I have brought up the word crisis repeatedly for the last few months. And crisis means turning point. The root of the word means turning point. The definition is a decisive turning or a decisive point of turning. And so the world has, as usual, turned and last Tuesday we all felt it. The whole planet felt a great turning, a great change. Many people rejoiced at at the great reward of their tremendous effort and devotion to the welfare of this planet.

[01:04]

We got through the process, from my view, quite peacefully. Everyone seems to have gotten through the process without any major injuries. Although I did hear at a press conference that one of the reporters was injured rushing to the president-elect's acceptance speech, hurt her shoulder or something. But otherwise, people seem to have gotten through quite safely, and it's a joy to have a new leader of the country who represents calm, presence, thoughtfulness, diversity, peace, strength, energy, and maybe also a good education

[02:20]

And part of his good education may be that he has read about the dangers of power and how they can corrupt. Hopefully he will be mindful of this and that mindfulness may protect us all from it. the work, the play goes on. I hope that you all have come here today in the spirit of how you can help. If I may, I'd like to repeat some things which I have been saying recently because many of you have not heard these points before and I feel I need to share them with you in order to go on with the work.

[04:05]

One thing I've been suggesting is that the point of Zen is enlightenment. Another way to say that is the point of Zen is Buddha. And enlightenment or Buddha means helping others. And helping others is to understand that they are our self. That the whole world and every part of it is our true self. This is the same as saying in somewhat technical language that the point of Zen is to understand the highest truth.

[05:20]

The highest truth could be put as others are yourself. Another way to say it is the highest truth is emptiness. Namely, yourself has no core. Your self is all other beings. That's your real self. So your self is nowhere to be found except everywhere. Realizing, understanding the highest truth is the same as helping others. Helping others realizes the highest truth. If we want to realize the highest truth, the way is helping others. The way to help others is to understand that they are our self. Understanding the truth is the same as helping others. Helping others is the same as understanding the highest truth.

[06:24]

Understanding the highest truth and helping others is peace and happiness, joy and fearlessness, great compassion. And so this is my story about Zen. Another way to tell this story is that the life of the bodhisattva, the point of the life of the bodhisattva is the same. The point of Zen and the point of the life of the bodhisattva are the same. Of course bodhisattvas, enlightening beings, the point of their life is helping others. But it's the same to say the point of the bodhisattva's life is to understand the truth, is to understand that others are our self by being devoted to them.

[07:29]

By being devoted to them we understand that they are our self. So the point of, I'm saying, the point of Zen and the point of the life of the bodhisattva, living Zen and living bodhisattva, same life. I'm just saying this partly to share with you my understanding of some words so that we can play with them. So my main suggestion today is that these Bodhisattvas, enlightening beings, the beings on the path to realizing Buddhahood. Of course, they're doing this to help others. And what I'm emphasizing today is that they come into the world to play. They come into the world to play with all beings.

[08:32]

Especially, in a way, they come to play with sentient beings, with living beings who are not enlightened. They come to play with all sentient beings. And if they meet sentient beings that do not know how to play, they playfully teach them how to play. The activity of a bodhisattva is the enactment of highest truth. When they understand highest truth, then everything they do is the enactment of their understanding, just like everybody else.

[09:38]

Our understanding is what we enact. Our actions come from our understanding. When bodhisattvas understand the highest truth, they must enact it. They must perform it. And for them, in the context of highest truth, everything they do is a ritual performance. Since they're performing the highest truth, they're performing it in such a way as to create a world in which our life and the highest truth are realizing each other. So I'm suggesting bodhisattvas come to play with all beings. They come to practice rituals with all living beings. They come to playfully practice rituals.

[10:45]

And again I would say that for bodhisattvas or for Zen students, ritual is play. And play is ritual. The point of the play is to help others. And looking at the story of my life, I noticed that when I was younger, about 40-some years ago, I read some stories, so-called Zen stories. And the stories made me feel like this is the life I want to live, the life that I imagined when I read the stories.

[11:49]

I thought, this is the life I want to live. When I look back at these stories, they look like somebody who's playing. They look like stories of play. Like, you know, sitting in your house on a full moon night, and you hear somebody sneaking up to your house through the woods. You don't know if it's a deer or a thief. And you listen and it sounds, well it doesn't sound like a deer. You think maybe it's somebody who is coming to rob you. But you're a playful bodhisattva and you have playthings in your house Kind of like you're ready for trick and treat. And in this story, the monk, the Zen monk, was in the house and he had playthings to offer to people when they came.

[12:58]

So when the thief got close to the house, he gave the thief his playthings, which just happened to be all his possessions. They weren't much, but anyway, he gave them all out the window to the thief. I didn't think of it as play at the time. I just thought, I want to learn how to do that. I know it's hard, especially if you have lots of stuff to just throw out the window all at once. But anyway, I would like to learn how to really want to do that. And the thief accepted the gifts. As meager as they were, the thief was Happy to get them, and I don't know happy, but anyway, the thief took them and headed off with the gifts which the monk playfully gave. And as he got farther away, the monk said, they're for you, and I'm sorry, I can't give you the full moon too. This playfulness of the bodhisattva.

[14:02]

This is how they help people. This story is a story of realizing that the thief is your true self. The thief and the moon and the woods and the hillside are your true self. So this bodhisattva enacted that, playfully demonstrated that to me, and he helped me want to be like her. Most people think it was a hymn. But I'm playing with that today. Some people may not like me to play with it. And I hope they're playful with their dislike of me. I generally recommend that if you don't like me, be playful with that. I don't tell you to stop disliking me. Except, I might say so playfully, like, stop disliking me, stop it. But I meant that as I was just kidding. Still, you know, when I'm contemplating a playful gesture, I sometimes hesitate.

[15:21]

I think maybe it's too playful. Like today, you know, when I was coming here, knowing that I was going to talk to you about bodhisattvas coming into the world to play with us all, to teach us how to play, I thought, well, maybe I'll wear, I have a playful robe. Also someone, oh, I forgot it. Someone gave me a little round ball to put on my nose. But I forgot it. I'm sorry. I should have brought that. I could put it on and take it off. But the one I was going to wear is a red round ball. What I was going to wear was a red robe that has Buddhas all over it. But I thought, oh, maybe it's too much. So I wore something more subdued, as you see.

