Happy Mother's Day. I've often been the one to speak on Mother's Day. I feel a little funny in a way because I'm not a mother. So I wonder what is an appropriate thing for a non-mother to say. Part of what seems to me that might be appropriate is to talk with, of course all of us, although we aren't mothers, all of us are children of mothers. So all of us have a relationship with Mother.

[01:05]

Otherwise we wouldn't be here. And some of us, quite a few of us, are mothers. So I thought I would talk about the relationship between mothers and what makes them mothers, and children and what makes them children. I think I'd like to look at a relationship between enchantment

[02:08]

in the mother-child relationship, the relationship between enchantment and unbalanced, inappropriate, and excessive involvement from both sides. And also look at the relationship between wisdom or disenchantment and balanced, appropriate involvement in the mother-child relationship. I said to someone who I've had a close relationship for years,

[03:25]

I said to him that I had to be very careful when I was with him because I had a tendency to be enchanted by him. And he said, what's the matter with that? Enchantment's good. And I said, I think I said something like, well, the problem is that when enchanted I kind of lose track of myself sometimes. I lose track of what it is for me to be honest and true, be truly who I am. So enchantment, like it or not, we've got to have it, I think. It seems to me. So the first meaning in the dictionary for enchantment is to cast a spell over

[04:32]

or bewitch. The second meaning is to attract or delight. It's related to charm, glamour, It seems to me, and I've done a little research and study of child development, that when we're little, when we were young and still with children today, it is necessary, it seems, for the child to find delight, to be delighted by the face of its mother or, anyway, primary caregiver. And the face that the child is delighted by is the face which looks at them

[05:40]

and finds delight in their face. It seems necessary that we look into a face when we're young and particularly that we look into the eyes when we're young and actually like look deeply into the eye, into the center of the eye, right straight through the optic nerve into the brain, because you can actually see a person's brain through the eye. That we look into that eye and we see in that eye a delight, actually a light, a shining, a shining delight. We need to look into that eye and see that light that delights in us. And when a baby, when an infant sees in the eye of the one looking at them

[06:41]

that delight, that delights them. And the one who's looking at them sees that they're delighted in being appreciated and they become more delighted. And the infant sees the increase of delight and becomes more delighted. And the one who's viewing sees the increase of delight and becomes more delighted. And the baby sees the increase and becomes more delighted. And again, the scientific research and the anecdotal experiences I've had is perhaps this mutual delight is perhaps the most exciting, most delightful thing that we can ever experience. Without this kind of mutual delight,

[07:44]

certain neural mechanisms are not set off in the infant's brain. The level of excitation, sort of the warming up of the brain, of the neurology of the baby that happens in this excitement is necessary, kind of like the heat of that. And it might actually literally be a temperature thing, but anyway, the heat of that meeting is the context in which certain neural mechanisms are initiated. And without that, they don't get initiated. Not to mention that in an extreme case, where there's not to mention this extremely delightful interchange occurring, even when there's almost no interchange, babies sometimes don't thrive. They just give up on life if they don't get this. But if they get a little bit, enough to keep living,

[08:49]

but not enough for this intense delight, certain ways of developing are hindered or somewhat undermined. Also, the baby learns in this interaction, they also learn how to modulate or to some extent regulate their level of excitation, because the babies, when they get to a certain point of excitation, if they keep looking at the mother, they will faint. So what they need to learn is actually to look away when it gets too strong, and they learn to do that. And some babies are considered at risk when they have mothers who won't let them get away. If the mother's need is to stay with this top-of-the-line delight,

[09:50]

the delight which is the prototype for all delight of social type, if the mother can't stand to let the baby look away, when the baby looks away, the mother tries to get her face over so the baby will see her again. If the baby can't get away, then the baby has problems, I mean, is in trouble, because they need to be able to let it cool down a little bit if they need to. So this kind of interaction is, in the sense of delight and attraction, this is enchantment. The word enchantment means to enchant, enchant means, it comes from the, what is it, it's enkantade, which means ensing or sing in, it's related to incantation. Incantation is more specifically related to

[10:55]

words that are spoken or sung in order to create a spell or an enchantment. But enchantment and incantation are very similar words. The mother usually is not trying to cast a spell over the baby, but in fact it's happening in both directions, and it's necessary. And the spell, you know, more or less, lasts far beyond these early years, and then it becomes something of a challenge for us to get over. The excessive involvement seems to be necessary for our development

[11:59]

at the early times, extreme involvement with this other face and this other eyes seems to be necessary, but after a while it tends to lead to excessive involvement or inappropriate or unbalanced. Because of this enchantment both mother and child, for example, mothers then give children their full attention sometimes, which seems fine, they certainly need it sometimes. As a matter of fact, I think it's good to give your full attention to everybody. There's nothing wrong with that, but what sometimes mothers do when they give their full attention to somebody, particularly their own child, which they often do give their full attention to,

