This coming weekend at Green Dragon Zen Temple, also known as Green Gulch Farm, there will be a bodhisattva initiation ceremony, and some of the people in this group will be initiated in that ceremony. If you'd like to come, you're welcome to come and witness some of your classmates as they ritually and formally enter into the bodhisattva practice and receive the bodhisattva precepts. Can you hear me okay? A little louder? Okay. How about you over there, Bill? Louder? Okay. And I might have mentioned this before in this class, I think I did, that I was talking with a group of people in Monterey, I don't know, in Carmel, and some of them had already gone through this initiation, and I asked them, what's the first thing that the initiates do, or the first activity that the initiates do?

[01:32]

the ceremony and they they remembered the ceremony so then so they they said various things that they thought would be was the first thing that the disciples or the initiates would do and but they weren't actually getting the first thing so they would say these various things and i would say well no and that that's part of it but that's not the first thing yes that's right that's part of it That's not the first thing." And they just kept going with various things that occurred in the later parts of the ceremony. And finally one of the people said, oh, I give up. And I said, that is the first thing. So it's not actually the very first thing, but it's the first thing the initiates do by themselves. There's certain things that the whole assembly does. The whole assembly participates in an invocation. But when the ceremony just starts focusing on the initiates, the first thing they do is renunciation, which is symbolized by, in the case of what we call...

[02:47]

lay people is symbolized by cutting a little bit of hair and For people who are going to be priests It's symbolized by cutting all the hair or shaving the head But I feel that what you know whether you're going to be in a sense have the lifestyle of a priest and do a lot of monastic training and and learn rituals and take responsibility for those rituals and those ceremonies and the transmission of them. Whether you do that style of practice or what we call lay practice, bodhisattva practice in both cases requires renunciation. I don't see in Mahayana, in the path of the bodhisattva, it seems like there must be renunciation. For a number of years actually at Zen Center we did the bodhisattva initiation ceremony for lay people without cutting the hair, without having the renunciation part in there.

[03:59]

But I noticed that in the Asian tradition there is that In the Asian manuals there is that section for laypeople too, so I have added it back in. It was taken out for some reason. Like most practices, there are many layers of grossness and subtlety to it. I thought tonight I'd go into some different layers or different, yeah, different forms of renunciation. And one actually kind of dynamic and kind of complicated presentation is one that has three parts. Even three parts or three different aspects are quite a bit to deal with.

[05:03]

So I thought I would talk about that, that way of presenting renunciation as having like three forms. And basically the first form could be called just primary renunciation, the second form the middle renunciation, and the third form the great renunciation. And one way to describe the first form is that one is extensively cultivating many different kinds of virtuous practices, but in hopes of acquiring something. And then one hears the teaching

[06:15]

about emptiness or the insubstantial nature of phenomena, including the practices which you're doing, and then one becomes unattached. So once again, This is talking about someone who's actually involved in practice extensively, but is hoping to acquire something or attain something. And then when most people start to try to do some spiritual practice to attain something, they also usually form some attachment to what they're trying to acquire or what they're trying to attain. So as one is doing these practices, one hears the teaching that the practices actually have no, you know, substantial inherent existence.

[07:22]

And hearing that teaching, you continue to do the practices, but now you become unattached. And you also still have some, I think, some motivation or some hope to acquire something. That's part of the environment of your situation. That's the primary kind of renunciation or the primary situation for renunciation. And I'll go back over that in detail, I hope. The second form, which could be called the middle form, now one continues to do all these Virtuous practices and virtuous practices are all the practices of compassion and wisdom available to you at the time, practicing the bodhisattva precepts, practicing giving, practicing enthusiasm, concentration, patience, and so on.

[08:29]

But one, in this case, now has no hope of reward, no hope of acquiring anything. This is the second. Third, now you reach a place where you... In the second one, you understand that the practices you're doing, you're not grasping them, you're not attached to them. But you're still somewhat involved in, for example, thinking in terms of self and other. You're still somewhat involved in thinking of doing these activities, doing these practices, which you're not trying to do to get anything anymore, but you still think in terms of you doing the activity.

[09:39]

You're still somewhat involved in thinking about what's the right way and what's the wrong way. You're still somewhat involved in trying to figure out what the path would be. But in this last case, you're no longer involved in the distinction between self and other, between activity and actor. All activity now emerges with no duality involved, and the The activity is totally determined by the conditions of the moment, and everything's, all activity is spontaneous.

[10:43]

There's no, like, buddy there trying to, like, engineer the practice anymore. And yet the practices, all these practices which are previously done, are still happening, but they're happening totally spontaneously with no deliberation, as the full-scale wisdom is realized at that stage of renunciation. And I'll go back over these, but basically before I do, I want to say that these three levels are interdependent. The second, the middle one, has to arise on the basis of the first one. The third one has to arise on the basis of the second one.

