Homage, I think, means to align yourself with something. I think it had to do when knights would pay homage to some , some lord, pay their, you know, confess their loyalty. homage has that meaning of lining up with something. And also has, I think, either the connotation of praise. Part of the path of perfect wisdom is to pay homage to it, to align yourself with it. repeatedly, over and over, to praise it, to make offerings to it.

[01:06]

Part of the way of realizing it. And part of the praise of it is to say, this type of wisdom sets in motion the wheel of Dharma, it sets in motion the wheel of truth. it is the mother of Buddhas. Someone might say, well, is there some difference between perfect wisdom and Buddhas? Wisdom understands that there's not a difference between perfect wisdom and Buddhas. But Buddhas are kind of the embodiment of perfect wisdom. There are perfect wisdom which can... Perfect wisdom doesn't really appear, but perfect wisdom gives birth to appearances which living beings like us, which bodhisattvas, as we aspire to be bodhisattvas, they can see the body of Buddha,

[02:24]

and perfection of wisdom gives birth to various kinds of Buddha bodies which can support our practice, guide our practice, orient our practice. Tonight I thought I might mention couple of words. One is samsara and another one is nirvana. Samsara, I think, means going around and nirvana means cessation, sometimes translated as cessation or also freedom or liberation. uh... samsara also in chinese the way they write samsara is two characters birth and death sanskrit word samsara just means going around but it's implied that what's going around is birth and death and then of course leading up to birth and following birth and leading up to death

[03:55]

and following death. So there's a way of life which is called birth and death. It's a form of life where there's birth and death. There's another kind of life where there's no appearance of birth and death. Another type of life which is called nirvana is sometimes nicknamed the birthless and the deathless. It's a type of life where the appearance of birth and death is not featured. Whereas there's another way of birth and death are a big issue. And where there's incomplete realization of peace. where peace kind of like, it's there for a while and then it's kind of like, kind of seems to be disappearing or getting lost.

[05:02]

Maybe a war appears where there's some peace of mind and then the peace of mind sort of can't find it. We seem to have agitated, anxious, frightened minds that are at risk of becoming violent if you poke at them. So I think maybe many people are familiar with birth and death. And birth and death is also where there's language like death. There's words. And nirvana is like peace with words. It's not a word. Nirvana is also a word. And nirvana is freedom from nirvana. Nirvana is a freedom from the word nirvana.

[06:11]

And it's a freedom from the word samsara. And it's a freedom from the word birth and death. And it's a freedom from birth and death. It's a freedom from birth and death. It comes with the understanding that birth and death are just words. To the extent that birth and death are just words, to that extent there is the perfection of wisdom which realizes words. To the extent that we think birth and death are more than words, we have, to the extent that we think they're more, we have less perfect wisdom. But perfect wisdom which realizes peace, which realizes nirvana, also realizes that samsara and nirvana, it realizes that samsara and nirvana are not different.

[07:19]

And realizing that they're not different, they're not different. before we realize that they're not different, even if we hear that they're not, they seem like they are. that comes from the perfect wisdom teachings is nirvana itself is samsara freedom itself is bondage to birth and death and birth and death bondage and birth and death itself is nirvana that teaching is just listening to that doesn't mean that it's so for you yet you have to understand that You have to see that. And the way you see it is by, well, not in birth and death. Zen school is, the Zen practice is about practicing, doing a practice.

[08:47]

You practice at birth and death itself being nirvana. You practice at that. You got birth and death, practice at that being peace and freedom. Try to practice that. Which, again, the way to do it is not to abide in birth and death. Then you don't have to stretch birth and death over to be something, to be peace and freedom. Perfect wisdom, the fruit of perfect wisdom is that you abandon, you can abandon suffering, you can abandon fear, you can abandon

[09:57]

any obstacle to the fullness of life. You can abandon, there can be abandonment of any obstacle to peace and freedom. Okay? That might sound kind of good. But the kicker is, this type of is that you abandon all troubles and all woes You abandon all obstruction to happiness and fearlessness and virtue and peace and freedom. You abandon all the obstacles without birth and death. There's another kind of wisdom that abandons birth and death. and also abandons the obstacles. The obstacles to freedom and peace.

