Did you hear what she said? She said that she's concerned that if she would be open and welcoming of her delusion, that the delusion would get bigger and more powerful. Is that something? I think a lot of people have that feeling like, give it an inch and it'll take a mile. So I'm... I have a response to that. Want to hear it? It's possible that if you give your delusion an inch, it will take a mile. It might happen. But it might not, also. And I don't know what the likelihood is. But if by chance it gets bigger, if delusion comes and you welcome it, and it seems to get bigger, I would recommend welcoming the enlarged delusion. And then if you welcome it and it gets bigger, I'd recommend welcoming the enlarged, enlarged delusion.

[01:08]

And it just keeps growing and growing, and you keep welcoming it. And then all there is is just totally all-consuming, endless delusion. And there's complete openness to it. Enlightenment will be realized. And what do you do with that sense of repulsion that comes with it? Well, repulsion is a delusion. Repulsion, being repulsed or feeling repulsion towards someone is one of the main things to welcome in life. And it's also quite difficult to welcome repulsion. So if you find someone... especially if you're like devoted to the welfare of others, and then you find someone repulsive and want to get away from them, you kind of know that that doesn't, it's not literally compatible with being devoted to the welfare of this person, to want to get away from them.

[02:16]

So not only do you feel repulsed or something in yourself, but you're also embarrassed that you're impulsed. And the Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha, tells a story of feeling repulsion towards some people prior to his awakening. So even the Buddha felt repulsed by people, but he also felt embarrassed when he thought about it. It seemed ridiculous to be repulsed by people who were basically, he was going to be like the people he was repulsed by, like he was repulsed by old sick people. He said, isn't it ridiculous for me to feel repulsion towards them because I'm going to be like them pretty soon. So, there's repulsion plus embarrassment of repulsion among bodhisattvas. Bodhisattvas feel embarrassed when they feel repulsed often. And I'm saying welcome the repulsion, welcome that you feel unloving towards people, welcome that. Welcome that you are embarrassed that you feel unloving.

[03:19]

And I'm suggesting that enlightenment is there, totally embracing and intimate with your lack of compassion, repulsion, etc. And if you practice being intimate with lack of compassion, you are exercising right while there still is this obnoxious delusion, or delusion which you find obnoxious. So you have delusions about delusions. Like this is delusion plus it's obnoxious. That's the second delusion. And now I'm really a stupid person, but actually I'm better than those other people. Mountains. Mountains of delusion. Opportunities for the exercise of compassion. All these things are objects of compassion. And loving them is letting them be fully themselves and also exercising enlightenment. And it's hard. It's hard when you find some, especially some suffering person who you find repulsive.

[04:28]

You feel bad. I mean, you might feel bad. Like, I should be loving this person. This person needs love and I feel like I want to get away from them. Enlightenment is there, intimate with you, wanting to get away from this person. And if you can really be fully that way, someone can come up to you and say, hey, Reb, are you kind of like shrinking back from being kind to this person? I probably could say, I wouldn't be like, well, how dare you accuse me of being uncompassionate? I'm already there, you know. I'm already there, yeah. This is uncompassionate guy right here, right now. You got me. Yes, brother, you. And you, so, if you can welcome, you can welcome being indicted for being unwelcoming and so on. But it's not easy and you got to be still in order to get with it.

[05:31]

If you're not still, you miss the opportunity of like embracing this current personality unloving response. But embracing an unloving response is a loving response to unloving response. And we can be loving towards unlovingness. We can. We can be kind to low-quality compassion. Or we can even be kind towards what appears to be cruelty. But it's often hard to be kind to cruelty. Often hard to be kind to cruelty. Enlightenment is challenged then. But if we can be kind to the appearance of cruelty, then we open to the non-duality.

