This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Feeling Our Way Through Practice - Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Feeling our way through practice - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 05, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good morning, and welcome again to IMC¹. Our teacher this morning is our own Diana Clark. Thank you.

Gloria Schulz: Diana, could I please make an announcement before the talk starts? My name is Gloria Schulz. I'm a longtime member of IMC, and about ten years ago, I heard a threshold choir presentation here and knew right away that I wanted to join. It has become a very meaningful volunteer job for me. Next Sunday, we will be offering a special program from 1:00 to 2:00 PM. It is quiet, meditative music followed by silence, and then another song. We offer our songs primarily for people who are in hospice, hospitals, extended care facilities, or in crisis. Thank you.

Diana Clark: Good morning. It's nice to see you all, and it's nice to be here. Some of you may know me; I'm Diana Clark. I teach here on Monday nights, and here I am on a Sunday morning. Some of you may be listening to Gil's² 7:00 AM sits, and you may know that I substituted for him a couple of weeks ago, when I talked a little bit about poetry and practice.

Feeling our way through practice

When Practice Meets Life

I'd like to extend a little bit what I spoke about then, and if you didn't hear that, it's perfectly fine too. But what I'd like to talk about is the way that practice meets our life.

I know certainly for me, at the beginning, there was a clear distinction between practice and life. I would listen to Dharma talks or read Dharma books, and they really touched me. It felt like something really powerful was there, but then I would just go off into my life—my regular life, whatever that was.

But the more I read Dharma books, listened to Dharma talks, and meditated, the more I started to see that these two things, practice and life, started to come closer and closer together, and the distinction between them started to blur. Things that I thought were conceptual understandings started to just show up in the way that I was being in the world.

I've told this story a number of times, but a really clear example for me is this idea of behaving ethically. I thought of myself as an ethical person. I wasn't going around stealing things or harming people, but I was doing an awful lot of little white lies just to make myself look better or not to hurt the feelings of other people.

When I started to take seriously what the Buddhist life was saying about behaving ethically and this wish to not harm others, I said, "Okay, I'm going to stop these little white lies." For example, saying, "Oh, I'm sorry I'm late, the traffic was really bad," when the traffic wasn't bad; I just was disorganized.

When I realized that I was going to have to say why I was really late, I started to get more organized because I didn't want to have to lie. Through all these small ways, I just started to treat the people I was meeting with respect, like showing up on time. That just started to shift my life a little bit and the way that I was showing up. So this small thing was kind of how my practice and life started to come together. And now here we are all these years later, and I find myself in the seat as a Dharma teacher—certainly not expecting that way back when.

So I'd like to talk a little bit about this, when practice meets life, and what does that mean? How does it show up?

Two Ways of Practicing

First of all, I'd like to say that there are different ways in which we might approach or understand practice. One way is that there are particular steps, there are directions, there are things that we do. The 16 steps of Anapanasati³, going through them one, two, three. Or maybe we have to balance the Five Faculties⁴—okay, is it energy, concentration... wait, what was the other one? Often we can't keep them in our minds. In this way, there is a really clear set of lists, we have a certain direction, and a certain approach in which we practice.

This works in other areas of our lives—in our professional life, in our educational life—and it works in our practice life too, until it doesn't. So that's certainly one way to practice: beneficial, supportive, and appropriate.

But I also want to mention that there's another way to practice, and this is with the same directionality, with the same sense of moving toward more freedom and more ease, but instead of being supported by lists and directions, it's more supported by a sense of feeling and experiencing. Experiencing: This way leads to more freedom, and when I behave or experience things this way, it leads to less freedom, more dukkha⁵. This way feels more spacious, easeful, open, expansive. This other way feels a little more forced and pushing.

It is about feeling our way with practice—not so much a conceptual understanding, but more just experiencing.

Before his awakening—right before he had the insight into the Four Noble Truths that characterized his awakening, this understanding about dukkha—the Buddha described what his mind was like. He described that his mind was "malleable and wieldy." There's this sense that there's not just one way, but a flexibility to what's appropriate for what is happening.