[11:52]

The second one purifies the first one, and the third one purifies the second one. But also, the second one is at the basis of the third one and purifies the third one. From certain ways, the third one could get off. Even the great renunciation, the perfect wisdom practice, that style of renunciation could get off if it wasn't grounded in the second one. And the third one purifies the second one, which then becomes the third one, and the third one also purifies the first one. The first one also purifies the third one because the test of the third one is being able to come back to the first one. And the coming back to the first one purifies the first one, but also purifies the third one by not keeping the third one separate from the first one. So they're very inner penetrating. And again, I'll try to make that clearer by some examples.

[12:59]

Okay, so now I thought I'd go back over them in a little bit more detail. Is that right? So the first one, sometimes... There's a tradition of teaching worldly affairs in the form of eight thoughts or eight emotions. So the eight emotions that comes with actually like four pairs of two or four pairs. The first two is to be happy or being happy when you acquire something. and being unhappy when you don't acquire something. That's the first two. That's familiar to most people, right? That sometimes you're happy when you acquire something and you're maybe unhappy when you don't acquire something.

[14:12]

Second two is Well, I forgot. The third pair is to be happy when you become well-known and to be unhappy when you're not well-known. In other words, known well. In other words, have a good reputation. The last one is to be happy when someone speaks well of you and to be unhappy when someone speaks ill of you. And the second pair, which is hard for me to remember because I'm never into this,

[15:22]

is to be happy when you feel good and to be unhappy when you don't feel good so those are examples of a certain basic kind of in some sense of course there's grosser forms of worldly thoughts than those but in some sense those are the basic worldly thoughts So in one sense, the first renunciation involves being, you know, standing upright or being upright and neutral and free of those kinds of emotions or those kinds of thoughts. To somehow be able to stand neutral in the midst of getting something or not getting something. Of course, also losing something. to be able to stay free in the middle of getting something or losing something, which, of course, last week I was talking about birth and death.

[16:38]

Getting life or losing life or not getting life. to be able to be upright in the middle of receiving. In other words, to not be seeking to get life and not be holding onto life and afraid of losing life. So this is a very basic thing. Now, in this situation, we're not saying that there aren't these... there isn't the situation of acquiring something or not acquiring something. There is... there's still that kind of thinking that it still seems like you're acquiring something and not acquiring. The highest level of renunciation, you don't even see things that way anymore, that you're getting something or not getting something. But at the beginning of our practice of renunciation, we're still thinking like, oh, I got something or I didn't get something. I'm born or I'm dying. We're still into that. But the renunciation is to be neutral there and free and balanced in the middle of these comings and goings, these apparent comings and goings.

[17:48]

And then again, feelings come. And they're calculated by the mind as pleasant or unpleasant. So usually, people are happy when they feel good and unhappy when they don't feel good. This is the usual worldly way of thinking about feeling good and not feeling good, is that I'm unhappy And, of course, a lot of people say, well, of course I'm unhappy when I don't feel good. Well, yeah, of course we are. Of course we're worldly people. Of course we're holding on to those thoughts. But we're talking about becoming neutral to that. Not that you don't have, not that you don't feel good, and not that you don't feel bad. You do. That's part of what's given to you. That's part of, you know, what's dealt to you. We're talking about being balanced and neutral with that deal.

[18:53]

Talking about learning how to, like, renounce being involved in feeling good or feeling bad. And if you do feel happy when you feel good, that's okay. But you're not concerned with that. And actually, after a while, then you don't start getting happy when you feel good. You just feel good. And if you just feel good, then you're more likely to be able to not feel unhappy when you feel bad. So feeling happy because you're feeling good is very similar to feeling unhappy when you don't feel good. And both are actually not necessary. You can just feel good and not feel good without getting into, like, being happy because of that or unhappy because of the other.

[20:01]

You don't have to feel unhappy when you don't feel good, when you have pain, for example. If you're into being happy when you feel good and you're attached and holding to that, then you're pretty much like going to be unhappy. You're going to get into being unhappy when you feel bad. So that's the second step here. Next one is when not somebody's talking to you directly, but, you know, the word's out on you and the word out on you is, it's a good, you're well known. You're famous. You got a big name. So, and you're happy about that. Being happy that you got a big name is one of these things to become free of. How can we become free of being happy that we got this great reputation? Next is to be free of being unhappy when you have a bad reputation, when the word out on you is getting bad.

