Receiving the Bodhisattva precepts and entering into the channel of being upright, tuning in being upright, practicing, realizing the practice of non-thinking. This is the essential art of Zazen, and watching you and listening to you, I feel that you

[01:02]

are tuning into this channel of non-thinking. Pretty, pretty good attunement, it seems to me. This attunement doesn't have a lock thing on it, like a radio, because the whole situation keeps changing, so you have to keep rediscovering what being upright is under the present circumstances, what it means to be balanced and still in the middle of great activity.

[02:07]

And this stillness, if it's real non-thinking, it's very alive. It's vividness and vitality in the middle of repose. So, there's great activity, and there's balance and stillness in the middle of great activity, and there's great energy and vitality in the middle of the stillness. In this place, we have given up control.

[03:21]

Giving up control, events do not sweep us away. Grasping control, trying to control, then events sweep us away. In this place, we don't indulge in trying to control, and we don't reject trying to control, and we don't even do that, like when you've had enough to eat. You don't reject more food, and you don't indulge in more food. It's enough. Or when there's something you do not want to eat, you don't have to reject the food or

[04:33]

indulge in it. It's just balanced and complete, and yet, there's tremendous energy there, and it wants to express itself. This situation is the essential art of zazen, but it's not the whole story. The rest of the story is, how does this presence and energy and vitality express itself? How does it express itself as the dependent co-arising of the individual, of the person, and how does it express itself in the dependent co-arising, in the meeting of the dependent co-arising of the world? And in this meeting of the dependently co-arisen self-expression from this being upright, in

[05:52]

the meeting of this with the dependent co-arising of the world, the world is restructured according to Buddhist teaching. The beauty of the world is realized through that interaction. And, this beauty of the world, which is the way the world and the individual are dependently co-arising, manifests as wisdom, great compassion, and the Bodhisattva precepts.

[07:00]

Now, that's a story which, as I say it, sounds fairly simple and logical to me. There is, from my ear, a thread of logic in what I just said, but the experience of one who lives, who's actually living, is that it's much more dynamic and complex and turbulent in actual experience. So it's hard to tune in to being upright, and even when one is tuned in to being upright, as one starts to let the self-expression come forth, it's often easy to lose track of the

[08:11]

thread, of the process, of the way that I just described, or any other one. And, the way it actually feels is often described as a labyrinth, or the geography, or the landscape of this process of expression is often pictured as a labyrinth by the ancestors, and feels like that to people today, too. In other words, you feel lost, you feel sometimes trapped, and you forget that you voluntarily

[09:15]

came into the trap. You think someone imposed the trap upon you. You feel frustrated by walls and doors, and it's hard to remember that you put the wall up there, that you went out of your way to come and sit in front of the wall, and that the wall is something you voluntarily chose to sit before. You feel like this thing which you came to use, the wall or the floor, is imposed upon

[10:19]

you, and also other kinds of resistance which you went out of your way to find and work with. You forget that you asked for these resistances, that you needed them and wanted them, and then sometimes you want to throw the resistance away. Someone said, I want to throw my resistance away, and the image that came to my mind when this person said, I want to throw my resistance away, was the image of some passionate artist who's in her studio painting and being very frustrated with the way that the canvas and the paints are resisting her creative impulses. She has this beauty in her heart which she's trying to express, and the paints and the brushes and the canvas are resisting her, and she wants to throw her paints and canvas

[11:21]

out the window. So there's many stories of artists going through their studio and knocking all their canvases and paints all over the room because they can't stand the resistance, but the resistance is the place where their art happens. The resistance is the place where the way is realized, no other place. Take away the resistance, you have no place to realize your art. The essential art is to be balanced and upright, then there's the world for you to work with. The various administrators at Green Gulch have desks, and their desks are resisting

[12:25]

them. I hear from the administrators. I see all of them smiling now. They all have these desks, and they look at the desks and they think those desks are resistances and they would like those desks to disappear, or at least the tops to be completely clear so they can see the wood. I told one of them, just go to your desk and just stand there for ten minutes sometime and feel the impulse to do something about that pile of stuff on the desk. Just sit there and feel it. Feel the impulse to get control of this situation here, and then walk away from the desk. Just try it. What we often do is we come to that desk and before we even find our balance, we start working at it, and the pile gets bigger and bigger. Of course, you can just push everything off the desk into a trash heap and you've got

[13:37]

a clear desk, but then other people with desks come to you and say, where's that stuff that you threw away? Then you have to start searching through the garbage cans, or anyway, it doesn't work. When you look at what's resisting you and you feel like it's like a canvas or a desk piled with papers or a stone, and you feel like it's resisting you, that's the dependently

[14:38]

co-arisen world, and now how does the dependently co-arisen self meet that world? This being absorbed in this interaction between the messy desk, the messy room, the messy life, the messy canvas, the messy marble, being absorbed in that meeting between the self and that is the arena for the self-fulfilling Samadhi. It's the place where you watch to see that the situation, in the situation, there is the receiving of a self. There's this, in the state of being upright, of sitting upright, of standing upright, of thinking upright, a self is given.

