it just occurred to me just now that when I was... last week I was down in San Luis Obispo and people referred to me relative to that retreat as the talker. So I wanted to say that over during the... during the brunch I overheard... Bob, say that he practices Aikido. And Aikido, the word Aikido means, Ai means love, and Ki is energy, and Do is path or way. So it's the path of loving energy. And so, in a sense, that's what I'm talking about here.

[01:02]

I'm talking about loving all beings. Bringing loving energy to every being, to every meeting. So enlightenment is kind of like loving energy and meeting loving energy. Loving doesn't mean liking or disliking. Loving energy is when dislike comes, you love it. When liking comes, you love it. And love means welcome. Welcome dislikes. Welcome likes. It means patience with dislikes and likes. It means calm. It means gentleness.

[02:05]

It means flexibility. As I mentioned, when I'm traveling around in this type of outfit, Maybe the shaved head works with that too. People say, are you into martial arts? And I say, yes. And they say, what kind? I say, Zen Buddhism. And then they usually don't know what I'm talking about. And I explained to them that Buddha, Shakyamuni Buddha was a martial artist. he met aggressive energy with loving-kindness in amazing ways. He met violence with peace and friendship. Some stories about that are just like almost unbelievable that he could actually meet mass murderers with loving-kindness and flexibility.

[03:17]

compassion and calm and graciousness. This is actually proposed as a historical way of being. And that disciples over the centuries, over the millennia, have also learned to do this. So, in a sense, the Buddhist practice is a tradition of martial art. I think also Christianity is turn the other cheek, Maybe all the way around. Come on. I think Jesus was a martial artist. Was Moses a martial artist? I think so. Now, of course, we know that Muhammad was a martial artist, especially Muhammad Ali.

[04:22]

Sufis are martial artists. What's his name? Rumi was a martial artist. I propose that to you. They met whatever comes, including violent energy, with loving energy. And there was something else that Bob said. He said he recently started to practice Tai Chi. And he finds it helpful because the Tai Chi he's practicing is more emphasizing his own personal balance and being aware of his own central energy. Whereas the loving-kindness practice in Aikido is more in partners. So he finds the emphasis on his own posture helps him to go into the meeting with partners.

[05:32]

Am I representing you okay? And this again relates to a famous story of the Buddha, not of the Buddha, a story that the Buddha told, which is a story that he called the acrobats. So it's a story about, it's a father-daughter acrobat team. And they are called bamboo acrobats. And I think that they had a bamboo pole. And then maybe the father would somehow balance the pole on his chin. Huh? Yeah, thank you. So he balanced the pole on his chin or his head.

[06:32]

And then his daughter would climb up on his shoulders and go up the pole. And, you know, that's one way they might have done it. So he says to his daughter, as she gets up on his shoulders, he says, now you take care of me and I'll take care of you and we'll be able to perform this acrobatic feat, collect our money, and safely have lunch. And she says, excuse me, venerable father and teacher, but you have it kind of turned around. You take care of yourself, and I'll take care of myself, and then we'll be able to take care of each other. And the Buddha says, the apprentice is right. So we want to help others, But we have to take care of ourselves in order to take care of others, which we talked about earlier. I think Valentina brought it up.

[07:34]

You need to be mindful of your own posture before you start taking care of other people's postures. When I say you have to, I mean if you really want to help them with their posture, it's good if you're aware of your own posture. So I have been allowed to give feedback to other people in their posture because for many years I sat and received feedback on my posture from myself and others. For many thousands of hours I paid attention to my posture so that I get in the position of paying attention to other people's posture and giving them feedback So it's loving kindness, it's loving energy towards our own body and then based on that learning how to practice loving energy towards other bodies. Another comment which I wanted to mention is that our great teacher, Suzuki Roshi, said we must be disciplined in order to be natural.

[09:04]

But I think what he meant by natural actually was in order to be relaxed and playful. And you might say, well, do children need to be disciplined in order to be relaxed and playful? And you might think, no, they don't seem to need to. But I think for adults, for Zen students, most Zen students need discipline before they can be relaxed and playful. Not too many adults without discipline are relaxed and playful. And children are sometimes, and adults are sometimes, but as children get up, grow up, get bigger, and go to school and stuff, they have more and more trouble being relaxed and playful. They find it sometimes, but now in order to be more and more playful, we need more and more discipline. Discipline of loving energy. We need to do the discipline of Aikido so that we can be relaxed and playful.

