This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video The Beauty of Beginning ~ Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Diana Clark at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Welcome, welcome. It’s nice to see you all. It’s nice to practice together. Today, I’m going to continue on this theme of it being January, the beginning of the year. It’s not unusual for us to have this idea to assess how the last year went and what we’re going to do this upcoming year. And heaven forbid, we might make some resolutions—all those things that we think we should be doing. Making a little joke out of it, sometimes it can be really useful, right? To set an intention at the beginning of the year.
Maybe start a meditation practice or boost your meditation practice, or eat all those things that we know we should eat and not eat those things that we know we shouldn’t eat, and exercise more—all these things. There’s this way that January—I might have mentioned this last week, I can’t remember—I was kind of pleased to discover that it was named after the Roman god Janus, the god of beginnings. So it’s not unusual that there’s this sense of beginning with the new year.
In the Buddhist tradition, we don’t really emphasize beginnings. There isn’t really this pointing to beginnings so much. Of course, beginnings are implicit within endings. But in the Buddhist tradition—and maybe I’ll just say as a little aside, when I say Buddhist tradition, Buddhism is really vast; there are so many different traditions within it. So within this lineage, this tradition that we practice here at IMC, there isn’t a creation story. I never really thought about this before until I did, I guess. I thought, “Oh yeah, there’s not an emphasis on how things began.” Instead, there’s this idea that things arise due to causes and conditions, that things happen because the conditions are there for them to happen. And that’s how things begin. So then, instead of just one particular thing that was a beginning, in some way you might say there’s not a beginning.
In the same way, something that I really appreciate also about this tradition is that the only kind of celebration that we have here at IMC is one that’s common in Southeast Asia, and that is Vesak.1 We pronounce it Vesak; there are different ways to pronounce it. This is like this real efficiency. Okay, the Buddha’s birth, so that’s the beginning, but it’s also the day to celebrate his death and also the day of his Awakening, which is also a beginning. All of these are kind of put together in one celebration that happens on the full moon, usually in the month of May.
We might even think, what is the symbol of Buddhism? It’s a wheel with eight spokes, and this kind of implies this ongoing movement. It’s not like a beginning and an end, but something that’s in motion. So instead, what we talk about here in this tradition is about the endings of suffering, the ending of difficulties, like bringing this to an end. And of course, the word is dukkha2 that I’m translating as suffering. Dukkha stands for this—I kind of like this one word for such a wide range—a little bit of stress on one end, just something mildly uncomfortable, to something horrifying, just tragic, terrible things that are happening on the other end. So this one word for this wide range. The end of dukkha is where this focus is on with Buddhism.
And we might say, related to that, this ending, this idea of ending the dukkha, but also this encouragement for us to notice—and it’s a big part of practice—is to notice the changing nature of things. In some ways, you might say everything’s ending and everything’s beginning. And it’s true that when you have some real subtleness, and often this happens on retreat, you can start to see, “Oh yeah, things are like flickering. They’re not as stable and constant as we imagine them to be, as we are experiencing them to be.” And so this idea of beginning maybe is there implicit in this state of ending. We might say the ending of dukkha is the beginning of peace, well-being, freedom.
So this idea of beginning, like beginning in January… I know that when I lead guided meditations, I’m often using this phrase, “begin again.” So that if you’re using the breath as the anchor of your meditation, it’s natural for the mind to drift away. Unless you’ve been on a retreat for some time, then the mind can really stay for a long time. But usually, if you’re meditating, for example, just coming here for 30 minutes, of course the mind is drifting. Chances are you just came from a lot of doing, maybe from work or something, and the mind is busy. And so that busyness gets carried into the meditation, and it takes time for the mind to settle. So the mind drifts, and then we just begin again with the anchor, which most often is the sensations of breathing. We just begin again.
This idea of beginning again without this sense of, “Oh, you’re going back to the start as if you had never done anything.” No, you just begin again. And we might say that this idea of beginning again is inherent in this idea of cultivation, of developing, building up some of our capacities as skills that we have. It could be mindfulness, like what I just described, with the mind just coming back and just coming back, and then the mind just starts to get the hang of just hanging out there with the anchor. But the same is true for loving-kindness. Maybe we have a specific loving-kindness practice. With that, the mind might wander, but we come back again to this state of wishing well, wishing others to have peace and happiness and well-being.
