I thought I'd start off by asking you, how is good friendship like perfect wisdom, or how is good friendship perfect wisdom? Yes. There's a lot of acceptance in both. Yes? There's almost no separation sometimes between my stuff and my good friend's stuff. And in friendship sometimes there's no separation. In the good friendship there's no separation between the friends? And in perfect wisdom, is there also no separation? He's nodding.

[01:02]

Everybody else nodding? Okay. Yes? You're agreeing? Yeah, I agree. Okay. And I also want to add that there's no attachment to form that has to follow. So in good friendship, there's no attachment to forms that have been followed. There's no attachment to forms that must be followed or that had been followed in the past. Like my granddaughter likes to be massaged and she's not attached to the way the massages were before. She gives instructions about where she wants to be massaged but she's not attached to her previous instruction.

[02:04]

She might give the same instruction again, but she might not. Any other comments about how good friendship is perfect wisdom or is like perfect wisdom? Louder. Louder. Okay. Good friendship is gentle. Perfect wisdom is gentle. Yes? Good friendship includes everything and perfect wisdom includes everything. Could you hear that? My idea of perfect friendship is not perfect friendship.

[03:05]

My idea of perfect wisdom is not perfect wisdom. Okay. Perfect wisdom actually is being free of your ideas of perfect wisdom. And perfect wisdom is being free of your ideas of friendship or the I-forms that it might take. Yes. Would you say it again louder? Perfect wisdom. Perfect wisdom. Do you say includes? Yeah.

[04:07]

Perfect wisdom includes friendship being a struggle when friendship is being a struggle. And does good friendship include good friendship being a struggle when good friendship is a struggle? Now I can hear those people talking in the parking lot. How is perfect wisdom good friendship?

[05:10]

They can't hear me. Anything else that you care to mention? Yes? What's the difference between the two? What's the difference? They're not the same when we have not good friendship. So not good friendship is usually not good friendship is holding to ideas.

[06:14]

So when friendship is holding to ideas of friendship, then that type of friendship is not perfect wisdom. But good friendship doesn't see any difference. between this kind of friendship and that kind of friendship except the ideas. And good friendship doesn't attach to the ideas of this kind of friendship or that kind of friendship, even if there are ideas. So it's not different from perfect wisdom. Yes? You say you don't have to strive and strain for good friendship. You don't have to strive and strain for good friendship.

[07:18]

OK, so Tish said you don't have to strive and strain for good friendship. And King mentioned that good friendship includes striving and straining. No, no, it's not the opposite. He said it includes it, and you said you don't have to. He didn't say it, but I could say it for him. It includes not straining. It includes no struggle. Good friendship includes things being really easy. Like he could meet somebody and just feel like, hey, this is like easy, right? That can happen in good friendship. Except that when you feel that way in good friendship, guess what you do with that easy feeling? What do you do with that? You let it go, yeah. And letting go of easy happens in perfect wisdom and happens in the good friendship.

[08:22]

And perfect wisdom, you just chanted what perfect wisdom can pull off. It turns the wheel of Dharma. Perfect wisdom brings light so that all fear and distress may be forsaken. Good friendship performs that function, too. So, I mentioned that we just did a session, I agree, Gulch, and I mentioned that that in my early time at Zen Center I was up for having a struggle in the sitting. Matter of fact, I enjoyed getting up early in the morning and then going to the Zendo and having a struggle. A struggle to get through the periods of meditation. And I had a positive view on that. I felt like I would go sit in the zendo and I was like a sponge with suffering in it, a sponge that had soaked up suffering maybe through the night.

[09:34]

And I'd go sit and I'd just squeeze the sponge and all the suffering would come out. And then like I was ready for pretty much whatever for most of the day. For me, and I also told the story one time, one of my first sesshins, I think, was Suzuki Roshi. I told him that, and it might not have been a sesshin, but it might have been after or before, I told him that when I was sitting in Full Lotus, there was this kind of like screaming pain. So it was hard for me to follow my breathing with this kind of loud crying going on. But if I sat half lotus, things were quiet. And in that quiet, it's pretty easy to follow my breathing. And he said, well, maybe for you, full lotus is good.