[11:03]

Which again, sounds pretty good, doesn't it? That abandons the obstacles to fearlessness and love for all beings. It abandons the obstacles to being up for whatever's happening in this universe. But also abandons birth and death. the perfect wisdom doesn't abandon birth and death. So there's a kind of wisdom which sees birth and death are different and it abandons the trouble and realizes the happiness. The perfect wisdom realizes the happiness and doesn't abandon any trouble. So that's for bodhisattvas. The other teaching is teaching for sages, for yogis who are interested in freedom from obstacles to a full life.

[12:18]

And a freedom from the life in the form of birth and death, and birth and death, and birth and death. But that process by itself does not make a Buddha. The Buddha is made by the path of wisdom which abandons hindrance and doesn't abandon trouble. That's the path that makes a Buddha. The Zen schools in the demonstration of samsara being nirvana and nirvana being samsara. But it's easier to start with samsara being nirvana because everybody can . And then by watching the demonstration

[13:27]

of samsara being nirvana, then you might be able to see nirvana and realize that nirvana is samsara. But actually you can start either way you'd like. And now's a good time. breathing in and breathing out could be seen as going to sleep and waking up could be seen as

[14:39]

And it's possible when going to sleep or waking up to be mindful that going to sleep itself and waking up itself is nirvana. Any questions? Can you hear me okay, Carol? You're welcome. If I talk loudly, it's so that people can hear me. It's not that I'm angry at you. King? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, right.

[15:54]

But either way is fine with me. If you want to just remember for the rest of your life that Nirvana's samsara Want to know what nirvana is? It's samsara. It's birth and death. Want to know what nirvana is? It's misery. But only when misery is happening. And also, misery itself, what misery really is, is nirvana. And the logic of is the logic of perfect wisdom, because perfect wisdom is what? Well, what is it? It's a word. We pay homage to a word.

[16:57]

And someone might say, what? Paying homage to a word? I want to pay homage to something a little better than a word. But wanting to pay homage to something that's better than something is different from paying homage to the perfect wisdom. Paying homage to something that's better than something else is not paying homage to what turns the wheel of Dharma. What turns the wheel of Dharma is just a word. What turns the wheel of Dharma is the fact of a lack in everything for any way to grasp it. Therefore, by perfect wisdom, there's no way to grasp. I shouldn't say there's no way. There's no basis for grasping suffering and fear. There's no basis for grasping fear. There's no basis for grasping your high or low opinion of yourself or others.

[18:05]

In samsara, there's high and low opinions. And in nirvana, there's high and low opinions too. It's just that in nirvana, you can't have anything. You don't get to have any high or low opinions. You don't get to have anything. Because nothing can be had in nirvana. And in samsara, it looks like they can, but they can't. Therefore, it's just like nirvana. Yes? So generally, is there an emphasis on the negative when we talk about samsara? I mean, birth and death is basically the disagreeing with suffering. And so when you apply this as a practice, you tend to do it in part? You could say generally there's an emphasis on... Do you say negative? Yeah, generally there's an emphasis on negative in samsara because samsara is where you cling to things.

[19:13]

And where you cling to things, you don't have to emphasize exactly the negative. It's just that clinging to things is negative. Clinging to life is a negation of life. Got it? It's not that life is negative. It's that samsara is the kind of life where we negate life by saying life can be grasped when you do that to life you I shouldn't say you but doing that reduces it truncates it impoverishes it but makes it graspable which we are we have evolved to be very skillful at and uses in it and one of the uses of it is to grasp conventional designations so that we can interpret the perfect wisdom into words and learn how to practice perfect wisdom.

[20:18]

Which then antidotes the grasping which makes life negative. Which negates, in a sense, somewhat the vast reality of our life. Samsara is kind of like, yeah, a negative version of life. Even though there's lots of wonderful things in samsara, like little babies and big babies and medium-sized babies, even though there's all kinds of wonderful things, they're all negative because they're all insulted. They're all diminished by misconceptions in samsara. But that whole process itself is ungraspable, is, you know, is demonstrating and in fact it's nirvana.

