The Journey And The Path: Untangling The Tangle Of Our Lives

So I want to just begin this talk this evening,

Just say a few words about metaphors and also stories and poems that can all be very helpful in our spiritual practice.

And I want to focus this evening particularly on a couple of metaphors,

As I mentioned,

The metaphor of the journey and the path.

And in the meditation we just had and the poem at the end,

There were at least three metaphors that we used,

The idea of treating our experiences like guests coming to visit.

Many of you would be familiar with that poem,

The Guest House by Rumi.

And I think for many people that's a very helpful metaphor,

It's a helpful image that,

Oh,

Okay,

I get how it would be nice to treat a guest and how a guest would want to be treated.

And can we treat our own experience,

Our own emotions and our own feelings and our own thoughts as like guests?

Often we don't,

Often we're very unwelcoming.

And so the invitation to welcome the guests.

And then in the poem by Martha Postlethwaite,

The metaphor of the clearing,

The clearing in the forest.

And I think we can imagine that of creating a clearing in our lives where there's a space where we can be with our experience.

Oh yeah,

I get that,

That sense of being in a clearing.

Particularly counterposed to the dense forest of our lives.

I think that's a very powerful metaphor that one we can,

Many of us can probably relate to,

Kind of the tangle of thoughts and emotions that we can easily be caught up in,

The dense forest of our lives.

So these metaphors can provide visual images that can be helpful for us when we're working with whatever is coming up in our experience.

And so the title of the talk tonight,

The Journey and the Path,

Really obviously uses two metaphors of a journey and a path.

So I want to explore these two metaphors and the ways in which they can be helpful to us in our spiritual practice and in our life.

And I want to begin with a poem.

Poem may be familiar to some of you.

It's by the very beloved poet Mary Oliver.

And the poem is The Journey.

It goes like this.

She said,

One day you finally knew what you had to do and began,

Though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,

Though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles.

Mend my life,

Each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

Though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,

Though their melancholy was terrible.

It was already late enough and a wild night and the road full of fallen branches and stones.

But little by little,

As you left their voices behind,

The stars began to shine through the sheets of clouds.

And there was a new voice that you slowly recognized as your own that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,

Determined to do the only thing you could do,

Determined to save the only life that you could save.

So the poem,

The Journey,

And its metaphor of The Journey,

Is the starting point of the talk tonight on the spiritual journey.

And in the poem,

The Journey is really a journey out of suffering,

Out of illusion,

Out of entanglement,

The old tug at your ankles,

The house trembling.

End my life,

The sense of being dragged into the drama of often of other people's lives,

Often the drama of our own lives.

And the kind of the leaving of that,

Moving from the entanglements towards some sense of freedom or peace or greater clarity.

And it's a journey that naturally involves difficulties and challenges.

It's hard to imagine any movement away from what is comfortable and familiar towards some greater freedom.

Even if the comfortable and familiar may be painful in some ways,

They're suffering in that as well.

But that movement will tend to involve movement away from that,

Will tend to be a movement into the unknown,

The unfamiliar.

And that can be very challenging.

It can be difficult.

So it can be a challenge.

It can be a struggle.

And Mary Oliver talks about the road full of fallen branches and stones.

But then little by little,

There's a connection with the inner knowing,

That inner voice,

Listening to that quiet voice within that knows what's true and what's for our genuine,

Our deeper well-being.

Not our everyday comfort necessarily,

But a deeper sense of our well-being.

That voice that knows,

That isn't satisfied with what's comfortable and convenient and familiar.

So leaving behind the habitual voices of the world,

The stars began to shine through the sheets of clouds and recognizing what the great Thai teacher Arjun Chah spoke about as the one who knows,

The one who knows,

That kind of that inner wisdom,

That inner clarity,

That inner knowing.

As we move deeper and deeper into the world,

Determined to do the only thing you could do,

Determined to save the only life that you could save.

So I see Mary Oliver's poem as a wonderful metaphor of the spiritual journey.

The journey from suffering to freedom,

Letting go of habits and patterns and ways of being that don't create happiness and well-being,

Towards a deeper and more authentic freedom of the heart.

So what I'm going to do as I talk about this metaphor,

This notion,

This image of the journey,

Kind of invite you to think about a journey in your own life,

Particularly your own spiritual journey,

If that's a meaningful image to you or metaphor for you.

Is there a sense of that?