[10:39]

Did you follow that, Guru? Did you follow that? I'm not saying that for you, but that's what he said to me in my 20s. Did he elaborate? Well, I think his comment was about as much elaboration as he was up for at that moment. Maybe for you, full lotus is good. That was his elaboration. Was he right? He was half right. It got your attention. It got my attention? It got my attention? Oh yeah, it sure did. I wasn't thinking about anything else but that.

[11:50]

So there was kind of a natural concentration there. There was no distraction. Like if you go to the dentist and they start drilling your teeth and you don't have any Novocaine, you might not be thinking about what you're having for dinner that night. You might, but if you really are really hungry. But then I went to him. I remember after I'd been around Zen Center for about almost three years, I was at Tassajara with him and I had this strange experience of easy. It was easy. Life was easy. I was on Easy Street, Tassajara. Tassajara Easy Street. So I went to him and I said, I'm having no struggle now.

[12:51]

Am I missing something? And he said, like before he said, maybe for you, Philotis. And he said, maybe for you, practice is easy sometimes. Maybe for you, practice is easy sometimes. Before he said, maybe Philotis is good for you. Any other comments about the similarity or even identity of the good wisdom, I mean the good friendship we're talking about, the good friendship of the Buddhas, and perfect wisdom? Kim? Well, I was thinking about that story that you told about the woman who said she had no complaints. She gave that instruction to the young man, and then he tried it, and then he saw her later, a year or ten years later, and he said he hadn't been able to do the practice yet.

[14:09]

She said, thank you very much, very much, I have no complaints. yeah and she might actually she might have felt the pain when she first gave him instruction and then she felt pain again maybe that he wasn't able to do it but she still had no complaints and she and she still was joyfully friendly with him she was still very happy to have him as her good friend even though he wasn't feeling like he was being a good friend because he wasn't being a good friend, so he's complaining. But she was a good friend to the complainer. And the complainer aspired to be a non-complainer, but was unsuccessful.

[15:22]

However, he was telling the truth, maybe. I don't know if he was telling the truth, but he wasn't lying. He wasn't pretending. Yes? So it might have you could say that changed it and I don't know that that changed it but it changed. But that is different from some other things you could have done. So you got this pain, and the pain might have changed.

[16:27]

But I don't think the pain changed. I shouldn't say I don't think. I don't know that the pain changed because of you welcoming it. And I don't really know, but I think that although the pain may or may not have changed for whatever reasons, let's say it did change, but the fact that you were welcoming, that is a change from, for example, resisting or not welcoming. That is a change. And that's a different life from having the pain and not welcoming it. But it could be the case that you could, it's almost like you could have kind of the same pain in two different moments. Not really feel like the pain changed much.

[17:28]

Or the pain, a better example is the pain did change, but it increased. It became more intense. So you said, I have no complaints, and then a bigger one came. And then when the bigger one came, you said, I have no complaints, and a bigger one came. and you just got happier and happier as the pain increased. And finally you became so happy that you were totally free of the pain. But it doesn't have to get more and more intense, but sometimes it does. And there's stories about like that. So the person has two pounds of pain and they're trying to welcome it but they're holding back a little bit then it goes to fifty pounds of pain and they're still resisting but maybe a little less and then it goes to thousand pounds of pain and then they really welcome it and then they're really free I heard a story about a

[18:39]

a young man who was studying with a Buddhist teacher, and they walked by a big cesspool. Should I not tell this story? It's okay? And the teacher said, go into the cesspool. So he went into the cesspool. And then the teacher said, now, see that turd floating near you on the surface? He said, yes. Eat it. And then he ate it. And then he was very happy. Not because the turd was delicious. He was very happy. And someone said to him, well, what happened after that? And he said, I kept being happy.

