Today our dear Fred passed away. He was 84 and a half. I last saw him on Tuesday evening and He said, since the last time I saw you, I've gone. And he didn't say down, but he had his hand in the air and he brought it down. And I said, you seem much weaker now. And I asked him what was most important now, and he said, to die right.

[01:02]

That was Tuesday. And I said, I wish to join you in that practice. And he said, how can you? And I said, I will live right. I vow to live right. Some of you don't know Fred, but almost every one day sitting we had here, Fred came. And he often came in the mornings, and he always came in the morning, and sometimes he just stayed till noon, so I would usually see Fred in the morning.

[02:09]

And Fred would usually ask a question, and he asked really good questions. He also would often confess his lack of faith and practice before his teacher, who he let me be. And so he would confess his lack of faith and practice before me. over and over and he would ask questions and often I would come and share his questions with the group. He loved this group, he loved this community, he loved Green Gulch community. Fortunately, as you can see, right up till the last time I saw him, every time I visited him, he asked for instructions about how to practice, and I would give them to him, and he said that he would practice them as fully as he could.

[03:46]

And sometimes he would say that he's having trouble concentrating on the practice. But he still wanted to focus on the practice of Breathing in without dwelling in body and mind, breathing out without abiding in the elements of consciousness. Just like I instructed you today, he was trying to practice that way. And he had trouble concentrating, just like we do. Last night one of the members of the Sangha was with him to support him along with his wife.

[05:05]

His name is Miu Yu, and he helped Fred's wife, Elena, get through the night. And he stayed with Fred after he died, and Elena had to leave the room, but she came back, and she said he looked very relaxed and peaceful. the China, the Heart Sutra in his room. So our sangha will not be the same without Fred.

[06:15]

But speaking for me, I'm so happy that he practiced with us for about 25 years. And Fred was very honest with me. about how hard it was for him to practice. But whenever I suggested a way to practice with how hard it was, he always said, I will try and thank you very much. And as I said, he'd come back and tell me that he failed.

[07:17]

And I would tell him again, and he would say, I will try, and thank you very much. And I said to his wife, Elena, on Tuesday, I said, you have been very devoted to Fred and you're very devoted right now and you seem fine. And she said, yes, I am right now. But what will I do when he's gone? I said, you need to find other beings to be devoted to And this morning when I talked to her she said, you told me that I've been devoted to Fred and that I need to find new beings to be devoted to and I want to do that.

[08:28]

Please help me find who to be devoted to now. So let's help her find who to be devoted to now because she realizes that That's healthy life for her is to be devoted to human beings. She also asked me, she said, I can't stand to bring Fred's ashes home to the house. May I bring them to you? And I said, yes, you may. so she will bring me Fred's ashes after the cremation. She also thought that Fred loved Green Gulch and would want to be put into the earth at Green Gulch, and I said, we can do that for Fred.

[09:32]

We don't do it for everybody, but Fred did many, many January intensives at Green Gulch, so I think he qualifies. So if you want to qualify, you know what to do. It's not a public cemetery, Green Gulch. It's for practitioners. It's not open. So if you want to be a Green Gulch, come and practice there. Intensively. people are saying to me, sympathizing with me for having, I have so many sick friends now. And I feel grateful that you're all supporting me to take care of my sick friends.

[10:40]

And, you know, so I don't know how many more years you'll support me to be with my sick friends, but I'm up for it. More precious years of supporting people to practice through sickness and health. How wonderful. So help me. Help me help people. Let me help you help people. We're doing it. Let's continue. And in order to help people in the best way, I feel we need to take care and pay attention to our body.

[11:52]

We help people best when we're aware of our body posture and our breathing. This is a basic mindfulness for us to take care of, which is the path of wisdom and the path of being skillful supporter of other people's practice and to be to train to give up being distracted from our mindfulness of our body and our breathing and to give up distraction from listening to the teaching and remember the teaching and listen to the teaching and remember the teaching so that we can be good supporters and servants of all living beings. I frequently ask human beings, what is most important in life?

[13:33]

This question comes from, this question arises in consciousness. And then it gets expressed in words, which I give to people. And they hear me. And then they hear me in... They hear me unconsciously. And they hear me consciously. And then they... Maybe they see an answer to that question. And then they tell me. and they see the answer to the question, they can see the answer to the question in consciousness. The question appears in consciousness and the answer doesn't always appear, but when it appears, it appears in consciousness.

[14:44]

It appears in consciousness. Consciousness is where things appear. Part of our life is not about appearances. We're alive and we're functioning, but there's no appearances. And that unconscious mind supports the conscious mind. And in the conscious mind there's an appearance of the question, what's most important in life? And the answer may appear there too. And that answer then we can use to guide our practice. So just recently I said, what's most important? And someone said, to be present. People often say, to be present. And then they sometimes say to be present in the moment, or to be present here.