We might even say this also about ethical practice, Sīla.3 Ethical practice, the behavior, the way we show up in the world, the way that we treat others, the way that we treat ourselves. This again is like, “begin again.” When we find ourselves maybe gossiping, something that’s not helpful, or taking that which isn’t freely offered. I know there was a time when I was working—I used to work for the US government at one time—and there was this real emphasis on, “Don’t take any extra paper or pencils or anything. These are US taxpayers paying for this. Don’t take anything.” But then when I went to corporate America after that, they were like, “Just take whatever you want.” And a lot of people were; they were just taking stuff home that they didn’t really need. But maybe, I don’t know why they were taking it home. But these are subtle things, not subtle, these are minor things, taking pens and paper. But there is this way in which if we find ourselves maybe not following as closely to some of these ethical ideals of not causing harm and not taking things that are not freely offered, to just begin again. Like, “Oh yeah, okay, I used to do that. Let’s see what it’s like maybe if I have a real commitment to my ethical life.”
For me, this was a big movement in my spiritual life. In the beginning, it was hard to meditate. I just had a hard time with it. But I thought, “Well, okay, I’m going to give it a go with these precepts,” specifically not telling lies. There are different ways we can translate it, but because I used to say this a lot, “Oh, sorry I’m late, the traffic was bad.” The traffic wasn’t bad. I just was disorganized and just didn’t leave the house on time or something like this. Or, “Sorry I’m late,” and I would just make up some story about why I was late. And I said, “You know what? I’m going to see what is it like to not tell these little white lies,” which we tend to think are inconsequential. Who cares? They’re just a small thing. Turns out that they are consequential. Because I had made this commitment to myself I wasn’t going to do that anymore, I had to show up on time. And showing up on time meant I had to be a little bit more organized. And it felt better to be a little bit more organized and to show up on time and not have to apologize. It felt good to be showing up on time. And this just had these repercussions in my life. My friends noticed, like, “Oh, you’re always on time.” But this is something, a small example I’m giving, but this idea of beginning again, whatever we might choose that we want to cultivate—mindfulness, loving-kindness, some of these ethical practices, this commitment to not causing harm, this commitment to working towards a way in which there can be more peace and ease and well-being.
Here’s a short little poem that talks a little bit about this. It starts by talking about endings, and then it turns towards beginnings. Those of you who hear me regularly will not be surprised who the poet is. It’s Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. She’s just such a wonderful poet, and she wrote this poem at the end of December in 2020. So we all know what 2020 was like, and so she was reflecting back on that year when she wrote this poem. It’s called “Bonfire of the Heart.”
I throw in any tallies I’ve been keeping, the ones that record who did what and when. I throw in all the letters I wrote in my head but didn’t send. I throw in tickets I didn’t buy to places I didn’t visit. I throw in all those expectations I had for myself and the world last year and countless lists of things I thought I should do. I love watching them ignite, turn into embers, to ash. I love the space they leave behind where anything can happen.
I love this last line: “I love the space they leave behind where anything can happen.” So this idea that endings leave a space, and she’s pointing to “anything can happen.” It’s like this beginning, there might be something new that arises. There’s this way that even the notion of beginnings has a sense of possibilities, this idea of maybe opportunities that we aren’t aware of or hadn’t even thought of before. So beginnings, of course, are associated with endings, but maybe there’s this way in which part of beginnings also have this inherent optimism, this idea of like, “Okay, something new can arise. It’s possible.” This grind that I feel so stuck in, perhaps maybe it’s possible for something different to arise. But it might require that some endings happen, some of the ways in which we are holding on to our sense of self, some of the ways in which we are holding on to ideas of how we think things should be or how we think things should not be. Not that we have to give up any ideas of how we imagine the world could be or some of the ways in which we would like it to be, but it’s the holding on and clinging to, “No, it should be this way. No, I want it to be this way.” Can we just hold these things lightly? Can we hold our ideas, our hopes for the world lightly? This way in which we hold on tightly just reaffirms this sense of me against the world, sends up this sense of all these problems out there, us versus them, and everything has to get fixed out there, instead of this sense of, “Well, you know, maybe there can be some growth that happens here.”