[21:23]

In fact. In fact it's nirvana. Because in fact none of this stuff, this negative stuff, none of the causes of negativity, none of the causes of suffering have any basis to be grasped. Before, they really are nirvana. Understanding that, we realize that they really are. In the meantime, all things are opportunities to test that teaching. Now, do you have a question? I'm just curious, in fact, if you're having what you feel that in the In the world where we judge something, we judge something that is pleasurable. I was just thinking, I think I tend to apply to people more when I, if something happens that I'm not happy about, and I don't hear what you do, or if people also apply.

[22:33]

Oh, this can't be. I can't do this. You did a little survey of your life and you found out that you apply the teachings a little bit more often when things are rough. Is that right? Yeah. Maybe if we did a survey we'd find out a lot that is the case. However, It is also the case that certain practitioners treat joy the same way that most of us treat misery. And as some of you know, what attracted me to Zen were people who dealt with joy the same way that they dealt with suffering. And the way they dealt with both of those was not to grasp either.

[23:37]

It wasn't like they... suffering and grasp joy. I know people... Then there's people who don't grasp suffering, which is pretty impressive. Then there's people who don't grasp suffering or joy, which is most impressive. So, you know, one of the things that kind of turned me towards Buddhism was this picture, this Buddhist monk, you know, a film of a Buddhist monk, It was actually inside of another movie. It was a movie inside of a movie of this monk burning, right? And I looked, I said, wow, how can she sit up like that in the middle of the flames? It might just be a pile of charcoal because she was just burning there. It was in the flames, you know, in this little black form inside the flames. I just assumed that whoever it was was Just charcoal. And then the charcoal... And I thought, well, yeah.

[24:41]

But then the charcoal pile sat up again. And I said, hmm, how did she do that? I was impressed that a person could sit back up in the middle of flames. It's a little bit like, you know, not really abiding in discomfort. It wasn't kind of like, why are these flames so hot? You know? More just like, you know, okay. Which is pretty much like not abide in that misery and know how to practice with misery. So that you could do that under that particular style. And then you could have other kinds. Can we change the dial to another kind of misery? Okay, let's go. See if I can do it here too. Okay. So I would like to dial in any misery and stress right if there was life. But then what about dialing in joy?

[25:49]

And being able to sit upright there too. I want both. And that's what the Buddha found. The way the Buddha first talked about it was, I found a middle way between addiction to sense pleasure and addiction to self-mortification. One form of sense pleasure is the sense pleasure of, that's right in the middle. I'm good, I'm bad. That's sense pleasure. That you can go around and say stuff's good and bad. It's kind of, it's kind of pleasureful. Even though there's a lot of pain, it's also like, well, okay, that's good and that's bad. You're a good boy, you're a good girl. That's sense pleasure. And the other side is, I'm not going to say anybody's good or bad. No judgments. No measurements, no ranking.

[26:54]

That's like denial. That's like self-mortification. The Buddha didn't say, I found the middle way between sense pleasure and self-mortification, self-denial. He didn't say that. He said, I found the middle way between addiction to one and addiction to the other. The Buddha can still say, you're good and you're not good, or you're not as good and you're better. The Buddha can do that. And the Buddha can also say, no judgment, everybody's the same. I'm not going to get into that at all. I'm going to brush my teeth. Well, first of all, I'm going to have a nice lunch and I'm going to brush my teeth. The Buddha does that. Buddha has lunch and then brushes her teeth. That's sense pleasure, often.

[27:56]

Especially if you were hungry beforehand. The Buddha comes up. Very nice. You eat in a very dignified way. How beautiful. Brush your teeth. Very nice. Sense pleasure. The Buddha does that. But the Buddha is not addicted to it. If the lunch is called off, Buddha doesn't have, you know, it's nirvana. Lunch is postponed for two weeks. That's nirvana. Because there's no grasping at lunch. There's no addiction to it. Oh, we changed our mind. We're going to have lunch. Okay. And lunch sometimes, right? So afterwards you can, you know, have a meeting and help people, show them the path of perfect wisdom. But sometimes you should not have lunch as good. It's better, you know, give somebody else your lunch. It's sometimes quite helpful. Give your lunch to other people is not the Buddha way.

