If I may mention again that I brought up looking at the path in terms of great compassion, renunciation and right view or wisdom. Someone said to me that she felt that, I think she said something like, I feel like this practice period has been kind of like trying to balance Bodhidharma and Khandzeon or Avalokiteshvara. And my response was that I don't so much see it as balancing Bodhidharma and Avalokiteshvara, but that Bodhidharma is Avalokiteshvara.

[01:14]

But Bodhidharma is a historical figure, so technically speaking, you might say that Bodhidharma is an emanation or a manifestation of Avalokiteshvara. That Avalokiteshvara isn't one particular person but is the principle of infinite, infinitely flexible and adaptable compassion. And one of the ways it manifested is Bodhidharma. And so the famous story of Bodhidharma coming to China and going to see the emperor. And the emperor, who had done a lot of compassionate things, building monasteries and supporting monks and nuns, asked Bodhidharma, what's the merit? How much merit do I get for all this great compassion, compassionate work I've done?

[02:19]

And Bodhidharma said, no merit. And then the emperor shifted gears a little bit and said, well, what's the highest meaning of the holy truths? And Bodhidharma said, no meaning, no holy. And then the emperor said, well, who is this facing me? And Bodhidharma said, don't know. And the emperor did not understand. In a sense, although Bodhidharma understood made an effort, the emperor somehow didn't click for the emperor. The emperor did not attain realization at that moment. So what did I do on the left? and crossed the Yangtze River, which happened to be fairly nearby to the imperial palace, and headed north to the little forest where he sat and faced the wall, where he sat and practiced the mind of a wall for nine years.

[03:30]

That's the story we tell. After he left, the emperor said to one of his chief ministers, by the way, who are you? And the minister said, didn't you know? That was Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva, the being of infinite compassion. And the emperor said, oh, really? Oh, my God. Go get him. Bring him back. I'm sorry I missed. And the minister said, no matter how many people you send, he can't come back. He won't come back. he's going to teach in the little forest. And he did. And so what he taught was this renunciation practice. Avalokiteshvara, as Bodhidharma, taught renunciation. So that beings can enter into right view.

[04:36]

The infinite compassion of the Buddha manifests in the world to teach people renunciation so that they can enter into Buddha's wisdom. They express their compassion by doing something to get people to open their eyes to Buddha's wisdom. And they demonstrate Buddha's wisdom, and they awaken beings to Buddha's wisdom, and they aid beings in entering into Buddha's wisdom. So this activity, the activity is Avalokiteshvara and it takes the form of Bodhidharma sometimes. But Avalokiteshvara doesn't have a particular form. It can take any form. It can take the form of a little Russell, Jack Russell Terrier. It can take the form of a sick person. It can take the form of an enemy. It can take the form of your spouse.

[05:39]

There's no place, it's infinite, it's universal, compassionate. It's the compassion that's in everything, that's teaching you all day long. Renunciation is the way to open your eyes to this teaching. So we have to let go, we have to stop grasping and seeking everything. This is the mind like a wall. It means the mind like a wall is a flexible, soft mind, actually. It's the mind which meets everything with complete relaxation, whatever it is. You relax with it. You join with it. You receive Buddha's compassion through it. You receive Buddha's wisdom through it. Some of us are very clever, some of us are more clever.

[06:44]

But another manifestation of Bodhidharma in this recent, in this present century, or last century actually, excuse me, in the last century, back in the 20th century, there was another, there was a manifestation of Bodhidharma, a little, I think it was kind of Bodhidharma, his name was Kodo Sawaki. Roshi. And he said, one time I read this and it took me aback. But before I tell you that, I want to tell you something else that took me aback that he said. He said, when you win, that's delusion. When you lose, that's enlightenment. And he also says, if you look at yourself carefully... and thoroughly, you'll see you're no good. So, I don't know how good he, maybe he actually was, maybe he looked at himself and he found out he was no good, because maybe he's no good.

[07:53]

So that's what he found out. But he actually thought that all of us will find this if we look carefully. Reverend Sawaki, Kodo Sawaki. He died in 1965. So some of the people at Asanga knew him. And we had some teachers here who were very close to him. He found that when he looked very carefully at himself, he found out he was no good. Therefore, he says, the only practice that really makes any sense is non-grasping and non-seeking. Because everything we try to grasp, what we think is true and valuable, this is based on our selfishness.

[08:59]

That's what we think is true. which is not what George Bush thinks is true. And what he thinks is true is not what we think is true. And so whatever you're grasping, let go of it because you're no good. And whatever you seek is no good either. So don't seek and don't grasp. And your eye will open your heart will open. You'll find this mind like a wall and you'll enter the way. And when you enter the way through this renunciation, you will be available to respond appropriately. And appropriately means apropos of helping beings open their eye to Buddha's wisdom.

[10:02]

And people get afraid that if they let go of their values, if they try to stop trying to control, that the whole world will fall apart. The whole world might fall apart, but up closer, some other things probably will happen, like you might fall apart. And you might fall apart, because you are going to fall apart. But it's possible that before you fall apart, you'll wake up. You're going to fall apart anyway. And in short term you might fall apart like you're, you know, you might lose, when you practice renunciation you let go of trying to control. You never could control anyway, but you let go of trying to control. And again, we think if I let go of trying to control, all kinds of terrible things will happen. Maybe so. But not because you let go. That's not the main reason why there are terrible things in the world is that you're not in control.

[11:10]

The kinds of things that will happen if you practice renunciation is you will start feeling more vulnerable. But it's not that you're going to be more vulnerable, it's that actually your level of vulnerability will be approximately the same before and after renunciation. I can't say you'll be less vulnerable, exactly, but you won't be more vulnerable. You'll just realize how vulnerable you are. We are vulnerable beings. We can be hurt. And we function very well in some situations if we forget about the fact that we can be hurt. Like if we forget about that we can be hurt, we maybe can go to work, even though we might get hurt at work. we still can go. If you think about how vulnerable you are, you think you might be paralyzed by fear. So let's not think about it, okay? So we need to feel safe enough.