[16:24]

But I brought a party favor. Once again I suggest And I just want to point out, I wasn't clever enough to think of this by myself, that bodhisattvas come into the world to play. Somebody told me about it more than once. And some Zen teachers showed me this. So I gradually got the idea that really it's about being playful as the mode in which beings are helped, in which it's the mode in which wounds are healed. It's the mode in which separation is healed.

[17:31]

But it's not just me being playful with you or you being playful with me. It's both of us interacting until we're both playing And then in the intimacy of our play, where our playfulness overlaps, where it's not my playfulness or your playfulness, but in the overlap between our playfulness, in there is where the life of Zen arises. It's there where the Bodhisattva emerges. It's there where the Buddha comes. It's there where beings are helped in the overlap of our play. bodhisattvas come into the world and invite us to a play date. If we refuse, they respond to that graciously by playing with our refusal in a way that we can learn how to accept the invitation to play.

[18:37]

Someone came and talked to me recently and he said that, actually I think he said something like, it seems like being creative and Yeah, I think being creative is what he said, but he could have said being creative and playful and joyful is taboo in Zen. So some people who actually practice here said that to me just recently. So I'm saying Zen is being creative and playful Again, I didn't say that yet, but now I'm saying in order to be creative, we must be playful. Creativity is another way to talk about helping people, being creative. But not just me being creative on you, but you being creative and me being creative in an overlap of our creativeness, that's where beings are helped.

[20:00]

it isn't just the bodhisattva that's helping people. The bodhisattva wants to help people but the helping of people happens in the overlap between the bodhisattva's creativity and the other bodhisattva's creativity. So this person in this temple here where I'm saying is this is supposed to be playland this is creativity space to joyfully create worlds together, this person is saying, it seems like that's taboo here. Because we wear black robes. I don't have black robes on today, but we often, many of us do wear black robes. I used to wear black robes. I do sometimes wear black robes, actually. I quite frequently wear black robes, but sometimes I put a little color on top. And sometimes we wear black robes and we go into a room that's kind of dark.

[21:04]

And then you're supposed to be quiet, you know, and not move. No dancing. No singing. No joy. And I'm saying, no, no, that's a setup. These are the forms we use. These are our playthings. Black robes, special hairdo, special makeup, special dance forms. We have these forms. And with these forms, they are tools for us to play. But sometimes there are tools for us to find out how we're not playful. Because if we don't know how to play and we're given a play tool, a play thing, then we will notice that we don't know how to use it in a playful way, which is not necessarily that pleasant to see.

[22:16]

So this person has a Zen play thing, has a Zen costume, which he can wear. And then she can put it on and notice that it doesn't seem playful to put it on. And we have schedules of play sessions early in the morning, like five in the morning. And people are, people are, we stipulate we stipulate. And stipulate means, one meaning of stipulate is demand, but another meaning of stipulate is specify. We specify that the meditation, that the meditation play, the play meditation, the creativity of our sangha is happening starting at five, and please come at least by about five minutes before five and be sitting in your place. We stipulate that. The second meaning of stipulate is to specify, typically as part of an agreement.

[23:24]

So part of the way bodhisattvas, one of the ways bodhisattvas play is they come to play and then they stipulate some things to play with. And also as part of an agreement. You want to be a Zen student? You want to be another kind of a student? We stipulate the play forms. Certain costume, certain posture, certain time that the play date starts and ends. These are stipulative, which I don't think is a word in English yet. These are stipulative forms which we can play with. Not descriptive. Sometimes they're descriptive, but I don't intend them as descriptive. I intend them as to specify something for us to agree we're going to play with. Like, for example, posture.

[24:26]

So we're going to stipulate upright posture and then we're going to play with it. So this morning I went around with people who are sitting upright and I played with their backs. I touched their backs and made some suggestion playfully. I didn't ask them, did you feel that I was being playful with your posture? But now I will. Did you feel like I was being playful with your posture? You're not sure? He thought so. Yeah? Not too bad? Somewhat playful? Were you playing with me? Yeah. It's early to start playing, right? Kind of early to start playing, especially when I'm kind of like sleepy or whatever. Sometimes the monks are sitting and they're practicing the form of upright posture, but they're doing it kind of grumpily. I'm grumpy. I'm a grumpy posture sitter.

[25:28]

And then if somebody comes and touches them, they go grump, grump, you know. But sometimes they sit for a long time and they go through a lot of grumpiness, but finally they say, okay, I've had enough grumpiness, now I'm ready to play. And then when someone touches, they say, okay, I'm ready to play. So someone came and told me, I'm going to tell you some stories now about Zen play, the way that the people in Zen, they come and tell me about their play dates. I'm going to tell you about some of them. So one person came to see me, actually, yeah, so I just told you about one. So she's saying that these forms are taboo against playfulness, And I suggested to her, I don't see them that way. I see them as opportunities to be creative and playful.

[26:33]

And so one way to put it is... Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to shift to another story. I think it's good to start with this one. Someone came to tell me recently, she was telling me about her practice and after she gave me a review of her practice, she said, but there still is a little bit of problem in my relationship with you. And the problem was that he was not feeling close to me. And not feeling close to me is a problem for this person. Part of the reason why it's a problem is because they used to feel close to me. But when they used to feel closer to me, when they used to feel very close to me, it was very painful to feel close to me.

[27:42]

So, and then what he did to deal with the pain was to try to feel not so close. And that seemed to turn the pain down. So there's less pain now but not so much closeness, which is, that's the current deal. But it's a problem. And then he said, maybe the problem is that I expect something of you. And I was very happy to hear that. Could you hear that in the back? Huh? Yeah. So I was very happy to hear him say that because I think that's the main problem in our relationship. Not that we're not close. Not that we are close. I don't think that's the problem. I think we are close, actually. That's what I think. And that's really what she thinks, too. The problem is that she expects something of me. And because she expects something of me, it's very painful.