[29:03]

Sometimes it's good to not be able to see who's better than anybody else and see everybody's perfect or everybody's totally worthless. It's good to be able to do that sometimes, to just give up your... No. You have to give it up. Just give it up. Give up all your amazing human equipment. Just take a break. But to be addicted to it, to dwell in it, that's the problem. We're not denying that we have the ability to not judge anybody. We can give it up. We can do that. And we can also judge everybody. We're not denying that. We're saying don't dwell in either. not dwell on either and remember that by doing that you find this middle way where all problems are themselves peace and freedom.

[30:14]

I think wisdom sees this. I did talk about it, but I just want to mention that the perfect wisdom does not abandon birth and death. So there can be abandonment of birth and death, but perfect wisdom does not abandon it. However, I'll stop there for now. I just want to remind you that When the topic of abandoning birth and death comes up, that doesn't go with personal wisdom. It only goes with personal wisdom as an occasional thing, not as a policy. The word abandons obstacles

[31:22]

abandons all obstacles to freedom and ease and nirvana. But it doesn't abandon samsara. Perfect wisdom abandons the obstacles to nirvana. But it doesn't abandon samsara. It doesn't abandon the suffering of beings. It doesn't. However, watch. It doesn't abandon samsara, and it also doesn't refuse to abandon samsara. It doesn't abandon samsara, but it again doesn't abandon samsara. And it does abandon obstacles to nirvana, but it doesn't abide in nirvana. It's like the coolest possible situation. It's the best, this perfect wisdom. There's other kinds of pretty great because they abandon the obstacles to nirvana which is great because then you can have nirvana which is like better than the best.

[32:30]

You know, it's better than the best worldly bliss. It's freedom from the best worldly bliss. But perfect wisdom makes you don't dwell on that. and you're open to samsara. And you can dive into it and show people how to abandon the obstacles to nirvana. That's what this class is about, is to teach us to learn how to abandon the obstacles to peace and freedom without abandoning the setup of birth and death. No, no, no, no, no, no. Don't keep, you don't keep anything. You don't keep, you don't keep birth and death and then all, you don't, you don't, you don't keep birth and death and you don't keep nirvana.

[33:36]

You don't keep anything. But also you don't reject anything. But you abandon things without rejecting them. Like you abandon hate without rejecting it. A little bit more. Do it again. Try again without having anything. You said you got to have something. Got to keep something. What would be the addiction to life and death? There's two kinds of addiction. One is do things for yourself in an addictive way, and the other is do things for other people in an addictive way. Be addicted to helping others before yourself. That's one style of addiction and birthing.

[34:40]

The other style is be addicted to doing things for yourself. And you can be addicted to both. But some people specialize in one or the other. Like a lot of people just can't stand to be accused of being addicted to their, not even addicted, some people can't even stand to be cited for a case of taking care of themselves, not to mention that they're addicted to it. So what they do is they're addicted to self-mortification or self-denial to prevent anybody daring to cite them for a moment of self-care, which would be like They like self-care, actually. They just don't want anybody to say that they're bad for liking it. And liking it is okay. It's the addiction. So the thing is to learn how to not abide, because then that avoids the addiction. Then you can do things, again, like you can put moisturizer on your cheeks, you know,

[35:47]

And then somebody said, can I peel the moisturizer off? And you can say, well, maybe if you're nice to me. Yes, Jacques? So you talk about this, is it the same thing as practicing peace, you know, freedom, and not space between Earth and the other side of the world? What are you sorry about? Well, before you figure out how to say it, you might be in the right place. Yeah. Nirvana doesn't exist without those two things because nirvana is actually freedom in the face of those two things.

[36:58]

It has no function other than being the way those things really are. And the way those things really are is that you can't be addicted to them. And you can't be stuck in them. That's the way they really are. Oh, I feel like this bush became white right here. But if you abide in the way you be, then you flip to one side or the other.

[38:10]

And you really can't abide, but if you think you can, then you can't. But if you see that, and you remember the teaching, then you can recover and just be in a way that offers no basis for apprehension, no basis for nesting there. It's the actual dynamic situation of our life that's so all-inclusive, that nothing is outside of it, so nothing can grasp it. So we can be that way. We can be reality. And we are reality. But we have to train with our... we have to train our consciousness because otherwise in our consciousness there's a dream that something can be grasped and that there can be addictions.

[39:24]

But the way that really is, is freedom. Yes? . What you just... Carol couldn't hear. So, let me try to say something about what you said. She said something about the Four Noble Truths. Do you know about those? The Four Noble Truths.

