So I'd like to look at these symbols here again and ask you to imagine this symbol here. This is again cyclic existence going clockwise, clockwise being the normal direction of the flow of the world, the normal direction of the flow of the progress of events based on ignorance and attachment. And what I propose is that all you have to do to get the process of practice rolling is just let this worldly process do its thing and pay very close attention to it.

[01:12]

And that would require of us a great renunciation, right in the middle of our worldly habits and our worldly tendencies, towards the cyclic existence, right in the midst of that, to drop everything but paying attention to that, right while you're carried along with it to some extent. And I got this little vision of, you know when you watch an airplane start up, the propeller on a propeller airplane, the propeller starts turning, you can see the propeller, it starts

[02:18]

turning and pretty soon it goes faster and faster and at a certain point it starts going backwards, it looks like it goes backwards, have you ever seen that? I propose the same thing would happen, does happen, not just looks that way but actually starts to happen if you watch this cycle of birth and death with complete dedication, complete concentration, at some point it will start, it will actually not just look, it will actually turn the other way. But if you don't give yourself completely to it then it won't, it will just keep going that way and you won't appreciate the fact that the very fact that it's going this way means that it's going the other way, the very fact that it's going around in this clockwise

[03:25]

way means that it's not going around in a clockwise way. So, this is the logic of reality, the fact that something is something, the fact that A is A means A is not A, the fact that that Buddha is Buddha or to put it the other way, that Buddha is not Buddha means Buddha is Buddha, the fact that sentient beings are not sentient beings therefore sentient beings are sentient beings. And this morning I had a section of the Dhyana Sutra I read was, What do you think, Sabuddhi, is there any Dharma by which the Tathagata has fully known the utmost right and perfect

[04:31]

enlightenment? Is there any Dharma by which the Buddha has known fully the utmost right and perfect enlightenment? And Sabuddhi says, No indeed, O Lord, there is not any Dharma by which the Tathagata has fully known the utmost right and perfect enlightenment. The Lord said, So it is, Sabuddhi, so it is. Not even the least Dharma is there found or got at, therefore it is called the utmost right and perfect enlightenment. If there were the slightest thing found there, it would not be. Furthermore, Sabuddhi, self-identical is that Dharma and nothing therein is at variance, therefore it is called the utmost right and perfect enlightenment.

[05:34]

Self-identical through the absence of self, self-identical through the absence of a self, a being, a soul, a person, the utmost right and perfect enlightenment is known as the totality of all wholesome Dharmas. Wholesome Dharmas? Wholesome Dharmas, Sabuddhi, yet as no wholesome Dharmas have they been taught by the Tathagata, therefore they are called wholesome Dharmas. Self-identical is that Dharma and there is nothing at variance with it, therefore the utmost right and perfect enlightenment is called the utmost right and perfect enlightenment. It is self-identical through not having a self. It is exactly a self because it doesn't have a self, it is exactly a self because you can't

[06:37]

get anything called a self, that's why it's the utmost right and perfect enlightenment. And when I read that I wanted to go like this, but I didn't because I thought I might not catch it, that's how I felt, I was very happy to hear about that. That's why we should study this, we should study bondage, we should study this because the fact that this bondage, that this suffering, that this misery, that this evil is just like that is precisely completely indicating that it's not like that. And so we have to be totally devoted to sitting still, totally devoted to sitting still with

[07:50]

this birth and death, totally devoted to observe the turning of the world of birth and death. Just observe the turning of the world of birth and death, which means to notice all these outflows, verbal outflows, feeling outflows, outflows around views. You notice them. Why do you notice them? Because all you're looking at is them and how they work and how they blow us up and shoot us down, how they send us around and around. It's all you watch, just sit still and watch that. And then I thought that if you can do that, if you can live that way called sitting still with the world of birth and death, if you can live that way, which is in fact the way

[08:53]

you are living, if you can give yourself to your actual life moment by moment, then these eight characteristics I thought followed very nicely. First, if you live this way, if you desire to live this way even, this is not an excessive desire. It's not an excessive desire to wish to be in the world of birth and death. It's reasonable since you're there already. To want to be any other place is unreasonable and excessive. So, having few desires goes very nicely with simply sitting with your body and mind as it changes, as it's born and dies. Also, if you live this way, this is contentment. That's what contentment is. Contentment means to live with this world of birth and death, this world of outflows,

[09:55]

this world of bondage. Of course, you want to become free of it, but you have to be content with it to get free of it. You also want to get free of your bed and your chairs and your clothes and your friends, but to have to be free, content with your friends and you have to be content with your monastery, you have to be content with your food, you have to be content with your body order to become free of it. Contentment is an act of renunciation. Wait a minute. Okay. Let me go through this. Enjoying quietude. If you simply sit with what's happening to you, if you sit and watch, just watch the world as it happens, watch the world as it turns, even watch the world as it turns, if you do that, that's enjoying quietude, that's enjoying quietude. That's the quietest thing, to

[11:01]

sit and observe the noise. Diligence, right effort. There's a diligence here because in fact you can't lazily sort of part-time or half-heartedly just do this. You have to give yourself completely to it. This is also called right effort, and right effort is no effort. Matter of fact, you don't have to do any effort to do this. You just have to renounce everything but this. There's a diligence there, but it's not really doing anything. It's just being who you are, but there's an intensity there, and there's a not missing a beat there. It's hard to make no effort and just be yourself. It's hard to be diligent and you don't have to do anything to be diligent. You are diligent, really. Everybody's really diligent at being the suffering creature they are. Everybody's diligent at being

[12:06]

weird. Unfailing recollection, mindfulness. Also, you've got to be mindful moment after moment. Every little turning of the wheel, you have to be there. If you're not there, it's not going to work. You're still holding on. You haven't really renounced everything but just staying with the flow or the happenings of your life. So it requires unfailing, unfailing recollection. Not just mindfulness, wholehearted mindfulness. Unifying or concentrating the mind. The mind is concentrated when you're with what's happening to you. So with it that you're not holding back at all. There's not even anybody there with it. It's just you are what's happening to you. Again, wholeheartedly staying with

