TEXT COPIED FROM HUGH’S POSTING OF TODAY’S DHARMA TALL
Live Session Summary, Sunday, November 9, 2025: It was good to be with you for our live session today. The focus of the session was ‘The obstacle is the path.’
Here are some of the main themes, poems, and quotes from the session:
I began by speaking about how natural it can feel to push away unpleasant experiences and to try to hold on to pleasant ones. The paradox is, however, that while there may be an evolutionary advantage in moving toward what appears to lead to more happiness and steering clear of what feels difficult or problematical, when we make this approach our habitual pattern of dealing with the pains and pleasures of life, it actually leads to more suffering and less freedom in our lives.
Many teachings from ancient wisdom traditions—and from modern psychology and neuroscience—point to the freedom that comes through opening fully to our experiences, both pleasant and unpleasant. In the Zen Buddhist tradition a core instruction is to ‘make the obstacle the path.’ That is, to open fully to difficult and unpleasant feelings, emotions, and experiences as a path to genuine freedom.
When we take as our orientation—our way of being in the world and seeing life—that difficulties and obstacles, while appearing as though they are barriers to awakening, are actually where we need to wake up—by meeting our experience fully and wholeheartedly—then the difficulties become portals or doorways to freedom.
I shared a number of quotes from poets, psychologists and spiritual teachers that illustrate how freedom comes from saying Yes to the difficult, including:
• “We have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors; if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us; if there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.
How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” (Rainer Maria Rilke, 'Letters to a Young Poet')
• “What you resist persists.” (Carl Jung, psychologist)
• “What you accept fully, you go beyond.” (Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now)
• “Welcome the guests, even if they’re a crowd of sorrows…” (Jellaludin Rumi, ‘The Guest House’, trans. Coleman Barks)
Rather than pulling pleasant things and experiences towards us and pushing away unpleasant ones, we are instructed to use difficulties to help us work with unhelpful habitual patterns and experience greater freedom by allowing ourselves to fully experience difficult feelings and emotions and see their ‘emptiness’. That is, these difficulties have no permanent existence; they are not who we are, but rather, they are temporary phenomena, like a weather system passing through, that come and go—and ‘self-liberate’, in the Tibetan Buddhist understanding, if we do not try to hold onto them or push them away.
See for yourself what happens when you say Yes to difficult experiences, rather than treating them as a problem or obstacle.
Other poems and quotes I shared include:
• ‘He who binds to himself a joy // Does the winged life destroy //
But he who kisses the joy as it flies // Lives in eternity’s sunrise.”
(William Blake, ‘Eternity’)
• “There was a time when I would reject those…” (Muhyiddin Ibn Al’Arabi)
• “Enlightenment is absolute cooperation with the inevitable.” (Anthony de Mello)
I look forward to seeing you next Sunday, November 16, at 9am eastern for our next live session. The theme will be ‘Cultivating mindfulness of the body.’ Have a great week and see you next Sunday. Warmly, Hugh 🙏💜
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TRANSCRIPT FROM VOICE MEMO RECORDING OF HIS TALKS ON NOV 9, 2025
…. modern psychology will tell us the same thing. You know, that whenever we push something away, it doesn't really go away. There isn't really this place away which is kind of, you know, off there somewhere that we can forget about, you know, a way is always, somewhere and and typically it's within us, you know. that it serves us as Carl Jung said that what you resist persists, what you resist, persists, and they're kind of the other side of that Eckhart Toll, who wrote the Power of Now. said, "What you accept fully, you go beyond? I love that quote. What you accept fully, you go beyond. You know, when we allow an experience to be present, to come and to go, then you know, the Tibetan Buddhist, the feeling self liberates. It you know, because we're not getting in the way, because we're not getting in a struggle with it, then it can just come and go in its own time. It can be like a weather system coming through, you know, we kind of get, you know, we hear on the TV or on the radio or on the papers or whatever, oh, there's some big weather system coming in. I was coming in from the south or the west or whatever, and, you know, we're going to get rain, you know, heavy rain or we're going to get snow or whatever. Well, you know, just in the same way as, you know, those kind of intense storms can come in and drop, you know, a foot of snow or drop, you know, inches of rain. in the same way we can have those, you know, very strong experiences, strong emotions, difficult mind states that come up. And our tendency is to think that the best thing we can do is to get rid of them. You know, we