I have a memory that yesterday in this meditation hall we had a ceremony to open a period of practice, a practice period of about seven weeks, eight weeks, seven, eight weeks. Some time ago the Abbess of Green Gulch invited me to lead the practice period this fall. Do you have a memory like that? I do. So I accepted the invitation to be the

[01:02]

leader of the practice period. The leader of a practice period in the Zen school is sometimes called Dharma flag teacher. And the Dharma flag teacher can be the abbess or the abbot or somebody who's invited to do it. Dharma flag teacher has the responsibility to raise the Dharma flag. So a story I can tell you is just a story. The way I heard it was that one day, or once upon a time, There was a president of the United States named Abraham Lincoln, and he was invited to raise a flag.

[02:11]

And he gave a speech on that occasion, and he said, if the mechanism, the flag raising mechanism works, we will raise the flag. And once the flag is raised, it's up to the people to keep it up. If the mechanism works, and then he said, and that's my speech. Fortunately, unfortunately, my speech might be a little longer today. So during this practice period actually there's a number of Dharma flags which I would like to fly in the sky. So today, let's see, one Dharma flag I wish to raise up for us to enjoy is the teaching

[03:29]

that the way, the path of the Buddha, the Buddha way, the path of enlightenment, the path of freedom, the path of peace, the path of nonviolence, the path of enlightened ethical conduct, all these wonderful dimensions of the Buddha way are being offered and the teaching is that to learn the Buddha way is to learn the self. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. The study of the self seems to be proposed as necessary in order to realize the way of freedom and peace for all beings.

[04:50]

That's a flag in the sky. Now here's another flag. the Buddhas teach that living beings, like human beings, but also looks like, from my perspective, the Buddha didn't say, this is me talking now, but looks to me like dogs also would be included in this statement, that living beings like dogs and humans have Mind, have, you could say a mind, but you could also say have mind or our mind. And one unfoldment of that comment is that the mind has two major dimensions. One is unconscious and another is conscious.

[06:00]

that living beings like us have mind, and part of our mind is unconscious, and part of our mind is conscious. The unconscious part doesn't have a self to study. The conscious part has a self to study. The conscious part is supported by the unconscious part. The unconscious part supports or conjures up the conscious mind. Some living beings have apparently a mind, they have this unconscious mind which supports their activity. But their unconscious mind, although it supports their life activity, does not produce a conscious mind.

[07:14]

But animals like humans and dogs and cats and bears and dolphins and whales and maybe birds I don't know how far it goes. They have an unconscious mind too, but their unconscious mind is able to create a conscious mind. And conscious mind means self-conscious mind. A mind that is self-conscious, a mind that has self. The Buddha way is learned in the conscious mind. And the conscious mind is the mind where all of our problems are, is where we suffer. The conscious mind is where there's self and other, and where there's concern for self and concern for others.

[08:28]

Conscious mind, as I was mentioning yesterday, the conscious mind is where there's concern for self-popularity rating or self-approval rating. There's concern for me approving myself and you approving me. We don't have TV reception here at Green Village, but sometimes when I go exercise, where there's TVs, I see on the TV screen, I often see approval rating. It's big news, approval rating. People are into approval ratings. Big flashing signs, approval rating sinking, approval rating going up. Looks like somebody's concerned with approval ratings, and somebody thinks that other people are too. The conscious mind is a mind where there's concern about self, and there's more or less understanding of self in conscious mind.

[09:45]

If there is a deep understanding of the conscious mind, we have what we call enlightenment. If there is a misunderstanding of conscious mind, we have what we call delusion and suffering. So to realize the way of Buddha is to study the self that is present in conscious mind. The unconscious mind isn't really suffering. The unconscious mind is just doing its business of life. For example, in humans, it's taking care of the heart rate. It's taking care of digestion. It's taking care of signaling muscles how to move so we can go up and down stairs. The conscious mind is not instructing the legs how to move once we've learned how to walk.