[21:10]

You hear rumors. And the last one is when somebody's talking directly to you. And they're saying, you know, blah, blah, blah. They're speaking well of you. And to be free of being happy because they're speaking well of you. And also, now they're speaking ill of you. And to be free of feeling unhappy because they're speaking ill of you. And as many of you know, one of the stories of a Zen monk that turned me towards Buddhism was a story about a person, a monk, who was being spoken ill of. Not only through the things being spoken ill of, but the evidence was not corroborating this accusation. And he... He didn't try to get in there and get the person to change from speaking ill of him to speaking well of him by giving them information and arguing his case so that they would switch from speaking ill of him to speaking neutrally or well of him.

[22:29]

He didn't get into that. He just said, when they spoke ill of him, he just said in Japanese, also desu ka? Or, is that so? Ah, is that so? Oh, it's Tuesday? Is that? Ah, so desu ka? Sometimes Japanese people tell Japanese people on Tuesday, which is called, what's it called? It's called, let's see, Monday's getsuyobi, kayobi, fire day. Yeah. So on Kayobi, they say, somebody says, you know, it's Kayobi, and they say, Japanese people talk like that sometimes. You say it's Tuesday, and they say, oh, is that so? There's something quite obvious, you know. They don't just say, they don't say, I know.

[23:31]

They say, is that so? And actually, if you don't know Japanese very well and Japanese people are talking, you don't understand what they're saying, you can just sit there and say, And it works pretty well, you know, because you're basically saying, is that so? Whatever you're saying, is that so? I mean, I suppose it is. So, you know, and they probably feel like, yeah, that's right. You're correct. What I'm saying is like that, like this. But anyway, they were criticizing him severely, speaking ill of him. And he said, is that so? And then the evidence was overthrown and they were shown that he wasn't actually guilty of the charges that they were making against him. And then they came and apologized and then said all kinds of positive things about him. And then he said, is that so? And I thought, yeah. I just saw that just looks so cool to be like that kind of balance in the midst of all this negative energy coming, this negative insulting language coming at you.

[24:44]

You just stay balanced. You don't run away from it. You don't fight back. You don't talk them out of it. You don't laugh it off. You don't demean it. You don't promote it. If you fight it, you promote it. If you laugh it off, you promote it. Anything you do other than be free, if you play the same game, the insulting game, you're caught by the game of insulting. And then also praise that you're... Are you caught by the praise? Rather than, is that so? You say, oh, wow, me, or whatever. Keep it up. Don't stop. No, just... that kind of flexibility and neutrality in the midst of the outrageous slings and arrows that really encouraged me to look further into Buddhism or Zen practice.

[25:48]

If we can't be this kind of balanced way in the midst of pleasant feeling good and feeling bad, if we can't be that way, not fighting or attaching to the kind of situation, number one, it makes it very difficult not to get in big trouble. In other words, to get into misery, in order to become free of raw, gross misery, we kind of have to learn how to do this. And then, in addition to, in a sense, protecting ourselves from intense misery, this kind of renunciation also sets up the possibility for spiritual practice. It's the ground man of the next one.

[27:10]

So it protects us from real heavy-duty misery. So, for example, again, if you're being insulted, if you fight it, it can get really bad. I mean, like, you could fight back. You can insult back, right? And then you can get in really big trouble. Like, you know, if a policeman comes up to you and insults you, you know, wrongfully, and then you lip off. And you can get into really big trouble for that. Even though everyone agrees they're wrong, still, if you fight back, you have to wait for more trouble then. So, in many examples like that, if you're not free of negative and positive stuff, Like you meet someone and you feel really good when you meet them.

[28:15]

But you're not free of that feeling good. You're really into like how good you feel being with this person. So then you kind of like cling to them and try to control them. And this, of course, can get into major, major difficulties. So the negative side is that it makes it very hard to practice if you don't do this kind of practice, plus the positive side, if you do it, then you can start to move into more spiritual practices. Another aspect of this level of renunciation is that you start to become free. You're still, you're still looking, you know, you're still dealing with practices as practices which you do.

[29:22]

You're still in that realm of thinking that way at this point. But once you, once you become unattached to these practices which you're doing with some kind of idea of gain, you start to become free also, not just of pleasant and unpleasant, acquiring and not acquiring, having a good reputation and so on, you also start to become free of the forms of practice themselves. you start to become free. Because of hearing the teaching of insubstantiality, you start to become free of thinking that such and such practices are relevant to the welfare of beings and other practices are not relevant. So this level of renunciation, you start to see more possibilities for practice.

[30:28]

Because you have been practicing, you've had some kind of gaining idea, you've been practicing, and in the midst of practicing there have been all this stuff going on that I mentioned, but you're not becoming free of this, of all these concerns. And part of the reason why you're becoming free of them is because you hear the teaching of the insubstantiality. And also you hear the teaching of the necessity to become free of these things. but you're hearing, in addition, the teaching of the insubstantiality of the practices, so you stop clinging to certain forms of practice. So then you start to see that other forms of practice might be relevant. So you're... your limits on what you think might be relevant to this practice of liberation starts to get pushed back. You start to give up the limits on what might be helpful, what might be appropriate.

