And I get into this panic of, you know, oh my God, I've got to get a book deal. And all this sort of sending out energy of, you know, I need to send out articles and then I get all these rejections. And it's like, in order to achieve the financial and... Not just financial, but... creative dreams that I have, I have to put myself out into the world and get this external approval in order to be where I want to be as a writer and to give my children what they need. And yet, I don't know how do I stay in the present with that. And Yeah. Could you stand up, please? I'm in trouble.

[01:02]

Please sit down again. Just like that. Just stay there so I don't have to turn quite so much to see you. So how do I fully engage with the world from a place of being present and settled. Right? Yes. Yeah. So the normal situation for living beings, like humans, is that their operating room, their operating theater, is karmic consciousness. where there is a world already appearing there, but we're actually operating with the representation of the world in our consciousness. It's that that we actually are engaging with. And there is a call for us to do that.

[02:07]

And if we relate to these appearances of the world, the appearances of the world are our consciousness. And so it isn't that in consciousness I withdraw from the world because that would be withdrawing from consciousness. It isn't that I withdraw from the world and calm down. It's that I calm down in the situation where there seems to be me acting in the world. So I would like to have presence and tranquility and flexibility basically in the operating room where there's a world. That's where I actually operate my relationships with the world. I'm actually operating with my relationships with the world through how they appear to me.

[03:10]

I'm relating to the world through the appearances of the world that are my consciousness. And I will relate to my consciousness better if I calm down in my consciousness. But my consciousness has panic in it often. It's normal. Giddiness, panic, etc. is normal in karmic consciousness. from our total life, all kinds of things are stimulating the production of a karmic consciousness where there's lots of calls, lots of requests, lots of cries, like of babies and parents and so-called oneself, which is relating to all that. So in that space, we want to develop Well, we want to develop the skill. We want to develop a skill of listening to all the cries.

[04:14]

It's a fundamental skill. Listen to the cries of the world. Have you heard that term before? So one of our kind of great... What are they called? What's the word? Personages or impersonages? How do you... personifications, one of the great personifications in this tradition is an enlightening being called Guan Yin or Avalokiteshvara. There's a statue of a female version of this being in the back of the altar there. You can check it out when you leave. She is, this is a female personification of listening to the cries of the world. And that practice of listening to the cries of the world is listening to the cries of the world in karmic consciousness.

[05:22]

So listening to the cries of I don't know what they're called, the cries of your creative process, the cries of your children, the cries of your thoughts about what it means to be a great mother. These are cries that basically we want to listen to them. And then be generous and careful and patient with these cries, but first listen. So you are listening, and that's actually one of the basic things that will be required for there to be tranquility in the situation where these cries are arising. Good things for these people. Good things for these people. Good things for my career, for my work, for my art. Good things for the world. All these cries.

[06:23]

I need to do this. I need to do that. I need to do this. That's the more cries. Listen to those cries. Listen to them. Listen to them. That is, I think it's an essential ingredient in being present and calm and flexible in this situation which you described, which is, you know, there's some variation on that. Everybody's got something like that. The actual, you know, some people have dogs and cats instead of children that are crying, you know. Some people have students who are crying. Some people have husbands that are crying, wives that are crying, patients that are crying, clients that are crying. Everybody's got this crying all around them. Yeah. You have hens, did you say? Three hens, one puppy, a twin boy. Do you have a partridge in a pear tree? Yeah. So you're listening to all this.

[07:26]

That's good. That's basic. Ben, welcome. Welcome all these cries. then be careful of all your actions. Be vigilant that you are practicing precepts of ethical discipline in relationship to all these cries. And be patient with them because they sometimes hurt. I mean, sometimes it's just a lot of noise. It hurts your ears. And sometimes you even see people speaking unkindly to each other or to you. To be patient with that is part of what is required to settle down. Now if you settle down, then you're ready to start relaxing and being playful and creative and fulfilling your your aspirations, all these good aspirations.

