Transcription
All right, happy Thursday. You know, it's interesting. I, uh, we started sitting tonight and somebody started practicing guitar in the apartment above, and I, you know, I had some thoughts.
One of the thoughts I had was like, "Oh, we're practicing Zen and they're practicing guitar." Kind of the same thing. You know, practice. I had a martial arts teacher years ago who said, "Practice makes better." I think that's right. Zen practice makes better. We sit, we become more adept at living a full human life. We still have obstacles, conditioned patterns, bad habits, reactions, but it gets better. My experience is if you do it for years, it gets a lot better.
But it's also true that like, like the guitar music, things filter in. You know, we have things that arise into our field of awareness that we don't want. I think there's a meme about that that's like, you know, "Do not want." Can't remember what that's from, but. And, you know, interestingly, you know, in my, in the different arenas of my life, there have been a number of things that have have come into my awareness that are sort of large-scale adversity-related things, right? You know, we'll think, think of old age, sickness, and death, right? Sudden tragedy, loss, hardship. And feel very fortunate that while none of that has happened in my direct family sphere at the moment, although it has in the past, that sort of within my circle of awareness, I've been seeing a lot of it. And I think that that is one of the core reasons that we do this thing. You know, we keep coming back and, you know, it's a little silly. I mean, you know, I go every morning and I plop down and I sit on this cushion and I watch my ridiculous brain do ridiculous things. And sometimes it gets really quiet and peaceful, and other times it's really active and annoying. Sometimes profound things happen, and sometimes nothing happens. Sometimes it feels like a waste of time. Sometimes guitar music that's mediocre at best filters in, like it's super corny, right? It's like the bad guitar music from the apartment above of our lives.
But that's what *dukkha* is. *Dukkha* means, you know, suffering, adversity, challenges, difficulties. And we're just beset by them, big and small, all the time, everywhere. And then, and not only are they all over the place, but like, there's a high fraction of our sort of societal structure that's finally tuned to make sure that you've got some *dukkha* to chew on at all times. My, my father-in-law, God love him, what a, you know, just a wonderful man, really good, good guy, you know, but he, um, when tragedies occur, he sends texts to the family chat. And so, you know, you could just be going along like weeding the flower bed and, "Oh, there was a mass shooting." You know, I've turned off notifications on all the news apps years ago because I don't like stimulating my nervous system that way. But kind of doesn't matter, right? Like the stimulus, the *dukkha* finds you.
You know, there's the built-in stuff, you know, old age, sickness, and death, right? Like some days you don't feel good. Some days you realize you can't do the things you used to do, right? Some days the people you love are getting old. Old age, sickness, and death. These are three constants in our lives. But we are the first generation of human beings to have awareness of everyone's old age, sickness, and death across the planet. With very few exceptions, human beings have lived in roughly the world that their parents lived in. And those parents lived in roughly the world that their parents lived in.
You know, there's a social, I'm a social worker by training. And, you know, there's a social worker saying which is that what is possible is a short distance from what is, right? Right? So if I'm working in a big institution and I want to make a policy change and help a bunch of people, if I aim for a little further along, I'm likely to get it right. And then from there, I can aim for a little further along. And we have incremental change over time. And all of a sudden, we've, you know, radically shifted something, but we didn't do it all at once, right? It's called macro-level social work. And it's true. It's absolutely true. If you're willing to accept small gains, you can make huge gains.
But that isn't the world that we currently inhabit. We currently inhabit a world that bears no resemblance to the world of 30 years ago. Just none. You know, 30 years ago, I was 20. Right? At 20, I went to my grandfather's farm and he said, "Hey, can you bring the truck to the barn?" And I jump in his 1965 Chevy pickup. Right? So, you know, 30 years ago would be 1995, right? So, that was what, a 30-year-old pickup then, right? So, I jump in that 30-year-old pickup. You know, the gear shifts on the, on the tree instead of on the floor, but I understand how it works. You know, step on the clutch, pull the thing off. You know, go to the barn, load the truck, go do the things. Everything was recognizable, right? You know, he liked cars, so like, you know, but I could drive his old cars or his, you know, modern cars equally. Now cars drive themselves. And I'm not trying to go down a road of like, "Oh, I'm an old man railing against technology." My point in talking about this is that the, the normal solution to human life outside of a spiritual life is to kind of do whatever everyone else did in the past, right? Just use the structures of the past to carry me into the future. You know, we'll worship the same gods, we'll have the same rituals, we'll live in the same houses, we'll have the same everything.
