The Radical Acceptance of Receiving the Self – Judith R.

so good morning everybody wake up I guess it's good evening everybody some of you in this room love very deeply having haven't seen you for a while so it's very happy to be here so what I'd like to do since I'm a meditation teacher this is a really good time if you have questions about meditation that you would like some guidance on, you could ask me. Okay. Mary, thank you Judith for being here tonight. I have a question about your thoughts on when do you use an open-eye meditation So should you open your eyes or close your eyes or when do you do it? I'm a person who believes you do what seems to help the most. So that's my main answer. Then I have a lot of side answers. so the side answer is in zen classically in zen it's half open 45 degrees down because you're half inside and you're halfway through half outside equal inside and outside are equal are one for most of my meditation life I found the visual too distracting and I closed my eyes now it's interesting after a lot of meditation I'm trying to keep my eyes open because I want the stability of being right here nowhere else so that's another answer and the third answer is if you're having trouble concentrating and your mind is restless closing your eyes might help if you are having trouble sleeping and your meditation is very flaccid you should open your eyes and if you really sleepy I sometimes sit like this because you can't fall asleep when your eyes are completely open and your eyebrows are raised and you'll see the energy starts to go up rather than down I'm Chuck, Judith thanks for coming tonight when we were meditating you mentioned if you get lost and I guess my question is is lost different than having thoughts come to your mind no well when I said getting lost I bet you many many people were lost at that moment lost in thought, lost in story, lost in the past or lost in the future. And so meditation practice is noticing when you're not in reality and reeling. I think of it like a fishing pole. You reel your mind back to now and that process is what meditation is over and over and over over and over reeling your mind back now as a beginning meditation you have to have a really long string because you might be in San Francisco for all we know you know right or back 50 years right so you got to reel that in might take you a long time and sometimes you don't catch it at all there can be a whole meditation right that you don'T catch it that you'RE in story and then maybe you catch it twice and then maybe you CATCH IT THREE times and then MAYBE YOU'RE ABLE TO STAY FOR A WHILE AND THEN YOU'RE OFF okay so that's what you you're exercising the muscle, the mind muscle of placing your mind in the present moment. And now what I notice when I'm sitting, I'm not so much reeling my mind in. For me now, and I've sat for 40 years, so I'm a, I guess you could say an advanced meditator. Sometimes I wonder but anyway, what I noticed now is when my mind starts to go off, I bring it back. Like that. More. That's how it is. So you work. You just keep trying and trying to get your mind to stay. Now in the beginning you have to have a lot of effort, I believe, to get Your Mind to Stay. The more you practice, The less effort you have to have, because your mind begins to get that it can relax and that it can stay and just breathe and just be. Very nice. And what we're kind of going for is automatic concentration, where you just sit down and you're just right here. That also means that when you walk around, you're just right there. And when you go to work you're automatically just right here. So that's kind of what we're hoping to cultivate in ourselves. I've got a question and I think it follows up to that question. It's about judging meditation. I can get hung up really quickly and you go, ah, it was really hard tonight, oh my God. Or I remember a time many years ago when you were sitting on that cushion and I really had a very troubled mind that night but I got into this space, this really deep space and I almost had a euphoric kind of sense and after the meditation or after the thing I came up to you and said, oh, I had this really cool kind of euphoric thing and you looked at me and you said, oh, just don't pay any attention. and it's not that it's stuck with me for so long but it's and i expected some totally different answer i guess but if you could talk a little bit about meditation um i appreciate that what was your first part i the euphoric part i want to speak to but you had something in the beginning i think we have a 10 i have a tendency oh judgment okay so judgment and euphoria And that euphoric thing was a different kind of judging, I guess. Right, okay. So first I'd like... So I always have these many faceted answers. The first I would like to say is my experience is that if you judge or evaluate your meditation, you will stop meditating. because you never live up to what you wish it were even me so that is not the way to go if you want to keep meditating because of the 11th step and because ofthe rest of your life you want a pause so forget about it don't evaluate your meditation just you know set the timer or whatever you do, sit, do your best. When you get up, pat yourself on the back and say, yeah, you did it. So that's one answer. Don't evaluate. The second answer is evaluation, comparison, good and bad, right and wrong, success and failure are at the heart of practice we are trying to learn how to have equanimity or stability in the face of the eight worldly winds so i love to do this the eightworldlywinds here we go so what that means is sometimes you have pleasure sometimes you have pain sometimes you have success sometimes you fail sometimes your meditation is good sometimes your restless mind just won't stop get the picture sometimes you gain sometimes you lose sometimes you're sick sometimes you are healthy alright those are the worldly winds the winds of being a human, the winds of samsara. But partly what we're trying to do is learn how to be stable, spiritually stable amidst the winds of the ups and downs of our