[28:49]

So if she can get a little farther away from me, then the expectation isn't so painful. Having a form where we can be together in a room together and feel that form and then notice the pain of the expectation And then somehow, this is not easy, somehow relax with that pain and start being playful with it. In the playfulness with the pain of the expectation, the expectation will be burned away. and we will realize that this person is our Self. This person who is not meeting any of our old expectations or new expectations

[29:56]

So this is between two people and the same applies, well, between us and the forms of practice but also between us and the other people who are practicing the forms. So Zen students practice forms together and so one Zen student is doing a form of practice like sitting upright or walking or bowing or, you know, anyway, conducting himself or herself in a certain way. And he sees other people also doing, who are involved with the same forms, but they're not doing it in accord with his understanding of the proper way to do the form. And then a judgment arises that this person is doing it wrong. Now if if we got everybody together and did the forms, and then everybody did them in accord with my idea of the correct way to do them, then I would probably just think, how cool it is that everyone's doing things the way I think is the correct way.

[31:09]

That's okay. That happens sometimes. But when people do things differently, then I get to see my expectation, my clinging. my lack of playfulness. And that is painful. But then again, if I can be playful with people not according with my idea of what is right and the pain of expecting that that would be the case, we realize the point of these forms, the point of these rituals, which is that this person is myself. this person who is not doing the forms the way I think they should or the way they should be done. If we're devoted to the forms with expectation, then we'll get lots of pain.

[32:16]

Not all the time, but anyway, lots of pain will come if we're devoted to something with expectation. If we're devoted to it without expectation, it brings helping others. If we avoid being devoted to some forms in order to avoid the pain of expecting them, we can't really, the play has no traction, no foothold to realize itself. So we try to, for example, we try to practice upright sitting and we have some idea of what that is. And then there's our idea and what we're doing. And then other people are also doing it. And there's our idea and what they're doing.

[33:18]

We're sitting in this situation where there's lots of opportunities for playfulness and lots of opportunities for clinging and expectation. And so there's quite a bit of misery in the ritual situation when we are expecting and clinging. But then that offers opportunities for bodhisattvas to come and point out to us a way to be playful with these expectations and playful with the clinging over and over until we find a way to be devoted to the form, to be devoted to the ritual and discover with others that mutual play space of creativity. Also someone came to me who assigns, who's in a position to assign tasks, who's in a position to assign work to people here at Green Gulch.

[34:26]

And he also, yeah, he was assigning people tasks and then he has some expectation that they'll do the tasks that he assigns them. We have a position here in the meditation hall which is, we say ino, it's a Japanese pronunciation. It comes from actually Sanskrit which is karma dana, which means karma is action or task or work and dana is giving. It's a position of the person who gives the work in the meditation hall. And then we have other positions here in this temple of giving work outside this room. In the farm, in the garden, in the maintenance, in the kitchen, in the guest program, all these different areas, people have the opportunity to assign work.

[35:30]

And then they have the opportunity, like this person, to notice that when they assign tasks, they think they have an expectation. They think the person will do what they ask them to do. or that they'll do the job, and now I do the job, but do it the way they asked them to do it, or the way they think would be proper, or even the way that they carefully instructed the person, and the person said, yes, I understand, and I will do what you said. They expect that that will happen, and then they notice that they feel pain, and in their pain, they might even start disliking that person which they gave that job to. they might get into big trouble. They might think that they're better than the person who isn't doing the job in the way they expected. So I encourage this person to think of his job as a job of, you know, giving.

[36:34]

That he's giving these jobs. That he's intending to give these jobs with no expectation. Really, it's a gift. He said, would you please sweep the road? Would you please change the light bulbs with the required number of assistants? Would you please do this? Would you please do that? Or not even please, just here's a gift for you. Here's a job. I give you a job. and no expectation. And I propose to this person and to myself that if you give jobs like this, and give jobs like this, and you notice that you did expect something when they don't do what you gave them, they don't do the job you gave them. You gave them the job of doing this and they did that. So you gave them the job of this and you thought they would do this but they did that.

[37:36]

And then you notice that you did expect and then you notice, oh, there's the expectation. So then see what they did as a gift. Well, that's hard. But anyway, if you keep practicing giving assignments to people as gifts with no expectation, you will see that whatever they do is a gift to you. That they're doing it in this wide variety of ways, some of which you never ever thought they would do, that those are gifts to you. if you give these jobs with this giving attitude, your eyes will open up, your wisdom eye will open and you will see that everything that's been given to you is a gift. The last eight years have been extremely difficult for many of us in this world, not just America. We have had a very hard time seeing what's been happening as a gift

[38:39]

Now some of us see a change and we feel, oh, that's a gift. Oh, this president is a gift. Well, I would say, you're right. This president is a great gift. But the bodhisattva sees the last president, or I guess still president, as a gift too. a gift that's very difficult to meet with no expectation, a gift that's very difficult, extremely challenging to play with for many of us. So many of us are feeling like, well, I'm glad I don't have to play with that anymore. Well, no, there's no end. You still have to play with difficult people. We still have to, I say. You have to play with me. I have to play with you. Nobody is accepted from the bodhisattva's playmates.

[39:43]

If you practice giving people jobs, if you're in a position where you can give people jobs, remember, please, that you're giving it to them. It's a gift and you have no expectation. Learn to give the job with no expectation. and give it, and go into detail with the person about how you'd like them to do the job. Specify how you'd like them to do it so that you can find out if you have any expectation. And the more you give gifts and specify and discover that you didn't really give it with no expectation, the closer you get to true giving And the closer you get to that, the closer we get to seeing that everything is a gift. And then, from that view, coming to play with it, and teaching the other side how to play, and realizing the helping of people, the helping of others, the true self.

[40:59]

I'm in a position where I can ask people to do tasks and I'm practicing this. I ask them to do the task and then they do something. Sometimes it's kind of related to what I ask them to do. Sometimes it's related in the form of being the opposite of what I ask them to do. Sometimes I can't see any relationship. Well, I'm telling myself, be playful with this. Welcome this amazing response to that offer. See this as a gift. And finally realize that everything that comes is not only a gift, but is who you really are. You are who I really am.