[12:17]

We need to be in some situation where we feel safe enough to relinquish everything, face our vulnerability, get used to it, and live a life where we're in touch with our fragility and vulnerability, which is just a simple aspect of our life, an important aspect of our life, our impermanence, our fragility, our vulnerability. You might cry. You know, your control over your tear ducts might relax, too. Also, your sphincters, anal sphincters, might loosen up a little bit. You might wonder if you'll be able to hold stuff in there. Probably you will. Usually, most of us tense up more than we need to to hold it in. But there might be a little dribbling here and there. It's not that bad, really. at a Zen center, maybe in corporate America you can't do that, but it's okay if you cry a little, drool a little, feel a little vulnerable.

[13:36]

But I'm saying you can do that. I'm saying that people here will not give you that hard time for crying. We won't kick you out for crying. Right? I mean, you won't kick anybody else off for crime, right? So they won't kick you off either. Now, laughing, that's... You might get kicked off for laughing. But even that, you know, it's not that bad if you start laughing in the Zendo. maybe if you start laughing, somebody else will start crying, and you'll remember this, you know, your laughing will be grounded, and it will come to its natural conclusion. The proposal here is that when we practice renunciation, we enter into a way of being in events such that we can respond more appropriately, because we're not holding on to a fixed idea of how to respond appropriately.

[14:46]

we'll probably always have ideas about what it's like to respond appropriately. If we don't, okay, but we probably always will. That's fine. And if you let go of them, you'll be better able to find the actual appropriate response, which might be the same as the one you thought, but it might be different. The right one is determined by everything that's going on, not just your idea. Your idea is one of the ingredients in the appropriate response. And again, the appropriate response is, that I'm talking about, is apropos of helping beings enter Buddha's wisdom, which means helping beings become free of suffering. And all the different ways of helping beings are emanations of Avalokiteshvara. And some of those emanations do not correspond to our idea of what Avalokiteshvara is going to look like. So, some of the emanations of Avalokiteshvara are, you might say, basically they're the emanation that will attract the being to the practice.

[16:05]

And sometimes the emanation that attracts the being to the practice is a little dog. Sometimes the emanation that will attract the person to practice is a very relaxed and gracious female form. Sometimes the form that will attract the person to the practice is a little tiny male form. Sometimes the form that attracts people to the practice is a big, strong male form. Sometimes, you know, it can be... The point is what will at this time encourage the being to enter the wisdom. That's the way Avalokiteshvara is manifesting. So, yesterday Linda said something like, nothing is lacking, you know? Nothing is lacking. Nothing is lacking, therefore there's nothing to gain.

[17:07]

Since there's nothing to gain, you don't need to grasp. Since there's nothing to gain, you don't need to seek. So nothing is lacking is closely related to your no good. Your no good, or I'm no good, leads to nothing to grasp and nothing to gain and nothing to seek. But also nothing is lacking leads to it. And some people asked, like I think Fu brought it up, and then later somebody else brought it up to me, the idea that perhaps I'm kidding myself. Perhaps I'm kidding myself. Perhaps I'm kidding myself. But you could also say, perhaps you're not kidding yourself. It's possible that you're not kidding yourself. Most of us are kidding ourselves, but maybe you're not. Most people are kidding themselves. Most people are deluded.

[18:09]

That's what we mean by people. Sentient beings are beings that are fooling themselves. In the one mind, all these beings that are fooling themselves and all the Buddhas are not different. And they're just one mind. So the Buddhas are not fooling themselves and Ascension beings are fooling themselves. So it's possible if you're an Ascension being that you're fooling yourself. Matter of fact, it is by definition if you're an Ascension being that you're fooling yourself. Of course, can you fool yourself more or less? I suppose. If you're fooling yourself, I would say... you're open to the fact that you're fooling yourself. You're still fooling yourself, but at least you're open to it. That's good, I think, to be open to that you might be fooling yourself. In other words, what you think is happening is just what you think is happening.

[19:13]

Not what's happening is what you think is happening. Not only that, but no matter what's happening, you will always think something's happening. I shouldn't, you know, almost never will something happen and you not, like, think about what's happening. So something happens, and then you think about something, which is what's happening for you. There are times, however, when something happens and there's these gaps where we do not think of what's happening. They're just standing there, not thinking. It does sometimes happen. These are the great moments when we have a little break from thinking about what's happening, and none of that but confusing what we think is happening with what is happening. This is where renunciation comes in. If the practice is actually there, it's possible there to be an opening. But prior to that, perhaps there can be the opening to that we are kidding ourselves fairly consistently.

[20:17]

So we practice not grasping what we think is true. Now, if you kid yourself by telling yourself something that you think is a joke, you don't fool yourself. If you know it's just a magical illusion that you created, then you're not fooling yourself. But what you think is true is what you're fooling yourself about. If you think something's not false, well, then it doesn't fool you, right? You think it's not true. What you think is true is what's fooling you. What I think is true is what's fooling me. I'm no good. Therefore, I'm not going to grasp what I think is true, including I'm not going to grasp what I think not grasping is. So I may think, oh, that's Buddha's truth. Fine. That's what I should grasp. And of course, if I think that's Buddhist truth, then I also think that's not Buddhist truth. So I don't grasp that as not Buddhist truth or as Buddhist truth.

[21:24]

I don't grasp anything. That's, I mean, I'm trying to not grasp anything. Yes, Liz. So this is continuous practice every moment. Why? Because it's built in that we're not one. It's built in that we want I don't want to make a picture and hold on to it. It seems like you just have to keep practicing this muscle endlessly. It takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of courage, yes. So basically we've got this equipment which is constantly making up a story. We don't just let things happen. We make a story about what's going on all the time. And it's not that we're trying to stop the story-making function of our mind. We have a story maker plus we have a history maker. We always have a history and a story. A story about now and a history about all the stories that led up to this one. And that's fine.

[22:25]

Renunciation is the practice to let go of your story. It's in the movement of the story that's the enlightenment. It's not that the story that you have now gets changed into another story and the other story is going to be better. It's when your story slips and in the movement of your story is where the enlightenment is. Next time you wake up, would you go get Bodhidharma for me, please? What I haven't heard you say, but I keep hearing is that in order for us to see through this, there has to be a meeting. In order for us to see through what? that we are doing this, that we are creating, that we do have the story, that we'll keep doing this until there's a meeting.