[15:39]

Now what do you do with it? What is done with it? The self is given, the self is received. Now how do you employ it? It's actually called, you know, Ji-Ju-Yu-Samadhi, Ji, self, Ju, receiving, receiving the self, and then you, employing the self, putting the self to work. Can you see how you receive the self and how it's put to work? How does that happen? Got a self, now how does it get put to work? And am I balanced and present as I receive this self? And now, can this Zazen self, can this self which is received in the state of non-thinking, how does it come out to meet, how does this dependently co-arisen self come out to meet

[16:44]

the world? And when they meet, what world is created in this meeting? Watching this interaction is called the Ji-Ju-Yu-Samadhi, the self-fulfilling Samadhi, or the self-receiving and self-employing awareness. But as it says, first you sit upright, dropping away body and mind, which means you sit upright, dropping away control and rejection of control, and then you enter this realm of the self-receiving and self-employing, its function. It's hard to be upright in the first place, but then when you enter this realm, this subtle

[17:54]

and dynamic realm, it's even harder to stay upright in that active world, to not lean there. It's hard enough to lean, not to lean when you're just sort of by yourself, but then as you enter this dynamic realm, it's even harder to stay upright. So yesterday I was talking actually about this realm, this realm of self-expression, and I was talking about it and expressing myself in this room. I was meditating on the dependent co-arising of my expression, like right now I'm also watching this, my self-expression as it meets the dependent co-arising of the world, my impression of all of you dependently co-arising. And in that interaction, some things happened, and one of the things that happened was, as

[19:05]

I was expressing myself, and as I was talking about expression, some people felt like I was polarizing the situation. One person said that what he heard sounded exclusive, like I was excluding someone. So like as though the insane were over there, the insane versus the same, the insane unexpressive and over here, the sane expressive, that I was setting up that kind of polarization. So I don't mean to do that. What I mean to say is that as we try to express ourselves, we are sane.

[20:20]

As we hide our self-expression, and hide it so well from others that we even lose track of it for ourselves, and try not to bring and allow this self, this dependently co-arising self to come out in the world and meet the world, as we suppress that, we are insane. That's what I mean. I'm insane when I don't express myself, when I not only restrain myself, but try to put out a false self in order to impress others that I'm okay. And do that without realizing that I'm doing that for selfish reasons. If I were to present myself in such a way as you would think I was normal, and that was my intention, but that was my self-expression, and I knew how crazy that was, but I wanted

[21:28]

to do it anyway, as a strange and perverted drama, then I would not be insane. I would know how insane that was, and I would know what a bad example I was setting, and I would be intentionally enacting evil. But I would just be a very, very bad boy in that case, and not totally crazy, as long as I knew, as long as I was conscious. But to lose track of that, and to know that it's easier to convince others that I'm normal, if I've also even convinced myself, that to lie about who I am will work better if I actually have deceived myself first. That will work better. And then after a while I forget that it was a deception from the beginning. And also, in talking about this right now, this is the dependent co-arisen self-expression,

[22:42]

but I want to elicit from you, if this expression is getting to be too much, I want you to be able to, getting to be too much means that you can't meet it, that you can't feel that you're expressing yourself in relationship to the way I am. Then I want you to stop me, so we can do this together. And so right now, I stop to give you a chance to tell me if I'm getting too far out for you. Too far out means that you can't do this with me, that I'm going off in a way that I'm not meeting you, and you don't feel you're meeting me. Is that happening for you now? You're on the edge? Okay. Well, let me try something, let me try this and see how you're doing, okay?

[23:47]

I wore my nice dress today. Huh? It's lovely. Thank you. I've been getting lots of compliments on it. How you doing now, Greg? Huh? Is that easier to relate to? Actually, you're one of the people who complimented me, weren't you? No, I was not. You weren't? Oh. Well, what do you think of it? Okay. To me, you look like a Korean girl. Yeah, Korean colors. Do you think that people who choose not to express themselves have made a choice about it? Yes, but not conscious, and the less conscious, the sicker. But anyway, for myself, if I choose not to express myself, I'm expressing myself.

[24:50]

If I consciously say, I'm not going to express myself, that's a full self-expression. But people who haven't studied that way? The people who haven't studied that way? Let's not talk about people. Let's talk about me. Because if I start talking about people, I think people are going to get nervous about me talking about people. Well, I can talk about me. Yeah, talk about you. But I've chosen to express myself. Pardon? I have chosen to express myself. Yes. But people who I think are not expressing themselves. Yeah, I guess what I'm saying is, I don't, myself, I'm expressing myself, and right now I'm expressing myself, I'm aware that I'm expressing myself, and I'm saying, today, anyway, unless I get like, unless we want to have a meeting where everybody wants to talk about people rather than themselves, I don't want to talk about people. I want to talk about me, and you can talk about you. But I want to say that when I, okay, when I get into expressing myself in such a way,

[25:56]

if I would get into expressing myself in order to make you, the world, think that I'm appropriate and I'm okay, when I do that, and that's my agenda, and I suppress my real self-expression, then I think I'm insane, and I think I will not let you express yourself. That's how I feel. But when I express myself with the main agenda to express myself honestly and not, even though you may think I'm not appropriate, but I really feel a deep need because this, from this place of being upright, I feel a deep need to express this beauty, and this beauty may not be considered appropriate, but I am here in this life to express that. That's my main thing in life.

