Last week I brought up case number 5 from the Book of Serenity called Ching Yiran's Price of Rice. And a monk asked the teacher, Ching Yiran, what is the quintessential meaning of the Buddha's teaching, and Ching Yiran said, what's the price of rice in Lu Ling? And I also brought up a poem written in response to this by an ancient teacher named Hung Jer,

[01:00]

and his poem was, the great work of peace has no sign. The family style of peasants is most pristine, only concerned with village songs and festal drinking. How would they know about the virtues of shun, or the benevolence of Yao? And then the assembly was invited to also write poems in response to this story, and some people sent me their poems, thank you very much for those who sent them, and if anybody wants to read their poems here, you're welcome to do so.

[02:02]

At what price, a tent city opposite the hospital, inside a machine, a muffled clang, ignited membrane clambers up, pulls narrow into vents, sufferers shuffle past, concerned with hunger, virtuosos practice patterns, benevolence sits in ritual silence. Would you say the last line again? Benevolence sits in ritual silence. Could you hear that by any chance? Great. Yeah. Great. Thank you, thank you very much. Yes, others? Rana?

[03:11]

Number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, who's the zero, who's the infinite, what is your number? Thank you very much. Yes? Looking for rice, I found 1,314 Ganga rice, but still the Buddha Dharma escapes me. Thank you for your research. By the way, have you escaped Zen? Zen successfully escaped you, but you are not so successful.

[04:24]

Oh. Esteemed Sixth Ancestor, how did you get so lucky? Two successors, exponential benefits. I've heard the price of rice is ever-changing, totally unreliable. And this pristine, peaceful village, filled with drinking and festival singing, needs no sign. Listen, I'll find the gate, bring my rice bowl and drinking board, and become the song. Thank you very much. I got other ones, but I'm not reading them, because the people didn't ask me to.

[05:43]

But thank you all for... Yes? Yes? Have I? Well, maybe. It's possible. I'm working on memorizing ancestors' poems. Ready for another story about enlightenment? Okay, so this case is number 16 in the Blue Cliff Record. It's called Man in the Weeds. Weeds. Weeds.

[06:46]

Ching, excuse me, Jing Ching. Jing Ching's Man in the Weeds. Jing Ching is the teacher in this story. A monk asked Jing Ching, I'm breaking out. I asked the teacher to break in. Or I'm pecking out. I asked the teacher to peck in. Jing Ching said, Can you live or not? The monk says, If I weren't alive, I'd be laughed at by others. Jing Ching said, You too are a man in the weeds.

[07:53]

Weeds. Before I read the poem in response to this, I just want to mention that there is the image which is offered in the tradition of a chick inside of an egg shell and the hen outside and the chick pecks out and the hen pecks in. These days, not too many of us get to witness this. It's possible that that hens have forgotten about this possibility.

[08:55]

I think, however, chicks still know how to peck out of the shell. But in the old days, the hens used to used to tap from the outside. The adult mother hen would tap in response to the chick inside the shell and together they would break the shell. So that image is used, you could say, for the relationship between Buddhas and living beings or teachers and students. The hen could break the egg

[10:01]

right after it comes out, probably, but then the chick would die. It would be alive, maybe. A lot of the eggs come out with living creatures inside. But if the hen hit it right away after it came out, almost all the chicks would not survive. And without getting pecked, some chicks you might think could get out but again, we don't know if that's possible, really. We don't know what's helping the chick get out when they peck. But in the old days, the idea was they couldn't get out by themselves. And also, the hen cannot get the chick out by herself because she needs to get some information

[11:03]

about what's going on inside and one of the main forms of information is pecking, which you could see to some extent and hear and feel. And again, if you look at the metaphor, people might think that the enlightenment is when the student breaks out of the shell. But you could also see the enlightenment as the interaction while the student's still inside, that that is enlightenment too. And also, when that chick gets outside, that's not the end of their relationship. They continue to relate,

[12:04]

it's just that the shell's not a big issue anymore. Except perhaps they might eat it because it has calcium in it and it also has some fiber. So the relationship goes on even after breaking out. But there is a breaking out. I don't know who the who the first Buddhist teacher was to use this image. This image was used, I'm pretty sure, before Jing Qing was asked by the monk. The monk had already heard about this and was addressing the teacher and said, Okay, teacher, I'm pecking out, I ask you to peck in. They already knew about this from other people. So then later

