This week, about between 50 and 60 people have been sitting here since last Sunday night, and we have been settling ourselves onto ourselves. becoming more and more intimate with who we are. And this process of becoming intimate with ourselves and with each other is the realm we call upright sitting in Zen.

[01:06]

And it is in this realm that the Zen practitioners open up and demonstrate and awaken to and enter Buddha's wisdom and compassion. I would like to give you a kind of an overview of this process of Buddhist practice. in the form of a fairy tale, something like a fairy tale, and then go back over the process in more and more detail, filling in the minute particulars and difficulties in the process.

[02:21]

Stories are useful for human beings. Narratives are useful for human beings to summarize a complex body of teaching. And I have told already some fairy tales this week in the attempt to give an overview of the process. And today I'd like to tell a new one. And this story is one that I actually don't know all the details of it, so even the story is going to be abbreviated, although it would be worthwhile telling it in detail. Fortunately or unfortunately, I don't know the details. But this story is a story that has a very deep, I don't know if very deep, anyway, deep, dark nostalgia for me personally. It's a story which I saw in the form of a movie when I must have been under, I'm pretty sure I was under seven years old.

[03:37]

I don't know how old I was. I was old enough to go to the movies. And I remember I started going to movies when I was about five. At that time, they cost a nickel. This movie actually has been haunting me Four, I would say it still is haunting me because I still haven't found a way to see it again. So maybe some of you could tell me how you get a copy of it. It's been haunting me for about 40 years. Recently I found a book, which is a novel, which was the basis of this movie. And the name of the book is, and the name of the movie is, The Secret Garden. I, for years, for decades and decades, I would remember that movie and think back to that movie, because I had such a deep, warm, and also dark feeling about the movie.

[04:41]

I couldn't remember it exactly. But I remembered that I saw it in the dark, if the theater was dark, and it was a black and white film, and it was a dark film. But it was a film about going into a dark place, into a secret place, into an overgrown place, and opening a door and finding light and love and life in that place. And I remembered it was about a crippled boy. And So recently I found a copy of the book, but I didn't read it. And then just a couple of days ago, someone in Sashin told me the story, more about the story. And I realized when I heard the story of this secret garden that it was a story about the process of Buddhist practice and the process we've been going through in this Sashin, this intensive meditation period.

[05:45]

And also, you know, and I say the story was haunting me because it was haunting me because I never resolved my relationship with the story. I couldn't remember it. Now I want to remember it, and then it won't haunt me anymore. It'll just be closer to me. It won't be a ghost. But I couldn't let go of that story, and I couldn't remember it for many years. Now I know a little bit more about it. And here's how I would tell the story. This is not necessarily the way you remember it or the way you saw it or the way you read it, but just let me tell it this way. Oh, and the other thing I realized after I heard the story is I remembered that the funny thing was that this story is about a crippled boy. And in a way, a crippled girl too.

[06:52]

But I remember that actually not too long before I saw that movie, I was crippled. I was crippled polio, which is another reason why this story might have been very meaningful to me when I saw it when I was a young boy. So I don't know where to start, but you could start with this. There was this girl who lost her parents. and was sent to England to live with some relatives who she didn't know. And when she came to this house, she found the house to be cold and dark, and she had no friends to play with. Somehow the story lets us know that years before she came, the house was a happy place and the family was a family of a father and a wife, father and a mother, and a child.

[08:02]

And the mother had a garden and enjoyed the garden very much. And then the mother died. And when she died, the husband, the father, closed the garden down, locked it up, and let it die. And the little boy, who survived his mother, got polio or something, became crippled, and was put into a room by himself. A dark room. All by himself and people brought him food and so on, but they felt that he was so weak that they shouldn't let anybody come to play with him. And after a while, he also felt that way too, that if anybody would come and play with him or relate to him, he would die. So the little girl came to live there, and finally, finding nothing else to do with her time, she somehow started exploring the area, and she discovered this

[09:09]

this garden, a walled-in garden, an inner garden. She found her way in. It was all dead, but somehow she got the idea, maybe in consultation with an old gardener that still lived on the grounds, to rejuvenate the garden. So she started to work with the garden a little bit. Around that time or after that, She also went exploring inside the house, and there was one room in the house that she wasn't supposed to go into, and this was the room where the little crippled boy was. So somehow, anyway, she got into the room, met the little boy, who also told her she wasn't supposed to go in there, and he also didn't want her in there because he was afraid that he couldn't handle his relationship with her. But finally, he was able to accept his relationship and let her into the room. And finally, she got him to come out of the room and go down into the garden.