[10:11]

we need to do the ritual of Aikido so that we can be relaxed and playful. So, in this context, I would also say that now I would use the word discipline as a synonym or, you know, the discipline of bodhisattvas as synonym for compassion. We need to discipline our body and mind. We need to discipline our form, our speech, and our thought for our form, our posture, our speech, and our thought actions to be relaxed and playful. But the discipline is to be loving towards our posture, our breathing, our thinking, and our speaking.

[11:15]

And then with this loving attention to our different types of actions, our actions will become natural, naturally playful and compassionate and non-stuck. And I'll just mention this next sort of huge thing, and maybe come back to it later, that we had this teaching in... which was one of most Suzuki Roshi's favorite teachings, where it was, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. That's Heart Sutra. One time Suzuki Roshi excuse the expression, submitted to an interview with a hippie magazine called the Oracle I believe it was the Oracle.

[12:21]

It was a magazine that occurred during the height of Haight-Ashbury. And he was interviewed there. And they had him in there and he said his main teaching is, they asked him, you know, this is the days of the Hittites. They said, well, Zen Master, what's your main teaching? He said, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. How does form get to be emptiness? How do you realize that form is emptiness? How do you realize that conventional phenomena are ultimate truth? Emptiness is the word for ultimate truth. Form is a word for like conventional things like colors and eyes and sounds and ears. But form is also short for form and feelings and perceptions and emotions and consciousness. Form is a sample of conventional existence.

[13:21]

Conventional existence is ultimate truth. That's the teaching. But how do you get from... how do you realize that a form is ultimate truth? I've told you. How do you realize that a form is ultimate truth? What's the path of realizing that? You can say... Huh? Ritual? Yeah. What? Play? What? Wholehearted form, yeah. What? Welcoming the form. Welcoming the form is part of wholeheartedly embracing the form. Using form... like seeing, the act of seeing a color, make that a ritual. Welcome it. Seeing an enemy, welcome it. Feeling a pain, welcome it.

[14:23]

Wholeheartedly feel the pain. Feeling a pleasure, welcome it. Not welcome it like, oh, I got you, I got you, pleasure. No, welcome it like, please come in and stay as long as you want, and when you need to leave, go away, pleasure. Love the pleasure, don't attach to it. Love the pain, don't reject it. This is the way that form is emptiness. When you love pain and pleasure the same, then pain and pleasure aren't emptiness. And how do you love emptiness? Same way. And when you love emptiness, emptiness is formed. So this is like disciplined form is emptiness. If you sit, the form of your sitting, if you discipline it, it will become ultimate truth. And disciplining means you love this body in the sitting posture.

[15:27]

You love this body in the walking posture. You love this body in the eating posture. You love this body then the body becomes ultimate truth. It already is, but you realize it. So, that's a big thing to mention. But it got mentioned. There it is. We can work on that for the rest of our lives. I also wanted just to, in this diagram here, fill it out a little bit. So ritual ripeness is playfulness. Ritual ripeness is enlightenment.

[16:31]

Ritual ripeness is helping others. When you do rituals and they're ripe, it helps others. They can see you, you know. They can see you like walking like this. They can tell it's a discipline. They can tell it's a ritual. They can tell that you've been training at this for many years to be able to do it this way. But they can also, in the ripeness of it, they can also see that you don't even know what it is anymore. That it's like This isn't what you've been doing before. In the ripeness of performing this ritual this is not what you've been doing before. This is the first step like this that's ever been taken. this is the first one of these steps. This is the first time this step has been taken. And in the fullness of the ritual of walking, you realize the freshness of life.

[17:39]

One ancient Zen teacher said, most bestial of humans am I. after 40 years of walking in Chinese fashion. This is a Chinese ritual way of walking. This is a Chinese Zen way of walking. They didn't do this in India, I don't think. And this Chinese way of walking got transmitted to Korea and Japan and to America and to Mount Madonna. it has now been transmitted. After 40 years of walking in this Chinese fashion, today I touch my nose anew. After 40 years of training, he finally experienced the present, the freshness of touching the nose.

[18:54]

It may not take you 40 years, but it might take you longer. Because this is a pretty great Zen master. It took him 40 years, it might take you 46. But he took care of that form all those years, and that form became a situation in which he experienced the freshness and playfulness of reality. And again another traditional Zen form is coming and meeting. You're practicing this form here. You practice it over and over and over for forty years and then you come some day and the meeting is fresh and no regrets.

[20:11]

And then all those forty years are a gift to reality. Is there any gifts you'd like to offer at this time? Would you be open to changing places? Yeah. Oh, I do. I can't sit like you do. I can talk to you now. Okay. As you were talking about form and ritual, I was wondering, is there something sacred in this, or is there sacred in Zen?

