Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute retreat session, Diana Taylor explores methods for cultivating inner peace and clarity as the foundation for developing wisdom and compassion. She begins with Thought Transformation teachings on giving victory to others, stressing that compassion means seeing suffering with discernment rather than weakness, and illustrates this through stories of bodhisattva action. She then pivots to practical mindfulness practices and the role of external and internal spaciousness—how environmental calmness, art, music, and poetry can bring the busy mind to a state of receptive quietness. She reads Dorothy Hewett’s poem Peninsula as a concrete example of how language and imagery can quiet and refocus the mind, then invites participants to reflect in small groups on what techniques have worked for them personally. The session emphasises flexibility and self-knowledge over rigid adherence to a single method. Suitable for practitioners new to or deepening retreat experience.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 11 Ret..mp3
UUID: 46ee37e7-d7b5-4e28-bac8-a9eebdaf09b9
Teacher: Diana Taylor
Collection: Retreat (Diana Taylor)
Date: 1997 (exact day not recorded)
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.2 minutes
Words: ~3,922
One of the verses of Thought Transformation is about giving the victory to the other person. If you need to think that way, you need to think that way. If you need to be like that, you need to be like that. Yeah. You’re a victim for why?
If you can’t forgive. Yes. Except we hold that position so that we can be powerful often, don’t we? No. Yeah.
Yep. I think we need to understand that particular verse at various different levels. Giving victory to the other person is about seeing that person with compassionate eye. The eye of compassion is not necessarily a soft and wishy washy state of mind. But it sees that the other person is coming from a point of suffering.
That other person is suffering and the desire to bring that person out of their suffering. So it’s not condemning the other person. But nor is it saying that this person’s needs are necessarily less than mine. It’s saying that this person’s needs are more important than mine because I can actually see these things and this person can’t. And so because this person is confused and ignorant then maybe I’ll work with this person’s confusion and ignorance to try and create change.
But I mean, there’s also the story of one of the bodhisattvas, I can never remember which one, was a captain of a ship. No, was on a ship, sailing somewhere. And he knew that one person was planning to slaughter everybody in the ship and run off with a cargo. So the bodhisattva kills the one person who was about to slaughter everybody else. Now that act is an act of killing which creates a certain sort of karma.
But the act was done with a mind of compassion which was actually preventing the man who is about to kill from doing the act of killing. So Bodhisattva knows when that’s going to be a compassionate act. We don’t know because we don’t know what the future karma of a person is going to be. So please don’t go around killing people. But there are times when the compassionate act is actually a very strong act and particularly when we have to stop somebody from hurting another person or killing another person.
So we’re not giving them victory in the sense of allowing them to do anything they want to but giving them victory in the sense saying, ‘Okay, let me try and work with you within your own framework and see what change we can generate through that.’ Like dealing with somebody with Alzheimer’s disease or any other form of dementia. If you want to communicate with a person who is suffering dementia, easiest way is to by entering into that dementia and following that story and therefore leading that person to somewhere which is safe, somewhere which is safe. Or like the story of the Buddha who says, Look, I’ve got a better game for you out here. Which is not the ultimate game but it’s working within the framework of the children who are there and then leading them out. So all the time, all the time, there are different methodologies for different situations.
So that particular verse doesn’t, not meant to be held at all times in every situation. Definitely. Because then you have to you’re hanging on to something and you know, whatever they do they can’t change it. And so you’re stuck in that particular situation. Forgiving ourselves is to do with recognising that we are human limited people, that we do not at this moment in our lives have infinite wisdom compassion.
Forgiving ourselves is acknowledging that. When we forgive another person, we’re forgiving them because they’ve done something wrong. They’ve done something through ignorance or through fear. When we need to forgive ourselves it’s because we have done something again through ignorance and through fear. So we need to be compassionate towards that, not angry towards it.
Say, Okay, I didn’t understand. My mind wasn’t in a position where I could act wisely. Or the wisdom might have been there, the skillfulness may not have been there. Definitely. Yeah.
And it’s an indication of just how deep these imprints are in our mind. That arises from imprints which have been in your mind for a long, long time. So there’s two aspects to that. There’s an aspect which is the quality of wisdom. And there’s an aspect which is what I call our phobic responses.
Phobic in the sense of being such a deep imprint that it just comes up instantly like a phobia does. And we find ourselves saying and doing things which normally we wouldn’t say or do, but we’re just into it without even knowing we’ve got into it. Forgiveness is about saying, okay, that is the way my mind is. And I want to do something about it. I want to change it.