And I'll come back to that question in a little bit.

So I believe that any genuine spiritual path will offer a movement that is one like what is portrayed in Mary Oliver's poem,

A movement out of difficulties and limitations that we experience,

That we all experience,

Towards some sense of greater freedom,

A greater well-being.

Now for some,

In some traditions and for some,

That may be in an afterlife.

It's not necessarily in this lifetime.

It might be the promise that if you do good works in this life or if you follow particular beliefs or rules,

You'll be rewarded with eternal life,

Peace or being with the angels or being with God.

I mean,

That's one vision of a spiritual journey.

Or it might be the promise of freedom in this lifetime.

And in the Buddha's own story,

There's a very powerful archetype of the spiritual journey.

I think it'll be,

At least the outlines of that journey will be familiar,

I think,

To many of you,

How he was born into great comfort and luxury,

A noble family,

Had everything he could possibly want or need,

Really lived a life of comfort,

Of luxury,

Of privilege.

But there's some realization that comes to him that even having all of these luxuries and all of these privileges,

He's still going to get sick.

He's going to get old.

He's going to suffer losses.

And ultimately,

He's going to die.

So how do these luxuries and comforts and privilege help when we're dealing with these realities?

You could be the richest person in the world.

You could be a multi-billionaire.

But you've still got to face those journeys.

Perhaps we move into loss of memory or loss of dear ones in our lives,

Sickness,

Aging and death.

So when we confront those realities,

You kind of think,

Well,

Are these luxuries and privileges going to help me in the final analysis?

And he sees,

No,

They're not.

So Siddhartha,

Which is an original name,

He sets out on this journey.

He leaves the life of luxury and privilege,

Cuts off all his hair,

Puts on the robes of a mendicant,

A wandering beggar,

One arms person begging for arms,

And goes out into the homeless life with a sense of hope or of trust that going out on this journey,

He'll find whether there is an end to suffering in this life.

And that's the journey.

And it's the archetypal journey.

Joseph Campbell speaks of the hero's journey and that path.

And the Buddha's journey or the journey of Siddhartha towards becoming the Buddha is this going outward from the luxury and comfort into the homeless life,

Trying various paths,

But not finding the way out of suffering,

Not being able to solve this conundrum,

This mystery of is there an end to suffering,

Until he sits under the tree,

Under the Bodhi tree,

Under the tree of awakening,

And says,

I'm not going to get up from this seat until I've found the answer to this question.

So there's really strong determination.

And then on the full moon night,

Some 2,

500 years ago,

He experiences the awakening,

Awakening to the truth,

The deepest truth about this life.

And then the journey continues into the teaching for 45 years.

He teaches all who were interested in waking up,

In finding freedom in his life.

And the Buddha was asked by a Brahmin about how to find a way out of the challenges and the difficulties of life.

And the Brahmin framed his question this way.

He says,

A tangle within,

A tangle without.

People are entangled in a tangle.

Gotama,

The Buddha's family name,

I ask you this,

Who can untangle this tangle?

So I think you get the metaphor of the tangle here.

And is this a helpful one?

I think we can all probably relate to how life can feel really,

Really quite tangled.

How do I solve the tangle of work,

Of family,

Of health,

Of finances,

Of living in,

Of politics?

Oh,

The tangle of politics.

That's a big tangle,

Isn't it,

For many of us in these days?

We won't be going there very much tonight.

That'll be a different,

That'll be a separate talk.

So the Buddha answered the Brahmin's question,

And I'll come back to that in a little bit.

We'll explore the Buddha's way out of the tangle a little bit later on.

But what I want to say for now is that I think we all have within us that inner voice,

That inner knowing,

That knowing quality of the mind.

You might call it our Buddha nature,

Or that quiet inner voice,

The voice of wisdom,

As Arjun Chah says,

The one who knows.

But it can be easily covered over with confusion,

With habits of daily life that actually keep us away from genuine happiness.

So one of the key insights,

I believe,

Or understandings that can help us to begin on our spiritual journey,

Or to continue on our spiritual journey,

Is a turning inward.

You know,

What I like to think of as a U-turn,

A turning,

You know,

Instead of the spotlight going outward,

Because often we want to find happiness by solving the problems in the world,

Our relationship to the world.

You know,

We think,

You know,

If we only get more of what is pleasant and less of what is unpleasant,

Then that will give us a good,

You know,

A good basis for happiness and for joy and for peace in our life.

