This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Crossing the Flood ~ 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 website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
Good evening, welcome.
Tonight, I’d like to continue this series on the idea of crossing the flood. This is a metaphor that shows up in a number of different places in the suttas1 over and over again. The general idea is that we find ourselves on what we call the “near shore,” just here, wherever we are. Then we come up against what seems like a flood of water—something that feels overwhelming, sets us off balance, or is just too much. We feel like, “Oh my gosh, how do I get to the other side?”
Life brings us so many things. It’s maybe not so uncommon or unusual to have, at least once if not more in a person’s life, a moment of thinking, “Wow, I don’t know how I’m going to do this.” In the way this metaphor goes, we’re sitting on the near shore, we see the flood, and on the other side is the far shore. For different people, that means different things, but in general, we could say that’s where peace, ease, freedom, and lasting happiness are. And so there’s the question: “How do I cross the flood? How do I get over to the far shore?”
In the Pali Canon2, the Buddha gets asked this a number of times: “How did you do it? How does a person in general do it? How do we get across the flood?”
One response that I really like has a poetic feeling to it. The Buddha’s response is: “By not hurrying and not tarrying.”
“Tarrying” is not a word that’s usually in my vocabulary, but I like it. It’s like not dawdling, not stopping, or not doing nothing. Not hurrying, not tarrying. These two extremes. It seems like so often we have one way in which we prefer to meet difficulties. Like, “Okay, I just got to power through,” or “I’m just going to put my head down and push.” Maybe that’s hurrying. Or maybe hurrying is a way in which we get disconnected from ourselves and from everything else, and we’re just like, “Okay, I’m just going to do the minimum so I can get to the other side of it.” I used to work with somebody who was like this; everything he did was done really quickly. I’d appreciate it, but then, “Oh, wait, this isn’t quite right,” and “Oh, wait, now that you did that, it doesn’t work with this other thing.” He just had this feeling like he wanted to get it off his plate as soon as possible.
And “not tarrying”—there’s this way in which sometimes when we encounter difficulties, we feel stuck. And we’re just stuck, and we don’t really do anything. Maybe we’ve put our head in the sand. A friend of mine recently said, “I just ostriched.” I was like, “What is that?” It took me a while to figure out: just put your head in the sand and pretend like nothing’s there.
So, these two different ways. What’s interesting for me is that the Buddha isn’t saying exactly what he did; he’s pointing to what he didn’t do. These extremes of going too fast or not doing anything. So maybe there’s some room for us to explore for ourselves. First of all, maybe explore: do we have a way in which we usually meet difficulties? Do we just want to get through it as fast as possible because it feels uncomfortable, so we’ll make decisions or yell out or blame others, just to no longer be experiencing the discomfort? Or are we more of one that tends to get stuck? First, maybe just ask ourselves if there’s a way in which we tend one way or the other. Chances are, that’s so.
And then, with that question, can we lean a little bit more towards the center? It’ll be uncomfortable because the usual way of doing things is the most comfortable way. But can we just recognize the way that we often are doing things and maybe do something more moderate, not on one of the extremes?
With the Buddha not saying exactly what he did, it allows us to interpret that maybe there’s a third way. We have one extreme, another extreme, and maybe there’s a third way. And what might that third way be? I’ll offer some ideas here. One that occurs to me is to tune in, to be sensitive to what’s needed. Maybe a certain amount of hurrying is needed, sprinkling some hurrying here, some tarrying there, and maybe a mixture of both. But a third way is to not just follow our usual habitual patterns, but instead become sensitive to what would be best here, and a willingness to maybe stretch ourselves. What is this situation, what is this experience calling for? What would be the most helpful in the big picture, in the long term, instead of just our usual way?
Then there’s another way we might interpret the third way: as something that’s balanced, something in the middle. The middle way, we could say, is part of the third way. I’m not going to talk about that tonight; that’s a whole other topic worthy of its own dharma talk. But is there a way to be balanced? One way we think about this is with equanimity3. Equanimity is this quality of not being thrown off, not being pushed around, but instead to be able to remain balanced.
Then we might say, “Well, that sounds nice. How do we be equanimous? How do we practice with equanimity?” One way is to just reflect on our experience. For example, let’s just say you came to a place like IMC on a Monday night, after dinner, for a meditation session. It could be you sit down to meditate and the mind is really restless. But chances are, if you have been meditating before, you know, “Oh, this is just kind of what it’s like at the beginning of a meditation session.” Chances are, things will mellow out, there’ll be a little bit more settling, and the body will have a little more ease. So when you’re sitting down and you realize, “Okay, I’m feeling a little restless or agitated,” there’s a certain amount of equanimity with that. You’re not all of a sudden like, “Okay, I can’t meditate now,” and just get up and walk out. Instead, you have this experience, maybe even seeing the bigger picture, like, “Oh yeah, okay, this is not uncommon.”
