This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video The Seduction of Certainty ~ 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.
Good evening. Welcome. Nice to see you all. So I’m going to start the talk tonight with this kind of playful, silly, whimsical poem and unpack it a little bit because it actually allows us to point to a few classical teachings.
This poem is called “The Cookie Thief” by Valerie Cox. This poem rhymes, which is kind of unusual these days. So here we go:
A woman is waiting at the airport one night, with several long hours before her flight. She hunted for a book in the airport shop, bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.
She was engrossed in her book but happened to see, that the man beside her, as bold as could be, grabbed a cookie or two from the bag between, which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.
She read, munched cookies, and watched the clock, as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock. She was getting more irritated as the minutes ticked by, thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice, I’d blacken his eye.”
With each cookie she took, he took one too. When only one was left, she wondered what he’d do. With a smile on his face and a nervous laugh, he took the last cookie and broke it in half.
He offered her half and he ate the other. She snatched it from him and thought, “Oh brother, this guy has some nerve and he’s also so rude, why he didn’t even show any gratitude.”
She had never known when she had been so galled, with relief when her flight was called. She gathered her belongings and headed for the gate, refusing to look at that thieving ingrate.
She boarded the plane and sank in her seat, then sought her book, which was almost complete. As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise, There were her bag of cookies in front of her eyes.
“If mine are here,” she moaned with despair, “Then the others were his, and he tried to share.” Too late to apologize, she realized with grief, that she was the rude one, the angry, the thief.
This playful poem, it’s kind of funny, right? The story. For me, it feels a little bit like “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” it kind of has that similar rhyming scheme, maybe.
Here is this woman at the airport, and she has a view about what was happening: that the person next to her was a thief, didn’t show any gratitude, and she was getting irritated. He was rude and ungrateful—all this stuff about this guy that’s sitting next to her. I don’t know, can you just imagine what this feels like when you realize, “Oh no”? But then all that was needed was one piece of information. Just one piece of information, and like, completely rethinking everything, realizing, “Oh, everything that I was so sure about and created such a big story about… one little piece of information realized everything was wrong.” But she was so sure. She was getting so irritated about this person, and just like that, things evaporated as soon as she had this piece of information.
I’ve had something not exactly the same, right? I didn’t take cookies related to somebody, but maybe there’s a way in which we do this. Something for me that I’ve told this story a few times, and now I’m forgetting the details, but the gist of the story is, you know, waiting for somebody. We were supposed to… well, this has happened to me more than once, but waiting at a restaurant and my friend isn’t there. And just kind of the impatience and making up this story: “Oh, I can’t believe this person doesn’t respect me. They think they’re so important, and I don’t want to be here, and how dare they leave me waiting and be late.” Like all this story-making that’s happening when somebody is not meeting me at the time that we had decided to. And then only to discover, finally, when this person does get into contact with me, that there’s a reason why they couldn’t contact me earlier, and it was a perfectly legitimate reason. When they realize, “Oh, right, of course, I probably would have done the same too. I would have been late and not been able to contact you.” So just, you know, for me, just recognizing how I was just really holding on to this particular story, and then poof, it’s just gone with some more information. I’m sure all of us have different versions of this story.
So we might say that having this idea, this notion, this view, this belief about how things are and being pretty confident about it, and then realizing, “Oh no, actually it wasn’t that way at all.” This is a word that feels a little uncomfortable, but it’s in the Buddhist teachings; we use this word delusion. Delusion is often just associated with ignorance, just not knowing the whole picture, not knowing everything. Maybe knowing a little bit of it, but not all of it. But also, delusion sometimes in the Buddhist teachings also kind of gets expanded to this lack of attention, like just not paying attention to what’s happening, maybe being busy with thoughts or just simply not paying attention. Or there’s also a way in which delusion can be understood as confusion, as this feeling disoriented or like, “What’s happening?” I’ll say delusion, and sometimes that’s associated with some bewilderment too. And I could imagine if I were this woman at the airport and I thought I had some cookies and somebody was taking them, I think I would be confused and bewildered. The usual social norms aren’t being followed.