[21:21]

Is there sacred in Zen? Yeah, there is. Where? Here. Always here. In Zen, where we are is sacred. Sometimes I hear people say the forms are not sacred. By which I think they mean they're not dogmatically rigid. Yeah, they're saying they're not dogmatically rigid. I think what they're also saying is we work for that goal to realize not being dogmatically rigid. We go to all the trouble of teaching people the forms and see if we can be devoted to the forms without getting stuck in them. And sometimes then people seem to be putting on a good imitation of somebody who's stuck in the forms. They'd say, don't do it that way! It looks, you know, they're doing a good show of looking like they're dogmatic. They're really not, but it looks like they are. And the students who they're yelling at, they also don't really believe that the person's being dogmatic, but they look like they believe it.

[22:30]

They look scared. But the idea is, again, to give yourself to a form, like bowing or sitting or chanting or doing a ceremony in a certain way, to really put a lot of energy into it without being stuck in it. And that would be sacred? Well, that's not really sacred. That's more than sacred. That's like reality. But like the form is sacred in a sense, it's an opportunity to realize the truth. Sacred is more kind of specific, I would say. Like a sacred place and a sacred time, sacred form are opportunities to bring love and realize the truth. The truth is really beyond sacred and mundane.

[23:34]

But if we don't take, if we don't, if we think something's mundane, then we might not take care of it. So we want to make all mundane things sacred so that we'll give them our full loving attention. So that we'll discipline ourselves around them. And again, the discipline, when it's done properly, realizes that the sacredness is empty. So it's a story we tell ourselves so that we'll pay attention? It's a story that we'll tell ourselves so that we'll pay attention to the story and realize that the story is empty, that the story is not an entity. So sacred things are opportunities to realize that nothing's an entity. So the sacredness seems to be an entity like a place or a temple or a teacher or a student. So you got it. That's right.

[24:37]

Now give it away. Will you take your seat back? Will I take it back? You may give it back to me. Thank you. I was wondering where all the people went. You guys got really concentrated there for a while. So that was a ritual. Did you see the ritual? And we played with it. To play with the ritual? Any other offerings you care to make? Yes, you may. I'm around, I'm less nervous. Try pushing the bottom button quickly.

[25:43]

It worked. Yeah. Contemplating or reflecting upon doing the rituals... And it sort of occurred to me, I appreciate feedback from you, the issue really arises because we're so focused and conditioned on doing. It comes from the egoic place of the mind. We're doing something. Yet when we refer to mindfulness or love or loving kindness, we are being, we're being loving, we're being mindful. And so I was thinking, maybe it is not that we're doing the rituals, then they're not rituals.

[26:48]

They're actions that produce karma in yogic language. But if we're being the rituals, being mindful, being the ritual, then it's spontaneously arising because it is not me that is doing it, even though it sort of looks like it's me that is doing it. And then there is that connectedness. We realize the connectedness among things. Then it's a ritual. If we're just doing it, It's not a ritual. This is where the feedback comes in. Was that a gift?

[27:52]

To myself? Sharing is a gift. And the fact that there's space to share in is a gift. Was there giving and receiving? It felt to me like I was offering, I was I can't quite tune into everybody else to see if they're receiving. They kind of forced I'm standing right here. I don't know. You felt like you were giving? I felt that I was giving. Did you feel like you were receiving? Do you feel like you were receiving? I feel like I'm receiving. Do you feel like I was giving?

[28:57]

I felt you being present and that's a gift. Did you feel like I was receiving? I felt you being present and that's receiving. Was I a gift? Totally. Were you a gift? I hope so. Thank you. You're welcome. Did you want to express something, Karaman? Or did you already express it at the breakfast table? Would you like to continue? You would? Tell me to come over there to be with you?

[29:59]

You'll come here? Would you like to sit here or would you like to sit next to me? I think next to you. She said something earlier which made me feel like she maybe wanted to play with the form. What we spoke about a little while ago at brunch was another possible form of enactment of ritual through music. The traveling music started this off in my head. Also, I was thinking about the great singer Edith Piaf, as you know, No, rien de rien.

[31:05]

Non, je ne regrette rien. If you said no regrets... Vraiment? Vraiment. Vraiment. That song in particular has lines in it that would be perfect like, starting your whole life again today, this very moment, je commence avec toi. Sounds good. Simone de Gaulle. Well, the idea was that... The idea was or is?