So starting anew after some endings. The Buddha, in his life story, of course, he had a number of beginnings. And when we tell part of his biography, we often aren’t focusing on this. Instead, often there is this idea, you know, he’s held up as an idealized individual, somebody who has attained Awakening. It makes perfect sense to do this. One way we might understand that is, I would say my understanding is he was an extraordinary person. But in this tradition, we really highlight the humanity of the person who became the Buddha. And in this version of his story, everything is part of what the tradition holds, but I’m going to change a little bit some of the emphasis that we place. Instead of everything that was wonderful or idealized, I’ll point out some of the ways in which he had to begin again, had to begin again over and over, quite a few times. There’s this way in which, of course, we are beginning again too when we’re cultivating things, whether it’s mindfulness or whatever it is in your professional life or in your personal life.
So many of you know that the person who was to become the Buddha started out having a life of luxury, with lots of sensual indulgences in whatever ways we might imagine that was being experienced. But then he realized, “Oh, there’s something more, and I want to seek it.” The way that this gets captured in the ancient Buddhist literature is that he wanted to seek the “Supreme state of sublime peace.” Notice it’s not some great philosophical thing that he’s after. It’s just he just wanted some peace. I appreciate this very much.
So he left his life of sensual indulgences and all these niceties and luxuries and began with learning some meditative practices, was able to achieve some meditative states. But then he realized, “Well, that actually wasn’t the Supreme state of sublime peace.” Even though some of those meditative states are very pleasant, it’s not the highest. And when they end, they end, and they always will. It’s not like you can get into those states and stay there forever.
So then he began again with, “Okay, well this didn’t work, attaining these meditative states. Maybe I can try some of this extreme asceticism that some practitioners were doing at the time.” And so he was doing a number of practices, including not eating, so practically starving himself to death. And at this time, he’s practicing with five other individuals. And so the six of them are doing this extreme asceticism. And the person who was to become the Buddha says, “Yeah, this isn’t the Supreme state of sublime peace either. And I don’t think I can get there from here,” because there was just so much suffering.
So then he has an insight. He has a memory about earlier in his life, he had had some meditative states that weren’t like these really high meditative states he was practicing earlier, but he felt like, “Okay, from there, that felt like there was some ease there.” So then he started to begin again with a middle way: not sensual indulgences, not self-mortification, but something that had some pleasantries but also had some discipline—the middle way. And it was practicing that way in which he became awakened and then became the individual that we call the Buddha.
So he had to begin again a number of times, trying practices until he found a way. And then after Awakening, then what? And it seems that he wasn’t sure what to do. He had thought, well, he was hesitant to begin teaching. He thought, “I’m not sure that I’m going to teach.” And the literature says, “If I were to teach the Dharma, others would not understand me, and that would be wearing and troublesome for me.” So he’s saying, “Yeah, I don’t think anybody else would get it. How do I explain this to others?” But then he is convinced to teach by a deity that comes down and convinces him, tells him, “No, no, no, there are people that will understand.”
So he does, he begins to teach. And he has in his mind, who is he going to teach? And he settles on teaching those five individuals that he was practicing with before, the ones that were doing the asceticism. And on his way to walk to where they are, it’s about 130 miles or so, so it’s a journey to walk there. And he meets somebody whose name is Upaka. And Upaka meets the Buddha soon after his Awakening and notices, “Wow, there’s something different about this person here.” And he says, “Your faculties are clear, your skin is pure and bright. Who is your teacher?” This would have been a common thing to say, like, “Who is your teacher? Who do you follow?” But they noticed, “Okay, what is this that your skin is pure and bright and your faculties…” This could have been like his eyes seemed like something’s different about this person that just became awakened. And Upaka is wondering, “Well, maybe I’ll go to that same teacher, because clearly you’ve had some benefit, and maybe I can go to that teacher too.”
