Judith R. at the Kill the Buddha (Series 1: Practicing Specific Steps) – 2004

If you want to stretch your legs or stand up, please do so. Come on in. I'd really like it if you sat there because I don't feel so lonely, you know. Everyone sits on the sides here. There's empty spaces right in front of me. So I'd like to ask if anyone has a question about meditation. I didn't ask that last time. Anybody want to ask a question? How do you keep from falling asleep? How do you keep from falling asleep is the question. So in meditation practice there are two, there's a scale on the one side is falling asleep or being drowsy nosy. On the other side is excitement or being mentally agitated or not being able to sit still, okay? So these are, excitement and laxity are very common techniques for meditation that as you're sitting, you notice where you are on the scale. Right? So ideally your awareness could would be kind of in the middle and a live, calm, clear awareness. So if you're going towards falling asleep or laxity, you'll notice that and you try to bring more energy to your sitting. Now the ways that you can do that are, one is to put more energy in your spine like really sit upright, you know like energize it consciously. Open your eyes sometimes if I'm sleeping, I really sit like this. Do you see how that, it really opens the energy? Sometimes when I'm sitting and I know I'm tired, I will do things like wash my face, go outside, walk in the cold, that'll wake you up, then come back in. Sometimes Sometimes it means you need more sleep, you should change your lifestyle and sleep more. Sometimes if you absolutely... Sometimes falling asleep means that there's something going on in the meditation that your consciousness doesn't really want to digest so it escapes into sleep. So those are all like little tricks to do. And then often you try all the tricks and you're still going like this. So if nothing works, all the little tricks, this is from Katagiri Roshi, just be a sleeping Buddha. sit till the end of your time and just say oh I'm really tired but good for you you sat down for your time on the other hand if you're very agitated and overexcited then you do different things you work on relaxing particularly relaxing on your exhales you soften your focus um you might do like the one the guided meditation we did tonight was very much i would put on the kind of relaxing scale and i kind of did it uh last week i didn't realize that some people had never sat before maybe it was all your people last week i just found out that there were 15 people from the halfway house came so that's partly why it was so crowded but so i thought tonight i would just give you this was a kind of really straight how to relax when you meditate type of thing but if you're very agitated you would work with that you want to just i think it's probably the front door you would work with doing mantras like let go and let God but if you do that when you're sleepy you just fall asleep so you see where you are and you respond to it and again I'll say in the beginning as an intermediate and as an advanced because now when I meditate I still do that and I do it more subtly like you can think you're in a tension but you're actually kind of in a dull attention or you can think oh I'm not thinking and right underneath your quiet there's a little bit of chatter going on oh you're doing good oh this feels good or yeah you think you're quiet but do you remember that conversation with such and such now that's really important right so there's a lot of different levels of sitting but i will say especially if you're new to sitting it's good i think it'sgood to set aside a time decide i'm going to sit for five minutes ten minutes thirty minutes forty minutes an hour however long you want and then quiet your body and just sit. And no matter what the judgment is of your sitting, you just do it until the time is over. And then I'd like you to pat yourself on the back and say, good, I did what I said I was going to do. And not to evaluate your sitting if you evaluate your sitting i can almost guarantee you that you will stop we always evaluate our i'm generalizing but most of the time you evaluate you're sitting poorly i didn't do well i wasn't calm my mind was wandering i had to invite my mind back like 45 times you know i don't know how to do this i wasn't meant to sit still i'm an active person and then you don't you stop sitting right so in my time of teaching i really think it's very important not to evaluate your sitting and katagiri roshi used to say It's none of your business what you did while you were sitting. It's kind of God's business, you know. And just do it and go on. And I do think though, over after a year or so of sitting regularly, you do begin to notice that you are starting to tame your wild mind. And you do start to notice some growth. But I wouldn't say that happens within the first couple of months. Would you? Or, I mean, you guys have experience too. I think that it's usually you see it over a longer period of time that your sittings are getting quieter, that your mind can be focused or placed more easily, that you can sustain it for longer, those kind of things. Anybody else want to ask a question about meditating? For the eyes, are you asking about the position of the eyes? Okay, so there's a wide range of how formal you