I want to have more wisdom. I want to have more compassion. I don’t want to behave unskillfully. So therefore I have to learn. Therefore I have to meditate.
Therefore, I have to understand what these words mean: wisdom and compassion. But I can’t do it instantly. I have to do it according to my abilities, my mental abilities in this lifetime, according to the different imprints in terms of dharma that I’ve built up in previous lifetimes, which make it easier then to understand the dharma in this lifetime. I’ve got to work from where I am at this particular moment with this mind strength. Forgiveness and compassion, purification, they’re really all the same sort of thing.
Christ said God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, whoso who believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting. This quality of forgiveness which is so strong within the Christian tradition is another way of talking about compassion. When God is seen as a God of forgiveness through the cross, what that God is saying is: You are human, limited people and the profound quality is the quality of love. Through understanding this, then you are released. As you begin to know it, you are released from your human ignorance.
Then you are released into a state where you are a loving person. God is love. I can’t talk in the same way about other religions because I was brought up as a Christian and known by Christian tradition. But when we look at these things and say what is that religion is trying to do? It’s trying to bring us to this point of wisdom and compassion.
Sure we all stuff it up and the religions stuff it up and the people who are ordained people stuff it up as well. But the intention is there and the beings are there. The possibility is there and the teachings are there. We’ve just got to get on and do it. Let’s take a break for some afternoon tea.
Did you want to ask a question? So I come back here quarter to four. Half an hour for afternoon tea. Go back to the first one. Which, if you remember, what was happening about quarter to ten this morning was about mindfulness and about creating that sort of space both both physically and internally where our minds are enabled to be at peace.
During the day we’ve been looking at ways in which we facilitate the development of that quality of peacefulness within our minds, different techniques we use. But it’s a bit hard to say what is the key of anything because everything is so interrelated all the time. But without this quality of mindfulness, without creating these spaces for ourselves, then we can’t develop the wisdom and we can’t develop the compassion. Because our minds simply become too busy and we lose that sense of clarity. And as we begin to lose the clarity and we become more and more fearful, then we start to lose that quality of compassion as well.
So it is very important to be creating these internal and external spaces. And in the process utilizing anything which is going to create that sense of inner and external space around you. So whether you use physical things like flowers and incense, having the room clean or having trees outside or whether you use music or quietness. All these things help to bring the mind back to a quality which is quiet. And from that quality of quietness then we can go into that quality meditation.
And in order to do that we need this mindfulness which is reminding us this is what I’m trying to do. So another way, another form that we can utilize for that is poetry. I’ve chosen poetry because I can’t see a CD player around here anywhere. If anybody’s got a CD player, I’ll bring some CDs in tomorrow. Can somebody bring a CD player in tomorrow?
This little one. Can you? Thanks, Penny. Just a small one will do. Oh, whatever.
As long as it plays CDs. And we can use some music. All the art forms. The art has various aspects to it, of course. But that profound quality of art, that art that moves us deeply, is always art which brings us back to these qualities of wisdom and compassion.
If you think of paintings which have moved you deeply or even just looking around at these thangkas beautiful. And what is it about these things which move us? About dance. If any of you are into dance and I have a daughter who studied Japanese, very traditional Japanese dance And again the intention behind the performance has been always to generate some sort of inner awareness in the people, the audience who are watching. Anyone who is a performer on stage, whether it’s performing in the sense of acting or performing in the sense of performing music or song or whatever.
Again those performers who move us deeply are the ones who bring us home to our own inner condition and particularly to those qualities of wisdom and compassion. So all art forms can be very potent ways of bringing the mind in, whether we’re utilizing the art form which is being produced by something else, or even if we are creating our own art form. Again, the process of creating art, again we bring our mind in and we make our mind focused. How many of you have read Zen and the Art of Archery? Only one?
Two? Good heavens! You should all have read it. Eugen Herrigel. It’s a book that’s been around for a long, long time where he talks about Japanese view of art, where art is seen to be an expression of some sort of inner movement.
It is this inner movement, this quality of peacefulness, joy, compassion, wisdom, which is the very foundation of art. And in order to develop art in that sense, of course, we need silence, which you will find very beautifully expressed in that particular book in Zen and the Art of Archery. So that if you are involved in any of the arts, then you can use those to, again, to bring your mind to this point of wisdom and compassion. Or you can utilize the art forms which are developed by somebody else. So what I am going to do is read some poetry by Dorothy Hewett.
