I'd like to begin by calling forth some context here. For a long time we've had this larger-than-life-size statue in the middle of the room. This figure is, we call, Manjushri Bodhisattva, which means the enlightening being of sweetness and light. And recently we invited this statue into the room. And this statue is called, in Sanskrit, Kishtagarbha Bodhisattva. in Japanese, Jizo Bosatsu.

[01:04]

And Jizo means earth womb or earth store, enlightening being. I usually, in a Zen meditation hall, this Manjushri Bodhisattva is sitting in the middle. And Manjushri is the in the personification of wisdom, which has gone even beyond wisdom, the most profound potential insight that we human beings need. And then, actually a little while later, we actually invited another smaller figure, which is sitting in front of Manjushri, of Shakyamuni Buddha.

[02:09]

In one sense, Manjushri is Shakyamuni's mom and dad, because the Buddha is born of this transcendental insight. In another sense, Manjushri is a Buddha's assistant, helps Buddha, is Buddha's disciple. So in Zen meditation halls, the The enshrined deity is this personification of wisdom, of insight, of the insight which will see through the sources of our misery. But sometimes if you come into the hall, you may not understand the context, and the context

[03:17]

is represented here by having now Jizo in the room too, because Jizo is a bodhisattva that creates the context for this wisdom practice. Because Jizo has this great vow which we may share, and it is the vow to enter hell, that's why I asked if it was hot in here, or too hot, to enter hell in order to liberate beings from that extreme torment, from that extreme alienation, but actually also to vow to enter every realm of misery I looked up misery.

[04:22]

It's related to the word miser. And miser is somebody who, you know, really deprives himself. Who really confines herself or himself to the least possible life. So this figure represents the vow to enter every realm of misery and to stand and sit and walk and lie down beside all the beings that are in those realms of suffering. To stand by their side, to hold their hand and to confer blessing and to teach the precepts. of the Buddha way. So in that sense, the vow is related to a view of Buddhist practice, which is that the path of awakening is in a sense the path of entering, opening up to, understanding suffering.

[05:45]

It's a path of ever, hopefully, deeper and deeper understanding of suffering. So, as a kind of overview, I offer the idea of there is there is some situation and that by entering into it, by entering into the situation of having a body of our own and breath and mind, we then open to this suffering, to this misery, and then being open to it, we may study it, And by studying it, we may understand it or see its nature.

[06:55]

And by seeing the nature of suffering, we together with all those beings we're sitting with can become liberated. That's the program of Earth Store Bodhisattva. to enter, open, study, and see the nature of suffering and become liberated by that understanding. Then Manjushri symbolizes the wisdom which helps realize that project, the wisdom which arises from the thorough study of the causes and conditions of suffering. of the wisdom that arises from seeing the totality of misery. Misery is actually a tight little ball in our heart that we're stuck on.

[08:00]

By seeing the totality of misery, misery explodes and all beings are released from it by that vision. So Manjushri and sweetness and light and earth store work together to realize liberation. And also I note that he's called earth store, enlightening being, and that the Buddha in the middle of the room is in the mudra, he's holding the mudra of touching earth. So it is because of the store of the earth, it is because of all the resources of the earth that this great project can be accomplished. It is because of the tremendous support we get from all beings that we would be able to enter into such a great path.

[09:08]

And Shakyamuni Buddha touched the earth to get support to do this work. And this bodhisattva represents that store of support that we can use to walk the path of awakening to the nature of suffering. This summer, I have been particularly emphasizing and discussing with people and practicing with people some practical ways to enter open study and see what our problem is. And the way I've been talking about it is in terms of what are called the four dignities or the four noble postures of a Buddhist monk.

[10:24]

Those four postures are standing, walking, sitting, and reclining. These four postures are meant to embrace all postures and all activities of our daily life. But these are four, maybe like four pillars, or the four directions. These are four ways to touch Earth and ask Earth if it's all right if we walk into this and stand in this realm of suffering. And will Earth support us to wake up here? And so I wonder, I ask, what is noble about these four postures?

[12:09]

What makes them noble? Or what makes them dignified? And there's two ways of looking at it, which are two ways of saying the same thing. I guess the thing that makes them dignified and noble is when they're unselfish. And one way that they're unselfish is that they're in the context of, I use these postures as ways to enter every realm of misery and to bring blessing and teach. So when we go visit somebody in the hospital and we go to see them, we can understand that we will use the noble posture of walking to get into the room.

[13:10]

And then we will stand by their bedside or sit by their bedside, and we will use those postures as a mode of entry and as a way to be there and as a way to get support so that we can stand to just be there. So we use these postures in our altruistic path, but also in a more fundamental sense of unselfishness, we live in these postures without expecting anything. We stand by the side of the sick or we stand in our own sickness and we stand there just to stand in that noble posture. We have no gaining idea.

[14:13]

There may be gaining ideas swirling around our head, but they're just swirling. And in the midst of all that greed, in the midst of all that aversion, in the midst of the desire to get rid of the sickness, in the midst of the desire to get health, Somebody's standing there in the middle of there and not trying to get anything. Somebody's so noble as to just stand and be close to this body with no promises. not knowing beforehand when you visit yourself or the other sick person whether that will be of any help. You just go and see. And you don't even look, when you see, you don't even look ahead to see if it'll be helpful.

