What is Pragmatic about Pragmatic Buddhism?

0:00I'm Danielle and tonight we're going to talk about pragmatism and what it means to be a pragmatic buddhist or what pragmatic buddhist 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-unquote true by examining evidence 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 that our belief is accurate. Pragmatism asks us really to look at our direct experience so

1:00things that we can observe we can see feel here whatever else and thinking about how 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 neo-pragmatism actually look really explicitly at the use of language and social processes and how language and narratives inform what we perceive as evidence and truth and belief and 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

2:05other 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 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 uncomfortfulness 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 regret and you know anger and all of these little moments that are

3:05unsatisfactory. 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 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

4:10in 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 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

5:16are 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 elements of pragmatism. I mean about Buddhism things like reincarnation and karma that is about intergenerational karma over like lifetimes and individuals lifetime and when we look at that pragmatically you know people can tell us stories about you know past lives or future lives and there are a lot of stories like that in a lot of Buddhist texts but they are stories so 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 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 provides evidence for that so for us that means when we are approaching the more mystical side of some Buddhist texts we just put those to the side

6:20that 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

7:21of 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 in this case Buddhism Buddhism says you know meditation can help you know kind of clear your mind can help you see the world more clearly does it you sit and you meditate do you have an

8:27opportunity 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 and 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 conducted this kind of experiment tried something and see saw that it worked for me or 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 know you a little bit better but now this time is yours what do you have 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 and a pragmatic sense otherwise it's dullest yeah I don't know

9:32it's um and after it's empirical you know you want to try to be you know just there's only so much for you in your life and want to try and afford buy late hence planning and teachers kind of a shortcut um to that but I mean um I think that's what partly why I'm drawing towards grudism it's sort of like a very notable you know that your philosophy you must it could be clinical it can be philosophical it could be mystical it's got all those nice elements to it uh it acknowledges that there are things that we cannot explain you know you just get a experience 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 um and uh I think meditation is just a very a good be engine free hand

10:43behind this all like if you strip everything from it the meditation would be like the heart to me just like if you strip all of our thoughts then all of our clinging all of our personality we would just be awareness we would just be uh yeah 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 um 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 Buddhism's 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

11:46it's a door that you can walk through and that you can kind of experience so how how you understand and that's a really useful part too um 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 um 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 disconnect it 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 um I mean it could be the heart of it that that could

12:47be 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 the meditation is only associated with Buddhism there are other traditions that also meditate so but um 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 mountain top 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

13:49I'm trying to learn ways of being that are healthier for my mind for my body for my relationships for society and um 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 uh an assassin this is see more clearly but maybe we don't want to do that maybe that's not the best way to use our um the our new found 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 does definitely essential of course um I I like it also

14:54think it's just for my own meditation practice that it just kind of like I've had fuel the chain to that I want to be I want to build though it's uh ethical causes you know I just uh it just seems to come more natural um but I guess yeah I definitely believe in the system of ethics you know well I mean that's kind of the idea the 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 a way of relating to our bodies ourselves and our end to others and so we're kind of trying to overcome a whole lifetime of habits and of 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

15:58that didn't really help us out so well but it does take time and practice speaking uh Douglas um speaking of ways that we relate to each other Buddhism and the way that we are taught to relate um there's this show called plural this is anybody here seen that it's not finished so you don't normally know what's going to happen in the end but I'm not going to spoil it pretty more I'll just tell you the plot the plot is dev there's this virus I think or somehow people get infected with something those either created or it's alien we don't know all of that stuff yet um they get in every dream on earth it just falls out for a ten minutes and then they get back up and they're now living in this like collective consciousness um everyone is happy all the time they're completely nonviolent I mean for all intents and purposes they're Buddhists when they get

17:02up 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 this hasn't happened to there are 12 people on earth and um 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 the brain joy 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 um 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 gonna be the message in the end but it seems to me that the message is one

18:05that 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 um and it's like we always whenever we see this theme in TVs or in TV shows or movies there's always some extreme right it's always like collectivism it's like this theme 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 drone you're a worker being you're an ant um and it's in this show that 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 it's like we have this there's this antagonism in our culture towards thinking um in the way that Buddhists say we should think right we should

19:11think of ourselves as connected to everything right as not independently arising it's not an independent individual but someone who is connected to a network of um consequences and um 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 was 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 has made 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

20:15interconnectedness 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 to talk about like maybe it's okay that we're acknowledged that we need other people you know 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 it's law to need other people they had anyone before talk about this trimstone and this trim factor so um which is fine but definitely grinding a community yeah I mean Buddhism talks about those three 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

21:20that model it's also represents like our individual um responsibility our 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 um 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 that but it's the third jewel that is most difficult particularly in our culture and the third jewel is the Sangha 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 of 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

22:24you 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 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 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 as Sangha 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

23:25a story it's just I just believe that it's like capital T truths and it's the the Sangha that 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 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

24:28testing 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 it's been a big 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 experienced so before you came here I don't know what this trick applies my name's Aaron I can do this would be with a couple of different kind of anchors or pointers but one of the large roofs was an Alan Watts recording it I was listening to it spoke of you know is there a greater power in the world is there God and then for to it is just not a useful question and I think that was the largest draw of we don't know that there's no usually and no I get there is no data that could support