[10:56]

But when we're learning how to walk, we learn how to walk, I learn how to walk in the conscious mind. Once I've learned how to walk, my walking is operated from the unconscious mind. And the unconscious mind is just actually, I could even say the unconscious mind doesn't have a self, isn't concerned with popularity rating, But it creates a conscious mind which is calculating popularity rating. But it doesn't care about popularity rating, which it supports the construction of. It's actually organic living bliss. But it supports the conscious mind. in which, if there's a misunderstanding of the conscious mind, there is stress, distress, dis-ease, fear, and so on.

[12:03]

So studying the self is necessary in order to be free of what? Of self. Self is our object of study. And the stress and suffering around the self is also something we should notice if we wish to understand the self. Part of understanding the self is to notice that one way of relating to it creates more stress. Another way of relating to it reduces the stress and leads to understanding which liberates us from suffering. Here's another Dharma flag.

[13:11]

It's about the practice. This room is called, we often use the Japanese word for it, Zendo, which means Zen Hall. a hall for practicing Zen. And we still use a Japanese word for the meditation practice we use here. We call it Zazen, which means sitting Zen. We sit Zen here. And yesterday someone said to me that she's heard conflicting reports about what sitting Zen is. what Zen meditation is. She said she heard that Zen meditation is to empty the mind or to have no thought. So I have something to say about that, a little bit.

[14:18]

So I would suggest to you that in a certain school of Zen, the Zen meditation is not abiding in thought, not abiding in our thinking. It's not that there's no thinking, that's not the meditation. And also thinking is not the meditation. The actual meditation practice is not abiding in the thinking, which the self seems to be doing. Selves often think that they are thinking. Selves often think that they are talking, that they are doing things. That's what selves often think. Or rather there's thinking going on and there's a sense that somebody owns the thinking.

[15:24]

And the sense of owning the thinking gives rise to a sense of self. So the actual meditation is to not abide in the thinking process. and also not abide in no thinking. Part of our mind, part of our life, does not think. Our unconscious mind doesn't think. And there's nobody there not thinking. The conscious mind does think, and there seems to be somebody there who owns the thinking. And there's even somebody there who can feel like they own the verbal expression, I own that thinking. So the way of Buddha is addressing people who, beings that imagine that they have a self who's doing things and who are afraid of their current approval rating.

[16:36]

It's for those people. And by studying this process, one can become free of this self-concern, which is the self-concern will be present until there is complete understanding of the self. When the actual process, when the actual nature of self is understood, that understanding will be free of self-concern.

[17:37]

Until then, there is self-concern, and the self is understood as something more than just all the things that come together to conjure it up. There is a self, but the self is just causes and conditions coming together to create a sense, for example, of ownership of a body. So in conscious mind, bodies often appear. Most of us can see in our conscious mind right now other bodies and our own body. Like I can see these hands and there's a sense that these are my hands and therefore there's a sense that somebody's here who owns these hands. There's a self. And maybe you think these are not your hands and you have some other ones that you own. That thought gives rise to a self. So without self, if there's a mind without self, I would say to you, it's not conscious.

[19:02]

When you take away self, you don't have consciousness anymore. But you still have mind. The basic cognitive life that supports conscious life doesn't have self. And when conscious life doesn't have self, there's no conscious life. For example, in dreamless sleep, which sometimes happens to us at night, at that time consciousness is not functioning. There's no self. There's no concern for approval or disapproval. There's no fear in dreamless sleep. But there's mind. And sometimes a noise or something will cause the mind to turn the conscious mind back on.

[20:12]

And it turns it back on often as dreaming sleep. You familiar with that? So you could be in dreamless sleep and you have mind and there's some sound and then the mind says, okay, let's make a dream. It doesn't say let's make a dream. It silently, non-verbally conjures a mind that has a dream. and somebody there having a dream. And the dream could be, oftentimes the dream is quite different from what will happen when the person wakes up. For example, one time I was sitting in meditation in a meditation hall in the mountains. I was sitting in meditation and then I thought there was a bird sitting on my shoulder, pecking at my shoulder, jumping around on my shoulder.

