I'm Danielle and tonight we're going to talk about pragmatism
and what it means to be a pragmatic Buddhism, Buddhist, or
what pragmatic Buddhism is. And the word pragmatism gets
used a lot sort of in popular culture.
And generally when people use it in popular culture, it's kind of
interchangeable with practical. And practical is part of
pragmatism, but it's not the whole thing of pragmatism.
So pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that looks at, tries
to determine what is quote UN quote true by examining evidence
of, of what would happen if it were true.
So pragmatism is about looking at our beliefs in particular and
trying to figure out which ones we can see evidence that they're
that that our belief is accurate.
Pragmatism asks us really to look at our direct experience.
So things that we can observe, we can see, feel, hear, whatever
else, and thinking about how the the consequences of that idea.
So if we have an idea, something that we believe is true, then
the idea with pragmatism is to say like, is it really true?
What evidence do we have to suggest that it might be true?
What would we look at so that we can see if something is true or
not? And later versions of pragmatism
and neopragmatism actually look really explicitly at the use of
language and social processes and how language and narratives
inform what we perceive as, you know, evidence and truth and
belief in all of those things. So when you put them together,
the really the idea is you can kind of determine what is true
based on the outcomes. Like you believe something will
have an effect and then you observe does it have that
effect? Or you can say like, I have this
belief to be true. Does that, is there evidence
that my belief is grounded in some other something other than
my own belief systems? So when we apply that to
Buddhism, it's the same sort of process.
So in pragmatic Buddhism, when we approach the Buddhist ideas,
we look at like, is there evidence that this idea is
accurate? Is there evidence that supports
that this idea reflects the way that the world actually works?
So for example, you know, the Buddha said that this idea of
dissatisfaction, suffering or uncomfortableness, discomfort,
that is, is kind of characteristic of human
existence. So we can look at is, is there
something pervasive in the human existence that that keeps
bringing up these conditions of dissatisfaction?
So I'll just talk about my experience.
I can look at my life and think like, yeah, I've had lots of
really joyful moments, but they're all sandwiched in
between boredom and unhappiness and threat and, you know, anger
and all of these little moments that are unsatisfactory.
So when I look back on my life, yes, it's one of those things
where I have moments of joy, but there's also pretty consistent
moments of, you know, boredom and unhappiness and all of those
kinds of things. And then the Buddha says that
there's a source for that dissatisfaction in particularly
in craving, but also in our aversion and delusion.
And when I look back on my life, those moments when I've been
dissatisfied, are they driven by craving, by wanting things to be
different than the way that they are?
Are they driven by aversion, you know, wanting things to be
different than they are, or are they driven by a delusion,
wanting things to be different than they are?
And in my life, for sure, absolutely.
There are certainly times when I have been bored and it's that I
didn't want to be bored. I wanted to be active.
I wanted to be entertained. I wanted to be, you know,
something else or, or I had an unpleasant experience that I
didn't want to have. And a lot of my sort of
unpleasantness in my life has been a lot about like trying to
avoid pain, so engaging in activities that like, you know,
people pleasing or avoiding situations or something like
that because I wanted to avoid pain.
But for me, when I look back, like the biggest characteristic
is about delusion because power of stories.
I can tell myself a story and I believe it and it's not
necessarily true. Stories about like what other
people's motivations are, what they're thinking or feeling.
And then I just believe them to be true and I act as if they're
true. And then I often create the
conditions that I'm afraid will happen because of the stories
that I tell myself. So and so that's part that's
part of what it needs to be like pragmatic in terms of Buddhism
is looking at the claims that Buddhism makes and for us to
investigate. Is there evidence that those
claims ring true for us? And that's something that we can
all do in our individual experience.
This is one of those things that I mean, personally, I think that
Buddhism at its core is very pragmatic.
And part of that is even the Buddha said like, try it for
yourself, you explore it, you investigate.
And that is a very pragmatic approach to the world.
But for pragmatic Buddhism in particular, there are a couple
of things that that make pragmatic Buddhism different
from other Buddhist sects. And that is in particular about
the sort of more mystical element, elements of pragmatism.
I mean, about Buddhism, things like, you know, reincarnation
and karma, that is about intergenerational caramels,
karma over like lifetimes, an individual's lifetime.
And when we look at that pragmatically, you know, people
can tell us stories about, you know, past life lives or feature
lives. And there are a lot of stories
like that in a lot of Buddhist texts, but they are stories.
