In our practice, is calm and upright an equal balance, or is it okay to have one be much heavier than the other, just as it comes? Are you saying that you see calm and upright as different from each other? Yes, I do. As I sit or even in meditation when I think I have a practice, usually only one or the other will come up as a bring that up more. What do you mean by up? Moral, ethical, as well as physical posture. But I do both of them sort of at the same time. to be ethical and to be physically upright. Because that to me is upright. I agree, that's upright.

[01:02]

And for the upright, I'm suggesting that for the upright to be most auspicious, it is united with relaxation and calm. If you have upright posture but it's tense, it's not as auspicious to awakening as an upright posture that's relaxed. So some people are upright and tense, but they're not calm. So for there to be calm with the upright, it needs to be upright and relaxed. And the same morally. Ethical discipline is usually seen as a prerequisite for calm, concentrated state of mind. So in the story of the Buddha's first teaching, these people were calm and relaxed, but they couldn't be that way if they hadn't also been practicing ethics.

[02:14]

If we've done unskillful things and we haven't really processed them and repented them, they make it difficult for us to relax because we think the police are going to come any minute. Whatever kind of police. But if we've recognized and worked with our past unstable action for a long time and recognized and been careful along with that for a long time, we feel, okay, I think I can relax now. And even if the police are going to come, I'll go relaxed and I'll be upright when I meet them. Welcome, sir. I didn't expect to hear. Please take me where you'd like. I'll go with you. And I hope to continue to practice wherever you take me And the same for the doctors and the nurses when they come to help us.

[03:20]

So optimal uprightness goes with calm. Optimal ethical uprightness goes with not being attached to ethical uprightness, not being tense about being righteous. I really want to be righteous, and I feel that being relaxed about my great desire to be conscientious and careful will promote the conscientiousness and carefulness. Otherwise, what do you call it, you have ethical burnout if you don't combine ethical discipline with relaxation. But it may be that, first of all, you have to be ethical and maybe a little uptight and then go from there to be relaxed about your ethics. I think that comes to my question of that it's okay maybe to not be in such balance on the it first brings you to balance when you first start practicing ethics oftentimes you you're somewhat uptight about it or self-righteous about it and then the next practice actually before relaxing is to be patient with your tension to be patient with the uptightness you feel around ethics to be patient with your

[04:43]

unskillfulness at what you'd like to be skillful at, namely ethical practice. And then you move on to develop enthusiasm, enthusiasm for the continuation of ethics and patience and generosity, but also enthusiasm for relaxing and being open and at ease with whatever is going on based on your commitment to ethics. And then we have to set up for wisdom. Then we have to set up to receive the teaching. Then the teaching can actually come in and inhabit this body of practice, this practicing body and mind. Thank you. And would you tell me your name again?

[05:50]

Wayne. Wayne. Wayne said something about how to relate something to daily life. You want to come up and ask about that? I don't know the format, but he did so well, so. Yeah. Please sit down. I realize I have some delusions about time, and so I tend to... Can you hear him okay? No. I have some deluded mind about time, and so I'm rather impatient. If you talk this way... Just talk... And so at the break... Did you hear that he had deluded ideas about time? What deluded ideas of time? It causes me to be impatient, as my friend just told me at the break. Okay. So you said what it causes, but what is it? What is the deluded idea of time? Well, it's manifest here because I was looking for some examples beyond the theoretical.

[06:57]

So you felt a need for some example, and you're a little uncomfortable without examples. I could understand it more clearly if I had a thing. And you were a little impatient with your lack of understanding. That's right. Lack of understanding is kind of uncomfortable. That's right. Yeah. So this is an example of if you hear something and you don't understand it, and you notice you feel uncomfortable. I mean, it's kind of natural. You go someplace to hear something, and then you're given it, and then you don't understand it, and you think, that's kind of uncomfortable. You know, I made all this effort to come here, and then you start talking, but I don't understand it. It's kind of uncomfortable, maybe. I think I understood the theoretical, but when you described... You didn't understand how it applied. That's right. The deluded mind, when it comes up, how does your active awareness, do you have some strategies on how to get back to the... One of the first things I bring up is that when you hear a teaching and you don't understand how it applies to your life, if it's a teaching which is supposed to be applicable, it's a practice teaching, right?

