Be The Surfboard, Not The Log – A Buddhist Take On Difficult Emotions

So I'd like to talk a little bit tonight about,

From a Buddhist mind training perspective,

A Buddhist psychology perspective,

Emotions.

What are called afflictive or unwholesome emotions and wholesome or non-afflictive emotions.

And it may surprise some of you that in the language spoken at the time of the historical Buddha,

Which is the language of Pali,

There is no word that translates as emotion.

And emotions are not seen in that way of thinking as distinct entities in the mind,

Distinct experiences in the mind like we very much identify them in a Western psychological point of view.

Anger is a pretty easily identifiable physical emotional experience.

We may experience it a little bit differently,

But we can all kind of,

Yeah,

I know what it's like to be angry or feel angry.

I know what it's like to feel anxious or fearful.

I know what it's like to feel sad.

I know what it's like to feel happy.

I know what it's like to feel greedy and wanting something.

But from a Buddhist type of view,

And I think that's very important,

And for those of you that don't know me,

By training I am a clinical psychologist and scientist,

Researcher,

Etc.

So I'm certainly not casting much aspersion on Western psychology,

But it's a pretty incomplete teaching,

Which is why after all the training in psychology I kept looking for explanations for the human experience.

There's a couple of things I want to either introduce if it's new to you or remind some of you or maybe teach in a slightly new way tonight.

And that is a teaching of the baseline mental emotional state of a mind.

Now that gets a little tricky.

We won't get into it a whole lot tonight,

But my mind,

Cheryl's mind,

Kim's mind,

Neil's mind,

Your mind,

We'll call those small M minds.

Not because they're small minded,

I hope,

But we'll just call them small M mind,

Each of your mind,

Brad's mind,

And so on.

M and mind,

Capital M mind.

Take over the grain of salt if this is a new idea at this time,

Which is larger mind.

And we can think of it for now as the baseline of the mind experience.

I was leading you a little bit towards an exploration of this in those last few minutes when I said,

Can you notice,

And it's fine if you can,

No matter what's going on in small mind in that last bit of the meditation where you think,

Oh,

This feels really nice.

Or were you not thinking?

Were you planning your grocery list or your ride home or worried about the twingy feeling in your knee or et cetera?

All of those are fine.

Don't beat yourself up.

But under whatever was happening is calm,

Is peacefulness,

Is sukha.

Shukha being a Pali word that means to some degree,

Happy joy mind,

Peaceful warm mind,

Or a state of a happy equanimity.

Now equanimity may be a word that is unfamiliar to some of you.

It's not a word we use in English,

Really.

And it's a translation of Pali word,

Upekka.

But it's a really important concept if you want to get through life with less misery.

Anybody other than me like to get through life with less misery?

If your hand isn't up,

Put it up now.

Yes,

We'd like to get through life with less misery.

Equanimity,

You can have a whole 10-day retreat on it,

But we'll have a few minutes on it tonight,

Is a state of mind where the mind is peaceful and flexible.

We can say the mind is non-reactive.

What does that mean?

Well,

Let's say right now,

I don't know,

Someone burst in the door and said,

You're all a bunch of stupid morons.

And then they ran away and left.

You probably feel some reaction to that humor or dislike or shock or maybe even a little bit threatened.

To overstate it a little bit,

If the mind was in a state of equanimity,

That would just be an experience that arose and passed away.

Like we're talking,

It's quite quiet in here.

Boom,

Boom,

Crash,

You're a bunch of stupid idiots.

Boom,

Boom,

Crash,

The person's gone.

And then most of us would go into consternation and probably you'd stop being quiet and be like,

What was that?

They're crazy,

Do they have a gun or whatever?

Stories,

The fears,

The stuff,

That's fine,

That's fine.

That's a very normal,

Very normal reaction where that odd event I just made up were to happen.

You probably,

Most of you wouldn't just sit in calm and equanimity,

In a non-reactive state while the winds of change blew around you.

Now,

This happened,

Probably a couple of you in the room were there.

You might have been there.

You might have been there,

I'm not sure.

About five,

Six,

Seven,

Eight years ago on Denver during a ten day retreat,

It was the second to last night and there was a massive crash,

Right?

You were there,

Okay.

Like a jet plane crashing or a massive shotgun going off next to our ear.

