I heard an echo of Barry's voice. I heard Barry's voice again, where he said, I really enjoy seeing how you enjoy saying the same thing over and over. And then I thought, later I thought, Yeah, it's like I enjoy going to Holy Communion over and over. The same Holy Communion. That's what inspires me. Yeah, it's a pleasure. It's a joy. And it's a joy even if it's painful. I also thought it's like Does Eucharist mean feast? What does Eucharist mean? Anyway, it's also like a feast.

[01:03]

We get together and have a feast. And speaking of feasts, Linda did some research on the the ending or the waning of the Buddhist practice in India. And she's willing to make her research available to you guys, right? So how can they get that information? Do you have... Charlie, do you have people's e-mail? You have everybody? So if we forward it to you, could you send it to everybody? Anybody who does not want to see this research? Huh?

[02:05]

Huh? So if you don't want to see it, tell Tracy. How's that? Is that okay? What? Okay. So, is that okay if we forward that research? Just the people here tonight, because we don't know about the people who aren't here. But we can tell them that they can contact you if they want. How's that? I'll send them to you if they want it. Okay. Another kind of news item is that one of the people in the class, her name is Lynn, she sent me an email telling me that one of the other people in the class named Fran, who told me last week that she wouldn't be here, and she's not,

[03:19]

Lin wrote to me to tell me she wasn't going to be here either. But she also told me that Fran told her that I said that without conversation, there's no Buddha. And I don't know if that's true. Without conversation, there's no Buddha. And there is Buddha, I say, and so there is conversation. Waking up to conversation is waking up to Buddha. Could you turn the light up a little bit more, please? Could you turn the light up a little bit more? Thank you. This item from Sunday at Green Gulch.

[04:24]

Were you a question and answer? Anybody else there for question and answer at Green Gulch? I was there. And I forgot what question that this big young man asked me, but... Anyway, he was asking me questions, one after another, very enthusiastically. I was really enjoying it. And I said to him that I was listening to his cries. And he said, I'm not crying. I'm not crying, he said. Then I said, well, to me, it seems like you're crying. He said, I'm not crying. I said, well, it seems like you're calling to me. I'm not calling to you. I said, it seems like you're calling for my compassion. I'm calling for your compassion. I just want to understand.

[05:27]

Please help me understand. And then he asked more questions than I. And I kept saying over again, you know, it seems like you're calling for my compassion. And he said, well, compassion, the problem with compassion is like compassion for something other. It's like something separate from you you feel compassion for. I said, well, maybe so. Separation is not real. And I said, I agree. But I said to him, you won't understand that the separation is not real without practicing compassion towards the separation. And then he said to me, are you calling for compassion? And I said, and everybody laughed, including him. I don't know if at the end, or we talk later, I don't know if he actually in the end opened up to the possibility that he was calling for compassion.

[06:39]

I don't know. But I think we are. Even Buddhas are calling for compassion. They want us to practice compassion They want us to open to and awaken to. They want us to open and watch the demonstration and awaken to wisdom. They want us. That's what they want. And so they also want us to practice compassion, so wisdom. true wisdom emerges, lives with, lives in the middle of. That's where it lives.

[07:42]

There can be some wisdom without practicing much compassion. But great, true, deep wisdom in the middle of great compassion. So that's the news. And I have a little question for you. Where does the knowledge of ultimate reality come from? That's a call to you. What? Yeah, in conversation. And in particular, it lives in conversation between Buddha and Buddha. And I think I said last week, the real Buddha is a conversation.

[08:58]

This teaching also I mentioned, or maybe I didn't, that a Buddha together with a Buddha, only a Buddha in conversation with a Buddha can understand ultimate truth. So an implication of that is that even a Buddha by herself, you know, which is a conversation, even that conversation by itself, which couldn't be by itself because it's in conversation, but I guess even if a person was having a conversation with herself and was a Buddha and, you know, had a was a Buddha, even that Buddha's perspective could not actually understand ultimate truth of all things.

