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Responsive vs Reactive - Richard Shankman

The following talk was given by Richard Shankman at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 22, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Responsive vs Reactive

Good morning. So, we're good to go. No announcements. All right, so good morning, everyone. I'm happy to be with you. Let me just say what I have in mind. I have a little bit in the beginning I actually want to try to keep it quite short, just to get us started, and then I hope mostly to open it up for discussion if there are questions. That can often be a good discussion. If there isn't much, I'm prepared to talk more if I need to. Those of you who know me, I can talk. But that's mostly what I'd like to do. The ending time is scheduled for 10:45. We want to respect the time. I was told that if things are going and we want to keep going five or 10 minutes after, that's okay, but we also want to respect for some of you who need to leave. So at 10:45, if you need to leave, just take care of yourself. Go. As a matter of fact, at any time you're not stuck here, just take care of yourself. You'll stay when you need to stay, go when you need to go. It's all good.

You know, I was reflecting coming here because I live in Oakland, and way back I used to come here a fair amount, but I haven't been here much really for a number of years. I just don't get here at all. So I was wondering, there's a few people here I recognize from way back, but I was wondering, am I going to know anyone? As I look around, really, I don't know really anyone here. There's a few people, but there's no one here I know well. So I was reflecting, what would be of value or interest to talk about, given that I don't know the group? I don't know you, I don't know your goals as a Dharma practitioner or meditator. And you know, we don't all obviously share the same goals, and I don't make assumptions. It's certainly not for anyone else to tell us what our goals should be. We need to come to that ourselves. I hope we'll reflect on Dharma teachings as we get clearer about our goals, but then we're each going to find our own way.

In the tradition, there's this idea of Nirvana—that's the Sanskrit—or Nibbana¹ in Pali. That's a whole discussion, and we don't know if we'll get into that today, but some of you may think like that. I'm guessing most of us probably don't. You'll hear words like Enlightenment, realization, Awakening, Liberation—all these different terms. They all have different connotations for each of us. They're not all the same thing, but that's a whole other discussion.

But I feel pretty sure that probably there's a few things we all, most of us, probably do share in common. You may not have a sense of your goals. Sometimes we're drawn to these practices, and it's just not clearly articulated. Maybe we just think there's something there of value. When I started out, I was 18 years old, and I was drawn to these, and I just thought, you know, I didn't know, but those people who are doing that meditation and going whatever real deep is, there's something they got. I want that. And there was just a sense of something like that.

Some of us may have a sense of just wanting to live in a way that we suffer less. Probably that's true for all of us, right? Want to suffer less or live in a way that's... I don't know, you have to fill in your own words. I bet all of us want to live in a way where we have a kinder heart, more empathetic, less ill will, anger, hatred. Right? Probably all of us. I bet probably most all of us want to live, if you think about it, who wouldn't want to live in a way where we're more clear, non-reactive, and more wisely responsive as opposed to being reactive in life? Maybe something like that. Present, awake, wise. You know, there's lots of different terms; you have to find your own adjectives. One way I bet all of us want to live is in a way that creates less and less suffering for ourselves and for others and wants to create more, you could say happiness or well-being for others and ourselves. That's a simple, I actually like that, right? And who wouldn't want to do that?

So anyway, you have to find your own way. But assuming we're up for something, whatever our goal or aims are, then the question is what's going to support us to be able to actualize that. So it starts with a nice idea, and then maybe it becomes actually more alive. And many of you will know from your own practices that you've seen lots of fruits and benefits in your practice. I was just speaking with someone a couple of days ago; he's been a Dharma person for maybe five years. And when he came to our group—it's up in Oakland, we're called the Metta Dharma Foundation, we're kind of like you guys here, we're smaller, but we have our weekly group, we run retreats and all that kind of stuff—and he came, a good person and everything, and he said himself that he had a lot of anger. And just even in these five years, so much has transformed. He was sharing two days ago with me that he had someone working where he lived and they accidentally destroyed a plant that was like his favorite plant. It was a big deal about the plant. And he was saying how it used to feel like that would be something he would have just—it would not have gone over well with the person who accidentally did it. And he said this time he noticed that he just kind of walked away and just thought, "Well, you know, things happen." And he noticed, wow, what a shift in himself. And he said to me, "Things are better when you're a Buddhist."