So this idea of delusion—sometimes ignorance, sometimes just not paying attention, sometimes confusion. Those of you who are familiar with some of the classic Buddhist teachings will recognize or know that delusion is also one of what’s sometimes called the three poisons, or often also the three unwholesome roots: greed, hatred, and delusion.1
So everything that humans do that is unhelpful, unskillful, unhealthy comes out of greed, hatred, or delusion. Kind of like the Buddhist getting down to just a list of three from which everything that’s unhelpful arises. So I’ve talked about the hindrances, and the hindrances have sensual desire and aversion in them. That’s definitely part of coming out of greed, hatred, and delusion. But there’s a way in which we could say that everything that’s not so helpful… At one time, I kind of got confused about all these lists. Okay, there are these unwholesome roots, there’s hindrances, there’s this word kleshas, there’s these… now I forgot what they’re called… oh, there’s taints. There are all these lists of all these things that are unhelpful, but we could just simplify it just to these three. They come out of greed, hatred, and delusion.
And there’s this way in which with delusion, we don’t know when we’re in delusion. If we did, then we wouldn’t be deluded, right? So sometimes I’ve given the teaching, because I use this for myself when I was practicing, and somehow I would get confused, like entering into maybe some new meditative states or something that I hadn’t experienced before, there’d be some confusion. But then there’s this recognition just to say, “Oh, this is confusion.” Then there’s a moment of clarity, and the confusion is dispelled. Just to say, “Oh, this is confusing,” is really a way to kind of help be grounded. So there’s this way in which when delusion is operating, we don’t know it’s operating. In fact, we would say that delusion feels like truth. And in this poem, right, this person was really convinced that the other person was the cookie thief.
But the truth is, maybe there are a few different ways in which we might want to talk about truths, but one is that most of life is uncertain. We like to think that we know. We like to think that we have the truth and that we know the whole picture and all this kind of stuff. But there are a few things we can point to that are part of the Buddhist teachings: that things are always changing. So even if we felt like we understood exactly how something is, maybe it’s different in a meaningful way now than how it was. Or maybe there’s a way in which it’s arising and passing or flickering, and it’s seen to not be as solid as we thought it was. There’s this changing quality, and we feel like, “Okay, it’s like this… oh no, wait, it’s like that, or it’s like this.”
There’s this way in which things are uncertain. Not only maybe do they have this flickering or unreliable quality, but things end, right? This is also one of the basic truths that the Buddha is pointing to, is some of these characteristics of phenomena is that they’re changing and that they end. And so they can’t be these lasting sources of happiness. Instead, they often can cause a certain amount of uneasiness, some way in which it makes us feel uncomfortable. And we don’t like uncertainty. Humans don’t like uncertainty. Probably all living beings don’t like uncertainty because there’s risk. It highlights our vulnerability. If we can’t predict precisely what’s going to happen next, it highlights how we might be in danger. We can’t plan or assume things in the way that we like to, that we want to. It makes us feel more comfortable. But the truth is, right, we don’t really know. There could be an earthquake in the next moment, right? I’m planning to finish this talk, you’re probably planning to stay here and then just happily drive home at the end or something like this, right? We don’t know what’s going to happen.
And so because humans don’t like uncertainty, we make things up. We just create stuff because information feels better than just recognizing the unpredictability or the fact that we just simply don’t know, to recognize that we can’t control things. So we’re making it up, as we see in this story. And we can also see this in individuals who are losing their memory. This is well established that they often can’t quite figure out, like, “Now, how did that get there?” They can’t remember exactly that they put it there. So they make up a story about why it’s there, and they believe it. And they’re describing to somebody else, “Oh yeah, that’s there because I was thirsty, so I put the glass… I took it out of the dishwasher and put it there.” But you know, maybe they forgot that somebody had returned the glass to them and put it there, and they’re making a story for it to make sense. I don’t blame them. It’s got to be pretty scary if you’re losing your memory and little bits of things are falling apart.
But you know, it’s not just only people who are losing their memory that are making things up. We saw in this poem, she created this whole persona of this very gracious and generous person. She was thinking he was awful, a terrible person. And it turns out he was so nice. He took the last cookie and broke it in half and shared it with her. He didn’t yell at her, he didn’t get in a big huff and get up and move off of there or something like this. There are all kinds of things that might have happened, right?