And we try and solve things,

You know,

Moving things around.

You know,

We've got to get the right job and the right relationship and organize my life in such a way that I can find happiness.

So more wealth,

More comfort,

More security,

Perhaps more power,

Recognition,

More material possessions,

More sensual experiences,

More kind of fun things,

Things that make life really kind of exciting.

Maybe we think,

Oh,

Get more of those and less or fewer of the painful experiences,

Less discomfort,

Less pain,

Less loss,

Failure,

Insecurity,

Poverty,

You know,

The things that make life difficult.

So getting more of the first and less of the second.

And we can maybe do a good job of doing that.

Many of us kind of do that.

We kind of like,

Oh,

Okay,

I've got a good job,

I've got a nice house,

Got a nice family.

You know,

But we're still going to be faced with the dilemma that the Buddha faced,

You know,

Early in his life of like,

Okay,

But is this enough?

Is this enough to provide the deepest happiness that's possible in this life?

It may be that that's enough.

And we say,

Okay,

You know,

This is,

I'm okay.

I'm not looking for anything else.

And that's fine.

But probably my guess is you wouldn't be here if everything was okay.

But why,

You know,

You could be at home,

Have a few beers or a glass of wine,

Watch a movie,

You know,

Popcorn,

All of that.

You know,

Why would you come out to listen to Tara or guests like me or others?

You know,

There's something I think,

You know,

Even just the coming here that we're perhaps looking for something or reinforcing something that we think is really important in our lives.

So we face,

You know,

We can get enough of the good things and keep away the more challenging things,

But we'll still have to face up to sickness,

Aging,

Last death.

And then we can come to an insight similar to the Buddha's when he sets forth that true happiness doesn't so much come from rearranging our external world or our conditions,

But more from how we meet our conditions.

You know,

That you could see happiness as you might,

Some Buddhist teacher said,

Sylvia Borstein I think said,

Happiness is an inside job.

It's an inside job.

You know,

It's not so much changing what's out there.

And it can be very helpful and important to put money away for our retirement.

I'm not saying,

You know,

We leave that all aside or we just kind of,

You know,

We're like the dude in the big Lebowski,

You know,

Things so everything will work out.

You know,

Sorry if that's an obscure reference.

But ultimately the turn inward is a crucial one if we're going to find experience genuine freedom in this life.

Really and recognizing that happiness is possible here and now,

Whatever the circumstances,

If we can meet our experience with an open heart,

Kindly without resistance.

There's a wonderful poem by Dorothy Hunt and a couple of lines of that poem.

The poem is called Peace is This Moment Without Judgment.

And the lines are,

Peace is this moment without judgment.

Peace is this moment without judgment.

This moment in the heart space where everything that is is welcome.

This moment in the heart space where everything that is is welcome.

So that whatever the conditions of our life,

If we can meet our experience with an open heart we can find peace in whatever the circumstances.

That's the promise of certainly of these teachings.

And I think the promise of any genuine spiritual path when we make that turn inward,

Not looking outward for happiness,

But looking towards how we're meeting our experience and choosing to meet our experience with an open heart,

With acceptance,

With kindness.

So this turning inward is a kind of coming home and it can bring a very powerful shift in our experience.

It doesn't mean we don't feel,

We don't experience suffering,

We don't experience sadness or we don't experience anger,

But that we meet them in a different way.

When we meet our experience,

Say for example,

When we meet our anger with awareness,

Something shifts in us.

We step out of being identified with that emotion,

With the stories in our mind and we become aware of the bodily feelings,

Become aware of the emotions,

We become aware of the thoughts and we can gain a certain perspective,

Perhaps a certain distance from our experience.

Does that make sense that like the difference between,

Imagine you're caught up in anger,

You're in a kind of conflict with a partner or a spouse or a family member or somebody's done something stupid as you're driving and cut you off and that anger,

How we can get swept up in it,

Caught up in it.

It's like if we're not aware,

We can just be kind of acted out and obviously an extreme example of that would be road rage where we're kind of so much swept up in the anger,

We acted out.

We don't have enough awareness to step out of it,

But if we can just have enough,

A moment of awareness can puncture that identification and then we come into a different experience.

Now we're still feeling the energy of it,

But now it's now the object of our awareness rather than being caught up in it.

There's a story of somebody riding along,

Galloping along on a horse that's going full speed and somebody shouts out to the rider,

Where are you going?