[31:31]

It doesn't mean that everything's appropriate. Even inappropriate things are relevant in the sense of being able to be understood as inappropriate. That's a practice too. So one of the great teachers in the Buddhist tradition named Nagarjuna said, for those who understand emptiness or interdependence, everything's relevant. For those who do not understand emptiness or interdependence, nothing is relevant. And the nothing is relevant seems a bit severe, but I don't want to spend too much time on that one to try to justify him saying that. But basically, when you understand emptiness, everything is an opportunity. Everything is relevant to the bodhisattva practice.

[32:37]

When you understand insubstantiality and that things don't have an inherent nature, then you don't grasp them and not grasping you see much more relevant, much more possibilities than before. Now, I could go now on to the more detailed discussion of the second, of the middle form of renunciation, but I also could stop now and we could discuss the first one more if you'd like to. You want to discuss it for more for now before going on to the next one? Yes? Do you think there's ever a time that it's appropriate to defend yourself? To defend yourself? Well, I mean, in terms of, you know... Definitely. Definitely. Definitely there's times when it's appropriate to defend yourself. Okay. Well, it seems to me that if you're going to defend yourself, generally speaking, it's probably good to start with, is that so?

[33:46]

But I'm not saying it always is, but that's a pretty good start. In other words, if somebody is insulting you, I think it's good to listen to it. Is that so? I am being called such and such, huh? Okay, I got it. So starting with that so is probably a good idea generally. But I think the main point is, do you feel like you're upright in the middle of this, you know, garbage flying at you? You know, or do you feel kind of like, yuck-o, I want to get out of here and go someplace else. Or I'm unhappy that I'm being called a turkey. Okay. If you can hear insults to you and be free of being unhappy about that, then you probably can see whether or not it's a good idea to defend yourself. In this case, the story I was talking about, one story you could say is that he knew, when he got insulted, that if he would like to stay cool, that a few hundred years later, people in America would be inspired to practice by this story.

[35:01]

Huh? What'd you say? Yeah, is that so? Right. But that's one story you can tell. If he, you know, he could have been, he could have been bounced, you know, and as he was being insulted, he could have been, like, not worried about it and not unhappy because he was insulted. Like, it's like, kind of like, he could have been that way. Like, here he is, you know, it's Tuesday and somebody comes and insults him and he doesn't get unhappy about that. It's like, This harsh stuff hits your face, you know? But that doesn't make you unhappy. It's just like, whoa, that hurt. It's not like, oh, that hurt, and I'm unhappy now. Or like, oh, it's like it's overcast, you know? And I'm unhappy. It's kind of an insult. The weather can be an insult, right? I was, you know, I've had enough of this. I do not need, or you see somebody's face, you know, some unhappy face.

[36:06]

It's kind of like, it's an insult. It's a challenge. But anyway, it could be a direct insult like that, and you don't get unhappy. And if you're not unhappy about the insult, like if you come to me and you say to me, or I come to you and I say to you, I better do it this way. You come to me and you say, you're really a lousy, selfish, stupid person. disgraceful person. You say that to me. And I kind of like, let's say you say that to me and I say, wow, that's fantastic. I mean, that like just, that just like happened. And then I might say, hey, guess what, Gwen, I'd like to defend myself now. That might be, I might want to defend myself. It might be interesting. But I might not want to defend myself. The important thing is that I do not feel unhappy that you're insulting me. This is not like... I may be worried about you. Like, what's the matter, Gwen? And that's what you might do.

[37:06]

You might say, what's the matter? What's the matter? That might be what you could do when the person is insulting you. might realize it's it's not really talking about you it's something about something about the way they feel probably and because you're not like thrown into this state because of this harsh harshness coming towards you you then can respond and sometimes it might be that defending yourself was a good is a good idea it sometimes might be the case however You know, from a long distance away, a story of somebody defending herself when she's insulted doesn't necessarily, like, go... That story will not be remembered very long. Because it's so common. You'd have to defend yourself in some really unusual way for it to be, you know, get in the history books. Because most people try to defend themselves when they're insulted, if they dare. So, but sometimes it might be interesting and helpful to defend yourself.

[38:12]

It is possible. And the way you know, if you're still operating at the level of trying to figure out what to do, which you might, at this level of renunciation, you might still be like trying to think, well, should I defend myself or not? Then I would say, if you're still trying to, if you're not, if you're deliberating, then one of the ways you would deliberate in this case was, are you now free of being unhappy about being insulted? It is possible. Now, maybe when you're first insulted, you feel like, oh, God, I just can't go on, you know? But then maybe somebody tells you, you know, and maybe you express that and say, you know, I just can't take one more insult. I'm like, I can't go on. I'm going to commit suicide if people keep talking about me this way. And maybe you express that, and maybe somebody says to you something about, well, you know, That wasn't really what they meant. They're not really talking about you. But you might be able to do that yourself.