[10:14]

She got him out of that room, into his wheelchair, down into the garden and on the ground. And there they practiced in that garden, trying to learn how to walk. I guess the climax is that when the garden bloomed, he walked. So I thought that was a good story. And I'd like to see the movie sometime. This week, during the session, in a sense, what we've been mostly emphasizing is how this girl can get this guy out of that dark room, into his wheelchair, down into the garden, and to plant the seeds.

[11:43]

Again, I don't know the details of the story, but it was complex and difficult to get him out of there. Sometimes maybe he wasn't up to it. Sometimes maybe she didn't want to put up with the trouble either. But even when they're both willing, still, there's technical problems, physical, bodily problems to deal with here. So I thought another way to go over this story in a little bit bigger scale, maybe a religious scale, is maybe before the story started, there was a Garden of Eden. There was a place of blissful oneness where you didn't have to make any effort to be alive.

[12:56]

where there was trust of everything. And then somehow, for whatever reason, one has to leave this Garden of Eden. One has to break with oneness. As part of our psychic development, we can't stay in oneness forever. And once we break with oneness, we gradually stop trusting the other. Or once we break with oneness and create another, then gradually we lose trust in the other. We have to get away from our mom. And the way boys get away from mom and the way girls get away from mom is different. But we all got to get away from her. and develop some independence.

[14:00]

But somehow it seems like it is inevitable that when we start on our path to our individuality, we become crippled and we become alienated, we become grandiose. We become miserable, etc. Which is the same as we develop a self, which we must do, but in the process of developing it, In the process of building this wonderful little self, which we must do, there's no way around it. We can't help but hold on to our creation.

[15:09]

And by holding on to our creation, we become alienated, crippled, grandiose, etc. We need the self. The problem is Once we take care of it for a long time, we think we own it. We think it's a thing by itself. So then we have to, we don't have to, but if we want to be happy, now that we've done this work, we have to go now in a totally reverse direction from what we've been doing so far. We got out of heaven. We got out of the Garden of Eden. We established some independence. We've got a self, but we overdid it. And we can't avoid overdoing it. Because when you take care of something for a long time, you think you own it.

[16:12]

So, there we are, at whatever age, 8, 9, 10, 16, 28, 35, 48, at some age anyway, you decide, that you need to reverse this process. You need to renounce something. You need to renounce the extra part. You need to renounce the self-clinging, which basically means you need to renounce everything. Because you can't just renounce some stuff because, sure enough, the stuff that you would choose not to renounce is exactly the key thing to renounce. So you have to renounce everything. You can't hold out at all. You have to renounce all human orientation, all human agendas, all human emotions, all human sentiments, all human cravings.

[17:23]

And renounce them does not mean you don't have them anymore. It's easy to renounce things you don't have. It's just theoretical. You have to renounce what you've actually got a hold of. But you can't do that directly. You have to do it indirectly. Because, again, if you did it directly, you'd still be using your orientation of how to do that. You'd have to even give up your idea of how to renounce it. total reversal, even in terms of method. This is what we call, this week we've been calling this becoming intimate with ourselves or initiation by fire. take this individuated creature, this person who feels independent, and put it through a fiery initiation where it will drop everything unnecessary.

[18:49]

I thought it might be useful to offer a new symbol for this process this morning, a symbol which has Fortunately or unfortunately, intense emotional baggage with it. It's a symbol of what we call swastika. The swastika was originally an Indo-Iranian Aryan symbol, which the Nazi party of Germany adopted to identify themselves with the Aryan race. the white Indo-Europeans who invaded India and conquered it. The symbol of the swastika is very old, and the way you make the symbol of the swastika, the way it was created was to imagine a cross. And at one pole of the cross is, you might say, heaven, the other is hell, or bliss and torment.

