This is our eighth class in this series, and so it's the last one. And I'm glad that it was eight, because I feel like any less than that would have hardly got going. But I felt pretty good about what we were able to do so far. In a way, I thought tonight could just be a discussion. And I still feel that way. I thought I might start with just a little summary of some points just to refresh your memory about what we might be discussing. As I mentioned last time using my hands, We've been studying renunciation, which is proposed as the medium or the mode or the medium through which we enter into compassion united with wisdom, or all kinds of virtuous practices united with wisdom.

[01:26]

And this, when virtue is united with wisdom, when wisdom is united with virtue, this is the medium in which the great transformation we call enlightenment occurs. Practicing giving is something we do in relationship with others. You can also give to yourself, but it's also something we practice in relationship. It's a virtuous way to relate called giving. Practicing the precepts like telling the truth and

[02:33]

and not taking what's not given from others, not harming others, not speaking inappropriately to others, not being possessive in relationship to others. All these precepts are another dimension of a virtuous way of relating. Being patient with what happens to you And being patient with what happens to you in relationship is the practice of patience, the greatest virtue, in a way, sometimes they say. And then to be enthusiastic in relationship, to be joyful at how wonderful it is to practice virtue with others. how great it is, how wonderful it is, to think about that and meditate on that until you feel full of joy at the prospect of working in a beneficial way with other beings.

[03:39]

This is the virtue of enthusiasm. Practicing concentration with yourself, sitting alone, but also practicing concentration in your relationships, in every meeting. Be present. relaxed and not seeking anything is concentration in relationship and then those practices when joined with wisdom which is realized through giving up your views of what these practices are and what these people are you're practicing with to practice these virtues With wisdom means to practice these virtues, all of them, each of them, with no expectation, with no grasping or seeking anything through their practice.

[04:42]

Then the wisdom is joined to the compassion, and the compassion becomes turned to the wisdom. And in this joint activity, transformation occurs. The practicing virtue with others by itself is not sufficient for enlightenment. It must be joined to wisdom. And wisdom without virtues... Wisdom in some ways you don't really practice with others. Because in wisdom you give up your idea that there are other. You give up the subject-object frame. You relax the sense of separation completely. So in some ways you don't really practice with others in wisdom. But that's perspective when united with practicing with others is the situation in which we are enlightened together. So again, what is it that I've been talking about renouncing?

[05:48]

I'll just mention a few things. I've been talking about renouncing the impulse to control. which means renouncing the will to power, which is so much, as Nietzsche pointed out so nicely, so much a part of a human being is this will to power. In order to enter into the sphere of enlightenment, we must give up this human impulse to control. We must let go of it. We give up, we abstain from or let go of or pass up on expectations for the virtues we're practicing. We practice them and let go of expecting some reward. Of course, we go through a phase of expecting reward, and we must, but... We get to a point where we practice virtues with no expectation.

[06:50]

And we meet others with no expectation in these good ways. And when we meet others with no expectation, that provides access to more information about who it is we're meeting. More information. means we are able to see other people's light. We will be able to see the light through our meetings with other people. Other people become access to radiance when we have no expectation, when we let go of our expectations of them. Like I expect you to be a woman, I let go of that expectation. I expect you to be a man, I let go of that expectation. And your light is revealed to me when I really let go, or when it's released. And then I realize that I have a relationship with light.

[07:51]

And then what do I do with that? Well, practice the virtues. Give to light. Be enthusiastic about light, of your relationship with light. Be patient with the light. Also we give up discursive thought. There is a place for discursive thought, and the best place for it is after it's given up. Discursive thought is very useful. That's why we use it so much, and that's why we cling to it, because it's so useful. But it's most useful after having been renounced. Renounced discursive thought and your calm, renounced discursive thought, and your body and mind leap into the vital path of true relationship. And in that path, somebody can say, would you please think discursively with me for a little while? And you say, fine. Let's plan a course on yoga, shall we?

[08:54]

Okay. Let's plan a vacation. Okay, fine. Let's plan a meditation retreat. Fine. Let's plan a business. Make a business plan. Okay. Do anything. after renouncing discursive thought, then you can use it for all kinds of good purposes. It's useful. But if you're holding on to it, then wisdom is blocked and the virtue is undermined. Even if you had a virtuous discursive thought, there are virtuous discursive thoughts. And they need to be let go of, though. so that you can see the light of the discursive thought. And then we need to renounce all grasping of anything in our mind. We need to give up seeking.