25:35this one or another is so through through educational Dharma and practice you can find this very my mother's a science teacher inside of the method is ingrained in my soul and and that is to me friend Mavis you create genes just it's just incited weapon it hypothesize no experiments are and then reset 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 have so many texts so much writing about what Buddhism is and what Buddhism says that we have a

26:39real 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 as 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 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

27:40is 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 okay 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

28:40technique 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 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 I'm not scared of it and I so appreciate how you articulate your saying the questioning is what I really appreciate because how you from the background of being a Christian born Baptist you didn't

29:44question everything was kind of coarse that to you and I find that this practice is more demanding of 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 say I didn't 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

30:52and find out there's a whole source of possibilities it is it is liberating in that sense right like because it is you can open it up all the things that you believe to be true you can start questioning them and exploring them and it gives you something to kind of focus on but it's also helpful to like have a community to kind of like touch down with because that can be it 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 grounding so this is one of those things that I you know 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

31:57where you're overwhelmed so I've done this also whereas I go I have to question everything and and then reading a lot about physics we're like this is actually like there's more space between all these molecules on 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 untethered and that's when I'm like okay I have 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 someplace where I can come back and be like okay there may be more space between the molecules in this floor than there is floor but I can feel a floor this is 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 uh am I

33:00the only one is it just me okay fine I mean one big question would be how do you feel you know uh are you suffering is what you're doing working what they're doing working uh okay sometimes we don't even be settled for things we the brain crave shortcuts fundamentally um but like questioning how you feel about something is a big one is yeah it is for me too as 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 um 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

34:04really 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's it in my body what does that feel like um and that's been really useful and it it has been I mean so it's been you know uh like 15 years of practice but I'd gotten much much better at at knowing that like I am 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 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 and then 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 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 but the body is

35:06just a thing it's a it's a thing and there's just be aware of it and be aware of what you're dead by way like what's when you re-identify what their thoughts and what we project you know what we think is right you know that's the question yeah we get lost and like I'll be thinking about thoughts you know I wish 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 center wherever I'm at you know when I'm driving whatever once I'm engaged in a moment you know I miss you what it takes mentally but then if I can

36:07get a chance to pause and that really can power my decisions in 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 um I remember you know early on when I started really meditating um and engaging in this Buddhist practice like my family would notice they noticed 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 get more reactive and they'd start to be like have you meditate lately and I was like I don't want to hear that right now I mean no I haven't you

37:12are correct but shhh so yeah so I just try to keep that meditation cushion filled up filled up as much as I can because it's a nice it's a nice buffer my name is Jane I 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 uh that's all I wanted to say so well it's good to have you yeah it's one of those it's a real benefit we always get a lot of newcomers and it's a benefit to our songa 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 its kind of regular habitual ways of being right you have the same group of people they come together at the same time they do the same thing it ends up becoming like a very

38:12familiar 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 the the space so that we have a little like it's a living um community a living songa so I'm glad that you're here I'm Mary um 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 um I think that one of the things that I have um really enjoyed about Buddhism here is um like you're talking about delusion for one example like just learning to see the world a little differently than my traditional Christian upbringing um to be more like oh this is something everyone has

39:19everyone has um frames 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 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 people and and I it would make me like I would just I would assume I'll just automatically like you must be thinking you're feeling this thing this thing that is like antagonistic towards me because that's been my experience and I didn't even realize that was a story it was a story that was time I thought it wasn't true and it took like many years of thinking like huh I just

40:20assume that that is true but it's not so maybe like a little space a little pause and recognize okay 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 for myself I guess you know been sick lame but I'm always projecting like how they're judging me you know probably because maybe I judge you know usually people that accuse things or not usually but a lot of times if people accuse things and so they're doing that so so yeah I try not to be as judgment on then not judging people and maybe judging or not you know

41:21nice heart 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 because 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 but I can still be like just because somebody said a thing even if I'm the one saying it about myself just because 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

42:24find 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 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 means 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 harder to do than to say but it still is one of those things if I can just recognize somebody

43:25is some of my coworkers they're giving me gifts of abuse I don't have to be like oh can I take that I can just take it 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 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 days and happen the way they happen I had say it was the last day of class at university and everything that could go wrong was just going wrong I woke up and I went into the kitchen in this soup that I made this like squash soup but in that squash soup that I made yesterday was planning on eating in the morning was still sitting on the the of it right so I never I never blended it or put it away and just forgot and then I was having all types of problems with like my files trying to get things ready my

44:28slide show and all this stuff ready for my lecture and then I you know got out of the house laid and I get in the car and the gas tank is on empty somehow so I have to I'm lay already but I have to stop for gas and I'm trying to get out of parking lot these people are coming in 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 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's 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 then I go to my office and I print the things up but the but the printer is not working if I only get the printer working I'm rushes a class and I realize 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 um 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 between

45:29these fine if I don't have my clicker I'll just use the keyboard if I can't find a parking space well 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 to print some grooves I think that's the biggest like win the few biggest single win um 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 giving an opportunity I'm gay so the pragmatism helps us in this day and age cry at many three years and within we have a lot more information strong medicine if you're glad as a kid I'm in that 50 and I think it confuses us a lot more so that's my thoughts and listening to you and it is yeah you do that's what I got out of it yeah within a confusing world and it's

46:33helpful if we can figure it out a way to kind of bring it down to the ground instead of like 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