[08:29]

But the good aspiration, if you want to have bad aspirations, you don't have to be relaxed and calm. You can do bad things. You can do unskillful things when you're not listening and you're tense and upset. But to do really skillful things, it's more likely that we'll be able to if we're present, calm, relaxed in this situation where there still could be panic but there's also a presence with it and a relaxation and a playfulness with it. So creativity can happen in a space where there's panic. Of course, it is not easy to listen to all this, but you are listening somewhat, so you can tell us. And you just have to know that listening is, if you're listening, you say, well, at least I'm doing part of my job. You know? Give me this. I hear you. You didn't give it to me, though. I hear you. It's more important to listen than to give it, I would say.

[09:37]

If you give without listening, that's not so good. If you listen and don't give, you're doing the important part. The important part of giving is that it's based on listening. And then, if you can give too, great. And sometimes what you can give is, I'm sorry, I can't give that to you. I don't have it to give. But I have some other things to give. Like sometimes I do have things to give people, and I don't want to give them because, well, I don't want to. And sometimes the reason I don't want to is because I don't think it's good for them. Like, you know, I have this big grandson now who's now taller than me, and He used to want me to take him to buy things. And so he would go to these places where he wanted me to buy him things, and he would ask me to buy such and such for him. And I would talk to him. I said, I will give you anything that is good for you, but this is a piece of junk.

[10:44]

And tomorrow, it will be in the trash. Tomorrow, you'll be not interested in it. I don't want to buy you any more junk. And he kind of accepted that, although he didn't particularly want to go shopping with me anymore. I took him one time to buy a helmet to ride on the bicycle. And we went and bought the helmet at Toys R Us. And that little boy knew Toys R Us like the back of his hand. He'd been there before. And he basically wanted to get almost everything in the store. And I said, no. I came to get the helmet. That's what I'm getting for you. And I felt generous with him not buying things for him that I really didn't think were appropriate. But I thought the helmet was okay. Another time we went shopping. This kid likes to go shopping. We went shopping, and he wanted to buy gloves for lacrosse.

[11:47]

and one of those sticks. And I said, but you don't play lacrosse, and you don't know anybody that plays lacrosse. We went to buy a football, and he wanted to get lacrosse equipment. No, no, we went to buy flippers for swimming, and he actually did go swimming. But he also wanted to get a lacrosse set. I said, no, I'm not going to buy you some equipment for sports you're not even going to play. But I felt good about that. I was listening to him. One of the main gifts to give people is, and to yourself, is boundaries. It's a gift. It's a gift. This is my limit. And maybe I'm even sorry that I have this limit, but I do have this one, and this is what I have to give. But I'm here with you, and I'll always be with you, and I'm totally devoted to you, but this is my limit. So, and you can be there and be generous with that, and then you're conveying generosity, listening, calm, and total devotion, even though certain things have not manifested yet.

[13:07]

You're welcome. Pamela. Yeah. Yeah. You're welcome. And anything, other things you'd like to discuss? Yes. This morning something arose for me, an interaction with a person where I felt a little bit threatened, and there was like a physiological response in the body. And then I realized I kind of wanted the person to be punished in some sense. And so I'm asking how, again, it's just we welcome what's going on, the physiological response, welcoming toward that, and then welcoming toward... You know, like one part of me is going like, you want what?

[14:10]

You know, if you're a Zen priest and you want this person to be in some sense, you know, you're wrong. Also, number one is there's a physiological response to welcome. And if you don't welcome it fast enough, there might be this secondary opinion about the person. Sometimes people do something and we have a physiological response that we don't get into anything about them. We just deal with the physical response if we're fast enough. But then sometimes we go on and have an opinion about the person who was the object that this response arose with. And that should be dealt with the same way. Well, first there's the physiological response or reaction. Yes. And then there's, I shouldn't be having this physiological response. Oh, I shouldn't be having it. Oh, okay, yeah. And then there's the other person. Yeah, I actually, like sometimes when I'm standing at the edge of a cliff, you know, in the mountains, when I get close to the edge, I have this physiological response.