[20:05]

And then the other poles are human and non-human. And then imagine this swastika turning clockwise, like this. Is that clockwise? Going clockwise. And as it goes clockwise, as this cross turns clockwise, it leaves a trail behind its tips and creates this swastika. You picture that? This symbolizes the way we transmigrate through birth and death, through life and death, through heaven and hell, through human and non-human form, to male and female form. We go round and round and round. This is the direction of the world. This is the direction of misery. This is our habit. So the first stage in the process of liberation is to turn this swastika around and get it to go in the other direction.

[21:13]

So a counterclockwise direction of this process. Now, the way we do this in One of the ways we do this in Zen practice is, for example, the one that practices renunciation is to trust something completely. And generally speaking, what we suggest to trust is what's happening. Don't go around and look for a good candidate to touch or trust. Choose something that's happening. Again, if you choose something, this is our usual orientation. We choose what to trust. I'll choose these people, but not those people. I'll trust these people because, you know, they're nice to me or whatever, and I won't trust those people because they're trying to get my money or whatever. Or I don't know what. They're different from me maybe. I'll trust these people because they're like me, and I won't trust those people because they're different from me.

[22:18]

We have all these ways of deciding. This is a new way. It's trust what's happening. And what's happening? Well, first of all, you've got a body happening. Next, this body is breathing. So first of all, we suggest trust everything to your body and breath. That's what we've been trying to do this week, is to trust everything to this breathing body. If you do devote yourself to such a practice that entails, if you try to practice that way, you will find that it entails renouncing all your other agendas. This is a totally different approach. If you do it for a few minutes, you may say, well, that Zen practice, that sounds good, I'll do it.

[23:18]

But as you do it longer and longer, you find out you'd rather do something else. You have other agendas. Things aren't going as you planned. It's time to change the program. Well, that is okay, because when that happens, then what you do is trust that. So not only do you trust your body and breath, because they're going on all the time, but you trust everything else that comes up on this path. So if you'd start trusting everything to your body and breath. If you completely devote yourself to being intimate with your body and breath, everything else in the world will come up too. And then you trust that. For example, judgment will come up. You will start judging yourself or your neighbors. You will start thinking your neighbor's practice is better than yours or perhaps not as good as yours. And you'll wonder how you happen to not only get in a room where you're doing this activity of total devotion to your own breathing body, but how you got in a room full of people like this.

[24:32]

Now, the usual thing for people to do when they start noticing that they're judging others is to feel pretty bad about it. It makes you feel lousy. And also you know other people don't like it either, especially if you're judging them as inferior to you. So you start to feel guilty, so you think maybe you should stop. Or at least if you can't stop, which you probably can't, how about denying that you're doing it? Then you can sit there doing it and not know you're doing it, which makes you feel, of course, considerably worse. But now you don't know why you feel bad. Meantime, you can't stop and keep going Basically, full bore, but unconsciously. Now, someone told me a story about this, you see. Someone's trying to sit there, being totally devoted to his sitting, to his breathing, body, and all these judgments are flying up in his brain, right, about himself and about others, feeling terrible about it.

[25:45]

Being in a zendo, one of the nice things about being there in a situation like this is that once you're totally devoted to one thing, you might become totally devoted to another and another. It spreads. This process of reversing the way we do things spreads. So rather than stopping doing this, which you can't do anyway, or rather than pretending, well, I shouldn't be doing this, so I'll stop, which in other words, I shouldn't be doing this, so I won't admit it. Rather than playing that game, this person just went ahead and did it. Totally trusted this judgmental mind, which is going nonstop anyway. And she went with it. all the way around the room and judge everybody. By the time she finished going around the room, totally trusting the mind that is doing this. In fact, this is the mind that is happening. It's not another mind.

[26:48]

She didn't make this up. This was actually the one that was going on. She trusted what was happening. By the time she got around, she was laughing because she saw how ridiculous it is that our mind does this. But if you go part way, not to mention if you deny it, you won't see how ridiculous it is. You'll only see how painful it is, how sick it makes you. And not only that, but if you don't admit it, you'll think you're holding back a little bit. You think, well, I'll lighten up. You can't lighten up. You can only deny. You can't control yourself. You can't stop yourself from doing what you're doing. It's impossible. But you can be honest about what you're doing, which means you can be totally devoted to what you're doing. You're doing it anyway. Why don't you do it totally? Now, the principle here is that if you're doing something, if you do it totally, you get liberated from it.