So there’s this way in which people often have an idea. So I gave an example of losing a memory, and the poem is about trying to explain why somebody’s taking cookies from the same bag he’s taking cookies from. But this happens so often. This was highlighted for me when… well, maybe I’ll just say this. I’ve had a number of conversations where I’ve seen people, they have this strong belief and they just say, “No, it’s this way.” And then if you poke a little bit at their logic, they start coming up with all these ideas that really don’t make any sense, but they’re just trying to support what they said initially. They don’t want to back down at all or look at things differently or admit that what they said wasn’t quite right.
Or maybe people… this is well established, this idea of confirmation bias too. When we have this view, we will discard information that seems to contradict it, and we will seek out information that promotes our favorite view, or just interpret or just simply only remember little bits of information that support our views.
So there’s this way in which we navigate this truth of anicca2, this truth of impermanence, this truth of changeability of phenomena, by clinging to views. We cling to views to help us feel better, to help us feel more comfortable about the uncertainty, help us feel better about impermanence. And for me, I was a little bit fascinated. This poem is playful and fun, but I was fascinated at the end. She didn’t stop to ask herself why this person was taking her cookies or ask him or anything. Instead, she just immediately, boom, made up this big story about this other person. She just made up a story: this person’s a cookie thief. And maybe it’s not said in the poem, but maybe she thought, “Oh, he doesn’t even deserve to be spoken to,” or she had this righteous indignation, like she knows what’s actually happening and was behaving from that perspective, from that view.
And there’s this way in which we are clinging to views and maybe discarding alternative ones, but clinging to our ones. Which, of course, is really encouraged. Our media is built on this. All our media, probably mainstream media and social media, is all about them wanting you to have a view. They’re wanting you to take a side. It’s all about this for you to set up an us-versus-them, me-versus-you thinking. It’s an incredible industry. People are making lots of money to try to make sure that you are taking a side.
I heard this from Matthew Brensilver some time ago, and I loved what he said. He said when there’s this conflict, why don’t we take the side… there’ll be pressure to take a side. “Are you with me or against me? Are you part of the ‘us’ or are you part of the ‘them’?” Why don’t we take the side of not suffering? Take the side of freedom. Take the side of ease instead of us versus them. Can we see, “Oh, here’s where more suffering is, and here’s where less suffering is”? Such a great way to consider it and to think about it. And that might even be a way… this is often a way that I think about the Four Noble Truths3: the truth that there is suffering, there’s the arising of suffering, there’s a cessation of suffering, and there’s a path leading to the cessation of suffering. This could be like a framework in which we could use, instead of us versus them, to be saying suffering and not suffering.
So this way of clinging to views is a way that we are navigating impermanence, but there’s something implicit in here that we often don’t even recognize. But there’s a way in which we’re often assuming that we have omniscience, that we know everything. It’s so clear. We’re the good guys, they’re the bad guys. You know, what we’re doing is good, what they’re doing is bad. I’m the one who knows, and you are the one who doesn’t know, or something like this. There’s this way in which we’re assuming omniscience and kind of batting away other ideas or batting away other information or not even having any curiosity about anything. It’s so much easier just to slap on this label, which is completely 100% fabricated. Just slap on this label, “I’m good,” slap on another label to everybody else, “You’re bad.” It’s not that simple. And we all know that. We know it’s not that simple. But there’s this uncomfortableness sometimes with this uncertainty or there’s just uncomfortableness with conflict. And so there’s this way in which we just want to take a view.
And this is another way that delusion gets described: clinging to views. Clinging to views is delusion. And we could say in the classic Buddhist teachings as well that clinging is a source of suffering, the source of a lot of difficulty. And it’s amazing the things that we can cling to, and it’s amazing the things that we have views about. We have views about ourselves, as I’ve been pointing to, but we also have views about what does it mean to be a self? What does it mean to be disconnected or isolated or distinct from everything else? And is that really true? We have so many of these views.