[21:21]

I was having a dream of the bird, of a bird on my shoulder. Then I came out of that sleeping dream into a waking dream, and I realized it was a stick. a stick tapping on my shoulder. Back in those days when people were sleeping in meditation, they would get tapped by sticks. And when they get tapped by sticks, their mind registers that because their mind is connected to their body which is being touched by the stick and then the mind creates a conscious mind where there's somebody sitting there and if the person's asleep, as we say asleep, they might think it's a bird on their shoulder.

[22:30]

And then they might think, gee, how wonderful. Here I am in a meditation hall with birds on my shoulder. How nice. And then the person who wakes up from the sleep and then has another dream is a stick. And then the person might think, in my case, I remember thinking, I guess I was asleep. Sometimes in those days, people would tap on somebody's shoulder and the person would be angry because they would think, I wasn't asleep. But in my case, since I thought I was a bird, I realized, well, I probably was asleep. But both the dream of the bird and of the stick, in both cases, that was conscious mind. There was me with the bird, and then there was me with the stick. and the stick holder. But some people think that Zen meditation is just to have no thoughts, have no dreams, have no thinking.

[23:48]

And I'm suggesting that's not Zen meditation. That is dreamless sleep is like that. Some very deep states of concentration do not have any images in it, do not have any appearances, and there's no self. There's no body appearing. There's a body, but there's no appearance of the body in some very deep states of sleep, dreamless sleep, deep concentration, coma, and brain damage, some kinds of brain damage. The person's alive, They're 98.6 approximately. And in the case of dreamless sleep, you can come out of it into normal waking life, or you can go from dreamless sleep to waking life, or you can go from dreamless sleep to dreaming sleep to waking life. Like dreamless sleep and then dreaming of what a beautiful symphony that is, and then realize it's an alarm clock.

[24:56]

So you can watch those transitions of consciousness. But enlightenment or Zen meditation is not just to go into the state of dreamless sleep. It's okay to be there, but that's not where we're practicing. That's not where we learn the Buddha way. We learn the Buddha way in consciousness where there's a self, where there's self-consciousness. That's where we learn, because that's where we're afraid. That's where we're kind. That's where we're not kind. That's where we're concerned about self. That's where we're concerned about other people's approval rating and so on. That's where we practice. That's where we learn how to be free. And what is freedom?

[26:04]

Freedom is, we call it zazen, or freedom is not abiding in consciousness. It's to be in consciousness and not abide in it. To be in consciousness and be free of it. And then act out that freedom with all beings. Zazen is the way that everything in the universe, that the whole universe is performing the work of enlightenment. That's Zazen.

[27:08]

Being free of self-concern is entering. The way, entering the way of Buddha. Entering the way of Buddha means enter the way everything is acting out peace and freedom. But the way everything is acting out peace and freedom does not appear in conscious mind. There's no perception, there's no way to perceive the way everything is cooperating peacefully and liberating all other things and being liberated by all other things. This is Buddha's mind. the mind of peace and freedom, the mind which cannot be knocked off compassion, the mind which is in perfect accord with the whole universe, the mind which supports the whole universe and is supported by the whole universe.

[28:17]

And in that mind, there's no abiding in karmic consciousness. There's no abiding in self-consciousness. That mind is the way all the self-consciousnesses are doing Buddha's work. But none of the self-consciousnesses can see the way they are doing Buddha's work. None of us can see in the consciousness where we're here, where we live, none of us can see how the whole universe supports us. We may hear that and say, yeah, that sounds good. But you can't see how all beings in the whole universe are supporting you to be a conscious being. And also you can't see how all beings support you to be alive in dreamless sleep.

[29:22]

But they do. Everybody supports us to live when we're in dreamless sleep. Everything supports us. We cannot see anything in dreamless sleep. But in conscious mind also, any way we imagine that, right now for example, is not the way it's happening. It is happening in Buddha's mind, in the enlightened mind. That is what's going on. But no one can see it. Including the enlightened mind can't see it. The enlightened mind is that way. And also, not only does the whole universe support our having consciousness, with our self-concerns and sufferings. But our self-concerns and sufferings, our conscious mind and our unconscious mind supports the whole universe. Our conscious mind is doing Buddha's work right now. Each of our conscious mind is supporting the whole universe and is supported by the whole universe.