[15:20]

You just trust that that entering will be your mode of blessing and teaching. So there is this kind of uprightness in your standing and sitting in these realms. I just, a couple days, day before yesterday, went for my second visit to one of our members who got in a serious motorcycle accident right here on this road. And when I first went to visit, they said, they kind of warned me, said, he really looks

[16:27]

You know, it's really scary to see him. I was glad that they told me beforehand. Actually, it wasn't so bad as they said. Anyway, he has ten broken ribs, probably lost the use of one of his arms, lost his spleen. They almost amputated the arm, but they kept it. He has damage to his nerves that go to the diaphragms, so he has trouble breathing. On and on, tremendous damage. So as I was approaching the room, a little bit of me jumped ahead into the room. and wondered, will I be able to be helpful? Will I be up to this?

[17:31]

Will I cringe? And I pulled myself back to where I was and didn't get into the room ahead of time and tried step by step to be where I was rather than worrying about where I will be and whether I'd be helpful. That's what I worked at. That's what I worked at. So anyway, that visit happened. And then they invited me back again. This time they told me that he was much better. He was able to talk now, and that's part of the reason why he wanted me to come is so we could talk a little bit. And again, I a little bit jumped ahead to wonder, will I be able to say the right thing? Will I be able to be helpful? And again, I pulled myself back and try to stand on the ground and walk on the ground and feel the support of the earth up through the floors of the hospital.

[18:35]

And that went pretty well too. I don't know if I was helpful. And if I was, then all the more the next time I get invited, I'll try probably to be helpful again. I mean, I'll say, well, I was helpful last time. No, the more helpful I am, the more I'm going to try to be helpful again. The more successful I am, the more I would sort of worry whether I'd be successful again. If I was just another kind of like useless creature visiting, I would have nothing to lose. But if I sense that by being present and not worrying about whether I was helpful, I was really helpful... then it would make me more worried about being successful again, keeping my good hit rate up. Still, I have to come back and realize that it's not by my personal power that I'm helpful. It's by standing on the earth that I'm helpful.

[19:41]

It's by letting the earth use me to help this person, that the whole earth comes through a person who stands And the person gets support not from one person, but from everybody if one person will stand at her place and sit in her chair. But if we wiggle off our chair, we block the earth coming through us. Shakyamuni Buddha touched the earth and said, can I sit here and not move until I do my job? And the earth said, yes. But the more successful and helpful you are, the more you think, oh, I have to be successful and helpful. So there is this uprightness of not cringing back, not cringing from the room, being ready to see this horror, whatever it looks like, being ready for it, and also not getting ahead, wondering how you're going to do, not going on sort of like

[20:48]

over towards the left side of the door, over towards the right side of the door, walk straight through the middle. In other words, really be upright. And feel the gravity of your support. And feel your feet touching the ground, and feel the ground supporting your feet, and bring that into the room. Let that be brought into the room. And then look and study the causes of this suffering and study and study and study until we understand with this person or people that you're with. So I emphasize the uprightness and I use the image also now of a wind bell Sometimes when we think about standing on the earth and touching the earth, we feel there's a mountain-like quality of that, that we are a mountain by all that support.

[22:06]

But there's another side to it. This mountain is very flexible. This is a walking mountain. This is a standing mountain. This is a sitting mountain. This is a dancing mountain. So the windmill... is relating to gravity, but is very flexible. And there's a poem about this by one of our ancestors who said, the name of the poem is The Wind Bell, and he said, the whole body is like a mouth hanging in emptiness or hanging in space. It doesn't question Whether the wind comes from the south, the north, the east or the west. To whatever influence comes, it sings transcendent wisdom.

[23:10]

Ding dong ding, ding dong ding dong. It hangs right in its place, but then as soon as the wind comes, it moves a little, if the wind is sufficiently strong. Some wind bells are much heavier than others, so the wind has to be a little stronger to get them to move. But anyway, if the wind comes from the south, they tend to move north. If the wind comes from the north, they move from the south. And they just, until that time comes, they don't ask, you know, what direction it's coming from. I hope it comes from the north. Will it be from the south? Will I be able to handle a southern breeze? They're really there. And then, it's not just that they're there in that kind of presence, but also when it comes, they relate, they respond.

[24:19]

And then after they respond, there's a reaction to the response. After they get pushed off their center a little bit, they come back. And they don't come right back to the center. They go a little bit past the center. And then all these different things with the eddies around the hanging particles, they bump into each other and make some sound. And different wind bells will sound different. Different visitors to the Sikh will make different sounds. Some people will, you know, sound like this. Some people will sound like this. Various sounds will happen when the muwin moves through the visitor. And each one has its authentic sound. which comes from being present and also being flexible. I recently was doing a workshop with

[25:36]

a group of people, and the name of the workshop was called the Four Winds. And the Four Winds are four different traditions which inhabit four different places around the mountains and the rivers and the forests of Los Padres National Forest. The four places are Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, Esalen Institute, the Immaculate Heart Hermitage, and the Native American Foundation of the Esalen Indians. These four groups we call the Four Winds. And these four traditions live in those mountains or around those mountains. try to take care of and love those mountains. So we got together to do our traditional practices and talk about how these practices relate to caring for the earth.