[15:17]

And I do sometimes think, I kind of think, well, I shouldn't be having this response. I should be able to go, you know, cavorting on the edge of the cliff, you know, totally relaxed with no, just feel normal. But I don't feel normal when I'm right at the edge of a big cliff. Little cliffs I feel kind of normal. But there's something about when the difference in the visual grain that I'm standing on and the other thing is really, when it gets really tiny down there, that body sort of goes, no, back up. This is really, you're uncomfortable, and if you back up, you'll be much more comfortable. So I often then back up to a place where I'm comfortable. But I do kind of think, you know, to some extent, I should be able to stand at the edge of a cliff without this thing happening to me, but my body does it. And when a certain image is, you know, like, You know, certain images set off things in your body that give certain responses, and you have to train a long time before those things stop.

[16:28]

Like if you tightrope walk at high altitudes a lot, some of that stuff gets bypassed, gets turned off after a while. But you have to train it. And there's lots of things in daily life where there's no training for it. They just pop up. Something just goes bloop, and your body goes, wait a minute. let's stimulate some hormones here." And then that creates something that impacts your consciousness. And then again you think, well, I'm trying to be calm and welcoming to everybody, but there's this big turbulence and I probably shouldn't feel this way. And then there was also the wish for some sort of healing and wanting to do something that would facilitate healing and potential for trying to do something healing that would be unskillful. So there was like all of that. Yeah, a very turbulent situation. Yeah, very turbulent. Yeah, very challenging. And basically we need to praise the training which will engage those situations and train ourselves so that we become more and more skillful with them.

[17:41]

Thank you for sharing your edge of the cliff experience. You're welcome. It helped with some healing for me. Thank you. We have basic physiological response to certain things like suddenly being on top of a cliff or even climbing a cliff. People climb cliffs and they get to a place and they can't move, right? And now we have people who teach how to climb or do rock climbing. So they tell you, move your arm, lift up. And if you do that kind of thing, your body can be retrained so that you can actually override these responses, which are often really helpful. But if you're trying to climb a cliff, you don't want to have these certain physiological responses the whole way, because they're creating hormones, which after they're released, then you have a drop in energy afterwards.

[18:51]

You don't want adrenaline the whole time you're climbing the cliff, right? So you have to train yourself so you can climb without there being adrenaline the whole way. And then just have adrenaline for special situations, because adrenaline is quite useful sometimes. But to have it being secreted for a long time, then if it's a 10-hour climb, it's not good. So we need to train ourselves to... And this is part of our vow, is to train ourselves to handle these situations, but also... be compassionate to situations where we haven't learned it yet and decide if we're going to learn them in those situations. And I'm not going to actually learn how to climb those vertical cliffs or, you know, cliffs that are going backwards even. I'm not probably going to learn that in this life. So if you take me out on those cliffs, I probably will be not able to move very well because my body will be exuding all kinds of hormones which say you shouldn't be around here.

[20:00]

But there's some other situations which I am going to learn in this life. And I'm happy to do so. Actually, just recently I was working out in the gym and I grabbed a bar and brought my feet up above my head, you know, to go over backwards. So I had my feet up above my head and then I came down and I felt really dizzy. So I, so I, then after I recovered my, From the dizziness I tried again and I came down and again I almost passed out. And then I did it again and I came down and I almost passed out. But I thought, I think I'm going to learn how to do this without passing out. I didn't think it was just because I was getting old, although to some extent it was because I hadn't been doing that kind of motions for a while and I kind of forgot how to flip around on a bar.

[21:11]

You know, like these gymnasts, they go swinging around the bar. How can they do that? Well, they train to do that. They learn how to do it. So then now I've learned now that what I need to do when I go up there and put my feet back over my head on the bar, I have to keep breathing. So I just got up and I just stopped and I just started breathing. And I just breathed and breathed and breathed until I felt comfortable. And then when I went down, I just went down slowly and just kept breathing and almost no dizziness. So I learned that. I learned how to do that. But the first time I did it, you know, I thought, well, maybe I should, you know, one might think, well, don't do that again because you almost passed out. But I just, I thought, I think I can learn this. And I did. And I'm going to keep doing that, that particular exercise, and I'll let you know how it goes.