[13:02]

even if they don't give their full attention to everybody, they often give their full attention, are very generous with their children, but in that process of being so generous and so giving, they sometimes betray themselves. In thinking about what would be good for the child, a little tiny infant or a 26, 34-year-old, 80-year-old, anyway, whatever age it is, in their concern for what to do, what would be good for the baby, for the child, they sometimes can't find out what they want. Sometimes they lose track of their own truth. And whenever we lose track of our own truth or what we want,

[14:05]

that creates a situation of pain. And the children sometimes do that too. Sometimes children are so concerned for what they can do for their parents that they are inauthentic. They give up their own truth. They betray their own truth for their parent. But also what children sometimes do, and what sometimes mothers even do, is because they see that if they give their full attention to their mother, they might betray themselves, they don't give their full attention to their mother so that they don't betray themselves. And for their own truth, they have to turn away from their mother. And sometimes they turn away too much. And some mothers also sometimes,

[15:08]

because their life is at stake, they can see that they will die because they're giving too much to the child. They also have to get away from the child sometimes. So basically it would be nice if we could give our full attention to our mother, be really concentrated on what's good for mom, at the same time be totally true to ourselves and not lie about how we feel, about what we want, and stuff like that. That would be nice. That would be balanced with our mother. And it would be nice if mothers could also totally love their children like they often do, and also keep in touch with how they feel and what they want. And even look around for what they want

[16:11]

if they can't find it. Okay, here I'm really concerned for the welfare of this person. What do I want? But a lot of mothers think, I shouldn't be looking for that right now. Maybe later, after my children grow up, really grow up. Or it's okay to look for what I want when they're not around, but when they're around, forget what I want. I do forget what I want. It's hard to find it. It's hard to look at both directions at once. trying to balance I think has good possibilities. Keeping our eye open for, you know, whether we're giving too much or too little attention.

[17:12]

Watching out for excessive involvement with our mother or with our children or our grandchildren, etc. Watching out for excessive involvement, I think, is good and confessing it is good. And that might help balance to notice, oh, I'm getting too involved here or I'm not getting involved enough. So excessive involvement, in a sense, when you care too much or too little. So some children are totally into trying to control their mother help their mother, that is. Keep their mother on the good track. And some children are into just never want to see her again. For their own self-survival. Or because when they do see her

[18:16]

because of this excessive involvement there's so much fighting or manipulation or dishonesty or harm. Excessive involvement then can lead to us being, you know, micromanaging each other or abandoning each other, getting far away. But actually micromanaging is a form of abandoning yourself and the other person. We lose both ourselves and we lose our appropriate loving relationship by being excessively involved in excessive involvement. We come by it honestly through our natural development of being enchanted by our mother and being enchanted by our children and grandchildren. It's like totally natural. Nothing wrong with us. I mean we didn't do anything special to wind up in this mess.

[19:17]

So again, noticing the mess noticing the excessive involvement trying to find a more balanced approach is fine and in addition to that Buddha has given teachings the Buddhist tradition has given teachings which if you listen to these teachings while you're carrying on your daily life the teachings actually instead of just telling you to balance the teachings tip you off to the way things are and as you see more and more the way things are you naturally balance without trying to balance you naturally balance because these teachings disenchant. They remove the enchantment. Of course the enchantment snaps right back in again so the teachings need to be listened to again so the enchantment constantly muted and softened

[20:22]

and in the softening of the enchantment the appropriate relationship emerges spontaneously. I laugh because I heard a quote I read a quote recently by this guy who said interesting things his name is Albert Camus he lived in France during the Second World War and he actually knew a lot about communism and of course Nazism after the war was over he defined democracy of course he said it in French I suppose

[21:22]

but the English translation he defined democracy as that regime created and sustained by those who know they don't know everything and my mind then leaps to well the communists and the Nazis probably thought they knew everything they enchanted themselves in this way communism during the 30s had enchanted a lot of people and Nazism of course particularly enchanted German people but even people outside of Germany were somewhat enchanted by the spell

[22:23]

I believe Jung said that Hitler just happened to grow up in an area of Austria where there was quite a bit of magic magical practice and in his hometown there were three noted magicians or what's the word I can use some other word anyway people who were very good at casting enchantments there were three noted three really good ones and the best of them was Adolf Hitler he enchanted a nation and in their enchantment of course there was excessive involvement there was an attempt to control

[23:31]

to such an extreme that violence was used in order to keep things into control in order to make things beautiful things which were deemed not beautiful were to be eliminated this is an enchanted vision of a beautiful world that looks this way and let's make it that way this is for the best we know this in enchantment we think we know everything but part of why I laughed when I thought of this quote by Camus was because I applied it to the parent-child relationship and I thought how about democracy there democracy in a parent-mother-child relationship in other words

[24:44]

a regime between the mother and the children created by those who know that they don't know everything can we live together and have a regime that we create together knowing that which we create out of knowing that we don't know or I don't know and you don't know everything there's more than one kind of enchantment probably but the key one that I'm focusing on is this sense, this belief that what we think is generally true my grandson