[13:09]

what you're doing, wholeheartedly sitting still, your mind is naturally unified. And cultivating wisdom. Wisdom is to see that the very fact, the logic of the linguistic way to say what wisdom is, is wisdom is to see the very fact that this is turning clockwise is exactly why it's not. This is cultivating wisdom. You will have deep insight as a result of these other practices. And finally, no vain talk. There will be no more vain talk. You may say stupid things still, but the practice is simply not to talk about that. You may be required to say stupid things, but your practice is simply to observe that you're saying a

[14:12]

stupid thing. That is not vain talk. Every other kind of talk is. So all these eight practices fall in line with sitting still, with just observing birth and death, with just observing this wheel of cause and effect go round and round. Again, observing it so wholeheartedly that there's nobody even outside observing it. It's not like you go and say, oh there's the world of cause and effect. It's rather the world of cause and effect comes and there you are. And that's it. And you don't try to figure it out. That's extra. That would be an excessive desire. So now, that's my proposal. You have a question? I only had a thing that you said came up that doesn't happen before for me, which was, I forget exactly how you said it now, but you said something about we do want out of

[15:14]

this situation, that the way out is to stay with it. Something like this, right? Right. We want to be free. We want to be freer. Yes. So that's a reasonable desire. But what I want to say then, but sort of like I said it's come up so many times before, it sounds like a contrived situation and I'm sort of saying, okay I don't like this life and I want to be free of it, so I'm going to follow this prescription which says the way to get free of it is to stay with it. So I'm willing to stay with it or you know do this practice to get out of this situation which I don't like. That always sounds somehow like my mind is well it's not a contrived. It's not really to get out of it because getting out of it wouldn't be free of it. If you want to get out of it, I maybe said that, but anyway. I think you should be free of it. Yeah, but to be free of it means you don't have to get out of it because the fact that you're in it exactly means

[16:17]

you're not in it. And so you realize, so there's just the realization. There's understanding, realization and liberation. So you renounce everything except single-minded seeking the path of freedom. That's all you're concerned about. And in fact that entails that you don't have excessive desires, like for example it's an excessive desire to want to work with something other than this. Now some people might want to go to a better monastery than this. That's not exactly an excessive desire, but it's an excessive desire to want to go another monastery while you're at this one. Or it's an excessive desire to, you know, be trying to make this better before, you know, with skipping over the way it is. That's excessive. It's reasonable to try to improve things based on what you have right here. So the desire to seek liberation entails that you work with

[17:20]

this, which might entail, once you're liberated, that you don't have to go anywhere. Because the real liberation, the real nirvana, the real attainment here freely turns itself right back into bondage. Real liberation is also, there's no such thing as real liberation. Utmost right and perfect enlightenment, there's no Dharma by which you realize that. And there's nothing can be got at there. Here things can be got at. In the world you can get at things. You can find things. Now the fact that you can find things is exactly the reason, exactly implies, exactly proves that you can't find anything. Here, in utmost right and perfect enlightenment, you can't find anything. If you can find something, you're not there yet, you're still in the world. When you reach utmost right and perfect

[18:22]

enlightenment, you can't get anything. But that can't get anything naturally turns itself into something you can get. It then contradicts itself too, and comes right back into the world, because it does not have a self. If it has a self, then it is not utmost right and perfect enlightenment. It doesn't have a self, and the world doesn't have a self. If you watch the self of the world, you forget the self of the world, and attain realization. But realization naturally negates itself too, and includes what it isn't, namely the world, namely bondage and ignorance. It doesn't put itself away from there. So in the deepest ignorance, there will be the greatest enlightenment right there. And beauty is the battle between good and evil.

[19:22]

And our heart is where the battle between good and evil takes place. So radical politeness is similar to radical evil. And radical evil is very close to radical good, and they're in a dialectic relationship. And if you just have good, it's not beautiful, and it's not true. There's an article here about the Showa Genzo, saying that when the self becomes

[20:33]

intimate with self, you can clearly realize that the self is not constant and evil, and is egoless. So anyway, when we go on observing this inconsistent self, it leads to the prayer to save all beings. So it's sort of like, it sounds that in what you've said, the more we look at what's happening and stay with that, instead of some desire for me to get free of this life that's so difficult, for instance, the more, it sounds like the way you look at what's actually happening and stay with it, the more up comes this prayer that says to save all beings, rather than wanting to save oneself through this effort. Right. So, if you want to save yourself, and think that to save yourself you have to hold

[21:40]

on anything to save yourself, then you won't be able to actually practice meditation, because you'd be holding back something. I guess what I was thinking with that was, there might be in the beginning some desire to save oneself, or to change one's situation, or make one's life better. Well, having a desire to change a situation to make your life better, that's the world. Okay? Those desires are zipping around all the time. That's the world. Practice is something which is not like that, but it intersects with the world, because the world is its playground. The world is where it operates, so practice operates in the world of trying to save yourself. You've got a person, you've got an event called trying to save yourself, that's the world. So,

[22:43]

all you do is you sit still in the middle of trying to save yourself, but sitting still is not trying to save yourself. That's just sitting there with the impulse to save yourself, or improve yourself, or make your life better, or make anybody else's life better. Now, if you want to make everybody's life better, that's very similar to sitting still. And, if in the middle of trying to help one person, and having a series of selfish desires, if in the middle of that you have a very clear sense of wanting to help every single solitary being, then that will make you sit still in the middle of this place you are. Because what happens is this, you know, this kind of thing I was talking about before, is that how individuals foster the totality and totality fosters the individuals.