It was really loud and out of complete and utter silence,

It was a very calm night,

No wind,

No nothing.

We were in a yurt.

Blake was probably there as well.

We were in a yurt.

We were in second to last day,

I think,

Of a ten day retreat.

People were pretty deep.

People were pretty calm.

They'd been practicing like rock stars.

A room,

Probably 28,

29 people,

Small yurt,

Half the size of this,

Really.

And I believe I was giving a bit of a Dharma talk.

I'll have to go back and listen to that talk because the sound came at a really cool,

Whatever I said was really cool when it happened.

But it was an incredibly loud,

Incredibly loud,

Sharp,

Brief sound.

Now I'm very blessed to at times be able to lead and sit with some of you and others for a ten day retreat.

And day nine,

I'm in a pretty freaking calm state of equanimity,

Not always incompletely,

But a non-reactive state,

Like just present.

No,

Not awake or enlightened,

But you do the work,

You get the muscles to some degree.

And this CRACK super freaking loud happened and I just didn't react.

I didn't go,

Who was that?

It was like,

Shhh.

Now it's not true all the people in the room.

There were a few that reacted very little.

There was some,

Which is a very normal response and maybe a wiser one to an unexpected horrible sound that sounded like a gunshot right in the exterior.

Probably not a bad idea.

Not throwing dirt on anybody's experience.

But when the mind is in a state of calm,

Alert,

Gentle equanimity,

It can be very non-reactive.

Now don't misunderstand,

It doesn't mean you don't hear it,

It doesn't register.

But all the story making and the reactivity,

What was that?

Oh my goodness,

That was crazy.

Did you hear that?

It can be very calm,

More like,

Hmm,

Does that bear investigation?

Because it might,

By the way,

In case you're wondering.

It turned out that what had happened,

Because a couple of the staff saw it happen,

There was a tremendous,

Beautiful,

Huge,

I believe it's a maple tree,

With a main trunk like yay big and like offshoots of gnarls,

Like big trunks.

And one of them had just,

Apparently in about a second,

It had snapped and dropped giant,

Giant,

Like probably this thick at the thick end that had broken off the trunk.

If anybody had been under it,

They would have been instantly killed.

Luckily we worked.

But there's a nice example of the states of mind in that room that evening were of a varying degree and nobody gets points for being deeper than anyone else.

We all have different experiences in different moments.

You can all go as deep or deeper than me and I can be more wigged out than you.

It's not a contest,

But being day nine of a very,

I cracked it pretty hard.

Those are treats people,

People practice really hard.

And so there was,

There was more equanimity in the mind.

So it was more calm in the body.

So it was the most slowing of the central nervous system because people have been meditating 10 ish hours a day for eight,

Nine days at that point.

And so there wasn't a typical consternation.

There was some consternation and some calm and some curiosity.

And then the stories instantly,

Right?

Why not?

That's again,

It's how we kept alive as cave people.

It's how we keep alive crossing the street these days is to pay attention to what's dangerous and to have stories like what was that?

Are we safe?

Should we investigate?

As I said,

So it's just a simple little story,

A little experience to maybe capture a bit of the feel of when the mind is in equanimity.

Don't misunderstand that when the mind is in equanimity,

It's sluggish or slow or zoned out.

That's not the quality you'll experience,

But this type of sukha equanimity,

The mind feels calm and pleasant,

Not necessarily hopped up.

Not,

Oh,

I feel like a million bucks.

It can feel like that too.

There's a whole gradation,

But often it's just sort of a gentle pleasantness,

Just sweetness up.

Feel pretty good.

That is one aspect of an equanimity and a sukha.

So to redefine the word sukha,

Sort of happiness,

Pleasantness,

Sometimes joy,

A positive mind.

Equanimity is this calm state where you neither prefer nor not prefer.

You're not chasing after what you'd like and rejecting what you don't like.

You're accepting things as they come and because you're all intelligent human beings,

You're aware that life comes and goes and some of what it brings is positive and things we like.

Some of what it brings is negative and things we really don't like and some of it's neutral.

So when it brings us a bad case of the flu,

We don't like that.

When it brings us,

I don't know,

A dozen roses in our favorite meal,

We do like that.

And when it brings us something we feel neutral about,

An empty cardboard box,

We feel neutral about it.

This is the human experience in a nutshell.

Events happen,

Things change.