And then here’s another idea from Matthew Brensilver that I think is really great and that we can see in this poem. He said that views are channels into which our greed and hatred flow. Views are channels into which our greed and hatred flow. So we’re making up views about all kinds of things just to help us orient to our experience, help us understand the world. But the ones that we hold on to and cling to are being fueled by greed and/or hatred. These words are like terrible words, like greed and hatred. None of us want to feel like we have greed or hatred, but they are strong words. And there’s a way, you know, just like, “I need more,” or “Get that away from me.” You know, these are the few different ways we might understand greed and hatred. And this is what’s fueling our views. And we might say that clinging to views is delusion. So here we are, these root defilements.
So how can we work with delusion? By definition, we don’t see it when we’re in the midst of it, when we’re lost in it. One is, just like in this poem, it’s by meeting other people. It’s like reflected back to us, you know, our thoughts and our views. Sometimes we have some ideas, and if we don’t share our ideas, they can get a little weird, you know, if they’re not shown some daylight and shared with others. I know this has happened to me many times. And it’s happened, you know, when people are accusing me. I remember some years ago, I won’t say the details, but somebody was saying, “I can’t believe you did that because of X, Y, and Z.” And I’m like, “Wow, that’s very creative that you came up with X, Y, and Z. It actually had to do with this…” some, you know, completely different reason. I’m sure all of us have had this, where people made assumptions about our actions and projected things onto us. And we’re doing this to other people all the time.
So one way to work with delusion is not only to meet other people, talk, share some of our views, meet other situations, but here’s the second part of that: is being willing to learn. Being willing to learn from others, being willing to learn from our experiences. Of course, be willing, like when we get some new piece of information, like a bag of cookies when we’re on the plane, to rethink like, “Oh yeah, I’m actually the cookie thief.” And then just to maybe think, “Well, how did I not notice that?” And for me, it’s noteworthy that in this poem, she’s reading a book while she’s just grabbing cookies. So she’s not paying attention at all, disconnected from her bodily experience and lost in some other fantasy or whatever the book is about. We don’t know.
And this is often when the delusion is happening, is right when we’re not paying attention to our experience. And we could point to specifically our bodily experience. There’s a way in which when we’re lost in thoughts, which views are, that we can talk ourselves into and out of just about anything and everything. Like why it’s a good idea to eat so many cookies while waiting for the plane, for example. There’s a way in which if we’re disconnected from our bodily experience, then our thoughts, they can just run rampant and create whole stories and fabricate whole entire worlds that are completely disconnected from what’s actually happening here. But there’s this way, if we can feel into our bodily experience, that maybe she could have felt the irritation and the discomfort and really thought, “Wow, this is actually really uncomfortable that this person is taking my cookies,” and maybe just address him with kindness. Or, you know, or maybe officially offer him some so he no longer has to be a thief. And then he… or you know, like, “Would you like some cookies? These are my favorite. I guess you like them too.” Or maybe it would have been an opportunity to connect with this person, and they could have had a funny laugh together, and they could have been embarrassed together like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this happened. This is what a story. Oh, I’m so sorry. Let me buy you some more cookies, or maybe can I buy you a coffee to go with your cookie?” And you know, maybe they would have had fun to connect while they’re waiting for the plane. I don’t know, right? That was a whole story I just made up.
But there’s this way in which to work with delusion is to be maybe with our bodily experience. If she had noticed the irritation and but was still connected to the chair or the cushion, she could have turned to him and said something different. So this is another way to work with delusion.
I think maybe I’m going to stop here. This idea about delusion and views, this poem. Maybe I’ll read this poem again. I was touched by this idea that maybe part of the reason why this poem is funny and playful is maybe we can recognize ourselves in it, or maybe we could feel this internal horror that she can’t apologize, or maybe we’ve had some of this experience too, like we did something that we thought was one way and it turned out to be completely different.
The Cookie Thief by Valerie Cox
A woman was waiting at the airport one night, with several long hours before her flight. She hunted for a book in the airport shop, bought a bag of cookies and found a place to drop.
She was engrossed in her book but happened to see, that the man beside her, as bold as could be, grabbed a cookie or two from the bag between, which she tried to ignore to avoid a scene.