[13:05]

another Zen teacher wrote this poem. The Ancient Buddha's Family Style. Responsive preaching comes to scornful detractions. Chick and Mother Hen do not know each other. Who is it that breaks in and breaks out together? A peck and she awakens but she's still in the shell. Once again she receives a blow. All the Zen monks in this world name and describe

[14:11]

this process in vain. So this might be an earlier version of this. I'm pretty sure it is. This is a poem written by Xiang Yan. And Xiang Yan is a Dharma brother to the people in the first story of the first class. In the first class we have Mihu who sent one of his students to his brother Yangshan. So Yangshan and Mihu are Dharma brothers. They are the same teacher. And Xiang Yan also has the same teacher as them. And Xiang Yan

[15:12]

wrote a lot of poems and this is one of them. The chick pecks from within the hen from without. Chick breaks free through the shell. When hen and chick are both gone the function has not gone astray. Singing the same song the mystic voice goes on alone. I have another case

[16:13]

that's quite a bit longer and more complicated which I'll bring up maybe later if we need it. So again I think we have we talked about irony in the first class in relation Katie brought up the statement that when one attains realization it is not what one was expecting or you know whatever you thought it was beforehand it will not be that. So in that way enlightenment is kind of ironic. And also in so enlightenment has an ironic aspect and

[17:13]

some other things some other things also have an ironic aspect. Can you think of some other things that have an ironic aspect? It's a real easy question. Grasping has an ironic aspect? Literally anything in the world everything has an ironic aspect. Our life has an ironic aspect. It's not what we think it is. And also Zen is closely related to our life so Zen uses irony

[18:13]

uses it as part of the process. So in this story the monk asked the teacher okay I'm pecking out would you please peck in teacher says you know will you be able to live or not? He says if I weren't alive people would laugh at me and then the teacher says here's another one in the weeds and weeds means usually delusion or stuck in shells but again there's an irony in that whether which you can't escape you can try and if you try there will be consequences but you won't succeed you'll just deaden the story by eliminating the irony

[19:15]

irony isn't the whole story it's just it's just part of the spice of life. So you're invited again if you'd like to write poems about this case Do you remember it? The monk says to the teacher I'm pecking out I ask the teacher to peck in teacher says if I do will you be able to live or not? The student says if I wasn't alive people would laugh at me teacher says here's another one living in the weeds and the

[20:22]

yeah so the the teacher says here's another one living in the weeds so the teacher in a sense is naming and describing the situation in vain but I think teachers are not afraid to do things in vain it's not like I'm not going to do anything if it's going to be in vain I'm not going to help you if it's in vain but again that can be an ironic statement because to say that to somebody could be quite helpful I'm not going to help you if it's in vain could that be an ironic statement yeah I'm not

[21:29]

coming to Berkeley if it's in vain yes you say a little bit more about the line about if I were my life people would laugh at me you know I get it it's ironic but but I don't know anything else about it besides that you mean what might the monk have been ironically saying he could have been saying that if a Zen monk isn't alive people would think he's you know kind of a phony Zen monk yeah

[22:30]

yeah yeah alive in a way that they see and if they see the monk and the monk doesn't seem to be alive they think he's a phony and they laugh at him well it could be it could be that that the function of enlightenment is being expressed through the life of the monk that's a living monk and people might laugh at a monk who didn't have that vitality well he didn't actually say dead he said alive or not alive so it's it's a kind of being

[23:32]

it's a kind of being not alive and you know yes if you if you have too soon if you let me out too soon if I think I'm not alive or I'm not alive and I'll be back because I think I'm not alive yeah or it could be that you you get out of the egg and you think you have a life independent of the hen and that's not really being alive and people would laugh at a chick who thinks it pulled the whole thing off by itself that would be a chick who thought like that would not be a fully alive chick a chick who didn't need her mommy and realized their relationship

[24:32]

would not you know people would laugh at such a chick like that story which we often tell about the the duck who got separated not the the swan no a duck the duck who got separated from his parent and was walking around you know and came to a pond there was a bunch of ducks swimming and the duck said hey young chickadee come on in the duck says I can't swim and they say well yes you can you're a duck and she said no I'm not I'm not a duck so he's kind of a funny duck they think she's funny they're not mean to her but they understand she just doesn't understand she's a duck so she's not really fully alive yet and she doesn't think she can swim and she doesn't swim you know

[25:32]

because she doesn't understand who she is so people laugh at her and a Zen monk who doesn't understand who she is the other Zen monks might laugh at her but they might also laugh at her in a loving way waiting for her to come alive but also he was maybe being ironic when he said in response to that statement you're living in the weeds which also has some resonance there with the chick in the weeds yes in addition to being like the handle for the ironic because as we're talking