Then the rider shouts back,

Don't ask me,

Ask the horse.

When we're caught up in our emotions,

It's the horse that's driving us,

The horse that's in control.

It's the anger that's in control,

But if we're aware,

Then we kind of take the reins back.

We're now directing it.

We can't,

Okay,

Slow down a bit now,

Now turn this way.

We can move,

Direct things in that way.

That's the difference where,

That's the power of awareness and the power of shifting,

Turning,

That you turn back towards our experience.

So the difference between being identified with an emotion and being aware of the emotion.

It's a really crucial difference and I think it's at the core of any genuine spiritual practice is that turning inward and experiencing that,

Really that difference.

I had the experience myself with another emotion with sadness and it can be the same whatever emotion,

Whatever mind state we're talking about.

My mother died four months ago and I experienced a lot of sadness at her passing,

At not being able to see her again ever in this lifetime.

And yet when I thought about her and opened,

Really opened to the sadness I felt,

What happened was a huge amount of gratitude arose in me for her life.

And the sadness was really held within this well of gratitude.

So the sadness was still there,

But it was what I felt most deeply was the gratitude,

The gratitude for the times,

Wonderful times we spent together in various countries and country roads and walking quietly in little roads in Ireland and many other places.

And gratitude for her life,

For leading a wonderful life,

For being an extraordinarily kind and loving human being.

And so that sadness,

So turning towards the sadness kind of allowed the gratitude to arise and really a sense of unconditional love of recognizing that that's what she gave to me and to our family and everyone she came in contact with.

So my heart opened,

So the sadness was still there,

But it was held within this kind of this well of gratitude.

So the key to this turn inward is recognizing we have a choice in how we meet our experience,

How we meet our circumstances and that our happiness and our freedom depend on how we meet our experience.

This was expressed powerfully by the psychologist and writer Victor Franco,

Who would be familiar probably with many of you,

To many of you,

Who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp and went on to write Man's Search for Meaning and other books.

And he said,

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others,

Giving away their last piece of bread.

They may have been few in number,

But they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man or from a person,

But one thing,

The last of the human freedoms,

To choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,

To choose one's own way.

So everything can be taken from us,

But the last of the human freedoms,

The freedom to determine how we meet our experience,

How we meet our circumstances.

So this is coming back to the sense of freedom comes in not arranging,

Kind of a negative way of putting it,

Not arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic,

But really turning inward and choosing how we meet our experience.

Choosing our own way.

So I just want to invite a reflection from you now.

I wonder,

Does this metaphor of a spiritual journey resonate for you?

When you look at your own life,

Your own experience,

Is it a helpful metaphor?

It doesn't have to be by any means,

But it may be,

And it certainly has been for me.

So you're here,

You've come to Tara's class,

Perhaps to other classes.

You might be new to these teachings and practices,

Or you may have been exploring them for many,

Many years.

And it can be helpful to reflect on your own journey.

So I invite you,

If you'd like to,

If you'd like to,

You could close your eyes,

You don't need to.

Just take a moment to reflect.

Just ask a few questions.

Do you have a sense of embarking on a journey to greater happiness or greater wellbeing or freedom?

Or of being on a spiritual journey?

Does the question feel like a meaningful one to you?

And what is the nature,

If that's the case,

What is the nature of this journey for you?

Is it a journey from some conditions towards other,

Kind of more hopeful,

More peaceful or other conditions?

So what's the nature of the journey?

Was there a particular time when it became clear to you that you were setting off on a journey?

For some,

It can be really clear that there's a sense of,

Oh yeah,

I took a turn at this point.

Maybe for some people it might be reaching bottom,

Hitting rock bottom and saying,

Where else can I go but to open to my experience?

For others it may be just saying,

Oh,

I need to change this in my life.

Like the Mary Oliver poem,

Leaving the voices behind and going out into the world determined to save the only life you could save.

So was there a particular time that it became clear to you that you were kind of going forth on a spiritual journey or that you were on one?

And do you have a sense of where it's headed?

And if it's not something you've given much thought to,

You might just ask,

Well,

Might this be a fruitful question to inquire into in your own life?

Just maybe sit for 30 seconds with this.

Is there something that you're looking for,

That you're moving towards?

Maybe some sense of greater freedom,

Greater peace in your life,

Greater well-being?