[23:44]

This self-contradictory nature of reality comes into you and into me. We carry the contradiction in our own life. We are the self-identity of good and evil. So, right in us, really, there must be evil selfish desires, and also right there too is an incredibly powerful unselfish desire, and they're identical with each other, right? I mean, they're self-identical through us. We make them self-identical, and we have to sit with such a person, because that's what people are like. People are like this. This is deeply ingrained into people, this thing of, if we could just be evil, if that's the way we were, well then, you know, we just fight it out. But we aren't happy with that, and of course we're not

[24:47]

just good. The inseparableness and the self-identity of them is what we are. If we can live with that and not run away from that, we attain liberation. And when other people veer off in one of these directions, like sort of seem to be good or evil, when they're manifesting a polarity, that may activate, you know, this dynamic, and we may again realize that we don't really accept and sit with the self-identity of these in our life, and then we're running around. And we're going through that very much here right now, at this practice period, and if we had everybody kind of like, you know, I don't know what you call it, what's the word? What do they call those highly disciplined military corps, snap

[25:56]

corps? Crack corps. If we had a crack corps amongst here, there would be, you know, it would be more, I don't know what it would be, but anyway, there maybe wouldn't be so much dynamic here in terms of this like the evils over there, the goods over there. I think some people are seeing the good over there, and some people are seeing the evil over there, you know, it's flashing back and forth, rather than realizing that it's coming in, it's here with all of us, each of us, each human being manifests this. It's not two people manifest it, although we can play that game between us, you know, play these roles, but that splitting is not really the intensity of this, you know, of the place that complete perfect enlightenment happens. If the place complete perfect enlightenment happens, it's always contradicting itself, it's always implying not itself. That's where that's where things are, that's where

[27:00]

liberation is happening, that's religious life. So get a good seat for the show. Yeah. This is my phrase, but I'll use it. Sometimes I feel like what I'm saying, or often I feel like what I'm saying I'm sitting like an enemy, it feels like an enemy in my heart. Well, it makes sense to me what you're saying, that we don't have a good needle, because, you know, it feels like there's something there counterproductive to my life or going against my life force, you know, in my heart, and it's deep, it's really deep. It's good, in a way, that you have that feeling. It's a battle, it's a battle.

[28:00]

The last thing that Camus wrote was something like, you know, we'd like to conduct our, you know, our work in a kind of nice situation, nice pastoral area, maybe some lovely meadow somewhere, I don't know what he said exactly, but he said, I'm sorry, but as far as I can tell, the real work of art, or whatever he was talking about, happens in the middle of, you know, an intense battle. I have a small question. What do you mean by self-identity? How does good and evil resolve in self-identity? How does it resolve in self-identity? I did say self-identity, but I also said contradictory self-identity.

[29:03]

Contradictory self-identity. Good and evil are not just identical, self-identical, they're contradictorily self-identical in our lives. If you look at our life, they're identical in our life, they're our life, they're us. But that's a contradiction too. And what you really are, the intense liberating, the actual place of freedom from suffering and freedom from bondage, that place absolutely contradicts you. You totally include, not you. At the place that you're set free. You're not set free in a place where there's not you. You're not set free all by your nice little self. You're set free when you include completely, not a little bit, but

[30:09]

completely, in full recognition, you include not you. Also, just being not you is not good enough either. Just not you by itself, that would just be called you. But you including not you, that contradiction, that complete contradiction, that's the place. And in fact, we have that working for us. Is this contradictory self-identity you're talking about, saying light and dark, that the light is nothing but the absence of dark, so it's totally dependent on dark, there's definition, and the dark is nothing but the absence of light, so it's totally dependent on light, but you can still say light and dark, so they seem contradictory, but actually there's only one thing going on,

[31:10]

the situation, and then you can look at the absence of the dark side of it, the light, or look at the absence of the light in the dark. Yeah, that's one of the ways you reason that the fact that you're you is exactly the main reason why you're not you. By that type of reason, that's one line of reasoning you can go on. The fact that you're you is that you're the way you are. All the things that make you the way you are are exactly the reason why you're not that way. All the things that make evil are exactly why there's no such thing. All the things that are good are exactly why there's no such thing. That's the reason for it, and we are the place where they both are. That's our thing. That's part of our, I don't know what, human situation. So I wanted to read this thing, this little talk by Suzuki Roshi,

[32:19]

which I thought was good for Sashin, and also apropos of what I was talking about here. You should sit, Zazen, with your whole body, your spine, mouth, toes, mudra. Check your posture during Zazen. Each part of your body should practice Zazen independently or separately. Your toes should practice Zazen independently. Your mudra should practice Zazen independently. Your spine and your mouth should practice Zazen independently. You should feel each part of your body doing Zazen separately. Each part of your body should participate completely in Zazen. Check to see that each part of your body is doing Zazen. This is also known as Shikantaza, just sitting. To think I am doing Zazen or my body is doing Zazen is wrong understanding. It is a self-centered idea. The mudra is especially important.

[33:22]

You shouldn't feel as if you are resting your mudra on the heel of your foot for your own convenience. Your mudra should be placed in its own position. Don't move your legs for your own convenience. Your legs are practicing their own Zazen independently and are completely involved in their own pain. They are doing Zazen through pain. You should allow them to practice their own Zazen. If you think you are practicing Zazen, you are involved in some selfish, egotistical idea. If you think that you have some difficulty in some part of your body, then the rest of your body should help the part that is in difficulty. You are not having difficulty with some part of your body, but the part of your body is having difficulty. For example, your mudra is having difficulty. Your whole body should help your mudra do Zazen.

[34:26]

The entire universe is doing Zazen in the same way that your body is doing Zazen. When all the parts of your body are practicing Zazen, then that is how the whole universe practices Zazen. Each mountain and each river is going and flowing independently. All parts of the universe are participating in their practice. The mountain, for example, does not have any idea of practicing with the river. The mountain practices independently. The river practices independently. Thus the whole universe practices independently. When you see something, you think that you are watching something else outside yourself, but actually you are watching your mudra or your toe. That is why Zazen practice symbolizes the whole universe.

[35:28]

You should practice Zazen with this idea of practice. You should not say, I practice Zazen with my body. It is not so. Dogen Zenji says, water does not flow, but the bridge flows. You say that your mind is practicing Zazen. You ignore your body, the practice of your body. Sometimes when you think that you are doing Zazen with an imperturbable mind, you ignore the body. But it is also necessary to have the opposite understanding at the same time. Your body is practicing Zazen imperturbability. Your mind is moving. Your legs are practicing Zazen with pain. Water is practicing Zazen with movement. Yet water is still while water is flowing because water is its stillness or its nature.

[36:34]

The bridge is doing Zazen without moving. Let the water flow as that is the water's practice. Let the bridge stay and sit there because that is the actual practice of the bridge. The bridge is practicing Zazen. Painful legs are practicing Zazen. Imperturbable Zazen is practicing Zazen. That is our practice. I have trouble with this word independently. Check your posture during Zazen. Each part of your body should practice Zazen independently or separately. So he says you should practice independently or separately, but then he says all the parts help the other part. But in a way that is nice because there is a contradiction there. It reminds me of a talk Mel gave last practice period

[37:43]

where he says all day long the white cloud and the blue mountain depend on each other without being dependent on each other. The white cloud is always the white cloud and the blue mountain is always the blue mountain. So in that contradiction each part of the body can practice Zazen independently and still depend on the rest of the body without being dependent. We depend on what we must be independent of. We depend on what we are absolutely contradictory. We depend on something we actually are in contradiction with. We are actually separate from things but we must include them.