[26:37]

about the chick pecking out it's also a listening a listening simultaneous listening on both sides and as sort of an intimate intuitive knowing of when the right moment is for that to happen and I was thinking about Pablo Chicharra being the one who listens to the crying of the world and yeah, I was thinking about the baby and the mom as Pablo Chicharra and that that Pablo Chicharra isn't Pablo Chicharra without some cries to listen to so that they both are yet to be listening to their cries of the world and without each other then that is a

[27:37]

leap yeah so maybe the maybe the chick's just kind of like what's the word wiggling around in the shell and doesn't and doesn't hear anything but then by accident maybe scratches her beak and makes a sound and maybe she hears her own sound when she makes it and the process is starting to come alive but then she hears another somebody hears her scratching and then taps you know doesn't really peck because maybe more like a gentle tap at first so then

[28:37]

the chick is Avalokiteshvara listening to the tapping of the one who's listening to her so the chick's helping the hen be Avalokiteshvara and the hen's helping the chick be Avalokiteshvara and this relationship of helping each other to and into the life of listening to each other that's not something to get over that's something to continue but in the process shells may get broken and there may be moments of liberation but the liberation was also there before the process started because the liberation allowed the chick to peck and the hen to respond

[29:40]

so the process is before now and after but there is this thing of breaking out of the shell and then they often say then they were enlightened or then there was a celebration of enlightenment whereas before they were really doing it and in a way the celebration is kind of ironic like people living together and they say you know they're living together lovingly and then they say I love you but that can be understood as ironic that I'm saying I love you but really I've been

[30:42]

loving you all along but I didn't say so yes does the laughing matter or not? I would say it does yeah you guys are talking about this guy thinking that people are going to laugh and I was thinking about laughing at the irony because oftentimes we kind of get the irony but we don't get it enough so that we wind up laughing but some people maybe they're bragging they find irony hysterical they get hysterical

[31:43]

about irony so this is interesting that people will laugh at me he might have been being ironic at that time when he said people others might laugh at me if I'm not alive he might have been ironic about the laughter and also about not being alive because everything has this ironic aspect which is generally generally speaking calling for more appreciation like just then I said something that could have been ironic and I could have been calling for you to appreciate my irony but nobody did yes you have to be seen

[32:50]

you have to be seen you have to sleep in order to wake up we have that part down quite well I think, yeah I think it's ironic yeah it's sort of ironic that we that we're sleeping is kind of ironic that we don't even understand that our sleeping is a condition for waking up we miss the irony of sleeping and we also miss the irony of being awake not saying we always miss it but we often miss the irony of sleeping and the irony of being awake we miss the irony of enlightenment quite frequently and also I don't know which is most frequently overlooked the irony of awakening or the irony

[33:55]

of being deluded and asleep so now maybe I could just bring up this thing which you didn't ask me to bring up but I told you I would bring it up if you asked me but you didn't ask me so or should I wait for you to ask me do you remember what it is that you want me to bring up so if I say that I suspect that I'll remember that's ironic, right because I know I'm going to remember so the thing I was

[34:56]

going to bring up was this thing about it's actually a thing about being creative this pecking is also about being creative, right enlightenment is about being creative it's about helping the next generation come out but also it's about the next generation helping the previous generation be successful so it's about and the creative so one story is that about yeah 1981 is almost 40 years ago, right speak up a little bit 1981 is 38 years ago, right so 38 years ago I was in England and one of the people who was hosting me was a painter and he wanted me to see a video of his painting

[35:56]

teacher and I keep meaning to look this teacher up but I think the teacher's name was Collingwood an English painter and in the video the painter said I think the painter said something like a lot of people think if you understand you can create I think I thought that that you know if you understood something then you could paint a great picture if you have really good understanding then you could he said but really it's the other way around when you create you understand and I thought that I was one of those people who thought understand if you understand how to paint then you can be creative if you understand how to play the piano you can be creative that's what I thought but you can understand how to play the piano and as you get into playing the piano

[36:57]

as you begin to create then you understand what you're doing you understand how ironic it is that happened to me that was kind of like a change of perspective on the creative activity of this world creation understanding then and I think around that time I already had the concept understanding liberation so some artists maybe are working to be creative so they can understand and be free like Vincent van Gogh was really trying to be free of suffering and his creative process almost almost liberated him but he couldn't paint 24 hours a day the next thing that happened