[10:25]

No one perspective can understand the whole, the infinite truth. And it's not because anything wrong with the perspective. It's just that everything is an overflowing giving and receiving conversation. So the mode of understanding the way things are is to be in accord with the way things are and to join this constant, never-ending conversation. Also, I've been telling you, because Buddhas have been telling me, that you, we, will

[11:38]

And, in a sense, we already are. Of course, we're not a Buddha like some Buddhas. All the other Buddhas are different for us, except they're not. The way we're already a Buddha is that we're already a conversation, which is what Buddhas are. And Buddhas are telling us, yes, you're already a Buddha because you're already the way things really are. You're like that too. Nobody's not the way things are.

[12:44]

And everybody's the way things are in this particular way. And everybody's a particular, unique, in the moment conversation. And the way you're that way is the way you're already a Buddha. And that way that you're already a Buddha... is in conversation with some beings who are Buddhas in a different way. Like who can discover the Buddha Dharma when nobody tells them about it. Like the Buddha. That's the kind of Buddha he was. We are not that way. We heard about it. We're receiving the teaching that's been transmitted for 2,500 years. We didn't come up with it on our own. But there are Buddhas who come up on their own, where nobody else has been telling them. We will become a Buddha like that someday.

[13:47]

Now we're Buddhas like this. And we are in conversation with all the other Buddhas, with all the different types of Buddhas. who are going to keep evolving indefinitely, but are already Buddhists. Because you're already, just like a Buddha, you're already a conversation. You're already nothing in and of yourself. You're nothing by yourself, just like a Buddha. And the way you're nothing in and of yourself is different than the way everybody else is nothing in and of him or herself. We're all uniquely nothing in and of ourself. The way we're a conversation is kind of the same thing as saying that we're nothing in and of ourself.

[14:51]

Now, the kind of differences, well, I won't get into that yet, but anyway, I'll just say that I asked you where the knowledge and wisdom of ultimate reality lived, and one person said, right? Now, where does knowledge of conventional knowledge reality live? Where does that live? Yeah, it lives in some... It lives in birth and death. It lives in, we might call, what I call consciousness. So I don't... The mind, the mind, where the knowledge and wisdom of the Buddhas lives, that mind is a conversation, is a mind.

[16:01]

And also, consciousness is a conversation too, but it doesn't usually understand that. So consciousness, or as Vivien did, sort of, Consciousness is, again, where the headquarters is. Consciousness is the problem center, or you could say the problem-solving center, which is a, you know, That's a pretty cool thing that we have a problem-solving center. We have a mind which can solve problems, which can make all kinds of wonderful scientific and cultural and artistic discoveries and then, you know, reproduce them in the... It's a wonderful mind. However, and it understands conventional truths.

[17:09]

like language is a conventional truth. It understands language. But it doesn't understand how it's a conversation. The conversation is the understanding of the conversation. So I do have an understanding of the conversation, and you have an understanding of the conversation, That's just my egocentric conscious awareness of it. So we have, in the sense that we have two minds, or three minds, unconscious mind, the conscious consciousness, which understands conventional truths like language and It's where we're going to solve the problem of how to practice compassion and have conversation until we understand that we're a Buddha, that we're a conversation, and that we're nothing in addition.

[18:28]

We're nothing in addition, completely nothing in addition to a conversation. which means we're nothing in addition to being nothing in and of ourself. Nothing in ourself plus something in and of ourself. We're nothing fixed, we're nothing graspable, but in our consciousness we see fixed, graspable things. You know, we have a tendency to project How do I know that I'm practicing, that I'm not just ensnared in the conventional world forever and not really practicing?

[19:29]

Well, maybe I shouldn't say how you know. Maybe I should say how I know. Maybe I should say how I know. The way I know that I'm practicing is practicing. I do not know that I'm practicing. I may think I'm practicing, but me thinking I'm practicing is again just thinking in my consciousness. And my thoughts about my practice are not my practice. And if I know, but if I think, believe my thoughts about what my practice is, and if I believe my thoughts that I am practicing, then there's stress.