sit. Anywhere from some people who do mantra, you know, who just chant while they're sitting, they don't care where their body is. You could be doing it lying on the sofa because your concentration is just the sound and the you might use a mala or something so it doesn't matter about your body. And then there's a whole range to, like I think Zen is one of the stricter ones about where your posture is. You know because I notice like some Theravadans and Tibetans you know they don't care that they're not as focused on their posture. But I will answer your question from a Zen point of view which is, I'm trying, I gave a little intro, because that's the strictest. But it's also the one I'm most familiar with. The instruction for the eyes in Zen is that they're 45 degrees down and they're half open. Half open means you can focus inside and you can focused outside. And also keeping your eyes open helps you not fall asleep. That's another instruction is if you're tired, open your eyes. Now I often meditate with my eyes closed and so do a lot of meditators do. And then I said sometimes I sit with my completely open. But the classic instruction is 45 degrees down, half open and you kind of blur your vision a little bit. The one thing about the posture is 45 degrees down means just your eyes going down, it doesn't mean your head because if you go like this then your spine's not straight and part of the posture is to have a spine that holds itself autonomously upright and centered. But again, the body is very important and also the mind is important. We're training the mind. One nice image from meditation books, is that the mind is like a puppy when you start. And with the puppy you have to say, like if you're teaching them where to go to the bathroom, you just have to over and over say, nope, and drag them outside. Nope, drag them out side. Nope drag them outside, so that's what we do with our mind. Our mind is wandering all over the place and you just keep bringing it back to the point of concentration. And again, you can have different points of concentration, I think. I mean, you could never lose with concentrating on the breath. That's been a classic meditation concentration point since before the Buddha. In Hindu and many, many traditions, the breath is a concentration point. but there are lots of concentration points love is a wonderful concentration point and i'm hoping as we go through the weeks here i will give you some loving kindness meditations to work on i find those particularly good for recovering people because we've had i'm speaking in general i hope you're an exception i hope your an exception but most recovering people have low self-esteem and a kind of self-hatred. And the loving kindness meditations are just incredible for that recovery process. And there's also meditations where the concentration point is on safety, feeling safe in the world. So there's a lot of different things that you can concentrate on. But the point that you're working on is to be able to concentrate at all, because when you start meditating I think really what you find is how crazy your mind is. They call it in Buddhism monkey mind. You know why? Because it started in India and in India in the trees instead of squirrels are monkeys and monkeys are very very noisy, chattering all the time. So the old Buddhist used to say you have to tame your monkey mind. And I call it now, lately I've been calling it compulsive thinking. And I talked about it last week that we have to discern when we're thinking. Oh, I know what it's called? Stinking thinking. Oh, I got the program word for it. Stinking thinking. You know when your mind is just revolving and revolving, and then it also pulls you into your patterns that you're trying to dismantle. If you listen to it too much, you'll get pulled off but unless you've developed some energy of concentration you can't work with your mind very well because it's more powerful than than you in a way do you know what i mean it's controlling the show rather than you placing your mind where you want to be And in terms of mindfulness practice, do people know what mindfulness practice is? Maybe not. So we, in Buddhism there's concentration practice which is learning how to concentrate the mind and then there's mindfulness practice which ist about awareness and being able to be aware moment to moment to moment of what you're doing and the causes and conditions of what you're going. So as you go through the day, you're mindful of what your doing. You're aware, you bring your presence to what you are doing. But we can't do that if our patterns are running because our patterns make us unconscious. And we also can't to it unless we've developed a little bit of muscle for concentrating right because you don't remember we know this so well i mean anyone who's tried to have a spiritual life knows this you know nine at seven in the morning when you're doing your prayers you're you feel good you're close to god but by 11 you haven't thought about it for hours you just went to work and you're on automatic so what we're trying to do is to less and less beyond automatic, and more and more learn how to bring our presence to what we're doing. And by bringing our presence into what we are doing, we are also making wholesome choices about what we do, as much as possible learning how to break our habituated patterns