[23:44]

What kind of a meeting do you mean? With another person. Oh, uh-huh, yeah. Meeting with another person can help us realize that we're making stories. and help us let the story move. When I was a kid, one of my favorite shows was Edgar... Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. For you younger folks, Edgar Bergen is Candace Bergen's dad. No. No, that's not true. Yes, it is. So, Charlie McCarthy is Candace Bergen's brother. And Mrs. Berger is his mother. So, in meeting other beings, with complete relaxation, we can awaken to our story-making and let the story move together with the other person or other being.

[25:08]

Is that what you're talking about? See, I think it was Jessica and then Salvi and Tracy and Bert. Jessica? and what I've done as part of doing this practice is having the faith that when that happens, a perfect glass will arise and that, like, for example, when I'm hungry, I will eat, or when I will sleep, I will not sleep. The faith that And faith can be not so much, well, I believe it's true. It can also be, if it's reasonable. If you have some doubt about it, you can discuss it until it seems reasonable that that would be the case. So the idea here is that, and I often use an example of martial arts.

[26:11]

I was using it a few weeks ago in Sashin, and Linda also read an article about the practice of judo which means the gentle way. And I was talking about how, you know, if you're relaxed and you're interacting with somebody, judo is called also, we say we play judo, we don't fight, we play judo. So when you're playing with a partner, if you're relaxed, you can make the appropriate response. If you tense up, you don't learn. And if you can relax with this other person, you can flow with their energy such that if they attack you, you can just let that energy of their attack, let that energy take them someplace nearby. But then let them do the work and you just sort of like guide them by, you know, guide them according to the implications of where they're going.

[27:12]

And actually then everybody has a good time. So it's, we do a lot of extra tensing around the activities. We get by pretty well. You know, oftentimes we get by fairly well. We've been quite successful. We're at the top of the food chain. So we're pretty good at surviving, but we have a lot of extra tension around our eating and sleeping and so on, and pooping. But there comes a time when the appropriate thing to do is to salivate. So when it comes to eating time, one instruction about how to figure out what to eat is just walk up to the food and see if you salivate. If you do, maybe it's good to eat it. But then eat for a while and then stop to see if you salivate some more. And at a certain point, you might stop salivating. And maybe you had enough then. The salivation is kind of an example of something that happens kind of in a relaxed way that you can use.

[28:22]

The same with a lot of other things. So the faith, I would say just try it. See how it works. So faith is partly that you try something, and faith is also that if you have doubt, that rather than just sink into the doubt, you dialogue with a teacher of that practice or a scripture about that practice. and see if you can find that it seems reasonable to go ahead with it and try it some more. And sometimes you try a practice and it doesn't seem to work but then sometimes you discuss it with an instructor and find out that you haven't been doing it correctly and then you try it again and sometimes you find that when you try it that way it seems to bring what you're hoping it would bring. And it's also possible to do these practices without seeking anything.

[29:26]

So, you do the practice without doing the practice to seek something, and a lot of these practices, that's the way they have to be done. If you do them while seeking, that's antithetical to the practice itself, right? His face changes. Yeah, it did, my God. It's amazing. And he looks like you. You know what? He looks like you too, Vivi. Salvi? I have a missing link with truth and principle. When you were talking, an example came to my mind.

[30:29]

I was doing some demolishing in my garage, and a very big and very strange colored spider came out, and one of the workers said, Kylan, it's very poisonous. And I said, no. And And I grab it with a stick and I put it in the corner of my yard. And I think that, for me, is a truth over a principle of not killing. And that's why I came out with that, with the appropriate response. And I don't know if I'm grasping that truth or what, but it just... Since I've been practicing Buddhism, it's sort of becoming sort of a principle or sort of a truth. So there's something that I'm missing. Another thing I thought of was the ancestor whose name was, in our lineage, Seigen Gyoshi Daisho.

[31:31]

He supposedly said, first, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers. So first you have some idea, killing is killing and not killing is not killing. So maybe that's where you start practicing the precepts. Then you practice renunciation and you see mountains are not mountains and rivers are not rivers. You see that. You see killing is not killing and not killing is not not killing. You don't see killing is not killing. You say killing is not killing. killing is not killing. You see that. And you see not killing is not not killing. And also you see there's no eyes or ears or nose or tongue. There's no mountains.

[32:34]

But then you see that killing is killing and not killing is not killing. But what's the difference? The difference is that your second way of seeing is not because of your attachment to your ideas. That's a difference. You're still practicing the precepts. So you have to see whether there was extra tension and self-righteousness around Salvi says the spider. You have to see. No merit. No merit. Emptiness. No holy salvi. So you have to look for yourself.

[33:40]

Were you better than those construction, those murderous construction workers? Were you a little bit better than them? I'm the Buddhist here. Or were you just like, I don't know what, just pick the spider up to pick the spider up and that's it? Maybe it was completely clear and maybe it was Buddha's wisdom. You look. And then if I come walking by and say, Salve, you're self-righteous. Yes. Do you tense up? Or do you say, you got me? Or do you say, maybe so, maybe so. Thank you, teacher. Get to look. That's part of the thing about the interaction, to test to see if you're holding. Because again, we think, oh, okay, maybe I'm kidding myself. In a way, I say, yeah, maybe I am kidding myself. I probably am kidding myself. So see, I'm okay, because I know I'm kidding myself. And then someone comes up and says, you're still not admitting that you're kidding yourself.

[34:44]

What do you mean? Tracy? I'm pronouncing your stories. Until they move, I think you said. It's not so much until they move, it's that if you're in your renunciation of your stories, which doesn't mean you kill them, this means you let go of them, you see them move, and in the movement, you enter. It's not the old story, it's not the better story, it's the movement. Like the story, the basic story is, okay, I do this, I do that. I practice Buddhism. Okay, that's a story. I shouldn't kill that story, but that's delusion that I practice Buddhism. Or I don't practice Buddhism. That's also a story. It's a delusion that I practice Buddhism or I don't practice Buddhism. Okay, then I let go of that story.