So there's a way in which we can practice where it is about the directions, these numbered lists, and conceptual understandings. And there's a way in which we are feeling and experiencing our way towards greater peace, ease, and freedom. Part of practice is to be able to do both. Chances are all of us have preferences for one way or the other, but can we practice in such a way that we stretch what's comfortable for us so that we can do both? So that we can find our way to the greatest ease and freedom using whichever approach is appropriate at that time.

Poetry as Feeling

These two different ways—one I'm calling feeling or experiencing, versus more of a conceptual understanding—we might say have some similarity to how poetry is more about feeling and experiencing, versus prose or lists, which are more about conceptual understanding. To be sure, we need both.

But I like something that E.E. Cummings⁶ said. Many of you know he was a famous American poet in the 20th century. He wrote:

"A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses their feelings through words. This may sound easy. It isn't. A lot of people think or believe or know they feel—but that's thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling."

In this way, I'd like to talk a little bit about poetry and practice, and how practice meets our life. I'll use a poem to help point the way in which we might feel this out.

Tree by Jane Hirshfield

The poem I'd like to talk about is the one that I dropped in during our guided meditation. It's called "Tree" by Jane Hirshfield⁷. Jane Hirshfield is an American poet who lives here in Marin County. She is a Zen practitioner; she lived at Tassajara⁸. In fact, I think she overlapped with Gil down at Tassajara, and she practiced at San Francisco Zen Center and Green Gulch Farm⁹. So I kind of like to think that she's one of our brethren, a part of our community.

She's also a translator. She, with Mariko Aratani¹⁰, translated poems from Japanese—poems from about a thousand years ago by women poets, some of their awakening poems. She has books of her own poems, but she also has books about poetry.

Here's Jane Hirshfield's poem called "Tree":

It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house.

Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose.

That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books—

Already the first branch-tips brush at the window. Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

(Taps on podium) Those of you who couldn't hear, I tried to tap here, and if it wasn't that loud... But what does this mean, this idea of a tree?

We know, like for the Buddha, he sat underneath a Bodhi tree, and a Bodhi tree has a lot of significance in Buddhism. The icon for Insight Meditation Center is a little leaf from a Bodhi tree. For Jane Hirshfield, living here in the Bay Area and Marin County, it is a redwood tree. We have redwood trees just right out here.

Something that I love about redwood trees—and maybe all of you do too—is that there's something majestic about them. There's something cathedral-like when you're in a grove of them. Redwood trees are so powerful, too. Some of you may know that about five years ago, the redwood tree out front was causing the sidewalk to buckle. The roots were getting in the way, and it was a tripping hazard. We thought, "Okay, we have to take care of this. We don't want people to trip on the sidewalk." So we partnered with the city to come in and redo the sidewalk.

I was very surprised. The city was quite wise: they didn't build a sidewalk over the tree roots; they built around it. They recognized the power of these trees to disrupt whatever gets in their way. They weren't going to set up a battle with this tree; they just went around it. If you go out there right now, you'll notice that the sidewalk curves around this tree.

There's this way in which a tree can represent practice, in that it grows. We have this idea in the teachings of something that gets cultivated and developed, in the same way that trees get cultivated, developed, and grow.

The Unconstructed House

The poem says, "It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house."

Regarding a house, we see in the Buddhist teachings the Buddha after his awakening. I spoke a little bit about before his awakening, his mind being wieldy, and after his awakening, the tradition holds that he said a short verse describing the experience of awakening. This is captured in the Dhammapada¹¹:

"House-builder, you are seen! You will not build a house again. All your rafters are broken, your ridgepole dismantled. This mind, gone to the unconstructed, has reached the end of craving."

