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Talk Notes
Thank you for being here. And I also want to thank Juriki for his wonderful way seeking mind talk. It was a long hard way. Bows to you and I thank Tim for sharing more tales of the beginning of the sangha. They were both wonderful and I don't think I will be able to compete lengthwise.
But I will also take you in into my way back machine. I titled the talk Two Darts and One Arrow.
In October of 1989, I was living in Boulder Creek, California, and I was working in Los Gatos. My commute home usually took something around 25 to 30 minutes.
But then the Loma Priada earthquake struck. My first evening trying to get home took more than four hours. Many roads were closed, covered by landslides, collapsing buildings, all kinds of things. Traffic simply did not move. Nobody knew what was happening or how long it would take to get anywhere. So, at one point, sitting in this enormous traffic jam, I watched a man suddenly jump out of his car and he started to beat the roof of his car with his fists and he was screaming. I couldn't exactly hear what he was yelling, but it looked intense. I do not know what happened to him that day. I don't know what he had lost, whom he was worried about, where he was trying to go, or whether the the earthquake even had anything to do with his distress. I don't want to make up a story to explain him. I only know what I saw. There was a man standing beside his car after a major earthquake beating it up.
Sometimes I think he was put there specifically for me. As I was watching him, I was thinking, well, that is useless. And but it really informed me on a very visceral level that this fury, this rage does not help. I've remembered this guy for almost 40 years now. There was nothing funny about it. He was truly suffering.
Again, what stayed with me ever since was the absolute futility of his rage. The earthquake had already happened. Traffic had already stopped. Whatever he needed reality to be at that moment, it was not cooperating. I believe we all know this experience in one shape or another. Maybe we don't pound on our cars, but something happens and the mind says, "No, this cannot be happening. This should not be happening. She should not have said that. He should have known better. My body should not be doing this. This person should still be alive. I should not have made this mistake. I should not have said anything". Sometimes what has happened is small. Maybe nobody even noticed. And sometimes it is devastating.
And sometimes what has happened requires our response.
But in any case, there is one fact we cannot negotiate with. It has already happened, whatever happened. Reality is.
The only thing we have a bit of control over is our response.
And the Buddha gives us a very precise teaching for this in the Salata Suta, the discourse of the dart. The Buddha said that when a person encounters a painful feeling, it is as though they have been struck by a dart. That is the first dart. That's the one we have no control over. It's what happened.
But it hurts. The pain is real. And then our mind, our ego kicks in and reacts to this pain or discomfort with fear, resistance, denial, stories, and all the thoughts that grow around what happened. That is the second dart. The first dart is real and the second dart is located and loosed by our mind.
I want to be careful of putting it this bluntly because having this tendency of not liking ourselves that much sometimes, we can be tempted to use this as another reason to beat ourselves up.
Not only do I have this first dart and I gave myself the second dart, now I'm working on a third one because I'm apparently also doing Buddhism badly. Because I am, you know, creating more suffering around my suffering. Please don't do that. Please.
Because if we do that, we miss the point. The Buddha never said that grief is wrong or that we should receive painful things with some calm Buddhist expression on our face. We are human beings. We grieve. We hurt. We get frightened. Our nervous system reacts before Buddhist philosophy gets a vote.
That doesn't mean we have to approve of the direction of the events. Being a Zen practitioner certainly doesn't mean we don't try to change what can be changed. It simply means that this place right here and now is where we have to begin.
The teaching of the two darts points to the difference between the pain itself and everything we built around it. There is what happened and there is the imagination around what happened. There is the replay, the projection, the resistance, the story about what should have been different, the smart reply that doesn't come to my mind until it's about 6 months later.
This should not be happening to me. Somebody or something needs to be blamed.
So that guy in front of me in the traffic jam was stuck and so was I. That was real. Whatever else was happening to him, his outrage could not move the traffic. Rage could not undo the earthquake. And yet I recognize those fists that were pounding the car because I have my own versions of them. I suspect most of us do. And our mind can pound against reality for hours, days, and sometimes years. We can replay that conversation from 20 years ago and still compose the perfect response that finally proves I was right. We can argue with someone who has been dead for years.
We can even argue with our own self from 20 years ago. We can insist that our childhood should have been different, that our marriage should not have ended, that our parents should have been not that way.