[39:14]

And then in that way, even though you initially felt unhappy when they said that, you regain your balance. And then somehow it drops away. And you still remember and you still know they said that, but it doesn't really make you unhappy anymore. It's just like, You know, one more little scratch on this process of a bodhisattva that bodhisattvas need to be scratched, need to be gouged in order to come up with this mind of renunciation. If you never get insulted, how are you going to, like, become free of that habit of defending and feeling unhappy when you're insulted? Because that's, like, well-established practice. genetically dash culturally to defend and feel bad when you're insulted because, you know, we kind of want to have a good reputation for our survival. So to become free of that, and if you're free of it, then from that position of freedom you may be able to say, well, I think in this case I should defend myself.

[40:19]

For example, let's say you're a minority someone's criticizing you sort of because of you being a minority okay so it's not for yourself but for the minority that's being abused that you're a member of you might be defending not so much yourself but this minority but if you're already caught by feeling bad about this you're going to be less able to defend the minority. And again, ask the person what they're talking about, maybe. Like, did you really mean that? Do you know what you're talking about? Tell me about what this is about. So in some cases, it might be good to defend against the insult. But again, if you're in the grips of feeling unhappy about you being... If I'm in the grips of being unhappy about me being insulted, then it's going to be hard for me to be very skillful in helping this person who maybe is relating to me through this prejudicial view.

[41:27]

In other words, to help them start in the process of their renunciation. To come back with something surprising like that may not do the whole story, though. may not do the whole trick because in this case i told he was insulted and he didn't fight back and uh... but people weren't instantly converted by that it took a while but they had to get more information to realize and finally they realized not only did he not do this but when he was falsely accused he didn't defend himself and not only that but they then told him to take care of this baby which he was falsely accused of being the father and he took care of it. So all that accumulated for the big punchline of them coming back and realizing that not only did they falsely accuse him, but when he was falsely accused, he didn't defend himself and he also took care of their grandchild. And then finally when they saw all that and were overwhelmed with delight at his virtue and his non-attachment, then they also got to see that when they finally praised him, he was pretty much the same.

[42:35]

So that makes this very nice story. Yes, Dennis? It's pretty much the same thing. And non-attachment can have levels of subtlety. So you can be more like you can be unattached to your car but still attached to your house. You can be unattached to your car and your house but still be attached to your boyfriend. You can be unattached to your house, to your car and your boyfriend and still be attached to your children. You can be unattached to all that and still be attached to like thinking of yourself as separate from others. And so on. There's different levels of subtlety. The deepest level of subtlety, the most subtle, is the basic idea that, you know, I'm separate from my actions. that there's action and actor, that there's self and other, that there's actually inherent existence in my feelings and ideas, and there's the grosser levels of attachment about material things, and then less, more subtle things about psychological things, and then there's also attachment to spiritual things.

[43:44]

So there's all these different layers, and non-attachment is applied at each time. Renunciation is sort of like when you enter into the non-attachment when you you previously were holding and now you renounce you give up something you have been holding and now you're in a state of non-attachment vis-a-vis what you just renounced or what has just been renounced some levels of renunciation you're not even doing it anymore at this level you renounce things You're still there being insulted, being praised, having feelings, you know, getting things. You're still seeing things in terms of getting and losing. But the pain and pleasure coming to you, you're still in that realm. So at this level, you now start to get over that. This also includes that you've, you know, the first one is like all this stuff, you know, houses, cars. grandchildren all that all that stuff in the first category so of course you know you get a grandchild you feel very happy maybe so you know some of us have grandchildren now we're very happy about that it's very nice so how can i be free of the happiness i mean free of the of this of this happiness thing that happens with that how do you be free of that and i think if i can be free of that that helps me be

[45:14]

with my grandchild more effectively but this is a very strong thing very strong test to your equilibrium but I do I do actually I'm actually working on that with him to try to like to see and to see how that actually helps me not get drained by being with him help my energy be more you know, balanced and flowing if I watch that tendency to, like, attach to getting something from being with him. Because you do get something. You do get something. And then you do not get something, you know. Stuff does come and go at this level of practice. But how can I be unattached? Like, just like Saturday night, my daughter wanted to work, so she asked me if I would take care of her son. So I went over and took care of her son.

[46:16]

And, you know, well, to make a long story short, the next morning when she got up, you know, it's like I was his new mother, which wasn't that bad hard on me, you know, me. They hadn't seen her all night, you know, because she had been with me. And then she was playing with them, and you know how sometimes you're holding somebody's baby and their mother comes up and they go to their mother, they want to get away from you to their mother? Well, he was doing that to me. And she says, wow, you're his new mother. And it was a little hard on her, you know, I felt sorry for her. She had made this fantastic effort, and I'm just a one-night guy, you know. But that does sometimes happen, you know. So I have to be careful not to get caught in that of me being almost as popular as his mother. And she has to be careful not to give it to him when she gets home after, how could you betray me for my father?