She read, munched cookies, and watched the clock, as the gutsy cookie thief diminished her stock. She was getting more irritated as the minutes tick by, thinking, “If I wasn’t so nice, I’d blacken his eye.”
With each cookie she took, he took one too. When only one was left, she wondered what he’d do. With a smile on his face and a nervous laugh, he took the last cookie and broke it in half.
He offered her half and he ate the other. She snatched it from him and thought, “Oh brother, this guy has some nerve and he’s also so rude, Why he didn’t even show any gratitude.”
She had never known when she had been so galled, with relief when her flight was called. She gathered her belongings and headed for the gate, refusing to look at that thieving ingrate.
She boarded the plane and sank in her seat, then sought her book, which was almost complete. As she reached in her baggage, she gasped with surprise, “There were her bag of cookies in front of her eyes.”
“If mine are here,” she moaned with despair, “Then the others were his and he tried to share.” Too late to apologize, she realized with grief, that she was the rude one, the ingrate, the thief.
It’s fun, right, to hear this poem again when you know how it’s going to end. These little foreshadowings that get kind of dropped in there that you can interpret. So just an encouragement. So often we are holding on to our views, and I’ve gotten this from Gil a number of times, I think, as a demonstration. So often we’re like holding on to these views: “That thief, he’s taking my cookies.” But of course, we need views because things are impermanent and we need to know how to navigate the world. And so you may ask, “Well, Diana, what do you do?” You hold views like this, with an open hand. This is completely different than like this, and maybe even shaking it, right? Just holding views with an open hand. This willingness to learn something new from what we encounter, from what our body is telling us, from situations that we experience. And then, you know, the views can change and morph when we’re not holding on to them so quickly.
So with that, I’ll end and open it up to see if there are some questions or comments.
Questioner 1: Thinking about making up stories, I was with this five-year-old that I’m very close to. I volunteer with her. And I forget what story she made up, but about this person that she’d seen or interacted with. And it was so, you know, it’s so easy to give advice versus to see it in yourself. So, you know, I’m going, “Oh, sweetie, we don’t know anything about that person or how their day was,” or, you know, trying to encourage her to be more open-minded. And that kind of triggered me to think about stories I make up, even just little ones, and how, you know, prejudices that, you know, just maybe little ones with strangers. “Oh, look at that person,” I don’t know, whatever story I make up. So I like the continued idea of, “Oh, that’s just a story I made up. Okay, maybe I can just let that go.”
Diana Clark: Yeah, that’s… I find myself sometimes using this when I’m talking to somebody: “Well, here’s a story that I have, that it’s due to blah, blah, blah.” But you know, just even saying, “Here’s a story that I have,” just lets people know this is my current thinking, it might be different later. And maybe I’ll also offer that what comes to mind from years ago, before I really had a practice, but I was feeling like I had been wronged, somebody had treated me poorly, and I had made up this whole story about it and all this kind of stuff. And my friend, she said, “Well, let’s make up other stories with the same facts. Okay, so all we know is X, Y, and Z.” And I’m like, “No, this is what happened. You know, this person really did it because of blah, blah, blah,” you know, all this stuff that I didn’t know. But that was such a great thing. And then we had fun, like, let’s make up all these different stories that would account for the exact same facts. And so that’s useful for me to keep in mind. And maybe it could be fun for children too, to like, “Oh, let’s make up all kinds of stories. The UFOs came and the unicorns touched this person and they did…” I don’t know, we could make up anything.
Questioner 1: So it’s funny to me that I can, with a lot of behavior, I can see it more clearly in other people, you know, kind of judgmental or whatever. And then I go, “Oh yeah, I do that too. Wow.”
Diana Clark: Thank you, Lena. That’s exactly right. And that’s part of the characteristic of views. When they’re in other people, we think they’re idiosyncratic, irrational, a little bit odd. But ours? Perfectly logical, reasonable, appropriate. Yeah, it’s funny.
Questioner 2: Thank you very much for the talk. I’m thinking about what you said about if she could drop into her experience, that it might help shift her views. And wondering if you can just say some more about that. I’m curious.