Some of them we experience as something we like or positive.

Some of them we experience as something we don't like or negative and some of those are extreme right?

Some of the don't likes are tragic loss or abuse,

Rape,

You know,

Just certainly don't like those.

Some of the things we get,

We really like falling in love,

Finding a wonderful job where we're appreciated and challenged,

Getting a new kitten,

Being given a world lifelong supply of all the best chocolate you could ever eat.

Maybe that's one of my fantasies,

I'm not going to admit it.

Some of the things we get,

We really like.

Some of them we don't like and some are neutral.

That's simple.

That's the human experience,

But when we are sticky,

What does that mean?

When we stick towards the things we want and we chase them,

Which we all do,

We chase happy objects.

We chase things we want.

We chase things we believe will make us happy.

Some of them do for a while.

They're not bad.

It's not bad,

But when we're sticky and we're sticking after the things we want,

We're finding our happiness,

We're finding our sukkah in an object,

An event,

A beautiful cup of coffee,

A kiss,

A book we find delicious to read and challenging and rewarding.

But what happens when the book is finished or the coffee's drank or the kiss is over?

Then what?

Well,

You're all very smart.

Well,

Then we need a new one,

Right?

We need a new object,

A new something that feels good or pumps us up or makes us happy.

Equanimity gives grace.

It's an odd way to put it,

But I'm going to stick with it for now.

It gives grace that we no longer have to run around for good stuff in order to feel good.

We just feel good with or without the lifetime supply of chocolate.

And of course,

The other side of sticky is the yucky side of sticky.

When we're sticking to the things that are unpleasant,

We can't stop worrying about that bill we're not sure we can pay this week.

We find it difficult to let go of a perceived or a real insult or slight or difficult event.

We have physical pain.

We feel unwell.

Our mind tends to be sticky to the negative stuff we don't want,

Like,

Ugh.

Get obsessive thinking,

Right?

This has probably happened to all of us already today,

Yesterday,

Where something happened or we heard of something that was unpleasant or upsetting or annoying or worse,

Maybe really quite awful,

And it was hard to let go of it,

Right?

It wasn't like,

Oh,

That happened.

Oh,

Well.

It got us.

It stuck a bit.

We worried about that person,

But we felt really hurt or offended or discombobulated by what someone said or thought or shared with us.

In equanimity,

The chocolate would come and the insult would come,

And we'd be pretty stable in the presence of both of them.

We'd be sitting in a meditation tent on a warm dusk on Dammit Island five,

Six,

Seven years ago and bam!

And we'd be,

Oh,

Not,

Ooh.

I hope I don't strike you as a particularly bland person.

It's okay if I do.

I'm not a very bland person,

So don't misinterpret that equanimity equals blandness.

It equals a non-reactivity in a way that's very wholesome.

Wouldn't you prefer that when you get bad news,

It doesn't ruin your hour or your day?

Wouldn't you prefer that when bad news comes into each and every one of our lives,

Very often and some of it's terrible bad news,

Your loved one has died?

That comes into our life suddenly sometimes.

But wouldn't you prefer instead of being knocked sideways that there was a flexibility,

I keep doing this because it's like a tree in the wind,

Like a flexibility with the buffets of the winds of change,

Which is the teaching of the eight worldly winds.

We can talk about that another time,

Buddhist teaching,

But the winds of change.

What if we could be flexible and solid in the middle of the winds of change,

The good ones and the bad ones?

Because here's kind of a spoiler alert that you won't really like very much.

The good things don't last forever.

It doesn't mean we shouldn't enjoy them and celebrate them and feel blessed by them,

But when we cling on to them as the answer,

The love affair,

The money,

The kitten,

The chocolate,

We're doomed to end up disappointed and worse because these things change.

Don't shoot the messengers,

The nature of things.

None of us lasts forever.

None of it lasts forever.

So I wanted to bring forward first tonight this kind of mixture idea like a yin yang of sukha,

Happy,

Content,

Pleasant,

Sometimes quite blissful quality of mind,

Which in the West we might call an emotional tone,

Sukha and equanimity.

Imagine if you will,

I really want you to try to imagine if your mind felt like that all the time,

Pleasant,

Happy and flexible,

Not very phased with the changes,

Able to adapt to the changes with grace,

Without a lot of drama,

Without a lot of reactivity,

But not bland,

Alert,

Alive,

Loving,

Curious.