You may not identify as a Buddhist. That's a whole another thing. Maybe I'm not supposed to talk like that around here, since it's a Buddhist place. I've been a Buddhist all-in for many, many decades. I've been meditating for, I don't know, 54, 55 years. I don't identify at all as a Buddhist anymore. Just totally dropped away. Where's Buddhism? Just in the aliveness of the present moment. But I don't really tell people that... wait, we're broadcast, we're live casting, right? Oh man. So anyway, I shouldn't have said that.

You know, the Buddha wasn't a Buddhist. Let's not make a big deal of it. And don't tell people up at Metta Dharma I said I'm not a Buddhist; I don't want them to freak out. But anyway, I am a Buddhist. But anyway. So we see that's real fruit. You know, it's not like this Nirvana or something. He can actually look and see a shift. And I bet many of you can. Some of you may be waiting, when am I going to get this thing that's supposed to start happening? Waiting for something to happen. And it can be like that. I can relate to that. So you have lots of company if you feel that way, so don't worry about it. You just show up the best you can, whatever that looks like. It doesn't matter. You will see. If you don't, come talk to me. If you don't know this, sometimes it can take a lifetime, but it actually profoundly transforms people's experience of being. It's a real thing. Lots of people experience stuff like that. So fruits come, but we don't have to wait. Just look back in your own life. Is there anything you can see that used to be challenging, difficult, that's even one thing that's a little better now? That's a shift. Don't invalidate that.

So what's going to help us actualize these beautiful qualities of our hearts and minds more? And it's not one way. Here, I'm not around here as much as I used to be, so I don't really know exactly. I know a lot of the teachers from way back, maybe things have shifted, but I have a general sense of how things are taught here. You can see for yourself, you're here, so obviously it's a powerful path and will work well for you. You might practice in other ways, but in some way, I think probably most of these practices bring together a few main qualities in our tradition that can really help us. One of them is learning to steady the mind more. Sometimes I use this word "concentration," it's a terrible translation for the word Samadhi.² We're stuck with the word concentration because everybody uses it, but it has so many connotations. So we just need to be clear what we're talking about. When I say that, it's okay. Steadying, however much, just so we're not a little bit even... steadying the mind, mindfulness, we talk about insight, we talk about qualities of the heart, how you develop these and in what combination, in what ways. That's highly individual for all of us.

It turns out, what I'm about to say here is, you know, I'm not trying to be controversial, but if I say something and it's different than what someone else has said, it's okay. It's not a big deal. Just find what works for you. Because what I'm going to say here is... okay, here it comes. It doesn't matter what you do. I mean, you want to do something that's not creating suffering, but within the Dharma world and the practitioner world, it does not matter. Pick up on whichever thread within teachings and practices calls to you. We can get more specific when we have questions, if you want. But follow that. Listen to your calling, not someone else's way. They're different than you; they have to find their calling. If you don't know what it is, you just pick something and stick with it a little bit, and it'll either say, "Wow, I feel connected with this, it's resonating for me, I'm feeling results," or, "You know, it doesn't feel like..." But "Huh, I picked up this book over here, and wow, that's interesting."

There was somebody just this week who I was her first Dharma teacher. She's been in it for about a couple of years, and we have a great relationship, everything's good. And she's just recently gotten drawn over into Japanese Rinzai Zen,³ which I know a little bit. There's a Rinzai center called Zen Mountain Monastery up in upstate New York, and the abbot liked my first book, so they used to bring me there. I didn't know anything about Rinzai Zen, but I would come and teach, and it was nice to go there. It's just a different thing. And so we had a discussion, and she felt all guilty because she's going working with a new teacher and coming in a new direction and everything. And that was nice of her to care, but it's not like that. If Rinzai Zen is becoming alive for her and she did not follow that, then I'd be worried. But she didn't want to feel like she's not with me. It's like, no, it's not like that. It's about each of us. So I appreciated her caring.