[25:58]

my grandson likes this book called Madeline and the Bad Hat Madeline and the Bad Hat is a children's story about a girl named Madeline who lives in a I guess like a convent with other young girls in Paris and I think Madeline is the smallest of the girls, was there twelve girls? and anyway across from the convent where these girls lived the convent school was a Spanish embassy and at one point the Spanish the new ambassador came and he brought his son there was a boy living there and the girls found this very interesting and his name was I believe Pepito Pepito I'm somewhat up on these things and everyone was very excited about Pepito

[27:00]

the girls were all excited, even the girl's teacher was excited about having a boy nearby because they didn't have any boys in their school but Madeline looked at him and was not enchanted too much and she said it's obvious that this Pepito is a bad hat and when my grandson for some reason or other likes to be referred to as Pepito he's willing to be a bad hat and recently his grandmother who he calls Abu because she's Chinese went to Paris and he was informed

[28:01]

he's three, he was informed your grandmother, your Abu is going to Paris and who lives in Paris? Pepito and Madeline so then the next time he opened his book his Madeline and the Bad Hat book he looked for his grandmother and she wasn't in the book and he got quite upset about it part of this

[29:04]

maybe part of what we find this story interesting is because to some extent we can see how that makes sense that his grandmother should be in the book it kind of is not that stupid to think that she would be in the book it's something her thinking that she might be in the book is related to thinking that she might be in Paris is related to thinking that she might be right in front of him right now or not in front of him the way our nervous system is built it's built on enchantment it's built on casting spells between us by looking at each other and being excited and loving each other it creates a world for ourselves and others so the Buddha's teaching is that that whatever we see

[30:08]

whoever we see for example if we see our mother or if we are a mother and we see our children what we're seeing is what we're seeing there has three characteristics one characteristic is the enchanted characteristic or a fantasy about this person there is a person there but we have a dream about the person which we enchant ourselves with and again this is necessary that the mother looks at the child and has a dream of the child by which she is enchanted by the child so that she is delighted and the child then develops a dream about the mother

[31:09]

which is a delightful dream by which the child thrives it's a dream upon which the child thrives and the Buddha recognizes that everything we experience has this quality this enchantment this enchanting quality this fantasy quality, this dream quality by which we come to be delighted by the world by which we come to be delighted not by the world but the way we become delighted by phenomena and this delight in phenomena creates the world for us the world is not actually what we're looking at we're looking at the way things are actually but because of our dreaming which we must do in order to live we have a world and we have a world which has delight

[32:12]

extreme delight the most extreme delight can happen here but of course also if we believe that things are actually this delight the way they appear to us which we find so delightful we get excessively involved with these phenomena we get too controlling or we run away or we try to eliminate what we can't control and we think in this enchantment that we know everything and we create regimes which are not democratic we create regimes which are I know what's right and if you agree with me then you know right but if you don't you're wrong and so mothers sometimes say to their children because I say so do it because I say so in other words I know what's right well yes you know what you think is right

[33:14]

what's the child supposed to do? well there's two basic options and there's varieties between one option is okay I don't know what's right I'll abandon what I think and just adopt what you think or I know what's right too and I'm right and you're wrong so at a certain point children need to do that this is actually a little excessive on both sides and this excessiveness comes because we believe that the dream-like quality of all of our experiences are not dreams but actually apply to our experience so when we meet someone we have a dream of them we do, we don't just meet people we put a dream up about them so right now we're all meeting each other sitting here together and we all have dreams about each other we also have dreams about ourselves we do that, this is part of the thing that we do so it's part of the way things are for us

[34:19]

and then there's another quality of all experience and that quality is that whatever is happening arises in dependence on things other than itself depending on things other than itself whatever you're looking at arises and the thing, whatever it is you're looking at, any person or thing and any feeling or idea you have inside your own sense of your body, everything that we experience arises in dependence on things other than itself this is the second aspect of the teaching of the nature of things this is saying whatever happens dependently co-arises and it's also saying that if something doesn't dependently co-arise it doesn't exist and actually one of our dreams

[35:24]

one of our main dreams is dreaming that things don't dependently co-arise we dream that, we dream we imagine that we fantasize that some of the things we're looking at actually almost everything we look at we dream that the thing doesn't arise in dependence on things other than itself we imagine that we imagine that we also do not arise in dependence on things other than ourselves we imagine that we do produce ourselves we imagine that, we have that dream and that dream is closely related to looking in those eyes so bright and happy that are looking back at us so bright and happy and she's saying to us

[36:25]

I don't know what she's saying, she's saying something like you are the most wonderful thing in the world and I'm just like you or you're just like me she's got an identity and she's very happy to see us, so now we have one too and we learn this sense of being, you know, you are you all by yourself, I'm not looking at anything that makes you right now I'm not thinking about how the whole universe makes you I'm thinking about what the universe has made and I'm forgetting about the fact that the universe made it I'm even forgetting if I'm the mother that I'm part of what made you I'm more concentrating on you as you are all by yourself and me as I am all by myself even though this relationship is totally interdependent I'm forgetting about that and just like delighted in you being delighted with me being delighted with you this other dependent character of all phenomena