[08:10]

So practice is related to practical. If you don't see the practice, you might feel uncomfortable. not getting it. So then you practice patience with the discomfort, and that will help you get it. That's the first thing, okay? And so, yeah, so that's the first. Now, from that patient place, you ask a question, and you did. I think I asked it out of impatience. And noticing that you acted out of impatience, that's part of being upright. Part of being ethical is to notice that you're being impatient. If you notice that you're impatient, that often helps us realize, oh, I need to practice patience because I just noticed some impatience. Now, I haven't quite got to patience yet, but I'm going to ask the question anyway. But then when you ask it, then you tell me that you're impatient.

[09:15]

So I say, oh, let's practice patience. Are you ready to practice patience? I'm constantly working on it. Do you want to practice it now? Do you want to, like, be in the present? This is sort of wonderful how this is working out for me. In the present, if you can work with being in the present with the discomfort, this is a daily life situation. It's your current daily life situation. It's that you have come and told us that you're impatient with some discomfort around understanding. that you want, you understand the theoretical, but you're having trouble applying it to the practical. The practical is right now, if you're feeling impatient, you would apply the meditation practice of patience to your situation of not understanding. Did everybody follow that, including Wayne? Yes. So I hear something, I don't understand it, I feel impatient with it, and I go to the teacher and say,

[10:19]

how do I apply this theoretical thing to the practical, which I don't understand, and I say, be patient with it right now. That's one example of right now how to apply it. Now, did understanding come? Yes. Yeah. Then what else? Well, also another practice to practice with when you hear a theoretical teaching and you don't see how it applies, you feel like you don't see how it applies, welcome Be generous towards your lack of understanding. Then you're actually practicing, you're practically applying the teachings of the Buddha to your lack of understanding. But when you do that, you actually understand, because that's what the Buddha would do. If you gave a Buddha something that the Buddha didn't understand, the Buddha would practice generosity with it, and the Buddha would practice ethics with it.

[11:21]

In other words, the Buddha would be careful with this situation of not understanding. But it's possible that you would say to a Buddha, you'd give the Buddha some driving instructions, And usually the Buddha is not usually driving the Buddha, she's usually being chauffeured. But let's say, you know, the Buddha's being chauffeured and drives into a neighborhood where she doesn't know how to get to some retreat or something that she's going to. So she asks for directions and she doesn't understand them because, you know, perhaps she doesn't speak Spanish and it's in Spanish. What does the Buddha do with that lack of understanding? Well, the Buddha's going to apply her understanding of the Buddha way by being patient with not understanding and being generous towards her lack of understanding and then tell the person, I didn't understand. And the person may say, I don't know what to do for you. And then the Buddha doesn't know where to go or what to do, but the Buddha's right there practicing the Buddha way, not knowing where to go next.

[12:27]

In other words, the Buddha's right here with what's happening, practicing. And the Buddha's already awake, but the Buddha's doing the practice that someone who wasn't awake would also be recommended to do. And we'd be generous with our state of hearing a teaching and kind of understanding it, but not knowing how it applies. How does it apply? How does the teaching apply? By being generous to the state of not understanding. When you're generous to the state of not understanding, you may still think you don't understand, but in fact you actually do understand because you're doing the practice that you were asking about. Now, if you hear a teaching and you think you understand it theoretically, but you don't understand how it applies, and you're not generous towards it, then in fact you don't understand how it applies. It is teaching. If you hear a teaching of awakening and you don't understand the teaching, and you're not generous towards your lack of understanding, you have not understood the teaching of awakening.

[13:34]

Because the teaching of awakening says you're generous to what's happening, including that you don't understand, including that you think you don't understand. Some other people hear the teaching and they think they understand, but they're not generous with their thinking that they understand. And if you're not generous to your thinking that you understand, if you're not generous towards your thinking that you understand, then you're not ready to be upright and ethical with your thinking that you understand. And then when you think you understand something and you're not ethical, excuse me, when you think you understand something and you're not generous towards that thought, then you're not ready to be ethical because you are rigidly holding to your view that you understand. If you hear something and you think you don't understand how it applies and you rigidly hold to that, which means you're not generous with it, then you're not yet ready to be ethical.

