Roshi started his talk this week by considering what titles Zen teachers in America should use.  Options could include ‘Reverend’, but isn’t true that other traditions already use that title?  Would this confuse people?  Some Buddhist traditions use “Venerable”; however, this is usually reserved for monastics and many teachers in the West are not monastics.  Roshi noted that this is one of the myriad complexities experienced when a spiritual tradition moves from one culture to another.

Roshi noted that life is complicated and many times our problems do not have clear answers.  The simple question of what our teachers should be called in public is simply one example.  As another example, Roshi cited the work of Daniel Goleman on “Emotional Intelligence.”  Roshi raised the question about the proclivity of people to delude themselves.  Why is this?  Goleman talks about a “Brain in Crisis” performing certain mental tricks to alleviate the stress.  An extreme example of this is the tranquility people report in near death experiences.  However, it does not need to be that extreme.  Even in day-to-day life, we tell ourselves stories to rationalize certain “uncomfortable” actions we do or things we say.  Our mind comes up with elaborate narratives to “smooth over” the rougher parts of our life.   Part of our practice is to deeply introspect our lives to learn what is narrative and what is reality.  Goleman states that our brain was biologically designed to do this to keep us sane.  If we did not have this “ability” we would surely go crazy.

However, it is not so simple.  Is self-delusion the only way to alleviate the pain?  Roshi mentioned a movie to us called “The Cowboy and the Queen” where a cowboy had a totally different way to train horses.  Conventionally cowboys “break” horses with force and violence to “break their spirit” so that they will work.  However, in this story, the cowboy did not “break” the horse – rather he used love to build understanding between two different beings.  The idea was to bond with the horse – even to the point where both the cowboy and the horse had a calm and relaxed breath.  Roshi stopped here and emphasized the calm and steady breath.  Anyone with experience in meditation should immediately understand this.  As the story progresses, the skill of this particular cowboy is related to the Queen of England who invites the cowboy over to the UK to train the royal horses.  What is interesting, however, is that everyone soon realized that love, compassion, and breath are not just skillful for horses.  They can be used for people as well.  Pretty soon, the cowboy was helping combat vets and others.  This should come as no surprise to any of us.  We cannot use force and anger to compel anyone to do anything in the long term.  It does not work.  Influence is gained through love and compassion.  The first step to opening this compassion is to realize that we are all the same thing – whether that is a horse, person, or any other being.  How do we know this?  We know this because we all breathe.  THIS is why the breath is so central to our practice.

Roshi wrapped up with the observation that the best way to open our compassion is “Just being a being!”  We all breathe – this is the central insight.   Roshi then asked, what does this have to do with the mind deceiving itself.  This should be clear.  The mind will do what it needs to do in order to reduce suffering.  The default “mode” is to insulate itself in a fictional narrative.  However, there are better ways to alleviate pain.  We don’t have to rely on delusion.  We can understand compassion, love, and most importantly – the breath!  The cowboy intuitively knew that this was the way to train horses.  The Queen knew this would help combat vets.  We know this through our study of the Dharma.  Our goal is to take our practice out into the world and show people that there is another option to reduce their suffering.