[37:33]

if we listen to that teaching and we put a little Buddha in our ear maybe at least one ear might be too much to put in both ears because maybe you need one ear to say to you you really do exist all by yourself and you make yourself happen and the other ear is saying that's a dream and actually that dream that dream is based on something the dream of independent existence which is so enchanting and so delightful that dream is based on something that's not a dream namely the way we actually are happening our other dependent character is the way we're actually happening that's the way we really do exist we exist in dependence on each other we don't make ourselves happen that's the way we really are happening that's the way we're really arising and ceasing

[38:34]

arising and ceasing all the time always have and always will be that way we'll never stop being dependent on everything which, you know, parenthetically I might mention is our immortality we won't really totally be annihilated at death because in fact we just dive into the universe and become all the stars and planets and molecules and atoms and people and grasses of the universe which is what we are right now but I don't want to distract you from your work by mentioning that too much if I listen to the teaching of dependent co-arising listen to the teaching of dependent co-arising it gradually starts to disenchant me

[39:39]

and this is actually if you're into some happy enchantment this is something which you maybe don't want that to happen you're looking at your children or your grandchildren and you're enchanted if you listen to this teaching the enchantment, the glamour starts to be taken off the glamour starts to lift and you start to look and see like this dynamic, ungraspable I shouldn't say you can see it but you start to understand this dynamic fleeting thing that's before you you start to understand that it is fleeting and as I've said over and over you start to understand that it is impermanent if you listen to this teaching and listen to this teaching then you start to see that whoever you're looking at whoever you're looking at, whatever you're looking at is impermanent, is fleeting, is unstable

[40:46]

and is unworthy of confidence and again people seem to have an easy time if I mention that my grandson is a perfect example of this he's impermanent, he's unstable and he's not worthy of confidence if I listen to the teaching and I understand that about him then the enchantment that so easily arises around his delightful face his face which does delight in hours which makes such a great delight that face, it becomes disenchanted and then my involvement with him becomes more balanced but in some sense the extreme delight of the enchantment is lessened so rather than

[41:48]

this enchanted love I enter into a disenchanted love and enchantment means to cast a spell and it means to delight and attract but disenchantment means to be free from illusion and false belief enchantment is based on illusion and false belief and we need it I'm just going to do a little survey here how many people have heard the Woody Allen joke that applies here raise your hands please well that's not very many so can I tell it again it's that joke where he says, the guy goes to the psychiatrist and says, my brother thinks he's a chicken

[42:50]

and the psychiatrist says, you should tell him he's not a chicken and the guy says, I need the eggs so you know we have false beliefs about each other but it's not so easy to disenchant because we lose the eggs we lose some we lose some of that enchanted love some of that enchanted delight but there's a replacement love the disenchanted, free of illusion love there is something we have to give up something there but that thing we give up makes us a better father a better mother, grandfather, grandmother and it makes us a better child too now of course, little children do not have the ability yet to hear this teaching

[43:53]

and apply it as you hear this teaching and apply it to your relationship with your mother and if you hear this teaching and apply it to your relationship with your children and grandchildren you will give up excessive involvement naturally you don't relate to impermanent things you don't relate to things you understand are impermanent the way you relate to them when you're enchanted by their impermanence by their radiant indestructibility you don't relate to them the same when you understand that and your relationship with whatever it is starts to become more and more virtuous more and more balanced more and more appropriate so

[45:00]

listening to the teaching that whatever I meet whatever I feel, whatever I think has this character that it doesn't produce itself and also I hear the teaching that I have a dream version of everything which is they look like they do produce themselves they do look permanent people look like they're keeping themselves going like I look at you and you look like, well there's a person there and now she's like still there, sort of like she kept herself going and he's keeping himself going and she's keeping herself going each of you seems to be like self-perpetuating and you seem to be the main thing that's keeping you going this is my dream of you and this is an enchanting dream or I'm enchanted this is my enchantment but I hear the teaching that you're not the way you actually are is the basis of this dream but the way you actually are is you're not how you appear

[46:01]

you actually have this other character which is the basis of how you appear and I can't see that character but I can hear the teaching about it and I don't know about that way that you are which is the basic way you are which I hear about but I don't know about that and therefore I really don't know all about you I know something about you, I know my dream about you that's something that's how I can find you and talk to you that's useful, that's how I can be delighted in you that's the location of my relationship with you but the location of my appropriate relationship with you is the basis of what I see which is dynamic, other dependent way you are hearing this teaching is similar to constantly reminding myself

[47:06]

that I know something about you but what I know about you is my dream mostly and I also know something else about you and that is I know that you do not make yourself happen or I hear anyway that I do not know how you happen you do not make yourself happen there's a story related to this in Chinese folklore about a person called the Duke of Zhou and he loved he loved dragons you might say but actually he loved carved dragons and he had he was a duke so he had a big estate