[14:37]

But if you hear something and think you understand, or you hear something and think you don't understand and you're generous towards your situation, whatever it's about, whether it's Buddhist teaching or mathematics or Spanish, if you hear something and you don't understand how to apply it, like you hear how to say good morning in Spanish and you don't understand how to apply it to saying good morning to someone, in other words, you think you don't understand, If you think you don't understand and you're generous towards it, then you have a good chance of finding out how to say good morning in Spanish by saying, would you tell me that again? If you think you understand and you hold to it, that's going to make it harder for you to learn. So you're asking how to apply these teachings, and asking how to apply the teachings is an act of generosity towards the teachings.

[15:41]

You're saying, please give me the teachings about how to apply these teachings. And you say that so I can give them to you. And then I can ask you, have you received them? And am I giving you something about what you need? Your analogy to the Spanish is perfect for me. It's great. And your two words, generosity, being generous to your thoughts, and rigid, are also very helpful. You're welcome. Yes, please come. Would you tell me your name again? Lee. Thank you so much for coming today. Thank you for coming today. It's a great gift. What I'm grappling with is the point where calm abiding leads to insight and sudden awakening.

[16:55]

And I'm imagining that... Could you hear that? No. He's struggling with the way or the point where calm abiding leads to sudden awakening or insight? Yes? And OK, so let's go from there. So that actual point where you have insight seems to be something that happens in time. Perhaps it was a long time of calm abiding or a short time of, as you called it, relaxation and uprightness. And then there occurs insight. Is the insight a result of the calm abiding, or is it that the calm abiding nourishes a state of awareness that allows insight? It's more like that. If we're calm abiding, even though people associate it with concentrated, which is not false, the kind of concentration we're talking about is a calmness which is open.

[18:05]

It's not a concentration where you're narrowing It's more like you're narrowing in the sense that you're in the present. It's not that you're denying past and future, you're letting go of past and future. You're in the present. And being in the present, you're open. And then in the openness, when the teaching comes, it can enter. And when it enters, we wake up. Usually the teaching, the truth is around us all day long, but unless we're relaxed and open, it bounces off our distraction and our, you know, our rigidity. Here's another story of sudden awakening from the time of the Buddha, Shakyamuni.

[19:06]

So there was this What was he? He was called the Barkcloth. His name was Bahia of the Barkcloth. And he was worshipped and revered and honored and venerated and given homage. A recipient of robes and alms food and lodging and medical requisites for the sick. So he was a yogi who was revered by people and they supported him to practice his meditation in seclusion. And he was in seclusion and then he wondered to himself in his meditation, he was thinking, He was wondering if those in the world who are sages, of those in the world who are sages or who have entered the path of sagehood, am I one of them?

[20:18]

And a deity came to visit him and said, you are not. Oops. And this deity came to him out of love and compassion, really caring for him, to tell him, you are not, you are not one of the sages, and you are not on the path for entering sagehood. And then Bahiyya said, who, but who living in this world is a sage and has entered the path of sagehood? And this his deity who was visiting him said, Bahiya, there is a city in the northern country called Savati. The blessed one, a sage, a rightly awakened one, is living there now. He is truly a sage, and he teaches the truth that leads to sagehood. So then Bahiya, deeply chastened, left where he was and

[21:28]

quite quickly got to where the Buddha was. And the Buddha was staying at a place called the Jeta Grove of Ananda Pindaka's monastery. Ananda Pindaka is a great layperson who supported the Buddha's Sangha and made a big monastery for the monks to hang out. So he went to this monastery where he heard the Buddha was, and he saw a large number of monks doing walking meditation. in the open air. And he went up to them and said, where venerable sirs is the blessed one? And they said, the blessed one has gone to town to beg alms, alms food. So he went to town and he saw the Buddha walking calmly walking calm, calming.