[26:58]

And if I push that down and instead present something which is not beautiful but is what you would like, then I think I am not only killing myself and going crazy, but I also won't let you do it. If you try to do it, I won't let you. That's about me. Yes? What was helpful for me after yesterday's talk, thinking about it, was to go back to the original part of the diagram, which is the taking with the precepts. And in that context I kind of viewed what we were talking about somewhat differently. If we've taken this vow outwardly, maybe still outwardly, it's something that the precepts are there and we're here, and we go into this practice of upright sitting and self-expression. Can the self-expression be modulated or guided by the vow?

[27:59]

Not repressed. But the difference to me in someone who's practicing self-expression in the context of having taken the vow, that actually it's a modulation perhaps, or a guide. So the self-expression isn't simply just self-expression. Go for it. Let it all hang out. Dam the consequences. It's really like, okay, way back there. Now we're like being guided by the vow. And so it's sort of like repression or modulation. Full self-expression is the Bodhisattva precepts. That's what full self-expression is. But full self-expression is not going to happen, basically, until we fully realize wisdom.

[29:02]

Okay? So when you first realize upright sitting, if you haven't yet realized, you know, correct wisdom, then your self-expression will perhaps be not quite perfectly expressing the Bodhisattva precepts. But when your expression does express the Bodhisattva precepts, then it is full self-expression. Now, it could be that when you're sitting upright, when you're being upright, as you express yourself, you think of your expression in terms, you actually consciously think of your expression in terms of the precepts. But even if you do think of your expression in terms of the precepts, it still may be off. Other people may feel like, you may think this is not stealing and not killing, but I disagree.

[30:05]

You may think this is not lying, but I think you're lying. They might feel that way. And that feedback might be helpful to you, and you might feel, yeah, I can see what you mean. But you also can express yourself, the Bodhisattva precepts guide you into what being upright is in the first place. Because being upright, when you're present and upright, when you're non-thinking, you are not killing your experience. You are not stealing from your experience. You are not slandering your experience. You are not praising your experience and so on. The Bodhisattva precepts guide you to being upright. And being upright should satisfy the Bodhisattva precepts too. Really what being upright is, is satisfies the Bodhisattva precepts. They're all satisfied, they're all enacted in this non-thinking. This detached, loving, honest way of being present is the Bodhisattva precepts. However, it is possible to tune into that dimension.

[31:09]

But when you start acting, karmic habits which were not functioning in that awareness are activated. Karmic habits which were set up in past times under the auspices of self-clinging kick back in. In other words, this Samadhi has not been driven down into your deepest levels of your body and mind. You've realized it up sort of in the level of consciousness. You are practicing the Bodhisattva precepts, perhaps as well as you think you could. And other people might agree at that moment. But as you act, as you enter into the dynamic activity of action, meeting the world, old habits kick in. And it is possible that yet you would realize a state which we call, you know, dropping self.

[32:11]

We actually do not believe in self anymore as a substantial entity. You've had a real insight there in your uprightness, which is called the path or stage of vision. You actually see correctly. But then when you start acting, these habits kick in. And this phase of training there, from that insight up until, you know, full realization of wisdom, is called the path of bringing the vision into being, Bhavana Marga. The path of bringing your vision into being so that your activity now is cleaned of your old habits which were built on a previous way, on the old way, the selfish way, the non-perceptual way of understanding. And it takes a long time to sort of wash away those old habits. So that not just at the conscious level, but down in your body, you are not clinging anymore.

[33:18]

And your activity actually reflects that. So in that time, in the practice of trying to incorporate the vision into what was once our habitual life, are the Bodhisattva precepts, guidelines there, in a very self-object way? They could be. Some people will use them. People who receive them, who formally receive them, may use them. Some people who don't receive them formally may use them. But whether you use them consciously or not, in fact, what happens is that you express yourself and there's a response. And the beauty of the situation and the harmony of the situation and the pain of the situation, the violence and agony of the meeting between those two worlds, guides you to the proper way.

[34:25]

It trains you. And you may not think literally of the Bodhisattva precepts, but in fact, if your action doesn't realize them, the world and you will have a violent interaction. And that violence will gradually sculpt and create your art. The outward, the manifestation of your essential art of zazen will be then actually manifested in the world, in terms of your relationships and the world. Your paintings, your relationships, your family, your body, your community will manifest that. And the problems in your community will feed back to you on your expression. Back and forth, back and forth.