[20:33]

But stress then there's, excuse the expression, strangulation of life. To believe that your life, or your living practice, to believe that it's what you think it is, does it a big disservice. So I may think, I may think I know that I am practicing, and that is a delusion. A delusion. So I'm capable of that. I'm capable of thinking. But I might not fall for that very often. I might think, oh, Reb just thought he was practicing. And then someone might say to you, did you just think you were practicing? And I might say, oh, yeah, I did. And I said, do you know that you were?

[21:38]

And I say, I'm not going to go that far. to say I know I'm practicing, but I did just think I was. Also, did you just think you weren't practicing? Yeah, you're right, I did. Do you know that you weren't? I'm not going to go that far. Do you think that I wasn't practicing? Sorry, yeah. Do you know that I wasn't? I'm not going to go that far. I don't know that you're not practicing. Did you just think I was practicing? Yeah? Do you believe that? I don't believe... I believe that you're practicing, but I don't believe that the way you're practicing is me thinking that you're practicing. I don't believe that. So, the way you know you're practicing is practicing. That's why we need to practice, because that's the only way to know it. And the way you know you're practicing is through conversation.

[22:44]

The way you know you're dancing the tango is called the tango. It's not called thinking that you're a tango dancer. Like some people think they are. Some people think they aren't. And some people think they're doing the tango. But the person isn't doing the tango. The tango is the dance between the person and another person. That's the tango. It's not what the two people think they're doing. So the way you know that you're practicing is called, no, the way you know it is, the way you know it, the way you verify it, the way you realize it is by the practice, which you cannot do by yourself. And anything you think you can do by yourself, that's not practice. And the practice that you don't do by yourself is practice,

[23:51]

And it's happening right now. You are doing a practice not by yourself right now. We are now doing something not by ourselves. We are now doing something together. The together is the practice. Not the me, not the part I'm doing. the part you're doing, but the part we're doing together. Not the part I'm doing that's not including the way you're doing it, but the what I'm doing that includes you and the way you're doing that includes me, that's what we're doing together. We're mutually including each other. And that's what knows the practice. Because again, the knowledge, the actual knowledge of reality of the practice of reality is a conversation.

[24:55]

It's a dialogue. It's not even a Buddha by herself can know that she's practicing the Buddha way. The Buddha by herself can know, I just had a thought. Yep, there was a thought about practice, and the thought was, I'm doing it. That's all it was. And that thought is practicing by itself. Great question. Did you hear that? No. He said, great question. Thank you. Oh, you're quite welcome. As long as you understand that reality is by yourself, then you're practicing. Would you say that again? You're sitting zazen by yourself? Like if you went, where would you go to be by yourself?

[25:55]

Go into the... Huh? Oh, in a cave, yeah. Huh? Or in your living room. Okay. So we have this... this person. I mean, we have this word called bodhidharma. which is the person who founded the Zen tradition in China. And he practiced in a cave. And he faced a wall for nine years. Was he by himself? No. By himself? No. No. I think some people who walked by thought he was. They looked at him and said, what's he doing in there all by himself? What's he doing in there practicing not together with me?

[26:58]

What's he doing in there not together with me? Bodhidharma's in there listening to the people outside crying to him. He's looking at the wall, listening to people saying, he's all by himself. But he's in there listening. He's by himself. And some of them call to him and say, come on out. But before he comes out, he's already practicing with them. That's what he's transmitting. He's transmitting the mind of what? Of Buddha. Conversation with Buddha. And you in conversation with Buddha. And you in conversation with your living room. When you're in your living room, you're having a conversation with your living room. That's why you call it living room. And somebody said, well, your living room is not calling to you.