[06:35]

of the Buddhas and the sentient beings. Then we open to the reality of everyone supporting us and us supporting everyone. But we have to operate on these little tough spots of karmic consciousness in order to open to that realm of harmony beyond karmic consciousness. Or not exactly beyond, but it's the harmony that's beyond karmic consciousness. Because all karmic beings are supporting each other. That's enlightenment. All deluded beings are helping all other deluded beings. But it's hard to tune into that because it means being cozy with impossible renditions of karmic consciousness. Cozy not like, you know, leaning into it. Cozy like being still with it. being welcoming, being patient, being calm, and being relaxed.

[07:39]

And then also there's real high-quality, joyful versions of karmic consciousness, and those too, we shouldn't be dwelling in those either. So we don't dwell on the bad ones, we don't dwell on the good ones. We treat both with uprightness and humility and kindness. Either, and this is what bodhisattva's vow to do. But it's hard. It's hard for sentient beings to practice that. You want to come up? Yeah? If you come up, I can give you a microphone. And you got to hold hands with Michael. There you go. Nice to see you, Rick.

[08:41]

Nice to see you again. Thank you. I saw her last week. She's coming to talk. That wasn't here, and I walked with nature, and it was a glorious morning. Great, great. I'm in a little bit of a bind with a friend of mine, so I'm going to get personal. Okay. Because I really would like some illumination here. My friend lied to me, and she got caught in the lie. And I didn't expect this particular person to lie to me. It just hit me, like, you are lying. I don't want to sit in judgment of her. I'd lie, I'll lie again. But what I'm confused about is how to negotiate back to trust. How to negotiate back to trust. Yes, I got hurt, and now she wants to just close off and not talk about it.

[09:42]

And I honestly don't know what to do. I don't know how to come back to where our friendship is based on trust again. I don't know how to be about it other than forgiving. Well, you might not be surprised to hear me say, if you're confused, embrace the confusion. Now, if you embrace that confusion, if you're loving towards that confusion, that would be an example of you trusting the practice of enlightenment. that you trust embracing your confusion. I'm not recommending you get rid of your confusion. I'm not recommending you to get rid of confusion. I'm talking about ways to realize enlightenment.

[10:46]

And realizing enlightenment doesn't come from trying to get rid of confusion when it's there. It is to be intimate and not separate from confusion. Now, that's what I want to trust. I don't trust people to tell the truth. I trust loving people who seem to be lying, and I trust loving people who seem to be telling the truth. Now, I'm not saying that people never lie. If there was a person who was lying, and I saw them, and I thought they were lying, what I would be dealing with is not their lie, but my story about their lie. For example, I might say, you're lying, and they say, yes, I'm lying, but I'm not lying the way you think I'm lying. Or they might say, I'm not lying. Or they might say, it doesn't matter, or get over it. Yeah, they might say, get over it. They might do a lot. Meantime, you've got your version which embraces all that.

[11:50]

And if you love your version, not like your version, not approve of your version as reality. Confusion being the version of confusion? Yeah, even I'm confused, I wouldn't approve that as that's reality that you're confused. I would say just love the story that you're confused. Now, if you have a story that someone's lying, love that story. Not a proven love. That's not love, that's pride. So love that story. Love my story. Say that again, because I get lost. Love being lost. Okay. Don't try to get rid of being lost. Just be lost here now. And now, being lost, you can also listen to me say, when you... when you... Whatever you think all day long, that's karmic consciousness.

[12:51]

And karmic consciousness is not reality. It's a result of, it depends on, ignoring something. You can't tell a story about what's going on here without ignoring something. Right. like you can't really get into like today's Sunday without kind of like ignoring today's Saturday a little bit. Can't really be open today's Thursday or today's really like beyond any kind of calendric calculation. you have to sort of kind of ignore that stuff and kind of go for it. It's Sunday, or it's sort of Sunday. But even there, there's still a little bit of like, it's kind of like not Saturday as much as Sunday. So whenever you tell a story, it's kind of storytelling, which is karmic consciousness, depends on ignoring some stuff in order to tell a story. All other things, if you will. It's an exclusion of all other things, you could say, or just exclusion of at least a little bit. So karmic consciousness... You can have a karmic consciousness of lying.

