respect or we might demand, you know, or coerce behavior, but we don't gain a love by trying to control others with

[09:48]

our emotional reactions. You disappoint me so you need to change your behavior and then you won't disappoint me and I will, it's not quite right to say, and then I will love you, then I will approve. So, this is what I'm interested in today. If there's some way that we can practice smiling a little bit with the challenge of, you know, here it is, it's obviously a challenge right from the start. You might think, oh, it's not so challenging when you're little, it gets more challenging, but it's pretty challenging right at the start, isn't it? Because you're very small, you're very helpless and you feel completely what's going on in your world. Without distinction between self and other, you feel everything in

[10:53]

them. And then what will we do? Hi, how are you? It's not so easy being here, is it? What can we do to make you happy? Can we do anything? I don't know. Can we help you out? All right. Well, today I hear that the young members, by the way, you know, I was young once. It's hard to remember, but I went to the Unitarian Sunday School and I didn't always like it, but then look what it did for me, I became a Buddhist. And then my brother went to the Unitarian Sunday School and look what it did for him, he became a Catholic. So, we don't

[12:09]

know. And you're welcome to have what I say be interesting or not, or use it or not. Anyway, I'd like to wish you a good day and a fun time out with the butterflies. And I was also asked to mention that if some of the parents, if you feel your kids are going to be all right out there, you might just stay and enjoy the rest of the talk, because they say there's going to be so many parents along with the kids these days. So anyway, thank you for coming this morning. Good morning. Well, now I'm back to my other play thing.

[13:40]

Doesn't it seem at least with oneself you ought to have a proprietary interest? You know, like, they're my thoughts, they're my feelings, so they ought to do what I tell them. How mine could they be if you can't even tell them what to do or not do? Whose are they? So, um, for any of us, each moment, various things will be happening.

[15:38]

Buddhists have various categories, you know, so there's sensations, there's seeing and hearing, there's thinking or judging, planning, remembering, there's emotions, sad, disappointed, angry, there's thoughts, you know, of liking and not liking, there's a feeling of pleasant or unpleasant, there's some conception about or thinking about what's going on right now, what's happening, what is the cause of what's happening, what can I do about it? And it's, you know, and then we have various kinds of strategies what to do.

[16:58]

We'd all like to be happy and for the most part we think and believe that our happiness depends on our increasing ability to provide ourselves with the experiences we would like to have. And our decreasing experience of things that are unpleasant. And we would be happier if we had more of the pleasant ones and fewer of the unpleasant ones. And as strategies go now, how well has that one worked? The founder of Zen in Japan, Dogen says, if it was going to work, don't you suppose it would have worked by now? You've been very devoted to your strategies all of your life. So are you all the happier now? So this is interesting, isn't it? I mean, I sometimes think, who thought up a universe like this? I mean, how is this that we could aim to be happy and are very aiming to be happy

[18:02]

guarantees that we would be unhappy. Because we're aiming, you know, to be happy, to have good, pleasant, positive experiences, not the painful ones, not the difficult ones. We didn't choose to have those. And yet, no matter how well we strive and aim, we keep having some of those unpleasant ones. And depending on how committed we were to being happy, those unpleasant ones are even more unpleasant. Because you were trying so hard not to have them. This is real catch-22, isn't it? So, you know, something unpleasant happens and darn, darn, this is so upsetting because I just didn't want to have this. I wanted, you know, a good experience, happiness. So because we attach our happiness to what is pleasant,

[19:05]

we suffer. That's Buddhism. We suffer because we attach our happiness to what's pleasant. And we believe, I can't be happy if I'm having an unpleasant experience. So if something unpleasant is happening, I have to get rid of it. I have to make it disappear. And then when what you're trying to make disappear is your feeling, your thought, your sensation, how painful is that for you? Especially when you do, they make it disappear by being angry at it. Then you're going to be feeling angry and you will feel rejected and abandoned and coerced and you will be upset. But you're just doing it in order to be happy.