Our life should have taken a different path. And there is something heartbreaking about that because sometimes we're in a way right. It could have all been different, but it did happen exactly the way it happened. Again, this is where our practice begins.
Oh yes. And then there is blame. I used to be an expert at blaming.
Blaming is one of the more compelling forms the second dart can take. Partly because if the blame sometimes contains a kernel of truth and if we massage the facts well enough, it's almost like we had nothing to do with it, right?
And sometimes someone did something harmful or hurtful. Someone really was negligent. A government really did make a terrible decision. A corporation did poison the air or the river. Accepting reality doesn't mean pretending harmful actions are harmless. It doesn't mean abandoning discernment or justice.
But there is a different, there's an important difference between blame and responsibility. Blame tends to look backward and ask "Whose fault was this? Where can I put my fault so it doesn't sting quite so much?" Responsibility asks, "Given that this is so, what is mine to do?" Sometimes figuring out who was at fault is part of being responsible. If a bridge collapses, we should find out why. And if someone committed a crime, accountability matters. If a system causes suffering, we need to understand the causes if we want to change it.
Buddhism does not ask us to become stupid about causes and conditions.
So there's a difference between understanding what happened so we can respond and being trapped by the demand that what happened should not have happened. Reality can feel unacceptable in the ethical sense and still we have to accept it as something that has happened. He can say this is wrong and this is what is happening.
The next question is very simple. Now what?
The answer is not quite so simple. We accept what is real because it is already here. That does not mean we approve of it. We are resigning ourselves to it. Or decide that nothing can be changed. It means we stop wasting energy arguing with the fact that this is the ground under our feet. Now we can look for the lever. Where can we apply ourselves, our energy? What can actually be moved? What action might bend things even a little towards the future we hope for? Sometimes we don't find the lever or the lever is small. Sometimes it is a conversation, an apology, a boundary, a meal brought to someone, a refusal to participate in harm. Sometimes it is larger and asks for years of effort.
Sometimes we do not know whether what we will do will make any difference at all. And yet and yet there are no guarantees. Practice does not promise that if we act wisely, the world will give us the result we want. We act because this is what is ours to do.
We accept the real. We find where we can place our hands and we push in the direction of the world we hope for.
There is another Buddhist story slightly related to the first one. It has another pointy object.
This time a man was actually shot by a poisoned arrow. His friends and relatives bring a surgeon to remove it.
But the wounded man says he will not allow the arrow to be removed until he knows who shot him. He wants to know whether the shooter was tall or short, what cast he belonged to, what kind of bow he used, what material the bow string was made from, what kind of arrow it was, what kind of feathers were on it, and all the rest.
Probably the poor guy died before half the answers arrived.
So the point here is different from the two darts.
The two darts are about how our mind adds suffering to the real pain. The poisoned arrow is about our insistence on explanation for what happened. Before I attend to the wound, I want to know why all this happened. I want to know who, why, the motive, what should have happened instead, and why did this happen to me?
Well, some of these questions may have useful answers. If I keep getting shot with arrows, I would eventually like to know where they are coming from. But there is a poisoned arrow in me right now. Maybe I should attend to that first.
I'm suspicious of the stories we create to explain other people and why things happen to us. We often do this with very, very little evidence. We think someone behaves badly and pretty soon we have constructed their childhood, their upbringing, that we've diagnosed their personality, determined their motives and we know exactly what's coming next. And the worst thing is while we are at this, we keep on finding more and more and more evidence that we are absolutely right. Well, back to 1989. I don't know why that guy beat up his car. And I don't need to know. He was suffering. And that knowledge is enough. Maybe there is even a kind of compassion in refusing to make up his story. I give him space to express what he needed to express. The Buddha's teaching keeps bringing us back from all our explanations to what is actually here. There is pain and anger. There is fear. There is this person in front of me. There is a world in trouble. What is the appropriate response?
Another Buddhist teaching speaks very directly to this.
These are the famous opening lines of the Dharmapata. He abused me. He struck me. He overpowered me. He robbed me.
I think it's important to note that the Buddha does not say these things didn't happen. He doesn't say you only imagined you were abused. He doesn't say there is no self so nobody could have struck you. The harm is named plainly. He abused me. He struck me. He overpowered me. He robbed me. Then the verse continues that for those who keep carrying these thoughts, hostility does not cease.