This is the quality of mind under all the crap.

That's the quality of mind.

Remember I talked a little bit about small mind,

Not meaning small minded like I said,

But your mind and my mind and that mind,

These little minds in our little skulls,

Take good care of them,

Take good care of your brain,

But mind,

Because when all is said and done and you've all experienced this,

Do not take it on faith because I said it certainly and don't even take it on faith if the Buddha or the Dalai Lama or any of the great teachers say it.

Apply it to the evidence of your own life,

But all of you have had an experience where you took some bad news with grace.

Maybe you've had 40 to one,

40 times you didn't take it with grace and it really rattled and upset you and then another time it was like,

Oh my goodness,

That sucks,

But all right,

Isn't that nicer,

Right?

In your felt experience,

When the mind is more flexible and can kind of roll with the changes of life,

That is a better experience than the vulnerability and the anxiety of waiting for the other shoe to drop,

Right?

Things are going so well,

I wonder what's going to happen.

That's not a stupid thought by the way,

Because absolutely some shit's going to happen.

Excuse the language,

But it's true.

So when things are going well,

Your kids are all doing well,

They're healthy,

They're happy,

You're loving relationships,

You like your house,

Your work is interesting,

Your friends are doing quite well,

You're like,

Oh,

This is so great.

When's the shoe going to drop?

At some point,

Maybe pretty soon,

Some shoe's going to drop.

Somewhere it has to,

It's the nature of reality,

It's the nature of change.

So enjoy the heck out of the times where things are easy,

For an hour,

A day,

Or a few weeks,

Maybe even a few months where,

Man,

My life's going so well and those I care about are doing well.

That's beautiful,

It's real,

It's authentic,

It's going to change though.

So enjoy the heck out of it while it's happening.

But if you're working with meditation,

If you're working with these sorts of teachings,

If you're thinking about these sorts of ideas,

You will over time experience the mind getting a little more flexible.

And it's an extraordinary experience the first time some small to medium negative thing happens,

Not particularly bad.

And you're like,

Oh,

Rats,

Instead of freaking out.

And one I use a lot,

Because we're islanders,

Is you go zooming to the ferry and you get there and there's a three sailing weight,

Right?

Anybody naming no names ever lose your biscuit because you get to the ferry and there's a three sailing weight?

Who the heck's fault is it,

By the way?

They have a reservation system.

I reserve all my ferries now,

Even like on a Wednesday in November when they're going to be empty.

I'm like,

For 15 bucks,

People,

I'm going to reserve a ferry and make sure I get on the ferry.

So most of us,

If not all of us in this room,

Have got to a ferry and either it's been delayed,

Like maybe tomorrow a bunch will be canceled because of wind,

We don't know,

Or there's just a wait because other people wanted to go somewhere too.

Darn those other people,

How dare they?

It's supposed to be all about me.

And maybe a few of us in the room have got there and had a wee bit of an internal tantrum about it.

Hopefully not at the picket agent who's blameless in your poor planning.

But where you're like,

Dang it,

Sit here,

Socks,

I wanted to get there next time.

Maybe it's for something important.

Maybe it's for a job interview on the other side.

But guess what?

Is that going to change anything?

Is your internal temper tantrum going to advance you in the ferry lineup?

Of course not,

We all know that.

So it's a beautiful example because it's so simple and it's so obvious we can shake our heads at ourselves.

I got to the ferry and now I've got to wait two or three sailings.

And better yet,

At Duke Point,

Each of those sailings is two and a half hours away.

So you're there for like seven hours,

Man.

Okay,

I can be happy and wait for the ferry.

Or I can be unhappy and wait for the ferry.

Or you could choose not to wait for the ferry.

You could go home and change your plan.

But a lot of the times,

Even though we don't maybe deliberately consciously choose it,

Question mark,

Because you actually did,

We sit there and be all upset.

So we choose,

I'm going to be late and be mad about it.

What a moronic thing to choose.

Think about it.

You can't,

Unless you've got some crazy superpower and can manifest some sort of drone that can take you across the other side,

You can't change the circumstance.

So you can be at ease.

Equanimity.

Ooh,

That's the flexible bit.

That's the calm bit.

That's the non-reactive bit.

Oh,

Darn it.