[15:51]

I offer you the teaching that the moment is something that appears. Moments appear, and they appear in consciousness. Here appears in consciousness. So in consciousness we can be present with here and this moment. And then we can also, we can do something called study the self in this consciousness. that there seems to be somebody here. There is a subject here in this consciousness. And we can study that subject. And when we understand that subject thoroughly, we'll be free of misunderstanding it.

[17:02]

And being free of misunderstanding this subject, this self, which lives in consciousness, we will be wise and our wish to be compassionate will be unhindered by distraction and confusion about what the self is. We have the opportunity to study consciousness, to study what appears there, to learn to be undistracted in our study and to study the self there and become free of consciousness. And when we're free of consciousness, we can use it to benefit beings, to help beings

[18:03]

join the same practice and the same enlightenment as all beings and all Buddhas and all bodhisattvas. Consciousness is where all of our problems arise, and consciousness is also where we learn to practice And when we learn to practice, it transforms our unconscious body and mind. And our transformed unconscious body and mind supports a new consciousness which is again now more ready to practice and study itself. Because consciousness can know itself, and it can know itself.

[19:07]

It can know itself and it can know its self. It has a self. Many people tell me before and after, they tell me what's most important, they tell me that they kind of would like to get rid of the self. They kind of wish the self, which is connected to self-concern and fear, etc., they kind of wish that maybe they could get a glimpse of not having a self around, like just not there. And I would say to you that nobody's going to get a glimpse of a self not being around. Could you see how that's impossible? First of all, if the self wasn't around, there'd be nobody to see that.

[20:14]

Second of all, if there's not a self around, there's no consciousness. Third of all, and this number can be increased quite a bit, third of all, whenever you're in dreamless sleep, there's no self. Every time you go into dreamless sleep, you get a break from helping yourself, which is fine. It's quite restful. It's a vacation from self-concern and all that comes with it. It's fine. It's good. It's restful. Enjoy it. And when I say enjoy it, I mean unconsciously enjoy it. And you do. And then, when you had enough dreamless sleep, then you get dream sleep. And in dream sleep, the self comes back. In consciousness, we have the outrageous fortune, the outrageous slings and arrows of fortune are in consciousness.

[21:24]

But then you can die. which is basically the same in a lot of ways, conscious-wise, dying is like dreamless sleep. To die, to sleep dreamlessly, perhaps to dream. Ah, there's the rub. When you've rested enough, Consciousness arises again with a new set of dreams. And in dreamville, there's a self. And then when you've had enough of that, you wake up from sleeping and then you have awake dreams with a self. And this is where we have our trouble, but it's also where we hear the teaching and sometimes think, yes, I want to practice. I really do.

[22:27]

And I'd like to learn how. And I've heard that this is the place to learn. The place where I hear the teaching and think I want to practice this, that's where you learn to practice it. I learn to practice it in the place where there's problems, where there's birth and death, where there's sick friends. That's where you learn. There's a self there. We're not trying to get rid of it. We're trying to practice compassion towards the self and the sick friends and say thank you to the teaching and put it into practice. Learn how to do it. And if we get distracted, reveal and disclose the distraction before the Buddhas and ancestors and go back to work, go back to play the wonderful work of learning the path of enlightenment, which is the work of learning how to study the self in consciousness, to study the consciousness which has a self and has perhaps some or quite a bit of misunderstanding of the self.

[23:44]

And with that misunderstanding comes stress, distress, nausea, and turbulence, giddiness, and so on. This is normal. That's why we have to, even before we understand the self, we need to learn to practice compassion as best we can before we're wise. And some people are actually quite good at practicing compassion even though they still don't understand that the self is totally process and not at all anything you can be concerned about because there's nobody outside the self-process. All the selfs are inside self-process. There's no self outside of self-process, and there is a self-process.

[24:49]

There really is a self-process, and nobody can get a hold of it. But part of the self-process is that you think you can get a hold of a process. So that's part of the deal. But you can see through the illusion of that if you study it. And you can study it if you want to. And you can want to if you look inside and find out that you do. And if you look inside and you don't find out that you do, it's going to be hard to do it because it's not necessarily fun. But if you look inside and you say, I've heard that studying the self is the Buddha way. I've heard that it's going to really be helpful to everybody if I would understand myself. So I do want to do it. Then you have a chance. Then we have a chance.