[26:51]

And so I talked about these four postures as ways to connect with the earth, get support from the earth, and support the earth. But then I also said at one point, I think one of the... And there were also other people who didn't live at these places who came to visit. And they were from various traditions themselves. And a lot of them were Christians. And one of the Christians said, how can we How can we be open to these other traditions without being disloyal to our background tradition? And so I drew a circle on the blackboard and drew the four directions and called them the four winds and I said, I feel that each tradition

[28:05]

needs to give up its own tradition and go to the center of the circle and be like a wind bell. We come from these four different traditions or styles of relating to the earth, which is good, but the real way to show your loyalty is to let go of your tradition and go to the center where all traditions meet and show that your tradition is flexible and show that your tradition is really the liberation from your tradition. You have to have a tradition first to get liberated from, but you do have a tradition, and we did have a tradition. So the Buddhists give up being Buddhists, and they don't turn into Christians. They just go to the center, which in the center is a place where we give up all holding. And we stand in the earth at that place together.

[29:09]

And each of us has the gift of giving up our position. I can't give the gift of giving up Christianity for Christians. I can't give up all the styles of Esalen for the Esalen people. So anyway, but we have whatever our tradition is, whatever the good practices we know, and we give them up. The wisdom of Manjushri is the wisdom of giving up wisdom, of going beyond wisdom. That's the wisdom that this earth store bodhisattva needs in order to fulfill her vows so that Buddha can really sit there until the work is done. So using these four postures, in other words, embracing every activity of daily life and touching earth in this way, we can open to all the anxieties and fears that we have.

[30:20]

And then the whole body realizes how it's sustained by all beings on earth. and we have the strength necessary to enter again and again these realms. I often, I guess I often think, how can you stand to stay in those realms? Imagine going into some realm of misery and just staying there, having staying power. Well, that has some relevance, but I think in some ways you don't have to stay in those realms of misery. Rather, you have to reenter them every moment. because it's changing. If you just put yourself in a realm of misery and just plunk down there and stay there, I think it will become, it'll lose its vitality. I think it's better to enter and realize it's now changed because, as you know, when you enter those realms, it's like, oh my God, I want to prepare you for this. It's really something. And then you go in there and it's really something. And then somebody laughs, you know.

[31:28]

And It changes, and then it's miserable again, and then it changes. It's changing. So you have to enter again and again. There's a pulse. There's rhythm in the situation. It's not a monolithic thing. In the moment it's monolithic, but then the wind blows and it's blown away. So, let's see, there's a famous Zen story of, you know, somebody comes to see the old master and he's intercepted by his attendant. And the attendant says, what do you want? He says, go ask the teacher a question for me. So he goes and asks the teacher and says, teacher, there's a visitor here and he wants to know, what's Buddha?

[32:31]

What's the Buddha mind? What's the mind by which we walk the path and awaken to suffering? What's the mind with which we enter misery, open to it, study it, and understand it, and be liberated from it? What is that mind? And he said, drink tea and go. So the attendant went and told the monk. And the attendant came back and said, I told him what you said, teacher. He said, by the way, what is the Buddha mind? And he said to the attendant, have some tea and go.

[33:33]

So each moment of suffering, just drink it, put down the cup, and go. There may be another cup to drink, but there's ways of dealing with that. Namely, drink it. And when you're done, put it down and go. Drink it and go. Drink this and go. It's not that big a deal if you do it. But if you drink it and then you don't go, then it gets real heavy. If you don't put it down and move on, then this suffering can become... Well, we think we can't... Then we think it's unbearable and we think we can't stand here and we think the earth is not supporting us. And then our posture... were not there.

[34:42]

These noble postures are not absentee. They're present. So at some point, anyway, we have to start fresh and just decide we're going to enter this moment and have this cup of tea. And then that's enough. All you have to drink in this program is this cup of tea. There may be many more coming, but you don't have to worry about those. That's called leaning into the future. That's called expecting a western wind. The windmill just hangs in space and it has nothing.

[36:02]

And because it has nothing, no prejudice, it can respond to whatever direction the wind blows from. And in a way, it's humorous to imagine a windmill that was kind of like leaning to the west, sort of getting ready for an eastern wind. It's sort of like, it's kind of funny, but people act like that sometimes. They get ready for something from some particular direction. So the wind bell is ready, but it's ready for any direction. It's not ready for something. It's ready for anything. Namely, it has nothing. It has no expectations. So it's ready. So it means that you have to give up everything. You have to give up Christianity. You have to give up your intelligence. You have to give up everything. You have to give up yourself. You have to give up the other. But this isn't, again, something you do by willpower.

[37:13]

It just comes from standing in an upright way and in a friendly way. Standing without even knowing what standing is. Sitting without even knowing what sitting is. Drinking tea without knowing what it is. Just drink it. And before you know what it is, go. At the beginning of that workshop, one of the co-leaders said, we were having, I don't know what, dinner or something. He said, we're connected. Speaking of these four winds, we're connected by nature. And I understood him first by saying that these four places in the mountains, they're connected by nature.

[38:18]

Nature is what connects them. But then my mind heard it in another way, that we We human beings are connected by nature. Nature connects us, but it is our nature that we're connected. And then my mind turned again, and I heard it saying, we are separated by nature. Those four places in the mountains are also separated by nature. There's nature in between them, separating them. There's mountains and rivers between each place. They're separated by nature, too. And then again I heard it, we human beings are separated by nature. By human nature we're separated. So it is our nature that we're connected and it is our nature that we feel separated. And then part of our nature that naturally feels separated from other people,

[39:22]

is the cause of our misery and our belief in that separation is part of the causes of that misery and I don't recommend that you go around and try to talk yourself into the fact that we're connected I don't think that way works although I'm not going to prohibit you from thinking that way that's okay It's fine. What I'm actually suggesting is that by entering the realm of misery, which is the realm where we are by nature separated, or the realm where we're separated by nature, by entering that realm, you spontaneously will realize that we're connected by nature. You don't have to think that way. You will realize it by entering the opposite realm. This bodhisattva does not vow, did not make a vow to enter heaven.