think, oh, you know, we tend to see unpleasantness, difficulty as in some way a problem, something that's going to interfere with our well-being. And you could say, you know, on a superficial level, there may be some truth in there. Oh, it gets, you know, we have too much rain, we might, you know, you know, things might happen. Our basement might get flooded or, you know, obviously, we need to take care of those kind of things. But in terms of our own experiences, there's a wisdom in just, you know, allowing what's here to be here and letting it come, letting it go, in its own own time. What you accept fully, you go beyond. Yeah, that's from Ecarton, the power of Mel. So this is really the theme for today to really turn towards our experience. Open to the difficult. There's a lovely quote from the poet Rains Maria Austrian poet Maria Rilka, who lived in the last quarter of the 19th century in the first quarter of the 20th century in one of the great poets I love Roa. He wrote a young poet, you know, up and coming. Somebody wanted to be and make a life of vocation as a poet, wrote to Rka, who was already an established poet, even though he was still quite young in his 30s, I think. The young, young man wrote to him and a series of letters and Ruke wrote back. I think there's 10 long letters that he wrote back and also, I think they've published now the letters the other way. Anyway, all of that to say I was quite wisdom in Rocke's response to this young poet, and these letters to a young poet. And this is one quote from from Rokai. He says, we have no reason to harbor any mistrust against our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. if it has abysses, these abysses belong to us. If there are dangers, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult. This is the kind of the theme lump getting out today. Always trust in the difficult. Then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. So what first appears as something frightening or difficult or painful will, in fact, be something that helps us to wake up, to really find the deeper truths of life. And he then goes on to say, how could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons, that at the last moment are transformed into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who were only waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is in its deepest essence something helpless that wants our love. So this theme, this idea of always trusting in the difficult, you know, when a difficult experience comes along, we really have two choices, as we have with any experience. We can meet it and allow it to have its day in the sun, as it will, have its moment, you know, and just to come and go as everything comes and goes, or we can get into some kind of struggle with it, you know, and the way we struggle with it is with experiences, that we tend to hold on to what we find pleasant and enjoyable and what we like. And we tend to push away what we don't like. We resist. We resist what we don't like. And there's you know, there's a basic kind of there's a wisdom in this, you know, that if we if we just let you know, if we just let quote bad things happen and not worry about them, you know, if we talk no, no notice of, you know, feeling cold or being in pain, then we probably wouldn't have a very long life. You know, if we weren't able to respond wisely, you know, trying to pull away from danger, then then we would probably not have a very long life because, you know, danger would come and we wouldn't look where we're going and, you know, there'd be, you know, a car would come along or something like that. So we can need to take care on that level, on on a day-to-day, immediate level. But when it comes to our emotions and our mind states, you know, what we there's a different kind of law and logic that goes on, I think, you know, from a spiritual standpoint that trying to hold on to the pleasant and to push away the unpleasant is actually tends to be actually counterproductive because it means that we're what we will do is we'll set up patterns and habits in our life, where we're always kind of moving towards what we like. We're grasping after. I need more of this to be okay. And I need less of this and difficult stuff to be okay. And so we're always kind of leaning into the future and, you know, in Buddhist language, that's talked about as craving. You know, we're craving, we're wanting things to beep the way exactly the way we want them to be. And when we do that, the Buddha tour, that that is, you know, that is when we suffer is when we're trying to control life in this way they get more of the pleasant, get less of the unpleasant and kind of space out with the neutral, the in between, you know. But this isn't actually a recipe for happiness, for well-being, for freedom. The wisdom teachings tell us that this isn't the way to go, that it actually the opposite way, you know, is actually the way to go. It's kind of paradoxical to actually welcome what's more challenging, what's difficult. But this actually, you know, and, you know, with all of this, everything I'm saying and all the teachings I'm pointing to, none of them are about just believe this. They're all about seeing