[22:36]

His senses at peace, his mind at peace, tranquil and poised in the ultimate sense. Accomplished, talented, senses restrained, the Great One. Seeing him, Bahiyya approached the Blessed One, and upon reaching him, threw himself down on the ground with his head at the Blessed One's feet. And he said, Teach me the truth, O Blessed One. Teach me the truth, O Well-Gone One, that will be long-term welfare and bliss. And the Buddha said, This is not a good time, Bahiyya.

[23:42]

I'm begging for lunch. And Bahiyya said, to the Blessed One. But it's hard to know for sure what dangers there may be for the Blessed One's life or what dangers there may be for mine. So please teach me the truth. Give me your teaching, Blessed One. Teach me the Dharma, O Well-Gone One. that will be for the long-term welfare and bliss. And the Buddha said, Bahiya, this is not a good time. I'm on my begging rounds.

[24:44]

The great Buddha went and begged for food. He was a beggar. In India, this was something that sages did. They asked for support, gave people a chance to support them. The Buddha did this before and even more after enlightenment, before he was sometimes not asking for enough and got kind of too skinny. Afterwards, he ate a lot more. So anyway, he said, no, it's not a good time. So then Bahiyya again says, But it's hard to know for sure the dangers there may be for the blessed one's life or what dangers there may be for mine. So please teach me the Dharma, blessed one. Teach me the Dharma, oh well-gone one, that will be for my long-term welfare and bliss. So asking three times the Buddha said,

[25:50]

Okay. That bahiya, you should train yourself with us. In regard to the herd, there will be just the herd. In regard to the scene, there will be just the scene. In regard to the sensed, and this is understood as an abbreviation for the tasted, the touched, and the smelled. So in regard to the five material senses, he named the first two specifically, and then the next three he said, in regard to the sensed, there will be just the sensed. And in regard to the mentally cognized, it would just be the mentally cognized. That was his instruction.

[26:57]

And then, we don't know how long, but anyway, maybe the next sentence he says, when for you, in the herd, there's just the herd. And in the scene, there's just the scene. And in the sense, there's just the sense to you. and only the cognized in the cognized, then bahiya, there is no you in terms of that. So when in the seen there's just the seen, then there's no you in terms of the seen. There's just the seen. There's no you in terms of the heard. There's just the heard. There is no you there. When there is no you there, there is neither here nor there nor in between. And this is the end of suffering."

[28:00]

And Bahiya understood. And then a little while later, he was killed by a water buffalo. He was right. We don't know what dangers, so he was right to trust the Buddha, to speak to him in the middle of the arms. The Buddha's teaching was a teaching of sudden awakening. Right here, with what you're hearing right now, There's just the heard. There's no seeking for understanding. There's no seeking for anything other than what you're hearing right now. And what you're seeing, there's just what you're seeing. You're not seeking anything. You're not reaching for anything. You're not grasping for anything. You're just dealing with what you're dealing with. Bhāhyā was ready for this teaching.

[29:07]

The Buddha doesn't always give this teaching. But he had done enough meditation, so when he asked for the teaching, the Buddha didn't tell him about the way things were. He didn't say, what you're looking at is nothing other than yourself. Your perception that things exist out there separate from you is an illusion. He didn't teach that teaching to him. He taught him a way to come into the present, and when he came into the present, He told him that if you come into the present and seek nothing, you will see that there's nothing out there separate from you. Actually, he did teach him that. So he told him how to come into the present and realize in the present that there's nothing in the world separate from you. Come into the present and realize that there's nothing to seek, that there's no person or state to seek.

[30:08]

But you have to come into the present and give up seeking in order to realize that there's nothing to seek. In other words, we have to be deluded completely in order to realize we don't have to seek to not be deluded. Deluded people only need to be completely deluded to wake up. But most deluded people are not ready to get the instruction to be completely deluded right now. But maybe you are ready to hear that. And if you are, you're ready for sudden enlightenment. And if sudden enlightenment comes, then you're ready to continue the practice of dealing with your delusions from there on, but now in the state of great relief. The Zen school is well known for teaching stories of sudden enlightenment.