[40:24]

But actually, we even should enter heaven because even in heaven there's misery. But because in heaven, heaven is not, people in heaven are not connected, do not feel connected to the people in hell. They're separated from the people in hell by nature. There's natural terrain between heaven and hell, between states of heaven and hell. There's terrain. There's mountains and rivers separating those realms. There's walls between those two realms. This bodhisattva did not vow to enter the realm where we're all connected. Of course we want to realize the realm where we're all connected because that is total happiness. But that's not the hard part. The hard part is to enter the realm where we're separated, where we're alienated. That's the vow of this bodhisattva.

[41:31]

Manjushri's vow is to realize the wisdom which makes possible, which happens once you enter those realms and study them. And Buddha is sitting there touching earth, holding on to her seat until the job is done. Buddha is not going to move until this vow is realized. Manjushri is going to keep meditating until this vow is realized. Manjushri is going to keep studying how we're separated by nature. This bodhisattva is getting us into the study room, getting us into the sick room where we feel separated. This bodhisattva is studying how that works. Buddha is sitting there until we wake up. So that's the context of this room, of the sitting we do here, of the standing we do here, of the walking we do here.

[42:40]

and once in a while we recline here. During our meditation intensives people recline here at night. And so it is the responsibility of each practitioner to moment by moment, use the posture she's in to touch the earth, to receive that support, to enact the path of the awakening to the cause of suffering and the nature of suffering. So I didn't pick a song for today.

[43:57]

So I'm looking through to see if I can find something that's appropriate. There's one possibility. Here's another one. That's two good possibilities. There's another one. I'm just checking through to see if there's any doctrinal problems here. That's okay, I think. ...know you, and that could be applied to any realm of suffering. Yeah, that would be interesting.

[44:59]

Another one is try a little tenderness. Another one is called all the way. So in the context of this talk, you know, you means getting to know yourself or the other, but also getting to know this pain that comes from separation, all that, okay? So it goes Getting to know you Getting to know you Getting to know all about you Getting to like you Getting to hope you like me

[46:03]

Getting to know you, putting it my way but nicely You are precisely my cup of tea Did some of you see that coming? Getting to know you Getting to feel free and easy When I am with you Getting to know what to say Haven't you noticed Suddenly I'm bright and breezy

[47:14]

Because of all the beautiful and new things I'm learning about you day by day. A white Honda. What kind? A white Honda. Does anybody have a white Honda? A white Honda in this lot? A white Honda out here? Nobody here has a white Honda? Well, just make yourself at home here. I'll give you a free lunch. Why don't you go outside and see if anybody out there... A white Honda's blocking her car. Yes?

[48:34]

Who's this sitting at the end of this clock? This clock? In the time of the Shakyamuni Buddha, He dropped out of regular Indian caste system and went off, left home, and became a wandering ascetic. And at that time, the wandering ascetics didn't wear much clothes, basically naked, and didn't wash or anything like that. And he didn't eat either for a long time. So they really felt that liberation from the world had something to do with like really like rejecting it. But then he came away from that extreme position and moved a little bit back towards a kind of middle position and became enlightened. And he recommended that his disciples wear clothes.

[49:35]

But not like real, you know, not like jewels and expensive ritzy clothes, but just, you know, something clean and simple. So he recommended that they make their clothing out of just scraps that they find. And then you find a scrap, you wash it, and cut it into rectangular pieces, squares or rectangles, and then patch it into a patch rope. and then dye it some color that will blend various colors of the fabric. So that's called a patch robe. So Buddhist monks are called patch robe monks. And the robe that they make is basically big enough to wrap around, which I was wearing, the kind of round robe I was wearing during the talk. That's a big patch robe which had nine panels. This is a smaller one for informal situations. It has five panels. So it's basically a from that tradition.

[50:38]

Yes? You stress, you know, drinking the tea and then leaving. And when I drink the tea, I try to stay for a little while to see what's causing something, getting to know it. Just talk a little bit more about this, sort of drinking the tea to see if the tea is made of it, causing it. Is that what you suggest? But you don't exactly try to figure out what's causing it. It's not like trying to figure it out, it's just observing all that comes together at a given moment in an experience.

[51:43]

So the basic teaching of Buddha is dependent co-arising. that whatever's happening, it's arising dependently. It's being produced by everything. It's got this context. And as you understand more and more how big the context is of anything, the thing collapses entirely. And you're liberated from whatever it is. If it's something pleasant, you're liberated from pleasantness. If it's painful, you're liberated from painfulness. But basically you're liberated from birth and death, birth and death. You're liberated from misery. But you have to taste the misery. If it's a miserable cup of tea, that's what it is. Do you have to live the misery as well as taste it? You have to live with it? Live it. Well, taste it means live it. Or another story, which is basically the same thing,

[52:48]

which we're studying in our koan class now, Case 39 of the Book of Serenity, a monk comes and says to the teacher, I've just entered the monastery. I request the teacher give me some guidance. And the teacher says, Jiao Jiao says, Have you had breakfast? Well, in sipping the tea... And the monk says, yes, I have. And Jojo says, then wash your bowl. So, in sipping your tea or chewing your breakfast, you chew, you chew each chew, [...] and pretty soon your breakfast turns into emptiness. And you're liberated from breakfast. But go ahead. No. Please, if you want to go into more detail. Well, what I generally try to do when I'm sipping the tea and I'm experiencing what's there, I do that and then also try to contemplate what caused it.