[28:09]

Are you calling to your living room? Is your living room calling to you? When you're in your living room, you're having a conversation with your living room, you're not alone in your living room. You're never alone. When you walk through a storm, hold your head up high and don't be afraid of the dark. At the end of the storm, there's a... light and a sweet fragrant song of a lark walk on walk on you'll never walk alone it's the

[29:19]

You'll never sit in your living room alone and you'll never sit in your cave alone. However, some people might come into your living room and say, what are you doing here all by yourself? And when they do say that, you say, well, I'm not by myself. And they say, yes, you are. And you say, well, what about you? Oh, well, before I came. But people tell us, people come up to us, look us in the face and say, what are you doing alone? They do. How come you're alone? Why don't you relate to me? Good question. However, the mind that understands that is the mind of the conversation. The mind that doesn't understand it is the egocentric consciousness. However, if the egocentric consciousness can ask questions, that is, call, it can be listened to, and it may wake up to the fact that when it calls and says, I don't see that I'm in a conversation, it may notice that it's just entered a conversation.

[30:38]

It wakes up to that there is a conversation. And then it's released from this enclosure where it does not see all the time that is calling, that is listening, and that is being listened to. We can wake up to that. But the waking up is not the consciousness, but how it liberates us without getting rid of the consciousness. And then we can demonstrate that this limited view, which doesn't understand, is actually nothing in and of itself and is in conversation with what does understand. Yes? Are you talking about Rumi?

[31:49]

Rumi? And what popped in my mind in response to that was that in the somewhat ancient times, there was this very large Arab army. Arab army. You could also call it a Muslim army, or army of Islam. And it conquered what we call Saudi Arabia, it conquered the Middle East. It conquered Turkey. It conquered Syria and Persia.

[32:51]

It really conquered a lot of area. But it couldn't conquer Turkestan. And the army gave up. It stopped trying to conquer Turkestan, which is sort of the Middle East, I mean Central Asia. Couldn't do it. Backed off, gave up. So then they sent in the saints. Come marching in. It sent these tender, loving yogis. And they conquered Turkestan for Islam. They converted Islam by tenderness. The armies couldn't. And the armies didn't really conquer. They just conquered the land. And then after they conquered, they could offer the teaching, which is not an army. Yes?

[34:09]

How does the conversation relate to stillness and silence? How? Well, he said, how does the conversation relate to stillness and silence? He said, how does the conversation, or you could say, yeah, how does the conversation relate to stillness and silence? I think we need, most of us need stillness and silence in order to understand the conversation. I don't know, if you all went over to Tracy's living room, then it might not be so silent there anymore. But anyway, we need stillness, silence, and we need being alone, actually.

[35:22]

We need solitude, stillness, and quiet in order to wake up to the conversation. Now you may think, you may think, well, I'm having a conversation. And if you think that's correct, however your thought about what the conversation is, is not the conversation. So I think I'm having a conversation with Tyler. And do you think you're having a conversation with me? Yeah. But my idea of our conversation isn't the conversation and neither is yours. The conversation is including our ideas, but it's none of our ideas. So my idea of the conversation we're having might not hold up when I go back to Green Gulch and you go to your house. I might think, well, no, I'm not having a conversation with Tyler. I think that probably won't, but somebody might. So sometimes we do understand we're having a conversation, but our understanding is limited.

[36:33]

We think it's going on now, but now it's not. It's always going on. And we need to practice solitude and silence and stillness, or silence and stillness in solitude to wake up and understand what conversation is. And the other way around, we need to practice meditation And we need conversation to understand what solitude is and what stillness is. You may think, I know what stillness is. But without conversation, you do not know what it is. It's not your idea of stillness. Stillness is conversation. So... Yes. We need silence and stillness in order to understand conversation. Which means to become free of our egocentric understanding of what a conversation is.

[37:35]

And vice versa. We have ideas of conversation. We have ideas of stillness. Both of them are conversations. They're not our ideas. And we need to alternate between them. So bodhisattvas who are totally into working with beings, they need solitude in order to understand what it means to work with beings. And vice versa, they need to work with beings in order to understand solitude. So they're both living in solitude and in conversation. That's why I said during a sitting, bodhisattvas are sitting in stillness and in conversation. Yes. I'm inspired by Barry to ask exactly the same question I asked. So I just wanted to ask you to talk more about conversation. You use the word, and I sort of feel like everybody really knows what you're talking about.