[31:15]

What I'm emphasizing is that in the early times of the Buddha, he also taught and had the teaching of sudden enlightenment with these two meditation practices on both sides of it. one before leading up to being ready for it, and then one after to apply it to the ongoing delusions of, for example, past and future. For example, I understand I don't understand. I'm good, I'm bad. It's not that it's true that you're good. or true that you're bad. It's that your mind is constructed on good and on bad. And in order to deal with those thoughts in a way that you awaken to the truth, you need to love those thoughts. In other words, you have to practice meditation with the thoughts, I don't understand.

[32:20]

And love doesn't mean you like the thought, I don't understand. It means you love it. Love it means you meditate with it. It means you're generous towards the thought, I don't understand. It means you meditate with the thought, I'm uncomfortable not understanding. It means you meditate with the thought, I hate myself for being such a stupid practitioner. I hate myself for being evil. And by the way, I'm evil. It's okay to think that you're evil. And then when you do, there's a practice of meditation to do with it. And if you practice meditation with it, that means you're generous towards your thought, I'm evil. It's okay to think other people are evil. Okay means that's an opportunity for compassion. And if you're compassionate with your thoughts, they are evil. you will let go believing that their evil is actually something other than your mind.

[33:29]

And then there will be great awakening. And then, with the great awakening, you deal with more thoughts of their evil. Their evil is a very dangerous thought. It is the basis of violence and war. They are evil. It is evil. I am evil. Those are all dangerous thoughts. And the way to protect the beings from dangerous thoughts like they are evil is to practice meditation with them, to be generous with the thought they are evil, I am evil, to be careful of the thought they are evil, Not to deny it, be careful of it. It is a dangerous, dangerous, dangerous thing. But if you're careful with it and generous with it, and patient with it, then you can be enthusiastic about meditating and be calm with it.

[34:35]

And you can be calm with the most horrible thoughts. And then realize those horrible thoughts are the conscious constructions of your mind. And then you can open to that teaching and again realize enlightenment with this afflicted, deluded thought. And then another one comes. And this way we make a Buddha. It isn't just that we wake up and we're done. It's wake up, And then make a Buddha. Before you wake up, you need to wake up. And before you wake up, you're getting ready to wake up. And after you wake up, then you can make Buddhas in this world by bringing your awakening to all these deluded states which are still coming up because the support

[35:40]

for deluded states is our unconscious mind, which is supporting our active conscious mind. And our unconscious mind carries the consequence of quite a few deluded thoughts. But at a certain point when the deluded thoughts arise, they receive medicine rather than just being received and creating more consequences. After awakening, they are not just treated kindly, but they're treated with wisdom. And then they do not plant more seeds. But the seeds that have been planted in the past will produce more opportunities to meet these seeds with compassion and wisdom. And then these states, these conscious states, do not cause more deluded states.

[36:48]

Actually, then that opportunity creates a little piece of Buddha body. The mind of delusion is the mind or minds of delusion. of delusion, deluded minds are constantly being transformed. And the deluded mind has two parts in a way. It has unconscious part and the conscious part. The unconscious part and the conscious part are constantly transforming themselves in all beings. That's already going on. We're talking about bringing the teaching of enlightenment into the process. And the teaching of enlightenment comes into the process by telling us how to meditate on the process.

[37:59]

And by receiving the teachings of how to meditate on the process, the process continues to evolve, but now it evolves towards enlightenment and beyond enlightenment, making a Buddha, which is not just freedom of this mind, but developing the skills to benefit other minds and bodies. So again, in Zen stories, there's many Zen stories about The monk comes to see the teacher. The teacher and the monk interact. The monk has sufficient background in meditation so that they have sudden awakening. And sometimes that's the last you hear about it because it's such a wonderful story. But then if you study more, you find out that there's many stories after that story.