[42:10]

I am who you really are. Also, I'm not you, and you're not me. But you know that part already. We come to Zen to learn what we haven't realized yet. How to help others. We come to Zen to realize others are our self. People in other political parties are ourself. We're coming to learn that. It's difficult to learn. But even with people in the same political parties you can start to learn this by just asking them to do stuff. Just give them a gift of asking them to do things. Request things of people. Ask them to do things. Request them to work. as gifts generously ask things of people and then you will realize in that process if you have an expectation if you do play with it play with it until there's no expectation or until there's so much playfulness that the expectation just doesn't matter it doesn't get a hold of anything anymore because the play gets so creative no one knows where to find anything

[43:31]

which is the ultimate truth. No one knows where to find anything. Nothing can be found. The whole universe is your true self. Bodhisattvas have come into the world to teach us this. I saw this years ago. I was attracted to the lesson. I'm still trying to learn. how to play with all beings. With the confidence that this is the mode in which beings are helped. With the confidence that this is the way to realize peace and harmony and happiness. Confidence in this. and to do it, and also just to make the point too that the effort to do this is ritual.

[44:38]

And in the ritual of this playfulness, our current state and the state we wish to arrive at, our current state of still not giving with expectation, or asking with expectation, that and the giving without expectation are inseparable in the practice. So we don't have to get rid of anything. We can still be asking people to do stuff just to try to manipulate them with tremendous expectations and misery and also realize in the practice that that's inseparable from the playfulness of the bodhisattvas. So I've been talking about playfulness, but you've been playfully looking as though you're not feeling very playful.

[45:40]

I appreciate you being yourself to teach me who I am. I have this song before me, I mean I have some words before me. It's the words of a song called America the Beautiful. And recently people have pointed out to me, since I'm in a position of speaking to groups sometimes, that it's kind of arrogant to refer to the United States of America as America. There's more to America than the United States of America. So it's maybe more, I don't know what the word is, but it might be good to say Americas.

[46:50]

South America is also beautiful. Canada is also beautiful. Mexico is beautiful. Of course, we know Alaska is beautiful. The Andes are beautiful. The Amazon is beautiful. So America is the beautiful, the wonderful Americas from sea to shining sea. Someone told me last night that this song is written by Irving Berlin, who was a tiny Jewish man, and he had a large non-Jewish woman named Kate Smith sing this song for him.

[47:55]

So I now request that Kate Smith sing this song. Okay? Ready, Kate? Kate? I don't know what the right tone is, Oh, no. Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountains' majesty above the fruited plains. Amen. America's, America's, God shed her grace on thee. And count thy good with brother and sisterhood from sea to shining sea.

[49:07]

May our intention equally extend with... Good morning. Can we be playful with someone who advocates destroying us? He said, can we? Yeah, I don't know if we can be, but if you ask me do I recommend it, I would say definitely, definitely. When I was, I guess I was a senior in high school or just out of high school, I started to practice judo. And judo, you say play, you play judo. And sometimes you watch the champions playing with each other. It doesn't sometimes look that playful. I think sometimes they lose sight of the point of the discipline sometimes for the sake of winning.

[50:15]

So, but the real spirit of, well, I shouldn't say the real spirit, but I think you can practice self-defense in a, I would say that when you practice self-defense in the highest and most successful way, most auspicious way, it's playful. The masters, the greatest masters of self-defense are playful bodhisattvas. But still, if you start practicing, it may take you a while to even relax in a situation where someone's bringing you a tremendous amount of energy, even wishing, perhaps, to throw you across the room. And in Judo, the first thing they teach us is how to fall. so that if someone comes up at us with aggressive energy to throw us someplace, we're not particularly afraid because we know that we know how, if they do throw us, we know we won't get hurt really.

[51:27]

So one of the things you need to learn how to do is how to playfully, in a relaxed, playful and creative way, to fall. If you know how to playfully be destroyed, then when the specter of destruction comes, you can meet it with playfulness. But it usually takes quite a bit of practice to be able to do that. But people do practice this, and they do learn it, and they actually can do that to be playful in a situation where lots of aggressive energy is coming, even with someone who actually does not want to play with you. But the idea is not just for you to play with them but actually to meet their unplayful aggressiveness with playfulness in such a way that they learn and are converted to playfulness so that you together will protect and benefit beings.

[52:36]

That is the outrageous suggestion here. But I'm not saying it's easy. even a slight insult sometimes is hard to be playful with. Or like you're ready for a big attack and then somebody gives you a slight insult. If they attacked you, you'd be okay, but if they said that you had bad breath, you'd freak out. So you have... It's very challenging, but I'm actually proposing that. And there are cases of people, many Zen stories about the Zen... the highly trained Zen practitioner being attacked and meeting the attack with playfulness and converting the attacker. There's quite a few stories like that. But there's some other stories which they don't tell about where they weren't successful. You're number two. Yes, what's your name? Bella. Bella? Yes. It's related to the statement that it's highly painful to be threatened

[53:38]

How do you be playful with global warming? Yeah, the same. Interact with global warming in a playful way. which means, you know, you playfully try different approaches. Like you try, which we're doing, I think, I think the healthy responses to global warming are playful responses, like wind power. They try ethanol, but that has problems. Solar power. These are playful, these can be playful dash scientific responses to a threat. If we respond to threat in an unplayful way, that contributes to global warming, too. That contributes to ecological disruption, too. Just being unplayful. When a child plays, it's actually testing and probing reality.

[54:56]

So we have the situation of this whole area of environmental condition that we're We're sensing that there's lots of dangerous possibilities, so how do we play with that? When you play with something, you oftentimes test it out, ask it questions, try something out. But the playfulness is to try it out with no expectation. You're being playful. If you have the expectation, then you start getting upset with the process. You start getting angry with the process. You start becoming demoralized and blaming and so on. All these negative things start arising because you're trying to interact with some situation but you're not really being playful. You're not being generous. Bella, do you have some response to that? You look dazed. Well, not just an acceptance that it might come, but also a relaxed acceptance.

[56:22]

If you can relax and accept something, its possibility or its coming, then you can play with it. If you can play with it, you can be creative with it. If you can be creative with it, then there's lots of possibilities. So actually a lot of the green sort of movement things are actually ways of being creative with the situation. Like for example, finding a way, discovering what mushrooms can do for us. Let the mushrooms play with toxic waste. They get in there and they work with it in such a way that they can decompose toxic waste that we have no scientific way so far of breaking down certain toxic material. But mushrooms know how. They know how to play with the stuff. If we watch the mushrooms, we can learn from the mushrooms how to be playful with poisonous material.