Diana Clark: Yeah. So for example, the agitation, maybe she could have felt some of the tightness, maybe in the chest, and the shoulders going up, and grinding the jaw in this kind of way. You know, this little bit of anger. And then she could have realized, “Oh yeah, okay, this is actually kind of odd and irritating that somebody’s taking my cookies,” and then could have maybe done something, maybe spoken to him. But there’s this way in which we’re so disconnected from our bodily experience, we’re just running with the stories and there’s nothing to consider that we should do anything except believe them. Is that helpful?
Questioner 2: Yeah, it’s… it reminds me of the concept of being grounded. When we’re in our bodies, then we are more grounded, and that helps our balanced thinking.
Diana Clark: Yes. Yes, perfect. Yep.
Questioner 3: Okay, I think this is kind of related to the last question. A part that I wasn’t sure I was getting was in the talk, you mentioned we make views from, or they’re channeled through, hatred or greed. Is the thought that by being more in tune with our bodies, like looking for places where there’s greed or hatred, that will uncover some of these views that are most likely wrong? Is that kind of the process, or maybe I’m misinterpreting?
Diana Clark: No. So we have to make views in order to orient ourselves in the world, to help understand things, right? Because we’re not omniscient. So we make views. And the ones that we make, like which ones do we choose to make, come out of some of this greed and hatred, our conditioning. But the ones that are causing problems are the ones that we’re really holding on to. And I would say greed and hatred support the clinging of the view as well as the content of the view. The content of the view may have some… the greed and hatred may be minor, but it’s the real clinging that is where the real delusion and the suffering is. Views, I mean, we have to make views because we don’t know everything. I don’t know, is this helpful what I’m saying?
Questioner 3: It is, yeah. I think part of it is it’s hard to live without views, so I don’t want to throw them out entirely. But the idea of the content and the clinging, I think I need to be able to separate those. I was thinking a lot more about the content and how to unpack wrong views, but maybe clinging is also a signal. Yeah. Thank you.
Diana Clark: And thank you for giving me the opportunity to highlight that distinction. It’s the clinging to views. And you know, the views, when we’re making up stories, they are going to be a reflection of our inner life, our conditioning, our biases. And those are… they’re coming from… they’re colored by greed and hatred and delusion.
Questioner 4: Well, thank you. It’s a really good story. The other thing that I noticed about this poem is that we try to live with the problem rather than address it properly. Because she doesn’t want to make a scene, so she’s uncomfortable with conflict, whereas the conflict could be dealt with in a gentle way rather than making a scene. Yes, I think she just didn’t want to deal with the issue, which we do. We just put up with the neighbors, whatever, or our coworkers, whatever, instead of addressing the issue. So we suffer, we choose to suffer.
Diana Clark: Yeah, right. This not wanting to have conflict and the things that we tolerate when we actually would be better to just address. Yeah. Thank you for highlighting that.
Questioner 5: Hi, how’s it going?
Diana Clark: Good.
Questioner 5: I just want to say Jim did a great job last week while you were away.
Diana Clark: Oh, great. Thank you, Jim. Oh, great. I was teaching a retreat. I knew it would be in good hands.
Any other comments or questions before we close for the evening? Okay. So I wish you a wonderful rest of the evening and safe travels home. Thank you.
Greed, Hatred, and Delusion: In Buddhism, these are known as the “Three Poisons” or “Three Unwholesome Roots” (akusala-mūla). They are considered the primary causes of suffering (dukkha) and rebirth. Greed refers to craving and attachment, hatred to aversion and ill will, and delusion to ignorance of the true nature of reality. ↩
Anicca: A Pāli word meaning “impermanence” or “inconstancy.” It is one of the three marks of existence in Buddhism, along with dukkha (suffering) and anattā (not-self). The doctrine of anicca states that all conditioned things are in a constant state of flux. ↩
The Four Noble Truths: The foundational teaching of Buddhism, which outlines the nature of suffering and the path to its cessation. They are: 1) The truth of suffering (dukkha), 2) The truth of the origin of suffering (craving), 3) The truth of the cessation of suffering (the end of craving), and 4) The truth of the path to the cessation of suffering (the Noble Eightfold Path). ↩