[09:55]

Giving up grasping and seeking is giving up samsara, is giving up cycles of existence. It's not getting rid of it, it's just giving it up. it's nirvana we give up contraction we renounce contraction we renounce tension we renounce the eight worldly thoughts those eight emotions i mentioned we let go of them we see them and relax let them go and of course we finally or basically we let go we let body and mind go every moment let it drop off we can go on but these are some basic things we talked about to be renounced to be released to be given away to get over we didn't I didn't mention you have to renounce your car your house your family all that stuff but that's already included in giving these material things

[11:07]

You renounce, you give them away. And when you give them away, you get them back. They come around and you get something back far better than what you gave away if you really give it. But if you give without renunciation, you give to get something, then the giving doesn't work so well. I just have a few little notes here. I thought maybe I'd just ask you three questions after all that. Question one, do you have any experiences that you'd like to share about renunciation that happened to you or somebody else? What sense do you have of the actual experience?

[12:14]

of letting go of some of this stuff, even a little bit. And also, second question, what allows this renunciation to happen? What promotes this letting go. And third question, what hinders it? What makes it harder for it to happen in your life or in the lives of others from what you understand? So if anything you'd like to talk about, fine. And if you'd like to relate to these three questions, that might be good. But anything you'd like to discuss or express? Question two and three. Love, that feeling, encouraging, and feeling of love. Feeling of love. And could you describe the feeling of love?

[13:17]

Right. Pardon? I was thinking of other words like light and open. Open. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Seeing light or? No, you know, just like what you were talking about. But it's being the light in people. Seeing the light in people encourages renunciation? And love also is something like when I feel it, I feel it, I feel it. Well, it's interesting that, and then the other thing she said was, fear seems to inhibit it. So, what I heard you say was that you were actually, it was like, what I heard you say was renunciation allows renunciation. Which is fine.

[14:19]

That letting go of that sense of separation encourages you to let go of the sense of separation. It does. Sometimes. So grace is handy? Like, you know, you're walking along, suddenly you see somebody's light, and you see their light, feel like, I'm fine with not insulting this person. I'm fine with being generous with this radiant being. And so... Somehow you were given the opportunity to see this light. In other words, I would say you were given the opportunity to let go of your expectation that the surface of this person is what they are. You somehow see the light. Renunciation is kind of grace. I mean, you can't make yourself let go. You just said about...

[15:20]

Say it again. Not holding on to... Yeah, not holding on to yourself. You see the light of others. Not holding on to yourself, the sense of separation is undermined or dropped. But again, you could say it's like grace to not hold on to yourself. Like you're given a moment of not holding on to yourself. And such moments occur, and then when such moments occur, you start seeing light in the people that are around you, which then encourages you to be devoted to them, or to be devoted to this strange light thing that's happening, which includes taking care of the surface of the person, because that's part of the opportunity.

[16:30]

And fear, sometimes our reaction to fear is to tighten up again, go back to the self, reiterate the sense of separation. It's interesting. I am not interested. It's not really interesting. This is not interesting what I'm about to say. I heard this tape of this French man who was blind from early in childhood. I think, I think, I'm not sure if he was, if it was one of those cases where they gave him too much oxygen, you know, and he was, but I think actually he saw for a little while before he went blind. But anyway, he was blind. But somehow he had the good fortune of having some sighted boys who really took care of him and would go running with him, actually, holding his hand. And so he did quite a bit. But as he, I forgot what age he was, maybe seven or eight years old, he started to be able to see again, but not with his regular eyes, but he could see.

[17:45]

Light came. And all you had to do was just stay with that light and he could get around fine. And, you know, he could get around the world, not the same way a sighted kid could, but he could get around, you know, he knew where to, how to get around. And he always knew what to do. I mean, he had just not only light to see through the move in the physical world, he had light to see in the interpersonal moral world. He knew what to do all the time. And he said, but sometimes I would lose the light and then I was confused and I didn't know what to do. And he would lose the light when he got angry or when he got afraid. Then the light would go away. And so he was, you know, he was part of the French resistance. And so he was quite useful to them because he was blind, right? So the Nazis didn't spot him for a long time. He did a lot of stuff.