Didn't want to wait here for three hours.

But there you go.

Here we are.

That's the truth of reality in this moment.

I'm not getting on that boat.

You can be happy.

You can be unhappy.

You can be neutral.

You pick.

Literally you pick.

It may not feel that way,

Especially when it's much worse than missing or being late or being delayed or something on a ferry.

That's a pretty,

I think we can all agree that's a pretty small annoyance.

It may feel like a huge one.

It's a pretty small annoyance.

What if it's something much bigger?

You get fired unfairly and abruptly.

Oh,

You want maybe equanimity about that?

Why?

Because I don't want you to suffer unnecessarily.

There's enough sadness and loss in the world that if we're going to create a whole bunch more drama because the ferry ain't obeying our masterful will,

That's a lot more suffering on top of the sufferings of death and all the age and cancer,

Physical and emotional pain.

So,

I wanted to bring you this idea and I dropped it in a little bit at the end of the meditation.

Can you find it?

It's okay if you can't.

It's there.

It's there.

You're going to tap it at various times.

That calm and equanimity,

That sukha,

That pleasantness is there.

When you're in the depths of despair,

It's there.

When you're mildly annoyed,

It's there.

When you're arguing with someone you love and you're flooded with emotion and negativity,

It's there.

It being mind.

The big ocean mind.

When you're caught in a nasty wave being tossed around,

That feels like all there is,

Doesn't it?

It sure does for me too.

When you're in rage or grief or reactivity,

It feels like this wave that's tossing me around and crashing me down and spitting me back up again.

This is it.

This is my experience right now.

But what's under any wave in real life in a real ocean?

Vast ocean.

Our tiny little wave off the Tavino or whatever that's got us and is spitting us out and churning us and trying to drown us is an accurate experience of part of the vastness.

Can you follow that?

Of course you can.

So that is an accurate experience.

Then being sucked under an undertone and spat out again.

That's an accurate experience of part of what's happening,

Isn't it?

And it sure feels like all this happening to me in my fragile human form.

Except there's a vast ocean stretching from the shores of Tavino to the next line of masses of Japan.

Vast ocean.

But we get completely convinced that our experience of one wave is the whole dang thing.

That's where we suffer.

That's where we suffer.

We forget.

We don't see the truth of reality.

That there's a vastness beyond our direct experience in this moment.

So in meditation,

Some of you will be kind of beginner's luck in a really good way.

You'll taste this really easily,

Very quickly.

Maybe not for long,

Maybe for a few seconds,

But you'll be worried about my friend and I'm worried about this and I can't afford my car payment.

Breath,

Breath.

I feel really good.

And then maybe within a few seconds you're back to worrying about your car payment and your friend.

That was tasting the ocean under the wave.

It's a real experience.

It's an identifiable experience.

Be measured on functional MRI,

Brain scans and other things.

Some fanciful nonsense.

It's a direct experience of under the thinking,

Worrying,

Consternation of what we in the West call negative emotions.

There's calm.

By the way,

You should all be like bursting into spontaneous applause right now.

Not for me,

But for the idea.

Holy hell,

Really?

Under the pain and suffering and consternation and stuff and grief,

There's like this vast ocean of calm and goodness.

Spontaneous applause.

This is a very big deal and it's why some of us study what we're studying.

We may not taste the ocean.

We may be like being pulverized by wave after wave of grief,

Anxiety,

Despair,

Awfulness.

I'm sure basically everybody in this room,

Including the person speaking right now,

Can relate to that.

Where it feels impossible that there's anything other than this grief or this rage or this sorrow or this deep,

Deep despair.

I'm not saying those aren't real experiences.

It's a real experience when you're being almost drowned by that rogue wave that's got you.

But if you can for an instant remember,

If you could for an instant recall,

If you could for an instant realize that there's a vast ocean and maybe,

Just maybe if I can ride this wave,

Maybe if I can surf this wave,

I'm going to find a trough on the other side of that wave that's calm.

Where I can catch my breath,

Where I can regroup,

Where I can see the bigger picture.

Think of something as visceral and as common probably to almost all or all of us in this room as an abrupt heartbreak.

Someone we love says,

Cheated on you it's over.

Or someone we love says,

I don't love you anymore it's over.

Someone we love says,

I want a divorce.

You did not see it coming.

I mean you knew you were like regular couples.