[38:44]

So there is this dynamic in here when he is saying do Zazen independently and let all the different parts do Zazen independently. It is in some sense very simple but quite challenging. Maybe there is something more challenging or more engaging of our effort than just sitting. Maybe. I don't know. But I guess I believe and I do find that just taking care of things that take care of themselves

[39:54]

is the best thing I have been able to find. So I take care of my body but actually it takes care of itself. I take care of my toes but actually they take care of themselves. I take care of my posture but it takes care of itself. And it has various problems because it is in this world of birth and death and it is dealing with all kinds of retribution. Pain and pleasure and so on. Habitual reactions to certain kinds of things. That is how it is taking care of itself. That is how my mind and my back are taking care of itself. But for me it works best to just let all this take care of itself

[41:01]

but be there letting it take care of itself. So I mean I told you this story or this image before of like you are walking hand in hand with someone through life, through birth and death and they fall down and Buddha does not pick them up. The teacher does not pick the person up. You let them get up by themselves. You let them learn that the place that they get up is where they fell down. If you pull them up they might not realize that the place to get up is the place they fell down and that is not only the place to get up but that they can get up. They might not realize that if you pull them up. Your toe, your leg, your back, your mind might not learn that the place for it to get itself out of difficulty

[42:14]

is the place that it is in difficulty and it has the ability to get itself out of difficulty or it with the help of everything, not just you, it with the help of everything can get up because actually when you get up from where you fall down you still have to use the place you fell down to get up and you have to use your arms. So if you are walking with somebody or you are walking with your own body or you are walking with your own mind in a sense you just walk with it. You don't get it out of trouble. You don't get it up off the floor. You let it with the aid of everything including you but the main way it includes you is you leave it alone. That's the main way you help. Everything else helps in all the different ways it helps. They also leave it alone and support it simultaneously. But for me the kind of poignant aspect of this is that if the person was walking by herself

[43:22]

and she fell down she still could learn perhaps and probably would that the place to get up is the place she fell down and that she can get up. She would still learn it. But she wouldn't know that if you were there you wouldn't help her. What beneficial effect would that have? Knowing that there was someone there that wouldn't help. Well it's infinite beneficial help. But one beneficial help you can realize is to realize that when they are there and that first of all you can realize probably they wanted to help you but they didn't want to help you. And they didn't. That's one thing you realize. Because they're there. You can probably sense that they kind of wanted to help you out and that they didn't so you notice that.

[44:23]

This is very elusive. Yeah, because doesn't that run against the teachings also? No it doesn't. Just let me get a hold of this and you'll see. I have someone there who didn't help you. You know that you did it from your own resources. And that they had faith in you. You know that if they weren't there you'd know that you did it by your own resources too. But maybe not as easily. Maybe not but there's something else you learn when they're there with you and they don't help you. First of all you know that they gave up helping you. They gave up the impulse to help you so that you could help yourself. So you know they cared enough to let you do that. That's one thing you learn.

[45:38]

But there's something that's more important. It has to do with this thing of letting things take care of themselves. Could it be that you can learn the significance of the fact that you got yourself up? Otherwise you might not realize how significant it is. But I think if you saw someone who wanted to let you forget and for... For when did? For when did. Then you can realize that this great action has been done with effort. In order for you to realize this you might realize the significance of the fact that you did that. Right? And you realize that somebody renounced something for you to save yourself. So for us to be saved, for the part of us that knows how to get it, that will be able to get itself out of all trouble, somebody else has to not mess around. But the person has to be there for the other person, so to speak, to realize that renunciation was necessary.

[46:39]

Buddha does not reach down and pull people out of problems. That's how Buddha helps people. What Buddha does is Buddha teaches people how to get themselves out. But you have to be there to teach them. You don't learn the same thing when the teacher isn't there with you, not helping you. You do not learn the whole story. You only learn how to get up off the floor. You don't understand that the reason why you were able to get up off the floor was because the teacher let you. You learn how to help others by not doing anything for them. Except teaching them how to do what they only can do themselves. So Buddhism does not teach us that we should do other people's jobs. We teach them how to do their own. So we have to be there and not mess around. So we have to be there with our knees, our legs, our body, our breath, our mind. We have to be there with that and watch it.

[47:40]

Be evil and let it get itself out of it and be there close and not touch it. Stay close and not do anything. It's easy to stay close and mess around. It's easy to be far away and not mess around. It's easy to stay close and not mess around. Stay close and not mess around. It teaches our body, every little part of our body, how to do jobs. It teaches our brains how to do jobs. I actually had that happen in a very literal way. I started driving in and I reached this point where there was a truck in the middle of the road. There was a lot of ice and a lot of snow. I was in a lot of places where there was snow and it was hard to go around. The yellow fish tails were blocking the snow. Claire was in the car and I knew Claire was the experienced driver over this thing in the snow.

[48:41]

So when we got into the bad place, I had this moment of, Okay, Claire, you get in the car and you drive. She sees me now. She just sort of knows that she can do it. It's a very literal experience of that. She acted precisely like she was absolutely there with me. She never for a moment wasn't absolutely there. But she didn't help. She did help. She didn't help this other way. But she didn't help in that other way. She absolutely helped. But she didn't help in that way. If she helped in another way, it might have shown a little bit less trust in you. And that might have made it a little harder for you. So the fact that you fall down and get up,

[49:45]

you think, that's pretty good. But maybe if Buddha was here, Buddha would have said, Let me help you because you're really not doing it right. If the teacher is there and you do it and they don't help you at all, you're more, you're more confirmed in it. But there's, excuse me. I don't know. It always comes back to what we were talking about. But it has also something to do with breaking through separation or that feeling of having a self. Because if I'm vulnerable by myself, it's not the same as if I can be vulnerable by myself. I don't want to cut you out. She just said it.