[38:41]

But could you just talk some more about it? I mean, just what you mean, or other words, or especially not with people. Dialogue? but I mean another word for it is okay so what pops in my mind is a lot of things are coming now because maybe we don't usually call you a flower but you ask me that question and all this stuff's happening in me before I even talk all these thoughts are coming up conversation is going on before I even have a chance to talk to you about it and part of what coming up is a story one of the first things I heard Suzuki Roshi say that shocked me was when you look at a flower and you say it's a sin when I look at a flower and I have the thought it's beautiful I'm having a

[39:52]

I'm not noticing that I'm having a conversation with it. I'm not noticing that I'm having a conversation with it. I'm missing out on this intimacy. I'm being disrespectful of my relationship. I'm just projecting my ideas on it. No, that is a conversation. And it's a conversation where... but I'm limiting it to my idea. I thought, I'm having this conversation with the flower, and then you say, and that's what it's not. Yes, so talk about what it is. Well, what it is is it includes the flower having a response to me that's different when I think it's beautiful than when I think it's something else. Whatever I think of the flower affects the flower, is included in the flower. The flower feels... If I believed what I think about the flower as the flower, the flower feels pain because the flower feels that I'm being disrespectful.

[41:06]

It still is a conversation, but it's a disrespectful one. Here's another one. But this is like... somebody, I won't tell you who, invited me to go down to the garden at Green Gulch and smell roses. Sometimes we have a variety of roses in the garden. And she invited me to go down and smell them. She didn't say I didn't have a conversation with the roses. I actually named somebody who works with plants, a conversation of flowers. Anyway, I went down, not too interested in having this interaction with the... Sorry, I wasn't. But I went. And I went up to the rose, rose number one, and I smelled it.

[42:09]

And I did smell something. Then she said, smell this one. And I did. And then I listened to smell another one. And, you know, my resistance started to wane a little bit, to spending my life smelling roses. But also something started to happen to me, you know. I started to get very, I started to feel very awake. And I started to know the difference between the roses more and more. After a while, at first they were kind of all the same, and then gradually they became more and more different. And I became more and more kind of alive. That's a conversation with the rose. What? Do you really mean the rose had hurt feelings? Do I really mean it has hurt feelings? Yeah, the rose .

[43:17]

Do I really mean that? Well, if I said Bernard has hurt feelings, would I really mean that? Well, there is a debate in Buddhism about whether... Non-humans are what we're talking about with sentient beings. But you know, Buddhism evolves and narrow-minded back more than a thousand years ago. Maybe they thought dogs weren't sentient beings and didn't have feelings. Maybe they thought that, I don't know. But maybe they did. But to me, when I look at a dog, especially when a dog's sleeping, ...dreams and is scared in their dream and angry in their dream and trying to defend themselves in their dream.

[44:26]

They seem a lot like the sentient beings we call humans. Also, I have a little bit of study of chimpanzees and the stuff they're into sounds... because it kind of reminds us of how selfish and dishonest humans are. They're really into a lot of tricky stuff. They seem to be sentient beings. As I meditate this way and my sentient beings are, it starts to expand. And it starts to expand into the roots of redwood trees, which seem to treat the roots of other redwood trees somewhat differently than the roots of themselves. They have these tiny little roots down there, and they can between their own tiny little roots and the neighbor's tiny little roots, and they act differently. It's almost like they have a self in their roots.

[45:31]

So I don't really, I'm having trouble like drawing a line. Now I have a brain which is a brain which is connected to a conscious process, which can draw lines and it can send these stories of lines drawn, boundaries, up into consciousness. But as I study it, this equipment seems to be kind of like a byproduct of biological imperative of reproduction of a particular genetic material. And it is closely associated with this selfishness. And the selfishness is closely associated with not understanding what the self is. So I'm having trouble like actually believing any boundary

[46:38]

that I put on where feelings and where suffering can end. Which is similar, if I could say, it's similar to putting any boundary, yeah, if I can't put boundary on where suffering ends, boundaries on where suffering ends with me. So that would lead me into a situation where there's no boundary to suffering. Like, you know, I can't get away from it. If I can't stop its evasion, I can't stop it pervading. I'm asking about living beings. I couldn't tell if you were saying about non-living beings. Is there a difference between Oh, like a rock or a cup?