[40:33]

Have you heard about them? Yeah. So, the Four Noble Truths. That thumb should not stick out. The thumbless person's hand has four fingers. The Four Noble Truths are the truth of suffering, the truth of... of suffering, the truth of the cessation of suffering, nirvana, and the truth of the practice, which is the freedom from suffering. Those are the first truths. Sometimes people say the first truth is the truth that there is suffering, or that they even say life is suffering. Sometimes people say that, but the truth, the first noble truth is not that life is suffering.

[41:39]

So what's the truth of suffering? The truth of suffering is, well, what is telling us what is suffering? And the Buddha says, well, what is suffering? He's going to tell you what the truth of suffering is. Well, the truth of suffering is, and then he just sort of starts saying everything. But then he says, in brief, The truth of suffering, in brief, suffering is any experience that you grasp. That's the truth of suffering. The truth of suffering is that anything you grasp is suffering. And he doesn't say life is that way. he said, life when you grasp life is suffering. But if you don't grasp life, then it's the third noble truth. Then it's cessation of suffering because there's no grasping. And the way of no grasping is the path, is the practice. And Tish was saying that there seems to be an order and

[42:48]

And then she also said, is that the reason why it's in that order? And I would say that if you say the reason why it's in that order, okay, then that would be suffering. And you could say, well, I'm going to say a story about this, but I'm not, I'm going to say a story about why it's given in this order, but I'm not going to use that story to grasp that this is why it's in that order. I'm just going to say that. So I'm not going to dwell on that. Not dwelling in that is the practice, which is Nirvana. So that's, Tish also is saying, well they kind of circle around. Right. If you do the practice regarding the first one, then it's the third one. Huh? The second one is that the origination of suffering, and the origination of suffering comes with the explanation about what suffering is, because what suffering is, is it's grasping.

[43:55]

So the origination of suffering is grasping. The origination of suffering is a mind that abides in what's appearing within consciousness. Consciousness which abides in what's appearing, that's where suffering is. When there's no abiding, there's no suffering. So the obstacles to no suffering, the obstacles to peace and freedom are dropped when there's no clinging, when there's no abiding. But the perfect wisdom doesn't then say, okay, I'm also going to drop the world of suffering. It doesn't do that. Yes, Carol? Okay, we're ready.

[44:57]

Here comes a poor expression. That was pretty good, by the way, that last one. So probably this next one won't be as good. That's pretty good, too. Why don't you just say ignorant? It would be better if you just said, I'm ignorant. Relatively. Well, I will, and you can too. Yeah, you did, as a matter of fact. Yeah. Something's ongoing. You're not supposed to grasp at things. You're not supposed to get relayed. So I don't know what you call it. I don't know what you call it. The circle and the yin-yang thing? Yeah. That's when you said tomorrow? Tomorrow, excuse me.

[46:01]

You know, I just sort of visualized that because it seemed just perfect. You know, I've abandoned that, but the process keeps going. I have difficulty with a lot of vocabulary because, like suffering, Okay, I want a lot of what I see as experiencing the appreciation of that. But as appreciation, you know, I know that words, Sanskrit, Jatla, Shanks, can be defined in long-intuitive ways. The historical aspects through the White Lich, which I've been reading a lot about Buddhism, your work, and other things, and I'm constantly there, and I, you know, I'm looking at words, meaning words.

[47:19]

You mean like suffering that also we appreciate, the suffering of the negative plantation, or... The practice in relationship to the appearance of suffering is appreciation in the sense of being generous towards the situation. If you appreciate it, and your appreciation is very generous, You're setting the stage for perfect wisdom. But as I often say, one of the first teachings I heard from Suzuki Roshi was, when you see a flower and you say it's beautiful, that's a sin. I thought...

[48:22]

Yeah, I think glowing sounds more generous than naming it and naming it and thinking that it's the way you named it. So just to glow with it, I think it sounds more resonant with perfect wisdom because just glowing with it, maybe you don't dwell on it or dwell on the experience of it. Yeah, just momentarily you're not dwelling in this experience of having a flower in your life. And that maybe is very close to perfect wisdom. It's part of moving towards death and birth. And if you then do the same thing with death when it comes and the same thing with birth when it comes, that's starting to sound like nirvana.

