Did you say Zen or Zazen? Zen. Zen? Zen. No, nobody has anything? I have something. I'm wondering why, in one sense, I have an intrinsic sense of this non-separatism.

[01:18]

I feel as though I come from the whole and am in a piece of that whole expressing its will to express itself. My journey is to learn as much as I can and then enter back into the whole. So, in many ways, I feel unseparated and I feel as though it isn't me as my name and my skin and bones and who I am that is doing all the things that I do in this life. I feel it comes from the whole. So, I have this understanding and I feel it inside myself and I function with it. And at the same time, my ego still is very, very powerful or it seems to express itself in all the little ways that it does through attachments, through desires and physical, you know, watching how I look and things like that.

[02:21]

And I'm just asking myself, how do the two function together? How can I function knowing that I'm not separate and still have all these ego-based expressions? Do other people have a similar situation? Well, I think you said something like, you know or you understand that you're connected with everyone, you're not separated, you understand that, it makes sense to you. And I also feel it too. And you feel it to some extent. Yes. Yeah. And you have another strong habit or another way of understanding, which is that you understand that you're separate and independent of other people and plants and animals and everything, right?

[03:34]

Yeah. So, you have these two groups. And you're wondering how to integrate them or how to live with them, how they work together? How they both express themselves in life. Either you move away towards them in the art as well as how to integrate them. Yeah. As if we act from other people, if we act from that way, then acting from that way, to some extent, that makes stronger that way, that makes that way stronger, that develops that habit of acting from the point of view of, I'm here and I act upon the world, which is separate from me. And that's what we call karma. I, the actor, do these things in this world, all right?

[04:40]

And then that way of functioning creates the world, a world that sort of reflects back that I do things by myself, other people do things by themselves, they do things to me, I do things to them, we're independent and we make a world based on that way of seeing things. Okay? And that world has risen and you can see it to some extent, right? And sometimes when that world, as that world manifests, sometimes it's like we almost, sometimes almost a hundred percent forget about the other point of view. Like, there's almost no sign of it at all. Like, we really think this other person is not us and we can't even remember a shred of connection with them. And we want to like actually get rid of them entirely, sometimes. Or get complete control over them, or something. These kinds of things happen where this other view is almost, it's almost not present at all.

[05:46]

So, if we actually see the world, if we could actually see the world, mostly from this other way of seeing how we're interconnected and acted from that, that way of acting is not karma, that's enlightenment in action. So, in fact, when you see how your life just appears, your personal life, you can still see yourself as a person, when you see how this personal life, this personal existence, just appears constantly, moment by moment, through the coming forth of everybody else. So, then you understand interdependence of your life with all other beings. And also you can see that other beings depend on your life and depend on each other. This is the vision of the Buddha, to see this interconnectedness and to see it like, to see that completely, thoroughly.

[06:53]

And not even to see it as external, but to be totally nothing but that vision. And then acting from that vision, you no longer act independently, but your actions arise, everybody comes forth and gives you your life, and then your life, which everybody gives you, produces action. So, your action is not your own personal creation anymore, you're acting for the whole universe. So, this is enlightened vision. And, of course, in that situation, you do nothing but act for other beings, by other beings, through other beings, and so on. And in that vision, all egotistical views are totally available. They're flowing all around and doing their thing, but they're all supporting you and giving you life, rather than you have a life. Which is based on egotism. Rather, egotism is just part of what gives you life, but it's not a major thing that gives you life, it's just one of the things that gives you life.

[07:58]

So, it's possible for both to be kind of prevalent at the same time. It's possible to... Yeah, right. The enlightened vision can be fully developed simultaneously with this egotistical view. Completely together. Now, some people feel that there's only the egotistical view, that's all they have a sense of. They only have a vague, soft, fluffy sense of this other thing. Or almost zero. So it sometimes seems that there can be delusion all by itself, and some people feel that way. But enlightened beings always feel that the delusion is completely with them. Enlightened vision is inseparable from deluded vision. But deluded vision may or may not feel any connection to enlightened vision. So the root, which I propose, which is kind of surprising to people,

[09:09]

the root to the realization of the enlightened vision is not by trying to think in enlightened ways, although it's okay to think in enlightened ways, it's just that... to try to think in enlightened ways is more deluded than just thinking in deluded ways. Because whatever way you try to think is deluded. Whatever way you try to think is deluded. It's based on what you can think of something by yourself. So then you try to think in these better and better ways. It's probably better to think in better and better ways than to think in worse and worse ways. But the best way is to realize that whatever way you think is delusion. In other words, that you're studying delusion. In other words, you're responsible. You're taking responsibility for your deluded thoughts. When you take full responsibility for your deluded thoughts, then you'll realize enlightened vision.