[50:51]

She just said it. And that does all kinds of things, like building communities. Because it also makes the person who is there with you very happy too, because they got to watch you. They've been waiting to see this. It helps them and encourages them. Plus it teaches you to be a teacher. It teaches you to be somebody else. That's it. Did you get the hand raised? You did? Anyway, before you said, doesn't this contradict the teachings? Yes. So in what way? I see it as a possibility in almost everything I do. But when you take someone, if someone falls, someone that you're in great strength with or someone that I work with or whatever, whether it be family or a spouse, if someone falls because of their power or falls because of their emotional power,

[51:55]

I don't see where that comes in. It's totally out of the question. From what my understanding is. Well, this is just to be clear. In today's society, it's much greater than it was 1,500 years ago. It's greater? As far as the power is concerned. Well, I didn't hear about this. What I just said to you guys right now, I didn't hear about 2,500 years ago. I heard it a few years ago. It just happened during my lifetime that I heard about what I've been talking to you about. So this is not about 2,500 years ago. But let's talk about an example. We talk about codependence nowadays. It's a new buzzword. It's a new buzzword, but there's this new thing. A newer buzzword is called, I think it's called, something like, what is it called? The caring phobia. People are now afraid to take care of people because of codependence. Codependence is very close to the Bodhisattva vow.

[52:59]

So, to feel that is very good. When a person falls down, to want to help them up is good. So, can you think of an example that contradicts this? Like, somebody falls down. In what way do you think that I'm saying something that wouldn't make sense? Can you tell me? Can you think of an example where what you're saying wouldn't be appropriate? What are you saying? Not help? I'm not saying not help. I'm saying don't do their work for them. I'm not talking about doing their work. Yeah, well, for example, somebody falls down, literally, somebody falls down, you can reach down and pull them up. But they can get up by themselves. If they can't get up, well, then that's not their work. Well, that's where it ends up in terms of doing it, I think. Can you show me how you're doing the person's work? That's not doing the person's work.

[54:02]

Well, then we're not doing a disagreement if it's not doing the person's work. I'm saying, what I'm saying is that we do want to do somebody... I'm saying we do want to do somebody else's work. When somebody falls down... No, I'm not saying do their work. I know you're not saying that. Being there and being supportive and being of help. I know you're not saying that. I didn't say you were saying that. No, no. I didn't say you were saying that. I said we, other people, probably including you, we want to do that. We want to do this unhealthy thing. I'm not saying you're saying we should. I'm saying most people want to do other people's work. It's a natural impulse because we're connected. So when somebody falls down, if we love them, we want to help them up. I'm not saying do their work. I guess so. What's going on? That's what I'm trying to figure out. I didn't say... I do mean just sit there and watch them.

[55:10]

I do mean just sit there and watch them and take care of themselves. I do mean that. But what I'm saying is that what people do feel is that when somebody is in trouble and they can get themselves out of the trouble, in those cases, we still want to help them. And I say that impulse is okay, but the act on it. The impulse is okay. It means we love them. That's okay. The reason why Buddha said I don't pull people out of the mud was because he kind of wanted to. But he learned that it doesn't help. But the rope that he threw was not a rope where he gave him the rope and he did the work. The rope he sent was Dharma. Like he said to people. The people were in this mud here. And he said, how is it? He said, do you want to... He just got them to concentrate on the mud and they got their way out. That's how he got a lot of people out of the mud.

[56:13]

By teaching. The Buddha gave teaching to many people. And some people didn't get it. And some people did. But people who don't get it, he couldn't help. No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying, for example, that some people I know, including myself, who are deluded, who are confused, get in a lot of trouble, and no one can help them. And people try, and they give teachings all the time. The person doesn't listen. That happens. It doesn't mean you don't try. Well, that's what I'm saying. That sounds right for normal, everyday activity. But it sounds totally contradictory. I think it's a conversation for some other time to take care of your... Well, I mean, it's been my experience. My experience of the Kripke problem is that the only person who can help is oneself.

[57:17]

Having people to stand over there and be your support, I mean, that's basically the only way. It's the only way. However, people being nearby and loving you and leaving you alone, I guess the implication there is, Man, I love you, but I can't do anything about this. You've got to do this. And whenever you're ready to do it, great. But I'm here until then, and I'm not going to mess around with you because that is a total waste of time. Because you can do what you want to do. There's a lot of people who have their hands raised, but I think, I'm not sure, that Dorothea wouldn't have a while ago. And also, Christina, you did forgot to remind me, I had people stand up and jump around. Okay, get up and jump around. Ho, ho, ho, ho! Ho, ho, ho!

[58:21]

I do what I want. Evelyn, Evelyn! Oh, no! We didn't mean to. You have to stand up. No, I'm talking. I'm experimenting. She has to be able to bend a little bit before she starts. Okay. Well, I think there are also situations when nobody can help. Like this afternoon, I fell into the river. I helped you. I helped you in the river. You helped him lower me? You swept me away. And I almost drowned. And I just got hold of a branch. And I fell at the bottom. So even if there had been somebody there, they couldn't have helped me. I can't jump. So it's just, well, I have connections, I guess.

[59:24]

Yeah. What came up from my childhood, that my brother, I think, had tried to drown me once. He put my head under the water. So I had to give him the last bit of love of my brother. We got together somehow. And that was good. I mean, it was a shock. When I came back to my room, I was shaking, and there were a lot of yawning. It was like a relief of this old spirit. Maybe the day I didn't see it. And I just thought of Ophelia again. Pardon? Ophelia. Ophelia. Yes. I think next was Sonia. Um, what I was having a little bit of concern about, and what it might be, is our ideas about what leaving you alone

[60:31]

and not messing with it might actually reflect the way it might leave you. I think when our ideas do nothing or don't mess with it, it sounds like just to stand there and walk while someone drowns or something. And it may not actually look like that, doing nothing and not messing with it. It might be different. Yes. And, um, I feel like that's the place for something new. I agree. Leaving you alone, and then, people drowning, and you sit there and say, well, that's what it is. Yeah, right. But I think that that's not what you're saying. Of course it's not what I'm saying, but anyway. It is tricky. It is tricky. That's why it takes many years of practice to figure out

[61:34]

how to sit in a Zen Dojo. Because it is tricky what to do when your knees hurt and your back hurts. It is tricky what it means to leave it alone and to let it take care of itself. It is tricky to walk with somebody and have them, you know, be trying to learn something and to leave them alone. It is tricky when you're riding in a car with somebody and, you know, they kind of like are losing their confidence and you think, well, maybe I could... and then you give them a little bit... then you take away a little bit more of their confidence and then they start driving worse. It is tricky. It's very tricky. But the principle I'm proposing is not tricky. It's absolute radical politeness. And when we're practicing here, the fact that everyone has it, it's tricky. We probably have a lot of trickiness here. It's tricky. It's very... it's difficult. Well, how far should we let this go? You know, should we let people ride down the creek? You know, it's tricky.