[22:15]

Yes, did you want to come up? Yes. Mine is Margaret. Hi. Hi. I was wondering, sort of echo this woman's question. Yes. I don't have a lot of appendages right now. I live alone. Yes. And hearing our own cries, how to attend to our own cries if we don't have a lot of cries of the world right now. Your own cries are the cries of the world. your own cries, and it would be the same with them. Listen to them. You don't have to listen to them. The Bodhisattva is called the regardor of the cries of the world, which means she listens to them. If they're auditory, she looks at them. If they're visual, and so on.

[23:18]

So listen. It's the same practice for your own. So solitude can work. solitude can work unless there's no cries. And then it's, I would say, then it's like dissociation. So if there's no cries, please come to Green Gulch. Yeah, I may have to. The other question I have is, can you explain a little bit more, give a very simple practice for looking at our karmic consciousness with bravery and diligence? With bravery and diligence, well, That's a huge practice question. Well, in the basic bodhisattva training course, the first thing is you want to do it. But the first practice is generosity. So if you want to be, did you say brave and diligent? I'll just tell you what they are.

[24:19]

First is generosity, next is ethical discipline, next is patience, and the fourth one is diligence, heroic diligence. Next one is concentration, and the final one is wisdom. They're sequential, but also they're mutually inclusive. So when you're practicing generosity, actually it includes wisdom, But in order to understand that it includes wisdom, you have to go through the process of generosity, ethics, patience, diligence, concentration, and wisdom to realize that wisdom was there in the beginning. So all these practices include each other, and yet to get ready for heroic diligence, it needs to be based on generosity, ethics, and patience. with the cries. And then if you're generous and ethically disciplined with the cries and patient with them, then you can contemplate your wish to be diligent with everything that's appearing, to be diligent with all these cries and to be heroic with them.

[25:42]

But you need that heroism and diligence and thoroughness with things needs these first three practices as its base. You need some diligence in order to practice the first three. So that's the sense in which it's included already. But to really be diligent, you've got to be careful. and patient because when you're doing work, if you want to do it diligently, you have to be able to be present with hardship. Because sometimes diligence is hard. To be thorough sometimes is hard. Sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's not hard. Sometimes you can be really diligent and really careful and it's not hard. But when hardship comes, like your hands get cold or something, or people start yelling at you when you're trying to do something, you need to be able to stay present with the hardship in order to work thoroughly. So you need patience in order to be really diligent and really thorough in your work.

[26:52]

So you've got these cries. practice generosity, ethics, patience with these cries, then you're set up to start practicing heroic diligence. And then you can calm down and wake up. Start with yourself. Don't skip over yourself. It doesn't work. So if you want to help others, like in that example on the airplane, if you're going to assist someone else putting on their oxygen mask, put your own on first. so that you have oxygen in order to move your arm over and get their mass for them. If they're having trouble or if they're pushing you away or whatever, you've got oxygen. You can keep working with it. Okay, let me help you now, rather than... So yeah, you have to sort of check into your own situation, listen to your own cries, then you can hear other people's better. But it is possible to live in solitude and do this? It is possible, yeah. Not recommended, though.

[27:56]

because here you are and you're talking to me you can be in solitude talking to me right now you could be in solitude solitude is good but just also you need some input from the rest of the practicing community which you're doing right now you're welcome she comes here often and she gets input yes, want to come? Hi. Hi. Your name? Leah. Leah. Excuse me a second. Sure. What's your name? Margaret. Margaret. Margaret. And Leah. Yes. I'm new to Zen. Welcome, newcomer. Thank you. Can you explain more what you mean when you say karmic consciousness? Specifically, I'm interested in the karmic part.