[48:08]

and in his estate and in his pavilions and on his verandas he had many many carvings of dragons some made from wood some made from lapis lazuli some made from jade some made from turquoise some made from what's that animal that lives in the ocean coral some made from coral he loved he loved carved dragons he was delighted by them and carved dragons are based on something they're based on real dragons there are real dragons and there's carved dragons one day a real dragon was flying over his estate

[49:09]

looked down and saw all the carved dragons and thought, I think the duke would like a visit from me so the real dragon swooped down to meet the duke and when the duke saw the real dragon the duke was awestruck and passed out in fear in fact actually in meditation practice when you actually start to see the real dragon which you can't see you are awestruck and almost will pass out to actually like see a heavy dose of disenchantment where you actually don't see things that you can grasp as independently existing when you first open to that vision which of course you can't see anything because you can't grasp anything in this interdependent world when you first open to it, it is actually somewhat scary and actually if you've never been scared by such a vision

[50:09]

you haven't gone deep enough into this meditation so I warn you ahead of time it's one of the good reasons to practice in groups so when you pass out when the dragon comes we'll be here to give you smelling salts or anyway, hold your hand and say yeah, the real dragon is well-known to be awesome but the main reason why it's awesome is because you can't grasp it and when we can't grasp something we think there's nothing at first but actually the real dragon is not nothing the real dragon is really how things are it's plenty it's really what's happening, it's really what exists it's just that you can't locate it or identify it because you need dream projections to get things so what the practice is in some ways of course we're already relating to the carved dragon

[51:11]

so in terms of relating to the carved dragon we want to start relating to the carved dragon to our mother and our children we want to start relating to them in an appropriate way and the one instruction for the appropriate way to relate to these dreams we have of people the dreams we have of our mother, the dreams we have of our children the instruction is do not despise anybody and do not esteem anybody don't do either of those just become intimate with them of course your mind is churning up evaluations constantly but no evaluation actually reaches what the person is and these evaluations are actually about the carved dragon, about your dream

[52:15]

so on the level of relating to what you can see try to give up positive and negative evaluations and just become familiar with what the person is when you let go of those there's still somebody there appearing but this is how to relate to the carved dragon we should also now go on to the real dragon the basis of the carved dragon is the real dragon and relate to the real dragon the same way don't despise or esteem it become familiar with the real dragon and everybody you meet, you see a carved dragon and the carved dragon is based on the real dragon there's a real dragon there every time you have an experience there is a real dragon which is the basis of your conceptual version of this

[53:16]

but don't think that the real dragon is better than the carved dragon or the carved dragon is better than the real dragon become familiar with both but to become familiar with the real dragon you have to keep listening to the teaching that there is a real dragon right here when you go to meet your mother little carved dragon mama or big carved dragon mama when you go to meet her, okay fine don't despise the big dragon mama don't esteem the big dragon mama get familiar with the big dragon mama the big carved dragon mama get familiar with it get familiar and if your mind churns up esteem and despise, just let go of them that's not all, remember

[54:21]

at the same time, listen to the teaching there's a real dragon here too as the real dragon in a sense seems far away I can't see it, but there's a real dragon here the Buddha said there's a real dragon this other dependent fleeting dragon the dragon which doesn't make itself happen the real, it's a real one and if I can become more intimate with this real one then I'm gonna have a better relationship with the carved one and the real one and we're gonna have a good relationship here and the same when the mother meets the children there's a carved dragon of the children but there's a real child which is the basis for this dream child remember the real dragon child and again, don't esteem it or despise it

[55:24]

become intimate with it become intimate with what you're dreaming about become intimate with what you're not dreaming about become intimate with reality of the way you are and your dream about it both, work on both like we sometimes say walk on the surface of the ocean at the same time you're walking on the bottom of the ocean don't despise or praise the surface and don't despise or praise the bottom don't do that with either of them get to know the surface and get to know the surface free of your evaluations and get to know the bottom in this way I think it may be possible

[56:27]

when we meet someone to be giving our full attention because we're trying to become intimate with the carved version of them the dream version giving them our full attention at the same time we're giving full attention to the teaching of the way they actually are by meditating in this way we also don't forget about ourselves we don't have so much trouble being honest we don't try to control so much because we understand that there's an element here a basic element that has nothing to do with that we appreciate free of evaluation, we're devoted free of our dream more and more so this is the way it is with our mother

[57:32]

and this is the way it is with our children this is the way it is with everybody but with our mother and with our children the enchantment is even more difficult than usual to give up when we start to become disenchanted vis-a-vis our mother when we start feeling all these excessive emotions we may think we're becoming inhuman when we don't freak out about what our mother is doing we may think we're unfeeling and similarly when the mother starts to develop some dispassion towards the children she may think also that she has Alzheimer's actually probably not Alzheimer's

[58:37]

just simply being unfeeling we've gotten so used to being guilty of believing our dreams that when we stop believing them we feel guilty when we become innocent of false beliefs we start to feel guilty this is part of the rough ride of transition to wisdom my mother has a dream version of me which I noticed when I was a teenager particularly I noticed that she was dreaming about me and it bothered me a little bit and it bothered me a little bit I would hear her on the telephone telling her friends about her son