[18:47]

He was part of publishing an underground magazine that had pretty big circulation. I forgot what it was, but pretty big circulation in Paris. And he got caught. He wasn't Jewish, but he got caught and he got sent to concentration camp. And in the concentration camps, again, he had the light. He could see the light. Unless he got afraid or angry. If he got angry at the Nazis or the guards or whatever, he'd lose the light. If he got scared, he'd lose the light. But with that light, he was very helpful in those camps. Because he could show sighted people the light, too. Anyway, it's a wonderful story of his. Basically, the story, the tape that I listened to went through his childhood, up through his years in the concentration camps. And I think he lives in America now, still alive. And so there's this, I think the name of the tape is, and then there was light or something like that. That's the main thing I remember, that he always knew what to do by that light.

[19:49]

Anything else that you, any other experiences of renunciation that have happened? Yes, Iran. Yes, I asked you how the class was? Yes. I had an experience during this period where I was able to renounce standing all my time on practical things, taken with all time and meditation.

[20:58]

This class, that didn't happen immediately. So I had this idea, I should really make some time available for meditation. And this is going to make a difference. in my life, my patient, and other people's lives as well. The first time it didn't quite work. It didn't quite work out. The second time also, again I had deception, it didn't quite work out. The third time, things that a little bit worse. Things didn't work very well. I'm still very busy. And because things got slightly worse, I had a practical motive to do this meditation because things weren't working anymore.

[22:08]

So, So it's sometimes like that, because there might be some result of it that things don't work if you particularly a renounce part of it. Not just that, but it was also given in class. So you were, your motive of whatever your mode was, you were starting to observe wasn't working very well, and you felt encouraged to maybe let go of your mode of working? Yeah. Including your mode of trying to make more time for meditation? Well, I didn't quite believe, apparently, that that would make any difference.

[23:18]

Because otherwise, already the first time or the second time, I would have started to do that. Earlier, in an earlier period, actually, I did set aside more time for meditation or some other things for more, say, practice might. But then... It's got watered down very much, because I've been so wound up in my work. And does your work have a lot of discursive thought involved? Oh yes, very much so, yes. So, it is, I guess, to the extent that... Well, it's basically my job, it deserves to be called my job. That's your view. That's your view of your job is that discursive thought is your job. Your view of your job is that discursive thought is your job.

[24:20]

Is that what you just said? Yeah, yeah. You didn't say my view is that my job is discursive thought. You just said my job is discursive thought and I added in that that's your view. That is the definition of my job in terms of what's expected of me. I have to produce... In terms of what's expected of you. Yes. So this discursive thought is expected of you. Right? So we have discursive thought and expectation of discursive thought. We have... We have... Yeah, so we have... We have discursive thought plus also a little, what do you call it, a little thing on discursive thought is that do not renounce discursive thought. You're expected not to practice renunciation with a discursive thought. But you saw that going with the expectation and trying to keep with the expectation of doing this discursive thought, it was discursive thought wasn't working so well in some ways.

[25:26]

The discursive thought helped me see that the way I was living just didn't work. So discursive thought can help you see that discursive thought is not working. And then discursive thought can say to you that maybe you should give up discursive thought. So that's discursive thought saying you should give up discursive thought. But the giving it up is not discursive thought. The giving it up is something else that happens. But hearing from discursive thought that this discursive thought is getting too controlled and too much expectations around it, and actually the discursive thought can say discursive thought is deteriorating in certain ways here and backfiring, that discursive thought can tell you, why don't you do a little letting go of the discursive thought? It might be a good thing. This is still discursive thought, but then there comes a time when you let go of that message, too.

[26:36]

Let go of the discursive thought, plus you let go of the instruction to let go based on the vision that this is backfiring, or if not completely backfiring, at least less than optimal. And I would say that that is so, that discursive thought, when you put too much energy into it, it deteriorates. And as you give it up and relax, it functions better. So discursive thought can observe that. I mean, there can be an observation of that, and that observation can be converted into a story, a discursive presentation about the way you're discursively operating, which is this is not optimal. And you could have various other ideas of how you could improve the discursive thought in a way to make it work better, but you could also have a vision that really what needs to be done here is to let go of it. And when you let go of it, you get much more information about how to do it more effectively. And then when you get that information, if you let go of that information, you get more information.