[47:28]

You have to be careful of this stuff. This is the first level of renunciation to watch out for this kind of stuff. And it's all the time we're getting these opportunities. Doesn't mean you don't love completely. Matter of fact, it means that this non-attachment, this renunciation makes your love more steady. You don't get pooped out by the loss of energy that comes from the grasping, from the being happy because you got this time with this person. Okay? Patty and Jeff and Elena. Any others? Yes? Am I talking loudly enough for everybody? A little louder? Okay, so that means maybe Patty should talk louder, too. Right now, I'm in a period where I don't feel good, and I'm seeing how unhappy I am, and I see how I'm hoping that when I come to my body, I'm feeling that it will go away.

[48:37]

So I'm basically seeing second... Yeah. So here I am, I'm here. Yeah. Yeah, so this is... So there you are, right? This is the practice you're doing, which is appropriate for you right now. And again, I think many other people could sympathize with you that this is really a big challenge. Like, I got a headache now, so how can I keep practicing with a headache? You know? Even a headache, kind of like, okay, I got a headache, and now I feel bad that I have a headache, rather than I just got a headache. It's pretty subtle. There are more subtle forms of practice, but it's pretty subtle to find how do you avoid, how do you become free? I shouldn't say avoid is even too heavy. How do you stay balanced and free when you have a headache? How do you become free of that impulse to like, what can I do to get this non-headache? It's possible to... you know, go take some medicine, but to do it from the place of neutrality versus the pain.

[49:46]

Of course, very intense pain is going to be more likely that you're going to go into spasm and tense up. So again, renunciation is to relax with the pain. Don't you have enough pain? No. If you don't, okay, sorry. But most people have enough pain. So now that we have enough pain, most of us, at least right now we do, this isn't the end of the pain story, but for the moment I feel like I got enough pain. Well, okay, isn't that enough? Do you have to make it stronger by being unhappy about it? Why not? Maybe being happy about it is perverse, maybe too much. So I wouldn't say be happy that you have pain, but rather be happy that you can practice with the pain. So you can be quite happy that you have a headache and yet you can relax with it. And now you might be happy that you could relax with the headache and that actually the relaxing with the headache, maybe the headache goes away.

[50:50]

But sometimes the headache doesn't go away, but still you're relaxed with it. And you can be quite happy that you can relax with the pain, that there's some freedom from the pain. rather than when you have pain then you go to hell because you have pain and you get angry and you can resist and you tense up and you blame somebody then you get bigger trouble but if you can relax and stay balanced then you're practicing renunciation with that pain in the same way if the pain goes away and then you feel good to relax with feeling good rather than Wow, now I really get excited about the fact that the pain ended. Sometimes that happens to me, like I have some kind of disease, maybe some small disease, and I notice that it's over, and then I get excited about it, and then, bam, the next one comes, you know?

[51:58]

And I kind of feel like it might have been better just to not get so excited in between those two. I think I had this case, it was like on my hand, you know, I had this wart on my hand. Warts aren't that bad, really, for me. It wasn't a bad wart, but it was a wart. And it had been there for a long time, you know. You know, a long time, like for years it had been there. And then one day I looked down and it was gone. And I thought, wow, it's gone. And I kind of went like that. And I looked over at my thumb and my thumb was out of joint. This knuckle kind of like had popped out. It's kind of like, oh, oh. So it's kind of like, it's kind of embarrassing, right? It's kind of like getting that excited about a wart going away. I mean, really. And then the more serious story is I used to work in a rehabilitation clinic. It was a clinic, a Sister Elizabeth Kenny clinic, which was originally for polio patients where I was a patient.

[53:06]

20 years before. When I was a baby, I was a patient in this hospital when it was for polio people. But now, of course, not so many people have polio. So it's for a rehabilitation clinic for people who have accidents and strokes. So the floor I worked on most of the time was with the young men, almost all men, who have broken necks and broken backs. So I was working with this one, one of these guys was like, he had a broken neck and he was, I really liked him, but anyway, he had a broken neck. And so what they do with, well, just let me say that he got, they come around and give people haircuts. People come to the hospital and give haircuts and he got this haircut. And back in those days, the haircut that he got, I remember it cost $1.75. And after the person with the hair, gave him the haircut left, He really was bitching about the haircut. He didn't like it. He's paralyzed, you know. He's got a broken neck.