And then the Buddha replies, I’m excerpting some of this, “I have no teacher, and one like me exists nowhere else in the world. I am the accomplished one. I am the teacher supreme.” So Upaka shakes his head and says, “If you say so,” and turns around and walks away. So I kind of like this. Okay, so the Buddha, he begins teaching, but the first person he meets, he’s not able to teach that person. Instead, he kind of proclaims that he is the Buddha, and Upaka was like, “Oh, okay,” and shakes his head and turns and walks away. They say he walked an alternate route; he kind of wanted to avoid the Buddha. So for me, it’s kind of an interesting thing. So even his beginning teaching didn’t go, you know, wasn’t like he immediately knew what to do.
Eventually, he comes to this group of five that he had been practicing with before, and they have a different reaction. They see him, and they can see that he has been eating and looks better and has more energy. And they say amongst themselves, they see him in the distance, and they say to themselves, “Let’s not treat him, give him the honor or respect of somebody that’s coming to meet us. We’ll just treat him like somebody that we know.” And they show up, and they see him, and they recognize, “Oh yeah, something is different about him.” And then he has a conversation with them, and they say, “Okay, yeah, we recognize something has shifted in you. Maybe you can teach us.”
So then he teaches them, but they don’t all immediately become awakened. Only one has the first stage of Awakening, Kondañña4 is his name. And it takes some time because it’s reported how they are going out for alms rounds, so that means every day they’re going out to get more meals. It takes some time before the first person becomes awakened, and then it takes a little bit more time for all five of them to. So now there are six people in the world that are awake: the Buddha, and he helped five other people, his former companions when he was an ascetic.
So he began with people who were already spiritual seekers. And then the sixth student, the Buddha went to the opposite extreme, to a very wealthy layperson who had no interest in the spiritual life. His name is Yasa, and he teaches him, and he becomes awakened. And then Yasa’s father, and then Yasa’s mother—so here’s the first woman—and then Yasa’s wife is the second woman. So persons six, seven, eight, and nine to get awakened are women. I just want to slip that in there.
So this idea about beginnings, this little biography of the Buddha, I kind of like to start the new year often talking about some of this, and I’m highlighting how he had to begin again. It’s not like everything was easy and fast and simple. And so we begin again. And you’ve had chances, there are lots of beginnings in your practice: first time coming to a meditation center, first time coming to IMC, first time meditating, maybe first time going on retreat. Or maybe you’re feeling inspired that sometime this year you’ll go on a retreat if you haven’t, or maybe going to a day-long, a whole day of practice here at IMC or something like this. So this idea of beginning, such an inherent part of practice, to begin again.
But I’ll also say, well, what was the beginning teaching? What was the teaching where the Buddha began? Or let me say it a different way, how did he start beginning, or what was the beginning thing that he taught to laypeople, to Yasa? He started with generosity. He started with teaching about generosity because generosity is this movement of letting go, or of giving, or opening up, or unclenching—unclenching our minds or our ideas or with maybe with time or our resources. Generosity doesn’t have to be about money. You can give people the benefit of the doubt. So it’s this movement, generosity, this movement of the heart and mind about letting go.
And we might say that this whole practice is about letting go, letting go of all the ways in which we are holding on and limiting ourselves. I’m not saying that we have to accept everything and be passive. I’m talking about the opposite of this movement of feeling like, “I need more, I need more, I need more.” This way in which we can feel like, “Okay, things will be okay,” or “I will start behaving better,” or “doing, showing up in a way that I want to in the world as soon as something else happens, as soon as I’ve acquired whatever it might be—acquired that new job, acquired something in a relationship, retired, or as soon as our life situation has changed in some particular way, or as soon as I’ve done X, Y, and Z.” It’s endless.
So there’s this way we feel like we have to either acquire experiences or we have to acquire money or acquire objects or acquire respect or acquire whatever it is, relationships, before we can start practicing. And so much of this practice is about letting go, is the opposite movement. And if we find it difficult to even think of this idea of letting go, then we can just have some curiosity about, “Well, what is it that’s underneath this idea that I need to have more?” To be sure, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have more money. I wish everybody all the wealth that they need. Of course, that would be great, right? Just imagine how the world would be if everybody felt like they had enough. Wouldn’t that be fantastic? I’m not saying that we have to just accept what we have. I’m pointing to this idea, this discontent, this feeling of, “No, I need more.” And what’s underneath that? What’s fueling that? Because this sublime peace is not going to come around as long as we’re ignoring that feeling of, “No, I got to have more. Whatever’s here is not good enough. I refuse to accept it. I have to have more.” That’s often this underlying belief that we have that we’re not even noticing, and it kind of fuels some drive to do a lot of good in the world. So I’m not saying that we should just be bliss blobs or something like this. I’m pointing to this: can we let go of this idea that the sublime peace, or any kind of peace, can only be found in the future, can only be found when things are different?