[13:52]

There could be such a thing as lying. It's possible. But we don't know directly. We have our story about it and we have our told of it. So that's our usual sentient being condition. So I'll have my story about what's best. I think it's best, my story is it's best to tell the truth and my story is you're not telling the truth and so on. So I have to take care of my story about what's going on. But I don't trust I don't trust trees. I don't trust pain. I don't trust pleasure. I don't trust right and wrong. I trust what? I trust being intimate with what's happening. And probably mostly what's going on is what's happening is karmic consciousness. So in the trusting, being intimate with what's happening, if we can stay with my story about the lie, I'm trusting that it just, we do, people do whatever they do, I think.

[14:59]

Brushstrokes, and there's... Well, you can trust that too, but you're trusting that is another example of a karmic consciousness. Okay, in what way? Well, like you think, people will do what they're going to do. That's another kind of consciousness. That's a constructed version of the world. People will do, you know, boys will be boys or whatever. Humans, we do whatever we do. Yeah, so that's a story about humans. Okay. Some other people don't have that story. They say humans don't do whatever they want to do. Some people say humans are totally contradictory. That's another story. There's not really an alternative. Sentient beings don't really have an alternative. But without an alternative, are we loving that or not? And if we are loving it, we're practicing loving the storytelling function of our life.

[16:03]

And if we're practicing that, we realize enlightenment. Because enlightenment is intimate with the storytellers. And storytellers don't really have an alternative. They're just telling stories all the time because that's their background. And that's normal for sentient beings is to be telling stories about their friends and what's good for their friends and what's good to be doing here and whether they should be in a carpool lane or not. We have these stories. And these stories are objects of compassion. and passion towards the stories is full, then there's intimacy with the story, and then we realize enlightenment, because enlightenment is always intimate with delusion. So with my friend... It's not the slightest bit separate, but it's not the same, because unless you exercise it, we seem to be in a different space from exercising it, namely to be half-heartedly deluded.

[17:06]

thinking we should be something else, or that they should be something else, rather than enlightenment welcomes people however they appear. Well, the appearance of people is not the way they are, but we welcome the way they appear. And when we welcome the way they appear, then we realize the intimacy of enlightenment and the realm of appearance, and in that intimacy we open to the way things actually are, namely that they appear because of causes and conditions and cannot be grasped. And we can tolerate reality when we can tolerate our karmic consciousness. If we can stand or sit and be still with karmic consciousness, which is very hard, because it's so energetic and turbulent and changing and challenging, if we can be present with it, we can realize what's intimate with it.

[18:10]

When we can be present with being a sentient being, we realize what's intimate with them, the Buddhas. In that intimacy, in that meeting, we're open to the way things actually are. It's a big job. It's a big job. And now here's another one. And now here's another one. And now here's another one. So we need to keep resting all the time. Keep being still. At the beginning of or between each moment, but really at the beginning of each moment, be still. And then it's good to stay still through the whole moment, so when the next one starts, you're already ready for the next moment to be still. And when you're still, you'll find out, if you don't move, you'll find out you're present. Present for what? The next challenge, the next karmic insult, the next opportunity for patience, the next opportunity for compassion, the next opportunity for service.

[19:21]

Oh, now I have this thing coming called a friend who I trusted who's lying. Now how can I serve this situation? How can I love this situation? So you might not get back to where you used to think that you could trust them because they were this thing all the time. You might not get back to that world anymore. But you enter a new world of infinite compassion rather than having certain people who tell the truth, and you can trust, and other people who you're not sure. You love both of them. And it's wonderful when they lie, but it's also sad when they lie, because if they're in that same world, they're suffering. And that's part of it, is I want to be in service to... You do want to be in service to eliminating suffering.

[20:25]

But before eliminating it, we have to love it. If we hate suffering, generally speaking, it seems to sustain it. I don't want to be in service to the suffering. And I have to look to myself, and I do. Well, you don't have to be in service of the suffering, maybe, but love the suffering. Not like it. You don't have to like it. Love it. Be compassionate towards it. That doesn't really sustain it. It just gives love before it goes away. And in some cases, the suffering is going to be followed by more and more and more, again and again. So if we wait for the suffering to go away, to be compassionate, We should be compassionate now with the current suffering. Then compassion can grow without the suffering going away.