So sometimes when we feel like we’re crossing the flood, when we feel like we are coming up against some difficulties—whether it’s overwhelming or not—is there a way that can help us to see the bigger picture? Sometimes seeing the bigger picture, if the difficulty is some difficult emotions or ruminations that we just can’t get out of our head, is to expand the awareness to include the bodily experience. Feeling the feet on the ground, feeling the pressure of the chair or cushion against the body. Getting embodied and grounded really helps us to see a little bit bigger picture, because otherwise we’re just stuck in the rumination, the circling that’s happening in the mind. This is another way to support equanimity. Often when we’re off-balance, it’s what’s happening with the mind. So can we expand to include the bodily experience? This helps us to not necessarily fall into our preferred hurrying or tarrying.
So when the Buddha said this to the person who asked how he crossed the flood, he said, “By not hurrying and not tarrying.” And then this individual said something like, “Yeah, but how really did you do it?” And then the Buddha expands it a little bit and he says, “When I tarried, I sank. When I hurried, I got swept away.”
I love this. The first ten times I read this, it didn’t really occur to me until more recently, this idea that the Buddha is describing trial and error. He’s learning from his mistakes. “When I tarried, I sank. When I hurried, I got swept away.” So it’s not like it was clear to him exactly what to do. He was finding his way. He was having to be sensitive to what was needed. He was having to figure it out, be present for the experience.
In the same way, this practice isn’t asking us to be perfect. It’s not asking us to know exactly what to do every moment. Instead, it’s asking us to just meet the moment as best we can. Can we be present for what’s arising in our life as best we can? And then we have a sense of what to do next or what direction to head.
There’s something more about this idea of trial and error. As I was saying earlier for equanimity, we have to be willing, as soon as we encounter some difficulty, to hang in there a little bit. Trial and error means that the very first time you make a mistake, you don’t just leave and say, “Okay, that didn’t work, I’m abandoning this.” It’s this willingness to hang in there and try something else. This willingness to be sensitive and to explore.
Maybe I tried really being present for the experience of the posture, feeling the pressure against the body, but then I find myself getting really tight as I’m straining. Instead, can I recognize that maybe there’s a way to be more receptive? Just receive what experiences there are to receive, instead of going out there and probing and trying to glom on to our experiences. Can we receive them? It’s more of an openness, an allowing of whatever is to be known to be experienced, instead of straining and pushing.
Or maybe there’s this way that we just show up for the practice, in whatever way that means for us. Maybe it’s like, “You know, all I can do right now is sit for five minutes, five breaths, five moments.” But this idea of, “You know what, I’m going to show up as best I can, and this is all I can do right now.” This way of showing up for ourselves, for what’s happening, in whatever way that we can at that moment. So this diligence, in terms of not abandoning ourselves, not abandoning meeting the difficulty.
And then there’s this way, maybe with this diligence, this trial and error of hanging in there, this willingness to just ask, “What’s helpful right now?” If we’re allowing it to be known to ourselves, for it to arise, sometimes it becomes clear. But maybe it’s sometimes helpful to just drop in the question, “What would be helpful right now?” The asking of the question is more important than finding the answer, but sometimes just orienting this way can be enormously helpful.
And then this third thing that we need, from this idea of “when I tarried I sank, when I hurried I got swept away,” is that it also requires a certain amount of saddha4. This is a word in Pali we could say means to have a certain faith, a certain confidence, a certain heartfelt connection that this is a way forward. I talked about equanimity; maybe we’re stuck in our mind, and then I said maybe we could bring it into the body, but then also the heart. To pay attention to the heart, to what feels heartfelt, to bring some tenderness into the experience. To bring some care and compassion and love into this experience.
In the suttas, there’s another quote. When somebody asks the Buddha, “How does a person cross the flood?” he’s no longer speaking about what he did, but just giving instructions for others. And he says, “By faith you cross the flood, and by diligence you cross the deluge.”
This word “faith” is a sensitive word. I’m not so comfortable saying it sometimes in this setting because it can feel like, “Oh, just believe and everything will be fine.” But can we have faith that everything doesn’t have to be figured out right this moment? A certain type of trust. A trust that being present for one’s experience, that alone is helpful. Trust that things change. They do change. It’s not always pleasant, but it can also work in our favor when we’re facing these difficulties. And then faith also has this heart quality. So what is it that uplifts the heart, that allows us to have some openness to meet difficulties, to meet ourselves and others with compassion?