Generosity is kind of like this opening. It’s pointing towards this letting go. And this generosity with literal things, with our time or with our resources, helps us to learn about ourselves, helps us to see what are some of these beliefs about what’s really valuable, what are some of our beliefs that we have about what we need more of. And part of the way that generosity is the first teaching is it helps us to understand ourselves more, understand, “Okay, what is it that I think is valuable? What is it that I think that maybe some people deserve and other people don’t deserve?” or some of these beliefs that we might have.
Because Awakening is the greatest letting go. It’s the deepest letting go. It’s letting go of this sense that there is this essence, this inherent core to me, and to which everything’s happening. Like there’s this unchanging thing, and everything’s just happening to this. And as soon as this thing feels good, then everything’s going to be fine. But with practice, we start to see actually there isn’t anything there. There isn’t an inherent thing. It’s just a collection of experiences that we’re just having over and over, again and again and again. That turns out to be all what life is. But just because I said it, you don’t have to believe it. And you don’t have to try to make sense out of this either. This is usually something experiential. It’s usually something that with a meditative experience or something can be like, “Oh, wow, yeah, there really isn’t a self here, actually, in the way that I thought.” So it’s not something you have to adopt as a belief.
Part of the reason why the Buddha was talking with Yasa and beginning with generosity is because letting go, this movement, is all about what this practice is about. And with generosity, we help to learn about ourselves, what are some of our beliefs, what is it that’s fueling this sense that there has to be more instead of this letting go. But not only that, this generosity, like literally being generous with our time or giving people the benefit of the doubt or with our expertise, it also helps build community. Generosity is a way, whatever we’re generous with, in whatever way—volunteering. I know that through volunteering in different organizations, different places, I’ve really had a sense of community, like us coming together to do something that’s important to us. So generosity is also a place that builds community. And this practice, what a difference it makes if we have some community.
So this idea of beginning again, beginning with whatever is important for you, something that you aspire for, and to recognize that just beginning again… I like this idea. Again, it honors and respects the human tendency to not do things in a straight line. We’re not machines. We often get distracted, we lose our motivation, we sometimes get filled with doubt. All these things, whatever is happening, can we just begin again? Just begin again. And the Buddha just began again. And if you feel like with your spiritual life, you’re not sure where to begin, or maybe you do have some clarity, I can offer a good starting place for all kinds of things is generosity. For your spiritual practice, for working on your relationships or your professional life, all these things, generosity can be a good place to begin.
So I’ll end there, and then I’ll open it up to see if there are some questions and comments. Thank you.
Questioner: Do we know how long it took Yasa and his wife to get enlightened after they met the Buddha?
Diana Clark: The story is the same day they met, they became awakened. That’s the story. The Buddhist literature is filled with all kinds of people who meet the Buddha and become awakened, and also people who don’t, who need time and have to practice, and who are monastics under him or followers or lay people under him and who don’t become awakened immediately. So there’s a whole range of people in the suttas. Wouldn’t it be nice? Well, actually, maybe if you meet a Buddha, right? Do you think there are people nowadays who meet somebody and get enlightened? That doesn’t happen anymore. If it happens, I don’t know about it.
Anybody else have a comment or question?
Questioner: Yeah, thanks for the talk. Some parts of it reminded me of some concept I came across in a newsletter. There’s a concept of not knowing, and then there’s a phrase associated with it which is like, “not knowing is not the same as knowing nothing.” But it’s this idea of holding beliefs lightly. And so part of what this talk is inspiring me to do is to try and build that intuition for how to become more comfortable. Naturally, I’m a pretty, I would say, like anxious thinker, tend to over-anchor on, “Oh, I know all these things, therefore it might lead to XYZ risk.” But the idea of not knowing is pretty refreshing. So I don’t know if you have more kind of comments on that as a concept or ways to get more comfortable with that, but that’s just kind of what’s going on after this talk.