[20:08]

This is how we get stuck. I get stuck a lot. So what's important, finally? So what's important? What's the important point or various people have talked about this, not just Suzuki Rishi, but you know, Stephen Covey, the seven habits of effective people, what's urgent, what's important. And we can get caught up in what's urgent and lose track of what's important. I find the world these days very distressing. I find world affairs distressing. I find the possibility of war in Iraq extremely distressing, saddening, especially considering that our government has such little support around the world.

[21:15]

It turns out with, you know, the terrorist attacks, it seemed like we could have the idea, we could understand that some people don't like us. Huh, wonder why? Oh, we would never just go and attack somebody outside of the context of international law and international relations. We would never do that. So anyway, since some people don't like us, let's do something that nobody wants us to do. I don't know, I find it so painful sometimes. Let's go and do something that nobody wants us to do and see, and that'll teach them to like us or, you know, they better like us or, you know, they can have some of that too. I don't understand it.

[22:18]

It seems, you know, not very sensible. Finally, you know, it's not just... When I think of, sometimes I meditate and I bring people to mind. So if I bring the president or those in charge of our government to mind, I feel a lot of fear, anxiety, terror, dread, a lot of kind of iron will. It's very hard for me to sit with it, to be open to that kind of energy. But sometimes I just breathe with that for a while. Is there any way to soften that? It certainly is not going to help, as far as I can tell, for me to get angry and think that that will teach them a lesson.

[23:24]

It doesn't seem like the lesson they need to learn for me to be angry. So, I pray, meditate, and share my heart with the world. I just got back from a three weeks. I was away for three weeks, came back a week ago. So, in England, people were concerned about food. Where's the food coming from? It's coming from further and further away. There's now been, you know, the Danes are shipping their butter to Austria. So they're getting their butter from New Zealand and so forth, you know. With all these new international treaties, trade things, you know, it's really hurt local,

[24:34]

local, you know, productivity. And so many now third world countries are producing crops for export instead of food to eat. It's supposed to help their economy or something. It really, it's supposed to help somebody make some money is what it's supposed to do. And then people produce these coffee or oranges or something, and then they have nothing to eat. Why aren't they growing food? This is all very strange. It's a strange world. So, the people I was with in England are trying to promote local food. We're pretty fortunate here in California that we have such a wealth of local food, pretty nice. And we can do some of these things for ourselves. But, you know, coincidentally, I was reading a book on the 6,000 years of bread, its holy and unholy history.

[25:40]

And, you know, in the Roman Empire, they were getting wheat from, not from Italy or Greece or France. They were getting Italy from England, North Africa, and Egypt. So, when they got invaded, finally, they had no food. They lost the wheat from England, from North Africa, and finally from Egypt. So, they had nothing to eat. Didn't matter how strong they were militarily. They had nothing to eat. Oh, but history doesn't really teach us anything, does it? We don't know what's going to happen. And then my friends in Toronto, well, some of my friends in Toronto, they've gone over the edge. They've had a little substance help. So, they've now had visions of the destruction of North America.

[26:47]

They're convinced. My friends, they asked me, now, can you tell the difference between what's your personal vision and what's a real vision? You know, what's your own paranoia? I said, no, I don't think you can tell the difference. Do you? Oh, yes, I believe it. Convinced me. So, I said, well, if you're convinced, you know, you have basically two choices if you're convinced that something terrible could be happening. I tend to have a little paranoid streak that something terrible is about to happen. Mostly, I attribute this to the fact that something terrible did happen in my life. You know, that's what I told them. If something terrible has happened in your life, if you've had trauma, then you project the trauma forward and it's going to happen again. Because it did happen. So, I know something about projecting this stuff forward. So, yeah, something terrible is about to happen any minute. So, when I'm here with all of you, I don't worry.