[47:45]

Yeah. Is there a difference between me and Bernard? Between a living being and a cup? Yes, but I'm saying, is there a difference between me and Bernard? Is there a difference? Sure, no. Sure, no? Yeah. Same with a cup. Same with a cup. Sure. Sure. Sure. No, the cup is a conversation. Pardon? Right. Did you say something about making a distinction between different types of suffering?

[48:50]

In a way, making a distinction between different types of suffering is like making distinctions between different types of beings. Is there a distinction between you and me? Yes and no. We're different and we're the same. We're both conversations and actually I include you and you include me. We're in that conversation. I'm a conversation, you're a conversation, and we're in conversation. And we can distinguish between the two of us. Right? And your pain and my pain, we can distinguish between. We can do that. One time I was in the hospital and my leg was broken and I was in the hospital and people came to visit me and one of them said, are you in pain? And I said, well, no. The person down the hall is in pain. Did you hear her? She was crying.

[49:51]

She was wailing. She wailed and wailed and all different. I could distinguish between hers and mine. It seemed like hers was the kind that makes you scream like 24 hours a day. So that's different. For mine, I wasn't screaming at all. So we do have differences. And these differences you can detect in the colluding control. And all those differences which we're observing, like this is more suffering than that, that discrimination and this discrimination, they're both calling for compassion. Everything's calling for compassion. It's not like we say, we don't pay attention to the distinction between pigs and fish when they're caught. We do. I mean, some people do. They notice. Tigs scream much louder than fish, usually.

[50:54]

But somebody else, I just heard on the radio today, what would it be like if you could hear a star? Because you can't hear stars because there's no way for the sound to move your ear. But if you could put an atmosphere around a star, what would it sound like? I think I didn't hear the answer. But anyway, I think any distinction you make is an opportunity for conversation and is a conversation. So I have difficulty saying that, I don't have difficulty saying pigs seem to scream louder than fish or seem to scream louder than when you mow the lawn, you cut the top of the grass off. And also, if you cut Kathy's hair, the tips of the hair, that's different from if I pull the hair out, right?

[51:56]

So we notice these things, and these things are calling to us to pay attention to with compassion. I don't see a place where the compassion would stop, where I would say, the cup doesn't deserve compassion. I don't see it because the cup is just like me. It's a conversation. And so in Zen, actually, one of the things about Zen and certain schools of Zen is we act like cups were like precious. We touch them like we're touching, you know, a fragile friend. We pick them up. as though we're picking up our own eyes. We put them down. And there's teachings like that. Treat the cup like you're handling your own eyeballs. We don't say, okay, be nice to middle-aged people, but not babies.

[53:02]

But some people do. They say, well, you know. You can be nice to babies, but when they get to be teenagers and they weigh 300 pounds, you don't have to be nice to them anymore. So be nice, be kind, be gentle up to this age, and then when they're really old, start again. The more I look, the more I don't see a limit to what deserves respect. And it seems like that path of respecting everything, cups, dogs, trees, flowers, humans, all humans, all animals, it seems like that path is similar to the path of the path which accepts that all the suffering, whatever it is, is something I can't get away from. Buddha cannot get away from the suffering of all beings. And Buddha is not like saying, Okay, those beings are suffering and now that one isn't.

[54:10]

But some, in the history of Buddhism, maybe some people said, well, they even say, like I said, the humans that are suffering, the animals don't count. Some people said that. So I'm just saying, I'm not saying they do. have feelings, but I do feel like, in a way, they're just like me, just like you're just like me, but you're also different from me. Yes? I was just thinking that it could be a little confusing if we just say, well, everything is calling to us and everything's a conversation which I agree with. So I was thinking that if we're able to be be in the kind of silence that you're talking about that makes it possible to hear the conversation, but we're also able, at that time, to know, to have some understanding of a response.