[38:03]

that came to me was another English person I think a Freudian psychiatrist or psychoanalyst named Winnicott he I was reading some of his writings about play and reality and he said in order to play you need to relax and in order to relax you need to feel safe at least in a in some limited sphere feel safe feel feel safe or another way to put it is trust that it would be

[39:05]

okay to relax and then he said also I think that when you can play then you can be creative so I particularly I got relax play create understand and liberate and I was talking to people about this in a workshop and one person just felt that he just couldn't trust relaxing and so I got into what he would need to trust that it would be okay to relax and it gradually became clear to me that I thought what he needed was he needed to be able to practice generosity and ethical discipline and patience in order to

[40:05]

trust that it would be okay to relax and as we got into it it seemed like that's that's what he needed so this is a this is a something that came to me and I see it as an alternative version of what we call and I've talked to you about before the six bodhisattva practices of generosity ethics patience diligence concentration and wisdom but it's coming at them from emphasizing sort of the central necessity of being relaxed and playful and creative in the process and that these people who are people who are practicing ethics help other people feel safe but also they themselves because they're ethical

[41:07]

they dare to relax if they're really committed not to harm anybody then they feel more able to relax when they're with people but if you're not sure if you're committed to not harm people then you maybe feel I shouldn't relax because I might harm them I should kind of hold myself in check because I might insult them or you know act in a harmful way but when you're really committed to being careful and respectful and tender with beings with that commitment and with the patience with your current level of that practice which might not be very developed you gradually develop that ethics and that patience and you actually can feel like yeah it's not that I'm trustworthy but this practice makes it so I can relax with people I don't have to

[42:09]

chain myself up in order to protect people from me ethics is what protects people and I'm really committed to it and also as I mentioned over and over part of ethics which I'm committed to which helps me feel okay about relaxing is that if I relax and I do something inappropriate you get to call me into question you get to call me into account so part of what helps me relax is that I'm willing to be called into account for what I do when I'm not relaxed and what I do when I am relaxed so those practices are the first three practices generosity ethics and patience set up a diligent effort to take care of things in a way that you can relax and be flexible and playful and then creative and then there's wisdom so that's

[43:09]

what I wanted to bring up which applies here to this enlightenment process the pecking should be careful I forgot who it was but I think it was a Japanese Zen monk who saw in Japan they have cicadas they're called chikadas chikadas or cicadas and they call them semi in Japan and they're even noisier than crickets they're bigger they're almost this big and so they really make a racket at night and it's it's okay though on the country it's very noisy in Japan and this this monk when he was young he saw a cicada coming out of its chrysalis and tried to help it he wasn't careful

[44:14]

so that by helping the wing come out of the chrysalis it wasn't formed properly so then the cicada died that was a great lesson to him to be very careful of beings and very gentle and tender even though you want to help people yes you do want to help them but even so even though you want to help them you still have to be careful really careful and gentle and if you really are careful and gentle then you can take care of them and be relaxed etc. and then Mr. Mr. Winnicott told a story about this girl he was the little girl he was taking care of and she was in the hospital I think maybe I don't know how old she was at the time but anyway this little girl was very very uncomfortable

[45:15]

just really uncomfortable and had trouble digesting and had rashes and also came to a situation of being put in the hospital because she was also having seizures maybe two or three a day and the seizures I think this particular type of seizure it's like your nervous system has this response where actually you you go unconscious and when you're unconscious actually during the seizure you're actually relaxed you get a little break from your tension by the seizure but it's you know it's a troublesome way to get some relaxation so anyway this little girl came to see him with her mother I think and at some point in the process of her spending time with him she came over and got on his

[46:17]

knee and and she as they say took it upon herself to bite his knuckles of his hand and to bite them hard almost to the point of tearing the skin but not quite that far but close to actually tearing the skin and that's what she did with him she sat on his she felt safe enough to get on his knee and then she felt safe enough to bite his knuckle and then along with that she started to reach into his pocket where he had his tongue depressors those wooden spatulas and pull them out of his pocket and throw them around the room so that's what she did with him on one occasion then she came another time and did the same thing

[47:17]

so she would play with him and he could allow her to throw his spatulas around the room and he could allow her to bite him and there was some you know some trust being built here and also some beginning to relax and be playful and then one also along with these activities she one day she was playing with her feet and so he to help her play with her feet more in a more engaging way he took her shoes off and took her socks off so she could see shoes come off and socks come off and then she was playing with her toes and she tried to take her toes off but they didn't come off and she