[21:28]

But actually the suffering does go away, but then more comes. Because suffering is impermanent. But that doesn't mean that's the end of it. It just means this is gone now. Now we get a new one. A new one. A new one. It is endless. It is endless. It's also beginningless. But is suffering endless? Basically, ultimately suffering is beginningless and endless. Ultimately suffering doesn't really arise. Ultimately suffering cannot be found. It's insubstantial. You can't grasp it. And if you love it completely, you'll find out that it can't be grasped, which is a big relief. it loses its harmful potential when you realize how it really is. That is actually my experience of it. As soon as I love it, it does cease to have dominion.

[22:35]

And also as soon as you love it, something wonderful has just come alive called compassion. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for asking me to come. You're welcome. She said, thank you for asking me to come on. In the vocabulary that I grew up with, to be deluded was to be stupid. To be deluded is to be stupid? And it's hard to have towards delusion than that. It's hard to have a loving attitude towards stupidity? Yeah. Yeah. It is hard. Except when it's easy. When's that?

[23:39]

Huh? When's that? When enlightenment's on the job. Then... then there's love of stupidity. But sometimes... Including my own, of course. I mean, my own is the best. ...story I tell, which was another traffic jam. And I was... But I was in the driver's seat this time. I saw a traffic jam and I turned to avoid it and got into a worse one. And I said, that was the stupidest thing I ever did. My partner said, even when you confess your stupidity, you give yourself a compliment. So, you know, confess your stupidity. But learn to confess it fully, not just sort of a little bit.

[24:44]

Like, that was the stupidest thing. Okay, well here we have another example, which doesn't approach some of the other things I've done, but here we have another little example of my stupidity. And, you know, to say that, you know, as a song, I'm so stupid, oh so stupid, to really get into it and enjoy, enjoy my stupidity. I know you do. Why not me? People really do love my stupidity. Don't you? I do. what do you want to do okay go ahead correct Now, I have a problem with that.

[26:06]

I believe myself to be unable to be still. Almost in a constant state of stress, you can acknowledge that without being kind. It's just a lot of nervousness. Something in me despises that. A serene, calm, quiet being with all the possibilities that that can bring. And here I am constantly almost shaking, trembling, quaking. And so... Some people do think that some people cannot practice enlightenment.

[27:18]

But I recommend that you donate that thought to the Buddhas. and open to the possibility that you actually could be loving of shaking. If we despise shakiness, it makes it harder for us to be still with shakiness. But if you love shakiness, you can maybe realize that actually you can be still with shakiness. One can be still with shakiness. Shakiness is something which your mind is, is your karmic consciousness saying, this is shakiness. In that view, in that moment, when you think this is shakiness, the thought is not moving.

[28:21]

But if that thought comes with despising the object which is seen as movement, then you don't realize that it is stillness. So it is possible for you to learn to love more beings. And one of the beings you could learn to love is a shaky being. A shaky being who's you, or a shaky being who's somebody else. And some other people actually have trouble loving other shaky people. There are some Zen students who don't like other people. And some Zen students say, it's okay for the other people to be shaky, but not me. And some shaking people actually feel okay about their own shakiness and feel okay about other people's shakiness. They love both. And it's possible to learn to love both. And some people hate other people's shakiness. People can do that.