Diana Clark: Yeah, yeah, not knowing. It’s a great topic. And especially, I’m somebody who I spent my life trying to know things, to figure things out. And it was such a relief when I realized, “Oh, we don’t have to know things.” But what I think it requires is a little bit of confidence that, “Okay, things are going to unfold the way they’re going to unfold, whether I understand them or not.”
And so how to work with this is to recognize sometimes the freedom. I guess a few things I’ll say. One is there can be a certain freedom like, “Okay, I’m not going to try to figure that out,” and just not try to figure something out. Because there is a nice feeling like, “Oh yeah, I just got it.” That’s a nice feeling. But there can also be a nice feeling with, “You know what, this can just be how it is, and I don’t have to try to figure it out.” Because so often, I mean, some things we can figure out, like why isn’t the checkbook balanced? Usually those things with numbers we can do, right? But why is it that this happens when that doesn’t happen? I can’t think of an example off the top of my head, but there’s something about like, “You know, it’s just that way, and I don’t know why, and that’s okay.” There can be some real freedom there.
So, to not knowing. And then I’ll say that often the reason why we do want to know is because there’s some unsettledness underneath, there’s some uncomfortable feeling. And actually, the knowing is a distraction. Trying to figure it out turns out to be a distraction from something that’s uncomfortable. And the uncomfortable thing is an emotion or a disturbing thought or something like this. And it turns out that as long as that uncomfortable, disturbing thought is there, we will always just find more things to figure out as a way to distract ourselves from our life. So it’s not like, “Okay, as soon as I figure it out…” There might be a moment, “Oh, okay, I figured that out.” Yeah, but then there’s that other thing, and it just never ends. It never ends. So to be okay with not knowing makes space for us to stop distracting ourselves from what’s actually happening, which might be bad news because it’s not what we want. We’re trying to figure things out in order to not be with what is. But to be with what is is the way forward. This is how you’ll find peace. This is where the peace is, is to actually be with what is and not always distracting ourselves with trying to figure things out. Thank you. Well said. Yeah, back there.
Questioner: I feel like I’m having a really warm response to, and I’m going to try and choose my words carefully here, but you highlighting the fallibility of the role model of the spiritual practice we have. And it’s one thing I’ve always kind of enjoyed is that he always had to start again. And as you were sharing about starting over for the Buddha, for some reason what popped in my mind was his relationship with his son, Rāhula.5 Like, he pieced out. “I’m going to give you a name, and I’m gone.” And then his son comes to him, and then going through and teaching, having to start over and over with his son over again, like teach him as a monastic. And just, I know with relationships in the new year, that just really touched a sweet chord in my heart. So thank you.
Diana Clark: Thank you, thank you, Conrad. Yeah, I kind of skipped over that part of the story. Those of you who know the Buddha’s story know that the Buddha left on his spiritual quest right after his son was born. And there was like, “Wait, what?” Maybe I’ll talk about that in another Dharma talk.
Okay, so I see that we’re at the end of the hour, it’s 8:30. So thank you all for your practice and your kind attention, and I wish you a lovely rest of the evening. Thank you.
Vesak: A major Buddhist festival commemorating the birth, enlightenment, and death of the Buddha, which are all said to have occurred on the same day of the year. ↩
Dukkha: A Pāli word often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” It is a central concept in Buddhism, referring to the fundamental suffering or unease inherent in life. ↩
Sīla: A Pāli word that means “ethical conduct” or “morality.” It is one of the three sections of the Noble Eightfold Path and refers to right speech, right action, and right livelihood. ↩
Kondañña: One of the first five disciples of the Buddha. He was the first to attain the first stage of enlightenment (stream-entry) after hearing the Buddha’s first sermon. ↩
Rāhula: The only son of Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) and his wife, Princess Yasodharā. He later became a monk and one of the Buddha’s disciples. His name means “fetter” or “impediment,” reflecting his father’s decision to leave worldly life. ↩