[28:59]

Here's synonyms, okay? Consciousness. Self-consciousness. Karmic consciousness. So the consciousness in which there seems to be somebody there is the only kind of consciousness. I want to use the word consciousness for the kind of mind where there seems to be somebody there. There's other realms of mind, which I would call mind. The unconscious mind is not consciousness. It's sometimes called a type of consciousness, but I think it's maybe helpful to call it mind. So mind is a more general, or cognition is a more general term. And we have a vast, we have a vast body. And that body lives with a vast, very reliably worked out cognitive process that's unconscious. There's nobody there. There's no self. And that part of our mind is doing all kinds of wonderful things like operating your legs when you go up and down stairs.

[30:10]

It's operating your legs and arms and eyes and hands when you're riding a bicycle after you've learned how to do it. It's actually operating the gymnast's body when she's flying through the air. She's not consciously thinking how to do those flips, but her cognition is performing these voluntary feats. That make sense? When you're learning to do flips, You learn them in consciousness. And in consciousness there's somebody there learning gymnastics or learning language. But once you learn it, when you get to the level where you're actually performing these things skillfully, there's no more learning to speak of except your coach making certain comments. But mostly you're doing it from the unconscious. So in the consciousness there is somebody there and the actions that somebody does are called karmic actions.

[31:14]

The actions which are not done by somebody, like for example the operation of your, the coordination of your heart and lungs and breathing, a lot of that stuff is cognitively maintained and operated but there's nobody there operating it the cognitive processes, the images and elements and patterns of elements and programs of cognitive operation are unconscious. They're much faster than anything a conscious mind ever gets involved in. So karmic consciousness is where I practice Zen or where I forget to practice Zen. or where I do well or I don't do well. That's karmic consciousness. And that's where we have problems, and that's where we practice compassion, and that's where we wake up to the reality of this wonderful workspace called consciousness.

[32:23]

and then we become free of it because we understand it. If we don't understand the space or the self that's there, we are stressed by our misunderstanding. When we understand karmic consciousness, when we understand self-consciousness, we are free of it. And then we can use it to help other people become free. So our practice is not karmic consciousness, where there's thinking, where there's me thinking, and it's also not the unconscious process, where there's nobody there. It's not abiding in either. It's not abiding in both. It's freedom from both, and therefore we can use the amazing thing of being a human being to help people become free of misunderstanding the process of consciousness, which is normal.

[33:35]

It's normal to misunderstand it because it arises in a way that promotes the programs of biological function. But somehow the consciousness has become aware that there's stress and that there's teachings about how to be free of the stress. So now we're in the process of learning those teachings. So we're very fortunate to have these teachings which can free us from the stress of karmic consciousness, of self-consciousness. So I say this over and over. I'm in a position, I'm in a line of work where people come to me and they say, I can't stand, I'm so self-conscious, I can't stand this self-consciousness. You know, I can't stand me, me, me, me. I want to get out of here. This is a normal situation in karmic consciousness. that people are having a hard time there and want to get out.

[34:37]

It's a normal situation. But right there in that place you learned language, you performed virtually miraculous things you've learned in that terrible, troublesome space. And you have to learn them in order to hear the teachings of how to be free of that terrible, troubling space. and also that wonderful, beautiful space, that glorious space, but also to be free of the glorious space. There's teachings for that. And we can learn them there. Just like we can learn language, we can learn the practices of liberation. Yes? Hello. I was wondering, to follow up on the last question, if our karmic consciousness has the ability to train the mind to drive a car, ride a bike, do flips as a gymnast, the conscious mind can also train

[36:00]

or the karmic consciousness, I suppose, can also teach the mind to do unhelpful things. Yeah. So karmic consciousness is always, you could say trained, but karmic consciousness is always transforming the unconscious process. Every time you say a word in English, you transform your unconscious. Every time you say a word in any language, you transform your unconscious. Every time you think a beneficent thought in karmic consciousness about yourself or others, you transform your unconscious process. Every time you think an unskillful thought, there's a constant process of the conscious mind transforming the unconscious. And then the unconscious supports the next conscious. So everything that goes on consciously is immediately transformed in the unconscious cognitions. The unconscious cognitions that have been transformed now produce another state of consciousness which transforms it.