[29:26]

People can hate anything, pretty much. It's possible. But I'm talking about loving whatever is happening, and as you love more and more, you will get closer and closer to stillness. ...shakiness. Some people actually hate stillness. When they see somebody sitting still, they hate it. So then they have trouble realizing, when they're looking at somebody else's still, who they hate, they lose track of their own stillness. But if they would love the other person who is still, or not, they would realize that they're still, too. Stillness is reality. That's where the Buddhas live. That's where the Dharma comes from. Movement is an illusion. However, we don't put down illusions. We love them. We adore the illusion of movement. If you adore it, adoration of movement, if you're patient with it and gentle with it and calm with it, you realize that

[30:29]

There's no substance to movement. And there's also no substance to stillness. There's no substance to anything. If you're being still and you say, okay, I'm still, if you make that into a substance, you haven't yet got to stillness. If you love your stillness, if you feel still, fine, congratulations. If you love it, you realize it's insubstantial. And when you realize it's insubstantial, you realize what stillness really is. ...is really insubstantial, and so is movement. But the Buddhas do sit still, and they speak from that stillness, and they encourage us to enter that stillness with them, engage the process of karmic causation, engage the process of illusion. from the still place, and then again and again.

[31:33]

You can learn that. As a matter of fact, let me tell you, you are learning it. You are learning it. You understand how to do it better than you did 20 years ago. However, the more you learn about yourself, the more enlightened you are, the more you realize your limits. All your limits are more things to love, more food for enlightenment to embrace. That's my story. It's a karmic consciousness, by the way. Yes, Glenn, do you want to come up? Welcome. See if I can remember this. All my ancient twisted karma is born of beginningless greed, hate, and delusion.

[32:39]

Your statement that basically to be a sentient being is to have karmic consciousness, which is delusion. Deluded consciousness. Deluded consciousness. And hate, an integral part of delusion. And if so, does that mean that to be a sentient being is to have a consciousness of greed and hate along with the delusion? to just have delusion without a greed and hate. It's possible. But you don't have greed and hate without delusion. So we say greed, hate, and delusion, but delusion is sitting in the middle, and it has these two kind of like options, greed and hate. But greed and hate, you don't just have greed, you have greed and delusion. But there can be some moments where you're just plain deluded, and you're like not really grasping anything to speak of, and you're not rejecting things.

[33:48]

You're just totally confused. If you got a little clearer, a little bit more deluded, I should say, if you got a little bit more deluded, you might be able to say, well, I think now I'm hating what's going on here. But it could be simplified to say, all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless ignorance. That's a shorter version. But ignorance can ramify into hatred and... Is it reasonable to, I don't know if I can do this without comparing, but to actually aspire to delusion without greed and hate? Is that part of the Buddha way? The way you describe delusion sounds like it can be, you can say this, well, benign delusion. delusion which is not destructive or unwholesome.

[34:55]

Well, it's not exactly benign because it's the condition for the arising of... And karmic consciousness, even if there's no greed or hate in it, is more or less anxiety-producing or anxious situation. That's the best we can hope for, right? No. The best we can hope for is to love whatever situation you care to name. we can hope to be able to love any karmic setup. And we can also, even open to the possibility that some people have already learned how to do this. And they're like, have sent this message to us to practice this way. So that, like, if this is possible, then all the other people who are, like, totally in agony with their karmic consciousness, we can go help them. Why wouldn't that be great? And we don't have to get rid of them before we help them. We don't have to get rid of our own karmic consciousness before we get towards it.

[36:01]

So I think the best we can hope for is supreme perfect enlightenment. which feeds on all kinds of karmic consciousnesses and supports including greed and hatred. If there were no greed and hatred, enlightenment would accept that and then just work on basic delusion, basic ignorance. I don't know why I'm stuck on this, but I'm wondering if one loves all cosmic consciousness. Cosmic consciousnesses love them? Would you hold your microphone up, please? Yes, if one loves all karmic consciousness, I wonder if that's coming then from love does not include greed and hate. The kind of love I'm talking about is be welcoming and patient and honest and gentle and calm with whatever.

[37:06]

Right. That kind of love. Right. I guess what I'm, you know, the bottom line here is I'm wondering if one can reach the point and perhaps this is a, I won't apologize for my speech, reach the point where one lives without greed and hate, where it's not a motivation in terms of... Yes, it is possible. And if you can live that way, then you could, like, without greed and hate, love all beings who are involved in greed and hate. That's right. Okay. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Oh, okay. Thank you.