Or something you want to leave behind,

Something that feels like in some way a kind of a fetter,

Something that's holding you or keeping you kind of locked or stuck in some way and open to whatever comes up with kindness and with acceptance.

So if you like to just letting your eyes open and coming back into the room again,

Attention into the room.

Maybe if we had time tonight just to kind of check in with what came up.

But I'll be around afterwards if anyone would like to talk about what came up for you.

But thinking about your own journey,

Our own journey,

I think can be helpful because it can bring us into closer touch with our intentions,

What matters most to us.

And this is really profoundly important,

I think,

To really connect with our intentions.

It's very easy for us to live on autopilot without giving much attention to the deeper questions of meaning and of purpose in our lives.

But as the great philosopher Yogi Berra said,

If you don't know where you're going,

You'll end up someplace else.

If you don't know where you're going,

You'll end up someplace else.

And there's a lot of truth in that,

As in a lot of Yogi's philosophy.

We will.

If we don't know where we're going,

We'll end up somewhere else.

We won't end up where we kind of might ideally wish to be.

So our intentions set the course for our journey.

They point us to where we want to go and remind us when we get lost or caught up in things or we forget.

And they can guide us.

Our intentions can guide us in our day-to-day moments.

We can come back to our intentions just as we come back to our breath or our body in meditation.

They come back,

Oh,

What is important to me?

Where am I really wanting to go?

I'm caught up in all of this tangle of stuff.

And now,

Okay,

This is where I'm wanting to go.

I'm wanting to move towards greater happiness and freedom and well-being.

And I'm kind of not there right now because I'm caught up in multitasking or kind of wanting to get somewhere.

Okay,

Can I notice that and come back to my intentions?

So for me,

As I look back,

I kind of trace back my journey,

This kind of this phase of my journey on the spiritual path.

I go back to a very clear time in my life.

There was a time for me when I said,

Okay,

This part of my journey really began here.

And for me,

It was back in the autumn of 1986 where I had an experience of really of clarity and letting go.

I was in a place,

I was an organizer.

I was doing a lot of political organizing at the time and very intensively engaged in things and kind of really tightly kind of wound up in that.

And I took a few days off and I went to in-laws and I just started reading a book.

And the book happened to be a book on Zen by Alan Watts.

It was called The Way of Zen.

Maybe some of us who are baby boomers will remember that book,

A good book called The Way of Zen.

And I picked it up and I started to read it just out of interest.

I wasn't a Buddhist.

I wasn't really interested in Buddhism at the time.

But what it did is it kind of worked on my mind in such a way that it laid the foundations for an opening of my mind that was powerful and transformative.

It really changed my life for quite a while afterwards,

At least a number of months afterwards.

Just how I experience daily life.

And I'm not talking about just kind of a cognitive understanding.

It was really a deep change in consciousness.

It was a kind of an opening that was very,

Very powerful.

And it went on for a number of months afterwards.

I was living in Los Angeles at the time and I was coming to Washington a few times a year for national organizing meetings.

And I remember coming,

I think I was coming up,

I couldn't remember,

Up or down that long escalator at DuPont Circle Metro.

And I remember saying to myself,

I was on my own,

I remember saying to myself,

I'm very,

Very,

Very,

Very happy.

And that's not something I say a lot.

And I remember,

To this day I remember the four varies.

And so something,

And this was a couple of months after this experience of kind of opening,

It was like,

Oh,

There was a kind of opening.

I'd been in this very tight place and there was this opening.

It was an opening to happiness.

So what that experience did for me,

It was it kind of took me through a doorway.

And then for about five or six years after that,

I looking back on it,

I think of myself as kind of going into spiritual exploration mode.

Some of you may be familiar with this.

What I did was I read books on Eastern and Western mysticism,

The Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads and the Dhammapada,

As well as Christian and Jewish mysticism,

Spiritual poets,

Dabbled a little bit in meditation,

You know,

The kind of smorgasbord,

Oh,

I like this,

This is interesting.

Oh,

That's right,

Go down there.

Oh,

No,

This looks really good.

So it wasn't really a clear path,

But it was kind of opening things up and it was a very interesting period.

But what happened for me was that about five or six years after that initial experience,

So it was kind of wandering,

Doing a lot of this wandering around,

After that initial experience,

My journey,

And I do really think of it as this stage of my journey.

Obviously,

I had,

You know,

Early I had a Catholic upbringing and so that was kind of a foundation in some ways.