So if we can't find a lot of like evidence that you could see
somebody, you know, died and then they came back to life or
they were reborn in another person, it's very difficult to
to actually find evidence of that.
So it's not that we're saying that that is not true.
It's saying that we don't have like some empirical evidence,
something that we can look at, see or touch or something like
that, that that provides evidence for that.
So for us, that means when we are approaching the more
mystical side of some Buddhist text, we just put those to the
side that can be interesting and you can still learn a lot from
it. So for the example with karma
and reincarnation, we think of that like within our lifetime.
We can certainly look at at our karma in the sense of like you
do something and there are consequences to that.
Something happens. It's just like A cause and
effect thing. You do something, then something
happens. That is, that's our idea of
karma. It's just like, what is the,
what's the next condition after that?
You put an action or a thought into the world and then
something happens. That's kind of karma.
Not in the popular culture, like karma is a bitch kind of a way,
but just like things happen. You put things in the world and
then things happen. And that that we can look at and
we can see evidence of that in our lives.
We can say like, oh, I did this thing and then this other thing
happened. That's kind of a consequence of
that thing that I did. Good, bad or neutral.
And the idea of reincarnation also, we don't need to look at
past lives or future lives because we can see even in our
own life, all of us have gone through moments of rebirth,
right? We are not the same person that
we were when we were a child. We've changed a lot.
And that idea of the, the concept of impermanence and that
you can kind of have a brand new moment in the next moment.
You can sort of in that way, kind of be reborn in the next
moment. That is a really useful tool, we
think, because it means that whatever has happened, you have
the opportunity to try something new.
Like you can do something new and create a new moment out of
that. There's lots of other things
that we can talk about with this idea of a pragmatic approach to
Buddhism. But I think that really the most
helpful is that is the question of like, is it helpful?
Can you find evidence of it? And is it helpful?
Is it useful? Is it help?
Does it help you navigate the world more clearly?
Does it help you achieve the kind of like calmness and
peacefulness or clarity of thought that you are hoping for?
And those are all things that you can practice, you can say
well on, in this case, Buddhism. Buddhism says, you know,
meditation can help, you know, kind of clear your mic and help
you see the world more clearly. Does it?
You sit and you meditate. Do you have an opportunity to
see things more clearly? That's something that you can
test for yourself. Anyway, I'm going to make this
brief and turn this over to you because I'd really like to hear
your questions or your observations or your comments
either about the idea of pragmatism in a pragmatic
approach to Buddhism. Or if you've seen this kind of
evidence in your own life. If you can say like, yes, I've,
I've conducted this kind of experiment, tried something and
see saw that it worked for me or it didn't work for me or
something else. But anyway, I'm going to turn it
over to you. So when you start, please
introduce yourself so we can get to.
I know you a little bit better, but now this time is yours.
What do you have? As well.
I wonder what is Buddhism, since everything is changing always.
You know, even Buddhism is changing.
But I think that the moment you call it Buddhism, it kind of
takes form in a Crag Rat sense. Otherwise, it's Dallas.
Yeah, I don't know. It's not that it's empirical,
you know, you want to try to, you know, just there's only so
much for you in your life. You want to try and before it,
bye. But hence finding a teacher is
kind of a shortcut to that. But I mean, I think that's what
partly why I'm drawn towards Buddhism.
It's, it's sort of like a, it's very valuable, you know,
thought, you know, philosophy, you must, it could be clinical,
it can be philosophical, it could be mystical.
It's got all those nice elements to it.
It acknowledges that there are things that we cannot explain.
You know, you just got to experience it.
You have to have faith because you don't want to waste your
time. You have to have faith in what
you're doing or not doing. And I think meditation is just a
very a good the engine behind behind this all.
Like if you stripped everything from it, the meditation would be
like the heart to me. Just like if you strip all of
our ducks, then all of our clinging, all of our
personality, we would just be awareness.
We would just be. Yeah.
Yes, but that's all I got. I mean, I think those are really
good observations. And I think it's also true that
there that Buddhism has changed every time it moves to a new
country. So every time that Buddhism
moves from, you know, India throughout the East and then it
came to the West, it takes on the flavor of the culture where
it is. And that's part of what I mean,
Buddha even had that idea. You have to be able to deliver
the message in the language that that culture can understand.