[38:15]

My questions keep changing at the time that it came as I walked. Yeah, because I sit there and my questions comes up but it gets answered and then my final question comes again. And that is When everything is still, it comes from stillness, it merges back to stillness. What are we doing here making all these stories? I feel like, what are we doing? What's going on? We're making stories in order to engage with the people who do not realize stillness. We're making stories to help people who are telling stories which make them feel alienated from themselves and afraid of themselves and others. We who are coming from stillness are telling stories to help other people who are telling stories but don't know how to work with the stories.

[39:31]

Why do we need to work? Stillness is stillness everything. What is this work? What's this work? It is what it is. The work is a response to the suffering of all beings. We see beings suffering, so we want to do the work of loving them. We see people because when we're not still. When I'm not still, I see all kinds of things. When I'm still, I'm still. So the suffering comes from not being still. So do we like kind of suffering maybe to just make a story or what? When we're still here, someone crying. Uh-huh. We're not suffering. We're just still and open. And we can hear someone cry in pain. And then when we hear them, if we continue to be still, we teach them to be still with their suffering.

[40:44]

And sometimes we might even speak to them in order to encourage them to love their own suffering. And then we might make a story in order to talk to them. It might even hurt us a little bit to make the story, but we're happy to do it because of the love we feel when we hear their cry. So if they need a story, hey, here's a story. But they might not. You might be able just to be with them without saying anything. Your body... And your body may convey the compassion that you feel from stillness. And they may get it without you saying anything or even moving. So the Buddhas actually are kind of still and they convey this teaching. And bodhisattvas will sometimes, or Buddhas will sometimes too, move and speak in order to get people to be able to study themselves and be with themselves and realize stillness.

[41:58]

What comes to my mind is the concept of teaching. When I see a child, a child is stillness, is living and is practicing. It doesn't come across as issue or let's practice stillness. They just are. And then what is it that at some point we lose that and we become teachings and teachers of stillness rather than the stillness? Something is in my way. If you're practicing stillness, you are teaching it to those who wish to see it. You don't necessarily think you're a teacher. Right. And you're showing people how to do it. I got it. Then I'm not practicing. That's what I teach or I speak about.

[43:10]

Got it. I keep going back. I guess I'm kind of struck by some nervous tension in the public domain to ask this question. Could you speak up a little? I really admire your talk, and I think it's really brave to talk about these difficult concepts. The language is kind of difficult, but I really admire the way you do put it into language, and I do think it makes sense. one thing I have a little bit of difficulty with and some curiosity about is the non-duality of Buddha and their compassion in our suffering or in suffering and in trying to live with

[44:39]

Some sense of non-duality in that belief or faith. Perhaps I'm curious if you could talk about how you feel that it manifests. Or is it feeling or intuition of psyche that are apparent to you in your practice? Well, I think that's related to what I mentioned before of someone saying, well, if enlightenment is non-dual with delusion, is that like some other consciousness from the deluded consciousness? And I feel like it's not really another consciousness. It's a practice. It's an enlightenment, a practice enlightenment, which is a way of being with delusion.

[45:42]

But it doesn't necessarily think. It's not the thinking, oh, I'm being with delusion, or I'm practicing compassion. So often think of the example of a dance. A dance isn't the same as thinking you're dancing. You can think you're dancing and there can be no dance. But you can also dance with somebody. But you, although you're dancing with the person, you're being with them. Your version of what's going on is not the dance. And their version of what's going on is not the dance. Being with them, that's the dance. And the dance isn't a feeling. However, the people who are dancing can have feelings about the dance. You can have feelings about... being with people or resisting them. But we'll talk about the practice of being intimate with beings. But that would be another being to be intimate with. That wouldn't be the being with them.