[35:26]

Until you can see beauty in your expression, beauty in the world and beauty in the meeting. And happiness. But finding that, the process of this being created, there will be violence, imaginal violence, and there will be agony and joy. But we don't have a problem with the joy. And we don't have a problem with the harmony. But the violence and agony, we sometimes think there's something wrong, but it's part of the deal of finding the adjustment. That resistance, the pain of that resistance, we need that in order to modify and try another angle, another angle, another angle, another angle. And the Bodhisattva precepts can be used consciously, literally, as checks. How is this action the Bodhisattva precepts? How is this action the Bodhisattva precepts?

[36:29]

You can do that all the time, but even if you never say it, in fact, they must be realized. What is the distinction between the self-expression and impulsive behavior? The behavior from being upright is impulsive, just like the behavior from not being upright is impulsive. When you're balanced and intimate with things, you still have impulses, but the impulses are love. And when you're unbalanced and attached, you have impulses too, but the impulses are greed, hate and delusion. So when you feel balanced, you think, hey, I think this is love. It isn't that I'm trying to get a hold of these people, or get something from them, or get rid of them. It isn't that I'm confused about my relationship, I just really love these people and I want to enact beauty with all beings.

[37:29]

You feel like, gee, this is really different from greed, hate and delusion. Then you try it, and you express it. You need to. If you don't, there's going to be violence. Now the other way too, if you're off balance and you don't express it, there's going to be violence too. So if you're off, you need to express it and find out, oh, it's greed, hate and delusion. What's wrong? Go back and be balanced. If you suppress, if you try to squash love, there's going to be violence too, because we yearn to express this beauty. And sometimes, guess what, you express this love and it actually works just the way you want it to. There are these moments, but even Cézanne almost never hit the mark according to his standards. He kept trying and trying, and the record of his failure at expressing this beauty is one of the great inspirations of this century.

[38:35]

But he never quite hit it. Every time he tried, the world kind of moved a little bit. He got frustrated almost every painting he did. He never was satisfied. But he kept at it. He didn't throw his paints and brushes away. So anyway, I want to talk about labyrinth, but maybe not today. Jordan gave me this beautiful quote about the labyrinth. So maybe tomorrow I'll talk about the labyrinth more. But in upright sitting, the labyrinth is temporarily kind of like, what do you call it, the labyrinth is not a big problem when you're just being upright.

[39:37]

Because if you looked around and somebody asked you to do a little survey of where you were, you might say, God, I don't know. I don't know what this is. You know, maybe I'm, you know, I might be in hell for all I know. If you did it, if you checked it out, you might find you're in a labyrinth. But when you're being upright, you're not worried about that. Labyrinth, not labyrinth. Labyrinth, hey, labyrinth. Not labyrinth, hey, not labyrinth. Desk, yes. Dirty desk, mm-hmm. Paint, yeah. Blue, mm-hmm. Red, yeah. Can we change red for blue? Hey, I'm not into, I'm not, I'm just kind of like trying to be here, okay? You guys work the situation. I'm kind of like trying to just really concentrate on keeping track of what's happening and not slipping off my seat here.

[40:38]

I'm up to my eyeballs and not moving, you know? It's hard enough just to be here. You guys figure out the world. Later, when I get settled, I'll come out to play. But right now, I'm just trying to, you know, not fall over on my face or backwards on my back. When we start acting, we're going to find out it's a labyrinth. You know, like, you know, we'll wear a nice dress or we won't. And when we wear it, people are going to comment, Oh, where did you get the dress? Well, I got it in a Japanese catalog. And another part of this is, is that, well, I just want to mention one point. This is, is that when that person told me, you know, and I said, Oh, that's a nice, that's a lovely robe. And I said, you know,

[41:43]

Am I a drag queen? And then she said, she said something which I forgot to tell you. And she said, You're a vision. Someone thought that was an important line, especially the person who said it. So maybe I'm not a drag queen, but maybe I'm a vision. Okay. Okay. However, I still have a little bit of a thing of a problem about it. I think I should be able to be a drag queen. And I kind of, you know, I resist and I feel resisted by the people who think that they know what the drag queen is and that there's kind of a drag queen, you know, rules. And, you know, if I don't follow the rules, I'm not a real drag queen. I have some problem with that. Like, who is really in charge of what a drag queen is? This is kind of a little thing I'm resisting. I'm kind of having some problem with. Yes, Rain, I mean Erin. Oh, that was a bad one. Okay.