[49:32]

And so if we're ready for flowers and cancer and insults, if we're ready for it, like being ready for, you know, to glow with it, to resonate with it, to be with it, to embrace it without clinging to it, in perfect wisdom. And then along with that practice you also have some teaching which is you will be able, there's a way you can actually be in accord with perfect wisdom with everything that's happening. And actually part of the reason you can is because all this stuff is nirvana. The things that are happening are basically nirvanic. All the stuff that's arising and ceasing is basically nirvanic. And if you can have this glowing, open appreciation of everything, you kind of like can open to everything being nirvanic.

[50:42]

But if you're kind of like open to some things but not others, then you might say, well, oops, I wanted to be open to nirvana but I accidentally was closed and then nirvana came and I forgot to, I didn't get open soon enough, so I missed it. So I think your glowing sounds like a pretty nice summary of being generous and careful. Glowing maybe doesn't carry the discipline side of ethics, but I think glowing with things without abiding, part of that is the practice of ethics, of being careful. Because you could think you're glowing, but then somebody tries to take the thing away and you notice, oops, there's a little tug there. I thought I was glowing, but actually, there was actually, I was secretly holding what I was glowing with. So then I think that was a little bit of possessiveness there.

[51:45]

I was glowing in a possessive way. So okay, so okay, now I got that, so now I'm glowing without being possessive. But then somebody pointed out to me that I was glowing without being possessive, and I thought people who were glowing with possessive. So that's another thing, that little fault there, and so on. So we do ethical discipline. If you glow, it has ethical discipline in it. And then there's patience. When people take away the flowers and give you garbage or take away health and give you sickness, there's also any stress prior to the full realization of the big glow, the super glow. Because perfect wisdom really is, you know, it's a glow. It's a great infinite light. But it's also like if you go in there you find out it's general, it's epical, and it works with all the little details that are in there and being dealt with in this careful, patient, relaxed, concentrated way.

[52:51]

And also the teachings are making a lot of sense to you now. You can see the teachings. Yes? Did you say suffering? Suffering is to evoke mindfulness? No, I don't... The practice is to be mindful. If there's suffering, the practice with the suffering is to be mindful of the suffering. The mindfulness isn't suffering. Mindfulness is the practice with suffering. If you have pleasure, the practice is to be mindful with the pleasure. If you have fear, the practice is to be mindful with the fear.

[53:52]

That's a practice. The practice isn't suffering. The practice is freedom from suffering without abandoning it. Yeah. The practice embraces suffering in a way that's freedom from suffering. And although it's freedom from suffering, it doesn't abandon the thing it's free of. It keeps a relationship with suffering. So if you invite somebody who has perfect wisdom, who is free of suffering, to come into suffering, they're happy to go in there, and they go in in this kind of resonant radiant, non-grasping way. And qualities based on that wisdom which make a Buddha. Yes? A triple world is there's three worlds of kind of like mundane

[55:04]

consciousness. One is the world where there's like, for humans, there's like other humans and there's like the yoga room in Berkeley, San Francisco, glasses, necks, elbows, hamburgers, pain, pleasure, fear, sexual intercourse. That's one world. It's called the world of sex. It's called the realm of sex. But it means like sex with the genitals of whatever species you're a member of and then watching the other species do it too. That's one realm. The other realm is a realm that you can enter by certain kinds of concentration practices where there's forms, but they're not... more refined forms, like there's not like living beings with arms and legs and glasses and t-shirts.

[56:08]

It's more like blue, yellow, green, and the sounds are not the sounds of language. So it's a very refined realm of meditation experience. And then there's another realm where there's no forms, they're just mental states, which also yogis get into those states. So those are the three worlds. And there can be suffering in all three. But in, for example, in the material realm and the formless realm, there's suffering but there's no negative sensation. There's no negative sensation in those realms. But there's still suffering because the beings in those realms are still anxious just because they because they're still grasping at the causation of their realm. But they don't have negative sensation anymore. Whereas in our life, we suffer when there's positive sensation, negative sensation, and neutral sensation.