You had some issues.

Bam,

In a wave right?

Gut wrenching,

We have all this beautiful language,

Heartbreak.

We don't call it,

Eh,

We call it heartbreak.

And if you've been there,

Most of us have,

It's visceral,

Physical pain,

Emotional gutting,

Despair.

But has anybody in this room,

You don't have to raise your hand,

It's a private question.

Is anybody in this room ever eventually got over that?

Right?

A day,

A week,

A year,

Three years,

Ten years later where you can think about that heartbreak and even that person and feel either sort of a benign calm or even warmth.

Like man,

That was a brutal breakup and I was so hurt and so angry for so long and now I think of them with a bit of fondness.

In fact,

Some of us even become friends with that person,

That experience.

So you don't need to take this as some fanciful teaching of an esoteric idea.

You've lived it.

You've lived a death of a pet,

Death of a human,

Loss of a friend through a misunderstanding or jealousy or confusion.

Those are usually the reasons.

Oh,

It hurts,

So real.

I'm not saying it's not real.

I'm saying it's a direct experience without seeing the bigger picture.

So use the wave example.

It seems to be the one I'm rocking tonight,

Which is you're caught in the wave and you are drowning.

That's very real.

Kind of,

Kind of not,

But that's much bigger teaching for another day.

Feels really real.

If you can remember this too shall pass,

This too shall end,

This too shall eventually be calm.

There's hope eventually in a day,

A week,

A month,

A year,

Two years,

I'll feel different.

This is a piece of the teaching of this ocean of sukha,

This ocean of pleasantness,

This ocean of calm,

This ocean of okay.

Even when the storm is raging,

It's actually always okay.

That's a biggie.

Even when you're actively in loss,

Grief and despair,

It's also always okay.

In that moment,

If your mind can wake up to the depth of what's under the pain,

The suffering,

The dukkha,

You will experience when we're going through anything difficult in our life,

Which is much of the time.

You know that moment where you wake up in the morning and there's a few seconds before you remember,

Right?

Before you remember,

Oh God,

They're gone.

Or oh no,

I'm fired.

This is a few seconds,

Maybe a little longer if you're having a groggy morning.

We wake up and we remember something's wrong.

Well,

In those few seconds before you remember,

You're fine,

Right?

You're in grace,

You're in calm,

You're in pleasant.

Two,

Three seconds,

Five seconds,

Seven seconds until we remember to be in pain.

That's a weird thing to say,

Isn't it?

But I want you to ponder it until we remember to be in pain,

Until we remember that the loss or the grief or the problem,

The diagnosis,

Until we remember we're not in pain because we're resting in mind.

We're resting in sukha,

Pleasant,

Joy,

Calm,

Peaceful,

Good,

And we're resting in equanimity.

And then we remember to be in pain.

I'm not pointing fingers and saying we're dumb masochists,

We're not.

What we are is a bit confused.

We're a bit confused.

So if you at least take what I just said,

That last bit under advisement,

I saw some nods around the room,

Yeah,

Like there's those few seconds before you remember your grandma died last night,

Where you're okay,

You're in calm,

You're maybe even happy.

Oh my goodness,

Grandma's gone.

We remember to be in pain.

But right there is a perfect example in your own experience of what I'm teaching tonight,

Which is under the pain there's calm.

Under that wave that wants to end you and might,

By the way,

Might drown you,

There's calm and there's a,

I hope you're hearing,

Maybe you're not,

If so that's on me for not transmitting it very well.

I hope you're hearing something hopefully not because if there is a vaster mind experience under our small experience,

It means in any moment we can wake up and have seconds of grace in the middle of worrying so dearly about each of the different things that are troubling each of us this week or today from small to medium to huge,

Depending on what's happening in our lives and our experiences these days or today.

We can wake up for a moment like those few seconds in the morning when you wake up before you remember to be in pain.

We can be without pain.

We can be without suffering.

We can be like on a blow up floaty thing just basking on the calm ocean.

No sharks,

No terrible waves,

No driftwood that's going to bonk us in the head,

Just floating in calm okayness,

Ready to roll with what comes next.

Once in about 1991-ish,

I was in the early years of my PhD program and my heart was broken.

It often was at that time by some relationship that it ended,

Not by my design.