[54:05]

The cause of what brought me to that point. You're suggesting not to do that? No, I'm not suggesting not to do it. I just say, do it in the sense of, don't do it in the sense of being the windmill that's leaning forward or over to this way to figure out the cause. Study the cause while still being erect. Don't lean over and say, well, was it that or was it that? more take the position of just being present and then have the causes come and present themselves to you. Because if you look over and say, well, was it that? You're just going to go over probably in the direction where you already think it's going. You're not going to look over here if you're selecting where to look. But if you're just present, causes will come and present themselves to you. Like Thoreau said, all you've got to do is sit still in an attractive spot in the forest long enough and all the inhabitants will exhibit themselves to you in turn.

[55:12]

But if you say, okay, now, where are the raccoons? Then that's what you're up to look for, right? But if you just sit there, if the raccoons come, you know you're not... Limiting your selection, because you're not selecting, you're just present and you're waiting for what's presented to you. Causes and conditions will be presented to you. You don't have to program yourself to look at them. So you do study causes and conditions, but try not to get ahead of yourself or behind yourself, try not to dwell on what just happened. Try not to think about what will happen. Not try not to, but just don't even do that. Don't just basically do nothing and be present. And you will get this great education. Everything will help you. Everything will present itself to you.

[56:15]

And it's its turn, according to its agenda. And its agenda is a big one. Yes. Tell me the difference between beginner's mind and birth and death. Between beginner's mind and what? Birth and death. Beginner's mind and birth and death. Beginner's mind is not different from birth and death, but it's freedom from birth and death. Freedom from something is not different from the thing. And yet, there's freedom from something and there's also being stuck in something. Being stuck, however, feels like it's different from being free. When you're stuck, you think this is not freedom. Whereas when you're free, you don't have to think anything about it. When you're free, you can be stuck.

[57:15]

But when you're stuck, you can't be free. So it's being not attached to the beginner's mind. The beginner's mind is being not attached. The beginner's mind is This is a muffin. Beginner's mind is, I swallowed something. Beginner's mind is just like being a windmill. but it's not exactly different from birth and death, because if it's different than what happens when birth and death happens, then you're going to be in trouble. So the wind bell isn't exactly different from the wind, but it's not the same either, because it's all conditioned. It dependently co-arises with the wind.

[58:19]

So does beginner's mind. Excuse me for eating in front of you. I was thinking about the reason that we sometimes tend to move before the wind comes and end up slanting in the direction we think we're going to be blown in. Which is fear. Right? So we need to address what makes us fearful. To begin with The main thing that makes us afraid is living in the future. You can't be afraid in the present. How to recondition ourselves to understand it. How to recondition ourselves? To understand that. Don't recondition yourself. Just listen to it. And when I say that, people often frown.

[59:22]

People think fear is not one of the tougher things to overcome. Greed, hate, and delusion are harder But in the present, fear can't live in the present, but you can have anxiety in the present. You can feel choked in the present. You can feel tormented in the present. But fear drops away in the present. Fear requires expectation of future. So you got, yeah, first of all you have to come to the present and then experience the anxiety of feeling separated from other beings. You have to come and feel the anxiety of the fact that we're separated by human nature. You have to feel the torment and the pain of not trusting the other. And you can feel that in the present. And not theoretically, but you can feel the present example of that process. Then you sit there, again like a windmill, and you watch how that process works.

[60:24]

You watch how it hurts now and who it is that you don't trust. You look at who it is you think is not you. even though what you see is actually your own perception. It's inside here that you're seeing. And you think it's out there. And that causes you to be miserable. And you don't trust your own perceptions. And the reason why you don't trust your own perceptions is because you think your perceptions are not you. So it's in a way good that you don't trust them. But anyway, you can trust them for what they are, namely as perceptions. You can trust them. You can drink that suffering and taste it. You can taste it. You'll never know all the causes and conditions with your little brain, but you can taste them. And little by little, we appreciate more and more and understand more and more by this study. It really works much better in the present.

[61:25]

To study in the future is really, you keep slipping. You don't really get much. You can't put your feet on the ground in the future. Do you have questions still? Yeah. They drop away also in the present. Well, that's where they drop away, but they won't drop away automatically as soon as you get to the present. Like if you're afraid and you come to the present, you can still feel aversion. You can still in the present think that something out there is separate from you and you don't like it. You can feel that in the present. If you look in the Buddhist analysis of psychological experience, fear is not on the list because the Buddhist psychological analysis occurs in the present. We don't do it in the future. But greed, hate and delusion can be in the present. You can be tormented by the external object in the present. If you study that very well, then it will drop away.

[62:28]

At the limit of study, when you study all the way to the end of what you don't like, you'll find out that you and it don't really hold up. If you study delusion and enlightenment to the end, you'll find out there's no such thing as either one of them. But when you first get back home to the present, from visiting the future in the land of fear, you don't immediately wake up and drop everything off, necessarily. You might. It sometimes happens that somebody who's been meditating takes a slight diversion and goes into the future, gets afraid, and they come back. And as soon as they get back, that very moment, they drop everything and wake up. There's stories like that. But it's not always that way. However, it is always that way that when you get back to the present, your feet are on the ground. you do get back to earth at that time and so you can stand there or walk there. But you still may believe that what you see out there is not you and feel tormented by that perception, that belief.