How did you cross the flood? By not hurrying and not tarrying.
And I think I’m going to end there.
I’d love to hear from you all. Do you have some ways in which you meet difficulties, some habitual or patterned ways? What does a flood feel like for you? What does it mean to you to have faith, trust, or confidence to help cross the flood? What does it mean to have equanimity, to have balance? What is a third way between two different extremes? I’d love to hear any comments anybody has about this. We can co-create this talk here.
(Audience member): One thing that comes to mind for me is to be the eye in the storm. In other words, all this stuff is going on around you, to you, through you, but you’re just the eye of the storm. You’re unchanged by it. You have that equanimity on the inside, so nothing out there is pulling you too much this way or that.
(Speaker): Very nice. Do you have a sense of what helps you to be the eye in the storm?
(Audience member): Inner stillness. In other words, if there’s a lot of noise out there, it’s not necessarily in here. So you can be still even though there’s all that noise.
(Speaker): Nice. Yeah, and we all have this stillness. We just aren’t always in touch with it. Thank you. Anybody else?
(Audience member): Thanks for the talk. For me, I found it hard to work with the metaphor. Maybe I just haven’t thought about it much, but near shore, far shore… it’s both kind of abstract, but then it’s trying to be concrete. I kind of thought a lot about the teachings of impermanence as a way to work through it. Specifically, the idea that, oh, today we’ve identified a far shore, we’ve created a goal. And to think about why we think that’s the far shore. If you think back, we probably all had different far shores and identified ourselves on a certain near shore, right? Depending on the day or season of life. And so impermanence kind of helps me just go, “Oh, it’s what I see today.” And if you adopt a posture where you’re like, “Well, that might fade,” or “The shore I’m on might fade,” you can keep moving and recognize there will probably be another shore.
(Speaker): I appreciate that very much, the changing nature of it. Thank you. That’s great. Today’s far shore may be tomorrow’s near shore. We don’t know, right? I love it. Anybody else?
(Audience member): For me, there’s a big difference whether the turbulent river is occupied by another person and it’s a relational situation, or whether it’s my own individual project or situation. When it’s my own, I can pace myself and pause. When it involves other people, it’s like there’s a real force just yanking me to go forward. And to change that tendency, I’m very conscious that that’s something I would really like to intend to change—to have the courage to just be present and be with it, instead of this impulse to rush in or say something or do something. Have you got any recommendations for this dilemma?
(Speaker): Can you tell me, do you have a sense of what’s underneath that impulse?
(Audience member): I feel like when it’s just me and my own situation, I have a certain amount of confidence and trust. But when I look at the other person faltering and showing me a need or a disturbance… But then again, it’s different whether I’m wearing a professional hat or it’s family. As a professional, I could do that because you have a little discipline you put on every day. But in familial situations, that’s where it’s really tough. And I feel it’s really important. I’m still sharp enough that I could attempt this, you know, it’s not too late.
(Speaker): It’s not too late. One thing, when we’re seeing others struggling and we want to help them, it really brings up acutely our powerlessness to control others. That’s really uncomfortable, to feel like, “Oh, I care about you, I want to help you, I want to support you,” and we might have a sense of what would be helpful for them. But of course, they’re going to do what they’re going to do. We don’t like to think of ourselves as wanting to control others, but the powerlessness is so uncomfortable. I don’t know if this is exactly what’s happening with you, but I just want to highlight that this is often what’s underneath when there are difficulties when one person is struggling and the other person really wants to help.
(Audience member): I see the power part, I definitely see it. But it’s very hard to perceive these delineations when it’s happening. It’s kind of like when the weather suddenly changes and you realize, “Oh, it’s going to hail,” and down it comes and there’s no warning. And so that’s the difficulty for me, particularly in very well-ingrained, habitual, familial patterns.
(Speaker): That’s definitely… I think I’ve heard it mentioned many times. These are the really tough areas. And they’re beautiful places to practice because they are tough areas. Meditation practice is fantastic because, let’s be honest, sitting still for 30 minutes is sometimes really uncomfortable. Building up the capacity to be with uncomfortableness is absolutely a way forward. Just feeling like, “Wow, this doesn’t feel good,” and having some equanimity, seeing the bigger picture like, “Oh yeah, okay, I’ve sat through physically difficult or mentally difficult situations.” It doesn’t matter the particulars of what made it difficult. It really does a tremendous amount for our capacity to be uncomfortable. It’s life-changing in so many ways.
(Audience member): And I can kind of hope that the compost process of meditation might loosen it up a bit. Does that make any sense to you?
(Speaker): Yeah, compost, right. Things get changed, somehow they get loosened. I’m sure it does. Thank you. You’re welcome.