for yourself. So see what it's like for you to have a difficult experience and really allow it to be here, allow it to come, allow it to go in its own time, and see if that if there's any greater well-being, any greater happiness or freedom that comes with that welcoming the guests, you know, I'm thinking of roomie's poem now, the guestouse, where he says, welcome, the guest guest, even if there are a crowd of sorrows who sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some nude delight. He says, "The dark thought, the shame, the malice, Meet them at the door, laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond, so that this poem, which, you know, you probably many of you are very familiar with, because it's such a. It's such a, it offers such good guidance from a spiritual standpoint, welcome the guests, even if there're a crowd of sorrows. But this is actually the way to go if we want to be more happy, more fulfilled, and freer in our lives, not caught up in suffering. Inen Buddhism, they say the obstacle is the path. The obstacle is the path, the obstacle comes up for us, a difficulty, and really offers us the opportunity to either accept it, work with it, or reject it and work against it. and really all of the wisdom teachings tell us that are wellbeing comes from working with and accepting the difficult. Accepting the obstacle. And what that means, you know in practice is to allow ourselves to feel what we're feeling, you to allow ourselves to feel sadness or feel grief, or feel anger, you know, I say, feel anger, really feel the visceral, you know, something, somebody has done something. And we feel that energy of anger, to feel that energy, but without, yeah, without the story. Because when we add the story to it, this person did this to me, I'm going to get back at them. That's not that doesn't serve us. That just gets us. Those are, you know, as many of you be familiar with the teaching of the second arrow. You know, the second arrow is where we add on to the experience something that doesn't help us, you know, when we they shouldn't have done this to me. I'm going to get back at them for doing this. Those are second arrows, third arrows. If we can just stay with the first arrow, which is the direct experience. So if it's sadness or anger, allow ourselves to feel it, say yes to what's difficult. Can I feel this? Can I feel the energy of it? Can I feel the tightness? Can I feel the heat? Can I can I just experience it, in the same way as a weather system coming through? Dancing in the rain, you know, or at least, you know, not you know, insisting that, you know, that the rain shouldn't be here or feeling disappointment or anger because the rain came. You know, whatever comes to us in our experience, you could say, is lawful. It comes out of the law of cause and effect. You know, it comes out of somewhere. It comes out of causes, you know, in Buddhism, it's spoken about. It comes out of causes and conditions. Conditions have happened in the past that lead us to, you know, whatever is coming up now, you know, if it's a feeling of shame, then that's coming from something inside of us, probably stories, other people have told us, maybe our family, you know, that we should be ashamed of something. And when something comes up, then that's where what we feel and it feels like we kind of almost like a collapsing feeling, oh, my God, my life is blah, blah, blah. You know, those feelings when they come up are. to be treated, are, you know, the word that comes to me is, you know,'s they're what is they're coming out of courseuses and conditions. They You know, you could say they're inevitable, you know, and if I have to be careful of what I'm saying here, you know, to not be misunderstood. It's not that somehow, you know, they were foreseen as happening, inevitable, I mean, just unavoidable, because the cord, the conditions that were here were there to have this feeling come now, you know, from past things that have happened, and that could be a complex, you know, array of different things happening and coming together to lead to this feeling, this emotion, this mind state. But what is here is here. What is here is always what's here. And the wisdom Wisdom tells us to embrace that, to allow it, to welcome it. I mean, it doesn't mean that we have to welcome, oh, this terrible feeling that I'm having. But as much as we can, just to allow it to be here. And if we don't add anything to it, we don't add the second arrow or the third arrow, you know, of resistance, of this shouldn't be happening. Then what will happen is it will come and go in its own time. I think I was saying, I don't know if I finished what I was saying before, but that it will in, you know, in term in the words used inibetan, Buddhism, it will self- liberate. The feeling will free itself. It will just come and go. It'll just, you know, that sense of coming and going. And in a way, what we need to do is get out of our own way, you know, not to not to get in a fight with our experience. This shouldn't be happening. This should be different than it is. And to just welcome, make the obstacle the path, make this the place, this difficulty, the place where I can find greater freedom. I