life. This is equanimity practice. And that includes our sitting. The sitting is the laboratory. You watch your mind, you can see how you do the whole of life. So this evaluation needs to be let go of because both success and failure are Buddha. Failure is the moment so it's the mystery itself it just has a tone on it right so we're trying actually practices trying not to evaluate anything or comparative language just what it is is and it is the moment and i'd like to say something about ecstasy or intoxication when you're meditating especially because we're all addicts so for many many i can say decades because i'm such an older person now uh for decades i sought intoxication in my meditation and i got it because I was determined to be intoxicated. But this was so-called good intoxication, right through meditation practice. So, and in many ways, these intoxicating states are very cool. You know, they're not useless because they are profound and the mystery of life is revealed in some of these states that are the scenery of meditation practice. But, the minute you hold on to them, grasp for them, or seek them, you're in the second noble truth, right? That the craving, the grasping will be the downfall. will um create suffering in your life and i think that's very very true within meditation and it's very it's really beside the point because i you know zen's a very hard sell so you're i'm a zen teacher so sorry uh the point is can our attitude and principles about life include death include loss that's not intoxicating at all so it's sobering so i'm committed to having a sober life and now i see it in the many subtle variations of what does that mean so now i to tell you the truth i i kind of don't allow those states to come up i've lived with those states a long time and now i don't want them i would rather be quiet and silent with no thought i'd much rather now be there it's very very stable anybody else want to ask anything yes i guess it's sort of related to that and those are probably very dumb questions i'll probably never get there you are we'll be uh don't say that don't say it so is it sort of like if you've exercised for years like that i have done forever and ever i find that i start to almost get a little edgy if i don't get in my regular bout of exercise is it ever that way with meditation where if you find that you just haven't been able to do it you start to really i think so that's why they say you should meditate every day because you lose it you can't go around back to sunday for your equanimity or your stability so i know when i don't sit i i do crave in a way being quiet of course i'm an introvert but i i miss it and um steadfastness is one of the main uh practices that you just steadfastly do it but again i where i'm at now is too much seeking is just another craving, right? So how can you be steadfast without seeking something? Do you get what I mean? Yes. I didn't find that I knew the meditation and it wasn't the thoughts that I was aware of but I'm very aware of my heartbeat. and I think I have a very stressful day at work so I came here in a rush and it was like throughout the whole time I was consciously trying to get my heart to settle down which I never really did so as I'm learning how to do this can you give me suggestions about bodily sensations? So I think you just need to accept exactly where you're at and accept whatever sensation is coming up and as much as possible relax on your exhales. But don't be afraid. Your heart is pumping all the time anyway. We just don't know about it. But then sometimes when we meditate, we feel it. Boom-ba-da-boom-ba da-boom. And I like to know that the mystery is within me And the boom-a-da-boom-a da-boom really reminds me, oh my God, what is going on inside this being? It's a miracle. So don't worry about it. Just pause and feel what you're feeling and relax. And do it over and over andover andover. yes first of all the stuff about not pursuing intoxication and meditation that really killed my buzz I just want you to know that I'm one of you so it's really healthy to re-hear that stuff because it is kind of a sort of an inoculation against that virus of you know pursuing you know the pleasure that can come in meditation. Because I was originally going to ask before, he brought it up, what to do with some of those states of ecstasy because they do seem to hide some of that mystery of life in there and that's what's really weird about it. I'm like, oh, I can pursue some of this, I can get a little bit of being in touch with the divine at the same time I can Get the High I've always wanted. So the divine intended me in the end to get as high as I wanted to get just pursuing this thing but something inside of me is not okay with that because at the deepest level some of the states of Ecstasy are hallucinogenic or just really strange, you know what I mean? Especially if you've done hallucinogenics. Then it's real easy to... Well, you already have a pathway in your brain to have those states come up. So the problem is there's also pain. So Zazen is a lot about what do you do when you're in pain? So you should sit longer and then your knees will start hurting you. and then talk to me about how your zazen is when you're sitting in pain it's very important to sit in pain because it teaches you how to be a quantumist with pain and now i'm oh and it makes me cry i'm you know i'm in my 60s oh my god how did that happen you know so now i feel like i'm older and people are getting sick around me and and i feel so grateful that i've practiced buddhism and not uh please forgive me but not new age where everything's going to be fine because i'm telling you everything isn't going to being fine that's what buddha said old age illness and death that's why we practice we don't practice to you know you know cool or intoxicated or that's not why we practice we actually practice so that we can handle life and life is very hard who's having a hard time in their life or their mate or a close friend is having a hard time raise your hand yeah so that's why we practice that's why you have a spiritual life not