A friend,

It was almost before email was coming in but we didn't have a lot of email yet,

And a friend faxed me at the psychology office at the university and back then we had cubby holes where they put your paper notifications and I went to get my whatever important psychology notifications and you know this meeting in that class and whatever and then there was this fax from my friend and she said ride the surf baby.

That's all it said but what great advice.

She knew I was caught in waves.

She wasn't necessarily interested in Buddhism.

At that point I was only early so that was just language she chose that was very impactful.

Ride the surf.

Need we say more?

Don't really.

You're going to be tossed about but can you learn to ride the surf?

Yes you can is the short answer.

And why are we gathered?

We each have a slightly different reason probably for choosing to be here tonight.

One of the first days of the time change was pitch black at 5 p.

M.

And it was probably a little more tempting to stay home at school tonight.

Then to bundle up,

Get in your car or get in the bus or walk or your bike or whatever you did to come here.

Oh I'd kind of like to go but Netflix is calling and for each of us for a slightly different reason we chose to come here.

Some of you I may not have even met before and you choose to come here because something drew you or you heard something or you looked up meditation in Nanaimo or something.

And I may not be your flavor and you may not find this all that helpful tonight and if not I want to say don't stop if I'm not your flavor you may not want to come back here I don't know but then go find somewhere else because something draw you drew you here and it was the thirst for a different type of experience.

And I would say it's your own inner ocean saying it's optional to always be in those effing waves man.

You have a little bit of agency you might want to learn how to ride the surf.

What in the West we call afflictive well we don't call them afflictive we call them negative or maybe harmful or destructive emotions right negative emotions anger hurt fear anxiety depressant of despair irritation judgment self-righteousness and so on and so on.

They're just waves we get caught in them I do too but we have a choice we have a choice to seek out bigger uglier waves to build on the waves to scream and yell and go on Facebook and talk about how our waves are different worse uglier and your waves are stupid and wrong or we can cultivate it's not easy I sure as heck haven't mastered it.

But bit by bit we can cultivate the ability to go this way it feels like the only real thing in my world the way that's trying to crush me drown me destroy me but I know there's a vast ocean.

Can I meditate can I go to a friend and ask for a hug can I take the dog and throw a stick and watch it's a neat simple suka it's a neat simple joy.

Want to see suka watch a dog chase a stick watch a kid laugh and dance when they're two when they hear music you know little buts type of but no one taught them they didn't see anybody dance innately a kid who can barely stand hears music that's suka that's our innate happiness innate joy.

I hope that gives us all a little bit of hope we can get to the ferry tomorrow for our super important lives and maybe we'll find out they're all canceled like they were a week or two ago when there was a bunch of ways I don't know if they will be or won't hopefully they won't it's inconvenient going into a sort of a long weekend but if so you can be upset and not on the ferry or you can be happy and calm and not on the ferry and you can be creative and say well I guess instead of going to Vancouver or Salt Spring or wherever your ferry was meant to take you I'm going to do something else.

I don't have to make it into a big drama and tell the whole world I'm the victim of the universe because my plans got affected.

I'm not being mean I hope it doesn't sound like I'm being mean I am mocking us a little bit in the hopes that will help us look at yeah wow I threw a major tantrum about that tantrums aren't fun it's painful when we're in that right it's really painful to be distressed and it's really painful when we're telling ourselves because we're all really smart none of us are masochists why am I freaking out about this why can't I let this go.