(Audience member): You know, when you’re talking about the near shore and the far shore, I was thinking of another metaphor I heard years ago, which is, you’re in a room and you want to figure out a way to get out of the room. You can spend a lot of time moving the furniture around and think that something’s going to be different, but really the task is to get outside of the room. And you’re looking for instructions, like, “How do I do it?” And the metaphor was, “Well, there are instructions, but they’re on the outside of the room.” What I’ve always taken away from that is it’s almost like there’s a narrative and a story that we think will guide us through, but you may not know what that is in the moment. It’s only after you’ve sort of navigated whatever that challenge is that you say, “Oh, well, this is the story I’m going to tell myself.” But again, it’s a story, it’s a narrative, but you don’t know what it is when you’re on one side of the river, I guess.
(Speaker): Interesting. So let’s see if I understand. The instructions are like the narrative, but we don’t know them. It’s only retrospectively we look back and we can piece together a narrative from events that happened.
(Audience member): Yeah, or perhaps the guidance that we were looking for to change our situation. But we don’t need the guidance then, when we’re outside the room.
(Speaker): That’s kind of a cruel thing, right? That sometimes, “Oh, now I see.” Yeah, that’s an interesting idea. The instructions are outside of the room. So maybe the metaphor there is to stop looking for instructions. Instead, I’m using this language like, “be sensitive to what’s needed.” Maybe that means you don’t have instructions, so tune in to what’s the next thing to do.
(Audience member): And it also goes back to what you were talking about a couple of weeks ago, that you’re in place B and you’re trying to get to place A, but the only way you’re going to get there is to be completely present here.
(Speaker): That’s exactly right. Thank you.
(Audience member): So the instructions reminded me that at one time I was trying to learn to ski. And for years I tried and tried to make nice, smooth, connected turns, and it never worked. And one day an instructor gave me a particular instruction, and I skied down with nice, smooth, connected turns. And I said, “Oh, great, these are great instructions.” And it took me a while to realize that it had very little to do with the instructions. It had a lot more to do with a couple of years of trying and failing. And more or less, that’s what I’m doing here.
(Speaker): Very nice. We tend to think, “If only I had those instructions years ago,” dismissing that, “Oh, no, no, no, we needed those years of trial and error and practice.” Yeah, great. Thank you.
(Audience member): You know, as far as doubt is concerned, Joseph Goldstein used a phrase which I loved. He said, “Watch out for doubt masquerading as wisdom.” And I loved that because, in my case especially, it’ll have the flavor of, “This is how it really is.” You know, “Oh my god, maybe it’s all…” It has this certain, “I know what’s really happening” flavor. But for me, if I can catch it, it helps. But I could be stewing in doubt for, let’s say, 10 minutes and struggling. After 10 minutes, let’s say I catch, “Oh my god, this is doubt.” Then I might stew another 10 minutes, “Okay, doubt, I’ll work with doubt.” And after 10 minutes, the thought might come, “Oh, Joseph Goldstein said that,” and then it helps resolve it. And he also said, “What does doubt feel like in your body?” And then I’m like, “Oh, this is what doubt feels like,” and I can stay with it, and then it shifts. But even with having that tool, sometimes having the right thought come seems important. I could stew for 20 minutes, even though I know this kind of thing helps me, if that thought doesn’t come.
(Speaker): There’s all these tools, but the right thing needs to come at the right time.
(Audience member): That’s right.
(Speaker): But the “right time” you’re defining is when you want it. It’s coming at the perfect right time for it. It doesn’t necessarily match your preferences, but it arises when it arises.
(Audience member): And when the resolution happens, the first thing that happens is, “I should have thought of this 20 minutes ago.”
(Speaker): But not hurrying and not tarrying, right? This idea of hurrying, like, “Oh, that should have been 20 minutes ago.” Thank you, Jay.
(Speaker): Today was a day that I didn’t have an opportunity to prepare a talk, and I scribbled some notes here and I said, “Well, we’ll see what happens.” And it’s just lovely that together, I feel like we created something together. So thank you.
If you’d like, you’re welcome to come up here and talk to me. Otherwise, I wish you a wonderful rest of the evening and safe travels home. Thank you.
Sutta: A discourse or sermon of the Buddha or one of his disciples. ↩
Pali Canon: The standard collection of scriptures in the Theravada Buddhist tradition, written in the Pali language. ↩
Equanimity (Pali: Upekkha): A sublime state of mind characterized by balance, non-reactivity, and impartiality, especially in the face of life’s changing conditions. ↩
Saddha: A Pali word that translates to faith, confidence, or conviction. In Buddhism, it is not blind faith but rather a confidence that arises from understanding and personal experience. ↩