And so it does look like there's a lot of different sort of
Buddhisms and it, and part of it is like, what is the, the
doorway into, into Buddhism? What does the door need to look
like for you to understand that it's a door that you can walk
through and that you can kind of experience.
So how, how you understand it. And that's a really useful part
too. I, I also the comment that you
made about meditation kind of being at the heart of it, it is
true that meditation is a really core part, a core practice in
any Buddhist practice. And part of that is so that we
can learn the lessons of Buddha Buddhism in our body.
So to connect the idea of the mind and the body, because they
are connected, you know, they work together.
But especially in the West, we have a tendency to focus on
things in the mind and what we think about things and how we
can analyze things and how we can rationalize things, which is
not necessarily a bad thing, but we often disconnected from like
what our body is experiencing about that thing that we're
thinking or believing or, or seeing or whatever else.
And meditation is a good way to combine those two.
I don't know that I, I mean, it could be the heart of it that
that could be fine. Meditation is the heart of it.
I wouldn't say it's the end results.
I think one of the things that concerns me in the contemporary
mindfulness movement is that it's becoming more and more
detached from the Buddhist principles that kind of gave
rise to it. Not that meditation is only
associated with Buddhism. There are other traditions that
also meditate. So, but it is, it can be
problematic if you're not meditating for something, right?
So, so yes, we want to increase our awareness.
That is a really good thing. We want to know what's going on
in our bodies and what's kind of happening in our body, mind sort
of connection. But then, you know, for what
purpose? How does that help us kind of
navigate through the world? Because we're not monks sitting
up on a mountaintop that's been all of our day just meditating,
right? We have to engage with other
people and that's where the teachings can really be helpful.
So the, the meditation helps it settle into your body.
But then what, what is settling into your body?
What is it that you are trying to learn?
Because for, for many of us, for me in particular, I'm trying to
learn ways of being that are healthier for my mind, for my
body, for my relationships, for society.
And there's a lot of different ways to do that.
So meditation by itself can, you know, help you to see more
clearly. It can help, you know, an
assassin. This is C more clearly, but
maybe we don't want to do that. Maybe that's not the best way to
use our, the, our newfound sort of enlightenment, right.
So there is, there's that other sense of like, and then what
about this awareness? What are you going to do with
this increased awareness that you get from meditation?
So I would argue that like, it's good to have both.
So to recognize that sitting in meditation is just a good thing
on its own. It's good to help regulate your
system, your nervous system on and your physiological system.
That is a good thing. And then what?
And that's where like the the rest of the teachings, I think
can be helpful. I think that ethics do
definitely essential. Of course, I I like to also
think it's just for my own meditation practice that it it
just kind of like I feel the change that I want to be.
I want to feel that it's ethical causes, you know, I just, it
just seems to come more natural. But I guess, yeah, I definitely
believe in the system of ethics, you know?
Well, I mean, that's kind of the idea that the more we engage in
a Dharma practice, the more natural it becomes.
And but it does take a while. Like most of us have lived our
whole life learning a different system, a different ethical
system, a different way of being, a different, you know,
way of relating to our bodies, ourselves and our and to others.
And so we're kind of trying to overcome a whole lifetime of
habits and of of practices that didn't necessarily help us.
But the idea is we practice enough a different way.
It will become just as natural and ingrained as our previous
habits that didn't really help us out so well, but it does take
time and practice. Speaking of Douglas, Speaking of
ways that we relate to each other and Buddhism and the way
that we are taught to to relate, there's this show called
Pluribus. Has anybody here seen that?
It's not finished. So you don't never know what's
going to happen in the end. But I'm not going to spoil it
for anymore. I'll just tell you the plot.
The plot is that there's this virus, I think, or some somehow
people get infected with something that was either
created or it's alien. We don't know all of that stuff
yet. They didn't.
Every human on earth just falls out for 10 minutes and then they
get back up and they're now living in this like collective
consciousness. Everyone is happy all the time.
They're completely nonviolent. I mean, for all intents and
purposes, they're Buddhists when they get up, but they're in this
collective consciousness and they don't have the desire or
the ability to do the sorts of things that we often do because
of our attachment to our individuality.
And so there are some people who have not been who who this
hasn't happened to. There are about 12 people on
Earth, and all of them except one are happy with this new
experience because they can control these new people, right?
So now they can control everybody on Earth who's
connected to this hive mind because those people will do
anything to make you happy, but they're enjoying it.