and bring the energy to the present moment. So you practice this in meditation. You strengthen the muscle for concentrating when you're in meditation, for being present, for being in the present moment and then you take that into your day. And it's harder in the day because you don't have all the outer stimulus is very strong. When you meditate you kind of close off the outer stimuli. But when you're going through the day, it's present. So in order to be mindful during the day you have to work that muscle and part of the exercise is meditating where very clearly you really can see your mind when you meditate. Maybe not in the beginning because you get swept away with the mind but after you've learned how to concentrate a little bit, you can really see your mind. And that brings a lot of awareness and you can start to change your patterns. Okay, shall we take one more? No, let me go on. That's enough. Okay, I wanted to talk about two things tonight. I wantedto talk about what God is in Buddhism. I thought, what's the hardest thing? And I thought oh, that's thehardest thing. If you're not a Christian or if you don't have a... I believe the right word is a theistic God. Is that the right Word? Yeah. So then, if you're working with the steps and you don't have a theicistic God, that means kind of in the image of man that God... Well, I think in Christianity, actually, we're in the Image of God. God's not in the Image of Man. But at any rate, if you are not working with that type of God, then you have a little translation to do like what does let go and let god mean for a buddhist or for someone who does not i don't know i mean i don'T think anyone anymore but maybe they do believe there's a man with a big long white beard that's in the clouds looking down and telling you what to do now maybe that is the way people think about god and that's good but a lot of people don't think about it that way and certainly buddhists don't Think about it That way so I'd like to just talk a few minutes on how do we think about It what is um God so I really think that the Power greater than ourselves is a really great way, I'm glad they put it in, to enter having some sense of a God or a larger thing than yourself. I want to just put one of the nicer phrases I've seen Buddhists using is the mystery of being instead of using the word God. They just put in the mystery or being. So, I've liked that. I can use the word god now but I'm translating it. As soon as I say it, it's been translated into the mystery, or into things. So I'm going to talk about a few main Buddhist concepts and show, hopefully explain how they come about to be a God. I think that, or some kind of a God, I think that a lot of people say, well Buddhism there's no God. And they just like to say that and go on. But to me that, I mean, how can someone say that? I just don't understand. That just seems so nihilistic and not very helpful just to say there's no God. So I'm not in that camp. But I understand what they're saying and I'm going to try and explain it. The two main principles, that's a good word, in Buddhism that apply here is one is the main, this is like the main principle of Buddhism, that things are impermanent. That things change. The only thing that doesn't, that is permanent is change, right? That's what they say. That everything is completely constantly changing. And it's very hard for our conventional minds to understand that because our conventional mind fix things and we fix things, and we put a name on them. Like this is a lectern, right? And it has this shape and it's solid. Okay? But if you ask a physicist what this is, they would say maybe. It's not solid. what i love buddhism is very similar to quantum physics in fact katagiri roshi used to joke with us that if we didn't sit very hard the scientists were catching up with us and as they do like now the cosmology you know this the stuff they're doing with the creation of the world is so buddhist you wouldn't believe. And quantum physics, as soon as they got those there, I don't even know what the machines called, but when they got a more refined, I'm just going to call it microscope, they went in to what for hundreds of years they thought was solid, like the nucleus or the electron they thought were the substance. Now they can go in and they see it's not solid. It's movement, it's energy and it's empty. It is space because they are more refined. Well that's Buddhist teaching. It' s movement. Everything is movement and here is the second principle. Everything in interdependent. Isn't there a new, is it a myth, I don't know, that if a butterfly moves their wings in New York something happens in Hawaii. You know that kind of thing but that is Buddhist understanding that everything is moving and impermanent and everything is completely and utterly interdependent. If If you are completely and utterly interdependent and moving, that breaks down I and Thou. Because we're utterly and totally interdependant and what I do affects you and what you do affects me. And we're moving together and there's no fixed sense of self. So that's why Buddhists say there's a koan. When you meet the Buddha on the road, kill her, I was going to say. Kill him. Now is that God is dead? If I've ever heard it, you're supposed to kill the Buddha. But that's not what it's meaning. The meaning is if you think that there