[30:31]

That's zazen. And that way that we are supporting the whole universe, and the whole universe is supporting us, the way we are completely engaged with everybody, and everybody is completely engaged with us, that way is the same as not abiding in consciousness. That's the same as not abiding in self. And here's a pivot. If we abide in the self, which we are innately gifted to be able to do, that magically interferes with the realization of Buddha's enlightenment. This one little thing we're holding on to, which is necessary for consciousness, the self is necessary to be conscious. I'm saying that to you.

[31:31]

Emphatically. This is the Dharma flag I'm raising. Without self, you are not conscious. I am not conscious. We must have self to be a conscious being. But it is not necessary to attach to the self. That's the optional part. However, we have strong predispositions to cling to the self, to be concerned of it. If we cannot abide in this self, if we can learn how not to cling to it, we open to Buddha mind, which is always present. But studying the self is hard. Because one of the things about the self is it kind of looks like the same thing over and over again. It's not. When you understand it, you realize it's not the same thing, but it looks like it.

[32:38]

So people get bored studying the self, nauseated studying the self, irritated by studying the self. And also, if they don't study it, they also get nauseated, bored, and irritated with it. People tell me, I want to get out of here. I want to get out of this consciousness which always has self-concern. I'm always so nervous about it. People want to get out of here. And the people who want to get out of here are people who are somewhat waking up because they're noticing, they're calm enough to notice that their problem is the self that they're clinging to. They may not notice that the self is not the problem, it's the clinging to it. Self is necessary for consciousness. Clinging to it is not necessary. But clinging to it is our habit and therefore Clinging to it is necessary for suffering.

[33:39]

You can't suffer. You can't be afraid without a self. In dreamless sleep, nobody can pull it off. What? Fear. You can't be afraid of death without a self. With one, if you got a self, You can be afraid of dying, but you have to cling to it first. If you just got the self and you look at it in awe, wow, what a creation. I wonder, you know, that's a sense of ownership of a body. That self thinks it owns a body. Amazing. If you really wonder about it deeply and don't cling to it, there's no suffering. There's no distress. But in order to not cling to it, you have to do this difficult work of studying it. And it doesn't give you a, what do you call it, it doesn't give you a pat on the back every time you study it.

[34:46]

However, the Buddhas do give you a pat on the back every time you study it. The Buddhas say right on that you're doing the work. You're studying the self. You're studying the Buddha way. And it's hard. And if you think it's hard, we say yes. And you go see your teacher and you say, it's hard studying the self. And the teacher says, yes. And also not studying the self is hard too. And until you understand the self, it's going to be hard and there's going to be suffering. And if you don't study the self, it's going to be hard and it's going to be suffering. But studying the self will send you into the path of the whole universe supporting you and you supporting the whole universe. It will send you to the path of not abiding in your consciousness, not abiding in the self or what it owns or what it doesn't own or what other people own.

[35:52]

All that's appearing in the realm of self. All the ownership arrangements are in conscious mind. There's no ownership in the great unconscious cognitive realm which supports our life. There's no ownership. And we do not learn the Buddha way in the unconscious realm. So it isn't like, let's go back to the unconscious realm where there's no suffering. That's not the Buddha way. Dreamless sleep is not the Buddha way. Dreamless sleep is great. It's very restful. That's a good thing to do at night or even in the daytime. It's restful. From what? From the stress, from the disorientation, from the knocking of our chakras all out of place that happens in conscious life.

[36:52]

But it's in the conscious realm where we have our problems is where we also learn how to study our problems. What's our problem? Problem number one, clinging to the self. How do you find clinging to self? Well, you hear about it and start looking for it. Is there any concern around this self? A lot of people have found it. Now one additional, not one, another point is in order to study the self it helps to be quiet and still. Some people are moving around this world and they're saying, hi man, how are you? Oh good, it's Sunday. I'm glad to see you.