Some of them are enjoying it. And then there's this one person
who is the protagonist who is not enjoying it.
She's not happy. She wants us to return to being
this, you know, to be an individual.
She wants to somehow get rid of this, eradicate this illness or
whatever it is, and to allow everyone to go back to being an
individual. And I just thought it was really
interesting. Again, I don't know how the how
the show resolves itself. I don't know what's going to be
the message in the end, But it seems to me that the message is
one that we've seen in a lot of other types of popular culture
before. It's like this, this dichotomy
between individuality and collectivism, right, which
really goes back to the Cold War.
And you know, we've seen this a lot of times, you know, this the
fight between capitalism and communism, Bolshevism.
And it's like we always, whenever we see this theme in
TV's or in TV shows or movies, there's always some extreme
right. It's always like collectivism is
like this thing that turns you into a, you know, a drone right
there. There seems to be this idea in
our culture that it's like you're either fully individual
or you're, you're just like a complete drum.
You're a worker bee, you're an aunt.
And it's in this show that's kind of how they're depicting
the people who have become this collective consciousness.
And we've seen it a whole bunch of times.
But so anyway, just to go back to what you were saying, like we
have this, there's this antagonism in our culture
towards thinking in the way that Buddhists say we should think,
right? We should think of ourselves as
connected to everyone, right, as not independently arising.
It's not an independent individual, but someone who is
connected to a network of consequences.
And and so I just think that there we have this strain in our
culture that is constantly driving us away from that.
And this show is just like one of the latest examples of that
model thinking. That is part of what we're what
we're the challenge that we're dealing with, especially here in
the US, because that idea of individualism is really strong
and it's hard to, it's hard to think about what's, what's the
alternative? What does it look like?
Because we do kind of have, we tend to be a binary culture
where we think it's like black and white.
And so then it is difficult to think about like, of course, we
are all individuals, but we, the argument that Buddhism is make
is we were all interconnected. And so for us, I think the
challenge is like how to become aware.
Of that interconnectedness, even though we don't necessarily feel
it or see it and we get all these messages from our culture
that that interconnectedness thing is a is a problem and that
is a challenge. It's one of the reasons that
it's a benefit to have a group to talk about this because we
don't get a lot of other opportunities to talk about
things like this because it's kind of heretical, you know, to
talk about like maybe it's OK that we are acknowledge that we
need other people, even though that shouldn't be a radical idea
because we know we need other people.
But it's set up in our culture as if that were like a major
character for all flaw to need other people.
They didn't have anyone before talk about this term stunt and
this term practice alone, which is fine, but definitely finding
a community. Related to this, it's.
It's nuts. Yeah, I mean, Buddhism talks
about those 3 jewels, right? The idea of, of the Buddha as a
representation of like the potential for transformation.
We see the model of the Buddha and the Buddha managed to find a
sort of clarity of mind that we are all seeking.
And that's that's a good thing. So we can see that model.
It's, it also represents like our individual responsibility
are our individual actions. So, so that and that, that our
culture generally is really comfortable with that.
Of course, we are responsible for our own, you know,
well-being in our own actions. We are, we're comfortable with
that, with that idea in general. And then the the second jewel of
the Dharma is like this. All of these teachings that we
can listen to and we can read about and we can learn about and
then try them out for ourselves. And also the methods, the
meditation and all of that. But it's the third jewel that is
most difficult, particularly in our culture.
And the third jewel is the Sanga.
It's a community of practice. It's a group of people where you
can talk about ideas like this that may be difficult to talk
about elsewhere. It's also the community, your
practice is really good to help you maintain your practice,
right. So one of the biggest challenges
is trying to make sure that you meditate every day.
And that's on you as an individual.
It can be challenging, right? You work full time and maybe you
have a family and you know, maybe you have all these other
obligations. It's really difficult to say
like I'm going to make time to meditate.
And so the group can help you with that because then you sit
here and I mean, like most of us probably don't sit for 40
minutes in silence by ourselves. I mean, if, if you do fantastic,
that's, that's great. That's what we're going for.
But for me, it took a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of years of
coming to this group every Thursday night and practicing
with a group so that then I could go on my own and do it on
my own and do it individually after that.
But I still need the group in part because communities of
practice not only give us a place to talk about these kinds
of things and help us to stick to our practice, but a community
of practice like this asonga can also help point out when we are
about the things that we can't see.