[62:35]

I'm not saying it's easy to apply this. But what I'm saying is that I feel that there's a deep tendency for us to mess with things and not let them take care of themselves. And if you can do that and let them take care of themselves and they learn, the learning is much greater if you're there and not interfering with them if you want them. What we tend to do is interfere and reduce learning opportunities or stay away and also increase learning opportunities. I think we're here to live, to learn, to understand, not, you know, to make life go on forever. The next question is what doesn't matter. No, I think it's important. I was just going to add to what Sonny said

[63:39]

that in fact the very act of not doing anything might be an extremely active thing. It might... I think of a traditional Zen situation where a Zen teacher might, you know, at some point yell or something or hit or something, you know, traditionally. And it's not to do the person's work at all, but it's to radically show the person that they can do their own work. But it's a very active kind of thing. And in the case of addiction and less brought up, you might do something very active to put that person in a new situation in which they can see for themselves that nothing's going to happen until they decide they want to make something happen. But that, you know, the role of being there, which is sort of like making a situation, like holding that person's hand when they're down there

[64:43]

can be a very active situation. Maybe that can help. I don't know if that helps, but... No, I understand that effort, but what it sounds like to me is just, you know, turning it back. No, what I'm saying is that religious... that liberation, that freedom has nothing to do with doing anything. That's one thing. It's not doing something. It's not doing or not doing things. That's not what it's about. The world is about doing things. You just watch how things are done, and you're liberated from that world. And the liberation from that world naturally comes in doing things. But doing things is not what causes the liberation. It's watching the situation,

[65:44]

understanding the situation, and not doing some other ground activity and not interfering that causes the learning to happen, the full learning. Matt? Mark? Matt? One more thing before you go on. I just was wondering if you could... You know, you discussed that. If there's a hand going down a river, and the one hand is pulled out, or you just drag the hand and pull it back, or a car runs by where you were today, that still to me, that's not doing something. That's right, that's right. If you're doing what you do, if you're standing in a way, or it's something that you can take a lot better than,

[66:48]

or it's like, this is what you're not doing. Right. Because taking your hand out to somebody who's trying to reach for your hand is not doing their work. However, when it comes to somebody actually dying on the spot, you just save their life, that's all you do. But that's not doing their work for them, that's doing your work for yourself. Pulling a child out of the street is not doing a child's work for them. That's not doing their work for them, that's doing your work. You're the only one who can pull a child out of the street. But when an able-bodied person falls down on the ground, you still want to help them up. Or maybe you don't, but I do. If you don't love them, you might not want to. You might just step on their head. If you love them, if you unrealistically want to help them up, you make a mistake.

[67:50]

And you do that with everything that's happening to you. It's as a habit. That's evil to do that. It's evil. Have you ever been in a car by yourself, and you had to put the brakes on real quick for some reason, and you reached over to stop the other person? That seems to be... wanting to help just seems to be, like you say, just a habit or something so... Not good. Yeah, it is, but... But it could become interfering. But that wasn't interfering. No. That's just infected. But the other image I keep getting of not helping... It always does that. You put your little arm up and... Yeah, yeah. But it's interesting. That's not doing a good job for them. To do their job for them would be to try to get over in their seat. And sit in their seat for them. Meantime, you'd both be driving the car.

[68:52]

Or vice versa. Try to get over in the driver's seat. This is what we try to do, actually. That's a problem. And we do that for a lot of things that are going on in our life. We try to do that. However, it's good to remember that, and feel that dynamic of that we want to embrace and exclude what we are. We want to embrace what we aren't. It's a healthy thing. We want to exclude what we aren't. It's unhealthy. We want to embrace what we are, which excludes what we aren't. That's unhealthy. Here's the question. In other words... I just started that because... In all this talk of... watching the situation we're in, world of birth and death,

[69:55]

and if we watch it closely enough, we will finally see that it's going the other direction. All this talk sort of sounds like it's all dependent on a person to do something. If you do this, if you look closely enough, long enough, you'll see... what's happening. Where is the element of... That's the thing. What I've been talking about just now is a kind of... subtlety or explanation of how to watch. You don't watch from the point of view of, I'm watching, like I'm doing this watching the birth and death. That's like walking with somebody and pulling them up off the ground. When we hear this instruction, we think that... I think I'm supposed to be watching the birth and death. That's an example. And I hear about... Well, here's this guy falling down in birth and death.

[70:58]

Wouldn't it be good to help him do that? So let's get him to do this. Let's make this happen. That's what we think. It's not the way it's done. It's not me helping myself or somebody doing this practice. It doesn't depend on this person doing this stuff. That's not how it works. So the subtlety of... That's what we've seen in these practices. The subtlety, the difficulty, the trickiness of being totally observant and just sitting still is that there's not somebody doing it. There's not you doing Zazen. That's the subtlety here. But for you to be there, like a person to be there in a sense, to be appearing and not to think that you're doing it, to be a self and not think that the self does the practice, then you learn more than if just the practice was going on.