[10:10]

But taking full responsibility for deluded thought requires complete pure mindfulness, complete courage, complete patience, complete compassion, complete wisdom. You have to actually see exactly how you're deluded, not just sort of say, Okay, I'm deluded, I'll sign. You're deluded. You're admitting how you are deluded right now. Specifically, exactly how you're deluded. And also what's required, which I'm emphasizing lately, is you have to fully express your delusion, which a lot of people, especially Zen students, kind of try to hold back. They try to hold their delusion in check. But then if you hold the delusion in check, squish it down and put it in a box behind you somewhere, then it just controls your life. It just sits in your head and tells you what to do all the time. You're totally a slave of it.

[11:13]

And you never can see it for what it is. So what you need to do is you need to express it, bring it out here where you can see it, and say, Oh, there's a delusion, okay, and I take responsibility, I take credit for it, I own up to that delusion. When you see the delusion as it is, and you see, Oh, here's the self, which does all these things, here's the self which does all these things, here's the self which does karma, you see that relationship, and pretty soon you have a chance to see, actually it's the other way around, that all the things you think you are doing, are doing you. The switch can occur, if you're totally there. And to fully get your delusion out there, again, requires mindfulness, courage, patience, because to put your delusion out there unmindfully is not really putting it out there, it's just kind of like putting out a kind of like consolation prize version, some summary, some approximation,

[12:17]

some dream of your delusion, rather than a clear vision of your delusion. In other words, you can have a wise presentation of your delusion. And you can tell the difference between your delusion and other people's delusion. Say, that's not my delusion. And you can see how your self arises there, and you can see exactly how you tell your self from other selves. That's not me, that's not my smell, that's not my thought, that's not my passion, that's not my taste, that's not my body. So it's kind of surprising to people to hear that. So the way to unify those two worlds and have the egotistical one not be possessing us and driving us

[13:20]

is to bring it out in front and really give it its full expression. Full expression of egotistical view is not indulgence of it or rejection of it. Full expression is to put it out just like it is functioning. It has a life. Give it exactly its life. No more, no less. And that's the same as giving each person that you meet exactly their due, their function, just as they are. No more, no less. And each flower, and each mountain, and each river, exactly its due. Okay? Yes? I have a question. There's this idea about

[14:22]

if you act like the Buddha, you become the Buddha. I was wondering if you could talk about that in the context of the fact that the Buddha never acted like the Buddha. Yes. So the Buddha never acted like the Buddha. No, the Buddha acted like himself. So Shakyamuni Buddha was a person who suffered in a particular way that was characteristic of himself. And he finally got to a place where he acted just like he was, and then he was enlightened. And somebody told me that they recently re-heard the story of

[15:23]

Buddha's enlightenment night. They heard it again. They heard it many times, but it struck home this time that the Buddha sat there and the Buddha said, I'm not going to move until I settle the matter that I'm concerned with here. And then Mara came, and I guess first the hostile energies came. And to try to scare him away, he managed to stay present in the face of those. Then the more alluring, seductive energies came, and he managed to stay present in the face of those. And I think Mara said something like, there's different versions of it, but one version is, I am master of the universe, you have no right to sit here. This is my world, you do not have a right to be here, where you're sitting. And then the Buddha touched the earth

[16:25]

to see if the earth would support him, you know, having that address. And the earth said, you can sit right there, boy. That's where you're supposed to be. And then he didn't move. In other words, you can be who you are. And that's what he did. He was himself at that time. Completely. This is what I was saying. He was completely a deluded person. And he realized exactly what a deluded person was, and that's enlightenment. It's kind of still my question, because what I mean is in the context of practicing precepts. Yes. Things like that, and trying to put this in your letters when you're working in the kitchen, and things like that. And making an effort to see things the way an enlightened person would see them. No, no, no, no. They don't very often say to do that. Enlightened people don't say,