[57:16]

Like, I often tell people that one of my friends, when he was a little boy, he used to start crying when he got in the bath, in the shower, because he liked to take showers, but his mother limited his showers for five minutes. So as soon as he got into the shower, he started to cry because he knew he had to get out pretty soon. So that's called the state of being separated from what you like. So even when we have pleasant sensations, we're still anxious. And negative sensations, well, they hurt, and we're also afraid that they'll go on, or we're afraid of how long they have been going on. That's in our suffering. neutral, we're basically nauseated. If there's any clinging, that's the normal world we live in. But if you go in these other realms, there's no negative sensation, so they just have the pain of positive sensation and neutral sensation.

[58:18]

And so those realms are actually called heavens, And you have to practice meditation quite skillfully to get in them, but there's still suffering there, and there's still bondage, and they're still impermanent. You aren't necessarily wise, even though you're a pretty skillful meditator, to get into them. Yes? Did you want to say something? It was delicious to hold a baby, yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yes.

[59:27]

Yeah, right. So the practice of sitting and caring for your breath is a practice which you might, if you can learn how to take care of your breath, dwelling in it. then you might be able to take care of little babies and old people and not-so-old people and yourself to really care for somebody without dwelling. So when you're following your breathing, your breathing is not exactly saying to you, you know, don't just take care of me, dwell in me. It doesn't really say that to you. And you can also watch it. If you're following your breathing, you can watch. And you can verify that to care to care about the breathing process, to be mindful of it, and to be dwelling in it, you can notice that you suffer. And you can notice, you can realize that if you don't dwell in it, you're at ease and you're at peace and you're fearless.

[60:34]

You can realize that. And then you might be able to realize that human beings that way. Because human beings do tell you, dwell in me. They do. They tell you that. And we don't think we have the luxury to not dwell in, for example, a sick person. We think we have to dwell in them because if we don't dwell in them, we might not take care of them. And we can't afford to not take care of them. So just to make sure we are diligent, we dwell in them. which doesn't stop us from being diligent, it just makes the situation miserable. That's all. And also hurts the person. That's all. But you're diligently caring for them in this clinging way. But your breath is not saying, please cling to me. It's not. Matter of fact, it's there to say, do you notice that it would be better if you just watched and loved without clinging?

[61:39]

And you say, wow, yeah. Like I tell stories about my granddaughter, she's so, you know, she wants her mother to cling to her. She doesn't want her mother just to care for her. She wants her mother to cling to her. And she is clinging to her mother's care of her. She knows she's clinging to her care of her because she demonstrates so vividly. And when you see somebody who is clinging to your care of them you may feel like well can i care for them without would that be all right for just the clinging to be on one side so that they could learn how to do that and some mothers might say well yeah i think that'd be okay i like somebody might say i want you to take care of me and i want you to cling to me you may say i'm totally up for taking care of you but i'm not going to cling to you everything but clinging.

[62:43]

And the person might have a big fit about that, but they'll get over it eventually. Yeah, you could also get into that, that you're clinging to not clinging, so you shouldn't make that a policy. You shouldn't cling. You just say, I'm not going to cling. And they say, give it up. And you say, fine, I'll give it up. And I'll cling. But it's not an addiction. It's just like a favor to you. Yeah, so this little girl's got her mother and father who are doing this thing. And she's got a grandfather who's doing something else. But at the same time, she knows that I'll do things for her that no one will do for her. And the reason why I'll do things with her is because I'm in this privileged position of not clinging to her.

[63:45]

I don't have to accomplish anything with her. Therefore, I can do things people who do have to accomplish things can't do. Well, actually, just last Tuesday, she said, I want the cell phone. I said, it's in the car. And I wasn't lying. I thought it was in the car. I said, I'm going to go to the car and get it. I was going to the car, and I realized it was in my pocket because her grandmother called me. She didn't see it. But I was going to go get the cell phone and give it to her, but she didn't get it. Things moved on. Things do move on. If you're not clinging, you can be with them. And if you're really with them, stress, but at the same time, we're not rejecting the realm of not being stuck. We're willing to be there if it's helpful.

[64:51]

So we don't cling to not being stuck because that's another form of being stuck. What? Reality is that things are moving on. And even a deeper reality is that things don't even move. In reality. And if we... If we join the moving on, we're able to be with the stillness. So that's another reason why we perform, we do the practice of performing stillness. We do a practice of stillness. Actually still. We do a practice of nirvana. We practice being still and at peace in this class. It's a ritual enactment of reality. And then do you have any doubts about that?