[37:56]

Or even, how are you? I'm feeling bad because a friend of mine is very sick. And lots of talk. And then the person sits down and sits still and the self shows up and they start crying or whatever. Being silent and still is a situation that promotes our ability to notice There does seem to be somebody here and there does seem to be some concern about this person in relationship to that person, this person in relationship to that sick person and that healthy person. There does seem to be a self arising moment by moment. And there does seem to be some clinging to it. I can see the clinging. And I kind of, there just seemed to be the understanding that you can cling to the self. And you can be concerned about maintaining it.

[39:02]

There does seem to be that. And once you discover that, then kind of like, and keep looking at that for a long, over and over and over. Many people, this is, I don't want to. Like my granddaughter says, I don't want it. I don't want to, I have other things to do. Yes, we know. But this is the necessary difficult work in order to be free. In order to be free from abiding in self, you have to discover it and be calm and quiet with it and be compassionate with it and generous with it and ethical with it. with it and everything it's relating to in this conscious realm in order to understand it. I once was working on a little essay

[40:19]

And I think, I don't know what the name of the essay was when I started working on it, but the final name of the essay was The Ceremony of Zazen. And while I was working on it, while I was on a vacation with my spouse, and my spouse helped me edit this essay called The Ceremony of Zazen. The Ceremony of Buddha's Meditation. And this article went into a book called Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains. And many people expressed appreciation for this article. So I just want to point out that my spouse Didn't exactly completely write that thing by herself, but she really helped me write it.

[41:28]

And she deserves a lot of approval for helping me with that. And as I mentioned yesterday, whenever anything good happens, she says to me, is that because of Zazen? And I say, yes. And then she says, the ceremony of Zazen, right? And I say, yes. The Zazen of the Buddhas is uninterrupted, unstoppable, inconceivable, unbeginning, unending, it's always there. The way Buddha's enlightenment is functioning is always here with us. Which, if it wasn't for that, we would have no chance.

[42:31]

But there is this possibility of enlightenment. There is this possibility. There is this reality. of the universe supporting us and us supporting the universe. This is Buddha's Zazen. However, without performing the ceremony of Zazen, we will not realize it. It's the ceremony of Zazen that the Buddhas have encouraged us to practice. If we practice the ceremony, we realize the actuality. And we perform the ceremony of Zazen in our karmic consciousness, where there is a body. And we sit the body on the earth, upright, and we watch the body breathe. And we watch the self that thinks she owns this body. And we watch the stress. And we study.

[43:32]

This is the ceremony of Zazen. This is the ceremony of Buddha's Zazen. And by doing this ceremony, we have the possibility of realizing and actualizing and embodying the way the whole universe is supporting us. And we are supporting the whole universe. That's going on anyway, but unless we do the ceremony of studying the self, which owns the body and breathing and so on, this wonderful enlightenment is not realized. And it's hard to study the self. It's difficult. It's easy to get distracted. and get involved in all the turbulence of karmic consciousness. You know, be concerned with the approval ratings and not notice that somebody's there concerned.

[44:35]

Oh, everybody hates me. Not noticing that the me, not looking back at the me. Oh, everybody thinks I'm great. And not looking back at who thinks that. Who's concerned about that? Who is thinking... Who are they talking about? Who is the me? Who is the I? When things are really whipped up, we forget to look at who is there. It's hard. That's why we need to do this ceremony of being still and quiet so we can say, who is here? Who is concerned? Who wants to practice the Buddha way? So we have practice periods.

[45:48]

to support the work of the ceremony of zazen, the ceremony of studying the self. One of our ancestors, our last Chinese ancestor in the lineage of this temple, was named Ru Jing, Tiantong Ru Jing. In Japanese we say, tendo-nyojo. This Zen teacher was the teacher of Eihei Dogen. And he said at the opening of a summer practice period, now we have the opening of an autumn practice period, he said, piling up our bones, piling our bones upright, Piling our bones upright on the open, flat earth.