[17:29]

try to see things the way an enlightened person sees things. I haven't heard much instruction like that. Have you? Well, this idea is Buddhas are manifest everywhere. Sometimes they say, see everyone as Buddha. Okay? But when you try to see everyone as Buddha, that's not the way enlightened people see Buddha. They don't like project Buddha onto people. They see regular people, and then they see that the regular people, just like they are, that's Buddha. There aren't like Buddhas out there, and then regular people. And then the Buddhas sort of get projected onto the regular people. Regular people is all we've got for Buddhas. There aren't some other Buddhas. So, to see other people as Buddha doesn't mean you start to start to see little bumps on their head.

[18:31]

But actually, if you watch carefully other people, you'll start to see bumps on their head. You know, their hair will start curling, and they'll start turning gold. But if you try to see them as golden, then you'll miss, then that's because you don't think, you know, you don't see that they're a person already who deserves your attention as they are. If you don't, if you don't give this ordinary person with whom you feel some pain your attention and openness, then you won't be able to see the Buddha. Usually, when we meet people, we close our heart to them. We close our heart to them means we close our heart to the pain we feel. So then we can't see them, our eyes shut. Not shut, closed, closed down. www.mooji.org

[22:39]

When I was a kid I used to like Moe's Allison, and to my hometown Minneapolis I would always try to go see him. I moved to San Francisco and he lived right down the street, on Divisadero, he played on, you know, a few blocks from Zen Center, I never went to see him, because college goes some other time, right? So if the Buddha was around, some of you people would wait, you know, for a few weeks maybe, if you knew he was going to be around for several years, you might say, well, you know, I'll make an appointment next week. But if we all knew we only had just a few seconds with Buddha, I don't think any of us would pass it up. Maybe we would, because we'd be so, maybe, afraid, some of us might feel, I'm not worthy to take a Buddha's time, but if we really knew that he had nobody else to see, he just came here to see us, and the schedule was open, we wouldn't postpone it, to meet each person that way. Not trying to make them look different, but just to meet them with that kind of respect.

[24:42]

That's, I think, okay. And then, that doesn't contradict your taking responsibility for your delusion. You could be right there and say, I'm giving this person my full attention, I'm treating this person just like they're Buddha, and actually, you know, I kind of have these judgmental attitudes toward them, like I think this person is, you know, not that good a Zen student or something, or I think this person has… I have these negative thoughts about this person, but I'm treating this person just like I'd treat … that's how Buddha would act, if Buddha had negative thoughts towards some person. Buddha might have a thought, you know, Buddha's brain, you know, Buddha's antenna might tune in, you know, sleazeball, and temporarily that thought might be running across Buddha's mind. Sleazeball. But Buddha, being enlightened, would treat the person in front of him with the utmost

[25:43]

love and respect, even though, temporarily, that thought was in the mind. So he wouldn't express that delusion? Sleezeball? Well, it depends. If he was talking to, maybe to certain people, he might say, you know, I just had this funny thought. Here I am looking at you, my dear disciple, you know, and I just thought, sleazeball. You know, he could tell, Buddha could tell, you know, if you trusted him enough for him to tell you his thoughts, you know, and some people you can talk to that way and they know you love them so much that you can actually tell them what's actually running through your mind, you know. You can say, blah, [...] you can say these obnoxious thoughts that you're having, just tell them because they know you love them and you do love them, and you know

[26:46]

that you're telling them just because you're telling them what a kind of trashy mind you have at the moment. But I know this other lady I knew, and I actually liked her very much, and every time I saw her I always thought affectionately, hi fatty, or sometimes hi tubby, that's what I always thought every time I saw her, because she was just, you know, she was shaped like this, you know. So I always thought, hi tubby. But you know, she did not know the extent of my love, I had not shown it to her, she did not understand my affection for her, so I never could tell her, I never could say it to her. I never felt like she would think that that was really affectionate and appreciative, so I never told her. Hey, it's a beautiful altar, who made it? Jay Frazier. Wow.