is something solid, that is God and you put a name on it and you think you know it you're way off the mark you really missed the mark so kill that Buddha that you think that you've put a new name on and that has become a solid known thing that's no longer God God is completely unknowable by our conscious mind because it's so vast so big and so interdependent, right? So this is a power greater than ourself, what I'm talking about. It is huge and completely interpenetrated with you. I'm going to say that again. It's completely interpenetrated with you. So, so that's why they say there's no self either. Right? Because there's really no boundary between you and God. or this extraordinary working of the universe. And so that's another way I've used the word God. Sometimes I say universal energy. Karagiri Roshi used to say universal perspective. Very, very, very large. And because it's interdependent, you can feel in buddhism upheld by god quote unquote you're not an isolated being left to hang out by yourself you're completely in the womb of encompassed by this universal interdependent co-origination is what they call it so you can say I'm going to turn myself over to the interdependent co-origination so we can put any word we want in there but the word is not the thing and the word actually limits the thing so often Buddhists say there is no God because of the limits that the human mind puts on the God. But this God is very, very, very enormous and it's interpenetrating everything. They say Buddha is everywhere in everything, in you, in the cushion, in the wood, in the air, in space. It's all made of the same thusness, suchness. So you could say I'm turning it over to suchness if you're a Buddhist. But it is something. It's not good to say it's nothing. You know what I mean? It's no good to be a Buddha It's just emptiness. Emptiness is completely co-originating with form and they come up together completely interpenetrated so sometimes they say small self and large self or big mind and small mind in Buddhism so big mind is the mind of interdependent co-origination the mind of everything working together that mind is peaceful and harmonious and good. I say good with a little because good and bad are all a part of this and they're not separated. They feed each other. So, I'm going to take back saying good but harmonious, I can say And then you can say, well, why then are there wars and evil and hurricanes and tornadoes, destruction? Why is there destruction? But when you look in the huge, huge perspective, that's why I like science. When you look at the worlds, the universes and the galaxies and the stars, you see this rhythm of birth and life and death and combustion and explosions and rebirth after the stars explode. Sometimes when a star explodes they make a whole new galaxy. It wasn't a bad thing that it exploded. It was a wonderful thing. It created a whole New World. so that's what I'm calling big mind and that is also the mind that I trust when I say I let go and let God that understanding of the rhythm of the universe is what I offer myself to or what I become when I sit okay one with a larger sense of life then there's also a thing called small mind now small mind is our conventional relative conditioned mind judith regeer she was born of these people she had these experiences in childhood um you know she has these problems she was this kind of an addict or that kind of an addict and this is this and that's that so that part of myself is what they call a small mind so but your small mind and the big mind in truth are completely interdependent but we don't see it that way we separate them right So in that sense, you could say I turn this small sense of myself over to the larger sense of myself. And what is a self? Then the label self begins to deteriorate as a name. But it doesn't mean the thing, this completely interdependent relationship with God. So now I can say God, but that's what I mean? The mystery, the huge interconnected world. Well, I'm going to just skip over a little bit now, move on, and I'm not going to talk very much, but I did put I got a handout for us today I put the guided meditation that we did on the front in case people want to use it as a grounding for them to practice at home and I put from the big book what you do when you wake up what you go through the day and what you retire at night because what? it's in step 11 it's on page 86 and 87 in the new revised edition to me this is it folks spiritual life in almost every religion has some kind of a structure to it. Some kind of a form to it and in almost every religion when you wake up you do something, when you go to bed you do something and during the day you do Something and this is our Something and you can't get much better than this page. So when I was first in program, I wrote these on index cards that I had at the different places at my bed and in my purse, you know, what I was supposed to do. And I just did this for my 12-step group because I just felt like people weren't doing this. And, I didn't know how can you have a spiritual life if you're not doing this? It's very, very important to have a daily rhythm to your spiritual life. And I think the Muslims have it right, which is five times a day they do something very structured. And I do two now. I mean if you add praying before meals which if you're a compulsive