[27:40]

And discursive thought thrives in renunciation. Did it thrive in your renunciation? Did your discursive thought thrive a little bit in the renunciation? Yes. Good. I'm glad it did because I said it would. And then rather than say, and then try to just give it more space, what is it like? Maybe you've heard that sort of a famous part of this book called Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by the founder of Zen Center, where he talks about taking care of a cow. He said the worst thing is to ignore it. So the worst thing would be to ignore your discursive thought or ignore your work. Next worse or next better is to try to control.

[28:45]

But best is to give the cow a big field. Now that's like practicing pronunciation with whatever kind of cow you have. It can be a discursive thought cow. It can be a feeling cow. whatever kind of, it can be eight worldly thoughts kind of cow, whatever kind of cow. But you don't just like, again that's not ignoring the cow, you're keeping your eye on the cow. You're watching the discursive thought. You're giving it room to function and not trying to control it. And yet it finds its happy function out there in the big field. And hopefully there is grass for it to eat and water to drink, and it does fine. So there is something for the discursive thought to work on. It still operates. It doesn't die, hopefully. But it starts to thrive in that trust, that being attentive to this cow,

[29:55]

in this gentle, non-controlling, non-expecting way, the cow would best realize its cow-ness. Helen? Other kinds of thought? Well, discursive thought literally means, you know, to run back and forth. To have thought, for thought to arise and just to appear without any elaboration of it or manipulation of it, you could say that's nondiscursive thought. And there's basically two kinds of nondiscursive thought. One would be direct perception, like great deal of what's going on in our minds which is to a great extent unconscious is that we're being stimulated through the sense modalities and uh we're aware of these things and making in our mind makes all kinds of decisions and calculations based on this information but this information comes in without being uh discoursed on that there's no interpretation of it

[31:19]

There's no elaboration of it. That's a big part of what's going on, actually. And then there's conceptual renditions of these things. And again, when we're dealing with a concept being presented to consciousness, then it's much more difficult for us not to interpret it and discourse on it. But it is possible to train your mind so that you see a concept and just let it be there. And your mind calms down in this type of training. So this is actually how to calm the mind, is to give up elaboration on the concepts that are being presented. So this non-discursive way of relating to concepts, this non-discursive way of relating to concepts is also the training in tranquility or concentration. So there is that way of dealing with it. But mostly we... we do something with everything represented, we interpret it, we think about it. We think about, thinking about your thoughts is discursive thought.

[32:23]

But just seeing a thought and letting it be a thought, period, this is non-discursive. And this is something people have to, like, train at. Because it's, you know, it's almost nobody's job. And even professional meditators, no one's checking to see if they're doing it. So sometimes they're sitting there, you know, and actually they're doing dispersive thought when nobody asked them to. People actually would like them to sit there and not do anything with their thoughts and be really calm and generate, you know, emanate this calm, but not to make it, can tell whether they're emanating or not. So that's why we have this thing, you know, come on, stop that. Yes? Oh, excuse me, I think you're next. Linda and then Kate. What came up for me? All Buddhas are supporting us?

[33:26]

And all Buddhas are practicing with us? So there's an element of, for those of us who don't sleep a lot all the time, there's an element of being able to trust that what we're told in order to practice the . So that kind of teaching, if you listen to it and accept it, that promotes the receiving of the grace of renunciation. If you hear the teaching that all the Buddhas are practicing with you, and that that is their practice is to practice with you and they have no other job other than to practice with you and support you in your practice. If you hear that teaching and think about that teaching, thinking about that teaching might make it more possible, might allow this relaxation of trying to control your life, of trying to control your experience.

[34:41]

And that's what that teaching's for. It's true, but it's a truth that's being given, hopefully, to encourage you to practice renunciation. There's other truths which are given for other purposes, like the truth of impermanence also could encourage you to let go of some of the things you're holding on to. And you might be told, well, you're going to lose this anyway, so why don't you give it away before it's taken from you? Then you get credit on giving, you know, and the joy of giving before it's taken away from you. Then you lose it, but then you're angry on top of losing it. But if you give it away before it goes, then you get joy from the thing before you lose it. Say, well, could I get a little bit of joy of having it and then get joy of, you know, giving it away later? And say, well, yeah, but you don't know when it's going to go.