[54:08]

He can't move his arms or legs. And he got this haircut. He didn't like it. He was upset. And I thought, I really felt bad that he was upset about that haircut. I really felt bad. I just felt like, oh, please, don't let that get you down. You don't need to. You can have really weird hair and it's no problem. And the next morning, they tilted him up. They put him on a bed where they tilt him up because when they're lying down all the time, the blood doesn't circulate. So they have to like elevate them a little bit now and then to help their heart be able to pump the blood up into their head. They tilted him up a little bit and he died. First he turned black and then he died. And I just thought, and he was like worried about his haircut. And that was his last day, you know, that he was worried about his haircut.

[55:09]

So, you know, we have headaches. We have all these bad feelings. They hurt, you know. We get bad haircuts. It's not, you know, we don't, we lose our nice haircut. We lose our hair. We lose our teeth. These things happen, right? But don't waste the time worrying about it and getting upset about it because this may be your last moment. Don't waste the time being worried about feeling good or not feeling good. This is an opportunity. And then to use that opportunity, even though you still have a headache or even though you're not feeling good, to use that opportunity, there's a joy there. There's a joy in like, hey, I got a real ugly haircut. And like, I don't care that much. It's not that big a deal that I got an ugly haircut. I'm paralyzed and now I got an ugly haircut too. Yeah, well, so what? I mean, you know, like I can practice.

[56:12]

I can practice even though I'm a quadriplegic and have a lousy haircut. And that's wonderful. And if we have lesser problems and we get upset, well, it's even more ridiculous. But we do it. We get upset about little things like my reputation's slipping. People are saying bad things about me in Chicago. Or you're talking mean to me. You're insulting me. And I get caught by that. Well, that really makes it worse. How about not getting caught by it That makes it a lot better. Plus, it doesn't mean you're not listening. And maybe you really understand what's being said to you when you relax with it. Maybe you understand the conditions for having the headache. Maybe you realize, oh, yeah, I drank all that coffee or, you know, blah, blah. And maybe you don't do that, and maybe your headache goes away, but... Maybe it doesn't, but maybe it does.

[57:15]

The point is you're doing the best response to the pain, which is that you're not getting unhappy about it. And then when the pain goes away, the best response is you don't get happy about it. You just say, okay, it's gone. Is that so? The pain's gone. And then what's going to come next? You're ready. What's next? More pleasure? Okay. More pain? Okay. I mean, I accept it. I'll work with it. Because I'm here. practice for supper way not I'm not here to like feel good to manipulate my condition that's not gonna work being attached to whether you feel good is he's gonna send us to misery and block the next level renunciation I was in the lane next who's next was Elena Maybe? Will they know? Oh, no, Jeff. Well, that's correct.

[58:18]

Well, I'm kind of struggling with someone who wronged me, a car repairman. Yeah. No, it's just a car, but it's more that he scratched and dented my car. Yes. And when people wrong us, what are your thoughts on renunciation? I mean, there's a lot worse things people can do to me, but yet I don't want to, you know, push back out, but I don't want to hold it either. Right. I'm kind of holding on to vengeful thoughts or anger, yet I'll have to take them to small claims court or whatever. I don't want to be beat up or attacked, but yet I don't want to hold these feelings anymore. What are your thoughts on that when we're attacked or people do wrongful things to us? Well, that's similar to being insulted, I think. Yeah. In the old days, they used to slap each other in the face in France with the gauntlet, slap them in the face, and then they'd say, challenge, or something like that. Challenge, you know.

[59:20]

If you tell French people that the word challenge has a French origin, they think it's an English word. But the origins of it is insult. So you got a car. The guy scratches it. You feel insulted because you identify with your car. Somebody scratched you. They're challenging you. He's challenging your car. He's challenging you. Challenge my car. Challenge me. It's quite typical of car owners. Okay, just a second. Anyway, that's an insult. That's an attack, okay? This is a long story which some of you have heard, but anyway, I love this story. It's something that happened to me. I was going to go into a retreat at Zen Center. It was at Green Gulch, the retreat I was going to go into, a seven-day retreat.

[60:21]

And before the retreat, my wife said to me, that she needed to have her car repaired. She had an old BMW, and it was going to cost quite a bit of money for us in those days, so quite a bit. And so I said, okay, let's spend it or whatever. I can't remember exactly the sequence, but anyway. And then... So that was that. And during the Sesshin, one of the main topics that I was talking about was a scripture called Mountains and Rivers Scripture. And one of the parts of the scripture that a Zen master named Yun Men said to his group, he said, where are all the Buddhas born? And he answered the question himself. And he said, eastern mountains move over the water.