[59:37]

and what she was telling her friends was like a spectacular son spectacular in two senses of the word one, that you could see it was a vision of him and also spectacular in the sense of like wonderful she told her friends these fabulous actually literally fabulous stories about me which were simply fabrications they weren't about me I mean, if they were, I would have been happy but they weren't they were about this wonderful son she had which, you know, her friends just thought, wow I mean, I don't think they believed it, but and although my mother was saying these in a sense, wonderful things about me I felt bad because she wasn't talking about me she seemed to be more interested in telling her friends

[60:41]

something wonderful about me than telling her friends about me I didn't like it too much if she had told them bad things about me I probably would have liked it less but even positive things totally made up about me I didn't like to hear about at least not from my mother and after I was practicing Zen I would go visit her and I got to a place to a point where I got past just teasing her and that form of inappropriate way of being with her and I started to I started just to kind of look at her and not talk too much and she didn't like that

[61:42]

she wanted me not to look at her too much plus talk a lot and when I was quiet she felt nervous and one time I was looking at her and she said something like I don't know, she said I think maybe she said don't look at me that way I was looking at her and she said I said what's the matter I'm just looking at you she said I feel like I feel so ugly I feel like you're looking at me and thinking I'm ugly I said well I'm just looking at you and thinking that's my mother but anyway she had trouble with me

[62:45]

just looking at her quietly I don't know exactly what's changed recently but now she seems to be able to tolerate me looking at her and being more quiet with her for me the difficulty was if I went and just chatted I felt like although that would make her more comfortable that wasn't really the way I wanted to be with her if I didn't look at her that maybe make her more comfortable because it didn't make her worry about getting old and not being so cute but that wasn't really somehow I was not honoring myself by not looking at her and talking to her a lot so anyway other children maybe for them like my siblings maybe for them to be quiet would be for them to abandon themselves so maybe they needed to talk

[63:49]

in order to be who they felt like they were and then maybe in that case she would try to tell them to talk less I don't know, it's this constant struggle of finding our own self and also at the same time really honoring the other so recently anyway she seems to be more comfortable with me being the kind of quiet son that I am who looks at her and I feel like I'm paying attention to her giving her my attention at the same time not being untrue to myself so I've been feeling more balanced but part of the way I found this balance with her was to remember when I'm talking to her the teaching about the real dragon

[64:50]

that the mother I'm looking at is the mother I see with my conceptual mind but there's another mother there I can't even say that other mother is much greater or lesser than the one I see even saying beyond is not quite right but there's another mother there which is the basis of the mother I see and by listening to the teaching about that mother and remembering that mother I seem to be able to find a way to be with her where I feel like I feel like we found our relationship and about two years ago or three years ago I was visiting and my brother and sister were also there and my mother and my brother and my sister

[65:55]

were just outside on a kind of a nice spring day I think outside of her apartment on a little patio overlooking a nice little grassy lawn and weeping willows and all of us were there and nobody was like fooling around everybody was just there together and I don't know how long it lasted maybe it lasted for 10 seconds or 2 minutes or 10 minutes but it was like we all were tolerating the real dragon about which none of us really know anything to speak of literally we do know about it but there's nothing to speak of it's pre-verbal

[66:56]

but it's the basis of everything we can say usually we're talking, saying things when we're together but at that time we were just we were maybe saying something but we were like I really felt we'd finally found our family and about a few weeks later I was talking to my brother on the phone, this had happened in Minnesota I was talking to him long distance and he said he felt our mother changed and we hadn't talked about that event but he was there too noticing this amazing way we were together so just last week I went back to Minnesota to visit my mother I went to do a workshop at a Zen center too but I visited my mother and I went over to her house and she said

[67:57]

something like she asked me would you take me to Target she doesn't go out very she really doesn't go out very often at all and for some reason or other although my brother is very devoted to her and sees her almost every day because he lives right nearby he doesn't take her to Target they don't go to Target, doesn't take her out very much I don't know what the reason is there's various reasons some kids you don't ask to take you to Target and other kids you do and that's been a pattern in our family since I was a teenager since I was about eleven if she wanted to go someplace she took me with her, not my brother that's just the way she had it worked out

[69:03]

he was the little one and taking me calmed her and taking him the little one made it more difficult like having a cat in the car so now he's grown up and he's totally devoted to her and she knows it but she still doesn't want to go out in the car with him but when I come to town oh now I can go out in the car she's afraid to go in cars it's like right on the edge of what's too much to do like to go out of her apartment and get in a car but with her big boy maybe she can do it so she said let's go to Target I said okay so then I gave her her Mother's Day present of course since I'm meditating a lot

[70:06]

things go differently than you might expect on the way to my mother's house I stopped at Walgreens and I went into the Descartes area my wife gave me this Mother's Day present to take to my mother so I brought this Mother's Day present from Green Gulch to Minnesota and my wife said but I don't have a card I said I think it would be alright with my mother not to have a card I think she liked the gift but the day before I brought her the gift she told me she really likes cards so I went to Walgreens to get a card so I went into the hall