to get away from life which is why I started meditating why I came to Zen was because I wanted to be quiet I came from a family you know that was not quiet and I wanted it to be quite and I didn't want to have any relationships so you come into a Zen place, I'm telling you, you can have no relationships. You don't talk and you leave. It's perfect. It was perfect for me. I was in Zen a few years before I came into program. So I loved it. Quiet. No one bothered me. But that's not it. That was a delusion on my part. now after all these years i see it's about handling real life from a very huge perspective and this has relieved me of the bondage of self that what i'm trying to do now is live my same life the life i i have the karma i have the problems and the joys i have but to live it with eyes that are enormously big rather than to live with eyes from my little self saying i want this i don't want that that person's stupid oh i'm gonna get that person you know that's not what i'm trying to do now And more and more, actually, I'm able to do it. This year has been a very, for those of you who are my old friends, this year has been a powerful year for me in terms of accepting myself. That's such a key thing. When you accept yourself and you're also larger than yourself. I really, wow I just feel like you can do it. You can live in the day you can take care of the things you have to take care and you can have a lightness about what you're doing So did that? Was that somewhat on topic for you? Yeah, I'm never going to call you if I'm doing drugs as i'm getting older the pain seems to be more intense when i meditate and i used to breathe into it what are other solutions just you recognize it but right so as we get older it's harder to sit right so change your posture and get easier and easier postures I don't think it's undignified to sit in a chair if you sit in the chair and you're connected with the universe and you have a beautiful bodhisattva going on so you have to take care of your body and there are such things as zazen injuries, meditation injuries which I've had so I don' t push my body farther than it's willing to go on the other hand I don't run away from pain so you have to make that discernment you have to discern where you're at I have a dear friend now he teaches at Clouds and Water he's an older gentleman and he has a neurological problem now and he can't do Sishin anymore it he just can't do it and it's a great loss for him and he's so his practice is so magnificent he just is accepting it and learning how to practice in a different way mindfully practice in his life so that's what you do you deal with the karmic situation you're in and I'll just say I get Zazen injuries physical injuries most often when I'm competing with other people in the room I'm trying to be as good as the Zen student next to me and my body is not capable of doing that so don't compete it's very similar to evaluation just accept who you are which is actually what I wanted to talk about today so we're talking about it, what I wanted to talk maybe I'll just go in a little bit of the few things I brought and then we can talk again and some people tell me I'm best when I'm spontaneous so I think the talking is okay I've been I've kind of changed my course a little bit in the last year I've been the head person at a Zen center I'm in my 7th year and it's been one of the most challenging things I've ever done. And particularly, I could say as a recovered person, I felt my internal weaknesses so much as I was put on the pedestal, so to speak. uh and that um tension between my old stories about myself and my psychological woundedness from my childhood and you know abuse and drugs and everything i did before i was 25 say uh you know and then it took me a really long time to become an adult in 12 step and therapy and zen and everything at least 15 years or 20 years of recovery. But even still, I had a lot of tension within myself put in a position of honor and responsibility. My shame got triggered sometimes and not thinking I was good enough. My co-dependence, like wanting all my students to like me. Oy yi yi, you know, that's really not good and wears you down, wears you down. So I just continued one day at a time, one day one day at a time, offering myself up to be of service. Is this what God wants me to do? Then I'll do it. Trying to not live in my reactions to things and practicing, really practicing with everything that came up. Also, I feel as a public speaker and as the head of a Zen center, oh you're terribly exposed oh my goodness people know every bad thing about me i don't have to do inventory anymore my community takes my inventory and they actually do once a year i get reviewed so and they also know my beauty which i don't know that well i still don't take in my beauty and you know all those things people say a walking uh big book um someone said to me in meeting a couple weeks ago, oh that kindness was coming out of my eyes. And I thought to myself, if they only knew who I am! But then I replied, you know the promises are coming through my eyes and I feel that a lot in my position and my zazen is coming through my eyes. My years of zazin, my years of studying Buddhism are now I'm really fruiting right now and this year what was really great for me and also why do they say pain is the touchstone of spiritual progress is that slogan still used it used to be around in my early years pain is the touchstone of spiritual progress so not the last six months but the year and a half before that was very painful time for me in my work um there was a lot of conflict and being the head person you're always when no one knows what to do they dump it on you you know right as anyone else a ceo or something you know you're the last man standing basically so if there's something going on you have to deal with it and i it was really hard i i got a lot of my post-traumatic stress got triggered by a certain person and I had a lot of disappointment at work I felt and it was a very, very hard time but step, step step, you know, one day I just kept going let it go oh my, I'm