The willingness to sit with fear is an act of courage. The old Buddhist texts refer to "the great and courageous bodhisattvas." These are beings who, have the fortitude to stand with suffering that might bring the rest of us to our knees. It's not that such people have no fear. Rather, they are able to maintain a courageous presence while they are afraid.

Dharma reflection: the story of Chiyono’s enlightenment poem; poetry, fearlessness, and flexibility of perception.

It's hard to keep up with all the disorienting changes we are processing each day. We can easily get lost in confusion trying to make sense of it all. As a result, we can draw conclusions based in despair and fear, thinking that we know where this is heading. We can find strength from Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn teaching: "Keep Don't Know Mind." In this "Don't Know Mind" we let go of knowing how things will turn out. This frees us from the tyranny of our mind-created stories and allows us to see many possibilities.

There is a transcendent Reality – inaccessible to the thought world – but to be known with right mindfulness and its accompanying powers of mind, patiently developed and polished day by day. These skills we learn provide tremendous traction to cultivate the mind, like gardeners watering the seeds of awakening. At the root of this uplifting spiritual training is the fundamental premise of our mortality. But are you ready to sit at the altar of the sublime and to have your illusions shattered? Like the hollow reed that becomes a flute, empty yourself of fear and be the pure love you seek.

It seems like many are feeling either a low-level anxiety or fear these days. Fear about their safety, about disasters like fire or floods, about what the future holds. While this is natural and understandable, when our minds get hijacked by fearful thoughts, it is almost impossible to have a wise or appropriate response. In this talk we explore practicing and skillfully working with fear so that it can transform into courage, compassion and wisdom.

Do we know the truth of what we are? If not, how can we love unconditionally? When the heart abides in loving-kindness, the misery of fear, anger and despair is vanquished. If we look for unconditional love outside of us, we will never find it. Nor can we know it by thinking. The mind must grow in silence and stillness, in unsullied conscious awareness. Then we can see what we truly are – intuitively, beyond thought, in the quality of this very breath, this moment. We pierce through the dust of lifetimes to know the core of our being, to wake up – here and now. Just to live in that kindness is the truest life of all.

This dhamma talk and Q&A was offered on January 4, 2025 for “How do I apply the Dhamma to THIS!?!” 00:00 - DHAMMA TALK 15:23 - INSTRUCTIONS FROM THE BUDDHA AND Q&A

We continue to explore the intersection of our more inner practice and our practice with the larger world, including the U.S. post-election world. Our starting point is seeing how widespread and predominant the emotions of anger and fear are in our society. We look particularly at the nature of anger and how to practice with it, especially in terms of our own anger but also in terms of the anger of others. Anger, it has been said, is the most confusing emotion in Western civilization, seen often over the last 2500 years sometimes as both entirely as negative and sometimes as a quality that manifests, for example, in the Jewish prophets, Jesus, and God. There's a confusion also among Western Buddhists, who may have conditioning related to aversion to anger combined with following problematic translations of terms like dosa (entirely negative in the Buddhist context) as "anger" (not entirely negative in the contemporary Western context). Based on these explorations of the nature of anger, we look at how to practice with anger individually, especially through mindful investigation of anger and how anger can lead either to reactivity and the formation of reactive views of self and/or other, or to skillful action. We also explore practicing with the anger of others through empathy practice. The talk is followed by discussion and sharing, including of the experiences of practicing with anger from several people. The meditation before the talk includes a guided exploration of an experience of anger in the last third of the meditation period (the meditation is also on Dharma Seed).