[46:45]

Being with them is more like the dance, which is not a feeling. It's more like to dance with the feelings rather than to have a feeling about dancing with feelings. So that which we recognize is not the enlightenment itself. The recognizing the intimacy is not the intimacy. There could be recognition, like, wow, there's intimacy here. With this, there's like no resistance to it now. Complete intimacy. There could be that recognition, and it's true in a way, but the recognition is not the intimacy. So it's like having some experience and then reflecting on it. The reflection is not the experience, but being in it for what it is, for what it is, when it is. Right. And we're being told that actually right now whatever the enlightenment of the Buddha is, is already...

[47:52]

intimate with and non-dual with all the sufferings of deluded consciousness. That's already the case, but we're being told which is already the case, or that reality which is already the case, we have to practice it. Otherwise, it's just hearing about it and oftentimes not believing it. and feeling like, you know, I'm deluded, and since I'm not being embraced to believe that this is not delusion, this is reality. But with loving attention to our delusions, we don't have to make them into more than that. But that's not a recognition of that. But there can be recognition. It's just that that's not the dance. When we're creating stories, are we practicing some kind of recognition? And I wonder if in some sense many religions, perhaps, you know, revelations or stories...

[48:59]

are reflections as opposed to the actual experience. Yeah. So from this intimacy words can be offered and they can be offered in the media of stories to help storytelling consciousness learn how to study itself. Storytelling consciousness has the ability to notice when it's trying to distract itself from itself. It's still in the same realm, but one can tell a story like, you know, I can see that I can be here with this or I can try to get away from it. Or just be with it. I can try to entertain it or just be with it. And I can notice the difference between spending a day being this and being this and being this and spending a day trying to entertain this or improve this. We can tell that. And those instructions guide us into intimacy. already there. So the karmic consciousness can be taught, and since it deals with stories, the teachings come to it often in storytelling ways.

[50:11]

So the enlightenment that engages storytellers then sometimes also exudes to the storyteller. But the main thing that is being taught is the intimacy is being demonstrated, and then words are being given to get the person's karmic consciousness to turn around and look at the intimacy, which we can experience in karmic consciousness as a major turning around from looking out at the entertaining world to looking back at the potentially not very entertaining karmic consciousness. And even if it's entertaining for a minute, to keep turning back, it's not that much fun necessarily. And it's a new trick for us to keep turning back, just like it's a new trick to keep remembering to be still. To be still and then study the self. We can train the karmic consciousness into that way of practice, and the more deep it gets, the more enlightenment is being in its intimacy with us ancient beings.

[51:25]

Without that exercise, We can barely even hear about it. It seems so true in my life that there's often reflection, and the reflection seems to serve some purpose, providing insight and understanding to, you know... We say suffering is beginningless and endless, and yet even the reflection itself seems to have some sense of limitation. and yet there's some grasping for reflection to facilitate or work skillfully with the present to move forward. And noticing that is noticing karmic consciousness. And noticing karmic consciousness like that is part of what is involved when you're intimate with it. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, be still.

[52:26]

I don't know. Did you have your... Yes, please. Other people can come up, too, if you want, and then you'll be close. You'll be on... What do you call it? On... So stop me if I get too personal. Okay. So in the past, I... Can I stop you even if you're not too personal? Yeah. Go. Stop. Get the picture? Please speak from being stopped. Okay, here we go. In the past, I have depression that's been pretty overwhelming. And even though, you know, I practice quite a bit and, you know, for moments I can practice it and I can love it, but the energy just doesn't seem to be there.

[53:35]

So I get overwhelmed again. And so sometimes, so I have taken medication, which maybe or maybe not helps me have enough energy to love my own suffering. And so I'm getting better at that, I think. So I'm wondering... So I'm practicing loving my own suffering. Now, I could go for a bigger, greater practice of loving suffering by going off the medication and seeing what that does. Or I could stay on medication and just keep practicing.

[54:35]

I mean, there's enough suffering here as it is. I'm getting better at it, and so I kind of want to play with it a little bit. Good. Yeah. And yet the consequences are considerable. So, well, do you have a response? Well, I'm glad you're... getting better at loving your suffering. And then if you feel like you'd like to experiment with seeing what kind of suffering you'd have without medication, I think it might be worthwhile considering with your doctor and so on, and friends. How about welcoming that challenge?