[61:26]

That's where the Buddhas are born, is the eastern mountains moving over the water. And I talked about that during the session. And eastern mountains moving over the water is renunciation. The mountains of our experience, okay, that they can move over the water of emptiness. This is the first level of renunciation. That's where the Buddhas are born, is when the mountains of our experience move over the water. So I understood that, and I still understand it intellectually. But then I got some message from my wife sometime, I think during the session, that it turns out it was going to cost more to fix the car. So then I said, I said, okay, you can have that other money I have. So I gave her all my savings to fix the car. I was having a little trouble adjusting, but anyway. And then, And then I got another message that it was going to cost more.

[62:34]

But I didn't have any more money, so she's going to borrow money from her father. And when I got out of Sashin, I found out it was going to cost more. So I was thinking, you know, well, who do I blame? Do I blame me? No, that's not a good idea. Do I blame the car repair guy? Well, I could try. Do I blame my wife? Poor thing. Why blame her? It's not her fault. But who am I going to blame for this car bill which is much more than the car's worth? It's over. But now it's done, you know? Can't back out. Who am I going to blame? For this insult. For this challenge. For this you know, situation. So anyway, it just happened that during that sesshin, my wife's sister gave birth to a little girl.

[63:42]

But the little girl had a rare and deadly malfunction of her heart. When babies are born, I don't know exactly, maybe some nurses or doctors here know, there's a kind of a way that the blood circulates when they're in the womb that has to change when they're born. And there's a sort of pulmonary artery that has to close off to recirculate the blood in a certain way. And if it doesn't close off, they're losing all this, they're hemorrhaging in a sense inside. And that was happening with her and she was turning blue. And it just happened that at UC Medical Center, at Moffitt Hospital, for five years, just for five years, they had developed this operation where they can correct this situation. So after she was two days old, she had open-heart surgery. Little tiny baby girl, open-heart surgery, and they fixed it. So she was okay. And she's still, you know, alive. And they said she probably couldn't be an Olympic athlete, but basically she's fine.

[64:45]

But anyway, we went to see this little baby in the hospital. And we went in to see her, and she was lying, you know, sort of spread out with those heat. They had, like, the babies with the heat lamps on them and stuff. And there was a big scar across her chest, and she was under sedation. You know, so she was kind of, like, conked out. But she was kind of conscious, and you could see that she was trying with her whole being to scream and cry. But she couldn't. And in some ways, it was even stronger that she couldn't cry than if she had been able to cry. Because you could feel the force of it through the medication, through the anesthetic. She was trying to just cry. Poor little thing, you know? And I thought, that's what the eastern mountains moving over the water is. Now I see.

[65:47]

And I didn't care anymore about the car. And I wasn't irritated by the bill. So we lose our perspective sometimes, you know. And we think, you know, I'm getting abused here. I'm getting, you know, I'm going to fight back. Well, Jeff, we're going to take your head off now, so, you know, maybe you should not worry about that other, about your car. Because there's something bigger than, bigger than your car. Then, when you get, when you get back, you know, and you're not so irritated by the situation, maybe then you should go talk to somebody about it. Maybe you should, maybe there's something to say. Maybe you should go to small claims court. I don't know. But the thing is, if you lost your perspective, you know, I mean, in some sense, when I have car accidents, I always think, oh, that's what the car's there for. The car can get dented rather than me. The car can get squished rather than me die.

[66:49]

When something like that happens to you, basically, it's always better than having it not happen and the next thing. If you can be there and see something bad, it's pretty good. The bad things are the things which you can't even be conscious for. They're so bad. So if you can have a big bill or a scratch in your car or a sickness and be there for it, it's much better than if it didn't happen that way. And when you snap out of this resistance, you can see that and say, thank God it's this. Thank God I still have my mind. And I can practice. Thank God I'm practicing. or thank Buddha or whatever. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Not so much thank you for my car getting smashed, but thank you that I can practice with this. And then maybe there's something to say to the guy. But is it coming from skill and not from pronunciation? Or is it coming from really holding on to like there really is this real, true insult?

[67:57]

Yeah, it's trivial. And if you can feel like that and relax with it, then maybe there's something to do about it. But maybe not. And maybe you can see there's nothing to be done about it. Whereas before that, if you tense up, you think there is something to do about it, and you try to, and you find out, I couldn't, you know, I just made it worse. Now, in addition to all the stuff that's gone wrong, I've got now this new problem of having this problem with this guy now, and having hurt him in some way. Because here at me, So we have to, like, this is what helps, you know, some things, things like this help us wake up to the importance of renunciation, of letting go and letting the eastern mountains move over the water. And this is where the Buddha is born in his renunciation, which is wonderful, that this car incident in my content would be a practice opportunity. Teach us a little bit about what Buddhism's about, what Buddha's teaching is about.

[69:03]

And how much is that worth? $3,000? I guess so. I guess so. Well, it's past 9.15. Can you write your question down for next time? Sorry, I need to stop now, I think. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So I'll continue with these three levels of renunciation next week.

[69:43]

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