[27:49]

If you trust your body and breath completely, you will be liberated from your body and breath. If you trust yourself completely, you will be liberated from yourself. If you trust your judgmentalness, whatever it is, if you trust it completely, it drops off and you're set free. That's the theory. This is the theory of what we call wisdom beyond wisdom. This is the prajnaparamita logic. The fact that A is A implies that A is not A. The fact that you are you implies that you're not you at all. The fact that pain is pain implies that there's no such thing as pain. The fact that I am petty implies that there's no such thing as petty.

[28:57]

I'm not petty at all. But if I don't completely admit that A is A, if I don't admit that pain is pain and breath is breath, and not admit it in general, but admit it specifically on this particular pain is this particular pain, this particular self is this particular self, this particular breath is this particular breath. If I don't admit those things completely, then I don't have A equals A. I have A equals A prime. A equals approximately A. A approximately equals A. That doesn't imply A equals does not equal A. That does not imply there's no such thing. It's a total devotion to something that implies that there's no such thing. It's total intimacy with yourself, which will show you that there ain't no self at all. And you get this new self then. This new self, a brand new self, which is the self of a dropped off body and mind.

[29:57]

This self is the self that's in the garden and can plant seeds. But it's a complicated operation to get this thing out of that dark room into the wheelchair and down into the garden. It's as messy and difficult as it is to move a cripple around who's not sure she wants to come. It's hard, difficult work. It's dark or it's light, depending on what you don't want to have. It's a total reversal. But if you understand, as the process is going on, that this is the work of the Buddha There can be a joy even though it's difficult. There can be a sustaining joy, enough joy to do it. There has to be a little bit more joy than the difficulty.

[30:59]

Otherwise, you just go like this and the wheel turns back the usual way. Only because it's better than the other way will we do it because it's hard work. What's his name? What's that guy's name, that black botanist? George Washington Carver? Was he the Wizard of Tuskegee? Yeah. So when he was a little boy, he used to go out in the woods in the dark before the sunrise and talk to the plants and take care of the plants. And... Even one of his little boy, all the women in the neighborhood would bring him their sick plants and give them to him, and he would cure them. And they would say, how did you learn so much about plants?

[32:02]

You're just a kid. He said, well, I just trust everything and love everything completely, and they tell me their secret. If you trust yourself, if you trust your body, you trust your breath, you trust your pettiness, you trust your judgmentalness, enough. If you love it, enough. It will tell you a secret. The secret is, you know, there's no such thing. Nothing can get you. You're completely free. Fly. But if you don't love it enough, it won't tell you the secret. But this is also sometimes tough love. Okay, so now, once you're liberated, or at least I would say you dropped off this body and mind, then we start a new process.

[33:07]

Once you've done this, you become a kind of unpredictable person. You become, from some points of view, even your own, rather wild. you start ruffling feathers. You become maybe a little bit of a trickster. You become creative. By dropping everything, you've gone to the place where you're nothing at all. This is the ground of our being. Coming from our emptiness, anything's possible. But not necessarily Right away, do you know how to work with this? So we need the second initiation, which in the story was him learning how to walk. He got down there to the ground. Seeds had been planted, but he still had to learn how to walk.

[34:12]

This initiation by water will be also what you might call a reintegration, reintegral form, a re-one-ment. The first part of the process was an atonement unto yourself. whether becoming one with yourself, confessing who you are, and becoming one with yourself. The second part of the process is to become one with the universe. The first was a reintegration with your own psyche, with your own psychophysical complex. Now we enter a process of reintegration with cosmos. First you learn how to take care of yourself.

[35:44]

Now you're going to learn how to take care of others and how to let others take care of you. And now the wheel turns in the opposite direction. It goes back now to the worldly direction. You enter now worldly situations. You take on complications. You start, basically, to talk. Before that, you were turning away from words, in a sense. You were letting the words burn away, and they weren't reaching you in the end. You took such good care of the words that they dropped away. Now you pick them up again and try to use them in a creative way with someone else. This person who is nobody at all, this dropped off body and mind person, starts to take dancing lessons.