[27:51]

I think, you'll save me. We're protected. If all of us are sitting here together, we're protected. But my friend believed that, you know, North America and Canada, it's over. It's toast. And he says, I have three kids. I have to save them. So, he's trying to figure out where to move, where he'll be safe. You know, New Zealand, Australia, Tasmania, Costa Rica, Brazil, where can you go? Europe probably is not going to do so well either. I don't know. So, I figure, you know, on one hand, you could, you know, really try to figure out where could I be safe. I can't locate that place. I can't go there. I don't know how to do that. Where will I be safe, kind of thing. And why would I move from here? Here's where my life is. So, the only thing I can, I go to is then, well, considering we may only have a few minutes left.

[28:55]

What do I want to be doing with myself? How do I want to be living my life? What sort of things would I like to do to occupy my time? What kind of person would I like to be? I may not have much time. Maybe I'll have some friends over for dinner. I'm having a little party this afternoon. I'm getting some people from the neighborhood together. We're going to have an end of the summer cookout, you know, barbecue. We'll wish each other well. It may not change the world, but it'll just be a nice thing to do with some people in the neighborhood that I, you know, hardly see all year. And then, oh, okay, I could do that. Anyway, I just think about, well, what shall I do? You know, what's in my heart, finally, that I want to share? In terms of love and kindness and smiling and connecting and relating and being friends with people. And maybe, you know, even if there's only a month or two left, maybe I will start my

[29:59]

healing center, you know, just for the last week or two that the world's here. Let's do a little healing before the end, why don't we? You know, we'll do a little yoga, a little meditation. Well, we'll touch each other with warmth and kindness and, you know, and we'll eat some nice food and, you know, we'll plan a few things, see what happens. Oh, gosh, I don't know. That's about the best I can do. I think I come back to, so it's the same question. What is it I really want? What's important, finally? Where is my life energy and time going to go? Will I do? It's all very strange.

[30:59]

Then I talked to a friend of mine in Boston. He said, oh, yeah, our neighbor was, you know, she had a date or two every year the world was going to end. And he said it kept not ending, you know, on schedule and then her house kept getting more and more run down. I mean, why fix your house up if, you know, the world is coming to an end? So finally, one time he said, so if the world doesn't end the 29th, would you would you paint your house? Wondering if you'd promised to paint your house if the world doesn't actually end. And she said, and then she stopped talking to him after that. So I keep training myself, you know, I've tried, you know, worrying. I've tried that, you know, just worrying myself, you know, practically sick.

[32:04]

Not really sick, but worrying, you know, obsessing about what's going to happen. I haven't noticed that the world performs any differently or better because of my worry. So I thought, well, you know, so I decided, like, I'm not going there. I'm not going to go worry about something that I have no control over and I don't really know what's going to happen. And, you know, we don't know what's going to happen. So why don't I, why don't I practice smiling and being happy? And, you know, being happy is going to have to be unconditionally. You want to be happy, right? It's going to have to not depend on whether your experience is pleasant or unpleasant, good or bad, whether you like it or don't like it. You just have to go ahead and be happy anyway. Screw it. You know, without any evidence or reason for being happy, you know.

[33:10]

So I'm working on it. The results are, you know, kind of haphazard. I figure maybe eventually I'll get pretty good at being happy, but, you know, it's a struggle. But I figure, you know, the Zen teacher, Yaku-san, who said, Awkward in a hundred ways, clumsy in a thousand. Still, I go on. So I figure if you're going to be happy, like, you know, go ahead and do it in your own awkward, clumsy way. And then, you know, maybe you'll get better. I want to say, um, oh geez, time's getting along here. Let's see. Anyway, I want to tell you, you know, I'm also moderately, I feel moderately, I feel very, how do you say, grateful. Grateful is the word that I, you know, to have had a teacher like Suzuki Roshi. And one of the lectures in his new book, Not Always So, is called Supported from Within.