[57:23]

Yes. Hi. Hi. So I'm a little bit stuck in a situation where I don't know how to be playful because I feel regretful about something I did and wish I had done something more skillful. Yes. Can you hear her? Yeah, so now you're bringing this up. What's the relationship between playfulness and regret? Well, usually, a classical spiritual technique is to confess the things that you regret. But confessing them with relaxation. So if you confess regret with relaxation, now you already know how to maybe confess regret and be tense about it.

[58:38]

So what you need to do is you need, one thing you can do is you confess your regret to somebody who knows how to play with your regret. to someone who can hear your regret, hear what you think was unskillful, and meet it with relaxation and playfulness so you can be playful with it. But sometimes people think, well, I shouldn't be playful with my unskillful action. I'm saying, playfulness doesn't mean you disregard it. Dislike playfulness doesn't mean you disregard poison. It means you relax with the poison. And when you relax with the poison or relax with the unskillfulness, you open up to creative possibilities. If you tense up with poison, if you tense up with unskillfulness, you close down your wisdom eye, closes If you open to the poison and open to the unskillfulness, your own and others, but opening doesn't mean denying it. It means, I see my unskillfulness and I would like to show my unskillfulness to a bodhisattva playmate.

[59:44]

And the playmate looks at it and says, wow, that's like horrible. But they do it in a playful way. And you can feel that, yeah, it's terrible what I did. And I really feel it's terrible and I'm really sorry. And also, I'm willing to get over it and move on and be skillful. No. Actually, now that I've done this unskillful thing and confessed it and I feel flexible, I feel really ready and energetic to do something skillful. And the other person is there celebrating that turn with you and you're ready to move on and do something good. You don't want to spend the rest of your life, what do you call it, demoralized and paralyzed by your past actions. unskillfulness. You want to get it out and learn how to play with it. And then skillfulness will be developed and will come forth in that interplay between the playfulness of the thing and your playfulness.

[60:46]

But you have to get it out there. You have to get the unskillfulness and regret out there so you can play with it. Yes. Yes. Excuse me, playful Hugh, could you come up here, please? Oh, my God! He's pregnant with apples. Come closer, Hugh, please. To examine the question whether Buddha was playful, through a story that I heard about early on in expressing his philosophy to followers, he arguably talked about becoming enlightened as an attainment.

[61:51]

And yet, then comes the Lotus Sutra, which I promised to go and read where he essentially says, oh, I was just fooling with you folks. It's not a matter of trying to attain this. It's a matter of having it come out of ourselves from inside. So the basic question, was Buddha playful, do you suppose? I suppose Buddha was playful. For example, one time, well, let's just start with the first story, right? So he said, okay, it's time for me to really settle down and I'm going to sit under this tree and I'm not going to move from under this tree until the way is attained. So he's sitting there playing with the tree, first of all. He's playing with the tree and he's playing with the earth. And then, when word gets out that he's going to not move until he changes the way, various demonic forces come to test him.

[62:57]

And they're coming to see, well, can he play with us? So first aggressive, negative, destructive energies come to him. and he plays with them. He plays with them by meeting their aggressiveness with soft, playful, loving kindness. He's not trying to trick them, he's not trying to make them go away. He meets them with playfulness and they disperse. Then another kind of potentially distracting energy comes, more seductive. And pleasure-proposing energies come and he meets them with loving playfulness and they disperse. And then the most difficult test comes which is related to what you're saying. Who do you think you are to attain the way? You. You're being arrogant to think you could attain the way.

[64:01]

He doesn't exactly say this but he's saying, well, it's not really, I don't mean maintain the way, I mean I'm going to sit here until the way is attained by all beings. And, you know, I need the support of all beings to do this. So then he says, just let me check to see if the earth will play with me. So he takes his right hand and he touches the earth and asks the earth to play with him. And the earth roars and sings and with a thousand voices, we love you, Shakyamuni. We appreciate that you practice a way that realizes that we are you and you are us. So that was his playful thing in his enlightenment story. And there's another story where he's actually, there's a supposedly historical mass murder and serial killer who was actually living near where Buddha was living and had killed many people and was about to kill his mother, supposedly, in the story.

[65:08]

And the Buddha sees that and the Buddha gets between this murderer and his mother so then the murderer decides to kill the Buddha. But the Buddha just keeps walking and this murderer is running after him and can't catch him. And the murderer yells out to him, hey yogi, why can't I catch you? And the Buddha says, because I've stopped. And the murderer snaps out of his insanity and becomes a great disciple of the Buddha. And a friend of mine has written an article about Buddha, it's called Buddha and the Terrorist, about this story. about how Buddha met this terrorist, this violent person, with not just loving kindness, but this playful little thing. If I just keep walking, and then he just notices, well, he can't catch him. How come? A little game he played with him. Kind of snapped him out of it. So, yeah, these are stories. Another story, which maybe doesn't sound playful, but just comes to my mind.

[66:14]

A woman had a... in a world-class set of traumas happened in her life. Like, you know, I think first of all she lost her kids in some storm, then she lost her husband to disease, then she lost her parents, and she just totally went nuts. And she's wandering around, you know, emaciated and naked and just totally, totally crazy. And she just happened to walk into the presence of this Buddha. And she got near him and he said, snap out of it, sister. And she did. So you could say, well, that sounds like a magician. But magicians are, you know, magic and playfulness and ritual are kind of in the same world. And also the Buddha also teaches science, and the Buddha's science is a playful science. So the Buddha works with environmental pollution in a playful, scientific, magical way.

[67:22]

And works with people and other living beings in a playful, magical, scientific way. All these things creatively working together to make possibilities of helping beings. And you just go and then Buddhist disciples, many stories of Buddhist disciples being playful and in violent situations. Many stories. And that's what attracted a lot of us to Buddhism, is these practitioners of playfulness who just circumvent harm and bring good through the playfulness. It isn't really that they do it. It's the playfulness does it. Thank you. Yeah, all the way up there. It's more playful that way. Anybody else? Anybody else that wants to come up here? Oh, and before you, please sit down and hear your microphone.