Dorothy Hewett is probably one of the most un Buddhist people you could think of in some ways. If you have seen her interviewed television she’s this big woman, I don’t know how old she is, she’s got lots of grey hair in any case. A very strongly sexual woman. Her sexuality is something that she seems to be very comfortable with and she allows it to be there present within her. But also she has a very beautiful way of using words and the way she uses words are like music.
And so in reading her poetry there’s this quality of, this musical quality which comes out in her poetry. And when we listen to these sorts of things then our mind similarly is brought into this sense of gentle flowiness, gentle calmness. And so we can bring ourselves back by using these things. So you’re going to have a go at doing this through her poetry. And this is called Peninsula which is about a place that she goes to on the Mornington Peninsula which is not that far from where my house is in South Gippsland.
So for me to read this poetry, of course, I’m reading about the sort of environment which is very precious to me so it has an added potency for that reason. So here’s another technique that you can experiment with. You may not be interested in poetry in a long term sort of way. Or you may like to find some poetry and to spend some time reading poetry like this or haiku poetry, some of the Zen poetry, in order to focus your mind and calm your mind. Or if it’s not poetry, reading some of the books which have moved you in a deep way.
And books which have some sort of spiritual aspect to them, are meant to be read in a very contemplative way. These can be profoundly moving and they can bring our minds back to being very calm and very settled in the process. So all these things, all these are methods for a particular purpose. The particular purpose is to bring us to this state of calmness and clarity. Because it’s from that state of calmness and clarity we develop the wisdom and compassion.
So that’s why we’re going to listen to Dorothy Hewett. So if you’d like to again put yourself in the meditation posture because it’s a good way to listen to poetry in any case. And again, seeing what this how the musicality of words can have this effect. And if you don’t like poetry then just switch off and do your own meditation. But first of all tuning in to yourself, becoming mindful of yourself, mindful of your own breath and your own inner space.
So when I begin to read the words falling into your inner space and allowing that inner space to expand and to have the joy of being aware. First of all, focusing in on the breath. Patchy rain. Five. Overnight, the dull, sharp, snowy light imprints the weeping she oak on the lawn.
The blackbird’s feet scrabble in the ceiling, slapping down to sleep. At dawn, beyond the tea tree hedge the spindle shanked jetties straddle the tide. Inside the old men captured snorting like swine in the second best bedroom. Bringing the tea on time, foot falls and table talk. Furred needles scratching ragtime through the hall, the empty mansions and the widow’s walk.
The bathing boxes face the bay locked in Edwardian secrets neck to knee. Above the shallow shore, one eye weeping like Cyclops. I wait for a ship to call, A message cast in a bottle, a light burning out at sea. Last night beyond the native hedge, tea tree, she oak, paper bark, flattened by the gales, something crying out there in the bay. A bird, a kestrel testing the wind, the cutting edge through Bass Strait from Antarctica.
Under this fragile roof tree, stoke the fire. Pull up the blankets. The blackbirds roost and fuss above my head and the cry goes on insistent, intermittently, dancing on the tides. In the morning in a grey light, snow fell in the garden on the peninsula. The nights are drawing in.
We light the fire. It burns and smolders wet wood, old desire. The seasons turn to winter solstice. Autumn’s ended. Frost on the grass and the rain drives drives in.
The house has turned its blind drowned windows to the storm. Since I saw you last, your present dims in wavers, mist on glass. I can’t recall your kiss embrace. Or put your face together in my mind. Only your separate features are remembered.
Three months have passed, all memories short and totally untended. All love dies. Eating my heart out in this gentle kingdom where death has touched me twice, last month deprived of air fought on the table a primitive response, an old temptation called the grave, and said, Let it go. There’s nothing here to save. I have withdrawn quietly from the world to sit the winter out.
Crows in the garden saunter, pick and preen. If I wait long enough, they’ll pick it clean. Old bones, lost love. A life that’s lived and covered over, saluted, recognised, in tender language, brutal, narrative. Last night the moths came, blundering towards the light, enlarged like giant x rays.
Only one night they last, one wild flight. Black moths in from the sea in the dewy garden, sleepwalkers circling the rooms hurtling against the walls to fall and flap like birds. All night I heard them frantic in the corners, too heavy to rise again. In the morning they lay quietly, dry sticks with folded wings. Where do they come from?
Poems. Come once or sometimes not for years. Go unsung, unknown or in a blaze of glory dance in the flame a moment and go out, never to come again. Does an angel tap a shoulder, promising heaven or hell? Is it death blowing his first breath over as swishing a swell?