[63:34]

But if you study how it works, that thinking that things are external bugs you, if you can study all that, just keep chewing on that, you'll digest it and turn it into heat and breath. And pretty soon you find out that what you thought was suffering is actually breath. What you thought was breath is suffering. And you get so confused you'll wake up. He was next. I hope he won't forget you. He defers. So I was wondering, for example, if you see greed, right? You see grief? You see greed. If you see greed in front of you, you see someone perhaps that is... You feel greed, you mean? Or do you see somebody else being greedy? Yeah, see someone else being greedy. So then you say, well, this is no other than who I am. I'm also... Have I ever done this? Have I ever been greedy? And then... So then you say, yeah, I have, you know, and this is no other than what I see out there.

[64:42]

There's no other than what I see in here. Yes. And then, but I still don't like it in here. Yeah, so you feel aversion towards the greed you see. Right. So then you feel aversion inside. I mean, even though when you see inside of you, you have an aversion. I mean, I would have an aversion to greed because I don't... Yes, uh-huh. So then... So then the next step is what? When you feel aversion to greed? Yeah. The next step is? Then you would just drop it. Yeah, just go. That's enough information for a moment. Don't be greedy. Another one's coming, don't worry. There's so many of them. If you stay home, you're going to get plenty of experience. That's not the problem. The problem is staying home, keeping your feet on the ground, step after step after step. And the more you get grounded, the more this demon of boredom comes up and says, you have better things to do than be present.

[65:51]

But when the demon of boredom comes, boredom comes when all the other demons have been dropped. As long as you're, you know, inhabited by the demon of laziness, or the demon of anger, or the demon of lust, when those demons are inhabiting you, boredom just sits back and says, they don't need me yet. But when you're applying yourself diligently to being present, then boredom comes. Isn't boredom a form of anticipation? A form of being in the future? It's like, well, what's next? There's nothing next. Therefore, I'm bored. Fine. You can manifest that way. But you say when you apply yourself to being in the present... Boredom is the queen of delusion's chess set. It's the most powerful demon for meditators.

[67:03]

It comes up when you're getting pretty good. Which brings about the question that I had in mind before. Getting pretty good means I start at a point where I'm not very good, where I just recognize that I had to do something to get better. So this gives me the idea of a process, which many times I wonder where I'm at in this process. And I have asked questions in this direction sometimes and the answers I get are like, be here now, forget about process. So, I come to a point where I no longer know what I'm doing or where I'm going or if this practice is meaningful or what, it's all confused. Well, the instruction of be here now is a good instruction just generally speaking, it's good.

[68:05]

But ironically or paradoxically, the instruction to be present is an instruction that you give to someone who is in the early phases of the practice. So if you wonder where you are and someone tells you to be present, that means that they didn't tell you where you were, but in fact you're sort of at the beginning. So when someone gives you that kind of instruction, if they're correct, if that's a correct instruction, then basically they're telling you that you're just at the start of the practice. That's the beginning. Well, you know, it's not the absolute beginning because if you don't have enough faith yet to receive that instruction. So I would say if you receive the instruction from yourself or from another, be present, if that's right on the mark, then probably you've had some previous practices which would make you susceptible to such a simple instruction. And the previous practices you've had were probably to listen to how miserable life is if you aren't present, to hear someone talk about the benefits of being present.

[69:16]

So you probably had some education prior to hearing the instruction of being present and following it. Like some people you say, be present, and they say, what? I am present, or whatever, you know. Rather than just saying, OK, or just being present, they start being defensive or whatever. So then the instruction of being present is not appropriate for them because it doesn't work. So in that case, they probably need to take a few steps back and develop enough faith and understanding of the human situation to realize that not being present has all these negative effects. Being present sets up all these good possibilities. I would say that if you hear the instruction of be present and you just take that instruction and apply it, then we could say you're at kind of like a certain stage in the path which I could technically tell you. So part of the paradox of Buddhist practice is we're only in the present, we're not going anywhere because we're already Buddha, and yet there's a process of realizing that we're Buddha which can be broken up to traditionally into five paths.

[70:18]

The first path is called the path of preparation. The next path is our equipment. The next path is the path of concerted effort. The next path is the path of insight. The next path is the path of cultivation of that insight. And then the last path is the path beyond training. So those are the five paths. And if you study them, you can tell by what you're doing in your practice and by studying and also hearing what other people are doing, you could put them in some place in that path. Even though we're not going anywhere, you can have that path. So the path is a path of walking step by step through our life deeper and deeper into the understanding of suffering. But we're not going anywhere because we're constantly working with the suffering in the present. We're not going into the future suffering. But when you're really working with practice, there should be paradoxes like this where you're not in a dead version of the present. Your present has the history of the universe in it. but also you don't get distracted by the history of the universe into the past or the future.

[71:23]

And you don't, like, hide from the history of the universe and try to get yourself into a present that doesn't have a future and a past. The present completely embraces past and future, but it drops off past and future, too. Being in the present, to me, means... It's all over. It's just... If I were able to do that when someone tells me, be here and now, I mean... That's right. It's all over. And now that it's all over, you've got a problem. No. No? It's all over. Simple as that. Then fine. Then what's the problem? No problem? It would be, I said. It would be. It would be. No. Well, you're right, it would be. Yes. So, what should we do? I guess nothing. There's not one thing I could do about it.