[32:15]

Let's see if it can still be right now with us. Maybe we can all sing it. Yeah. Wohl. Wohl? Jawohl. Jawohl. Ja. Ja. Wunderbar. Wunderbar. The singer gives the song to the listeners. The listeners give the attention and love to the singer. And the whole exchange, the giving, the recognition, the giving up, the perhaps acceptance that it's all gone, is reenacted. She sings all that. She sings their love. Mm-hmm. They hear her sing their love and they love her more and she sings their love more. They lift each other up to Buddha. I think in a way that's a combination of the ritual and the full playfulness because the song, the voice fills up the auditorium, fills up the world on the airwaves and is then transmitted beyond

[33:28]

over and over again and yet given up each time because the song ends. Yeah. So you can't hold on, you can't grasp. You really can't. And all this love of her listeners turns the sparrow into a lion. Jean Cocteau said a nightingale. He sort of elevated her from street sparrow to elegant bird knight to represent the whole country. And it occurred to me that she was enlightened through, through what she gave. She was an enlightening being. I have a feedback for Anya. Please. It's not that there was an enlightened Edith, but that Edith's activity was enlightened action. Thinking. She sang for the whole country. That's enlightenment.

[34:31]

To sing for all beings, to let all beings empower you to speak. That's enlightenment. Not that she was enlightened. But when she was singing, there was enlightenment. But when she stopped singing, then it was not so easy to see. But then she needed to sing more. Yes, exactly. When she stopped singing, she should have started singing. She should have just kept singing all night long. We have chants, although in our tradition perhaps not as much as some other spiritual practices, but we are brought together in the chant just as we are in the walking and the breathing. I'm wondering if we could, in our practice, even sing more. Yes, we can.

[35:34]

Good. That's the kind of play I really enjoy. Thank you, Rick. You're welcome. Caroline. Oh, thank you. Some decades ago, a Zen student said, why don't we sing? And I said, we do sing. We do sing. She said, no, but I mean like with a melody. And I said, well, if you want me to sing, I'll sing.

[36:35]

So then I started singing. And some people are sorry about that. But if you like, I have some songs to sing to you this weekend. So partly I will sing them for you, Caroline. And I will sing them for all beings too, if you don't mind. There are some people who want me to sing songs just for them. They're not into this all beings thing. I do feel a song coming on now, but I want to study the words of it some more before I sing it.

[37:39]

I almost know it, but I'd like to remember the words first. Sometimes I just start without knowing that I'm not going to be able to finish because I don't know the words. But this one, I've almost got it, and I'll sing it to you later today. Or I'll sing them later today. Yes, we could. Would you like to lead us? Maestro? Yes, there is. Yes, you may. Red, last night you described when you rolled out this mat that this could be a place where a meeting could take place.

[38:59]

Can you hear her? Would you like them? I'll start over. Rep, last night you described this place as you rolled out the mat as a place where a meeting could possibly take place. And I believe you professed that in this place a Buddha could meet a Buddha. So I thought... this is a nice rectangular space. Perhaps if the Buddhas were seated, maybe three feet tall. And I thought perhaps I might step into that space with you.

[40:04]

And then I thought, well, the room is not that large and I would hate to leave all these wonderful people out. And probably a Buddha meeting a Buddha means that everybody's got to be Buddha, which could be a lot of fun. Could be a lot of fun. And then I thought, even here in Mount Madonna, these people seem very devoted to this practice. I could imagine that there could be this large meeting of Buddhas if I was willing to step into the space with you. But I wasn't so sure about Watsonville, even though it looks very beautiful out there at night. Still, I would like to try to step into that space at this time. Would that be okay with you?

[41:09]

You're welcome. Thank you. How is it now? The cells of my body are tingling a little bit more than they were just a moment ago. It feels okay though. It feels okay here. How is it for you? Like that. Greetings, Tension. Do you have any feedback for me? The song I thought about when Caroline was talking was, oh my singing voice is rather French right now.

[42:39]

They're singing songs of love, but not for me. The stars in the sky above, but not for me. Although I can't dismiss the memory of your kiss, I know it's not for me. It's enough for now. It is? Not really. Let's do it again sometime. Okay. Oh happy day, oh happy day. When Buddhas sit, oh when they sit. When Buddhas sit, oh when they sit. When Buddhas sit, oh, when they sit, they wash our clinging away, oh, happy day, oh, happy day.

[43:52]

When Buddhas walk, oh, when they walk, when Buddhas talk, oh, when they talk, when Buddhas walk, oh, when they walk, they wash our clinging away, oh, happy day. Oh, happy day. Can we have some traveling music, please, Connie? That's an old, familiar song. Buddha's Walk. Please do Buddha's Walk Walk that Buddha.

[44:45]

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