[47:00]

Gouging out a cave in the empty sky. Breaking through the barrier of dualism. Splashing in a pitch black lacquer bucket, piling our bones upright on the open, flat earth, breaking through the barrier of self and other, Oh, I forgot, gouging out a cave in the empty sky. This room is a cave in the empty sky where we sit with our bones piled upright and break through

[48:18]

the clinging of dualism, and splash in the pitch black lacquer bucket. This kind of presence, this kind of ceremony of Buddha's mind where we pile up our bones. Our bones are already piled up, but we consciously attend to this body, which is upright, breathing. We attend to it. We pile up the body right here. And we take care of it right here. This kind of effort, where we gouge out a cave where we're allowed to be still, and quiet. This is where it's possible to study the self and other and pass through the duality into the freedom of Buddha's mind.

[49:33]

But this effort, such effort, requires unstinting support. And the practice period, which we're doing here, is set up to support this. We have a ceremony which we're performing here and we must be unstinting in performing this ceremony in order to create the support for this study. And we will try. for seven weeks to be unstinting to support this kind of piling up our bones, piling our bones upright in this room and throughout this valley. And we invite you to come here, all of you.

[50:34]

We invite you to come here and practice piling your bones upright in this cave the cave of this place, which we're unstintingly supporting as a place to pass through the barrier of duality and realize the splashing of Buddha's mind with the whole universe. we will, we wish, I don't know what we will do, we wish to be unstinting in maintaining this ceremony here in this room. And we do this so that everybody in the world will be supported, will be unstintingly supported to pile up their bones and carve out a place in this world to study the self.

[51:43]

The Buddhas, right now, are piling up their bones, sitting upright on the opened, open field. gouging out a place to practice in the empty sky, cutting through duality, realizing freedom. They're doing that, and they're inviting us to join them. And we're asking them for their help, and they're offering it. and we must help each other and others must help us. We cannot do this alone. The Buddhas recommend that we pay attention to this

[53:08]

which has the bones piled up right, and it's breathing, they recommend that we pay attention to, moment by moment, posture and breathing, and also we notice that there's a something there that thinks it owns this body, and notice what's going on with that self and how it thinks it's doing things. The Buddhists recommend this as a necessary thing, and they're doing all they can to support us to do this, and we can do all we can to support other people to do this. Zazen is not having no thinking. Zazen is not abiding in the thinking. Zazen is not having no self. Zazen is not abiding in the self. Zazen is freedom with our daily life. but we have some challenging work to do in order to be free.

[54:13]

I think you understand what the work is and if there's any way that we can help you study yourself Please let us know. We want to help you study yourself because we want you to study yourself so you can be free, not of yourself, but with a self. Free of clinging to the self is what we want. Free of abiding in the self is what we want. Not just no self, which we have every night in dreamless sleep. But having a self and giving it away for the welfare of all beings, every moment totally giving the self away. And we know that it can be given away with no problems if we study it thoroughly.

[55:19]

But until we study it thoroughly, we might have some misgivings about giving it away. Maybe you've noticed some of those misgivings of giving the self away. Maybe you think, well, I'll keep a little bit, just in case. That doesn't work. What time is it? it's quarter past eleven so in conscious mind conscious mind has time by the way unconscious mind does not have time but in the conscious realm it's quarter past eleven and yesterday I told people a dream which I'd like to tell you because it was such a great dream

[56:21]

I was dreaming that I was giving a Dharma talk. Not so much, yeah. And I think I was in the San Francisco Zen Center City Center in the dining room. And I was giving a talk and... there were less people than here than this. Maybe there were 50 people. And I was happy to be with these 50 people. And these 50 people were, and I was giving them some, I was raising up Dharma flags. And they were like talking to each other and looking at the ceiling. And some of them had iPads and they were looking at their iPads. And some of them were even talking to each other about what was on their iPads. And they were talking so loudly that the other people couldn't hear me. And they weren't interested. And some other people in groups were going off to have snacks. And then when some people left, the other people thought, oh, I guess we should go too. So it was like there were two or three people who were paying attention. And then I'd try to get the people to come back.