But this was a definitely a kind of a sharp left or right turn,

You know,

A different direction turn.

And what happened though,

About five or six years after that initial experience was the journey,

This kind of going out in a new direction opened up and revealed a path after I attended two longer meditation retreats.

So these were like nine day retreats up in Massachusetts at the Insight Meditation Society in the early 1990s.

And at those retreats,

I found a deep peace that was,

Again,

Was a kind of homecoming for me and experienced an opening of my mind that really set me on the Buddhist path.

I mean,

Before that,

For the five or six years,

I was kind of like a,

You know,

Dabbling in this and dabbling in that and I wasn't anything.

But these experiences kind of like,

It was almost like a drop down to another level.

And you can experience that if those who've been on longer meditation retreats,

Anything more than maybe a weekend or longer,

A week or a month or longer,

It's,

You know,

There can be a profound shift happens,

You know,

Because we have the time and the space for a real sense of kind of deepening in our practice.

And that's how it happened for me.

And from that time,

Really,

That it set me on the Buddhist path as a path that I felt was trustworthy and reliable.

And it's been the path that I've followed,

I've continued on since then for almost 30 years.

So,

I've talked about this metaphor of the journey of kind of setting forth,

Leaving perhaps something behind,

Going out often into kind of uncertainty with a destination in mind,

But not necessarily a clear route,

You know,

On the spiritual path,

Not necessarily like,

Oh,

I go here and I go here and I go here.

It's more kind of setting out with a sense of direction and wanting to get somewhere,

But not necessarily knowing all of the,

You know,

All of the way stations on the way.

And in the spiritual journey,

I think,

Authentic spiritual journey really is from entanglement and suffering to freedom and happiness or peace.

So the way to get there,

As I said,

May not be clear and it may involve a lot of searching,

A lot of getting lost.

In the Buddha's own life,

When he went out on his spiritual journey and left the kind of life of comfort and luxury,

He followed a couple of main pathways.

One was going to leading spiritual teachers of his time and really studying with them for a long time and really getting to know all of their practices.

But although he clearly benefited from the practices,

He didn't,

Hadn't still solved,

Still hadn't solved the problem of,

Is there an end to suffering?

So he kind of embarked on another pathway and that was in the direction of asceticism,

You know,

Punishing the body,

You know,

It speaks,

The teachings speak of him living on a grain of rice a day and touching his stomach and being able to feel his back because he was so thin and emaciated.

And going on that path and that clearly not being a path that led to freedom to the end of suffering and he recognized that we don't get to freedom by punishing ourselves,

By punishing,

You know,

The body,

For example.

And then he let go of that path and that's when he sits under the tree in what is today northern India in Bodh Gaya and has the experience of awakening to the truths about suffering and the end of suffering.

So we can go from the journey and a path can open up to us.

When we find a path,

What's different is that we connect with more of a roadmap,

A clear direction that others have walked.

So imagine a path through the woods.

Clearly someone has,

You know,

Cut down some trees and branches and then walked,

People have walked on it and we can follow that path and that can be a guide to take us to our destination.

We still have to walk the path ourselves,

Others can show the way,

But we still have to walk the path.

That's still our journey.

And just to say a few things about a path,

A spiritual path,

I think there isn't,

Clearly there isn't just one spiritual path or one perfect path or one right path,

Although some people might claim there is.

There are many spiritual paths,

But all genuine spiritual paths lead,

I believe,

To the same end.

It can have a different name,

It could be called freedom of the heart,

It could be called awakening or enlightenment,

But some sense of freeing ourselves,

Not just,

You know,

Free in a physical sense or a mental sense,

But free in the deepest sense of not being entangled by the conditions of the world or the conditions of our life,

Finding freedom amidst all of the conditions of life.

You know,

An image,

Another metaphor is of dancing with life.

Whatever life,

However life is,

We can dance with it,

That kind of fluidity,

So it doesn't have to be the way we want it to be.

I don't like this,

Oh,

I want this,

No,

It can be,

Can I be with this?

It's not really what I had wanted,

But can I still dance with this experience?

Different paths obviously have different strengths and may appeal to different people.

For me,

What I valued greatly in the Buddhist path was that it was such a comprehensive roadmap.

You know,

The Buddha was this kind of a psychologist of 2500 years ago who mapped out through his own experience these mind states,

Mapped out the mind.