[55:17]

You know, like, say you fell down in your leg when you were on the sidewalk. I wouldn't say, excuse me, I'm busy relating to this cup. I, even then, the cup is, you know, calling to me and the flower and the duck. So somehow out of that silence, we also, the conversation is so continuous that I know to help you if you break your leg and I don't get obsessed with the cup I was talking to. So if Marjorie fell down and her leg broke, and just before that happened, you were taking and you didn't want to relate to Marjorie, I might say, Linda, could I borrow that cup for a second? And you might say, what for? So you could help Marjorie. And you go, oh, I didn't notice. And you might say, I think I was a little bit too much into the cup.

[56:18]

So sometimes we're in a conversation but we can get help being more wholehearted in it and from there we make the appropriate response. And we can get, we can start caring for, we can be in a conversation and be caring too much for one element in it. And caring too much for one element tends to, yeah, make it hard for us to see the whole, you know, participate in the whole thing. And part of our practice is to notice when there seems to be an imbalance. People pointing out to us when we're caring too much about some element in the conversation. By the way, when I did fall off the bicycle in Houston and hit the sidewalk, as soon as I hit the sidewalk, I was lying on the sidewalk and this car pulls up full of these women Do you need any help?

[57:22]

And I said, I don't think so, but would you stay there for a minute? Yes. So when... They were driving, you know, but still they could stop and help me. So when we... Quietly and experience stillness... there's a better chance for us to develop a more intuitive situational awareness. Is that right? Yes. There's a way for us to wake up to the infinite dimensions of conversation. Well, the cup versus the... I've got skin in this game, Marjorie on the ground, right? So, a little bit more likely to notice... rubbed on the ground and done with a precious teacup. Maybe. If they're both happening at the same time. Maybe. I don't know exactly how it goes. What I'm proposing is that the appropriate response comes from the full, wholehearted conversation, that you don't have to figure out whether you should... Which is better heard, the full conversation in the stillness of

[58:38]

the full consciousness from that place, you will figure out what to do with the cup and the person. And you might bring the cup to the person and say, is this of any use to you? You say, no, put it down. Or they might say, yeah, that's just what I need. Who knows? Operating from your self-consciousness, you're operating from the what you're doing together with everyone. Yes? It seems to me that when you find this, you are more able, I feel I am more able to include both and, both the mind consciousness, And you made these gestures, and I thought, well, you're gesturing towards the conversation.

[59:55]

Stillness helps us open to the conversation. You're sitting facing the wall, you know. And you're... I don't know what the word is. You're remembering stillness. You're not making yourself still. You're just accepting the stillness of your life. And a fly lands in front of you. And you wake up to a new relationship with that fly. Suddenly you feel like, oh, I never thought a fly would be my best friend. But you sort of wake up to, yeah, well... It's not like a person, but suddenly I'm not like limiting. Flies are not important and I can squash them. You wake up to a new possibility with flies because of the stillness. You wake up to a conversation with the flies. And similarly, if you think you know about flies, well, that's fine.

[60:59]

If you really want to know about flies, you should also practice sitting still. because you'll have revelations about flies and people, your revelations about your relationships will be enhanced, will be deepened by being yourself in stillness. Yes? You started to talk about being pervaded, like that by not putting limits on your relationships with things, that you were able to pervade, I think he was saying, you were able to pervade all of them. You're not, it's not that, yeah, it's not that you pervade everything, you open to, you already pervade everything, but you So one of the opportunities of being still is to open to how you're pervading and how you're being pervaded.