So the Buddha equated this awakening with the end of the house-builder. That house can represent the sense of self, this thing that we create and believe that we're inhabiting, something that protects us and we can hide behind. All the while, maybe not recognizing that it is constructed and doesn't have to be there. But we are so accustomed to it. Of course, we have literal houses, and we want to have houses, but there's a way in which a house can also be how we set up our identities—the things that define who we are, which in the same way, limit who we are.

"It is foolish to let a young redwood grow next to a house." I like the word "foolish." In Pali¹², the language of the early Buddhist scriptures, they use the word bāla¹³ to mean both "foolish" and "child." So it's the same way that somebody doesn't know yet; they just haven't learned yet. A fool is someone who just hasn't gained some particular knowledge or wisdom.

"Even in this one lifetime, you will have to choose. That great calm being, this clutter of soup pots and books."

Practice disrupts the way that we consider ourselves. Even in this one lifetime, we will have to choose. There's this recognition that if we want to continue to practice, we can't have our life be exactly the way that it was, including this house, this way that we consider ourselves. So often we want to be exactly the same, to not change things, and just want less suffering. Of course we do, but we don't recognize that having less suffering means that some things have to shift and change about ourselves. The way we think about ourselves, the way we think about the world, think about others, the way we feel about ourselves and others—that's where the real freedom comes.

Part of practice is to help us gain the confidence that we can make these changes. Part of practicing is to help us feel more clearly what is the direction for more spaciousness, ease, and freedom, and what is the direction that leads to more dukkha, more suffering.

When I first started practicing, I had no idea of all the subtle ways in which I was holding on to these ideas of myself. I was still working in corporate America. I had a great job, and I didn't realize how identified I was with that job, and how every little slight thing that didn't go well really rocked me. But practice grows, and we start to see more clearly, gain more wisdom, and feel more clearly. We gain the confidence to let go of some of the ways that we think about ourselves or the world, or the way we set up "me versus you," "us versus them." We start to see how that is such a great source of suffering for us and for everybody.

Choosing the Calm Being

"But you will have to choose that great calm being..." Trees, especially redwood trees in my view, have a certain nobility, steadiness, calmness, and stability. Maybe this is something that you've touched into with your meditation practice and recognized, "Oh yeah, this calmness is possible. It's available." I'm not saying it's always easy and we always have access to it, but to even recognize that it is possible for our lives, and possible to be more and more in our life.

"...this clutter of soup pots and books." I love this line. In my mind, it's a little bit autobiographical. I imagine Jane Hirshfield has a kitchen full of all kinds of pots and books. Being a poet, it's not surprising she has a lot of books. I have a lot of books; I can't help myself.

Practice isn't asking us to let go of all of our soup pots and books, whatever the equivalent of that might be for you. Practice isn't saying that you can't have any of those things. Instead, I think the key word here is "clutter." Things that aren't tended to. Things that are getting in the way of something else that we want to do, maybe getting in the way of some of this calmness or stability that we know is possible.

So it's not so much that we have to get rid of all these objects in our life that fill up our house. Instead, it's about a shift in our relationship to them. Maybe we're not clinging to them, or maybe we're dishonoring them by just letting them fill up our life instead of taking care of them. The clutter could be literal or figurative, but it's about choosing, recognizing, seeing, feeling: Yeah, there's this something found when we go for a walk, versus some of the agitation that we feel in so many areas of our life.

We might ask ourselves: What is our life filled with that's the opposite of calm? What would it mean to choose the calm, not the clutter?

The Moonlight in the Ruined House

There's this way in which practice asks us to soften, to let go of all the ways in which we build these selves and limit ourselves, and instead feel the freedom that is available. Maybe we've all had just a glimpse of what's available. Chances are you have, otherwise you wouldn't be coming to a place like this.

Here's another poem. This one is very short. It was translated by Jane Hirshfield and Mariko Aratani, and written in Japanese by Izumi Shikibu¹⁴ around the year 1000. I love this poem. It uses metaphor, and it's very evocative. The poem goes like this:

Although the wind blows terribly here, the moonlight also leaks between the roof planks of this ruined house.