So there's extraordinary complexity and nuance of the different mind states and emotions and how we work with them.

That's one thing that I find very,

Very powerful.

The other is the clarity and directness of the teachings,

You know,

How we can find the end to mindfulness,

The end to suffering,

But just through being present with our own experience here and now and how that reveals,

You know,

That everything changes.

It provides the basis for letting go and living freely.

It also,

For me,

What was very attractive about these teachings and practices were they're very experiential.

They're not about believing something.

They're really about seeing for ourselves.

You know,

Nobody should be teaching or saying,

You know,

You should do this and if you do this,

This is what will happen.

The most these teachings will say is this has been helpful for me and for others.

Explore it.

See for yourself.

What happens when you bring your attention back to the body and the breath?

What happens when you cultivate loving kindness or compassion or equanimity?

What do you see in your own life?

So it becomes our own kind of guiding light that we can work with and see,

You know,

Is this helpful to me?

Does it bring about transformation?

So rather than being based on beliefs,

Being based on our direct experience,

Seeing for ourselves and that it's possible that freedom is possible in this very life,

In this lifetime,

You know,

A three score year and 10 or however many it may be,

That we can find freedom in this lifetime.

That's the promise that the Buddha holds out.

It says,

You know,

Follow this path and this is what it leads to and see for yourself if this is the case for you.

This is what I have experienced in my own life,

The Buddha taught.

So just a few words about the path because in a way I'm thinking that this is probably two talks.

It's a talk on the journey and the path and the path part of the talk will be more just the kind of the outline and the skeleton.

And just say about the Buddha's teachings,

The Buddha's path.

The Buddha saw people everywhere caught up in suffering because of confusion,

Because they were looking for happiness in the wrong places and in the wrong things.

And after he found freedom in his own life,

He sought to share with everyone a reliable and trustworthy path out of suffering.

And he saw himself as like a physician who diagnoses an illness,

Identifies the cause of the sickness,

Points to a way of healing from the sickness and then prescribes medications or remedies that will help lead to good health,

Freedom from the illness or the sickness.

And the Buddha identified our illness,

If you like,

Our sickness as mental suffering,

As in the Pali word dukkha,

A sense of unsatisfactoriness,

A feeling that things are not as they should be.

And you want to experience that in your life.

You know,

We're wanting things to be different than they are.

We experience this as suffering as dukkha.

This is the first noble truth,

The truth of suffering.

And Buddha pointed to the cause of the illness of suffering as clinging,

Of wanting things to be the way we want them to be and resisting the truth of our experience.

So holding on to the way we want them to be rather than dancing with life,

Rather than opening to life.

This is the second of the noble truths,

The truth of the cause of suffering being clinging.

The Buddha identified the end of suffering,

The freedom that comes from letting go of clinging.

This is what he called nirvana,

Freedom from suffering.

This is the third noble truth,

That there is an end to suffering when we let go of clinging.

And then the Buddha laid out a path to the end of suffering,

A path of training in meditation in ethics or virtue and in wisdom that leads to the end of suffering.

This is the fourth noble truth.

So these are the four noble truths.

This is the eightfold path to the end of suffering.

And all of the Buddha's teachings come back to these four truths.

The way from suffering to freedom and how we can experience freedom directly in our own lives.

We can say it very simply.

We can put it very simply in this way.

We suffer when we cling.

We find freedom when we let go.

That's the four noble truths.

We suffer when we cling,

When we hold on to wanting things to be a certain way.

We find freedom when we let go.

And he said,

Here's the path to doing that.

Here are the practices and the skills that you can work on to find freedom in this lifetime.

So the goal of the Buddha's path is to,

Coming back to that earlier metaphor,

Is to untangle the tangle.

To untangle the tangle.

Remember the question,

Who can untangle the tangle?

And the Buddha said,

A person who is established in virtue,

Discerning,

Developing wisdom,

A monk or a practitioner who's ardent,

Who's astute,

Kind of makes effort,

He or she can untangle this tangle.

Those for whom craving,

Aversion,

And ignorance have faded away.

For them the tangle is untangled.

So those who've let go of clinging,

Let go of aversion,

Hatred,

Blame,

Judgment.

Those who've let go of delusion,

Kind of confusion,

Not seeing things as they really are.

They have found a way of untangling themselves from the tangle.

So again,

Just to reflect,

Where is your tangle?