[43:04]

How about a vision? What? Hormones? Is it okay if I take hormones? Can I take testosterone? Okay. So tomorrow I'll talk more about the labyrinth and I'll tell you this wonderful, I'll read you this wonderful quote that, from Simone Weil, that Jordan gave me about the labyrinth. But again, if I start talking about the labyrinth,

[44:05]

part of me wants to talk about what it's like there and it might get really dramatic. I personally feel that I want to, I really want to. I think what we're doing here by sitting this way is we're setting the stage for the dramatic enactment of dependent co-arising. And I want to set that stage with you, with you, so that we can dramatically, we can put on the drama of Buddhist teaching. The full scale drama of dependent co-arising of each of us and the world. I want to create that situation with you. But it potentially has this, you know, there's a violent quality to creation. You know, like now we say Big Bang, right?

[45:07]

But in the old days too, the way that they pictured the Divine transforming itself and coming down into air and wind and earth and water and animals and humans and trees. When they pictured that transformation of the Divine into these forms, they did so in terms of dismemberment and rending. There was a violent imagery for this transformation. It's imagination, but it has this kind of cutting or dismembering or violent quality. And even the quote that Jordan gave me, beautiful quote, I wanted to change it when I read it to you. For example, she has the word God in there various places. I want to change God to dependent co-arising. And then someone might feel, you're doing violence to Simone Weil. And it's not that I want to do violence to Simone Weil's writing.

[46:08]

I love Simone Weil's writing. It's just that my creative urge is to change that word God. And, you know, Plato had a real hard time with Homer. Because Homer did violence to the ancient stories of Greece. He changed the real traditional stories of the Battle of Troy and the Odyssey. He didn't make those stories up. Those were before him. He rewrote them in a way that was beautiful at the time that she lived. But she had to let Dionysus come into her to disrupt the ancient story so there could be a new fresh one. So we have an ancient story about Buddhism, about the world which we have received.

[47:12]

In order for us to arise and enter, we have to change it. Because we love it, we have to change it. In order to save it, we have to change it. And that change can be painful and difficult. I can't myself see any way to avoid it, but what I hope is that you can join it. And you can contribute so you don't feel this is a violence you don't participate and sign off on. We can't leave things like they have been. We can't let it otherwise the practice will die. But if one of us does the change without the participation of everyone else, then it won't work. It won't be enacted in the world. If one of us has a creative impulse and the world doesn't meet it and join it, it won't work. So the creative and somewhat painful changes I'm suggesting to our own practice, I need you to join me on.

[48:19]

Otherwise, you know, it won't really be right. So if I talk too roughly, not gently enough about these tender topics, help me. So I can say it in a way that you can join and support, but also your resistance is a way for you to join too. Okay, so maybe that's enough. Oh my God, this fell down. Have you been able to hear me, Kathleen? I'm sorry, now you can hear me really well, huh? Now, it hasn't been a very good lecture, you didn't miss anything. I'm sorry, I didn't connect this up properly. So, this is my plan, to go deeper into this, to keep studying this phase of the diagram between being upright and the training in full self-expression,

[49:33]

which is training in the self-fulfilling Samadhi. Training in the meeting of self-expression, dependently co-arisen self-expression, and the dependently co-arisen world. Each of us to join that. I express myself to meet your dependent co-arising, you express yourself to meet our dependent co-arising. We keep working at that, working at that, creating this drama of dependent co-arising, which emerges from this balanced, dropped off body and mind of non-thinking. So you just keep working on that, expressing, settling, expressing. Use the Bodhisattva precepts to guide you to upright sitting, express yourself and see if from your point of view that expression is the Bodhisattva precepts. And then do other people feel that expression is the Bodhisattva precepts? And if they don't, listen. Oh, uh-huh, you think that was speaking of others' faults, huh? Okay, I hear that.

[50:42]

How about if I said it this way, would you feel like that was more in accord with the precepts? A person might say, yeah. And you say, well, that way is true for me too, I'm not like giving up my expression. So back and forth, back and forth, we find a way, and the Bodhisattva precepts are kind of like our communal language to adjudicate whether the self-expression is on the mark. And sometimes we don't have time to check to see if it's the Bodhisattva precepts, it just comes out from our upright sitting. And sometimes we don't have time to check and it just comes out from our leaning, from our biased, from our imbalance. And when it comes from imbalance, it's not going to work. And we say, oh, that didn't work, and that came from imbalance. The other case is, it came from balance, but an old habit came into play. So this is how to dramatize, to put the show on.

[51:44]

Breck? Next question, next question. Yeah. One way to phrase it would be, is Zen practice the only way to traverse the cycle? Is Zen practice the only way to traverse the cycle? No. The only way to traverse the cycle is self-practice. You've got to work with yourself, you have to do that. Now, someone might say, oh, Zen practice, well, okay. You know, what is it, somebody says, all the religions are basically the same, especially Buddhism. And among Buddhism, all the different kinds of Buddhism are all the same, especially Zen. So, you know, Buddhism gets kind of like, as currently, it's kind of like a lot of people think, oh, they're the most, you know, they really know, the Buddhists really know that they're not the only ones.