[37:03]

One of the simplest and, in a sense, the archetypal story about this in the Zen lineage, Zen tradition, is the water initiation of Shakyamuni Buddha's first disciple, Mahakasyapa. So imagine now we're back in India. This is also kind of a fairy tale. We're back in India about 2,500 years ago. And there's the Buddha, Shakyamuni. And he has his, all his monks are there with him. At that time there were no Buddha statues on the altar. There was just the Buddha and his gang, you know?

[38:38]

Things were, in a way, less formal in those days. They didn't have to have any services aside from what they were doing. So he was sitting there, and what happens in India and in other countries too, when the teacher is giving the talk, people bring gifts, and often they bring flowers. And maybe they brought a flower, a lei, and put it around the Buddha, or put it at the Buddha's lap or feet. And the Buddha picked up one of the flowers, and turned it. Sometimes they say twirled it. Anyway, turned or twirled the flower. Now these days, most of you are smiling.

[39:40]

But in those days, at that time, only one person smiled. Maha Kashyapa. Another version of the story is the Buddha held up the flower and turned it and winked, kind of giving a hint. This is a test. Another version is the Buddha held up the flower and blinked. I don't know, it's different words. They're translating the same character. Another story is the Buddha held the flower and lifted his eyebrows. Anyway, he held up this flower and one person smiled. Now, there's a background to this story I suggest to you.

[40:43]

The background is that Mahakasyapa had been close to the Buddha for a long time and been looking in Buddha's face for a long time. So if Buddha winked, it would be, you know, a major event. Mahakasyapa, I think, for a long time, he was becoming intimate with himself. The Buddha was encouraging him, too. Buddha probably was saying, Venerable sir, are you aware of yourself? Are you aware of your breathing? And Mahakashyapa probably said many times, yes sir, I'm exhaling right now. Venerable attendant Mahakashyapa, are you aware of your feet on the ground? Mahakashyapa probably said,

[41:48]

Yes, I am. Well, good. I see you doing that. So back and forth like this for a long time, I think Mahakashipa was working on himself, working on himself, being close with himself, being aware of himself for a long time. And I think he really finally settled with himself and got used to that and just walked around like that pretty much all the time. You can imagine that. Imagine that, please, imagine it. Imagine it enough, talk to yourself about it, until you do it too. So, Mahakashipa, I think, had kind of forgotten about himself. He was so devoted to being present with himself, he kind of forgot about himself. There he was, a forgotten Mahakashipa. present, aware, alert. He did his work.

[42:52]

He did his work so thoroughly, his own face was no longer his own. Then when the Buddha raised the flower, He could really see something. And so when he saw something, he smiled. Could have done something else, but he smiled. And then the Buddha said, I, the Buddha gets to talk possessively in this case. The Buddha said, I have the womb. of the treasure, the womb, the treasury of eyes of the correct dharma. The wonderful, subtle mind of nirvana. The true form of no form, the flawless gate to liberation.

[44:08]

It is not established on words and phrases. It is a special transmission outside of tradition. I now completely entrust it to Mahakashipa. So in this story, in the background of this story, is the fire initiation, is the renunciation of everything, which means total dedication to what's happening. Or rather, it's a renunciation not of everything, just a renunciation of all our agendas, of all our human cravings, and not renouncing the truth, but rather dedicated to the truth of what is appearing now. He did that work, so this story is about the water initiation, where he comes back into the world and enters into a human relationship with the Buddha. And the Buddha has been doing the same work and enters into a human relationship with Mahakashapa.

[45:16]

This is the completion of the process and a great moment in the history of the world. It may be a fairy tale, but it's still. very important. And in fact, this whole process, I said history of the world, in our sense, this whole process is not a historical process. So, like when I was talking about these wheels turning, the wheel of the world is turning clockwise and spiritual practice starts to turn it the other way. And after it's completely turned the other way and we're released and body and mind have dropped off, Then, in order to complete the process, to make it a process that goes on forever, we have to turn the wheel in the other direction and go back into the world to show what a self that's nothing at all can do, to show how free a self that had forgotten itself can be.