Is there a tangle that you can connect with right now in your life?

Where is the shoe pinching,

As it were?

Is there something in your life where you're feeling,

Oh,

I'm wanting this to be different.

I'm wanting this person to be different than they are.

Good luck.

I'm wanting this situation to be different than it is.

When we want reality to be different than it is,

You know what happens?

We suffer.

Because however much we want things to be different,

We will experience things being as they are and be in conflict with that,

And that will be suffering.

Now of course some things we can change and some things it's very healthy and wise to change.

But there are things that we can't change.

We can't change death,

For example.

So if we're going to be struggling with that,

That's going to be suffering,

Isn't it?

When we kind of get to the end of our life.

James Burroughs in his book on awakening joy tells the story of a woman in an older person who was politically correct,

Elder persons,

Home,

Who was 93 years old.

And was given the diagnosis of,

You know,

She was going to die within a certain short period of time.

She's got,

Why me?

Why me,

93.

I know,

I hope I wouldn't be saying why me at 93 anyway.

So where is your tangle?

Where is the place in your life that you feel squeezed,

That you're struggling with the way things are or feel the need to make a change?

And how do you see untangling yourself from clinging and from suffering?

How can these teachings and these practices or other skillful practices be helpful for you in working with that tangle,

When working with holding on to wanting things to be a certain way?

Can you find the clinging,

The thing that you're clinging to or you're pushing away in your life or you're disconnecting from?

And can you then just invite a willingness to be with this experience without clinging,

Without pushing away,

Without disconnecting?

At the core of the Buddhist teachings are two simple and potentially life-changing instructions.

And I'll just name them,

We're not going to have time to get into them this evening.

But they simply stated that this,

Abandon what is unskillful and cultivate the good.

Abandon what is unskillful simply means when we're clinging,

See if we can let go of that.

When we're blaming or judging or hating or checking out,

Notice that.

See if you can meet that with kindness and let go of those states.

That's abandoning the unskillful.

Cultivating the good is consciously inviting the arising of mind states and emotions that lead to happiness and well-being.

Like loving kindness,

Like joy,

Like equanimity,

Like gratitude,

Generosity.

These qualities invite them to arise.

And when we do that,

That's what we're creating in our lives.

When we invite loving kindness towards maybe a difficult person,

Then that's the quality of mind that we're creating.

That's really what karma means,

That we reap what we sow.

If we sow kindness,

That's what our mind will be filled with kindness over time as we train our mind to do this.

If we cultivate anger and hatred,

Our mind will be filled with anger and hatred.

That's the life we will lead.

We will see people through the lens of anger and hatred and judgment and blame.

So what are we cultivating?

So at the core of this practice is a training of the mind.

And at the very center of this is mindfulness.

And that's where I'm going to finish this evening,

This practice,

This training of the mind in mindfulness.

Many other qualities as well.

But this core teaching about mindfulness,

Thich Nhat Hanh,

The great Vietnamese Zen teacher,

Poet,

Author,

Activist,

Speaks of the miracle of mindfulness.

The miracle of mindfulness is not something supernatural or otherworldly.

It's really what I've been talking about,

The transformative power of awareness.

That difference between being caught up in an experience or an emotion and being aware of it.

That's what mindfulness allows us to do.

It allows us to shift out of identification,

Out of being swept up into being aware.

And when we do that,

We make a powerful change in our lives.

And so if we commit ourselves to this path of practice,

This path of mindfulness,

Of cultivating the good and abandoning the unskillful,

We're creating our future,

As I've just mentioned.

So we're going to finish off now,

And I want to say a critical question.

How am I meeting this moment?

The invitation to keep coming back to that question,

Both in meditation and in our daily life.

How am I meeting this moment?

So let's just take one minute to finish off this evening.

Just invite just a coming inward again,

Just reminding of just this sense of being on a journey if it's a useful image or metaphor for you.

Just where is that journey headed?

And is there a path that you identify with or that you might wish to explore?

One that's been walked before,

But you'll have to walk yourself along that path.

Just sitting with these images,

These metaphors,

If they're helpful to you.

Coming back to the power of intention,

Kind of leaving here perhaps with an intention of exploring some area or some quality that you might want to deepen,

Or some way that you might want to let go in your own life.

These few lines from T.

S.

Eliot,

This great poem,

The four quartets,

At the very end of the poem he says,

We shall not cease from exploration,

And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.