The next verse repeats the same injuries. The same things happen.
But then comes one of these great lines from the pali canon.
Hatred is never ended by hatred. Hatred is ended by non-hatred. This is an ancient truth. I know that many translations are hatred is ended by love alone. But the truer translation is non-hatred.
And I think that's an important difference.
The Dharmapada does not issue a command to feel warmly towards someone who has just harmed us. It is not turning the other cheek. It is certainly not an instruction to stay where we are being harmed. Compassion does not require proximity. Forgiveness does not require us to give up our boundaries.
The Buddha is pointing to something basic. Harm has entered my life. What happens next?
Does hatred keep reproducing itself through me?
This is where the teaching opens the door. Up to this point, we could understand Buddhism simply as a very good description of how human beings make suffering worse. There is a pain and then we jam a second dart right next to the first one. There's an event: blame, projection, fear. There's a wound and we insist on why. There's harm and then we can carry forward hatred. But the Buddha way does not stop here. We don't simply practice because we want to suffer less. We practice because we trust this way. This is a very different orientation. I'm not walking away from something. I am walking towards something. I am walking toward a bright life.
When I say bright, I don't mean cheerful. I don't mean a permanently optimistic or comfortable life or even necessarily a peaceful life. A bright life can contain terrible sorrow, illness and loss, confusion and fear. Brightness is not the absence of darkness. I am talking about a life that is fully met. A life that is not always hidden behind my demand that it should be some other kind of life.
When I stop spending all my energy arguing with what is that this life is the way it is, I can actually respond to it.
There is an early Buddhist poem that I've always enjoyed. It's called the Dhaniya Sutta. It is a conversation between the Buddha and a cattleman named Dhaniya. The poem goes on for a while, so I will just read a couple of exchanges. Dhaniya the cattleman says, "The rice is cooked, my milking done. I live with my people along the banks of the mahi. My hut is roofed, my fire lit. So if you want rain god, go ahead and rain. The Buddha answers. Free from anger, my stubbornness gone. I live for one night along the banks of the mahi. My hut's roof is open, my fire out. So if you want rain, God, go ahead and rain. Then Dhaniya says, "The stakes are dug in, immovable. The new Mongja grass halter is well woven. Not even young bulls could break. So if you want rain, God, go ahead and rain." And the Buddha answers, "Having broken my bonds like a great bull, like a great elephant tearing a rotting mine, I never again rely in the womb. So if you want rain, God, go ahead and rain." I really love those exchanges.
One thing we might overlook is that Dhaniya is not wrong. He's a good cattleman. He has done exactly what a responsible householder should do. He has fed his people, milked his cows. He has put a roof over their head. He lit the fire.
He made everything as good and strong as he can.
This isn't a story about how foolish Dhaniya is and how wise the Buddha is.
We fix the roof. We feed the cows or the chickens and we should prepare for rain. Buddhism is not an argument for stupidity. Sooner or later it rains anyway and sooner or later our roof will leak. So we fix it. The Buddha and Dhaniya address different aspects. What is so beautiful to me is that Dhaniya and the Buddha say almost the same thing. Go ahead and rain. But they're speaking from very different kinds of confidence.
Dhaniya says, "I have made things secure enough. I am ready for the rain." The Buddha says, "I don't need things to be secure. They will change anyway." Dhaniya's confidence depends upon the stakes holding. And the Buddha has broken his bonds. It is the same reign and almost the same words, but a very different kind of freedom.
The Buddha doesn't say, "My roof is stronger than yours, my provisions are better, or I have found a place where the river can't rise." He hasn't created better conditions. He has stopped depending on those conditions for his freedom.
And so the Buddha too can say rain if you wish.
I don't hear any resignation in that. I hear freedom. I hear confidence.
And this is to tie this back to one of my previous stories. This is where for me the teaching moves beyond just not jamming in the second dart. Practice isn't only learning how not to suffer unnecessarily, not only becoming better at coping with whatever life throws at us. It isn't an ancient stress reduction program. It's much larger.
The question becomes, what do I trust when there is nowhere else to go?
My answer has become pretty simple. I trust practice. I trust sitting down and paying attention. I trust returning to this breath, this body, this moment.