[71:59]

To have a self there and have the self not do the practice is where liberation happens. Usually the self is doing the practice. Doing the practice. Doing Buddhism. Doing Zazen. Doing the meditation. Watching birth and death. So that takes you to the self doing it. The self doing it. The self doing it. But pretty soon, it's not the self doing it. It's that everything is coming together and there's a self there. Everything's coming together and there's a self there. But the self isn't doing it. But it still sounds like this is a process of the self doing it and what I'm hearing you saying and then eventually you see... So the self doing it, the self doing it, so eventually there is not another self seeing now, okay? There's a self doing it, a self doing it, but pretty soon there's an understanding that what's happening here is a self doing it, that that's the vision here. When you see that, what's happening now is observation of the world really. Observation of the kind of thinking

[73:03]

which is called upload. Of a self doing this stuff. And at that time, there's not another self over here seeing that. There's understanding that that's the way we're approaching life. This evil way. Because at that time, things turn and it's no longer the self doing it. But there's a self there and everything does the self. You answered my question. Akin Roshi, a couple years ago, said something about our practice. He was talking about Kensho or insight or understanding Kensho or Satori. And he said, these are accidents and our practice is just to make us accident prone. And that was a quote. Yeah, that's a quote. Oh, really? Well, anyway, what I'm getting at is where is this aspect of grace or it's not something you're doing that's bringing us about. It's not constantly being willing to look at the self, trying to do something for the self and then eventually

[74:03]

this will lead you to it. Well, this is grace. Real nirvana or reality is grace. Grace is that you are all whatever you want to say. All kind of a mess. That's grace. Grace is, this is grace. This is what's been given to you. You've been given this gift to work with. That's grace. Grace is so wonderful it's willing to take this form, this contradictory form. That's grace. Now you got it. You couldn't have been able to work without grace. Without the fact that Buddha's compassion and ultimate reality is willing to come down to this. Now, the water oozle says, hey man, let's do it. Right? Lower yourself. The water oozle demonstrates, understands, this is a gift. This is grace.

[75:04]

This is gracias. So you say it back. You say, gracias. Gracias. [...] Now I'm going to fix it. Even though it's a mess. The mess is working itself out by grace. Grace is saying, okay now take this. Now take that. Okay now, watch them do this. Watch them do that. Gracias. I don't think so. Pardon? Si, si. I'll post this real talk on the Google. How many people knew, who'd like a copy of this? I know some of you have it,

[76:10]

but some people are new. How many people who don't have it would like it? It's in a book? Okay, I'll make some copies. Gracias. So you know, not a thing, not a thing, not any dharma can be got at, you know, in complete, perfect enlightenment. Therefore, because of that, it comes down into us, creatures like this, that we create, we manifest this tremendous dynamic situation. Hey, why did you say not any dharma can be got at? Why did I say that? Now I know I can't answer why questions. But it's in the sutra.

[77:12]

It's section 22. Section 22, it's so nice. Does dharma mean phenomena or? You could say phenomena. Phenomena, phenomena has no phenomena, as taught by the Tathagata. Therefore, we say phenomena. Because for the Tathagata, there's no phenomena. Therefore, the Tathagata says phenomena, and here's some more. Here's some more. Here's some more. Here's some more. Because where I'm coming from though, the Tathagata says phenomena. So I can dispense with that feeling. And I appreciate him saying phenomena. Now you can go back to your place to create and

[78:14]

let your mudra take care of your mudra. And let the rest of your body take care of your mudra. And be good. Thank you. Phenomena. Thank you.

[79:17]

And I just sat there and it was totally empty. This big concrete cavernous building with cages all over it. And I just cried. I just cried. And I thought, how can anybody do this? How can anybody do this? And I just... That's when I turned vegetarian. And I was I started running. Found out I had hyperglycemia. Met Gabriel Cousins who treated me for hyperglycemia. Moved away from economics. Got into business. Got into psychology a little bit. Started learning Maslow. He became real influential. Maslow. Love his stuff. Started selling VCRs at that time. This is like 78, 79. And large screen TVs. This is like before anybody even knew what VCRs were. Got into politics, Marxism. Then I shifted into sciences. Met Oliver Loud. Oliver Loud was incredibly influential guy. Probably about... He's 82 now. Been working on his manuscript

[80:35]

called Challenge as a Human Future. The most amazing person I've ever met in my life. Knows everything about everything. And used to spend hours in his library. Started getting into meditation. Did a study on hunger and children and brain development. Found out there's like a half billion children in the world with stunted brains due to malnutrition. Started meditating on my own. Didn't even know what I was doing except I had a piece of paper. One piece of paper that said how to meditate. And I started meditating on that. Started running five miles a day every morning. Became a vegetarian. Started fasting. Everything started changing. And the change is basically I found that I had no personal problems on my own. And time kind of stopped. I wasn't doing any spiritual reading at all. Started getting involved

[81:37]

in the healthcare industry and getting involved in hunger, problems of the world. Everything started changing. So I did that for about a year and a half, two years. The Iranian Revolution happened in 1979 and this hostage thing. And I started heavily getting into finding out about Iran. Started giving lectures on... Started discovering Iran, the politics and the social realities of Iran and the CIA's role and so on and so forth. Started giving lectures on it. My father couldn't come to the United States because we wanted to meet. This was in 1980, April 1980. I had a spring break so I went to meet him in the Bahamas for two weeks. And while I was there President Carter declared some war power or something and I couldn't re-enter the United States.

[82:37]

So I went to the airport with my father and he said well if you can get a seat come with me to London. And I put my name on the waiting list. One seat opened up. Flew with him to London, arrived at immigration, got detained, put on the next plane to Iran. My father went to London. They sent me to Iran and boom, here I am in Iran. Post-revolutionary Iran. At that time I was like gung-ho about the revolution and filled with Marxist leftist ideas and all this kind of stuff. so I spent five months there. The first three months my father was building this aircraft hangar. Yeah, aircraft hangar. And what had happened was that the crane driver had dropped the assistant crane driver

[83:40]

had dropped this great big steel beam and put him on top of this worker and squashed him to death. So they wanted my father and they wanted to put him in jail or what have you. So I had to take care of all of that. It's nine o'clock. This will take another five minutes maybe six minutes. What do you guys want to do? Five minutes. Five minutes? Okay. So anyway, I took care of that problem and then more and more as I stayed in Iran I became more and more disillusioned so all these fanatics around me I stopped meditating at that time because I felt that I had also become a fanatic. Got out of Iran five five days before the Iran-Iraq war started. Just missed it just like that. It was like phew, missed it. Otherwise I would have been on the front lines. Went to Germany because that's where I could get a visa to the United States. Went to West Berlin

[84:42]

and I remember going to East Berlin and spending a day there and coming out and thinking forget about Marxism. Got back to Antioch ended up with a biology administration degree came to San Francisco started volunteering at Food First wanted to get into get into Berkeley to study masters in public health concentration and nutrition. My student visa ran out so I found a loophole in the immigration laws and applied for religious asylum and I knew that it would take them like three years just to get out of there and I didn't even look at my files because they were so disorganized wasn't even computerized at that time so they give you permission to stay and work in the country. So I said great by that time