[37:04]

So the support makes states of consciousness which transform itself. So this is constantly going on. We are constantly evolving both consciously and unconsciously because the conscious process transforms the unconscious which supports the next conscious. So we're always evolving. And whether, you know, but the question is how? Evolving towards understanding and freedom and peace and fearlessness or evolving towards more deception, more withdrawal, you know, more fear. So, you know, people, you know, I say, let's practice now because when you get older, I notice a lot of older people get more and more afraid. So, practice now so that when the older body comes, there'll be a consciousness that

[38:06]

that has trained the unconscious so that the unconscious that lives with the old body is generating skillful responses in consciousness and so on. So if I've, through whatever karmic conscious processes, if I've trained myself to have reactions to people or to situations, through whatever ways that I've been thinking about them. I can train or I've taught myself maybe to have responses that seem very automatic. And can I then use that same consciousness to untrain myself or to train new responses? You can use consciousness to train new responses, yes. And I say you can. In other words, in that space where there's a you, that space can learn new responses. And it has been all along. At one point we didn't know how to speak English and we learned to speak English.

[39:08]

We can still learn new things. And now, particularly now that we have learned English, we can use English and Chinese and Sanskrit and Tibetan and Japanese, we can learn these languages. We don't have to, but we can learn them to learn the teachings of how to transform the conscious process into wisdom, which also will transform the unconscious process. And because the unconscious process lives so close to the body, it will transform the body. So the body and the unconscious processes which live so close together and the conscious process, they will all be transformed into, in the long run, perfect wisdom. But in the short run, there's still lots of wonderful transformations that can occur so that karmic consciousness is generally speaking, commonly speaking, illuminated by the teachings, where they're remembered quite frequently every day.

[40:20]

That can happen. I've seen it happen in many people. Some new students come to Zen Center and they say, when I arrived, I felt pretty good. But then I found out that some of the people here had been practicing really a long time. Why do they still act like that? You know, they still do these kind of like not very skillful things. And now I found out they've been here a really long time. I mean, I'm pretty unskillful, but I just arrived. Right. It would be like going to a language school and finding out that some of the students who don't know much better than you how to speak the language have been there 30 years. I say, well, you should have seen them the way they were before. I really, to me, everybody that's been practicing has come along, when they've been practicing a long time, I've seen they've come a long way, all of them.

[41:22]

And people who don't practice, I've seen them kind of like go backwards, become less skillful they were when I first met them. Some people practice, you know, they get pretty good and then they stop and then they deteriorate because they're not practicing. But that's what the teaching says happens. Just like if you speak English and then you go live in France for 20 years, you lose your English to some extent. Right? Because the conscious mind is not speaking English, the unconscious mind gets transformed into French or whatever, and it's not stimulating those old cognitive processes and you get, as they say, rusty. So we can, some of us haven't been on a bicycle for a while, so when we first get on we should be careful because the unconscious has been busy doing other things.

[42:31]

We have consciously not been riding, okay, got that part. The unconscious has also kind of like not been running those tracks and the body has not been doing those things. So when you first get on, be careful Because your body and unconscious processes have changed because you haven't been riding bicycles. And just like me, I haven't been swinging around those bars for a long time, so I have to get warmed up again. And that's what I'm doing. So, does that answer your question? I had one follow-up. So if we have our unhelpful responses or kind of unconscious ways of behaving, if we're looking to change or learn new methods, is the basic approach to listen as closely as we can to the existing unhelpful or unskillful ways and that by becoming more aware of them, then they're transformed in some process?

[43:39]

If you pay attention to them, to unskillful processes, they will be transformed. I mean, if you pay attention to the way unskillful behaviors appear in consciousness, if you pay attention, they will be transformed. If you don't pay attention, they will also be transformed. However, the way they'll be transformed if you don't pay attention is they'll become more well-established unconsciously. But no matter what you do, whatever you do, I should say, will transform the unconscious cognitive ocean that we live in. But awareness of what's appearing in consciousness, and aware that this seems to be kind of unskillful, that type of awareness transforms the unconscious processes to promote more awareness, which will promote more awareness, which will promote more awareness. But also, not paying attention also has evolutionary consequences too.