[35:45]

And if it goes before you are giving, then you're going to fight it and that's going to be it. So dare to give it away as soon as possible. So that's an art teaching which might encourage you. Seeing impermanence sometimes encourages renunciation. like the story of Scrooge, right? He saw these three visions of his impermanence, or maybe it was two visions of his impermanence, and then he got really generous after that and felt really good about being generous after he got these visions of his impermanence. Kate? I find lots of opportunities to do Great. Some of those extremely difficult people who are there every day are .

[36:49]

I cover my expectations of how it was working for me. Uh-huh. Also, when I give up my cloak, I'm more transparent. Not always easy, no. As a matter of fact, some people in this class have pointed out that some of these practices seem very difficult or impossible at work. Like we can do them here or with some friends, but at work, these practices are like, forget it. And yet, you put it slightly differently, that work actually really challenges you in these very areas, but that work offers you these really great opportunities.

[37:59]

Some situations... you don't even notice that you have expectations and you do. Whereas other situations, your expectations get pushed up in your face and it seems really hard then to give it up. But in other cases, you can't even, you don't have a chance to give it up because you don't even notice that you're holding on to your expectations. So like work is a situation where a lot of people feel like their expectations are like right up there, like I expect to get paid for this. Whereas sometimes with your family, you don't expect necessarily to get paid for it. I mean, you do expect to get paid for it, you see. But a lot of people do not notice that in their family, they don't notice that they expect to get paid to put in your time. You know, brownie points. Credit for doing certain things. Well, you do get credit for doing things.

[39:00]

You do get paid in your family, but you don't necessarily notice it because it doesn't come twice a month or whatever, and the amount hasn't been set. But we do expect to get paid. Usually, most people have some expectation of some payment in family life, but sometimes don't notice it. Or at work, there's a nice thing about work is a lot of people... know their expectations or know some of their expectations and then you can practice relaxing with them and then if you and then if you notice those and practice relaxing with those that will reveal other areas of your life where you expect something and like probably if you take a class at the yoga room you expect something You may not notice it, but if you do, it's good to notice it and then abstain from that expectation. Unless the class isn't about renunciation, then you can cling to it.

[40:03]

I expected this kind of instruction and I didn't get it. Gloria? Can I say something? Tonight I saw you as a little girl. And you're sitting there, I saw this little girl. Excuse me. One of my very favorite things was connect the dots. Connect the dots. Because it gave me these random dots all over the page. Connecting dots, that discursive thought. Yeah. But this course allowed me the pleasure of not having to connect the dots. Because somewhere in there, I discovered that if you had to connect the dots, it would go well. Right. But I discovered once I stopped connecting the dots, that actually things tend to go well.

[41:12]

But that seems to be the natural course of things. And so life is a bit more delightful without connecting the dots. Yeah, and the observation that life is more delightful is a kind of connecting the dots kind of thing that you get to see. You connect the dots with not connecting the dots. It goes with, it's connected to being delightful. But before you connect the dots and even know what it's about, there's relief from discursive thought. And you can see that when we're little kids, we're taught to connect the dots. We're taught discursive thought. Even without being taught, we could figure it out. But we're taught to hone it and sharpen it. And we get encouraged to connect the dots. And some people who love us, really, sort of, are sitting next to us when we're connecting the dots. And sometimes they really want us to connect the dots more than not connect the dots.

[42:14]

They expect us to connect the dots. And that does encourage us sometimes to connect the dots. But it also doesn't encourage us to learn that we don't have to connect the dots, that this person will still love us if we go from one to nine rather than one to two. And if we make up a different drawing, a different thing from, you know, the witch or the bear or whatever, and to be able to watch the kid connect the dots without, with some sense of not forcing them to learn the usual things, That's your joy. That's their joy. And also, they can still learn to connect the dots. But if it's in that context, that will be a resource later for them to remember, oh yeah, oh yeah, she was relaxed while she held my hand while I connected those dots. I didn't have to connect the dots, but it was fun to connect the dots because then this story came forward, which is fun.

[43:21]

But there's other stories possible. And sometimes kids can connect the dots differently and come up with something that's not on the page. And you can appreciate that and be astounded with all these strange things that happen and what they see. I can't remember the story, but I don't remember what it was, but I was driving up in the mountains with my daughter one time. And it was foggy. And the light from the car at night were making these shafts of light. And she made up this theory about how that happened, how that shaft of light happened. And this person in the car said, no, no, it's because of, you know, and gave her the usual story. But I thought her version was... just beautiful, you know? But then I thought how people tell kids that when they have these great visions and these great understandings of these kinds of phenomena, they tell them, no, rather than, wow, and here's another one, you know?