[48:19]

had a major surprise you know and it was like a creative breakthrough for her that she could play in this way and then she could try to she actually tried to pull her toes off and they didn't come off it was like a creative breakthrough and the next day there was no more seizures and the next day she was cured by this process just being able to relax a little bit with him and bite his knuckle and reach up and take the spatulas off there was some relaxation there she wasn't like almost paralyzed with tension so she was playing with him a little bit she was relaxing with him now she's playing with him and then

[49:20]

she starts being creative in her play and then she has this insight comes and that's that happened the day before she was liberated from kidney seizures this is the great function of the pecking in and pecking out she was pecking to him she was showing him what he could do for her her biting her her body tone showed him what he could do and then he showed her what she could do and then she showed him what he could do and back and forth this way they found their way to freedom together and then she went on to be quite a

[50:20]

healthy young girl and he saw her years later and she was really doing well yes yeah wisdom it's hard to make it's hard to make wisdom is tough wising wise up understand understanding understood but we don't wisdom doesn't get those conjugations I wish it did I think maybe in Japanese you can conjugate wisdom but English wisdom doesn't really conjugate does it it's kind of like a little bit it's a little bit kind of a stuck word yeah

[51:27]

wisdom wisdom that's the thing about play and reality play opens to creativity to wisdom which realizes reality and reality is to realize reality we're free we're free from delusion without getting rid of it you know we're free of the shell without getting rid of the shell we can use the whatever was confining us we can now use to express freedom by pecking and getting pecked back or by hearing the pecking and pecking the process is the unfoldment of the freedom when we're in accord with the relationship the relationship is already there what it

[52:27]

is but we have to get into it in order to be creative with it and understand it it's already a creative process we're already living in the middle of this creative process so we have to use the aspects of the creative process to realize the creative process and so we are calling to each other and we're being called by each other that's actually already going on and we need to enact that in order to realize it and we are doing that yes well the way I am emphasizing now is that basically you know that

[53:27]

in a way that usually people don't say that concentration is compassion but it sort of is but certainly being generous and being tender and respectful and careful of all your karma is compassion and being accountable to other people about your ethical commitments and your ethical uh yeah accountability and then being patient with your pain and other people's pain being present with people these are compassion practices but also being diligent and enthusiastic about those practices but also about helping beings to become free to be remembering that and thinking about that so you feel energy for it that's also the fuel for compassion and in a way concentration is also compassion so in a way the first five are

[54:27]

compassion and make possible the total integration with reality yeah yeah it's we need compassion in order to trust it's okay to relax somebody has to we have to feel that people are that it's okay to relax with these people we don't have to hold up our guard with these people or we can hold up our guard but in a relaxed way and then we can hold up our guard and play with our guard like in judo they call what they do playing so you can hold up your guard but in an ironic humorous way like Laurel and Hardy they were very good at playing with each other

[55:28]

and kind of getting irritated with each other but in a way that was really funny yeah and Stan Laurel was thinking of all these new ways to be funny about being pushed around by Oliver and irritating Oliver in all these funny ways yes I was noticing earlier um that I was feeling a little stymied I think a little stuck by the case I didn't have anything to offer felt like I was really trying hard to think think think and figure it out and I started talking about pain relaxing and I'm so much more relaxed now um and I it totally changed the way I felt about the case and then I and now I can't and now I just I see it as the teacher

[56:28]

and the student playing playing together the whole day so I was kind of like the teacher I was feeling like yeah yeah his last statement sounds like he's saying you're stuck in the weeds but yeah it's it's it's just it's just the last line in the play which and that play will go on important ingredient here is see that's the thing about they're interacting you know teacher and student interacting and then they say the student woke up and then people think like period that's the end of the story but that's not this is this is an endless drama that they're so this is breaking out of the shell but they go on and so the ironic another example another story which yeah it's not that

[57:29]

long so I'll tell it so the famous the founder of the Linji school of Chan which which became the most prolific school of all the Zen schools in China and it's one of the two main schools in Japan and probably the same in Korea but in Japan there's two main Zen schools in China there were five but the most populous one was the Linji school and when Linji was about to die he said to one of his senior students now after I die do not destroy my treasury of true Dharma or simply do not destroy my teaching and so and part of part of Linji's teaching was shouting he shouted

[58:29]

as his students his pecking to the students and the would often involve shouting and the students would shout back to him and they would have shouting matches playful ironic shouting matches and he was quite successful of getting people he could say to wake up but I would say tonight he was quite successful in getting people who just wanted to keep shouting forever you know who were just really enthusiastic about shouting at everybody and being shouted at by everybody all over China so he's about to die and he tells his second most important disciple who just happens to be near his death bed after I die do not destroy my teaching and the teachers this monk's name is San