So that's what... or it may not even be in the Buddhist world, I don't know. You get the idea, right? Because... this is the last thing I'll say and then how you do this is the details. I have come to feel... so one more thing, I'll back up for a second. So I've always been identified as a Samadhi or Jhāna⁴ teacher. That's become more around, but back in the early days, way back, it was like me and one other guy, Leigh Brasington, and that was it. And it was like, "Oh man, you guys aren't Insight teachers," and it was a whole big thing right back then. And of course, it's not true. We've learned, and anybody who develops Samadhi knows that the insight, the mindfulness, the concentration, the heart, it's all there. But if you're not doing Samadhi or Jhāna and you're just doing pure mindfulness, the concentration, the mindfulness, the insight, the heart, it's all there. Whichever doorway you pick, all parts have elements that are there and come in in the right way for you.

So we have to find our way. It used to be, even up until really only even the last seven or eight years, as I've really come to appreciate that even talking about Jhāna—that word won't mean much to you, but it's these deep meditative states—that's too restrictive because it's kind of defined in a certain way. It's still good. The real path, this is the part that I have to say, again, it may be different than what you've heard, but it's all right. I really see that the path is as we train ourselves to be able to connect more deeply and authentically within ourselves. And then we learn two things: to actually, experientially, what does that mean to be connected within ourselves? Because that's hard for some of us and easier for others. It's just different for each person. And then to listen to that and let it start to lead the way.

We learn to distinguish between our likes and dislikes and our greed, hatred, and delusion and our authentic voice, because they can mask, right? We think we're following ourselves and really it's just your opinion or whatever. So we learn to really recognize something that's authentic, our own spiritual awakening and path. And then it starts to open, and the whole path is we know how to follow, and then it knows how to lead us and open and find, show the way. And there's no limit on what that might look like. It's a vast, vast world, and it transcends traditions, methods, systems. We use all of those systems. That's important. We're in a tradition, we practice, we have teachings, they're important. There's all the Buddhist lists, we use these things, techniques. People are doing the same thing from other traditions too. But once you connect in and the aliveness reveals itself, that's the whole path there. And then it can open up. It's just amazing some of the ways that can reveal themselves, and we really come to finding the pathway deep into ourselves. And sometimes we can find places of amazing beauty that we just had no idea was there, or liberation or enlightenment or all kinds of things that were there but we had just lost the connection. It can be kind of like that. Anyway, so I'm going to stop there. And again, if that was too... I don't even know, just forget it and we can just open it up if anybody has a comment about anything I said, anything else, question.

Q&A

Bill: Hi Richard. Like maybe everyone here, when it comes to my practice, I've got my strengths and I've got my weaknesses, right? And I'm extremely grateful for my strengths; they've made all the difference in my life. I'm comparably happier than I used to be, and I feel like my strengths are real strengths. I'm happy for them. My weaknesses are discipline and, if you will, concentration. My daily practice is not really there as far as formal sitting practice is concerned, even though I think I ought to be doing it. I'm sure I should. And the concentration, when I'm sitting, my ability to follow the breath is poor. I mean, I can go off on a 10-minute daydream without barely even being aware that I'm doing it. It's hard for me to follow the breath; it's just not natural for me. So when you say, "It doesn't matter what you do," correct in a way, that makes me feel good, because, you know, go with my strengths, right? But I'm wondering, can you say something, since you're the Samadhi guy? If I was able to develop the concentration practice skills and do them dedicatedly, regularly, what kind of difference do you think that makes?

Richard Shankman: I think it will transform your whole life. It will transform your life. That's everybody I know. And I think it's just because of my books, maybe I attracted people. Over the years, I still do, you know, from all over, every person without exception I've ever met who's appreciated the power of Samadhi—a lot of them come from what we call a pure Insight tradition—everyone sees the power and the benefit of it and that it supercharges everything else: the mindfulness, the insight, the heart qualities.