[52:46]

The Buddhists are not exclusive, they're the ones who realize that they don't, the Buddhists are the ones who really know that they don't own the show. But then they really think they know the show, right? So, there is no such thing as Buddhism, really, or Brecker-Rebb. So it's pretty advanced to start talking in such a way, and that's why I kind of like took a leap, I think I took too big of a step there, I leaped out ahead of our level of discourse when I started talking about suburbia and stuff, because maybe people thought I was talking about some other place, or some other time, or some other people. That's why I think now, I really need to be talking about myself. That for me, such and such is insane, and for me such and such is healthy. And once that's clear, then I can talk about them. Like Dogen, you know, he says this stuff about them.

[53:48]

God, can you imagine, this kind of disclaimer in the Shobo Genzo saying, he wasn't really talking about those other priests, he wasn't really talking about those other schools, he wasn't talking about the heretics over there, you know, he was talking about his own heart. This is part of changing the tradition to save it. Okay, we got to change this to save it, otherwise it's going to like, Soto Zen is going to be in big trouble. Lee? Lee? Well, yeah, that's part of the deal. That's part of the experiment. Have I not been assertive enough? Have I been too assertive? So you think, okay, ready, get set, there's an urge, here it goes.

[54:53]

Is this in my balance now? Okay, here it goes. Well, the way the world met me on that one was, you know, I didn't really feel much of a response. Now I'll try something else. I recognized you before, but I was talking to Brick. I'm not listening. I don't know, you know, this guy said to me that he's been coming to seminars and stuff for a long time, he says, I never recognized him, and every time he's talking to me, I turn away from him. And he said, like, he just did it just now, and actually he was talking to me about something, and I was listening to him, and then he said something else very quietly, and somebody else talked to me really loudly, and I turned away from him. But the thing he said when he was talking quietly was what he really wanted to talk about. When he brought up what he really wanted to talk about, he said it quietly, and I turned away. It may be that there's something in my body,

[55:54]

and that when somebody brings up the most important thing, but not with enough, you know, with the energy to match it, maybe my body just goes, out of here. You know, sometimes I think, that I'm being used by some wise person to act in this way which is really not very polite, but really appropriate. So that when people are dishonest, I just sort of like, go to sleep, or fall over sideways or whatever. Sometimes I think that. It's not true or anything, but the thought crosses my mind. And they don't respond.

[57:06]

Sometimes I'll keep asking. What is it? What is it? And please tell me what's going on for you. Sometimes they don't. And I'll keep presenting. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, well, I heard you say something about a relationship dying, and I heard you say something about not responding. But there's another way to see it. Namely, that the relationship changes, and their non-response is their response. But it doesn't mean that you don't have to have a response to what you call their non-response. So some people like, sometimes I have a meeting with somebody, they come, and I ask my question, and they don't answer.

[58:11]

And I wait sometimes for a while, and then after a while I maybe say, well, since you're not talking, maybe you can go outside and not talk, and I can talk to the next person. Maybe you don't need me here to not talk. And sometimes they say, yeah, that's right, and they go out. But sometimes they say, no, I do need you here to talk, and then they're talking. But it's not like, if I ask somebody a question and they don't give me a response, I don't consider that not a response. They don't talk. But it's still, even though if they keep it up, I may say, well, you know, I'd rather do something else than have you sitting here not answering my questions. That's how I feel. Is that okay with you? And they'll say they don't answer that. So I may say, well, if you don't, if you won't answer my question, is it okay if I leave the room? And they don't answer. So if they don't answer, I say, well, I'll take your not answer the way the Buddha did as an ascent. So please excuse me. So then I would leave the Dogson room, leave them sitting in there, and talk to people out in the hall. But usually the person will leave

[59:14]

if I say I'd like you to leave if you're not going to talk to me. But I don't consider that the end of the relationship. I consider that quite a relationship. Not better than the ones where the people are, you know, talking to me and stuff, but it's another way of responding called not talking with words, but talking with their shut mouth. You know, the whole Sangha split apart, several year Sangha split apart, because the non-response that appeared to be of them was repression, and there was the huge violent people, and the change with most of the people in there. Yeah, and maybe that's fine. That's just what's needed in a case like that. So in the case of one individual, if an individual comes to you

[60:16]

and you ask them a question they don't answer, and you say, well, you know, this has been going on for a long time, or this has been going on for several meetings, several meetings you've come and talked, and I'd rather not do this anymore, so could we end the meeting now? And then the person goes out in the hall and they start screaming and pulling things off the wall and stuff like that. That might be okay. The question is, how did you feel when you did it? Did you feel balanced? Or did you feel impatient? Check yourself out. Did you feel like you were violating any precepts when you did it? And was their response harmful? Check it out. Sometimes you find out it's really good. When I was a little kid I used to go see a child psychologist and the reason why I went was because my parents noticed I was spending a lot of time in my room, quietly.