[57:29]

And I asked people to talk less noisily so we could study. But they weren't interested, really, in this boring teaching that I was offering. Whatever it was, I don't know what it was, actually. I was mostly concerned with getting their attention. Of course, this was about my own mind. My own mind wandering off. Going having snacks and looking at having conversations instead of like studying the self. It's hard. It's not that interesting. During this talk, several people have walked out. One advantage of sitting in the back, it's easy to get out. People up front, it's kind of hard, right? It looks like you were considering it, but you know, it's... But people in the back, oh, this is like not interesting. it isn't necessarily interesting to look at this grisly situation of self-concern.

[58:35]

So anyway, I don't know what I was talking about, whatever it was, almost nobody in the group was interested for very long. And again, as I said, I noticed that the disinterest of some made the others think, well, if they're not interested, probably what he's saying isn't that interesting. So the disinterest was contagious. So yesterday, I told the story yesterday, and people said, thanks for this. I told the story. They said, thanks for telling us your dream. And it didn't get recorded, so now I'm telling it again. But the end of the dream, the end of the dream, it had a climax. This was not dreamless sleep. This is dreaming sleep. There was a self. There was me. I was there. And I was trying to be the leader of this class.

[59:41]

And these people were not interested, were not focused on whatever I was offering. So I turned at one point when it was almost nobody was left. And one group had gone over. And they went over to, from my perspective, they went to my right. And I followed them over to the snack area. And I said to them, this is not going to work. It's not going to work. We have to pay attention. This is not going to work. And I wasn't talking down to them. I was talking to them on a level. And then I found myself down on my knees, sort of. I was below them. I was talking up to them. I was compensating for the intensity of my saying, this is not going to work. We can't avoid engagement.

[60:41]

I was crying. I was begging them to see that this distraction is not going to work. We have to take care of paying attention to what's going on in our life. I was saying to them. And I really felt it. And as I also, looking back, I can't remember if they were going, yes, we agree with you, or... It seemed like they looked a little bit surprised, but they didn't look like I was bossing them or... I wasn't... Yeah, they didn't look like I was talking down to them. I was beseeching them to realize that this path... of not paying attention to what's happening in our life right now, it's not going to work. Of not engaging it. So anyway, I woke up and as I woke up I thought, this is the great, this is a great dream. I felt so good to be saying that to them.

[61:48]

I felt so good to say that to myself. So the ceremony of Zazen is to completely engage with your consciousness. which has a self. If you completely engage in it, you will notice the self, and you will notice the self-concern, and you will notice all the stuff that comes. You will notice your fear. And it's not going to work to wander away from that fear. It's not going to work. It's not going to work to go away from the teacher who's saying, would you please listen to me? It's not going to work for the teacher to to not go over to the people who are wandering away and saying, this is not going to work. In a beseeching, begging, humble way, with lots of energy and no superiority, I need you people to listen. I need you to be engaged, and you need to be too. This is not going to work for any of us.

[62:51]

We have to be wholehearted. I felt so great that I said that. And then when I woke up, I still felt great and I still feel great. And I thought, I'm not going to forget this dream. And I haven't. It's a dream of the ceremony of Zazen, of the ceremony where we perform the whole universe is supporting us and we support the whole universe and there's no alternative. And we have to train ourselves to accept the total engagement of all beings with all beings. We have to train. And avoiding it's not going to work. I will try to honor

[63:54]

with that dream for myself. And if anybody tries to get away from me, I will try to go on my knees and beg them to not try to avoid me. Because I'm almost as difficult as yourself. I might be, sometimes. But the most difficult one, you know, is yourself. For me, the most difficult one to keep track of is myself. But that's my understanding, folks. That's what our ancestors say, is study yourself and you will be realizing that all things are confirming you and you are confirming all things. Thank you for listening to my dreams.

[65:00]

My dreams of Dharma Flags.

[65:03]

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