[44:25]

So, yeah. So this helps us. If we practice renunciation, we can appreciate the It helps us appreciate, well, it goes really well with appreciating how it is for the other person. And I think the natural order of things is that they go well together, but the deluded way things go somehow seems to actually enhance our understanding of how they go well together. So that's why it's not to say that things not going well isn't good, and that things going well is better, because they actually go together. Because that's another discursive thought, that comparison. So you have to let go of the discursive thought which ranks the delightful release as better than gripping tension.

[45:32]

Susan? No, I've been a grasshopper and a stinker. It affects my body. And it's brought me a lot of happiness and emptiness. And so it's helped me, and I really find myself telling other people, do not grasp and do not see. And yet, right now I'm going through major life changes, and it's almost like a static flame. Anger comes, and I try to let it go, but it's like it sticks to me, or jealousy, or maybe loneliness. And I keep going, do not grasp, do not see. And it has helped me tremendously from where I was before. But I guess it sounds like a silly question, but with constant practice, would make it easier. Well, challenge X gets easier with constant practice.

[46:35]

But part of what happens is that you get given bigger challenges. Your reward for handling this challenge well will be you get a bigger one. So then because you get a bigger one, your challenge, your skill develops more. So then because you have more skill, you get a bigger one. So most of us are living in this tight little world where we don't even let the challenges in. If you relax a little bit, you start to feel challenged. Then if you practice with that challenge of not grasping and seeking, then you took care of that one and that one helped you become more skillful. But then your reward is a bigger one comes. And so your reward for practice will be that you'll get greater and greater challenges and you'll get more and more skillful and greater challenges and more skillful, greater challenges, more skillful, greater challenges, more skillful. That's the program of growth.

[47:43]

And somebody said, I forgot who it was, but somebody said, growth is for trees. Forget about growth. And I met this little girl at, here's one example of me growing as I become something of a consumer. I went and bought some stuff. I bought some stuff at Best Buys. And my daughter just thought that was, like, really amazing. Dad bought something? He went in a store and bought it? So this is part of my... Anyway, when I was in Best Buys, this little girl... These two little girls were in the shopping cart where their mother was trying to make an exchange, and one of them could talk. And she said... She told me about she had this pain, you know, these pains... in like her knees and stuff. And I said, is it like from growing? She said, yeah. I said, like last week, I grew an inch last week and it really hurt. And I said, yeah, it hurts to grow, doesn't it?

[48:49]

She said, yeah. So I think growing does hurt sometimes. But if we don't grow, we shrink and [...] get more and more scared, you know. So if we can relax with the pain of the growth, then we get more growth. If we can relax with that greater growth and that greater pain, then we get... So anyway, problem X, you can get more skillful, so the problem X is easy after a while. So some of the problems I used to have are now easy to handle, but now I get new ones that I hardly saw before. So now they're challenging another dimension of the practice. another dimension of the renunciation. So there's no end to it until everybody's included, until everybody's practicing it. It has to keep growing, because it's about this wisdom and compassion. We get into this wisdom and compassion and joined, and the wisdom makes the compassion not be limited by any kind of idea.

[49:59]

Dorit? This program is a program for beings called bodhisattvas. And bodhisattvas are beings that are born out of happiness. And I would say to you, if you want to practice these practices, there's something about a bodhisattva in you if you want to do these practices. The reason for wanting to do these practices is that your joy makes you want to come into this world of suffering because of the joy of helping suffering beings.

[51:03]

And the These practices are how you realize the joy of being with beings and helping them learn the practices by which they'll be happy and realize themselves. So the joy, the joy is the reason that draws this kind of practice into the world. The world is not, from this perspective, being forced upon you, you're not here just because you accidentally fell into this world. So you either came into this world because of unsatisfactoriness and hoping that you could improve your situation, in which case these practices might not be that interesting to you, or you came into this world because you wanted to help.