[35:48]

Okay? And then a new story comes. The story is, Buddhism practices me. or Buddhism, then there's me. But it's not the new story isn't enlightenment. It's the letting go of the old one and the coming of the new one. It's in that movement where the enlightenment happens. It's not when the things come forth and confirm you in that coming, in that movement of the new story. And we have to let go and not seek to enter that movement space. And it's nothing. It's not a story. It's a movement of the story. Is there some of the wisdom that might be derived from the experience, seeing that movement is that nothing is fixed? Again, can I point out that to say that the wisdom is derived from the experience, you don't derive any wisdom from the experience.

[36:55]

The wisdom is in the experiences, in the experience moving. Because experience means the story of the experience. Because we don't just have experiences, we always impose a story on them too. We do have experiences, but then we also have the stories. It's the stories where we get stuck. We can't actually grasp our experience. What we do is we grasp the stories of our experiences. Our version, our truth of our experience, we grasp those. The wisdom is not derived from the experience or even derived from the movement of the experience. The wisdom is the movement of the experience. But we have to let go of our grip on our experience to enter that movement. And entering that movement through renunciation means we're entering right view. Right view basically means no view, but really what it means is let go of your view and see the movement of your view. And the movement of your view happens because you let everybody else in on your view.

[37:58]

So my view moving or changing or letting go of my view means you get to author my view. But I get to author yours, too. So the movement of my story is when all you get in on my story. And the movement of your story is when we're all allowed in on yours. That also is where the wisdom is. So relaxing helps us enter this space. It's a rough space, you know? People keep bringing extra stuff in that they didn't agree to beforehand. I see Tim, but I thought somebody was before Tim, I think. Bert, yeah. It doesn't seem very helpful to me to say if you look closely, you'll see that you're no good.

[39:05]

And if that is the same as there's nothing lacking, it seems like you could just as easily say, if you look closely, you will see that you are only good. And that seems more right. But that's what most people already think, basically. They say they don't, but actually, you know, that's just a cover. I guess I think they may... Most people think, like you, you actually think that what you just said to me was true. You think it's true that such and such wasn't helpful. You think it's true that you don't go around thinking that you're good. No? No means what? No means there's something else that's true that you know about? Isn't that what that means? to say that if you look closely, you're no good.

[40:21]

No, no, it's not just so much if you look closely, you're no good. You will see that you're no good. You perceive that you're no good. Well, it's okay if you don't see how it's helpful. He didn't say, and that's helpful, what I just said. He just said that. I read it, and I thought, that's quite a statement, I thought. You're talking about compassion. And you're saying that compassion takes many different... Right. I mean, I can see how you could maybe say that's compassionate, but... Well, it's not so much that I say it's compassionate, but rather that as I thought about it, it was very helpful to me. And the more I think about it, the more true I think it is. The more I think about human beings, the more I realize that we're basically, you know, the sentient beings, human beings, have basically delusion equipment. We have equipment for making up, not only for making up stories about what's going on, but we also have ways of saying, convincing ourselves that they're true.

[41:29]

Our own stories. That's what I see human beings doing. And that statement helped me along in that way, that I think human beings are really, really built to be selfish. Our genes are doing just great. There's four billion of them out there. I believe that. To me, it's not something I believe exactly. I mean, I sort of do believe it. And I'll try not to hold on to it. But anyway, I'm entertaining that as a possibility that we're really selfish. And I don't want to be too strong in that, but that we're really selfish. That's one of the difficulties of our world is that we have put people in leadership positions who stand up and tell us talk about moral character and things like that.

[42:36]

But they don't say that while they're talking about moral character, they don't admit their own selfishness while they're talking. So then the children look and then they think, well, this person's lying, but I must be wrong because this person's a leader. And what they're lying about is not that these values are bad, but they're not telling us that they have not accomplished them. and that they're saying this for personal gain. They're talking about high values to gain something for themselves. They're not telling us that, so then I feel weird about what they're saying, so then do I reject the person and the values, or do I reject the values and not the person? It makes the children upset, and so they want to go take drugs. while the person's up there talking about how he can prevent kids from taking drugs, the person who's talking takes drugs. So, and the children kind of know that, but somehow the person gets to get up there and talk, and nobody's helping them by saying, well, yeah, he's not mentioning that, but he knows that, or he's that way, and you're not wrong to think that he's a selfish person, and that he's doing this just to gain power.

[44:00]

But also that you're that way, too. And I'm that way, too. We're all that way. And we can't help it. We're built to be into that stuff. And if you don't see that yet, it's okay. And if somebody telling you that if you would look, you'd find it, if you don't find that helpful, it's okay for you to say that. And you did. But I found it helpful, so I thought I'd mention it to you. But to me, also I thought it was interesting because the implications that he drew from that is that you should practice non-grasping and non-seeking. But that's also the implication of the one mind where we're not different from Buddha. but we're also not the same as Buddha. Selfish beings, selfish deluded beings are not the same as Buddha. So we not only have illusions about what's going on, images of what's going on, pictures and stories about what's going on. That's okay to have pictures, but we think the pictures and stories we have are true.

[45:04]

That's the delusion. We hold to our stories as reality. That's the delusion. We're built to do that, not only to create images, but to take them as what's going on. We mix images with what is going on, and we can't tell the difference between our images and what's happening. This is our delusion. And we act on these delusions. This is what I think it means by no good. And if it doesn't seem helpful to hear about that, then maybe today it isn't helpful, but maybe tomorrow it'll be helpful, that you can accept that we have this problem. The implication of this is that there's a way to become free of it by practicing not grasping what I think is true and not seeking based on what I think is true. Help us open our eyes to that we're deluded. because we need to do that in order to become free.