[61:18]

And at first they had my ears checked, but nothing wrong with my ears. So then they sent me to this child psychologist. His name was Dr. Hansen. And I went all the way across the big city to see him. I was eight or nine years old. And he started every meeting. He would say, Is there anything you'd like to talk about? And I'd say, No. And then we'd build things. And I had a great time. And I don't know how he felt, but you know, we built model airplanes, model ships, model cities. And I got to build these things and didn't have to pay for them. And he also helped me. And he was, you know, an adult. He was quite skillful. So I could make these things better than I could make them myself. And then I got to take them home. And at the end of the meeting, he would say, Is there anything you'd like to talk about? And I would say, No. And once a month, all the crazy kids were gathered together and we had a party.

[62:26]

And you know, at the party, they made us, they made us, they forced us to eat ice cream and cake and to play Old Maid and Monopoly. But I never really talked to him about anything. But my little hands, you know, I was having a good time. I guess he found out something about me. I didn't consider it not a relationship. And I was happy to go all the way over there for that. And all the way back, it was, I enjoyed it. So, it wasn't, in this case, it was okay. But sometimes, when people don't talk, if you don't feel good about it and you say, I'd like to, I feel like I'm wasting my time. And sometimes that's really helpful for you to tell them that. And also sometimes, when someone is, you ask a question and they don't give you an answer, if you press, they back up more, right?

[63:28]

If you press on them, they withdraw more. So sometimes, sometimes you might try something a little different. They might come in and say, instead of asking a question which they don't answer, you might say, do you have any questions for me? Or, would you like me to say anything? Or, let's, do you have any advice for me? And they might say, yeah, stop asking me questions. And you might say, okay. But then the next meeting, you might say, I'm sick of not asking questions. And then they might say to you, well, I, you know, it's okay that you're sick of not asking questions. Is there anything else you'd like to tell me? Didn't get that joke. Okay. Yes? Yes? Yes.

[64:33]

Yes. [...] As a way of talking, of dealing with yourself. Yes. Uh-huh. What are you hearing, though? Say what you're hearing. Yes. Uh-huh. Yes. No, I'm not talking, so, this is what you heard, okay? I'm not saying that. Did you people hear me say that? No, I'm not talking about turning away. If someone's dishonest, I don't turn away from the dishonesty. Okay? I don't, I don't recommend that. That's not what I meant. Okay? And you don't like that, right?

[65:43]

I agree with you. If someone's dishonest, don't turn away from it. So, what's the alternative from turning away from someone who is speaking dishonestly to you? Yeah. That's what I'm suggesting. If someone, if you hear someone speaking, listen. And if it's dishonest, listen again. And dishonest means, what does dishonest mean? Dishonest means you, you, it sounds dishonest. Right? It might not be dishonest, but you may think it's dishonest. That's why you shouldn't really turn towards or away, but you say, you might say, you know, did you just say such and such? And they say yes. And say, and you might say, well, you might say, would you like, would you like me to say something about how I feel about what you just said? And they might say, uh-huh. And you might say, it's what I have to, what my impression of what you just said, you know, might be kind of difficult to hear. Do you actually want to hear it?

[66:44]

And they might say yes. Say, I had this feeling, I had this fantasy. It's not necessarily the truth, but I had this fantasy that you weren't telling me the truth. What do you think? Did you just tell me the truth? And they might say, they might say yes. And then you say, tell me more about that. And then they might tell you more and you might say, oh, I get it. Now I see it was the truth. But sometimes they might say, that's right, it wasn't the truth. So I'm definitely not saying when you hear, when you hear something, I'm not saying turn away from it, but I'm also saying that when you hear something, it is sometimes okay to have a response and to say, I feel uncomfortable with what you just said. I wonder whether, you know, I should be here while you're talking that way. To go away from somebody is not necessarily turning away. If you're in a group of people and they're, for example, let's say they're speaking badly about other people,

[67:45]

you sit down at the table or something and people are gossiping in a negative way about people, it's not necessarily turning away to say, you know, I feel uncomfortable with this conversation. That's not necessarily turning away. As a matter of fact, it's kind of like meeting them. So, you hear these people talking in a way that you think is disrespectful of someone. You hear that. Maybe they don't mean it as disrespectful. But you say, you know, first of all, maybe you check and you say, am I balanced here? Am I trying to control the situation? Am I listening carefully? Am I, you know, am I practicing being upright? You might feel like, well, pretty well. And am I uncomfortable? Uh-huh. And what am I uncomfortable about? I'm uncomfortable because I feel that the conversation is potentially hurting, potentially causing harm. So I feel uncomfortable about that. Now what do you do? You might say, should I say anything to these people about it? And you might feel like, yeah,

[68:47]

that might be helpful. So you might raise your hand and say, excuse me, could I say something? And they might say, well, what do you want to say? And you say, I'd like to say something about the quality of the conversation that I'm feeling. And they might say, Or they might say, we don't want to hear about that. And you might say, okay, fine, not say anything. But you might say, I'd like to excuse myself because I'm feeling uncomfortable. That isn't turning away, that's giving them, maybe, an expression of your discomfort. You're giving that gift of how you're feeling. And then they might say, wait a minute, wait a minute, what's the matter? And then you say, well, you didn't want to hear about my feeling about this conversation. That's what it's about. I'm feeling uncomfortable about the conversation. They say, oh, okay, okay, what is it? And you feel like, well, I feel like the language that's happening around this person, I feel like if this person heard that, that would hurt them, maybe.