totally into let go and let God that's my favorite slogan I say it many times a day, no control. I have no control, just trust. One step, one step, and I've been doing, what would it be, six and seven on worrying the last three or four years i've been praying please i i can't worry this much because i was getting tireder and tireder and the more responsibility you have the more you get drained by worry and something happened in the last six months i just couldn't do it anymore you know like okay i'm not going to do it anymore and i changed certain things at work so i'm now working so hard that was the other thing my addiction or my low self-esteem I was such an overachiever you wouldn't believe it I worked so hard I worked hard at program I worked at therapy I worked because I have to be better and to some extent that's great because you get somewhere but I don't think you get very peaceful you don't get relaxed you don' t come into yourself with that attitude and again I prayed and prayed to have my achievement drive softened because achievement drive comes from your ego it's just totally about ego the more success I can gather around myself the better i am so i feel like this year has been a year where i've let it go i'm working less i asked my community could i work less i am noticing what brings me passion and what doesn't and i'm trying to get other people to do the stuff that dragged me down at work and now because i'm a hot shot i can say would you please do this i don't want to do this anymore and they're actually listening to me and saying okay you don't have to do that so all of a sudden i have a lot of passion now because I'm doing what i want to do which is basically studying and writing about what i'm studying in buddhism it's buddhist related but the thing that's important to me is i guess i've just deepened my third step this year without trying because at a certain point you can't do it by trying right trying is the opposite of letting go in some ways so it just kind of happened with a little bit more space in my life and uh i let um i'm not taking as much responsibility about my students which i noticed was codependent kind of thing i was doing being the big mama taking care of everybody i was so tired i mean i can take care of my two sons you know but I have a community of 150 people you know I was off that was off so something happened where um I'm just not doing that anymore and I'm not worrying as much of course that's a very deep pattern but when worry comes up i i just don't i try not to allow it just let go let go and let god i'll just say that you know i can just say it once now and i change something changes in me and i've been studying uh sunday we're starting an intensive at clouds on um dogan dogan is a 13th century zen teacher he's the founder of the Soto Zen school which is my school and he was a brilliant person and he wrote these highly poetic brilliant treatises on spiritual life and the thing that I have the most passion about now is studying this guy and writing about him and they actually said I read that in Japan they say you You shouldn't teach Dogen until after you're 60. Okay, here we go. Even the Japanese say I can teach Dogan. Anyway, I'm studying the Vendô-Wá because that's what we're going to study at Clouds in two weeks. And I'd like to talk about Jijiyu Zanmai which is um the real uh special wording for meditation or zazen in zen and it means the concentration of receiving and using the self receiving and using the self and the other thing they say in this treatise is the self settles into the self, and the world settles into the world. So I'm curious, I'm investigating what does the word settled mean what does it mean to be settled into your life and that is really helping me that word that means we're that it's really radical acceptance isn't that you totally accept what's happening right now. And when I settle into the self, I wonder if I could do it physically. I feel like... And then it's quiet down here. And in order for me to do this, I cannot fight my karma. I can't fight who I am. I have to receive who I am, which is very different than my beginning years in program. And maybe that was settling into the self at that time. I was fighting to really change my terribly ingrown habit patterns. And mostly now I can say they were habit patterns of self-hatred. and the settling into the self means that you have to let those go you haveto accept who you are and at the same time the self has two components the self has a million schmillion components but what I'm talking about with the self is you have your historic self which is your karmic self you know who your parents were what your race is what your ethnicity is what kind of high school experience you had what kindof health issues you have all those very particular historic things that would be called your historic self and you also have your buddha self do you know every single one of you is a buddhah do you know that everyone raise their hand are you a buddha yes why how can you not be the mystery of life right and that goes back to bump i think if you've ever been at a birth or you've ever been out of death there's nothing more mysterious than that really i mean this is incredible mystery this is that you are connected whether you know it or not but we would love to know it that we're completely connected with this mystery every single moment whether we're having a good time or a bad time the the human sentiment actually doesn't matter because you are always part of the mystery. So I'm trying to live my life connected with that idea as much as I can. And I don't need to get rid of the historic self that's the self i'm i'm settling into that one too i'm selling into judith regier with uh there was a oh such a sweet woman this was years ago when i lived in chicago and and i think she had some mental disability but she was always at meetings and she would say i love myself with all my faults and imperfections that was her line she said it over and over i love myself with all my faultsandimperfections and uh... i think that's a really important