When you know what you're doing isn't helpful when you know you're making it worse and you can't stop right but that's still really wise if we're at least it's a major leap to be thinking I need to let this go I need to you know I need to forgive that my friends said that mean thing they may have meant it they may not have it may have been a misunderstanding it may have been on purpose but I just need to let it go and you can't that's because we're human and it's pretty sticky and then be kind to yourself and say okay I need a few more surfing lessons stuffs hard hard to let go of the sticky cliches that's a poly word that collages the sticky afflictive poisonous stuff if it was easy we'd all be in equanimity and suka all the time because clearly that's more fun clearly that's a better experience but whatever brought you here I'm going to put forward that there's a deep inner knowing in you that already gets it that already gets that there's a vast ocean and this is just a wave even if it's a pulverizing heartbreaking awful wave and that this too shall pass and that you have agency you have power or ability to create a change instead of being a log instead of being a log tossed around by the weather you can be a human with volition and choice intelligence and power and ability who can clamber up on top of the log and start writing it use it like a surfboard so there you go there's a new t-shirt don't be the log be the surfboard this can literally very over used word this can literally change the experience you have of being alive when you start to at least glimpse the possibility that there's a vast ocean not just this wave it's very freeing it's very hopeful it's also super discouraging when you get smashed by the next wave and smashed by the next one and you kind of know you'd like to be surfing and you freaking can't but that's where we have community and good books to read and hopefully some helpful talks and hopefully the ability to work with that mind because the more you can bring the mind out of to in this moment in this breath in this second in this millisecond everything's okay like those few seconds when you wake up before you remember let's cultivate those few seconds let's stretch them out and then when we do remember grandma's gone can we get to where we remember grandma with happiness and love and her cinnamon buns with a best in the world no offense to your grandma's in the buns of mine were better and we can have the beauty of holding them in our heart with a good memory because if they're gone they're gone people that's the it's as a three sailing weight there's a three sailing weight you can be happy you can be unhappy or you can be neutral you still ain't getting on the boat you can be happy you can be unhappy you can be neutral you're still not bringing grandma back in the form you'd like her back which is in an animated live human body form but you can certainly bring her back in what she taught you and who she was and how much you loved her so i'm not checking my email i forgot my watch this is on airplane but i need to see what time it is okay so tonight i wanted to bring the beginnings of teachings on sukha happy peaceful loving joy mind according to the buddha the innate quality of your mind is that your mind is sukha your mind is equanimity this sort of wise non-reactivity of rolling with the surf when it's tossing you around you you do your best to surf it and always at least keep the intellectual knowledge of the big ocean even when you can't feel it quite simply you're really feeling a lot of anger you've also got biochemistry and cortisol and neurological changes when you're caught in anger it's almost impossible to let it go right away if you meditate a whole lot you could probably get there but it's not easy that's okay if you're caught in anger and you at least intellectually remind yourself i'm not going to feel angry forever i can start letting this go and in about 20 or 30 minutes my body and mind can calm down and i'll feel better that's fantastic that's surfing instead of being along a good handful of you in this room know that one of my dogs is named sukha and i named her that so multiple times a day i use the word sukha come here sukha dinner time sukha come sukha come sukha come because it's really nice to have a reminder because i need them all the time because i'm often a log and i'm often believing the wave is the totality of everything and forgetting the ocean and just simply saying that word plus she happens to be a very happy delightful lovely personality loving hilarious dog so it makes it even easier because she has that quality the way a lot of dogs do of life is great i love you it's perfect which is a nice little reminder so there's a little uh hack as those who are young amongst us would say life hack name your pets really good words so when you say them over and over and over it helps name your pets happy and and uh graceful and forgiving and not um all the other names i've used in the past which were maybe hilarious but maybe not the best quality in the world why not why not a dozen times a day say grace grace come on grace kitty kitty kitty come on grace and suffer time little ways to remind ourselves that it's much faster than the wave and when we're doing well when life's pretty calm when your meditation is pretty calm there's just little ripples right yeah i feel pretty good attending to the mindfulness of breath it feels okay and there's a thought but it's not a big thought it's not a big crashing wave it doesn't bonk you in the head ah maybe i'll make a hot chocolate when i get home kind of a nice thought but you let it go and you come back to the experience of just being in equanimity going with the breath going with the ebbs and flows and then you're distracted a little and then that's fine and you come back that's a taste it's a really good taste and if you're like oh my goodness never had a meditation that felt like that first of all you have it might have only lasted a few seconds and you may not have noticed it and that's okay but it's there um and then when you do have one that is a little more noticeable gee that was a few minutes or half a dozen breaths of calm and felt kind of pleasant these are all tastes you can't manufacture it by the way because it's already there what you can cultivate is the ability to dive through the tumultuous waves and rest in the more calm ocean underneath so we'll sit together for a few minutes to let that sink in and then i'll close with a bell and uh what's called a dedication of merit so just for just a few minutes comfortable or relaxed posture or you may have agreed or disagreed or liked or not liked some of what i said that's fine whatever's present is fine maybe you're in some big waves maybe you're in some tiny little ripples maybe there's a fair bit of calm whatever it is it'll change so for a few minutes just simply observe what's the quality of the surf in the mind right now okay you.

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