[27:46]

Where's Frazier? He's filming it. Oh. Maybe I should reward him for making a nice altar. Okay? So sometimes you, if you don't think it's going to be helpful to tell people certain things you think, don't tell them. Sometimes I've heard people say that it's kind of acting phony. Acting phony? Yeah, like if you say, you don't say what's really on your mind, you just act as if. Yeah, well I think it's, what's acting phony? Not saying what's on your mind, you said two different things. Not saying what's on my mind, for me, is not acting phony. The fact that I don't say everything that comes to my mind is not acting phony. If I said everything that's been going through my mind, you know, you people would just gag

[28:54]

me, I know. So I don't have to find out what you would do to me if I told you what I'm thinking. It's not phony. The little bit I let you know about what I'm thinking is sufficient for you to know that I'm crazy. I don't have to tell you everything to sort of like rub it in, you know. Okay, we got the message, thanks, it's enough. So it's not, I'm not being phony that I'm not letting you know how crazy I am. If you really want to know, I'll tell you. But you don't, believe me. The people who I do tell say, that's enough, that's not phony. Why don't you have something on your mind about someone that's really getting in the way of you being with... Okay.

[30:18]

Okay. Okay. Okay.

[31:38]

Pick up on, like you could be thinking, well maybe that was my thought and you just picked up. Yeah, well, if you start studying, that's the point, if you start studying your egotistical patterns, your selfish modes of operation, you start to see that all these things come in certain categories. I mean, certain categories account for all the different types of experiences we have and there isn't an additional category called me, or self, that owns these. So actually none of these belong to somebody. However, it is not the case that somebody else is... But sometimes, because someone else can't express something, or is rejecting some feeling they have, because of the way they're rejected, and see their body, their body shows you they're

[33:17]

holding something back, and you can sort of intuitively sense what they're holding back, and you have the feeling for them. So, you know... Okay. [...]

[34:23]

Okay. Okay. But when somebody's having an experience and pushing it away, so that they don't get lost, and we're all trying to keep each other alive, up until the point that one of us really wants to not live, and then we all have to let that person go. So, if a person's ready to stop being a person, stop being alive, and we won't let them, then they send the message back to us, let us go. And if we won't say okay, it's hard for them to do it, because we're holding them. And of course, some people not letting us go, giving us that message, will be more disorienting

[35:54]

than others, because we have some very more powerful connections with certain people, even though we're connected to everybody. But it's good not to confuse whose body is having what experience, even though we're very responsive to each other. Is that anything else you want to talk about? No? Yes? What he just said reminded me of, you know, five people in the community died in eight weeks, five people in the immediate vicinity died in eight weeks. First, Janet, then Jerry, Brian, Pam, and Lisa. And so, these issues of letting people go are really coming up for me right now. So, that would be both of them.

[37:01]

You know, one time I was sitting in the zendo up here, and I looked at somebody across the zendo, and I forgot what they did. They did something, you know, I saw them do something, and then I saw a ghost of that person, and I realized, it seemed to me, my realization was that the ghost that I saw was created by my not fully experiencing the person. Like, I had an experience of them which I wasn't fully participating with, and as a result, this kind of ghost appeared right around them. What was the ghost? What did it look like? It looked like the person, but it was like, you know, it was like kind of an unsatisfied,

[38:08]

unsatisfied kind of yearning phantom of the person. In their place, or kind of? Well, kind of like right around them, you know, because they had gone on to move slightly. I think it was because of the situation, though, where they hadn't moved much, you know, so I could see that I was watching the person, but I wasn't creating ... when I started paying ... I sort of noticed, I put the two together because I kind of was aware of my lack of presence with my experience of them, but I was present enough with a later experience to see the ghost and to remember that I wasn't paying attention to them the same way in the later moment than I was in the earlier moment. So, my feeling is that for ourselves, we create ghosts of our past experience by lack of participation and that our psyche wants us to come back and feel that fully. We feel haunted by experiences that we haven't lived. And another thing happens with other people who die, who we don't let go.