[72:26]

So, is that happening? Sometimes it does. It hits for one hour or for a few minutes, and then there's a big hangover. How do I stop this? How do I stabilize it in the blissful part? Do you understand? The wind bill gets blown over here and stops. Right? This is the blissful part. The wind bill gets blown over in the blissful part and it stops there. I mean abandoning the idea of the blissful part. Exactly, exactly. Blissful part, let go of the bliss and swing back into misery. Abandon the misery, swing back into neutral and a little bit over into the bliss. Abandon the bliss, come back over into misery.

[73:30]

Abandon the misery, come into the bliss. So what's liberation? This is liberation, right here. This is liberation. But not liberation like, I'm going like this. It's liberation because you asked me that question, so my hand's going like this. I did this because you said stay in bliss, so I went over here to demonstrate staying over bliss. I didn't do that on purpose. Somebody else might say, well, how about staying in misery? Then I would have gone this way. The liberation is that when you're here, you let go of it and swing back. But you don't just stop, you're not swinging back to the middle, you're not saying, okay, I'm going to give up bliss and swing back to the middle, and then the wind bell doesn't do that and go, meow. It gives up bliss and goes back to something neutral feeling, but then it goes over into negative feeling, this little hangover. So the thing is you say, well, if I give up bliss, at least I shouldn't have a hangover from giving up the bliss. Well, actually you won't, necessarily. It's not really a hangover in that sense.

[74:34]

It's just that I'd rather give up the bliss and be free even if I have to pay for it by having a little misery. My main agenda is to be free. And so here I am in bliss and so I let go of it. And I'm free. I'm so free. Oh, here I come into suffering. Now I'm entering a realm of misery. Hi, hi, here have some blessings. And then back out of there. Oh, now I'm over in bliss land again. Why? And then back over here. Oh, suffering. Swing. But not according to my agenda. Okay, I'm in bliss land. I'm going to misery. No, I'm in bliss land. I let go of it. Where will I go? Where will I go? What will it be? Oh, this is what it is. And then let go of that. Come back. Oh, bliss. This isn't under control anyway. Why don't you go with it? I didn't say boredom was suffering. Pardon? I didn't say that, but do you want to say that? Do you want to say that? I'm saying it, yeah.

[75:35]

Okay, I don't agree, but go ahead. Okay, fine. I've just done that. It's my personal experience. And so, go in that case, or for any kind of... Could that be... Just don't be stuck with it, move on. The goal, did you say? Goal. Oh, go would be... Goal, like... Yeah, right. So drink the tea of you experience boredom as suffering, drink that tea, and go. The real suffering is that you're holding on to the boredom. If you just drink it, it's not suffering, but just drinking it is going. Uh-huh. Suffering is no more suffering than anything else. It's just when you hold it, it turns into misery. Misery, again, means miser. It's being miserly. It's like drinking, it's like having boredom and being tightly wrapped around that and holding on to it. That's what makes it misery. And what the other kind of boredom is? Misery is what? It's boredom with your whole body.

[76:58]

It's like, it's boredom like I don't know what it is. Hello, boredom. Who are you? You know, it's being friendly to boredom. It's like, wow, what is this? It's boredom. Woo. You know, I'm bored. Boredom. You know, not even like, and not even like I'm going to transcend this boredom by my personal power. This boredom is really just taking over the whole universe. That's also letting go of it. letting go of it being a miserly kind of thing. Could you wait a second? Sure. Was there somebody over there that had their hand raised? I think you did. I was just thinking when you were moving from bliss to misery, if you're proceeding on the five-fold path, if you're making...

[78:02]

on an up swing, would this be more of a spiral movement? No. Well, I mean, I say no, but just because I just said that, okay. The progress on the path is to be free from any pattern, is to be free from like going this way or going that way or going in spirals or anything. It's just becoming basically more and more skillful at dealing with the swings of the windmill. or even more and more skillful at noticing that you're not behaving like a windbale, noticing that you behave like this. And you stay there for a long time and the wind is blowing from all different directions and you're not moving. And you're just pulsating with misery because you're holding in some realm. And then you start to notice, but the pulsating has kind of got a rhythm. And it's going according to something, so then you become a windbale again. When you move out there and you just get stuck and there's no blood flowing through it and there's no air flowing through it, it's just static. Then you got... This is miserly, right?

[79:07]

You're a miser. There's a miserly situation. You're stuck around this thing. Even around pleasure you can be miserly. Okay, so the path is the path of progress and understanding how to deal with the situations. And it's basically the path of being free from all kinds of paths. It's the path of being free of patterns and all programs. all of them. And it itself even takes the form of being a program itself, and then it goes beyond itself. So wisdom that goes beyond itself, or spiritual practice that goes beyond spiritual practice, that's practice after practice is over, after you don't have to do anything anymore. Liberation from everything, giving up everything, giving up Buddhism, giving up practice, giving up good, Intending to do good, vowing to do good, and then giving it up.