[44:50]

It promotes not paying attention, which comes naturally. You don't have to work at it to be inattentive. you can do unskillful things blindfolded. But to do skillful things blindfolded is usually done after you learn them without a blindfold. Like playing chess blindfolded follows from quite a bit of training without the blindfold. So to learn to play chess, we usually learn without a blindfold, unless we're blind. And then we learn without, you know, without blindfold. gloves so we can feel the pieces. OK. Thank you. You're welcome. Yes. What's your name again?

[45:57]

Tyler. Tyler. Yes. Tyler. And what's your name? Drew. Drew. Drew. My question is around the role of the teacher in your progress on the path. I've been practicing for about two years, not very long. But I feel like I'd like to find a teacher and start working with a teacher to study precepts. And I'm not really sure how to go about that. What is that process and how does one... Well, I don't know how you went about to feel like you want a teacher. But anyway, that's the key thing that's come to you, is if you've been given this emotion and you're aware of it, that you kind of think a teacher would be helpful. So you got that part. Yes. Then I would just say, go to some place or places where there's teachers of the precepts that you wish to receive and watch them practice and see if you feel that some of those teachers would be appropriate for you.

[47:03]

When I first started practicing, life was simple. There was like one Zen master in the United States that was available, you know. So I didn't know which one should I go to. I just went where there was this this teacher and then that life was simple. But now there's lots of teachers and so maybe just go check them out and see which one you feel affinity with. And if you see one you feel affinity with, then just watch them teach for a while. and see if you feel like, this would be good, don't be too quick. And then when you feel like, you can go talk to the teacher and explore what kind of relationship they would be up for and tell them what kind of relationship you want and work out an agreement about how to proceed. Thank you. The precept practice in the great vehicle of the Bodhisattva, the precept practice is to receive the precepts from somebody other than yourself, who has received the precepts from something other than herself, who has received the precepts, you know, and so on.

[48:25]

We don't make these precepts up on our own. Or even when we hear about them, we don't say, well, I'm going to go practice them. They need to be given to us by somebody. And you say, well, if you find a book on the precepts, somebody gave me this book. Okay, that's right. This book was given to you. But the tradition is to receive it from an actual person of the same species as you, if possible. who received the precepts from another person, and so on, back to the Buddhas. And even the Buddhas, even Shakyamuni Buddha received the precepts from Buddhas before him. So there's no beginning to this transmission. So it's normal in receiving the teachings that you receive the teachings from another. And then when you receive them, and also receive them properly, receive the teachings, receive the precepts properly. In other words, there's a proper way of receiving them.

[49:29]

And part of it is to check out what the person who gives them, your understanding of it. So that process of giving the precepts, you receive the precepts, and then you aspire to practice them, and then you go to work. So a teacher is involved in the transmission of these practices. And in this tradition, the teachers are people who had teachers. So when somebody comes in to be the teacher, like I came in to play the role of the teacher today, before I gave the talk, I bowed to the teachers. I bowed to the one who listens to the cries of the world. I bowed to the bodhisattva infinite wisdom, perfect wisdom. I bowed to Shakyamuni Buddha. So that's a normal part of this tradition is the teachers have teachers.

[50:34]

So at some point you may be feeling yourself, oh, Oh, I want a teacher. I need a teacher. I had that feeling before I came to Zen Center. I thought, I don't know if the way I'm meditating is good or not. Maybe if I talked to somebody who had been doing this a lot, he could say, well, this is fine, or this is not fine. So I came to San Francisco to meet a teacher. Well, actually, to meet a practitioner of the practice I was trying to do who had more experience than me. And I was very fortunate to find somebody like that. Now in some sense the situation is great because all over the country people can find teachers. Yeah. Thank you very much.

[51:32]

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