[46:22]

But if you watch this and make a circle out of this process rather than a historical line, if you watch this circle turning counterclockwise, and then turn it and keep turning it and turn it around and bring it back. When it comes back, it's going clockwise. You see? Counterclockwise, counterclockwise, [...] clockwise. So it's a circle, the process, and you go around and around like this forever. You drop all your attachments, you drop all your stuff and totally dedicate yourself to what's happening. This sets you free. Then you re-enter the world and then get involved with people, but then you go back again and renounce and drop all your agendas. So it goes round and round like that forever. So it's not a historical process. It all happens in one moment.

[47:26]

This whole circle is happening in one moment, that you drop all your stuff, realize the Dharma, and bring it back into the world in one moment. And this lineage of Buddhas and ancestors coming down thousands of years is happening in one moment right now. We make it a historical process. We make it into a story. so that human beings can follow it. And when you can follow it, if you can follow the story, then we say, okay, now bring it back to the beginning again. This is called beginner's mind. This is a story which when you complete, you're willing to start over. Repetition's okay. So I've been talking about the same thing over and over again all this week, and every time I do it, every time I tell the story again, I think, can these people stand to hear it again?

[48:30]

Are they going to be sick to the stomach hearing this again? But I think, well, maybe they don't like it. But still, in religion, we have to be able to repeat stuff. We have to also renounce the mind that wants something. Anyway, the eyes of Shakyamuni Buddha were reflected in the eyes of Mahakasyapa. In fact, if you look at people, if you look, you actually are reflected in people's eyes. This is not a new thing, really. If you look at somebody, you're reflected in their eyes. Shakyamuni Buddha, the eyes of Shakyamuni Buddha were reflected in the eyes of Mahakasyapa. And the eyes of Mahakasyapa were reflected in the eyes of Shakyamuni Buddha.

[49:33]

The eyes of two people who had forgotten themselves were reflected in the eyes of another person who had forgotten himself. This, this reflection of my eyes and your eyes and your eyes and my eyes, this fact is what we call Buddha's eyes. Buddha's eyes are not the eyes in Buddha's head. Buddha's eyes are not the eyes in your head. Buddha's eyes are that Buddha's eyes are reflected in your eyes and your eyes are reflected in Buddha's eyes. That's Buddha's eyes. That's Buddha's face. if we become intimate with ourselves and have nothing more interesting to do than to pay attention to what's happening, we might be able to think about, pay reverence to, joyously contemplate the eye of Buddha, the face of Buddha, which is your eyes reflected in the others and the others reflected in yours, which is going on all day long.

[51:01]

But we have to renounce our agendas before we'll be willing to pay attention to such a boring thing and see how wonderful it is. To see and be seen after having become intimate with ourselves. Face to face, eye to eye, body to body. And not only that, but of course, the reflection of Buddha's eyes in our eyes and the reflection of our eyes in Buddha's eyes, this doesn't happen like first one side and then the other side. It happens at the same time. This all happens at one time. I'm telling a story about it, but there's no history here. And if we don't see all the teachers in the eyes or in the face of one generation of teachers, then we are not disciples.

[52:29]

And if we don't see in the eyes, if we don't see all the disciples in the eyes of one disciple, we're not a teacher. Do you understand? So when a teacher sees the face of a disciple, the teacher must see not just one generation of disciples, but all disciples that there ever were If I look at this person, I don't just see this person, I see back all the way to Shakyamuni Buddha, all of them at the same time. Not in a line, but at a point, I see them all. And similarly, and then if I can see that, then I'm a teacher. So when a teacher sees you, a teacher doesn't just see how wonderful you are, which is pretty good.

[53:41]

The teacher does see you're wonderful, but the teacher sees not only are you wonderful, but through you, the teacher can see innumerable generations of great beings, of enlightening beings. And that's how happy they are. And similarly, if a disciple sees a teacher, that's pretty good. But you don't just see one teacher. You see all the teachers. If you just see one, that's good. But, you know, what if that one gets a little out of line? In other words, isn't the way you think that one should be? Okay. What if that one is kind of lazy and stupid for a few minutes or a few years or whatever? Your appreciation might waver. But when you realize this one just happens to be the place where all of them are, then your appreciation is greater.