[80:09]

Because part of being good is to admit that we're constantly trying to put good in a box and make it into a delusion. Because we can handle delusions very nicely, because that's what delusions are. Delusions are maniputable. But you can't manipulate good. Good is springing up all over. You can't control it. It's a gift that comes to those who let go of everything. When I say let go of everything, I don't really mean everything, I just mean whatever you're holding on to. You don't have to hold on to things, let go of things you're not holding on to. But for us, everything we experience we're holding on to, so it means everything from our point of view. You understand? You don't have to hold on to, you don't have to let go of things you're not holding on to, but the things you're not holding on to, you have no experience of. The things you have no experience are the things that you haven't yet pulled into your little box of experience. So you don't have to let go of those. And those are what are supporting you to let go.

[81:17]

So once you let go of your little trip, all the stuff you're not holding on to comes in and supports you. That's the earth. That's the big body. That's the whole body. So you let go of the small body and the whole body supports you. Thank you. It's about exactly what you were just talking about. Like, I decided that I stand for certain things or I will conduct my life in a certain way or I will not put up with certain things. I feel like that keeps me having a life that kind of This isn't just sort of wandering around aimlessly. And I feel like if I gave those things up, like, I don't know, I would just be some bum on the street or something.

[82:17]

And not, I don't know, like I don't want to be. Well, like right now. You could just give it up right now. And you'd still be here in this nice Zen center with your glasses on. Just give it up now. Don't give it up in the future. Because in the future you could be a bum on the street. But in the present you're just going to be the same person you are, whatever that is. I have no idea what that is. Well, I do, but I'm going to give up my idea of who you are. So just give it up in the present and see if you turn into a bum spontaneously. That would be quite a thing, wouldn't it? So don't be afraid. Just give it up. Don't think about what's going to happen in the future. Just drop everything. Just give everything up right now. Don't do it. Don't walk out of the room and do it. Do it now here with me here to watch. And I have never seen anybody turn into a bum from letting go of things. I've seen people turn into bums by grabbing being a bum.

[83:21]

But I think you're going to have trouble doing that right fast. Just let go of everything and see what happens. I love you, Red. Not so bad, was it? That's what happens, folks. When you let go of everything, you heal the wound of love. Or basically holding on to it is that we're separate. And that causes a wound between us. When you just give everything up, including that, then our love is reaffirmed. And if we're in love, who cares if we're bums? Relating to that, something that Jesus taught, not being a practicing Christian myself, but appreciating the teachings of Jesus, love thy neighbor as a self.

[84:47]

the way I've come to reconcile that in my understanding is that, that transcendence. Yeah. And so you can practice that however you wish to practice love thy neighbor as thyself, but I'm partly suggesting that if you enter the realm, if you feel any misery in your life, if you enter that realm, you'll notice in that realm you don't love your neighbor as yourself. You think your neighbor is not yourself. Even you think your friend who you're visiting in your hospital is not yourself. When you love your friend in the hospital as though she were yourself, then you got it going. Because actually who you see there in that bed, when you look there and see somebody, you're looking at yourself. When you realize that and love that, then things start really cooking. But if you try to skip over the fact that we feel separate, then just trying to love your neighbor as yourself will be obstructed by that unwillingness to face this misery.

[85:53]

We are connected by nature, but we're also separated by nature. Both. And we have to face the consequences of separation, which are misery. And again, don't look around for where's some misery to enter. Just sit here and somebody comes and asks you a question. And there you deal with them. The people who sit still get visitors. The people who run around also get visitors. Not necessarily the visitors they need. Yes? Some people get more trust. They are born, I think, with more trust. How do you develop that trust?

[86:55]

How do you develop the trust? Well, there's many, many ways, but the way that just comes to my mind first is you develop the trust by admitting that you don't. If you admit that you don't trust, for example, if I admit that I don't trust you, I immediately feel uncomfortable. Or vice versa, if I feel any discomfort between us, I think it has to do with that I don't trust you. By admitting that, that's already developing more trust. And it's trusting awareness. And it's trusting Buddhist teachings. namely that I interpret my experience as me, separate from you. And that is a lack of trust of you. And the more I face that, the more trust I will have of you.

[87:58]

But trusting you means I trust that there's a you beyond my perception of you. So if I think you're a bad person, I trust that that may not be true. That maybe that's just what I think. Especially if other people tell me that you're not a bad person. And I trust to look at the fact that I tend to blame other people for my problems. And that doesn't make me feel better. What makes me feel better is not to blame myself or others, but realize that my problems come from the way I think. That I'm thinking in a painful way. Admitting that also makes me trust more. But that's just what I'm saying today. There's many ways to develop trust, but that's one that came to mind. Was that relevant? Yes. I have a problem with anger. I'm constantly... It seems like I'm battling anger all the time.

[89:01]

I think I'm a nice person. I'm going with all these nice thoughts. I can be leading the... Could you stand up, please? No. I can be leaving the Zen Center on Sundays, all these wonderful feelings, and I get down in the city, and all of a sudden what happens is this demon anger comes out, and I'm constantly trying to push her back in the box, and it seems to me I have a problem with that constantly. Also, I work constantly with the immediate, and I wonder, where is this thing coming from? It's constantly jumping out at me, and I'm constantly trying to stuff it back in. Yeah, anger's really fast. Yeah. Really fast. So what do we do with that? Yeah. Have any ideas? No, no. No, I don't have any ideas. Well? Because it feels like its own thing. I don't seem to have control over it. Because it comes out of, I don't know where it comes out of. You don't have any control over it, but you have noticed its behavior, haven't you?

[90:05]

Yes. So that's a step towards freedom from it.

[90:11]

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