A man in a worn overcoat saying, Try this on for size? Or a woman with long wet hair, both of them out there waiting to be recognised. Is it a single presence? Has it a face, a habitation and a name? Was this person from Porlock, Coleridge blamed?
There was one moment when the sky whirled golden needles. Barefooted in my nightgown on the grass, I stagger out to find the glinting sea beyond the garden gate, an edge of cliff, a few steps now like a miracle. When will I walk again? What days, months, years still lie ahead of me? I have come after a long struggle to this sunlit garden, this acre of grass, this temporary haven where I dream at night the same old passionate disastrous things.
In the morning light the tide runs and the hedgerowed blackbird sings back back breaks leg buckles but the sheer tree shakes out its golden needles on me. Out along the bay the sheer wind sighs in with the tide. I have heard it breathing in my ears all night to the pall and the pulse of the earth, the planets moving to their unaccustomed places. They comfort me. Life will go on.
Go out, return with every tide. Children will play in the shallows and the yellow-breasted robin nest in the shade of the tea tree hedge. A skein of drift vapourises above the bay. This is a place where you have never been. Your faith is fathomed under oceans of sea water running down the straits.
Drowned boy, crippled child, lover and awkward woman, they stand out under the sheer tree with gentle gesture. A place where no one walks, only the future fossicking the shore. The square behind the tea tree hedge darkens. Soon night will block it out. The house will rock above the bay, mysterious lapped in grey cloud.
The tide will carry us to sleep. And all the wide salt reaches of the strait invade the mind. What have we left here when we pack and go? Two ghosts. A yellow dog, a tapping bird, the sleepless nights when all we heard was magnified.
The mornings when the sun struck first across the floor, the wide glazed windows and the doors that opened on the lawn. I found this space, a square of frosty grass, the sun that left the garden earlier each day to winter wrap us in a world of cloud. What have we found here? Nothing to take away. Our tenancy is lost.
We’ve made no mark, no covenant or seal, no footsteps in the frost, a fragile shelter and a voyager, ephemeral and real. The house remains. Staying present with whatever is present within you. Being mindful of your own inner space. There’s nothing particularly Buddhist about that.
It’s simply another way of focusing the mind, bringing it in. For some people it will work, for other people it doesn’t work. That’s all. What is important is knowing our own minds. So what I’d like you to do now is to get back into groups of maybe three or four.
Two is too little this time and five is too much. We’re stuck with three and four. And what I’d like you to talk about in those groups is what what you feel works for you. And in doing this, getting some idea of the variety of what works for different people. And in this way also we get different ideas.
So out of what we’ve been discussing today, what sort of things have worked for you? And what sort of things do you think are going to be useful for you? I’m just sharing that with the people in a group. So I say little groups of about three or four and I’ll give you about seven minutes, something like that. Ten minutes at the most.
So if you’d like to just sort of gather yourselves around. In the different groups, find out what everybody’s been thinking. We’ll start over here because you’re the closest and you look as though you want to avoid it most too. Just very briefly, some of the things you talked about. Sorry?
To the traditional meditation. Yeah. Yeah. That’s right. We can be flexible about this.
If we understand what the process is then we have the power to be flexible and to utilise things which are easy for us to utilise. Then when we’re doing that we actually enjoy our meditation instead of it being hard work. Very, very important that. So this group here. Okay.
Yeah. Definitely. And up up in the corner there, I’m not sure how many groups there are up there. I can’t see you. Right.
Two. Yep. Mhmm. Mhmm. Good.
Yeah. Yes. Definitely. Definitely. Bliss out.
Oh, yes. Yeah. Well, Yes. Right. Yes.
Yeah. Yes. That’s right. And the repetitive nature of it. Yeah.
There must be somebody down here, a group down there somewhere. Yep. Yep. Definitely. So we’ve got another group.
This one here then. We’ve I suppose we seem to connect with nature a lot Turn around. To create peace. You have any artists or potters or sculptors or people like that here? Someone up back.
How does that relate to meditation for you, your artwork? What do you do? Yes. Yeah. Mhmm.
Yep. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. Why do you think these things work? How do you think they actually work?
Yes. Yes. Yes. Right. Yeah.
What else? What are some of the other factors involved in this? Why do these things work? It’s a distraction. Sorry?
Yes. Tell me some more about what you mean by that. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yep.
Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Or some something positive within yourself. Yeah.
Yeah. Any other ideas? Yeah? Right. It’s a bit of a paradox.
Why should we feel more connected in those circumstances? Nature is honest and we are part of nature.