[46:05]

So the Buddhas are not different from us. They're not the same as us. We're all just one mind, and the implication of that is not grasping and not seeking. So coming at it either from the side of we're no good, or we're no good and we're not different from Buddha, either way the same practice follows, which will help us face what a delusion is a delusion. And when you face a delusion as delusion, that's not delusion. Because then you stop grasping it as reality. Okay? I think that what you mean by no good is deluded and selfish. Yeah, right, exactly. I think it's just the idea of saying I know good. I'd rather you say... Deluded. Deluded and selfish. And not get into this good and bad stuff. Yeah. Well, I'll tell Swakiroshi that he said that and maybe he can stop.

[47:11]

Him and Emila and Toby and Maya and Laura and whose hand is that? Nancy and Patty and Astrid. And who? Astrid. Astrid, yeah, Astrid. Okay, so I think the next one was, and Sam. I think the next one was Tim, I'm not sure. Tim. So I think that biologists consider the concept of a food chain kind of outdated and that maybe it's actually a better analogy as a food web. That way humans are at the top in some sort of biological hierarchy above all other species. And it's also like a sort of more accurate representation. It also might be representation that doesn't lead to a mindset that leads to a domination or a power over with regard to the earth. So I say that because I really feel like, you know, we're in the midst of this kind of like recent earth holocaust and we're actual, you know, regular participants in it here in Marin County.

[48:19]

And I say that now maybe from the total grasping, deluded story that this Holocaust is going on. It's real. My story might not be right, but I feel like my story is close enough that I feel like ultimately what for me is more important is to tell people about that story and to get them actually to take on that story as opposed to drop all stories. And the reason I think that is because, you know, it seems like it might be more convenient for them to drop all stories, but I don't really see anybody dropping all stories, but I see a lot of people engaging in the destruction of all these other beings. And for those other beings' sake, I'd rather have them take on a story that leads to less destruction of other beings. So I just don't feel like I can sit around and wait till I achieve that level of wisdom, acting out my stories.

[49:24]

You won't sit around And, I don't know what you said, you won't just sit around and tell you something or other. You won't. Achieve that level of wisdom. Yeah. You will, we all will, until we achieve Buddha's wisdom, we all will act upon our stories. We will keep doing that. That's the point. We can't help it. Until we see the movement of the story, we will keep acting on our stories. That will happen. And I'm just saying that if we can enter into the movement of our stories, that that brings another dimension of benefit that will not come unless we discover the movement of our stories. So if you have a story of what will protect the world, you're going to act on that story. But some other people, believe it or not, have another idea about what will protect the world, and they're acting on their stories, and they disagree with your stories, and they're kind of like, they don't agree with you.

[50:28]

And what I'm saying to you, which I've said before, is that if you or I could enter into the movement of our stories, and if the people who disagree with you could move into the movement of their stories, that their... we would find a new level of cooperation. And you would be able to, I think, find other skillful ways to charm those people, you know, to disarm them from your point of view. I sort of feel like if I was really thoroughly practicing with not grasping, food chain comes up, food chain goes down, and I sit here quietly. No, that's not true. The way you currently are, food chain comes up and you respond. If you let go of your view, you wouldn't forget it. It wouldn't be like you can't remember another perspective. As a matter of fact, the movement perspective is the web perspective. So when I say top of the food chain, I mean people think like that.

[51:30]

I mean we're built to try to get to the top. It's delusion to be on top, because of course we're not really on top, but that's the way we, that's our selfish story that some of us have. Now you have another story which is closer to the story of the movement, namely, even our stories are not really hierarchical stories, they're web stories, really. Like I was saying to somebody this morning, she likes the term imperceptible mutual assistance, right? And when you feel imperceptible mutual assistance, that's because of imperceptible mutual assistance that you can sense or believe or intuit imperceptible mutual assistance. But when you feel perceptible non-assistance and obstruction, that comes to you by imperceptible mutual assistance. So even the creation of the delusion of the hierarchy of the food chain that we're on top, that came by imperceptible mutual assistance.

[52:34]

And the story of imperceptible mutual assistance also came in the same medium, by the same principle. When you enter the principle, you can see how people who have different views from you, how they also came from the same mother as you did and then you're talking to your brother I mean, and he feels that, and then you don't have to hold on to your story anymore, because part of the reason why you hold on to your story is because he's holding on to his. And you're afraid that if you let go of yours, that he'll hold on to his, and you'll be letting go, and he'll be holding on. But if you can let go, you might be able to encourage him to also enter into letting go. You both let go to your story, and then you find a story which you can co-author. It just seems like most of my experience is that people who are really holding on to their story tight are the people who are most engaged in trying to deal with the Holocaust and people who are like really working on letting go of all stories seem like pretty average in their participation in the Holocaust.

[53:44]

Yeah, but what about the other people who are holding on to their stories who are perpetuating what you consider the Holocaust? Yeah. It seems like there's got to be somebody that's trying non-perpetuation or anti-perpetuation. There is somebody like that. And so the question is, would that somebody be more effective in finding the real meaning of protection of life Would that person be more effective if that person had no attachments? That's the question. And you can think about what you think, but what you're also saying is maybe it would be more effective, but I can't stop acting on my stories until I get to that point, and I agree that you won't. I don't think I'm just saying that. I'm also saying I'm not sure that they're more effective by being not attached. I'm just not convinced of that. You know, I don't know either. I can't say that, that they're more effective by being not attached. I can't say for sure because we don't, you know, it's hard to say.

[54:45]

Is Buddha more effective as, was he more effective as an ecologist than he wouldn't have been if he hadn't become Buddha? Has Buddha's teaching been any help to ecology of the world? You could say, well, not much because look at how things have deteriorated since the last 2,500 years. Has Buddhism really been much help? Could have been worse. Could have been worse, yeah. And so the forces of human selfishness and human self-centeredness and what do you call it, anthropocentrism, all that stuff was there 2,500 years ago and it has continued to cause, it looks like, damage since that time. And I think the Buddha observed that and known that And the Buddha, I think, was saying that the non-attachment will help us protect beings from this juggernaut of human selfishness. And in the meantime, before we retain perfect wisdom, we are going to act on our stories.