[71:14]

it's a big hallmark area so I got this Mother's under Mother I got a Mother's card I read the thing, it seemed right it said from both of us, you know, I thought well that's perfect and then I got the card but then when I got out of the store when I got to my mother's house to put the gift inside the card I noticed it said from both of us Happy Birthday so anyway I put the gift the money which was also cash I put it inside the envelope and gave it to her and said this is a Mother's Day present and then she opened the card and she really liked the card

[72:15]

and said you guys give me the best cards and I'm thinking this is a hallmark card and she just loved it it was okay but she just thought it was fabulous she read it over and over and she opened it and saw the present and she liked the present she liked the money and I said I'm sorry it's a birthday card maybe it could be for your birthday too and she said is it okay if I count it I said fine so she counted it and she said I'm rich I'm rich and she said but I don't want to keep this cash in the house

[73:18]

and her regular bank because it was pretty far away quite far away she has a bank account usually she doesn't have cash that she puts in she usually sends checks by mail so she didn't want to have the cash around the house and we didn't want to go all the way to this other city so we said we could open a bank account right here in this little town you live in and she said okay so we went to the bank we got in the car and went to the bank and we went into the bank and we went over to the place where you open accounts and we sat down and then we opened this bank account and she's sitting next to me I must say I was like totally there with my mother I was just totally there with my mother

[74:21]

and also this young woman who was helping us she was really nice, I was totally there with her too it was like, it was cool I was like I was able to really be there with my mother like being there with one of you people the enchantment was like not operating I was just like being here with this person and she's sitting there and she's saying I'm having so much fun this is so great she just had the most wonderful time opening this account just being there in this bank and also she thought the bank was just so beautiful and this woman who was helping us was really nice too it was just I don't know what

[75:25]

I don't know what but the real dragon was alive and well and the carved dragon was there but it wasn't really an issue the real dragon was there and it was okay, it was alright I didn't have to like carved dragons were not my problem or anybody's problem and so we finished our business and then we went to Target I've never been to Target before one time I went into a grocery store in Berkeley and I was waiting I think I was waiting in line at the checkout stand and someone from one of the people in the Zen community came up to me and said Are you alright? What are you doing in this grocery store?

[76:30]

I mean, you do that? You do this? You're here? This is you? Anyway, I took her to Target and things worked out very nicely at Target also she wanted to buy something, they didn't have it but she got something else she wanted she wanted to get some mystery novels she can still read, her eyes are still good and so she bought these two mystery novels but then she realized that they were hardbound and she got a little upset because of being so silly as to get hardbound because they're too heavy so we went back and got soft paperbacks because she can hold them so then we left Target and went home and when we got home then she had a little trouble because she got so excited on the trip that it was like a major thing so she had a little trouble settling down when she got home and she got kind of scared but then she went and rested and she was okay but it was, that's what happened there when I went to visit my mother

[77:38]

and I really felt that the practice, the teaching really helped our relationship a lot I really felt like it was we're really getting to be able to be together without, you know, and she can be her and I can be me, you know and it's okay because we're not so much, you know, thinking we know what we're not so much thinking we know everything it's more democratic democracy finally is reigning with people who don't know everything you know, but are devoted to each other not knowing everything we know a little, we know a little we know what we're dreaming, but we don't know everything if we remember that, we may be able to be balanced with each other if we forget it, then we have feedback about what that's like and then say, oh yeah, right, oh yeah

[78:44]

there's another, there's something else going on besides what I'm dreaming is going on which is the basis of this dream so I'm going to get intimate with that real dragon too not overlook the carved dragon but don't forget the real dragon is Bernard here? Bernard and Lisa aren't here? anyway, Bernard suggested this song if by popular request you want to hear more of it someday after I learn it better I didn't learn the whole song I just learned the first part

[79:46]

some enchanted evening some enchanted evening you may see a stranger you may see a stranger you may see a stranger across a crowded room across a crowded room and somehow you'll know you'll know you'll know even then that somewhere you'll see her that somewhere you'll see her again and again again and again who can explain it who can tell you why fools give you reasons wise ones wise ones never try wise ones never try

[80:57]

may our intention may our intention be [...] so Jane asked a question about a kind of image of a kind of image of of a magician and magicians can use various materials to create an illusion to create an illusion and the people in the audience see the illusion and they think it's real, but the magician who actually can see the illusion

[82:00]

because they kind of need to be able to see that it was created to know that it's going to work for the people in the audience they know it's an illusion, they don't believe it and so the meditator can get to the point where her mind still creates the illusion, but she doesn't believe it there's a later, even a later stage of meditation where there's not even an illusion created but just to be at the stage where you don't believe the illusion is basically liberation to go even beyond that and to be able to see things without the illusion or not even see the illusion is also possible but just to go to the point of

