So this is the fourth talk on stories. And using the word story as an acronym. We began with the idea of source stories, the originating stories, that from which we originate our views and approach to life attitudes, the fundamental stories in which our life maybe is built on. And then trapping stories, how we get caught in stories. Sometimes the stories are self reinforcing, and labrets. And then we get stuck in debilitating ways of being in the world, or with ourselves. And then there's opening stories, that gives us though, you know, a bigger Vista, full of possibilities, open possibilities, help us see beyond the limited possibilities that old stories have and kind of free us in a certain kind of way. And then today, the AR, is release, releasing stories, there are different than opening opening or opens perspectives, releasing frees us help something let go be released. And this idea of release is my kind of preferred translation of the word nirvāna, or nibbāna. For a number of reasons one is release is is an act kind of an action, something that happens is not not a state. But rather, it's the movement of letting go deeply, deeply. But also release is not the same thing as letting go. And that letting go can be something that we do. But in a sense, but release is something that we don't actually have control over. Not something we actually do ourselves, we set the conditions for it, we might let go deeply. So there can be release. And now this idea of, of release be more than just open to possibilities. But it's releasing even the idea of control. Now in ordinary life, in practice, there's a you know, it's fine to have some degree of control and agency, it's important actually. But in the spiritual realm, as we get deeper and deeper into practice, there's something about letting go of control. That clear, it becomes clear that this is what's needed. That at some point, the sense of control and being the agent and the doer, that is what's needed with the let go and a deep, deep way, or an or that go and allow. And so this idea of allowing something that's not our agency to operate, is, is part of the movement of this Buddhist spirituality. I think almost all forms of spirituality, and deep practices have this emphasis. And so stories that help that. Stories that release us from stories, stories that bring us the edge of stories. And so there's a few stories that come to mind. One is stories where we tell the truth. Sometimes we only become released from the burden of our guilt, the burden of our of our resentments, pervert burden of our regrets, all kinds of things. If we tell the truth to someone, we tell the story, this is what happened. This is what's true. And and without telling the story, we can't really make it clear put it out on the table. This is what happened. This is sometimes it's telling our own story. To someone it could be a stranger even, but not keeping it bottled up. Not keeping it kind of festering inside. But saying it. There's a kind of a confession to confessional attitude sometimes to this heart of ours. We have to confess we have to admit we have to explain we have to not carry secrets. We have to not
hold things privately, where we don't really see them where they kind of are in the background. We kind of know they're there, but they're they are not real. least, but so then we've got speaking them. So these are not made up stories. But rather true stories are true enough, the things that we have to say, to get off our chest things we have to say, to come clean the things we have to say. So we no longer had to identify with our behavior. And some of you know, like one of their great truth telling places, telling stories, truthfully, is in recovery in AAA, people tell their stories there all the time. And it's kind of considered one of the important very important practices for recovery community. So these are releasing stories, so telling the truth, sometimes, because this truth telling, this releasing is, has to do with not our agency, something deeper in our minds, or hearts or some other things that operates, the imagination can have a big role. And so story sometimes can speak Kitu our mind in a different way than prose, cat and explanation can. And, and sometimes by hearing a story, maybe because we identify with it, the emotional connection, maybe the symbolic connection, that the ritual of the story, it speaks to the subconscious mind, and in very important ways, it opens things and releases things, that that is not easy to do, by ourselves. And some teachers are really brilliant at this to tell stories, and, and such a way that people release what they're holding, holding. And some Cisco dharma teachers I know, you know, it's not uncommon for people to be crying during the dharma talks, because they told the story that somehow released something. So I want to give you an example of kind of a story. It's kind of a poem, not to have anyone crying, but maybe you get a flavor of how a story can bring us up against something, and then a tension or a possibility, and then maybe allow for some kind of release. So this is a poem by MBM Apollinaire Apollinaire. So French poets from the early part of this century, apologize, never said his name out loud. So I don't quite sure how that's pronounced. VM. And he's very short poem, apparently, I think it's not I think it stands by itself. And he goes something like this. He said, come to the edge. We said no, will fall. He said come to the edge. We said no, we will fall. He said come to the edge. So we did. And he pushed us. And we flew. So here, what is the edge that we get pushed against? That we finally let go, finally, really let go, rather than falling. We become free we fly. So I don't know if that telling of the poem. Some of you might know that poem. So that maybe doesn't have much, you know, you knew that punch line. But maybe you weren't. Some of you weren't expecting to hear the end. And maybe this idea of oh, if that hearing flu, this is you know, maybe evoke something different in you and, and pointed you to something else, then, then, you know, if you just tell the story, say, you know, it's a good idea to let go, that go deeply, you know, don't be afraid, just like go but the story kind of kind of bring us along and almost so we identify we live the story. So
the stories that release us, stories that inspire us enough and move us that we get released. So these two kinds of stories are closely related. The stories of telling the truth, and the stories that kind of pull us into a possibility of letting go something deeply, both stories are releasing, both stories are both letting go. And, and one of the letting goes that we want to do is to let go of our stories. And, and some of you, I'm sure are more than ready to let go of some of your stories that you've been living with for a long time. And maybe you can let go by telling it to someone or telling it to yourself by writing it down. Maybe you can let go of some of the stories by designing a little ritual of putting it down. I have tremendous of appreciation of the power of ritual. And the wonderful thing about rituals, they work even if you don't believe in them. So it's okay to do them. But this shift that change might not be dramatic or known right away. But there's something about their ritual that helps the heart Let go, a ritual of honesty of truth. So you might want to consider the you might want to consider what stories have you lived in long enough that you'd like to release? And then that becomes a releasing story for you their story of how you released your stories. So thank you very much. And so we have one more day for the acronym y and that'll be yes. Then I'll explain tomorrow, what that means in relationship to story. Thank you