[39:03]

And some of these stories are about the monk continuing to hang out with the teacher for many years after. and the monk having further states of delusion after this awakening, which the teacher helps them deal with these further states. And again, part of the history of the transmission of the Buddha's teaching to the West is stories of people waking up and not having a teacher with them to help them deal with how to apply that awakening to their deluded mind afterwards. And again, as I said earlier, sometimes with these people who wake up, when deluded minds come up, they say that the deluded mind, their deluded mind, is enlightenment, and other people's deluded mind is delusion. They're right about the second part, but they're confused about the first part, and they don't have a teacher there to say, you're a good student, you understood, but you're off track now.

[40:04]

And I'm off track with you. I'm here to remind you that you're not a Buddha yet. But sometimes people do have awakening and do not have a teacher and things go very badly because they are not being reminded that deluded states still arise for people who have had authentic insight. And in that insight there's no deluded mind. It's just No here, no there, no in between. And that's the end of suffering. This is the state of enlightenment. There's no problem. There's no birth, there's no death. And then, boom, a diluted state arises. And there's birth, and there's death, and there's suffering, and there's all kinds of thought of good and evil. of self and other, of right and wrong, of me and you. All this stuff flies up again, and it's time to apply any enlightenment that we've got to it.

[41:12]

And if we don't have any enlightenment, then apply the teachings we've heard. Apply giving. ethics, patience, enthusiasm, and calm to these deluded states. And if we've got wisdom, too, all the better. Because then we can really fully understand to actualize, bring out the truth. There's truth in everything. There's truth in evil. There's truth in good. There's truth in self-righteousness. There's truth in colors. There's truth in sounds. Everything has truth. If we meet it with love and wisdom, the truth is realized. But we have to realize that This stuff is delusion. And do it in a loving way, a loving and inspiring way.

[42:17]

And if we can't, we need to not be able to in a loving and inspiring way. If we're impatient, we need to be patient with our impatience. We need to be compassionate with our lack of ethics. And compassion with lack of ethics means to practice ethics with your lack of ethics. So to be honest about your lack of ethics is ethical. To be honest about your lack of patience and generosity is ethical. Confessing our shortcomings is part of ethics. Shortcomings is not ethical, but part of ethical discipline is to notice our shortcomings. And if you keep noticing your shortcomings and keep noticing your shortcomings, the shortcomings will be transformed into enlightenment. The shortcomings dealt with in a compassionate and wise environment become the body of Buddha.

[43:24]

Buddha's not made out of, you know, denatured sand. Buddha's made out of a rich soil, which has all kinds of delusions of human and non-human that would be exempt. Lotus flowers do not grow in air or in sand. They grow in mud. Well, we've got the mud. No problem there. Now we need to bring love and wisdom to the mud. And before the mud goes away, the lotus seeds are germinated and sprout a stem and make a flower and make a fruit and make more seeds before the nut disappears, we make the Buddha body. The Buddha body comes, is based in living beings who are deluded.

[44:29]

We've got enough delusion. Now we just need to be lotus farmers. And in order to grow lotus, we must meditate, which includes not just calming, but generosity, ethics, patience, and enthusiasm. And enthusiasm, you need some enthusiasm to do the first three practices. So enthusiasm is put fourth on the list, even though it's also called effort. But our effort cannot be fully alive until we practice giving, ethics, and patience. And we need some effort to practice those three. And we need somebody to teach us how to practice them. And we do have somebody to teach us how to practice them. The teaching is out there now. You've heard it. These first three practices are to be applied to the mind of the delusion.

[45:34]

And when you apply these practices of giving ethics and patience to a deluded mind, then you're ready to develop a really great, unstoppable energy and enthusiasm. Now you can contemplate what you want to do with your life. and see how when you don't do that, you really feel bad. And when you do do that, you really feel good. And then you feel like you really want to do it. But you wanted to do it before you knew about it, you heard about what you were interested in. You have had many thoughts about the way you want to live already. You forgot, so didn't you forget? And when you forgot, you didn't feel that good about it because you forgot about something which is very precious to you. But when you remember that you forgot and felt bad, that contemplation reminded you again of what you aspired to.