I mean, I've talked a lot more recently about this idea of
delusion. Really, it's because it's a big
one for me. I can tell myself such big
stories that I just really believe are true.
And then I can no longer see that it's a story.
It's just I just believe that it's like capital T truth.
And it's the the song of it can help me and say like, Hey, you
keep saying that thing, but that's not my experience.
I don't see it that way or, or something like that.
And that can be, it can be really beneficial because it's a
community that can support you, of course, and hold you
accountable. And that can be a real benefit
when you're trying to do something that is difficult and
not in line with what everybody else is doing.
Had any of you approached Buddhism with this pragmatic
lens? Before hearing about pragmatic
Buddhism, Did you think about Buddhism in terms of like, what
are the consequences of my actions?
And is this, can I find evidence of what these Buddhist teachings
are? Is that, had any of you
approached it that way before? I mean, and I asked because it's
become really popular now in a lot of scientific circles.
So there's psychologists and neuroscientists and biologists
and physicists that are kind of testing a lot of Buddhist
principles to see if they can find evidence of it.
So it's become a lot more popular.
There's a lot more books about like the benefits of of
meditation and what happens physiologically is benefit
meditation. Those are all that's like a
really pragmatic approach to to Buddhism.
So had that. Is that something that had that
you had experience of before you came here?
I don't know if this directly applies.
My name's Aaron, I came to Boo. This would booze with a couple
of different kind of anchors or pointers, but one of the large
groups was an Alan Watts recording it.
I was listening to it spoke of you know, is there a great power
in the world Is there God and then fortuitous just not a
useful question and I think that was the largest draw on we don't
know that there's no usual way of knowing that there is no data
that could support this one way or another.
And so through through annotation of Dharma in
practice, you can find this very my mother's a science teacher
and site of the method is ingrained in my soul and and
that is to me fried my base greetings.
Just it's just assigned it weapon hypothesize no experiment
Sir and then re accept. I think that is a really useful
part of Buddhism in general, and I think it's a real advantage
that those of us in the West have because we can, like, look
at things in a new way so we can start looking at all of this.
Like Buddhism has been around forever.
We had so many texts, so much writing about what Buddhism is
and what Buddhism says that we have a real opportunity to step
back and like analyze. Do we just, does this resonate
with me? Does this help me?
Is this useful to me? Does this help me to see more
clearly? We have a lot that we can kind
of pick from. And I think for that reason, in
pragmatic Buddhism, although our lineage does go through Chan and
Zen Buddhism, it's one of the reasons that we use like the
silent meditation is one of our major meditation techniques
because that's what's common in Chan and Zen Buddhism.
But we also can look at other parts, other Buddhist practices
to say, is this useful? Is this helpful?
Does this help us to understand it better?
Does it help us to practice but better?
And that is exactly, it's like proposing A hypothesis.
Does this work for us? And I think that's the real
that's a real benefit of from these newer sort of more dynamic
approaches to Buddhism that are coming out of the West and that
are reflecting a lot of western culture is that we don't
necessarily have to say like this is what is capital T truth,
because this lineage of Buddhism says this is what's true.
We can say like, well, let's we can evaluate that.
Is that is that true? Does it fit our culture?
Does it fit our life? And that's that can be a really
useful thing. We just for us in pragmatic
Buddhism, as long as we keep coming back to asking the
question because, you know, in I've talked about this also like
we are not as a species and particularly as Americans, we
are not comfortable with uncertainty.
We have a very low tolerance for ambiguity in general.
And so we have a tendency to like, find the answer, OK, this
is what's true. And then we stop questioning
because now that's comfortable. Now I understand that this is
true and one of the real benefits of Buddhism in general,
but I think pragmatic Buddhism in particular is that like the
question is really what's important.
It's not as important as the answer.
It's engaging in the process of questioning, questioning,
whatever that is. You know, this meditation
technique, is this meditation technique effective?
For me, That's something you should keep questioning.
Try something else or try something new.
Or you know particular teachers, are they effective at explaining
something? They help you understand
something great, not try something new.
I like the questioning part, even if it means it puts us
right back into that state of ambiguity and uncertainty.
But I think there's real benefit to getting more comfortable with
not knowing and figuring out how to navigate the world when you
don't know. Because in truth, we don't
always know, even if we convince ourselves that we do.
And we still need to engage in the world like we are not.