[55:49]

That's the case. So we'll do the best we can while we still have some fixations. Amala? How do you not fall into the trap of thinking that the teachings are right? I mean, we say, and I think we've had an experiment, that all humans can be deluded or selfish, and then we are trapped, or we create a whole system here, and that energy here says, which in fact we believe are right. And now how do you personally get out of that trap? I don't, I'm in the trap, so yeah. So I have to admit that I'm trapped. My tendency will be then to believe that the Buddhist teaching is the truth. So I have to admit I'm probably trapped by that. Not maybe, actually not, but probably. I'm probably fooled by what I think Buddhism is.

[56:51]

So I have my story of what Buddhism is, and as long as I'm, and I'm probably holding to that. So part of what I'm saying is that You get to co-author what Buddhism is and then I can see if I hold to my view if it differs from yours. And if I do, that's a sign that I'm holding to my view of Buddhism, which Buddhism would say... That's wrong. You should not be holding to your view. That's what Buddhism is. There is no actual fixed thing called Buddhism. It's always criticizing itself. And if I'm already feeling like I'm caught, then if you come and disagree with me and I feel some tension, I would say, oh, gee, there it is. If I don't think I'm caught and you come and talk to me and I feel tension, I say, oops. Now, on the other hand, if I have a view of what the truth is, and you come with a really different view, and I can move with that, and we can both move into this space, this mutually imperceptible mutual assistance space, then maybe neither one of us were attached. Or maybe we were attached, but when we met, we let go and entered that space.

[57:56]

But probably, I think, most of the time, I am going around holding on to my story of the Buddhist teaching. And part of my health, or part of the health of a senior practitioner, is that they keep studying. And when I keep studying, I keep getting shocked. and challenged because I keep running, as I go deeper and deeper in the Dharma, I keep running into new stuff that challenges my understanding and I have to let go and say, oops, oops, oops, wait a minute, oops, oops. And also in situations like this, I need to be challenged by you, by daily life. Like I said, you know, like somebody comes and brings somebody you aren't expecting. Can you like respond to that and say, okay, we'll serve this situation that wasn't what we're expecting. And, you know, I need challenges to keep from attaching to my view of reality.

[58:57]

And I think you do too. So that's the Bodhidharma side. Challenge the emperor. No merit. No holy. whoa, the emperor didn't like the challenge. Then when he was told that that was Avalokiteshvara, he said, well, please come back and challenge me. But everybody that challenges us is really pushing us to grow. Like Linda also said, these bodhisattvas thrive on suffering. They don't want suffering, but you grow on the suffering of the world. That's why you You got it. So the question is, can you mature on it? And bodhisattvas do mature on it. So we are probably attached. Each of us has our own understanding of Buddhism. As of today, next week it'll be different. But each version we have each day, we're probably holding on to for dear life. And if you don't have Buddhism, you've got something else.

[59:58]

Everybody's got their own little philosophy they're holding on to. Everybody's a philosopher. What's your philosophy? If you look at it, that's good. Then you can put it out there and have people peck at it and say, what do you mean food chain? It's really a food web. Okay. What do you mean food web? It's a food chain. Okay. Like that story I tell about, you know, I went out to dinner with my wife and you know that story, right? You don't know that story, Bert? So you probably recognize it. So what is it? The host at this dinner is a professor at UC Irvine. And my wife says, what's Irvine like? He said, it's beautiful. His wife says, no, it's not. It's ugly. And he said, it's ugly.

[60:59]

And then my wife turns to me and says, you should learn that. So Tim says, it's a food web. Can I say it's a food chain? He says, it's a food chain. It's not that he forgot that it's a food web. He really knows it is a food web. But at least he can go through the theater of being flexible. and if you go through the theater of being flexible you can see whether that was really like were you actually flexible or was it just a fake like did I actually let go of it's beautiful and attach to that it was ugly or did I let go of it's beautiful and let go of that it's ugly and just say it's you know like actually I was talking to Michael about this and I told the story of Suzuki Roshi saying, one of the first stories I heard him tell, not story, the thing I heard him say is, when you see a flower and you say, it's beautiful, that's a sin.

[62:13]

It's a kind of, like, you had this category of what's beautiful. The flower, you then put in that category. It's a kind of insult to the flower to relegate it to your category of beauty. That's the meaning of that. We can't help it, though. We do that sin, you know. We see somebody, that's Susan. That corresponds to my category of Susan. Actually, I call her Linda most of the time. And then she doesn't like that because, you know, that's a sin for her. But to put people in categories like beautiful in your mind is a kind of a sin. And Michael says, well, what about like with your wife or something, you know? The flower doesn't need you to say, it's beautiful. Actually, the flower is insulted by you saying it's beautiful. It wilts when you say it's beautiful. What it wants you to do is just go there and relax. And then you relax, and then you say, whoa, if I relax, I'm going to wet my pants, so I'll fight back by calling it beautiful.

[63:17]

It's beautiful. Okay, I'm all right now. But actually the flower wants you just to come and meet it without like putting it in a category and like be, not be, you know, not be in a power position of I can name you, you're a flower, you're beautiful, I gotcha. I can even, rather than just be overwhelmed by it, you know. Yeah. One time I was up in the Sierras in, it was almost September, and it was at such a high altitude that the snow had just melted. So it was spring at the end of August. And the hillside was full. It was unbelievably fluorescent. It looked like a cultivated garden. There were so many flowers. It was like solid with a profusion of different kinds of, they were wildflowers, but they were huge wildflowers. And in among the wildflowers were these overwhelmed female homo sapiens.

[64:23]

They were like falling on the ground, crying. They were so overwhelmed by this, you know. It was so beautiful to see them fainting in these flowers. It was like it was so much they couldn't even say beautiful. But anyway, so Michael says, okay, the flower doesn't need it, but your wife needs you to say something like that. But there's a difference between thinking you're beautiful and putting you in a category and me saying you're beautiful. I do need to say you're beautiful. I do need to say that. But I don't need to put you in a category called beauty to say you're beautiful. Matter of fact, you can be in the category of, I can be committed to sin of putting you in the category of ugly, but truly say you're beautiful. Because that's what I have to say to you. You don't need me to put you in any categories. What you need is for me to adore you.