[46:39]

That kind of contemplation generates great energy to do this immense and inconceivably wonderful practice. So I have two stories about that. One is about me. When I was a boy, quite a while ago, I lived at the time of James Dean and Elvis Presley. And if you were a bad boy, it was considered very sexy. And you could be very popular if you were like James Dean and Elvis Presley or Marlon Brando. Marlon Brando and on the waterfront with my hero. I tried to break my nose like this. Like this. But I just couldn't hit it hard enough.

[47:41]

Anyway, I was somewhat successful at being bad, and I got rewarded by my friends. But then a big, strong man came to me one time. I was 12, and he was about 40. And he was 6'4", weighed 240. And he was the 1946 National Heavyweight Golden Gloves Champion. And he told me about what a bad boy he was when he was my age. And he was pretty bad. It's true. And he still was kind of a big bad guy. And he said to me, you know, it's easy to be bad. And I knew it was. He said, you know, what's hard is to be good. And I thought, okay, I'll try to be good. if that's really for big guys. And I tried, but I kept forgetting.

[48:48]

And I didn't feel good about forgetting. And I would remember again and forget. It's hard to remember to be generous and careful and patient. But if you review that and think about that, you again, the aspiration to do these practices to do the meditation develops, plus not only those first three, but the aspiration to develop a mind like the Buddha's. Calm, calm, tranquil, like a Buddha. The wish to do that, that energy develops, and then we can practice it. The second story is the story of the famous teacher Shinryu Suzuki. So he's about 63 or something like that. He's the founder of Zen Mountain Center. He's at the monastery with his students.

[49:52]

They're in the Tassajara Creek. There's a nice swimming hole there. The students are swimming in the swimming hole. And he jumps in. And he goes below the water level and goes down there for a long time. And the students think, oh, he's really a Zen master. He can stay down a long time. And then they think, this is getting to be quite a long time. Maybe he's not just demonstrating his powers of holding his breath. So they go down and find him down there and pull him up. And it turns out he got so excited he forgot he couldn't swim. And then later, during a retreat, he told that story and he said, you know, after that, I really, I really wanted to practice hard.

[50:58]

He reviewed his conduct. Even this Zen teacher reviewed his conduct and thought, that wasn't careful, that wasn't skillful. I really want to be more skillful." Even at that age he was still re-arousing his aspiration to practice by honestly reviewing the shortcomings in his attention. It wasn't so good that he did that. It wasn't so mindful that our teacher jumped in the water like that. It was a shortcoming in a way. But he noticed it, he was honest, he reviewed it, and he again said, but I still want to practice, even though I'm not too good at it. And then at dinner after he said that, someone said to him, Roshi, you said that after that happened you really wanted to practice hard, but weren't you already practicing hard?

[52:12]

And he said, yeah. But then I really want. So it isn't just that today you really want to, and then that's it. It's hopefully today you really want to. Today I really want to practice. I really think how good it would be if I met the deluded mind which arises, if I met it with meditation, always. That would really be good. But I have to do it again tomorrow. Unfortunately, there's a retreat tomorrow. So I can come to the retreat and again be inspired to practice. And then I have to drive back to San Francisco and try to inspire myself all the way back to San Francisco with your support. I don't know how far I'll get. before I get depressed and forget but if I do I hope I become conscious again and say whoops here we go again here we go again another deluded state to be kind to and to awaken in the midst of

[53:42]

In the scene, there's just a scene. The scene seems to be out there. This is his eluded state. Right there in the middle of delusion. Just let the delusion be delusion. Wholeheartedly. And then the delusion will lose its power. And we can wake up and go on. So it's very important. I don't want to undermine enlightenment, undermine or undervalue. It's very important, but it's almost more important, is the practice of the enlightenment. And the practice of the enlightenment, fortunately, is pretty much the same before and after the enlightenment occurs. It's just that afterwards it really works on, what do you call it, all cylinders.

[54:49]

It works before and it works more fully after. So we do need the enlightenment, which the practice supports. And once the practice has come to fruit with the enlightenment, then we do enlightenment practice. And we encourage everybody else to do the same practice, even though they have not yet completely given up believing the false impression that their mind creates, that people are separate. So, should I have some walking meditation now?

[55:31]

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