We're not withdrawing from the world, so we should just keep
questioning. My name's Carol, and I so
appreciate how you articulate everything.
The questioning is what I really appreciate because how you from
the background of being a Christian born Baptist, you
didn't question everything was kind of course that to you.
And I find that this practice is more demanding of me and I can
question and there's a source of knowledge within that I'm
capable of learning more and I didn't.
That wasn't. I would tell a story about
conversation I had with a friend who called me.
His mother had just passed away and he was a born again
Christian. His concern was he didn't think
his mother was going to happen because she had not been
baptized. That's kind of sad.
They have that tunnel vision of thought and not questioning
anything that that's kind of like the background I was raised
in. So I really appreciate this
ability to use my mind to question things and find out
there's a whole source of possibilities.
It is, it is liberating in that sense, right?
Like 'cause it is, you can open it up all the things that you
believe to be true. You can start questioning them
and exploring them. That gives you something to kind
of focus on. But it's also helpful to like
have a community to kind of like touchdown with because that can
be, it's can be a little bit exhausting to your point, like
to keep, to keep questioning and to not know if the, if this is
the, you know, right answer or the thing that I'm supposed to
do. And it can be really helpful to
kind of like give yourself a, a grounding.
So this is one of those things that I, I, you know, I'm a, I'm
a product of this culture. I tend to go to extremes like
black and white. I'm going to go hard one way and
hard the other way. Before Buddhism, I was like,
yeah, I'm balanced on average because I go so hard one way and
so hard the other way. Like, yeah, on average it's
balanced, but it wasn't very balanced.
And so it's helpful to when you get that point, if you get to
that point where you're overwhelmed.
So I've done this also where I was like, oh, I have to question
everything. And and then reading a lot about
physics where like this is actually like there's more space
between all these molecules and the floor.
Then there is actual floor. And then like, am I even sitting
on the floor? I can go to some crazy places,
is what I'm saying? Like I can go way too far and I
become kind of untouched, weathered.
And that's when I'm like, OK, I had to stop questioning.
Now I have to find something that I believe is true, even if,
you know, I don't have evidence for it right now.
I have to find some place where I can come back and be like, OK,
there may be more space between the molecules in this floor than
there is floor, but I can feel a floor.
This is a this is a thing that I can feel.
This is true for me right now. This is real for me right now.
And then once I can get to that space, then I can go back into
questioning again. But if you are like me and you
tend to go way too hard and things start to unravel and
you're kind of like untethered, find something to tether
yourself to. And then once you feel grounded
again, then you can go back to questioning again just to am I?
Am I the only one? Is it just me?
OK, fine. I mean, one big question would
be how do you feel? You know, are you suffering?
Is what you're doing working, what they're doing working?
Because sometimes we don't even be settled for things.
We the brain creates shortcuts automatically, but like
questioning how you feel. About something is a big one,
yeah. That is for me too, because
before I found Buddhism, I just hadn't, I had no real idea about
what was happening in my body or mind.
It's just like I was, and a lot of people are like, we're on
sort of automatic pilot, right? And I was just very reacted to
things. So something would happen and I
just would react and I didn't even realize like, hey, I have a
feeling there's, there's some sensation in my body that's
that's happening before I react to that thing.
And Buddhism has really helped me to be like, wait, what is
what's happening? What am I feeling?
Like I feel the need to do this reaction, whatever it is, like,
where'd that come from? And where is it in my body?
What does that feel like? And that's been really useful.
And it, it has been, I mean, so it's been, you know, like 15
years of practice, but I've gotten much, much better at, at
knowing that like I'm having an experience, like I am feeling
this thing either physically in my body or emotionally or having
this thought. And that's really liberating
because, you know, for the longest time I just was like,
this is just the way the world is.
And it was like a, it was like a pinball and a pinball machine
just careening from one side to the other.
So that's better like what's happening in this moment.
I think it goes back to your original point about awareness,
right? Like just can you be aware of
what's happening even in your physical body?
Because that was another thing that I, that was kind of cut off
from my emotions and my physical sensations.
Like I didn't want to have anything to do with any of that.
The body's gross, right? That's what we grow up learning.
So now I'm like, the body is just a thing.
It's a it's a thing and there's just be aware of it.
And be aware of what do you identify where like what's when
you re identify with our thoughts and what we reject, you
know what we think is right. Yeah, that's pants the question.
Yeah, we get lost and like I'll be thinking about thoughts.