[59:31]

Sheng which I think means three saints so San Sheng the greatest student of Linji hears his teacher say when I die don't destroy my true Dharma and so San Sheng shouts and destroys the teacher's Dharma and then the teacher said who would have thought or you know how ironic that my teaching would be destroyed by a blind ass so it's you know irony upon irony my teaching is destroyed when my teaching is transmitted and who destroys it a blind ass my greatest disciple is a blind ass well

[60:34]

the shouting is it pardon exactly the teacher destroyed his teaching by using his own teaching he uses the shouting to destroy the teacher's shout and the teacher's shout has now been destroyed however that's also part of the process is that the student destroys the teacher's teaching and that makes the teacher successful now the teaching is the student's teaching which is again a kind of irony you make your teacher successful by in a sense destroying your teacher's teaching and that's exactly what your teacher's teaching is for is for you to make it successful by destroying it and maybe the story didn't happen but it's perfectly set up and that's another irony is that the setup for a punchline and a joke when you put the setup most people

[61:36]

do not laugh they don't think the setup is funny then the punchline comes and they laugh and part of what you realize is that the setup was funny but you couldn't get it until you heard the punchline so now the setup is in the foreground and the punchline is in the background so you don't laugh now the punchline comes to the foreground the setup goes to the background and you laugh and your laughter makes the setup funny and it always was but you didn't get it because you couldn't see the punchline yeah yeah yeah like in dreams in dreams sometimes something's really funny and you wake up

[62:36]

and you say it it's not funny boredom well boredom yeah I think boredom is a really good again as I said maybe other traditions have irony as a big important part but part of the irony of the other traditions is that people don't know that they're ironic people don't people are not so aware that Christianity is really ironic and Islam is really ironic it's just like it's not well known in Zen it's like all the scholars can tell you that Zen has various rhetoric devices the main one is irony

[63:37]

okay that's the main so Zen is well known for irony being a big one and of course it's also in Christianity too but they just don't they don't play it up very much so boredom boredom is another ironic situation which you're probably waiting for me to tell you yes and I'm willing to tell you even though it will all be in vain yes which was a that was a joke you got it see I'm willing to tell you yes say again yeah

[64:39]

what about it we don't know I mean it's not like he's saying you're a man alone in the weeds he's saying you're a man and there's a bunch of other men in the weeds too and so maybe the teacher is included in that yeah sure I think the way he said it was it's not like there aren't already a lot of people in the weeds this guy too is in the weeds also this one here who's interacting with me in this practice he's also in the weed with the other people and can the teacher be in the weeds too? pardon? can the teacher be in the weeds too? that's Zen our irony is that the teacher gives up not being in the weeds

[65:39]

to go into the weeds in order to hang in order to do this thing with people and then they go into the weeds and then they accuse people of being in the weeds but they also sometimes accuse what are you doing here? that's part of it too yeah so boredom is like boredom is like boring, right? but boredom is really the most in some sense the last what do you call it? the last hope against the process of awakening you know if people are really full of hatred you don't need then boredom is not really relevant if people are racked with lust

[66:40]

boredom isn't people don't you know sometimes people say you know this hatred is really like boring not so often but they could and that would be that would be like starting to get playful boredom comes in and says you know you have better things to do than this this is really not interesting and yet you're like really fixated on the boredom and it's really you're kind of paralyzed by it so boredom is a very powerful detractor it's a very powerful detractor like was it the responsive yeah the chick and the mother yeah where is that?

[67:41]

oh there it is the ancient Buddha's family style is a responsive preaching to scornful detractions not distractions but also detractions this is Zen is really a waste of time it's so boring but that comes when you actually get into it in ways it's not the first problem the first problem is more major kinds of but this is like a very powerful one and so how to have a responsive relationship with boredom and again if you get really angry at it well already the boredom then disappears but that's then you're going taking a step back to something more interesting so how can you not try to get rid of the boredom and have a good have a relationship with it without trying to jazz it up or get yourself excited

[68:42]

how do you have a a relationship with the boredom again there it is there's life in the boredom there's life in it it's a lively thing that's coming and saying this situation is really dead there's no life here oh yeah thanks for coming and bringing me this boredom who gave me this boredom I'm so grateful and now I have a chance to go into boring traffic

[69:32]

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