[83:01]

not believing it is really a great attainment and even while still kind of believing it to fairly constantly hear the teaching which reminds you that it is an illusion even though you kind of like do still fall for it at the same time you hear a teaching which says that things aren't that way you start to change the way you relate to things even before you see them differently you understand them differently you understand that people are you understand that people are permanent, radically impermanent you really understand it and you really are convinced that they are impermanent

[84:03]

prior to being able to actually see radical impermanence so radical impermanence means the way people are changing every moment according to this teaching we are changing every moment because of dependence on things other than ourselves and so is everybody else but because of our imagination we coat people with a kind of generalized concepts or generalized images so we put a generalized image over people so although they are changing all the time we see a generalization of them like generally Jane, right? Jane still applies to you I've got a concept of you that will apply to the various Janes that you are so then I don't see how you're changing because I see this generalized image makes you much clearer to me in a way

[85:04]

and graspable but I hear a teaching that you're not a generalized person that you're a momentary person and a unique person each moment and not the same one you were before I become more and more convinced of that even before I can see it eventually it can actually be seen directly but long before it can be seen directly you can be more and more convinced now you've heard about it and so you're somewhat open to the idea of radical moment by moment impermanence but probably most of us are not completely convinced when you're completely convinced although you still take care of things that appear to be stable you really continuously remember their instability so you relate to them appropriately when you remember that and are convinced of that but not yet able to see it so the magician

[86:06]

you know still sees the image of permanence but really doesn't believe it the magician is really convinced that this is not real but still can see it that it looks like that yes as you're talking about changing the moment the only way I can get into that is by thinking about atoms and molecules and the processes of the body that are invisible or physical odd is it I'm sure that's not the only one you're talking about but could you address that in some way um I just did

[87:08]

now you want me to do some more well the research in physics has led to people actually proposing things work in a certain way that they can't actually see right but they have actually they have an image of things changing very rapidly and also an image of the way for example a body is made that is composed of they have this image that is composed of molecules

[88:10]

and atoms and that the atoms themselves are mostly space but because of our biological evolvement we don't see things which are mostly as space as mostly as space in fact even though things are mostly as space one one thing that's mostly space can't just pass through something which is mostly space I mean the likelihood of your hand of the molecules in your hand running into the molecules of your other hand the likelihood of them touching each other as you move your hands towards each other the likelihood would be actually that you could pass one hand through the other most of the time you'd pass one hand through the other without bumping into any molecules

[89:11]

does that make sense there's so much space here and there's so much space in the two hands that you actually probably most of the time if you just move them towards each other they would just pass right through each other without touching any molecules but because there's force fields around because the movement of the molecules create force fields magnetic fields and other kinds of electrical fields actually the hands repel each other and they seem to be solid so that's another physical fact that spacious configurations of molecules interfere with each other so matter although it's mostly space actually has in the generalized way like a hand or something but even in a specific way like one electron and you know one neutron

[90:13]

they don't actually take up the same space but there's some subtleties there but basically there's some interference at that level but even at that level if you don't bump an electron and a proton together they don't hinder each other they're in space in an unhindered way usually even though electrons are moving around the proton partly because of gravitation and I think also somewhat to do with electrical charge so and of course the electrons are moving all the time and the nucleus is also changing all the time because it's made up of other particles which are changing all the time so each atom is changing all the time because where the electron is makes a difference and it's constantly moving so each atom is changing all the time each molecule is changing all the time

[91:15]

so all of our molecules are changing all the time and so in that way we're constantly changing and there's more dramatic events than just the changing of an ongoing molecule or an ongoing atom or an ongoing it's not really ongoing though it's not really an ongoing atom or an ongoing molecule it's a rising and ceasing atom, a rising-ceasing molecule the one you've got arises and then it ceases and you get another one somewhat like it, related to it because again according to physics and also the Buddhist teachings that when a molecule arises it doesn't arise out of nothing and when it ceases it doesn't entirely annihilate it because its occurrence influences the arising of another one

[92:17]

is a condition for the arising of another one so the ceasing of one helium atom at this location is a condition for the arising of another helium atom in the same place so the previous one is not annihilated but also the previous one doesn't go on so I think generally in that level the theories of physics are upholding the Buddhist understanding of middle way between things don't last and they're not annihilated however the Buddhist teaching of causation which is the Buddhist teaching of the real dragon that's always the nature of our life is that the causal process, although it's causal and they have a cause and effect none of our judgments and concepts of the way that works are actually in the process whereas

[93:19]

usually even in physics they think there's some law in the process but the law that they think is there is actually a thought construction and there's no thought constructions in the causal process so Buddhism is essentially a teaching of causation but it's not the usual kind of causation which has actually like may arise so if you can kind of open to this to this practice which is constantly changing that openness and that attunement then your practice will evolve in a positive direction so sometimes our dreams help us, sometimes push us into realizing what's beyond our dream and the very active verbal little boys and girls are a real challenge when you're with them a lot and generally speaking, you know

[94:24]

they're all trying to control things a little bit but some are really excessively trying to control which is course next season which is course next season

[94:30]

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