[54:48]

And similarly, if a teacher can remember this student is not just one student, this student is all students, your devotion can be greater. And this way, The student transmits the Dharma backwards through the teacher. The student transmits the Dharma backwards through the teacher many generations. And the teacher transmits the Dharma through the student back through many generations. They both transmit to each other and backwards. And also the people back there are transmitting the same way. That's why it's all in one moment. Who can stand such intensity? A forgotten self, a dropped-off self, a self that's not anybody at all can stand this reality, this connectedness. You know, this doesn't just happen between professional yogis.

[55:59]

It happens everywhere. It's a question of whether we open our eyes to it, demonstrate it, awaken to it, and enter it. It's going on all the time. When my daughter was born, and just at the moment she was born and I saw that amazing Buddha face, I almost instantly thought to myself, now I understand how my parents felt about me. Before that, my parents occasionally would tell me that they loved me. And when they told me, I thought, oh, that's nice.

[57:07]

How nice. Thank you. I know. You told me that before. And still the case. Great. And, you know, I believed them, that they did. But when they told me that they loved me, I thought when they said they loved me that they loved me the way kind of I loved them, or whatever I knew about love. And then as I grew up, I loved people in ways that I didn't love people when I was a kid. I learned new kinds of love. But when I saw my daughter born, I learned a kind of love I had never seen before. And I knew, oh, that's probably the way my parents felt about me. So when I saw my daughter's face, my daughter transmitted my parents' mind to me. Through my daughter, I understood my parents. And whether my daughter saw it or not, she saw that she transmitted her ancestors to me in a way that no one but her could do.

[58:23]

It's not a historical event. It's all of our families happening all the time together through this face-to-face transmission. So she was initiated into this world where she gave up her old world in the womb. She was initiated into this world through my face. I was initiated into my ancestor's world through her face. So this is how it goes, this face-to-face transmission. Now, if I hadn't been there, I wouldn't have got to see that. And if she hadn't have given me that face, I wouldn't have been able to see it, but she gave me that face. And I was watching, very devotedly, so I got to see. So it's all very simple.

[59:27]

You just sit, settle yourself on yourself, just be yourself. That's all there is to it. And this process rolls right along. And if you just be yourself, that turns out to be a bone-crushing and complex event which requires everything. But it's really very simple. It's just hard because we think we have an alternative. And we do have an alternative. It's called grandiosity, misery, alienation, and being crippled. And this difficult reversal of our tendencies takes us back to this wonderful moment of realizing the connectedness of all time and space in this moment with all beings, where we not only are in oneness with all beings, but we're awake to it.

[60:31]

We're adults. We're independent, sovereign beings. We're kings and queens of the universe. We see kings and queens of the universe everywhere. And act accordingly to the best of our ability. How's that song go?

[61:45]

It's quarter to four. How's it go? No. It's quarter to three. I think I better get going. How's that go? So set him up, Joe. How does it go? It's quarter to three. What? Anyway, it's getting late, so I probably should be going. But, you know, I just want to set up one for my baby and one for the road, okay? And to tell you that this non-historical world we live in We also have to learn how to handle complexity and talk to each other.

[62:49]

In silence is good, but we have to also learn how to talk. So I'm telling the Sashim people that tomorrow, I will tell more stories about these Zen monks who come from this place and try to talk. We have to express our understanding and talk sometimes. So tomorrow I'll tell you about how they talk and how the teacher checked out their talking and how they checked out the teacher's talking. Back and forth, back and forth, talk, talk, talk. And as an introduction to this talk, I'll read this poem which says, the ocean is the home of dragons appearing and disappearing.

[63:52]

They sport serenely. The sky is the home of cranes. They fly and call freely. But why does the exhausted fish stop in the shallow water and the sluggish bird rest in the reeds? Is there any way to figure gain or loss? Welcome to the world. Please be thorough. Please be thorough going and do what you have to do, okay? We're all rooting for you. But I guess I should stop.

[65:12]

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