[65:25]

But adoring you isn't putting you in a category and then adoring you. It's adoring you before, during, and after all categories. So you do need to say you're beautiful, but not because you think they're beautiful. You need to say they're beautiful when they don't any longer correspond to your previous idea of beautiful. When they're 99% you still, they aren't falling in any category, but you know they're beautiful. You know they're beautiful. You don't categorize them as beautiful. That people need to hear from each other. That's our devotion. It's not a sin. It's compassion. It's service. It's giving. And I also want to say that the Chinese character... Can I write something on the board? This Chinese character... that Wang Bo uses for renunciation. This Chinese character means to abandon, to let go, to surrender, to give up, to relinquish.

[66:44]

But it also means to give, to donate. like to give alms. So this mind like a wall is also a very generous mind. So when I give up my reality, I also, it's a great act of, it's a gift to you because now I'm ready to co-author a new one with you. And I'll give you my old stories. You can have them. You'll take care of them better than me because you won't attach to them. And then you might say, wait a minute, I want you to attach to it. If I'm going to let go, you should attach to it. So that's another funny thing is that the idea is that if you transmit some value to somebody, they'll be able to take care of it better. It'll be more likely to survive if they don't attach to it. You ordinarily would think, if I'm going to give someone some truth or some value, if I'm going to convey it to them, I want that value to go on.

[67:46]

Well, yes. But it will go on better if they don't attach to it. So renunciation is the way to protect compassion. If we tense around compassion, it's more likely to be cut off than if we protect it by non-attachment. That's the idea. And that, I think, is hard for people to trust. Because with babies, we start by attaching to them, holding them very closely. But you can see, even with babies, if you hold them too tightly, it can be too much. It can be too little. It can be too much. What's the attending just the right amount? That's the art. I don't know who is next, but I know there's Laura and Nancy and Toby and Sam. Laura? Okay, Toby? You said that humans were delusion machines.

[68:49]

Pardon? You said that humans were delusion machines? Yeah. Yeah, I thought our best function is our defiling machine. Pardon? I thought our best function, where we're at the top of the food chain, is in defiling. Well, defiling, delusion and defilement. The Sanskrit word for defilement is disdain. So we put our mark on everything. If something's happening, we always put an image on what's happening. And then we think the image is the thing that's happening. The file seems more proactive. Fine. Fine. Yeah, we're defiling machines. But, you know, just in terms of, like, psychology, we're image makers. And when we make images or concepts, we interject the... This is the process of conception.

[69:50]

We take concepts and we mix them with perceptions. Perceptions are cognitions that are not mixed with conceptions or images. Undefiled... direct experience. And then we mix in our images, and images are fine too, no problem, they're very useful, but the problem is that when we mix images with perceptions, we think that the perception is the image. And conceptual consciousness can't tell the difference between the image which it interposes or mixes with the perception. It can't tell the difference between the two. And generally, the one that takes priority between the perception and the conception is the conception. So for example, I like the example of if you look out, especially older people, if you look out at the trees and so on, you see something. If you put on glasses, you see something else.

[70:55]

And what you see, certain kind of glasses, like if I put on some of Emma's glasses or somebody else's glasses, maybe things will get what I'll see as blurrier or maybe more diffuse than what's out there. But if I put on another pair of glasses, maybe I'll see individual leaves. which seems clearer, more articulated. So our more articulated we often call clearer or sharper, right? Does that make sense? But the funny thing is we think that that's more real than what we saw before, right? That the more articulated version is real, more real. And also, once you see the more articulated version, it's hard for you to remember what the blurred one looks like, which is still there. That's the perception, equivalent to the perception. Does that make sense? Yes. You can't tell the difference. And the one that you're seeing, though, the one you're focusing on, is the more articulated one, because the more articulated one will be more useful to a selfish person.

[71:59]

Because you wanted to see, you wanted to see more clearly, whereas somebody else would perhaps not want you to see more clearly. Like the leaf might not want you to see it more clearly. It might like you to see it the way you saw it without the glasses, so you won't cut the tree down. But from the human, from selfishness point of articulations are very, conceptions are very useful to us. And we put on glasses so we see things the way we want to. And then we think that the way we see, that when we see the way we want to, that that's the way they are. But if you take the concept away, they're not that way anymore. Nancy? I think I'm not going to ask my question. I was so excited about it. Very good. And then I think maybe Patty, but she left. Oh, there she is.

[73:02]

No, Laura. I didn't ask my question. Oh, you didn't? What happened? I thought I called on you. I just said your name. Okay, Laura. Okay. When I was little, my mom told me a story about a monk who put his eyelids out because he kept falling asleep while he was pressing. And when I grew up, I found out that was Ho Chi Minh. All right. That story made a deep impression on me. Yeah, clearly. We tell a lot of stories. And we tell a lot of stories in every culture. So storytelling also points to some kind of Yes. Can I tell you what? Can I tell you the story? Would you tell us the story of how Bodhidharma came to the West? No. Well, there's two stories. One story is he came from, what do you call it, southeastern India around through Southeast Asia on a boat and then landed in Canton and then moved up through China to the kingdom of Liang, which is located on the south side of the Yangtze River.

[74:25]

And the emperor of Lyon was Emperor Wu. And that was the beginning of his tour of duty there. The other story is he came up to Central Asia. Oh, about this one? This one... This one... Well, maybe I'll let Andy tell the story, since Andy had more to, in some sense, one story is that Andy had more to do with this coming here than I did, but actually it's not true. But since he had a lot to do with it, and since he spent the money on it, maybe he'd like to tell a story about how this Bodhidharma came from the West, called Beijing. There you go. One thing I noticed on a recent tour was what came to be called the Shopping Samadhi. I noticed people were really enthusiastic, really seeing the crescendo and then at the gift shops.