can wake up. Because what we what we can see is if I can do it if I can say yes to this experience and allow it to come and go, then it points to the possibility of saying yes to all experience. And when we say yes to all experience. And again, I have to be careful. I don't mean that I'm saying that bad things, that people are doing, we say yes to it in a sense of approving them. No, we don't't approve them. You know, bad things or we don't justify harmful things happening. But we recognize that this is what's here right now, what we're saying yes to is what's here right now. And then the more we can do that, the more we can respond wisely and skillfully and appropriately encourageously to what does need to be responded to. You know, if people are doing some of these harming somebody else and we can do something about it, then it's very wise and compassionate to do that. It's appropriate. But to do it from that place of this is what's here right now, can I just be here? Can I welcome Can I welcome, can I accept what's here right now? So, this is you know, final thing I'll say on this before we've finished with moving to a final meditation is, you know, where I've found myself getting into trouble over the years really has been when something comes up and often it's come up for me as like, you know, a feeling of overwhelm, I'm just trying to do too much. You know, that's kind of a pattern that I've, you know, had in my life in the past. And what I've tended to do is, you know, once, you know, all of these things are scheduled and you know, have to happen, it can be like, you know, trying to hold on, you know, hold tight, you know, and getting really contracted and really getting in a fight with how things are, you, and my mode was often to just try and push through. I'm going to try and, you, hold on tight to get through. It's almost like, you know, you just, you know, a survival kind of mode. You just kind of hold on tight. But, you know, that, you know, what I found was that wasn't a wise way of being or responding. Because at some point, you're not going to be able to just push through. You know, and the more you get into that defensive crouch, you know, you got to push, push, push, push. The more you forget to take care of what needs to get taken care of, sleep, nutrition, exercise. You know, all of these things, because we're so focused, this was my experience, we're so focused, just pushing on through. And at the end, the body will tend to say, "No, I'm not going anymore. I'm not even going to continue." And then you can reach, you know, you can just hit a wall of collapse and, you know, kind of physical, mental collapse, you know. And so this is kind of like when things come to a kind of more extreme place, but it's the same thing. You know, when we resist what resists actually persists, you know, it doesn't go away. We can't just force our way through in the end. We might think we can for a while and in emergencies, we sometimes yeah, we have to do it, you know, we don't really sometimes have a choice. But in, you know, when it isn't that situation, what's services is to just really say yes to what's here, not resist, not push away, and what that leads to really is a place where we see that we can bring this to everything in our experience. All experiences can be met in this way, with this openness, with this friendliness, with this kindness. You know, what I said, Jennifer was, you know, in the Tibetan term is self liberate. If we don't get in the way of these emotions and mind states, they can just free themselves by coming and going in their own time. They come, they stay for a while, and then they go. But the problems we have is when we get into a struggle with what's coming up, we fight what's here. So let's just move into a final short meditation and a few words to close up. So just making a shift, sitting in a way that's comfortable and relaxed. Just notice what's present. You know, we've been in a kind of a lots of ideas and thoughts being shared, and just notice voice present for you right now. I take a few deeper breaths, letting yourself settle. calming the body, calming the mind.. Maybe just taking a moment to appreciate your own effort efforts and being here today and practicing today ascending yourself a wish of kindness, friendliness, compassion, May I be well, may I be happy? May I be safe? Just breathing out, sending a wish of kindness, friendliness to everyone here, all of us here together, practicing together in all our different places, just sending a wish, may you be safe. May you be happy? Are you be peaceful? Are you be held in loving kindness, breathing in, breathing out. breathing in, wishing yourself well, breathing out, sending wishes of loving kindness to everyone here and out into the world, out into our suffering world. And finishing with this poem from. Muadin Ibn ali. There was a time I would reject those who were not of my faith, but now my heart has grown capable of taking on all forms. It's a pasture for gazelles, an abbey for monks, a table for the Torah, ka for the pilgrim. My religion is love, Whichever the root lo's caravan shall take, that shall be the path of my faith. coming back for the last few minutes.