[34:15]

And he talks about what it was like in Japan in the Second World War for him. He stayed at his temple. And unlike many people, he said, who were priests, he said, As a priest, I decided to just go on being a priest and to see what happened. He said many priests became school teachers or government workers or, you know, clerical, did simple jobs. And he said, I just decided to be a priest and see what happened. And because he said, if you are true to your way, you will be supported from within. You're true to, and I would say, you know, in a larger sense, rather than your way, you know, true to your heart. You will be supported from within. And during the war, you know, at one point, the government came and took down his huge temple bell. Many of you, some of you at least have probably seen the picture of

[35:17]

he's there in a very formal outfit. He does not look happy. They're hauling down the bell, you know, like our big bell out here for armaments. That's not a happy thing to have happening as a Buddhist, have your bell taken for armaments. So he doesn't look happy. And he said during the war, they didn't have much to eat. And so they cleared out their garden in front of the temple, removed the rocks, put in manure and started growing vegetables. So they grew pumpkins and some other things, and they often had a little food to eat when other people didn't because of their garden. And one day he said there was a woman in there visiting in his congregation, and she thought she'd cook lunch for him and open the rice bin. He said, we had a pretty big rice bin and it was empty. So she was very surprised and she went home and got some rice and gave it to him.

[36:18]

And then she told others that he didn't have any rice. So people brought rice to the temple. Then other people heard he had rice, so they came and he gave it all away. This is such a nice, you know, simple spirit, you know, in times of difficulty that we could give and receive from one another in whatever ways we can. So he said, you know, we will be, you know, we're supported from within by our practice. None of us have such an easy life, and it's not an easy world. So for me, anyway, it's important, you know, what can we do that's kind, generous, gracious,

[37:22]

and giving and receiving, taking care of one another, supporting and nourishing one another. Coincidentally, oh, you know, I forgot and in all the hubbub at the beginning of the day, I had a little poem for the kids. So now it's for you. This is a poem that's written by an 11 year old. Some of you may have heard of this young man, Matty Stepanek. And there's a little book of his poems called Heart Songs. He's someone who's had cystic fibrosis for many years, may not live that much longer. No one knows. This is called making real sense of the senses. Our eyes are for looking at things, but they're also for crying. When we're happy or sad, our ears are for listening.

[38:24]

Oh, excuse me, our eyes are for looking at things, but they're also for crying when we are very happy or very sad. Our ears are for listening, but so are our hearts. Our noses are for smelling food and also the wind and the grass. And if we try very hard, butterflies. Our hands are for feeling, but also for hugging and touching so gently. Our mouths and tongues are for tasting, but also for saying words like I love you and thank you for all of these things. So coincidentally this morning, I was pleased to hear that you know, there was, as I say, you know, you all may not agree with me, but I'm, and I usually try, you know, I usually avoid politics of the world.

[39:28]

But as I say, the possibility of the war in Iraq distresses me. So I was pleased there's on the next Saturday, the 12th, there's going to be a big day of prayer. It's being organized worldwide with meetings in 106 cities. So here's the prayer. I thought we could share it now, wishing for peace, sending out our hearts. So there's a prayer and then it says, this is going to be next Saturday at 1 p.m. New York time, but also all around the world. And we say the prayer and then we'll just, and then it says, feel the presence of peace in Iraq and in the whole world. This feeling is the key to creating peace. This is very similar to what I was suggesting of, you know, if we all are angry and we make our face into grimaces,

[40:31]

you know, it affects us and it affects the world. And if we practice smiling, that will also affect us and affect others. So here's the prayer and I'd like to read it. And then if we could just sit silently for a short time and then we'll end the talk, okay? We are one global family, all colors, all races, one world united. We dance for peace and for the healing of our planet Earth. Peace for all nations, peace for our communities, peace within ourselves. Let us connect heart to heart. Through our diversity, we recognize unity. Through our compassion, we recognize peace. Our love is the power to transform the world.

[41:36]

Let us send it out now. Thank you very much for being here today, for being here in my heart,

[43:15]

and for sharing your love with the whole world. Blessings.

[43:19]

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