[69:48]

And I feel uncomfortable participating in that kind of talk, just even being in a group and letting it happen. And they might say, you know, various things. They might say, thank you, or whatever. But, you know, the dependently co-arisen you is feeling uncomfortable. The dependently co-arisen you wonders if you should just sit here passively much longer and just continue to feel comfortable or whether you should express yourself. And you think, well, would that help? And you think, well, I think so. So you try it. And maybe it does. But this is not turning away. This is contributing creatively to the process of the conversation. Is it difficult? Could it be agonizing? Could it be dangerous? Could you get in trouble? Yes, to all those. Is it coming from being upright? It could be, yes. Is it intended as love and the care for and protection of beings?

[70:49]

Could be. So you check. No, you're right. I'm not I'm not talking about turning away from anything. And I'm also not talking about turning towards anything. Okay? I'm talking about neither turning away nor towards. And when you're in that place I think you'll find a vitality. Yes? I guess it involves hearing words like sick and insane in a way that's probably not meant that way as a turning away. Maybe it's something that I think we recognize for me it's helpful that I recognize something that I guess it's not necessarily turning away as a turning away labeling this situation as insane not like what you were talking about Right. Right. Well

[71:57]

I guess there's a little bit if I'm if I'm leaning okay if I'm indulging and I notice it and that's not the way I want to be and I straighten up in a sense you could say you could say it's almost like you're turning away from the leaning but you don't have to see it that way you can see it that you notice you're biased you notice you're leaning you notice you're indulging or you notice you're rejecting and pushing away you notice these tendencies and just noticing them you're upright again without rejecting. Yeah so for me it's not so much a rejection but a sharp a sharp a sharp quality of creation that creation for me has a sharpness you know a sharpness

[72:58]

and I can use the word insane for myself hey Reb that's insane that's really like the worst Reb I mean that's extremely bad you know it's really really bad for me to crush myself I want to say that about myself if you can't use that word insane in a way that works for you then put it on the shelf for a while until it finds its right time but I'd like I like that word insane and I I like to use it and that's who I am and can you allow me to use that word? Yeah What? You don't have to what? You don't have to take the word insane in? What do you mean by take it in?

[74:01]

Take it in Ok So was I not gentle enough with you? I'm sorry if I wasn't I'm sorry Pardon? Yeah, please be gentle with yourself and I'll try to be gentle with you too but I hope I can gently say that I would like to practice the Buddha way in the world

[75:03]

where nothing is excluded and find some way to deal with everything that there is in the world and to be gentle about it because I think gentleness is really very important when we're dealing with things which are really powerful and sharp and dangerous but I don't want to be I don't want to go to a world where there aren't any dangerous things like dangerous words dangerous people I want to be close to the dangerous people I want to be intimate with the dangerous people in other words I want to be close to the dangerous me because I think a big part of the problem of our world is that the dangerous people are disrespected you know or the dangerous person in myself is disrespected

[76:03]

and when that powerful dangerous person is disrespected that person gets very violent but when dangerous energies and dangerous people which is pretty much everybody and pretty much everything is respected and treated with love it can find a way to express itself if these energies are forbidden to have a container they go wild so I would like to give a container to everything so it can express itself and I'd like to ask you to help me create a container where we can bring things up which includes the container includes that when you have a real problem with something that's brought up that you feel really invited to express your difficulty and get help dealing with this material I think if we

[77:05]

anything we exclude will become a ghost and a demon everything we push away will get more power but if we can reach around all phenomena kindly and include them and together find a way to contain them and work with them I think that's I think that's the way I trust but it's hard really hard really scary if you think about the next minute ok is that enough for now any outstanding problems or anything that anybody wants to bring up in this arena one more I guess this is addressed

[78:07]

directly to you and earlier when Sue was speaking I was upset that she did not get the finish that she was trying but before you think I didn't give her enough time you think that ok is that true this way that I didn't well if I didn't give you if I didn't give you enough time I'm really sorry I would like to give you enough time I would I'd like to learn how to do that I think that's funny

[79:11]

what's funny about it it's dangerous to give people enough time so challenging huh yes I'm just going to say something about your dress it's ok with me is it ok with you guys it's very quick and I can't get that out of my mind that's why I feel like I should tell you it's probably not very significant but the first time I saw you in that dress and especially now you looked like a baby goat that was unexpected

[80:28]

anything else any other questions ok so I think Jordan wants to do that I'm going to take that thing now

[80:50]

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