[68:30]

If someone wanted to see the robe that I didn't wear, here's the robe that I didn't wear. Brought to you from China. Would you take hold of the mark? So there it is. That's the robe. No. In my nose, yeah. I'm sorry about that. I should always bring that with me. There we go, yeah, okay. So sometimes people talk about

[69:32]

how good it is to go into a situation with really clear intention. Like to be, to have just like rock solid intentionality behind your actions. Rock solid? Or great intentionality. And so I'm wondering if you could talk about the difference or the overlap or difference whatever, between intention and expectation out of a situation. And if you feel it's worth going into a situation with intention. Well, just for example, if I were going to, if you asked to receive, for example, the Bodhisattva precepts, I might say, okay, I'll give them to you. And I would really give them to you with the intention that they would be beneficial to you and that you would practice them. And I would even ask you, I would specify, you know, will you practice these? And you may say, yes, I will. And I say, will you practice these? And you say, yes, I will.

[70:46]

I say, will you practice these? Yes, I will. And then I say, wonderful that you're that way. And I'm just so moved that you tell me you want to practice these precepts of compassion. But then the ceremony is over and I do not expect that you will. It's stipulative. We stipulate, we specify, these are the precepts. I just want to know, do you specify that you're going to practice them? Do you, and over and over, to get it really clear, is this, you're going to practice these? Great, I'm so happy to hear that you commit to practice them. And then I watch and see if the person doesn't practice them. And then, but I'm not, I'm not angry at them, you know. I'm not disappointed in them. I'm interested though, how come they aren't doing what they said they were going to do? So I go say, I just want to check something out with you. Did you say you wanted to practice this precept? And you say, yes, I did. And you say, are you practicing it now? And you say, no, I'm not. I say, I just want to check, thank you. And I say, do you want me to keep checking?

[71:48]

And you say, yes, please. You know, I have that kind of thing happen to me millions of times. So I've learned, you know, when I first started giving people assignments, you know, really good assignments like being compassionate. Give them a precept of compassion. And when I noticed that they didn't do it, I got disappointed because I expected. But I've given it up. It's been burned off me. I don't expect people to be good anymore. But I love that they want to be. And I love to assist them. And I don't get tired assisting them if I don't expect that they will be. So I really have the intention that we will practice good that we will help each other. I have that intention that we will. I want us to. I want us to live for the welfare of others. I do, I do, I do. And I don't expect that we will. And therefore I can continue to want it. Because it's not painful for me to want you to be good if I don't expect you to be good.

[72:50]

But if I want you to be good and I expect you to be good, pretty soon I'm going to stop saying, well, maybe I wouldn't, maybe it wouldn't be so painful if I didn't want them to be good. So I'm going to stop wanting them to be good And then when they aren't good, it won't hurt me. So then I've really got a problem. I'd rather have the other problem of wanting myself and others to practice good but not expecting. Or wanting and expecting and then getting over the expecting. So how do you go about setting up your intention then, because it sounds like you... I don't really set my intention. The intentions are given to me. And they're given to me by my past intentions and by other people. So, you know, like, I wouldn't have had an intention to give a talk here if I wasn't invited to give the talk. Somebody invites me to give a talk, so I say, okay. So then the intention to give the talk arises.

[73:51]

Now, to go from an intention to a vow... that requires a certain, well I would say certain things have to be brought together. So if you intend to be good but you wish to elevate your intention to be good to the vow to be good, then you need to like have a witness. Then you need to be aware that you have conflicting intentions. And you need to, like, know that this matters to somebody, whether you follow this intention or not. And you also need to know something about time, the difference between self and other, and things like that. And you get all that together, then you can elevate your intention to a vow, to a commitment. But the intention, you don't make your own intentions, and also you don't make your own vows. You need other people to help you to make vows. You can't make a vow by yourself. You need a witness or witnesses in order to really do it. You can't follow through on your intention to help people without other people helping you help people.

[74:56]

If you think so, you're not being playful. You're hogging the practice of good. We must have help from playmates in order to practice good. Someone told me that we can call this the Playpendo. This is the playpendo. No, that was Linda Ruth Cutts. Yeah, she's playful. Come, please come. Yes, please come. As to the question of grandchildren,

[75:59]

Yeah. Talk about playing. And I can't walk and chew gum at the same time. So I do have a big problem with the kind of stuff that comes at me, trying to be really with them. And then a lot of times I'm also having a dinner party kind of thing. I just set stuff up on the stove and I'm trying to talk to grownups and I'm being pulled in about eight different ways. Yeah. And is there something that Buddha can help me with? I mean, you could really be playful in that situation. Well, you know, I often use grandchildren as an example that helps people understand practice principles which they just can't believe when they first hear them. But one of them is, one principle is that all compounded things are unstable.

[77:07]

All compounded things are unstable and not worthy of confidence. And people feel bad about that, like, you know, like your compounded husband or wife is not worthy of confidence. They're unstable. Yes, they are unstable. Some people say, oh, that's terrible. But if you say grandchildren are unstable and not worthy of confidence, people feel like, okay. It's not a bad thing to say a grandchild isn't worthy of confidence. Right? That they're unstable, unpredictable, unreliable, uncontrollable, you know. So, but just because they're unstable, unreliable, and also quite evil, you know, extremely selfish, sometimes want to kill various beings, you know. Each other. Each other, want to kill each other. They hate, they want, my grandson says, I'm sorry, but I want to kill him. You know, I just want to kill him.

[78:12]

And I said, I'm really glad you can express yourself. But just because they're this way, it doesn't mean they're not worthy of devotion. We can adore unstable, unreliable beings. So when they're doing this to you, how do you adore them? How do you play with them? Now, if you're attached to some result, like you're trying to control a dinner party or them, then I think I think you're not going to find the place. So one example I give of my grandson was he lived in Chinatown, San Francisco Chinatown, and we would go out to play in the street, take a walk to the park, and on the way to the park, you know, on the busy streets of San Francisco Chinatown during, you know, business hours, he wants to go into the street. So I'm trying to be playful with him, not overpower him, not try to control him.