[85:44]

someone will show up. At that time I was in a big hurry to become financially independent and I found this building close to Berkeley, Oakland 24,000 square feet $1,500 rent I was going to start this cultural entertainment center and $1,500 a month for 24,000 square feet had an auditorium had a restaurant fully equipped restaurant it was like this American Italian cultural center that had gone to moved to San Francisco. So anyway I decided to put on a reggae concert I had a reggae show on radio for years so I decided to put on a reggae concert and had three bands they played two shows per night once in Oakland once in San Francisco and didn't have the faintest idea what I was doing took me a month to organize the whole thing ended up losing my shirt and started driving a cab

[86:44]

at the midnight shift in Oakland then after that I ended up as a headhunter in Silicon Valley in 1982 what's that? that's an executive search firm this was the boom time of the defense industry and the ICs and all this kind of stuff and so I would call up it's basically dialing for dollars you make about 100, 200 calls a day you try to find out if someone's looking for let's say a design engineer or something they pay like 60,000 dollars and then once the guy says yeah we need this person then you would start trying to steal that person from another company to get him into that position and if you succeeded you get a third your commission was a third of their salary so like you know dialing like crazy oh finally on the on the like the 14th day I call up and the guy says yeah actually we're looking for

[87:45]

a design engineer pays 45,000 dollars a year I say okay tell me a little bit more about the job he said well we need the guy to design the guidance system for a ballistic missile nuclear ballistic missile and I put down the phone and I thought forget it I'm quitting this job so I quit the job and I guess it didn't take five minutes keep going okay so I went to Santa Cruz to chill out and decided to go back to Masters of Public Health and I realized anybody who got into Masters of Public Health needed an MD degree so I went to Oberlin to study become a pre-med student again it's called backtracking and when you go into Oakland Oberlin it's required to do to go through

[88:45]

their battery of health new students go through health battery health test so fortunately for me unfortunately for me I don't know what but I ended up this quack said I had some illness gave me some medication ended up in the hospital for 15 days after that I said I didn't want to be a doctor so that was that so I moved to Yellow Springs back to Yellow Springs Yellow Springs is a great town started working for electronics firm working in the radio started a little health food company making a 9 grain cereal started carving signs coaching soccer small town had a great time everything was going really good started importing cars luxury cars from Germany sold my brother's video camera started fooling around with it and boom I was captivated started getting into it made a documentary

[89:46]

on Arthur Morgan and the Dayton Flood went to New York City because at that time I decided I was going to get into film business become a filmmaker went to NYU made a couple of documentaries made a couple of films got them into the hands of an agent in LA he said send me a screenplay you want to direct I said oh great sat down wrote a screenplay this is 1987 wrote No Way Out it was about a corrupt senator making sure plenty of military aid got to Afghanistan as it was being diverted to drug dealers who were sending heroin to the United States and the senator was getting kickbacks from that this was before Iran Contragate and all that stuff like hey add something there congrats somebody finally did that what? congrats somebody finally did that what this movie you mean? yeah they stole my idea 1987 got married but no paper to document it was like

[90:46]

hey we're married three months three months later got divorced I found out she was a pathological liar and she was a pathological liar I'm telling you it was unbelievable cousin called 1988 started crying said come and save us we're about to end up in the streets they had started this business they were about to lose the business they were about to lose the house everything they owned everything was about to go down the drain at that time I had sold my brother's apartment in New York City and so I moved out there my father was there what to do with the money decided he said buy a house because we're going to sell everything in London and come to the United States in 12 months I said okay so I took my brother's apartment's money used it to turn around the business my cousin had started

[91:47]

and invested the rest in a house I figured okay there's enough money to cover payments expenses for 12 months by that time they would have come over from London liquidated everything in London turned Deaver around that was the name of the business bought 901 Smith Road which is actually real close to Green Gulch Farm did a 7 day fast learned yoga over the mind spent it with Gabriel Cousins went to LA hated every minute of it started writing started painting lived on a boat I bought for $2500 as soon as I got to LA started trying to sell the house because I realized my father changed his mind he wasn't going to come over so here I was trying to deal with the payments on the house money was rapidly running out couldn't sell the house had tenants they decided to go to India I said oh my god so moved to Mill Valley in the house learned of Green Gulch

[92:48]

somehow with some friends help managed to get a second mortgage on the house so I got another $65,000 on the house started living off that started putting some movie deals together started making graffiti started making a documentary on graffiti but the guy decided to commandeer the documentary and instead I ended up shooting him shooting up heroin 25 minutes this guy is sticking a needle in his arm that was quite something summer of 1991 went to London to help my sister she's got a restaurant nightclub there I took over the nightclub part for about 5 months I was running a nightclub the new rave scene but they wouldn't listen to me I said you're going to end up in deep trouble with this business you're going to have to make big changes they didn't listen I said look within 6-12 months you're going to be in deep deep trouble and they are in real deep trouble

[93:50]

right now came back to the Bay Area went up to Tahoe because I had a movie deal up there but that fell through came to the Bay Area and for the last 3 months I was trying to save my credit if your credit is ruined your life is ruined kind of deal finally I decided forget it you know I'm walking away from everything so I said I'm not going to play this game anymore and I had $360,000 in debt and sold everything gave my paintings away decided hey what to do next found out about Tassajara I called Keith up I said I'm coming down he said ok fine send an application never sent an application just showed up actually the night

[94:51]

before I showed up the night I showed up I was this is this is over the night I was to show up I was driving through Fairfax I had sold everything I had everything packed in the back of my car I was I was like two o'clock in the morning and I was super hungry went to the supermarket bought this ready sushi and I was driving through Fairfax and I was trying to open the I was driving I was trying to open up the soy thing and I did and it squirted everywhere and I was going all over the place and suddenly the police car stopped me are you drunk? right he thought I was drunk he came in and started shining a flashlight I was trying to get my license out I gave him the wrong driver's license I gave him the Darien Zade driver's license which was expired and suspended and suspended as soon as I

[95:51]

as soon as I gave it to him I realized oh no I gave him the wrong

[95:54]

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