You know, I was trying to meditate and I'm like my
thinking, I'm thinking, thinking about making, you know, and
just, we get lost real easy, you know, And it's nice to have
something where I can send her wherever I'm at, you know, when
I'm driving, whatever, once I'm engaged at a moment, you know,
and I see what it takes mentally.
But then if I can get a chance to pause and that really can
power my decisions. And my actions, yeah, I can find
that nice pause. I always say that my Buddhist
practice is a cushion between my crazy and you're crazy.
And the more that I practice, the bigger that cushion gets.
Which means like the more crazy I can observe and get observed
absorbed by this, this practice cushion.
And the more of your crazy, you can just be who you are and it
gets observed by this practice cushion.
I remember, you know, early on when I started really meditating
and engaging in this Buddhist practice, like my family would
notice, they notice a difference in part because I was just less
reactive. Like I could pause more.
There was just more of a space between whatever thing that they
just did or said and the reaction that just automatically
came up for me. And they would notice, like, if
I started to not engage in my regular meditation because I'd
get more reactive and they'd start to be like, have you
meditated lately? And I was like, I don't want to
hear that right now. I mean, no, I haven't.
You are correct. But so, yeah, so I just try to
keep that meditation cushion filled up, filled up as much as
I can. If it's a nice, it's a nice
buffer. My name's Jane.
I just wanted to thank you all. Like, I'm this is my first time
coming here and I just came here to learn about this.
And so thank you for this experience.
I've enjoyed it so. That's all I wanted to say.
So, well, it's good to have you, yeah.
Thanks. It's one of those, it's a real
benefit. We always get a lot of newcomers
and it's a benefit to our Sanga because it makes it much more
dynamic. You know, that kind of
questioning part. It's easy for a community to
kind of get settled into. It's kind of regular, habitual
ways of being, right? You have the same group of
people, they come together the same time, they do the same
thing. It ends up becoming like a very
familiar, comfortable routine. And as we've said, like the idea
is not to to be comfortable, not that you should be
uncomfortable, but that you should be in that kind of space,
that dynamic space where it is changing.
And it's a real benefit when newcomers come in because it
helps to change this, the space so that we have a little like
it's a living community, a living sanga.
So I'm glad that you're here. I'm Mary.
So the, the word pragmatism just seems very complicated.
So thank you for talking about it today and and kind of
explaining it more. But I think that one of the
things that I have really enjoyed about Buddhism here is
like you're talking about delusion, for one example, like
just learning to see the world a little differently then my
traditional Christian upgrade to be more like, oh, this is
something everyone has. Everyone has brains that make up
stories for them and they don't. You can't always trust what you
think happened, why this person did what they did.
It might have nothing to do with you.
So I mean, just learning things like that here, it's been
helpful. It might have nothing to do with
you. That's the best message that
I've gotten from this practice actually, because I mean, I, I
grew up in an alcoholic home And so I thought everything was
actually my fault. And that, that pattern, that's
the story that I told myself for a really, really long time.
And so it colored like all of my interactions with with people
and, and I, it would make me like, I would just, I would
assume I'll just automatically like you must be thinking or
feeling this thing, this thing that is like antagon.
Againistic towards me, because that's been my experience and I
didn't even realize that was a story.
It was a story that I was telling myself.
It wasn't true. And it took like many years of
thinking like, huh, I just assume that that is true, but
it's not. So maybe like a little space, a
little pause and recognize that, OK, this is the story that's
coming up for me. They have their own story in
this, but I don't know their story.
Just because I feel like I, I, I assume what their story is
doesn't mean it's their actual story.
So that's been like the single most liberating thing.
I think for me it's like I don't have to believe, even though my
own stories that I tell myself. I gotta do it over myself, I
guess, you know? Been sickling, but I'm always
projecting like out of the judge of me, you know, probably
because maybe I judge, you know, usually people that accuse
things are not usually, but a lot of times if people accuse
things and so they're doing it so so yeah, I try not to be as
judge mental and then not judging people and maybe.
Judging or not, you know, nice, hard.
It is hard. And, and the other part of that
is that like just because somebody said a thing doesn't
mean it's true. And that's like a really hard
thing to get, but but so liberating.
And there's a lot of difficult things at work and people are
saying things about me that aren't true.