Having said that, and you're smiling, but I just want to say, so that's all real, but there's no "got to get anything." Because let's just imagine someone didn't have any concentration at all, never did it. You sat down to just be present with yourself. Actually, when you've got concentration, it's easy to sit with yourself. That's easy because you've got the power and the support of the Samadhi to meet all the challenges and the ups and downs and everything. It's a heroic journey to sit and be present with yourself without concentration, when your body's hurting, your mind's out of control, you're either so restless you're going to jump out of your skin or the opposite, you're falling asleep and everything. And to be with all of that, that's the heroic practice right there, for real. And everybody who's done that knows that. I've been through that a lot myself. And so everybody has. If you could just do and sit to be with yourself, and just in the fire—it's not always like a fire—but just in that, with your suffering, with the ups and the downs and be with everything, learning to just... that would, there's a purification and a letting go and a non-clinging that would come just to learn to let go just by doing nothing. We don't talk about Samadhi, we don't talk about anything, just, can I just be present? And for all the times I can't be present, how do I be with that and everything.

So that's an example when I say it doesn't matter what you do. I don't mean in life it doesn't matter what you do. I mean, I guess you could say that, but I hope we all would want to... I'm talking about when we're doing different practices within the Dharma. Everyone's going to show up with their a combination of their strengths and their weaknesses, if you want to call it that. I use different language. We work along with whatever our intention is, how we want to consciously aim our practice. And then a whole big piece is we have some intentions, but then we practice in a certain way that's aiming us, but the whole trick of the whole thing is we let the present moment teach us and inform us. That's the whole thing. How you do that is a learning that comes in a skill over time, because a lot of times we're just caught and reactive. But if we, with time, everyone can learn. We come to see what's going on in the present moment.

During the times when the body's cooperating, the mind's clear, we're steady, we can practice in ways and just develop the concentration side. And it doesn't matter, because on its own, there are going to be times when you can't concentrate, mind's not cooperating, emotional stuff's coming up and everything. And people say, "Oh, I had a bad meditation." There's literally not such a thing as a bad meditation. Absolutely not. There's just what is happening in the present moment and how do we work with it. And if we can hold that attitude, we do the best we can, because a lot of times we don't even see the way we're caught, we're reactive, we can't. So we do the best we can meeting the present moment with as much clarity as we have. You don't have to be better at it than you are. You just don't. Because if we had to be better at it than we are, well, you're screwed.

My son is in high school, he's a jazz trombone player. He's a pretty good player for a high school player; he can play. And he sounds great. He's pretty good, and he's on this jazz ensemble and everything. So sometimes I'll get his trombone and try to play. And I remember when he started playing, it was in the third grade when he started. Couldn't do anything, no skill, no ability, nothing. That's how it is for me. I try to play. If any of you play a brass instrument, it's hard. You have to develop your embouchure. It's tough. But you don't have to have any skill. You don't even have to know how to get skill. You just show up. I mean, you get a teacher, you start to blow, and you just do your best to try to get it. And starting from nothing, you can get like really good. It's like that with our Dharma practice, with life, with meditation. We bring the best we have. Again, I'm not just trying to make you feel good, but it's not just trying to make you feel good, it's literally true that you start with what you have. You try to remember the best you can to let the present moment be your teacher. You're going to forget that a million times. You're going to be pissed off at the present moment and you're going to remember this talk. You're going to, you know, "Damn that Shankman," and because you're going to be suffering, welcome to the club. We're all sufferers. There will be times when you can remember and you'll do the best you can to let go around your suffering. And over time, it gets better.