I trust turning toward rather than turning away. I trust the precepts.
I trust the sangha.
And I trust the strange and sometimes difficult instruction to stop trying to rearrange reality around this little self who is forever saying, "I want more of this and I don't want that."
That doesn't mean I trust that everything will be okay.
I don't even know what that would mean. People get sick, relationships end, wars happen, earthquakes happen, terrible things happen to very nice people. Zazen is not an insurance policy. And the Buddha never promised us favorable outcomes. So what I trust is the way not the destination.
Perhaps this is one meaning of refuge. I take refuge in Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. And it's easy to hear a refuge as shelter as though somewhere inside the three treasures there's a protected place where rain can't reach us and where we no longer hurt.
But I don't think refuge means finding that place.
Maybe refuge is discovering that we can stand in the rain. We don't control what comes. We don't know what tomorrow brings.
I don't even know what the next five minutes bring. But I know where I want to stand and which direction I want to walk.
In a way, it also changes how I hear the Buddha's awakening because we so often begin Buddhism was suffering. And the whole Buddhist story, the whole project is getting rid of suffering. There is suffering. Suffering has a cause. Suffering can cease and there is a path. It almost sounds medical. Diagnosis, cause, cure, treatment. But the Buddha didn't just become better at managing distress. He awakened. He sat beneath the bodhi tree through the night. And when his eyes saw the morning star, there was this extraordinary recognition of the true nature of existence. And Buddhism has spent the last 2500 years trying to say what can't quite be said about this awakening.
But whatever happened under that tree was much larger than now I know how not to feel bad. It was freedom.
The life of practice is no longer just organized entirely around protecting and satisfying the self. The Buddha way isn't a fire escape.
Can I trust practice? Can I trust this moment enough to actually enter it? Can I stop standing at the edge of my very own life waiting for better conditions?
Because Dhaniya's roof will eventually leak. Mine will too. The stakes eventually loosen. The people we love change. My body changes. Things we thought were secure will turn out to not be so. Impermanence.
The Buddha is pointing toward a different kind of confidence. It isn't confidence that the stakes will hold. It's confidence that our freedom doesn't depend on the stakes holding. Maybe that is what faith means.
It isn't believing something I can't prove. It isn't persuading myself that everything will work out. It isn't believing that some cosmic power has arranged events for my benefit. Faith is putting my foot down on the path again and then doing it again. Zazen again, meeting this person, taking refuge, discovering over and over that when I stop demanding another life, this life becomes so large, much larger than the one I was trying to arrange for myself.
Practice for me has been the long discovery that I can unclench my heart, my mind, my hands. Not because the world has finally become acceptable according to my specifications. Not because nothing hurts. And not because I have secured the roof and tied everything down.
I practice because little by little I have come to trust the way. I trust sitting down and paying attention
And I trust that if something must be changed that I can begin with the simple acknowledgment this is what is happening what now I don't practice because I expect the Buddha way to spare me from suffering I practice because this is the direction I choose to walk. I am not walking away from suffering. I'm walking toward this life, toward the bright light.
We chant the bodhisattva vow so often that it is easy to stop hearing what we are actually saying. Beings are numberless, I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. And then we say, Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. That is an astonishing thing to say. We are not saying that Buddha's way seems useful or that meditation helps calm us down. We are saying that this way is worth giving our life to. I don't know what tomorrow brings. None of us do. The rain comes when it comes. And the earth moves when it moves. But I know which direction I want to walk. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it.
Do we have time for triads?
I pushed it a little more than usual, you know. I didn't want to be left in the dust.
My ego said more, more, bigger, better. So, I have two proposals. One is how shall I live in a world in which suffering and hatred exist?
So in other words, how do we cultivate a mind that doesn't automatically turn suffering into more suffering? So that was number one. And the second proposal is going to the story of the two darts and the one poisoned arrow. The first dart this hurts. Second dart this shouldn't hurt. We should blame someone else for it. And the poisoned arrow, I need an explanation before I can attend to the facts and to the suffering.
Our practice basically says, what does this moment ask of me?
And that's what I would like you to touch on. What is asked of us when there is suffering in the world or our own life? How do we respond? And if those two subjects don't fit in with your thinking, just talk whatever you want. Thank you.