[75:38]

And so, anyway, one day, because some of us had been to the Great Wall before, we went to Christchurch, Beijing, Cheerios City, a quite curious place, because it's got scores and scores of shops selling everything you could think of. So Rip and I happened to be looking around a little bit and we went into one shop and we noticed this border guard was sitting in a cave. And I noticed Rip was looking at it a little longer than some of the other border guards and things we'd been looking at. And we kind of asked about it a little bit. Red turned and went. When he turned away, voted dormant, you know, this was an amazing, I knew that I had to buy it because despite the fact of not having him, I, he winked at me. I said, okay, so I, that's when I knew I had to go ahead and negotiate it.

[76:43]

I can't remember now whether it was Red that winked or voted dormant. I don't know, somebody winked at me. So I, we got it, and I, packed it in a suitcase and we brought it back. Do you know its history before that? No we don't, but I've had somebody look at it and my conclusion, my hypothesis right now is that it was a religious figure in a temple because first of all it has all the markings of a figure that might have been used for veneration in a temple and the back of it isn't nicely done which indicates it was set up to face people as they went by, more or less. And also in the back of the There's actually a place where they're invested with, what's the word? They actually put calligraphy and so forth. So it would indicate that it not only was a new figure of veneration, it was probably amongst other figures of veneration.

[77:50]

You see that pretty prominently in the temples there. They'll have a sea of several different figures that they might have voted government. Some of the hajimatsu might have voted the people. So it's provenance is probably that it was simply, it's not too old, it's probably less than 100 years old. And it probably was in a template amongst other figures. But we don't know that. What distinguishes it as Bodhidharma? Well, one characteristic is that oftentimes Bodhidharma has his okesa up over his head like this, and Buddhist monks are allowed to wear the okesa up over their head when they're meditating, especially if it's cold, it's okay to do that. Also, he has a mustache.

[79:03]

Bodhidharma often has a mustache. Other Chinese monks don't very often have a mustache, but sometimes they do. And also, Bodhidharma is the most common monk. In terms of a person, he's the most common monk in Chinese iconography. What about the eyelid thing? And the big, and the buggy eyes are also, the intense eyes are also often characteristic of Bodhidharma. Pardon? I can't hear you. Red, yeah, red. So this robe is gold and red. So the red's also a sign of Who was next? Sam? Maya or Sam? Yes, Maya?

[80:06]

Huh? Maya? I just wanted to comment, going back to Bert's question, that whether you felt that this goal, not being good, was the same kind of description as in the Third Book of the Lotus Sutra. Say it again? Yes. Right. So that we have, you know, all of our organs are set to grasp and capitalize for self. Yeah. So... So one of the interesting things I felt about that was that I didn't feel like it was a moral judgment in the sense that we usually think of morality as either bad... It's almost... It's like pre-moral.

[81:12]

It sets the stage for our moral efforts. And our moral efforts are highly challenged by the fact that we've been grasping things before we even come to a conscious act. THAT ALL KINDS OF DECISIONS, SELFISH DECISIONS, HAVE BEEN MADE PRIOR TO US EVEN CONSIDERING WHAT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE AND WHAT WOULD BE MORAL AND WHAT WOULD BE KIND. WE'VE ALREADY SET THINGS UP, YOU KNOW, ACCORDING TO WHAT WILL LOOK GOOD FOR US AND WILL BE PROMOTING FOR US. AND THEN SO THIS LOOKS LIKE IT'S GOING TO BE GOOD, BUT ALREADY IT'S BEEN TILTED IN THE DIRECTION OF WHAT WILL BE FOR OUR BENEFIT. SO EVEN IF WE TRY TO DO WHAT'S GOOD FOR OTHERS, THERE'S THIS ELEMENT OF SELFISHNESS MIXED IN THERE BEFORE WE EVEN KNOW IT, UNCONSCIOUSLY SET THAT WAY. because of this grasping. And the grasping, the selection of the concepts, is selected by selfish predispositions and sentiments. So some people just immediately see some people as more interesting than others depending on their lifestyle.

[82:13]

And then they try to be helpful, but it's already been prejudiced. So being aware... of this likelihood that we prejudice the situation even before we start considering what would be kind, it would be good to check to see, is there any holding here? And if there's holding, that's probably a sign that it's connected to our predisposition rather than we're objectively, honestly trying to think about what's best for everybody. And the practice of renunciation is to hopefully help us to settle into the level of experience that's not mediated by conception. And there is a possibility that this can happen through this meditation on non-grasping and non-seeking around our experience, that we can calm down and start to open to a level of experience uncontaminated by conceptual mediation, which means uncontaminated by selfish agendas.

[83:23]

But if we don't admit our selfishness in the first place, then we won't know where to notice that we're holding on. And if we don't notice we're holding on, we might think we're letting go, but actually we're just kidding ourselves. but most of us are holding and tensing. So a big part of our practice would be, we talk about relaxing, meeting whatever happens and relax, meet whatever happens with relaxation. But to find that means that you start to notice that mostly when you meet things, there's probably some tension and grasping. So that's where there's a confession practice associated with getting to the place of non-grasping is a lot of confession of grasping. And to get to the place of not seeking is to notice that we do things that can be done without seeking, like you can go to the toilet without seeking to go to the toilet, but we add in seeking unnecessarily. If you discover the seeking and discover the grasping, then you have a place to focus to find that there's also relaxation there already.

[84:32]

So once again, When there's the busy one who's grasping and seeking, there's an unbusy one simultaneously there who's not grasping and seeking. So part of the training is to turn the attention towards non-seeking and non-grasping, which is already there. It's the level of mind which does grasp at objects as separate from subjects. So it's really supposedly possible for us to become intimate with a level of our being that isn't selfish and that isn't us, separate from others, which is just… prior to this distinction between self and other, between selfish and unselfish, between good and bad, which is a level of direct experience that doesn't have these concepts and is going on all the time and is really most of what's happening with us.

[85:36]

So there's several more things, but it seems like it's usually good to stop about now because, you know, everybody's managed to stay awake all this time, and that's pretty good. So maybe we could stop if that's all right. Well, Bodhidharma, you have been well received. They accept you. Do you know what the eyeballs are made of? I do not know what they're made out of. No, I don't. And I may never find out. Would you be willing to read them somewhere so that we can see them more closely? I will leave them in the room, in the Doksan room, and you can go in the Doksan and look at them.

[86:30]

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