overeater is a very good thing to do then you have five times the day. Three meals and And then I also, we'll get into this with mindfulness practice. I also do, I have a beeping watch, one of those things that will beep on the hour. You can do that. When your thing beeps, you say your prayer or you say your sentence or you says a step you're working on. You bring your consciousness to your spiritual life as much as you can. Otherwise, you're just going through the day willy-nilly and doing what you want, don't we? Anyway, I'll do this anyway. Even though I have a feeling it's not a wholesome thing to do or it's actually what God is asking me to do today. now again i said what god is asking me to do today but i feel that through my intuition i receive information about what i should be doing today and sometimes it's simply just following my appointment schedule but sometimes i get an intuitive feeling that i should do something else or i need to make an amend or whatever is going on but i don't i i'm a firm believer that it's really great to have some kind of structure to your spiritual life and the big book supports me in this thought and so you're all going home with what you do in the morning what you are doing what you're doing during the day and what you'll do at night and I would suggest if you're coming here and if you are interested in meditation that meditation is part of your day and if you're new at it you start with 10 minutes and if you're old at it if you do have a daily meditation practice that's very good and sustain it and sincerely do it when you're sitting really try and let go focus your mind on what you're doing okay so anybody want to say anything or ask anything okay you can each take one of these on one side is the meditation and and the other side is the 11th step apart. Again, from the big book and from all the different spiritual religions, meditating in the morning and meditating in the evening are the primal times, right? When you get up and when you go to bed. Now, a lot of people can't do it twice, although I've gotten my morning meditation is pretty good and pretty steady over the years, that when I get up, I meditate, mostly before I do other things. I have found with meditation, I'm sorry to say, if it's not one of the three top priorities of your day, you won't do it. You got to push it way up to the top. You have to say I'm going to do it because it's number two or number one on my list so so the morning's a really good time bedtime's good now i can't i just never gotten bedtime together because i have two kids and i'm so exhausted but i do spend like five minutes i do have a moment before i go to bed where I connect with God or with what I'm doing or I review my day or I sense, do I owe an amend? You know, I kind of run it before I go to bed. Another time that's really good to meditate, I'm just throwing this out, is before dinner. Like after your workday is done and before you start the evening. Sunset is also classically a time where people do meditation practice. But actually you can do it any time. Some people meditate on their lunch break, however you can fit it in. Some people do their aerobic exercise with a meditative mind. that's another possibility that you're already on the treadmill so why not say let go and let God so there are a lot of different ways of fitting it into the schedule but I think it needs to be very high on your priority list and I find if I set a certain time and I do it every day at that time that provides the most regularity for me however, when I had babies I didn't do it that way because I was up all night I couldn't get up early this is when my kids were really little and I was very stressed I just threw my meditation pillow down anywhere, anytime for however long I had i was very very flexible in that time of my life so i think it depends on who you are and what your life is but i think my best suggestion is to do it when you get up get up uh 20 minutes or a half an hour early and sit right away and do your quiet time you know whatever you do for 12 step in the morning. Read your books or whatever you do and then go on. Okay, let's take, we have about eight minutes left. Why don't we just talk to your neighbor in two threes maybe and just say anything that you're resonating with tonight or if you were here last week Did something that happened last week affect you? Anything you want to share with your small group. I'm going to try, shall we try to do the serenity prayer for the closing? I felt like last week we didn't have a closing and I didn't think that was quite right. So let's just try doing an AA closing type with holding hands and doing the serentity prayer. And I'll just say now, too, everyone was great about cleaning up. All the chairs go back. But there is one row of cushions that go around the wall. So don't take all the cushions out. When I looked around before I knew it, I looked round, everything was out of the Zendo. And I thought, oh, we're so trained, you know, like everyone took their seats back. But we do have seats that go around the wall that need to be up for tomorrow. Okay, so just take a couple of minutes to share with your neighbor how this is sitting with you. And then we'll say... What? Oh, and I'm going to pass around the hat. I'm giving money to the Zen Center for allowing us to be here. Thank you.