line that that's how you settle you embrace who you are we can change and all of us in this room have seen change I would imagine you've seen some changes happening from working the steps but I think you have to do the steps but I don't think you can control the steps I don' t think you force the steps I don''t think you make the steps happen you just do the step and then something happens to you that's what I felt like this year happened I didn't know how to make this change in myself and I don't even know if this is lasting you'll see next year do I come back I don' t know and basically it's none of my business I just do the day I accept what I have to do if I haveto say no, I say no if Ihave to say yes, fine you just do it i don't know if i'm expressing myself but the samadhi of receiving and using the self so using the cell for me means using my life force for the benefit of myself but also everybody and that's uh it has something to do relieve me of the bondage of self because in order to be used you can't stick too much you gotta let it happen you know uh and i noticed because now my life is totally a life of service so much so that i wish it wasn't you know like i'm gasping so i have really questioned this year i've been questioning does god want me to be working this hard or gasping for breath all the time you know i know i'm i'm a servant i'm being used i'm in a position of a lot of responsibility uh but i'm not happy this is too hard is that what he wants and you know i used to do the third and seventh step prayer every day you know relieve me of the bondage of self i'll do whatever you want me to do that all that kind of stuff and i noticed since i got this big job i stopped doing those prayers because it's like i can't do anymore but this year i realized that it's my my habit pattern that's taking on too much responsibility it's not god i don't have to say that that's god's will for me to be unhappy to be stressed out so i've just changed it I just said okay I want to be happier and I'm not going to work so hard and I am going to do what I want to do and see what happens did I make sense yeah so all of a sudden what thy will not my will be done has changed and i see that it was my habit pattern egocentric habit pattern that was leading that so now i uh just recently i got this message of um service can be done in many ways that was the message big and small so now when i'm walking the dog i say oh i'm serving lyra or when i'M taking a rest oh i'M serving myself or when I'M going to clouds and doing something i don't want to do oh i'm serving the community but i don t think it's just the biggest the best the i don' t know maybe you don't have this particular character defect as me but i'm just i don''t know it's gone i'm not doing that anymore and i feel like i'm settling into myself and the one other thing i'd like to say before we either open it up or stop um i used to my buddhist life was very very focused on zazen sitting practice i've sat a lot a lot and I always was seeking something in my sitting practice and it was often these states these profound states and I thought that I would have an even more profound state and that it would totally change me and thankfully I've had a lot of good teachers so they keep saying one is ryokan this well i think he might have been 18th century uh in japan he's a writes poetry but anyway he called it buddha seeking fools that you're seeking for buddhah but it's already here it's like a fish seeking for water but they're completely already in the water so this last year or two that's just stopped now when i do zazen i just work with my thoughts and i try i keep my eyes open and i tried to be here that's all I don't evaluate I don´t seek anymore I am stopping seeking which is a big thing for me to say and what I have taken up now which was a mindfulness practice of Kadagiri Roshi he used to pause at doors that was his practice and when i was totally focused on zazen and having these peak experiences pausing at doors seemed like stupid or do you know what i mean like nothing like that's nothing pausing outdoors you know why should you do that it's like uh why take a breath a three breath meditation that's nothing but over now i'm totally into three breath meditation and now i am totally into pausing at doors so the first couple weeks i tried this i couldn't do it at all then i said okay just try and do it three doors a day where you catch it and my friend the the same man that I talked about before, he was trying to do it too because that's what he's trying to do instead of long sittings. Trying to get the mindfulness really there. So he said also, he said, you know what? You have to be mindful before the door, then the door. And then he said you have to be mindful all the time. And I said, yeah. That's it. So I've been working on it for the past month, and I might be up to 40% of the time. I remember when I'm walking through a door, and I'm doing things like this, like saying to myself, I'm in the car. Oh, I am walking to Zen Center. I entered the foyer I'm talking to Bart do you see what I'm saying I'm walking in to sit down and now I'm giving this talk you know and I used to think that was nothing and now I think it's everything and so I'm hoping that I can take this up for a year that's what I'd like to do and I find it settles the self into the self it settls the world into the world it slows me down and settles me and that's what I would like for the last part of my life is to really appreciate my life and that kind of different than seeking, right? There's no seeking. Because it doesn't have to be different than it is. So maybe you can only say that when you get into your 60s. Maybe that's the wisdom of aging. But I'm glad to be here. Because seeking was driving me crazy and making me very, very tired of life. What was I seeking? Does someone want to have the last word? It's 8.15. It's time for it. Thank you so much for sharing. It's Diane's turn now. Just some announcements. If you're interested in any of the activities here at the Zen Center, there's several brochures up at the front.