[55:39]

to see how that would be. It might be helpful to take a break from it. I think you got the basic idea. Now there's also a possibility that there's a danger, like we're talking about give the delusion some space and then what might happen then. There is that danger. But I think Part of loving your current suffering makes you realize that in the full course of your practice you want to be able to be more and more playful with your suffering, with all your suffering. And so it might be that at some point that you might just not take the medication. But again, be playful about that. And part of being playful might be to share that with your friends, that decision, because that would be to discuss that with them.

[56:42]

And for me, that was not too personal. And listening to you, this image has formed in my mind. Could you speak up, please? That's what it is for, but you still have to speak. And listening to you... And if you go like this, it helps. Oh, there we go. And listening to you, this image has formed in my mind, so if it's way up, I need to be pointed in another direction. And trying to comprehend this, enlightenment, delusion, polarity, and how it works, I suddenly felt that the stillness that you're talking about has a fundamental movement in it, and that the movement is constant, pulsing.

[57:59]

Yeah, so I would just say that instead of calling it movement, I would say activity. There's tremendous activity in stillness. But it's hard for us to understand activity without like birth and death and coming and going. So our common concept thinks of activity as movement. And we sometimes think that stillness is not an activity. I'm not saying stillness is an activity, but now I am saying stillness is an activity. It's a way of living which has tremendous activity, great function. But the function isn't necessarily in terms of arising and ceasing or birth and death or movement. But in the activity which stillness supports... Part of the activity is the illusion. But there's not actually a substantial movement, just like there's not a substantial stillness.

[59:06]

Well, here's the other part of the image to continue with, that this apparent movement between the two creates a third or a third relationship. And that relationship or that third point, I mean, you know, actual triangle in my head, that third point is in itself then it's changed. It has changed. It has become something else. But within that change, the same process is happening. And so it keeps changing and keeps changing. But it depends, that change depends on this movement between reality, delusion, reality, and then another point, reality, delusion.

[60:18]

Yeah, so what I experience now in my consciousness which has a story that you're telling me about your karmic consciousness. And so what I'm talking about is being intimate with what you just said. And intimate with it is not to try to grasp what you just told me. That that's not the truth. That's not... It's not... Yeah. Right? Well, that's kind of grasping, too, that labeling you just did. That's more karmic consciousness. How do I escape from this? Yeah, so I think now we're coming to the point, is that your karmic consciousness is escaping this thing you just demonstrated, which is normal karmic consciousness. We want to get out of karmic consciousness. Yeah, I don't want to be trapped in it. I'd like to be able to keep moving on, move up the triangle, keep going. So that's karmic consciousness. in the form of a story about how to get out of karmic consciousness.

[61:21]

Karmic consciousness has, what do you call it, there's eight million stories of escape from karmic consciousness in the karmic consciousness. You know? So, that's just normal. Now, all this you're talking about is to be loved. That's the practice. The practice is not trying to get you to stop this. To be loved? No, it's to love this... Oh, yeah. It's for me to love my story about you and for me to love you telling stories. And I want to also encourage you to love this escape thing. I love this person who's trying... Escape route? To love, not just the escape... Love the escape route, but love the planning to it. Desire to get out of here. Love this person who's trying to get out of here. That would be good. That would be a good one. And part of... You want to get out here and also, I think you also want everybody else to get out of here too. Yeah. Because you see them suffering here. So you want your friends to get out.

[62:21]

It would be good. Yeah, it would be good, you think. How are we going to do this? Yeah. So I'm saying love that person who wants everybody to escape. Buddha doesn't exactly want everybody to escape. Buddha wants everybody to enter the Buddha way. and become Buddha. Buddha wants people to learn how to love people who are trying to escape. And love people who think they have escaped, and love people who think they have it and feel kind of good about that but, you know, still working on it. Love people who think that they're never going to escape. I'll help them all not move with their attempt to escape. And be patient with

[63:10]

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