[52:10]

And now these practices are coming to you and reminding you of perhaps why you're here, your motivation for being here. And it isn't so much that these practices make life worth living, it's just that these practices are living and are happiness. I never heard of anybody who practices this way who is not happy when they're doing the practice. They're only unhappy when they're not doing the practice. In other words, when whatever fear or anger or clinging divert us from the practice, distract us, we forget the point again. And that's the challenge of the world. So we come into the world to realize this wisdom and compassion, but then we get challenged, and in the challenge we sometimes forget what the point is again.

[53:12]

And fairly new students and, of course, intermediate students and long-term students say to me, why do I keep forgetting? We talk and we talk and they say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do I forget? It's because it is this onslaught of challenge, you know, of insult and intense stimulation. Our system, you know, it's hard for us to stay balanced when we keep getting struck. So hopefully we get reminded, say, oh yeah, So probably, you know, I would say most of you are here because you want to be here and you've just sometimes temporarily forgotten that you wanted to be here because you're so challenged. It's so challenging, you know.

[54:14]

So much intense and, you know, impermanence, intense impermanence keeps knocking on your door and, you know, it's hard to stay on the ball. When things are changing so fast and if there's any clinging, it's painful when they change. So the rapidity of the change coupled with the pain, it's harder to stay relaxed and balanced and cheerful. But that's the game that's being proposed here to learn. It's called the Buddha game. and those that are trying to learn about the bodhisattvas. Some other people, there's other approaches to spirituality, which is like just try to get your own scene together and try to limit the challenges. And that's kind of like another route, but that's more just from the bodhisattva's point of view, that's just more a way to get people into the game.

[55:23]

And then once they're in the game, you say, well, actually, you know, you're not going to be able to avoid the big things that are going to come. But you get them in. So nirvana is not the goal of the Buddha. Nirvana is a very skillful technique to get people into the practice. We have this thing called utter stable bliss and freedom. And then we really do have that. But that's not the point. That's just sort of like to help us do the real point, which is like get everybody in on the big picture. But life is not really worth living because thinking in those terms is not seeking. So we don't want to get into talking about why life is worth living because then people will seek this way worth living.

[56:27]

When I say we don't want to do that, I mean we don't want to do it unless necessary. So we can do it if you really need it to be worth living. But it looks like you don't because here you are having a great time. What I've been noticing is that comparison and anticipation undermines renunciation. And patience seems to support that. And sometimes outpatience... Patience supports what? Supports renunciation. Mm-hmm. And sometimes that patient is seeing, being able to see the comparison, the practices of comparison and anticipation. Patient helps you see the practices of comparison and anticipation. Yeah. Comparison and anticipation, are they painful?

[57:31]

Yes. Yeah. So you practice patience with that pain. And then the patience helps you like not wiggle around with the pain and when you don't wiggle with the pain you can see how the pain is related to or depends on the expectation, the anticipation and seeing that is revealed to you in the mode of patience with the pain that they support. And then seeing that makes you more and more willing to like let that connection drop. In other words, to let the expectation drop. Again, if you try to get rid of the expectation or the anticipation, That's still not, patience doesn't really do that. Patience doesn't like see the pain and see the conditions for the pain and then try to get rid of the conditions. Patience sees the pain, sees the conditions for the pain, understands, and then energy comes up because you're not fighting the conditions or the pain.

[58:35]

First of all, you're not fighting the pain and then you don't try to get rid of the conditions, you just see it. And then your energy of resistance is now available to you. So then you feel good about the practice of patience meantime the connection is still there you haven't done anything with it but in this enthusiasm you're also are willing to like you're willing to let this connection which is your mind you're letting going to let drop you're willing to let it drop it does drop by itself You don't have to make it drop. It does. It's not stuck. Things aren't really stuck together that way. If you're willing to let them get unstuck, then the unstuckness will be revealed to you. So patience does work that way. And uprightness is a critical part of that. Because as you were describing that, I was feeling the how to...

[59:37]

to lean a little or turn away from in relationship to anticipation, recognizing. Right. So we tend to, what do you call it, shrink back or wiggle around in relationship to pain. And then if we see the condition for the pain, we also tend to shrink back or try to avoid those too. So to try to find some way. Patience is very much about being in the present moment, the present time of the pain, and the present place of the pain. Try to not get front or behind, right or left, future or past of the pain. That's where the patience is practiced, which is very similar to being upright with the pain. And the upright patience with the pain is being present with the pain, and this is very close to renunciation again. And then you get revelation.