This ruined house represents our sense of self or identity—these things that we hide behind. Maybe we're letting some ruined planks go. The roof isn't quite as tight as it used to be, and moonlight is shining in.

In Buddhism, the full moon is often a symbol of awakening and enlightenment. But no matter that, I feel this when I go outside: "Oh, it's a full moon." I've done that a number of times when I taught on Monday nights, walking outside after teaching to see this big moon. It just feels like something is special.

When this house starts to crack and the roof has leaks in it, maybe it's windy, which means we feel things, but the moonlight is shining through. There's this sense of freedom, beauty, and possibility that the full moon can represent.

Immensity Taps at Your Life

Returning back to the poem "Tree" by Jane Hirshfield, it continues: "Already the first branch-tips brush at the window."

By the time the branch tips of a redwood tree are brushing on the window, the roots are already underneath. They're in the sewage system, they're under the house, they're making the sidewalk buckle. Here at IMC, we have to call Roto-Rooter on a regular basis because that redwood tree out there is getting into our pipes.

By the time we notice that something's here, it has already touched us; it's already a part of our life in some way. But maybe it's underground. We haven't quite seen it, the way we don't see roots until they are disruptive.

There's also this idea of the branch tips meeting the house. So much about practice is about meeting ourselves, maybe in a way that we haven't before. Let's be honest, it's not always good news. I know for me it wasn't always good news noticing all these white lies I was telling and all these ways in which I was holding and clinging onto these ideas about myself. I wanted people to make sure that they saw me in one particular way, and certainly not this other particular way which I was trying to secretly hide.

I like an expression that Jack Kornfield¹⁵ uses about meeting ourselves: "the unfinished business of the heart." Meeting ourselves is a way of recognizing this unfinished business of the heart, and maybe it allows this business of the heart to get finished, to be metabolized, worked through, met, and seen. Often we try to discard, disown, or somehow excise these portions of ourselves because they're painful or ugly. But so much about practice is meeting all of these aspects of ourselves when we're ready.

We don't have to jump into the most difficult parts of our lives at the outset. Instead, we allow practice to grow. We water it, we let it have sunshine and good soil, and then practice grows. As it grows, we don't have to make it grow. Maybe it's just coming back to IMC on Sunday mornings, or listening on YouTube.

Then there's the way this poem ends. For me, it's powerful. I love this line:

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life.

This is an invitation for all of us to step into what's possible for us: our biggest life, our best life. And it's softly, calmly. It's not with a sledgehammer. Sometimes it feels that way, but maybe there's a certain insistence of an invitation asking us to be the best versions of ourselves, bringing our best wisdom and compassion to whatever life brings us.

After all, what else can we do? We can't control the whole world. I know we try—certainly I try—but it doesn't work. Instead, there can be this invitation to bring our best selves. I love this word "immensity," like maybe it's bigger than what we can imagine. Maybe it's bigger than what we suspect is available, or what it would be like to have more freedom.

In this poem, and I would say in practice, freedom is tied up with this house that we're building, constructing, and renovating. Our constructed house can be an inhibition to freedom. Freedom is a way of letting some of this building just naturally deteriorate. We wouldn't want to do this to our actual houses, but in our sense of selves, is there a way that we can let some of these moonbeams of freedom shine in and allow ourselves to be touched by it?

Softly, calmly, immensity taps at your life. Thank you.

Reflections

As an ending here, let's just turn to some people near you, and let's all take care of each other. Let's not let anybody be left behind with nobody talking to them. We don't want that. Just discuss: what did you think of this poem? Maybe poetry is just not your cup of tea; perfectly fine. Or maybe you're like, "I don't know, I don't get it"; that's perfectly fine too. Or you might feel like, "I'm kind of curious, I'm going to go outside and look at this tree now."

Whatever it might be, just turn to somebody and maybe say a little bit about how this poem touched you. Thank you.