And I can just be like, just cuz they said a thing does not mean
it's true. But I feel it every time I was
like, Oh, that is not true. And I but I can still be like,
just cuz somebody said a thing, even if I'm the one that's
saying it about myself, just cuz somebody said a thing doesn't
make it true. And that's really helpful.
So whether somebody is judging me or not judging me, it doesn't
really matter, right? Like that's not something that's
happening inside me. That's something that's
happening inside somebody else. And I, if I give myself enough
space, I can make a choice about whether I take that on or I
don't take that on. And I didn't, I never really
knew that that was a choice. There's, there's a story about
the Buddha that talks about like not accepting gifts of abuse.
And I find this like so fantastic.
Like the story goes something like when the Buddha's Buddha
first started teaching, there were other sort of gurus and
then he started getting their, their following their followers.
So they, they left these other gurus and went to go talk to the
Buddha. So some of the gurus got really
pissed off and they would come and talk to the Buddha and be
like, you're stealing my followers, you're a bad man.
Why are you doing this? And then the Buddha would be
like, I do not have to accept your gift of abuse.
That, that feeling that you're having, that anger that you're
having that's on yours. I'm not not stealing anybody.
I'm, I'm giving the message about like this is the message
about unsatisfactoriness and how you can work through
unsatisfactoriness. That's that's all I'm doing.
And I think about that all of the time because that's, that's
a case where somebody is like judging you or saying something
mean to you. Like they are giving you the
gift of abuse. You don't have to take the gift
of abuse, which is I will just say much for me much parter to
do than to say, but it still is one of those things.
If I can just recognize somebody is some of my Co workers,
they're giving me gifts of abuse.
I don't have to be like, Oh, can I take that?
I can just say like, thank you. I don't accept your gift of
abuse because just because you said a thing does not make it
true. So I have to remind myself that
a lot. But but it when I do, it's
amazing. It's like a superpower, really.
I am thinking about not necessarily the gift of abuse,
but also just the, you know, trying to accept things that
happen the way they happen. I had to say it was the last day
of class at university, and it's everything that could go wrong
was going wrong. I woke up and I went into the
kitchen and the soup that I made this like squash suit, but in
that squash sheet that I made yesterday was planning on eating
in the morning was still sitting on the the oven right.
So I never I never blended it or put it away.
I just forgot. And then I was having all types
of problems with like my files trying to get things ready, my
slideshow and all this stuff ready for my lecture.
And then I, you know, got out of the house late and I get in the
car and the, the gas tank is on empty somehow.
So I have to, I'm late already, but I have to stop for gas and
I'm trying to get out of the parking lot.
These people are coming in and I get stuck and end up having to
back up. And so then I'm like, you know,
I'm now I'm hyped up. So I have to get to class and I
to get there, there's no parking space and all the spaces that I
usually can park in, maybe because I'm a little bit later,
there is no parking. And then I get halfway to my
office and I don't have my cell phone with me.
I left it in the car and and then I would go to go to my
office and I print the things up, but the but the printer's
not working. You finally get the printer
working. I'm rushes a class and I
realized I don't have my clicker with me and I got into the
classroom. I actually got there just on
time and everything was fine. And I taught my class well too.
I had two classes, but I was able to not perfectly.
I was a bit frustrated during a lot of that sequence that I just
told you about, but I was able to just tell myself, you know,
if I get there late, it's going to be fine.
If I don't have my quicker, I'll just use the keyboard if I can't
find a parking space. You know, these things happen
and you know, not perfectly, but I you were asking about how we
use these things to help us in our daily lives.
And I feel like I run up against situations like that and I don't
react to them the same way that I maybe would have before I
started practice and grooves. And that's the biggest like win,
the biggest single win. We're about out of time.
But if there anyone that has something that you would like to
share before we close, I mean, I'll open the door for anyone
who hasn't spoken if you would like to.
You are not obliged, but give you an opportunity.
And Gay said the grammatism helps us in this day and age of
craigmaticism within. We have a lot more information
just thrown at us in the view. The ladder's OK.
I mean that 50, I think it confuses us a lot more.
So that's my folks. And listening to you in this.
Yeah, you too. That's what I got out of it.
Yeah, we're in a confusing world, and it's helpful if we
can figure out a way to kind of bring it down to the ground
instead of like. Socially, some of them would be
had over a well. Yeah, yeah.
Well, we will close. And when we close, we like to
say, may the fruit of our practice extend to all living
beings, Svaha.