[65:54]

Well, if you do, then we surface them and we use language with our doubt. So we don't doubt that if we can use language without dwelling in it, we realize freedom from language. Which is, the freedom from language is already the case. It's a question of practicing to realize it. our life is actually free of words. But we need words to understand how to practice in such a way that we realize that freedom. So we're talking to realize a wisdom which is free of talking. And the freedom from talking is already the case, but it's so quiet and still we can't see it. unless in our talking.

[67:02]

We have to train to not dwell in our talking to realize that we're not dwelling in our talking. But we're not making that situation happen by opening to our language. Yes? I don't think so. I don't think they had the compound birth death. I don't think they had it, but I don't know. It's two characters. It's a character for birth or life. No. Maybe they do have a character like that. Before Buddhism came, they had a character for life. And the character for life means life, and it also means birth.

[68:08]

So sometimes you hear people talk about life and death are the most important thing. Sometimes they say birth and death. It's the same character, birth. I don't think the compound was around. So rather than using a compound or finding a word that means spinning around, they did birth and death because in India they understand spinning around, going around, it's referring to birth and death. didn't have that idea in China of going from round to birth and didn't have this rebirth thing. So they had to say, well, we're talking about going between birth and death and birth and death. Yes? Yes? There's clinging in all... No, it's more like... It's actually like... It's like in those realms there's not colors, there's not smells, there's not tastes.

[69:34]

There's not even refined versions. They're just mental states. Like, for example, the infinity of consciousness is one of the states, and there still can be clinging there. But it's very, you know, there's not even any images of birth and death or enemies or whatever. So it's very pleasant, but there's still some subtle clinging going on there. That's even more subtle than that. There's not I. There's not even the language I, but there's the idea, there's a concept of something that you get a hold of. There's still consciousness, there's still a sense of self, but there's no language for it. ... Yeah, the intention to create those lofty yogic states, as long as there's lack of perfect wisdom, they're still suffering.

[70:49]

They're still clinging. They're still abiding. Even though we're talking about creating a very, very pleasant worldly state. Much nicer than almost any other worldly pleasure we know about. But we have spiritual pleasures which, according to the people who have been up there and come back, we have spiritual pleasure which is far more wonderful than the pleasure of these great yogic states. For example, the pleasure of caring for other beings. Compassion is much greater pleasure than the pleasure of these mundane states. But the Buddha did actually have experience in those states and he did recommend his disciples go visit. You should know about how to take care of the people who get stuck there. Yes, Bill? Definitely.

[71:52]

That's the place we're mostly going to be working on it because that's where samsara offers the greatest... That's where people... There's nobody insulting you in these higher realms. There's nobody insulting you. There's nobody robbing you. And there's no dementia. There's no Alzheimer's. There's no cancer. it's not so much that it's really high, it's just that it has more challenges to demonstrate itself upon. And every time perfect wisdom meets some phenomena and doesn't cling to it, it gets deeper. It gets deeper and deeper until it makes a Buddha. So we can enter perfect wisdom and then spend quite a long time after that deepening it by applying it

[72:53]

to birth and death, which we have not abandoned. And before we entered, we knew we weren't going to abandon it. However, we do abandon the obstacles to freedom by this wisdom. But in some sense, it does develop best in the world, the chunky world of sex. Yes? Yeah. And when you say provided you don't forget to work on it, yeah, it means provided you do the practice with it. the more difficult, if the practice can work with the more difficult, it's a deeper practice.

[73:59]

But the practice doesn't go look for trouble, it's just that we just know that it's eventually going to, all the people you have sort of not up for dealing with, eventually you're going to deal with them. And when you finally are getting around to dealing with them, you're going to be wiser. And right now, you're up for dealing with some people, like the people in the yoga room, maybe. Pretty nice group of people. Okay, a little bit of challenge here, but basically, it's not that bad. There's other people who aren't in the room. Eventually they're going to be dealt with. We're going to meet them and not dwell on them either. But we're going to avoid them and not dwell on them. We're going to go and get close to them and not dwell on them. And then our practice will be bigger.

[75:03]

Are you ready? Thank you.

[75:07]

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