I consider myself to be of average natural ability as a meditator, but I put in the time. Most people, by the way, most people in this room don't have much of a daily meditation practice. I've just learned over time it's just how it is. It's hard. I used to do a lot of prison Dharma work. I started a couple of... I was a prison chaplain, volunteered at a couple of California state prisons. I started a bunch of Dharma groups; they're still going. And I remember one was Salinas Valley State Prison. That's a tough, level-four prison. It's like Pelican Bay kind of a thing. We'd run our group, going every week, and then sometimes there'd be a violent incident. They would have a lockdown until they sorted it out, for a few days, a week, a month, or something. And so once they had this lockdown, everybody's in their cells. They bring you, they feed you in your cell, you just don't get out. I think once or twice a week, individually, you get to come out and go shower or something. That's it. We couldn't run the group. And when the lockdown was over, it had been, I think, a month or something, a long time, we came back. We were going around the group asking how people were doing. Some people managed okay. As you can imagine, it was rough on some people. And I said, "Well, how's your meditation going?" One guy said, "I don't know, I just couldn't find the time to meditate." I've heard you say this before. That's my favorite story because it's not your fault. And I cannot tell you how many people judge themselves in their Dharma practice by how well their daily meditation practice is kept up.

A lot of people would have that feeling, so you're not alone. I've been there myself. Even today, with my Samadhi. And by the way, I'm just going to say a little about my own practice. It's no big thing; many people... so I'm not making a big claim. I've been doing it a long time. When I sit to meditate, my concentration is good, it's great. And I can have times I'm sitting in this thing and I'm like way in it, it's really good, and I'm restless and bored and I want to go check CNN if Biden did whatever. And I'm sitting here blissed out in meditation. It can be like this. We're human beings. We have all these forces. We do the best we can.

Find the style of practice you like. Oh wait, I've got to add one more thing. This is so important. Here's a question. It's more of a rhetorical question. In your daily life, as you just go about your business, a lot of times we can just be caught up in things. We call it losing our mindfulness, and we just sort of... sometimes people say the person went unconscious. They're not unconscious, you know what they mean. You're conscious, but you're just kind of... it's like being on automatic pilot or something like that. When you're not on automatic pilot and you wake up, if you will, and you know what's happening in the present moment and you notice, say, there's reactivity in the mind, do you do your best to kind of let go of your reactivity, best you can? Or do you go, "No, I'm reactive, I think I'll just go with it." No, you don't. When you wake up out of automatic pilot and you notice there's ill will, do you say, "Yeah..." Sometimes we do because the power can actually be strong. But or do you say, "You know, I have an intention to live in a way..." This is actually one of my intentions: to live in a way where my heart never closes off, ever. I have plenty of work to do, for sure, but I aspire to that.

When I wake up and realize, "Oh, there's reactivity in the mind," even if the energy of it is like, "No, I'm going to tell that person," or "It's going to..." I have to go back to my intention and realize, "Wait a minute, I don't feel like letting go of my ill will now." I still have to do it because that's my intention, if I'm going to want to live with a heart that doesn't close off. Don't you do the same thing, or whatever your intention is? Or do you just go, "No, you know, I'm pissed off and I know I am, and I should have a kind heart, but screw it, I'm just going to..." No. You use the time when you know what's happening, when you're not on autopilot, the best you can. We all do. What more can you do? That's full-blast Dharma practice.

So if you're judging your practice by just how well or poorly your daily sitting is... yeah, get support, sit more. It's better if you can do it, sure. But it's an inaccurate way of judging yourself. Actually, judging yourself by how well or poorly you show up for anything is... I would say, maybe this is hubris for me to tell you what your criteria should be, but I'll just throw it out there... how well you show up in any situation, that's an inaccurate way to judge yourself. That's just reactive patterns of your mind. That's what we're working on. Your intention is a much more accurate criteria. How well you pull it off is just how well you've worked on your reactive patterns. That's the process, that's the lifelong process we're all in. But your intention, if you've got a good intention to live in a way that creates less and less suffering for yourself and others and to create more happiness and well-being for yourself and others, when you lose that and you're just not being such a great person in the moment, your intention is still there. You just lost contact with it. That's all that's happened. It's still true for you; you just forgot and you got caught up in the energy of the moment. Your good intention is still true for you, and that says a lot about your good heart. So that's, I would say, a better way to judge than how well you meditate.

Bill: So if you are able to maintain a good daily practice, with the benefits thereof, you're more likely to remember that good intention and to stay with it?