[79:13]

you know, try to practice my principles of treating beings with respect and kindness, not trying to control them into what I think's the best way. And yet there's this dangerous situation. The street. Trucks. And so I tried to negotiate with him in a playful way without just overpowering him with my greater weight and so on. And we did okay. But still I was a little bit trying to control him away from the street. It was unsatisfactory from my point of view, negotiation. Later I thought what I should have done was to go with him into the street, you know, to play with him. If I was playing with him, and I said, okay, let's go, he might say, oh, no. Or he might come with me. But when he got into the street with me, he would be able to feel the energy of the trucks and so on.

[80:22]

And he would stay close to me. He wouldn't run away from me. He would feel the danger. But on the sidewalk, he couldn't feel it. And in fact, I can go into the street and face the dangers of the street. But also I can be on the sidewalk and face the dangers of the sidewalk. I have some training in how to deal with these physical dangers. And I can teach that to him on the sidewalk and I can go into the street with him and teach him how to be in the street with the trucks. And then I don't have to try controlling him. I'm dancing with him and playing with him in the street with the trucks. Which might mean that we actually don't go very far into the street. We stay kind of away from the trucks. Another example of this which is related is one time with his mother a generation before. We were taking a bath together, he and his mother, his future mother. And her mother was out of town, so it was just father and daughter together taking a bath.

[81:23]

She was about five or six. At the time he wanted to go on the street, he was about two. or three. So she says, she says, let's go into the kitchen and get the dishes and put them in mommy's bed and break them. So this time, on this occasion, I did much better. I had a playful response. I said, okay. And then she said, no. They're testing reality. They kind of know the street's dangerous. That wasn't the first time he tried to go in the street. He's crossed the street many times. He wanted to test reality. So he's got his grandfather there to play with him and test reality. So... But if you're not willing to go with the grandchild, then it's just going to be a wonderful struggle for many years, hopefully many years.

[82:40]

But you can start playing with them, which means you have to sort of like give up and go with them. But when you go with them, you bring grandmother's intelligence and grandmother's experience. So they're not just playing with another kid, they're playing with They want to play with you. They want your intelligence. They don't want to lose their grandmother. They want to see, what would it be like if I suggested this to her? What would she do? And so you can teach them that. Every day. Every day. But the highest priority is this playfulness. Not that you finish dinner. Of course, there's safety. You might say that's a higher priority. I would say, for me, that playfulness is a higher priority than safety. Because, you know, we can't control playfulness. but we can teach playfulness so that if people get in trouble, they have playfulness to deal with it. Of course we want to protect them by going into the street with them. Lift them up in the tree. Yeah, right. You can do all this stuff, but it's not to control.

[83:43]

It's to teach generosity and playfulness so that they can realize the truth and learn how to help people. rather than learn, my grandmother controlled me, so I'll control my grandchildren. Okay, well, that's not the Buddha way. A lot of people say, my grandmother never did anything. That's what she taught me. She was always there just watching and never did anything. That's what I value most. She let me, she watched me learn, you know, do my experiments. She was always there and she never, like, tried to control me. I've heard that from some people. I thought, yeah. I had it both ways with mine. Right, you got it both ways. So congratulations. How many did you have? I have four grandchildren. Yeah, great. Good for you. They're all very interesting. Thank you. They're all very what? They're all very interesting.

[84:44]

Oh, yeah. You should meet them. I will. I know. Yeah. um my biggest uh challenge is which i i put my heart into what i speak and please if you think it just help me with the fear i just want to be free of fear and just be and just You want to be free of fear. Free of fear. And if there's anything that I can be playful to breathe into fear, to not fear the fear, I would be willing to do it. Yeah, breathing is good. When you're afraid, breathing is really good. Breathing is one of the main ways to play with things. Nice move.

[85:49]

Thank you. How's the playfulness going? Huh? Are you shaking your head? Is that a playful shaking? It's contract. Use your hips a little bit there. Use your hips. Use your hips. Wiggle your hips. Atta girl. Get your whole body into it. Yeah. Too much in my head. Yeah, it's too much in your head. Stand up and work your whole body. Get it down. Yeah, there you go. That's a belly dance. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Play with it. It keeps crawling on me.

[86:53]

Yeah. Yeah. You aren't trying to get rid of it, are you? Sometimes, most of the time. We're not trying to get rid of the fear. If you try to get rid of it, it grows. It thrives on being rejected. See, that's where I back off. I go with the intention to some degree, and then there's a limit, and as soon as I hit the limit, I kind of back off to see the whole story, and then get some energy back. Oh, that's a mistake. That's how I do it. To back off to get is a mistake. To back off as a gift is a fine. It's okay to retreat as a gift. I'm going away. Bye-bye. But it's a gift. I'm not trying to get something. I'm just giving you the gift of me going out the door.

[87:57]

I don't expect that I'm going to get out the door, but I'm going. Here I go. This is my gift to you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. And you say, would you give me a different gift? And I say, what do you want? You say, stay. I say, okay. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Don't do things to get. Don't try to get something from what you're doing. Give what you're doing with no expectation. But I lose ground. It's okay to use ground. Ground is giving itself to you. Don't take the ground. Receive it. You're being given ground. We're being given the earth. It's given to you. It's given to me. Receive it. Say, thank you. Thank you, ground. Every step. Thank you. [...] Don't forget to say thank you to the earth. It's supporting you. Don't take the earth. Don't use the earth.

[88:59]

And then give yourself. With the earth's support, give yourself. And you do give yourself, but you must do it with no expectation. I know. I need to learn how to fall. You need to learn how to fall, yes. That's right. Let's see you fall now. That's pretty good. That's pretty good. It's even okay to put some padding down when you're learning how to fall. And the more your body you use when you fall, the less you get hurt. Lots of surface area. Don't just fall on your elbow. Fall on your whole forearm and your whole thigh to your thigh and so on. Use your whole body to meet the earth and it won't be so bad. Yes, please come. Especially when you get older.

[90:03]

Somebody said when you get older, the ground starts looking farther and farther away. So that's why people want to start to bend over and get closer to the ground. So as you get older, you've got to keep working to stand up straight, even though it's so far down there now. And if you can stand up straight and also from standing up straight, go down. When you get older, don't stay away from the earth. Get down on the ground. Sit on the ground. Lie on the ground. Put your body on the ground. Get up and go down. The more you communicate physically with the ground, the less you'll be afraid of falling. And if you get afraid of falling, you can just curl up in a ball. But once you're in a ball, then roll. Roll on the ground. That's good. Yes? What is the effect of playfulness on trust? What is the effect of playfulness on trust? Your trust in playfulness will increase. Your confidence that playfulness is the way to live will increase.