[39:18]

They feel that from us. We can hold people back. And I've heard of and seen some cases of some people who are moving towards dying and the people they love the most feel obligated to tell them not to leave. And then the people who are trying to leave become psychotic because they want to go and they want to stay. They really have had enough of this, but they feel like the people who they love are telling

[40:23]

them, we can't live without you. So, the only way they resolve it is becoming psychotic, which is they aren't going and they don't want to really go along with it and they don't want to disappoint the other person, but there's no way to resolve the conflict with their present situation, so they become psychotic. And then the story goes that when the person says, okay, okay, you can go, they come back. They become sane again and then die. There's a statement you made about we don't fully experience a situation that haunts us in some way. So, you know, a lot of us have childhood things that come up and you think that that's what it is, that at some level we never fully participated in

[41:27]

it. And so to go back into that. And that's how the healing happens? Basically. Whatever it is, it's already happened. Most of the stuff we're afraid of is already over. But the feelings are still there. The pain of it is still there. What we're afraid of is the pain that's already happened. Or, you know, which is understandable. Kids or even young, older, various age kids. In other words, they take responsibility for the experience. In fact, they feel like they won't survive. And in fact, they're right to the extent that they didn't feel it and they did survive. So in some sense, it was in some sense something good about it because they're still here. However, our enlightened nature wants now more than that.

[42:29]

Now it wants to go back and fully experience the thing which we didn't experience. It's not exactly go back exactly, but feel it now again fully. Feeling it now again fully, we're okay. That's all it wants. And that loses its power? It loses it. Well, it never had power. What has power is our self-protective motives inappropriately applied. Then they have power over us. If you try to protect yourself by not experiencing some experience, then that self-protectiveness has power over you. But then your healthy side of you says, No, forget about the self-protectiveness. That's not inappropriately applied. Come back and feel this. And the power over us, it's not exactly power over us, it's like requesting us to do what's healthy for us. So in some sense, it's good that it has, in a sense, power over us, you could say, or the power to invite us to come back and feel it.

[43:31]

Because if we do then, then we're done and we can move on. So when I looked at the person and it was a visual impression, it wasn't so much a feeling, it was a visual thing. I made a visual ghost out of not experiencing a visual thing. But the feeling things are not necessarily a ghost of the person, it's a ghost in your own feeling department. So you make a feeling ghost that haunts you and haunts you and haunts you and says, When are you going to feel this? That was a visual ghost which says, When are you going to see this? So you can have visual ghosts, smell ghosts, taste ghosts, touch ghosts. If somebody touches you and you don't fully feel it, it's perhaps even a pleasurable feeling. Can you imagine? Someone touches you in a way that's pleasurable and you don't fully experience it and that haunts you for years. You're haunted for years to fully experience that pleasurable touch that you couldn't accept at the time, that was so much what you wanted that you didn't dare to feel it,

[44:33]

and your body says, Go back and feel that! And then you go back and feel it and you're not haunted by that pleasure or that pain. But it can even be a pleasure that you didn't dare fully experience, you thought you would, I don't know what, freak out if you felt the pleasure, but the pleasure then haunts you and you yearn for that pleasure. Concentration Ghost It can be a concentration ghost, a state of concentration that you couldn't stand to fully feel, that could haunt you. You know, you entered into a state of concentration but then you couldn't stand how wonderful it was, so you flinched, and you're haunted for years by that concentration state that you didn't fully experience.

[45:36]

But if you fully experience some wonderful state of concentration, then you can let it go. Hey! But if you don't fully experience it, the meditators are often haunted by meditation states that they don't fully experience, and therefore they aren't ready to let go of. Does this make sense? So in all these ways you can make these ghosts. I'm still kind of confused as to the way you go back and then fully experience it. Well, the way I recommend is that you don't try to go back, but you just be present, you know, just practice upright sitting, and this stuff will come to visit you. And if you're practicing being upright, and you're sitting in a formal sitting of zendo, or practicing upright digging a trench, or practicing upright cutting vegetables, or making beds, or having dinner, or talking to somebody, if you're upright, I'd say, if you're upright, this stuff comes flashing by.

[46:42]

And if the stuff isn't flashing by, you should see an upright doctor. It's probably like leaving someone with this ball from being represented to you. If you curl up in a ball, you know, this stuff won't come back. If you sit like this, you know, you will say, well, we need this stuff dealt with, but obviously you don't want to, so we're not going to waste our time banging on your back. But if you sit up straight, you know,

[47:15]

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