[62:08]

It's not like then you pervade. You're already doing it. You wake up to it. You're pervading enough already. Pervasion is enough. Thank you. And you're also being pervaded infinitely. That's enough. You've already got enough of that going on. But you can wake up to it more and more. And one of the ways you wake up to it more and more is by remembering stillness. Because you being you, you being just like you are, is what's pervading. And so you allow yourself to completely be yourself right now. that allows you to wake up to how this person being just like this in no other way is pervading because everything went into making you just like this so it isn't like we pervade more or are pervaded more it's just like being still we open to it and I also just wanted to say that Suzuki I've told this to you before but Suzuki she said Zazen is a great tenderizer

[63:22]

So being still, not... I take it away. Making yourself still is not zazen. Zazen is celebrating your stillness. You already are still. You're completely, unmovingly this way and this way and this way. Each moment we are still in being just like we are. Accepting that and remembering that we become very tender towards our interlocutors, like a fly, like the wall. We become sensitive to the fragility of the wall and the fragility of the fly. When we start to see fragility, we see preciousness, preciousness of cups, Preciousness of flies, preciousness of people, preciousness of teenagers, middle-aged people, babies, old people, all of our feelings.

[64:30]

They're all precious. It's all precious. And being still, somehow we're open to it. And it's not so much about projecting feelings into a cup, but opening to how precious and fragile it is, just like me. That's why I tell you I'm fragile, so you realize how precious I am. And if you realize how precious I am, you'll be tender with me. And if you're tender with me, you'll become Buddha. So I'm just trying to help you be Buddha. One of our students at Zen Center, she started up studying zoology, and she was in a zoology class, The zoology teacher gave the students an egg and he opened the egg so the students could see into the egg at the chick and see what a chick and an egg is like.

[65:37]

And then she wanted to, she said, well, you know, now we're going to cover up the egg again, put the shell back. And the teacher said, no. And he said, I'll take care of the eggs. You don't have to take care of them. The chicks are not going to survive. And she had this vision of the fragility of these chicks. It was very painful for her. And that's why the teacher took care of them. And the teacher says, I did this so you would see, so that all of you students would see. how fragile life is, how precious it is. And from that time on she has been a vegan ever since because she realized how precious chicks are and of course other little animals because they're precious because they're fragile. And we are too. And solitude helps us wake up to how precious everything is.

[66:44]

And part of the reason everything's so fragile is because everything's in conversation. We can't, you know, want to protect our friends from harm, but we're going to break. Yes? Say more about how Zazen helps us Well, I could say more, but it's more, it's kind of like, it's kind of like, just try it and you'll see. You know, almost everybody who sits still, you know, and gets almost like, when the yoga room used to be in a different class and the yoga teacher said, Actually, we were lying in Shavasana, in the corpse pose, and the yoga teacher said, if you stay in any position long enough, I thought she was going to say, you will experience great bliss.

[67:58]

She said, if you stay in any position long enough, you will feel uncomfortable. And I said, that's better in a way than, not that uncomfortable is better than bliss, but rather that teaching is better than bliss. First of all, before you have the bliss, you're going to have some difficulty. And so when we sit in Zen, as many of you know, if we sit still a long time, we feel uncomfortable eventually. And we're not pushing ourselves too hard or moving before. It really is necessary. But just carefully, respectfully working with the discomfort in our body, we become very tender.

[69:04]

And we're towards this fragile state. sensitive being. And not just towards this one, but towards the other ones too. So we tend to become more tender towards the floor, towards our bowls. And in that tenderness is where enlightenment's living. And that tenderness is similar to listening to the cries. All these fragile, precious beings are and sitting still seems to open us to that. Yes? As we're talking about conversation, I keep thinking of, I think the term is interdependent co-origination. Yeah. Yeah, it is. Dependent co-arising is a conversation.

[70:10]

Everything that exists is a dependent co-arising. Everything that exists has dependently co-arisen. And I'm... I'm using the word conversation rather than let's have a dependent co-arising. But in technical Buddhist terms, you are dependent co-arising. In other words, co-dependently with unlimited conditions. And also, everything else is arising dependently upon you. Thank you so much for another conversation.

[71:04]

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