[91:13]

It will get stronger and stronger. And you will be more and more interested and playful with other people who don't know how to play. when people say, I don't want to play with you, you'll be more likely to have a playful response to their rejection of your playful offer. Because again, when you're playful and you ask for a play date, you don't expect the person to accept your invitation. It's still a gift. I offer you a play date. If you don't accept it, it's a lovely day anyway. And I'm glad I offered you an invitation to play And when I do that, my competence in playfulness increases. When I don't do it, even then my competence in playfulness might increase because when I don't do it, I feel lousy. So it's competence in the practice.

[92:13]

Competence in a practice that you don't expect anything from. Competence in giving yourself to the practice of giving. You're welcome. I find that with different people, I'm in my playfulness. Yeah. And I don't understand why I can't be consistent with my own playfulness with everyone. Yeah. Even with the same person, as they change, your playfulness changes. So I see my grandson sitting at the breakfast table.

[93:16]

I go down and sit across from him. I look at him, which I like to do. And he says, he wrinkles up his face, and then he says, would you stop staring at me So I start looking around the room. And then when he sees that I'm not, you know, that he can tell me what to do, and I'm, you know, I'm under his control, things start to move on to some other activity. And somebody else, it's different. And him on a different occasion is different. It's very dynamic, constantly changing. And so my playfulness changes too. I can't play the way I played before and still be playful. Yet there's times I want to play and I'm with somebody and it just seems like with that particular person I am not playful myself.

[94:22]

Yeah. Or they're not playful. Or they're not playful. Yeah. So there's some occasions where we have a history of tensing up. When you tense up, at that moment you can't play. But then you can relax with the tension and then you can play. So relaxation, playfulness, creativity, and understanding and helping people are a process. But the first gut level or knee-jerk reaction of tensing, that right there, unless we recover and see that that's a gift, we're caught at that moment. And the process of playfulness is temporarily blocked by tensing up. But then if you can relax with the block, with the tensing, the process starts again. So your awareness of the inability to play is the beginning of another play round.

[95:28]

If you can notice, oh, I'm not being playful. I'm tensing up. Oh, okay. Now I have something to relax with, now that I've noticed it. But if you don't notice it, then it's pretty hard to recover. So mindfulness is necessary for this process to keep rolling. I'm sort of understanding as I'm sitting here that Playfulness wasn't necessarily highly regarded in my family as a child. And with some people, I think that I actually think of playfulness as trite within myself. In other words, I become very judgmental of myself. If they don't want to play with me, I start thinking of it as very trivial, and I put myself down for even wanting it so much. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I was just thinking of, you know, there was this novel which I read, actually.

[96:30]

I don't read very many novels, but I did read this novel. It's called The Name of the Rose. And it's a novel about a monk who put poison on a book. And in the book was a picture of Jesus laughing. And this monk felt like it was sacrilege to say that Buddha, I mean to say that Jesus would laugh, that Jesus would be playful. But this monk valued books so much that he didn't destroy the book. He just made it so that anybody who read it, if they touched the book, they would get the poison on their fingers and would die. So he didn't want to get rid of the book, but he wanted to make sure nobody knew that the book said that Jesus laughed. So there's some feeling like, you know, this great

[97:33]

compassionate being was not playful. Some people feel like Jesus was not playful, that the teacher of love was not playful. And some people also say that Buddha was not playful. They say, Buddha smiled, but he didn't laugh with his mouth wide open. Buddha didn't go, ha, ha, ha. Buddha didn't do that. Some people say that. And that's one thing nice about the Zen masters, is they're allowed to open their mouth wide when they laugh. but I really don't know that Buddha didn't open his mouth really wide, but maybe he didn't. But I think the Buddha was playful. But there's some feeling like if somebody's got cancer, if somebody's really sick, if somebody's mentally tormented, if somebody's in hell, you should not be playful. This is not a time to play. And I'm proposing that somebody has to teach that person how to play in order for them to become free of cancer, mental illness, torture, poverty.

[98:42]

Once they can start being playful, then the process of liberation is initiated. Well, it's initiated before that, but like when somebody's offering them the opportunity and they're rejecting it, still the process has started. But somebody has to show them how to be playful with their horrific situation, with their terrifying circumstances. So how could I be playful with my own judgment of being playful in a situation when, for example, I'm with somebody with cancer? So you're visiting somebody with cancer and you feel like you shouldn't be playful? Mm-hmm. I feel judgmental against myself if I'm being light about it or even worse, playful. Yeah, okay. So how can I help that person to become playful if I'm judging myself? Well, we'll start with you. Yeah, I'm going to start with you. So you feel like I can't be playful or I feel like I can't be playful with this sick person.

[99:49]

Maybe they're even just depressed and I feel out of place. Like they're depressed and I come in all and notice they're depressed and they even tell me. Yeah, and I'm just all, hee, playful. Hee hee. So hee hee might not be the right kind of playfulness. Playfulness doesn't mean that you decide beforehand how you're going to be playful. You might go in to see the person and they're depressed and you might say, How are you feeling? Terrible. Yeah. You're feeling terrible, huh? Would it help you at all if I went hee-hee? No. Well, then I won't go hee-hee then. Is that okay? Thank you. You're welcome. And I might feel quite playful when I just did that with you. I mean, I did. Glad you enjoyed it. Really?

[101:02]

Are you really glad? Yes. Wow. Amazing. Yeah. This is a quick success. Uh-oh. I'm glad. One of the key things is that When you feel in yourself that you're ready to play, you go to the person and give yourself to them. If you don't feel like you're ready to play, maybe you should just work on yourself a little bit until you feel playful. And then when you do, then go give yourself to them. It doesn't have to look playful. It's a spiritual thing. It's that you're just giving yourself with no expectation. And what comes up will be given to you. You will be given what to say. It will be given to you. But if you're not being playful, you may not see it. The gifts are coming and you don't see them, perhaps. This might be a perfect time to stop and have lunch.

[102:11]

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