Richard Shankman: It's like anything. My son's trombone playing is way better when he's more regularly practicing. And when he doesn't, for those of you who play a brass instrument—I don't, but I've learned enough—you lose your embouchure, and it gets weaker, and he loses his control, doesn't have a sound. He needs to get it back, and then he's back in it. So then he's naturally flowing. And when he's really flowing, he tells me he's not even thinking, just musical feelings. I'm not a musician, I don't know what this is like, but just the musical feeling comes out and he's not even thinking where he's moving a slide. It's just flowing. That's where it can go. So it's like that as Dharma practitioners. And at some point, you know, as the Dharma becomes more alive, the lived experience of the living flow of it just becomes more and more like a set point for us.

The other thing I would just say, I picked up on this. This may not be right for you, but you said sometimes it's hard to be with the breath. Now, you've been a meditator, I've known you from way back, so I don't know your practice well, but it could be that breath meditation is not the best practice for you. And if that's true, then there's a question, how do I find out if that's true? I talk to me or maybe there's others who could talk to you, but that's a whole different thing because everyone can find their best practice, and it's a big world.

Online Moderator: When you have a moment, I have an online question. A mystic writer, Visha Vargas, asks: "If possible, following what's alive in the practice, can it be applied to intentions and actions in our own lives? If we have a talent we want to develop..."

Richard Shankman: That doesn't sound like a question, sounds like just a sharing and a comment, right? Yeah, well, I appreciate that. That sounds wonderful. I like that. That's great. Thank you for the wisdom. And that's another thing, you know, there's a lot of collective wisdom here, obviously on the live stream or whatever. And so thank you. I really appreciate that person for putting that wisdom into the group.

Sylvie: My name is Sylvie. I've been thinking a lot about ethics lately. And when you started the discussion today, you know, you were trying to help us find words that were alive for us on why we're practicing. And you came up with this definition that seems to be a common denominator for all of us, of wanting to increase well-being for ourselves and others.

Richard Shankman: Let me say that was me saying that. I don't know that everybody would sign up for that. I'm guessing most people probably, but yes, please go on.

Sylvie: So I sign up for that. Within that context, I've been trying to connect this to what we call ethics in the real world outside of Dharma circles. Because I was having this conversation with someone who is not a practitioner. When I came to meditation, my motivation or anything I heard about the practice was not ethics. And somehow from meditating, I've become more sensitive to well-being and suffering and what causes it and all of those things. And so I'm kind of getting closer to ethics, I'm finding. But can ethics be realized without mindfulness?

Richard Shankman: Of course. How would you be able to have an ethical life if you're not aware of the suffering you're causing yourself and others?

Sylvie: Well, I don't know. I mean, that's a big question.

Richard Shankman: You know, I don't know if I know the answer to that. But there were two things. First of all, you said can a person just be ethical without mindfulness? It may be that plenty of people don't think about mindfulness. Maybe they're caught on automatic pilot a lot, but their natural response, maybe—none of us are perfect—but the natural response is one of empathy, of kindness, of care. It just comes out of how they naturally are. So I don't think you have to say someone has to have mindfulness. Now, if we don't have what we call mindfulness, which is—to me, my definition of mindfulness is not being on automatic pilot. There's the practices of mindfulness, but the mental state of mindfulness is you actually know what's happening in a present moment instead of being lost in it. Then sure, if you don't have that and we're caught up, you could say that we don't have freedom or choice in those moments because we're just reacting out of the habitual patterns and mental tendencies in our minds when we get a stimulus and there's a response. So if we want to make changes, we have to have some awareness to make changes.

Sylvie: Where this is coming from is there is an enormous amount of harm that is being caused in the world by all of us human beings. But at the level of consciousness of humanity, there is a very low awareness of that harm. And it's not like... it seems that we make assumptions that, you know, those people are unethical, those people are ethical. But most of the people I've spoken to, I find that they naturally want to do something that's ethical. But what's the question or what's the problem?