[25:50]

But you have to check and find out that you want this, because it's hard work. It's hard work because there's so much going on in consciousness, right? It's so, well, it's really alive. And it's not sitting still. And it's got so many interesting things other than studying the self going on. So you have to really say, yeah, I really do want to study it. I want to actually be kind to all that's going on so I can calm down and understand the self. Yes, I really do. Maybe. Maybe. check it out, see if you do. If you do, there's a lot of resources to support you doing that because a lot of people want you to do it and think it really would be good and they want you to learn it so you can help them learn it. We can help each other become very skillful and

[26:55]

more and more undistracted in the work of studying the thing that's in consciousness called self. To study the process that lives in consciousness, to study the process that gives consciousness life, Self gives conscious life. Life of consciousness includes the self. Life is the, I mean, consciousness is the place where the self lives. And self lives in consciousness. And we can study it. We can. And Fred studied himself and he told me what he saw. And I was happy to hear that he could see something about the self.

[28:02]

And it was a wonderful practice we had together. And the merit of this is going to help us and Elena and his stepson and his grandchildren. They have been benefited and they will continue to be benefited by the effort he made in the painful work of studying the self of Fred Murath. He could see his resistance and tell me about it, which he did over and over. We also could look inside, we can look in consciousness, we can be aware and notice any resistance, and we can be kind to it, and we can understand it, and we can become free of it.

[29:22]

And then again. Many of us will really miss Fred. Our community will be different now, but I think perhaps you could join me in being encouraged by the way he practiced and being encouraged by his life. by the way he practiced and that we will carry on the work which he wanted to practice and did his best to practice Would you lead us in a song for Fred?

[31:05]

I'd be happy to. Any suggestions? They say you're leaving this valley. Okay. I haven't sung this song for a while, so I might get the words off, but close something like this. Come and sit by our side if you love us Do not hasten to bid us adieu But remember the green gulch valley And the cow people that loved you so true Now they say you are leaving this valley We will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile. For they say you are taking the sunshine that has brightened our path for a while.

[32:19]

How's that, Fred? Pardon? I was asked that earlier and I do not remember. But I can find it. And at future ceremonies we will use it. But I don't remember what it was. It was something amazingly wonderful though. Yes. Yes. One time I sat sashin next to Fred, because we both sat in chairs. We sat next to each other and we took the meals together. And at the end of the sashin, he told me that... He indicated that I caused him quite a bit of trouble during the sashin, and the reason was...

[33:24]

that I sat still. And I'd never forgotten that. I mean, it was just so amazing for him to just share that with me afterwards. And I'd never forgotten that. You can cause trouble for people. In many ways. In many ways. I have a picture for it, if anyone who doesn't know things wants to see it. The Green Gulch at the last practice trip. Is there anywhere I may... Thank you for bringing it. It's so hard to imagine anything about that. I don't think I've ever seen one without the other.

[34:28]

But, you know, I know. I'm sure you know. It's hard, but... In all those years, and years, and years, they were always spent together. It must have been like a mutual emotion. Yeah. Two very different colors of people, don't you think? Well, is there anything else that you wish to say at this time? Anybody? Yes. Thank you. Not the first time, but one of the early times that I saw Fred, I was in the Berkeley Zen Center sitting quietly in the background in a chair. And I was disturbed because somebody was clumping in.

[35:33]

And I looked up and I had this view of, my goodness, stop clumping. And of course it was Fred. So I say, of course, because when you, I mean, there were many oceans between us, close and after that. And when you said he kept confessing that it was hard for him, I decided I would confess what I observed about myself. and also how wonderful it was that he could come clumping in and still be serious and practice and be devoted to it. So I take a lot of faith and hope today that all of my narrowness and over-responsiveness to things that don't need to be responded to in a way that I've learned

[36:36]

can be overcome, at least I can try. At least you can try. And I'm very grateful to him. Thank you. Yes? I remember, I think that many of us were there for his chit-chat, and he was so happy, and he was so proud that he'd actually managed to send it to me. He was just very happy that way. Yes. Friedman's really one of the sweetest men I've ever met. I remember once on the balcony, he was tired one time here, and I said, why don't you lie down on the subatoms and take a rest? And he said, can I? It was like I had given him a gift, you know, just saying that.

[37:44]

And I felt, he gave me a great gift. He sang with me. Well, excuse me, I have a P.S. to my comment based on what you just said. Can you speak up, Lois? I beg your pardon. I have a P.S. to my comment, and that is the observation that I made that the perfection of wisdom is not... just following the rules, to expand into whatever rules they are and somehow be flexible about that. I mean, why shouldn't you clump? Why shouldn't I clump? Why shouldn't I, you know, that's not the issue. It's not to be disrespectful to anybody, but it's to enlarge from within and to use what we have. Use, become what we are given and what we keep

[38:45]

strong indicating and let it illuminate us. And so this narrow view of mine in that regard has melted in me. We could do a service for him this morning, or we can do a service for him in a few minutes, if you like. May our intention of unequally stand to every being and place wherever to marry upon this way.

[39:56]

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