[60:39]

So then patience in this way turns into wisdom. You see. Not only do you see the conditions for the pain, but you also see that the conditions aren't inherently connected. They don't have to be there. And in fact, they're changing too. So then you see them go away and you notice the pain goes away. And then you get the next installment. the next challenge, to do the same practice, and it gets deeper. I was wondering about, I think you said to Linda, about the impairment and just give it away. You know, it makes us want to hold on and have it, but just give it away. And when you said it, I didn't quite understand because it seemed like, to me it seemed like, The way I heard it was like, you know the Nietzsche quote where it says, like a man throws himself from the edge of a cliff to avoid the unbearable sensation of vertical?

[61:44]

And it sounded like you're giving it away because you knew you were going to lose a bit of it. And what you were just talking about was something different than that, was patient. Yeah, rather than give it away because you want to avoid the pain of having it taken away. In other words, giving is not anti-phobic of losing the thing. It's more like we're reasoning with ourselves, we're going to lose it anyway, so how about enjoying giving it away rather than you're going to lose it anyway and it's going to be terribly painful, so why don't you try to avoid that pain? No. I came to the land where this stuff happens. I'm here on purpose, to the place where we get stuff and then it gets taken from us and it hurts. That's the name, that's the place. And this world is called the world capable of patience. You can practice patience here because you're given stuff and then it gets taken away. You're given stuff and you get to hold it just long enough to attach to it and then it's taken.

[62:46]

Or just long enough to attach to it and then to attach to it more and more and more and then it gets taken. So this is a good place to practice patience. But you practice patience not with an antiphobic attitude but with the attitude of the joy of practicing patience and the joy of giving away what will be taken from you. So since it's going to be taken anyway, why don't you have fun with it, which is the fun of giving it away. But again, giving things away will also be promoted by really receiving them in the first place. So if you get something and you don't really receive it, then you're going to resent giving it away, even though you can see that giving it away would be fun. So part of giving away is also to really receive what you get. So taking what's not given is related to not receiving what's given. But if you really receive your gifts and enjoy them fully,

[63:51]

which is to experience the thing fully, that's going to also promote your willingness to give it away. And again, renunciation helps you fully experience what you're given. And when you fully experience it, you say, I've had it. I can give this away now. I've had this enough. And then you've had the joy of having it, and now you have the joy of giving it. But we have to be present with the thing and not seeking or grasping in order to have it fully enough to give it away. And if we have things and don't fully enjoy them, then we keep thinking, well, maybe if I have a little longer, then seeking comes in, which again distracts you from fully enjoying it, so it becomes this cycle. The cycle is dropped or alleviated by renunciation on the spotski.

[64:59]

And that's not the end of practice. That's not the end of the path. That's the entry into the actual life. We don't get rid of the cycle. We turn the cycle into what's really happening. And we don't turn into or realize what the thing really is. Anything else anybody wants to bring up? Yes? I remember you mentioned something about these games of emotions, but you also called it working thoughts. Yeah, yeah. And actually, there's another type of thought. So there's like discursive thought, which is like I connect the dots.

[66:10]

Then there's like renouncing that and just letting the dots be dots. Okay? And then there's another kind of thought, which is the thoughts come, and then there's me. So first of all there's me doing discursive thought, and as long as there's me doing discursive thought, well, this is delusion. Then there's me giving up discursive thought. There's still the delusion of me and discursive thought, but it's pretty much more and more just Letting the thought be thought. Even letting discursive thought be discursive thought. I'm not being discursive about discursive thought. I'm just letting my discursive thought or your discursive thought just be discursive thought, which is similar to just letting a thought be a thought.

[67:12]

But still I'm here. Letting it be. And then that opens the door to the discursive thought. Or there's just a thought. In other words, there's something. Whatever and then there's me. So I get to understand how I'm born from these things, rather than how I'm a priori to these things, which is delusion. To see how the things happen, and then because things happen, because you happen, because you happen, I'm here. This is enlightenment. But the transition from I'm thinking about you, I'm working my thoughts. And then the transition from that is to give that up. But even there still is the idea of me and the thoughts. Or me giving up the thoughts.

[68:15]

That opens the gate to the thoughts coming. And that's where I'm born. And I have a life. But it's given to me. I don't have it already all the time, and I don't take it before anything happens as my position on what's happening. So that's how renunciation is a transition from delusion to enlightenment. Thank you very much.

[69:37]

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