Sylvie: The question is, if you're completely unaware, like the intention you keep talking about, right? My intention is to do good, but I'm living my life on autopilot.

Richard Shankman: We don't need to think about them. We just need to think about ourselves. That's more of a... I don't mean to kind of shut down what you're saying, but it sounds, and I hope I'm not coming across that way, but it sounds like you're sort of having more of a theoretical discussion of how it might be for other people if they don't have mindfulness or something. I don't know if that's right, but you can correct me if I'm missing what you're saying. So to me, when I hear that, it's like, well, I don't know brain science, I don't know a lot of psychology, you know, what motivates people, how they'll be. That's kind of the bigger questions. But we can each look into ourselves. And here we are, how we got here, why we want to be mindful, why we ended up as Dharma practitioners. It could have gone many, many different ways. It's a big, big world. And we can tend to ourselves. So personally, I just don't know the answer for everybody else. And I don't know if it's that useful. Like, what are you going to do if, say, I said I knew the answer? What can we do with that information? We're not going to go around telling everybody, "Hey, you better be mindful."

Audience Member: I think there's a way to connect what the both of you are saying. I think when you're talking about good intentions, yes, that person might have good intentions, but it might be tainted by greed, hatred, and delusion. So then it's not the purest. But then what you were saying was, how does it relate to us? And I don't know about you, and I hope it's okay for me to share what I've kind of been reflecting on, but when we think about the violence that's happening, right? And it's caused by hatred, misunderstanding, and all those things, sometimes I feel the same thing in my heart when somebody cuts me off or interrupts me or things like that. And so it's like, how do we make sense of it on a personal level? It's like, well, sometimes I see the same tendencies in my own heart. It's not wanting to like shoot someone, but it's the same kind of aggression inside. And so you check yourself in those moments. But I think when we have these ethical discussions or debates, a lot of people are just thinking about it in their rational minds, but the rational mind is subject to greed, hatred, and delusion. I don't know if that makes sense at all.

Richard Shankman: All of us have plenty of greed, hatred, and delusion in our minds. Every one of us. Everyone you're ever going to meet has it. Even if you get a guest teacher come here and everybody's bowing down at their feet—and I'm not being disrespectful—they're human beings, and we're all doing the best we can. A lot of people have a lot of purity. I'm not being disrespectful to people I respect tremendously. And when I've had conversations with many people whose names would be well known, they would be real about being a human being still being on this path. It just gets subtler and subtler.

One of the ways I think about the path, if any of you know like mathematics, when you have a graph, there's a thing called an asymptote. And they'll graph something, you know, maybe the graph will show a line coming down like this and maybe there's this x-axis and the line comes down and then it approaches, it curves down, and the way they're graphing, it gets closer and closer and closer, and it goes out to infinity. And as it goes further out, it gets infinitely close. It never really gets there, but just closer and closer. And I wonder sometimes if it's kind of like that, that it just gets better and better and closer and closer, but maybe work to be done. Or is there this... because we've built up in the various spiritual traditions, the Buddhists have done it too, we've built up this perfection. And I don't want to be disrespectful, maybe there is a perfection out there. Nobody actually knows. Nobody knows, but we're all on the path to find out.

Audience Member 2: So we went a little over. I just wanted to tell you, Richard, that I remember years ago you gave a talk and you said that you had on your altar—correct me if I'm wrong—on your altar you had a picture of George W. Bush and you tried to not harden your heart. And I remember hearing that because that was a fail.

Richard Shankman: Okay, by the way, that reminds me. So I haven't had an altar for years. I should... I'm just don't do that anymore. But I should make one. But now George W. Bush, that's kid's play. Who would have thought that I would yearn for the good old days? Some of you are too young to know. Oh my God. [Laughter] That's kid's play. Little did I know, I didn't appreciate what I had.

It feels like we're kind of done. And we're about 5 minutes over, it's 10:50. So here's the thing. Thank you all for letting me hang out with you. And we were kind of all over the place. I hope it was useful. And if not, it can be like that sometimes. I'll hang out a little bit if anyone wants to chat.