But the sociopolitical, technological structures of our society are advancing and growing, changing so fast that never mind your parents. The world is unrecognizable to anyone over the age of 50, maybe even over the age of 40, you know, or 30. Like, I mean, 25 years ago, the internet was, you know, AOL. Now the internet can write your term papers for you in 10 seconds, which creates all of this existential anxiety, right? The reason people walk around with this sense of unease is reasonable because anxiety is often produced when we don't know what's going to happen and when some of the things that might happen seem scary. You know, if I don't know whether you're going to give me a cookie or a brownie, I don't feel anxious. But if I don't know whether you're going to give me a cookie or hit me, I do feel anxious, right? And so, you know, everyone makes fun of the Boomers because all of their advice seems ridiculous. Well, of course it seems ridiculous. The, the, the world that they grew up in and the rules by which life was governed are all gone. Every generation has, you know, things that they do that they probably should atone for and things they did that helped. The Boomers are no exception to that. But the reason their advice doesn't resonate is because the world is completely different than it was. Like wildly so.
And so I humbly would suggest that Zen might be one of the only remedies for such a situation because it starts from "not knowing" and "no fixed self." Because the truth is that the playbook of your forefathers and foremothers was never *the* playbook. It was just more likely to work, you know, based on sort of social agreements and social constraints and, you know, that the world was roughly the same. You know, if you're living, you know, in the Golden Age of Zen in China, maybe, you know, if you just do what you're supposed to do, everything will be fine. But maybe the Huns will show up. You know, there's a famous koan about a famous unmaster named Ganto, you know, who's killed by bandits during like a time of trouble and he shouts, and the shout is like, you know, echoes down through the ages, kind of thing. But the point is that he was killed by bandits, right? So clearly the "become a monk, live in a monastery, become a Zen teacher, grow old" playbook didn't work for him.
So that's the antidote in my view, right? Antidote might be the wrong word, but this practice of "not knowing," this practice of "I sit with what is." I allow what is to be what is because I can't prevent what already is from being. You know, I may choose to work to change something, but what, what is, is present with my feelings. I accept that there is no fixed version of me. Then all attempts to solidify that will create suffering for myself and for everyone around me. You know, think about how hurtful it sounds if I say, "Why do you know? How dare you say that about me?" Now, what if I say, "Why do you say that about me?" See the difference? One comes from the position of a fixed self which I must defend. The other comes from a position of curiosity. Huh?
I had someone want to propose a change of plans for an initiative to me today. And they said, "Um, don't just agree with me. If you don't agree with this, I really want you to tell me." And I said, "Just because we frequently agree doesn't mean that I'm afraid to disagree with you. We just happen to frequently agree, but I've disagreed with you before, you remember." And they were like, "Yeah, that's true." I'm like, "Yeah, tell me your idea. I'll either tell you that it's great or I'll tell you I don't agree. We'll figure it out together. No fixed self, no fixed place, right? I don't know yet."
So then as I look at life, right? At loved ones, at situations, at *dukkha* arising, at suffering occurring, right? I don't know what's going to happen. But what I do know is the most liberated, powerful place I can be is in the place of total engagement with exactly what's right there in front of me. Right? So if there's self-driving cars and AI, okay? What does that mean? Let's find out. Because we don't know what's going to happen next. A nearby star might go nova and wipe out the power grid and bye-bye self-driving cars. I don't know. I'm not sure the physics on that actually works out, but. But it's not "I don't know" me, right? It's "I don't know" embrace, right? I, I work directly with what is. This path is a path of courage. It's a path of fearlessness. If you can withstand and truly experience and feel the things that life brings, including the hard things, including the grief and sadness and challenges, then what can stand against you?
The bad news is I have no antidote for your suffering. The good news is that the suffering is also not poisonous. Just suffer and then it'll pass. The antidote, if it could be said to be one, is that it ends. Impermanence. Sometimes we have to walk through hard things. Which is why we say that this is, this path is an antidote to suffering, right? It's not because it stops all suffering. It is because it allows us to be exactly with what is. We're not generating extra. "How dare you say that about me?" Now I'm generating extra suffering. "Why do you say that about me?" Now I'm eliminating suffering. I might even be giving you permission, right, to have a beef with me.
"I don't think you're going to like what I'm going to say." "Oh, okay. What are you going to say?" "Well, this." I had someone not that long ago tell me, "Um, I notice that you're nice even when people are being disrespectful." I was like, "Well, I'm going to treat people with respect regardless of what they do. That's on them. How I act is on me." Can we aim at the minimal pos, minimum possible suffering? What's my minimum suffering payment? Right. Good.
So, you know, when the guitar comes through the ceiling, just hear it. Music is good, enjoy it. If the music is bad, just wait. It'll be impermanent. The music makes you cry, just cry. Music makes you dance, just dance. You know, work directly with your life. Good.