[19:44]

So this class is relatively easy. I mean, I don't know. But I'm not attached to the idea that it's easy. I just said that. I would also offer that good friendship is intimacy. And intimacy can be a struggle, or it can be easy. But it's often a struggle to be intimate with someone. Even someone you really, really, really, really want to be intimate with. Like me, I wanted to be close to Suzuki Roshi. I wanted to be intimate with him. I made a big effort to arrange my life so that could happen. Does that make sense to you? Did I tell you about the story about... Oh.

[20:57]

Did I tell you... So the story went on that I said to him, it's easy. I didn't say easy, just not hard. And he said, maybe sometimes for you, practice will not be hard. Or maybe practice will not be hard for you. And then he took a piece of paper. You know that story? Took a piece of paper and... It wasn't this one. He took a piece of paper and then he folded it. He said, when we do origami, you know origami? When we do origami, we fold. And after we fold, we press. I don't remember what else he said, but I got the idea that the hard part of origami is the folding part. But after you get the fold, which is the hard part, then you just press on the fold for a while. And that's not very hard. Someone who does not know anything about origami can press on the folds of a master.

[22:06]

Does that make sense? But learning the folding like an expert, where to fold and how to fold and how hard and what angle, that can be quite difficult. So sometimes you do something difficult, and then after you do it, you just sit on it for a while. Because sitting on the fold makes it more stable, more well-established. The fibers kind of gradually calm down under the pressure. So if you make a fold and then move on quickly, it might not hold as well for the next fold. So he was saying that, in fact, that I had been, he didn't say this, but I had been practicing hard and now it was kind of easy for me. And then the next day they asked me to be the director of, to leave Tazahar and go to be the director of the city center in San Francisco.

[23:06]

And I said, okay, did you ask Roshi, is it all right with him? And they said, yeah. And I said to him, well, the next fold is happening. And I think at that time in Tassajara, as before, I... I always appreciated him giving me an opportunity to spend time with him. And so during the previous winter, a visiting priest had come and taught a way of practicing Buddhist chanting. And I was one of the people he taught. So Sukhoreshi came down in the summer after the practice period was over and asked me to show him what I had learned. So I wanted to be close to him and be intimate with him.

[24:11]

And here he gives me a chance to go into a room with him and sing in front of him. And then he listens to what I learned and gave me some feedback. So this is what I wanted, right? I wanted to be with him and have him look at my practice of learning various things that Zen priests do. So I wanted that intimacy, but when I got it, I wanted to get out of the room. So I said, I don't want to take any more of your time, Roshi. He said, it's okay. Chant again. So sometimes the person or persons we most want to be close to, we just can't be there.

[25:13]

Sometimes we can, but sometimes it's just too... It asks me for more than we're ready to give. Did you stay with him? You stayed with him? I stayed, yeah. And then I think I offered him a few more chances to get out, which he declined. But at some point, you know, we did get out of the room. as you can see. He actually like left the world. But yeah, I think I didn't run out of the room. I just wanted to because it was hard for hard for me to receive all of his attention. Just the two of us, he was giving me all of his attention, pretty much. He wasn't playing on his iPad.

[26:15]

Or his iPhone. He wasn't texting somebody. He was like, I was the main show in town. I was the only show in town. And he was watching it like, this is really a great show. Which is what I wanted, right? Did I tell you a story about looking at my grandson when he's having breakfast? Charlie's read it. Tell it, Charlie. Once upon a time. Yeah. In LA. A little bit different. Could you stop staring at me?

[27:18]

And just before he said that, he wrinkled his brow. And then he said, could you stop staring at me? And then? And then a little later did he say, well, okay, you can look. sort of and then when he said that I said okay and I still looked at the ceiling and he has a cousin a younger male cousin named Gabriel and so I was looking at the ceiling and he said do you think Gabriel has trouble following instructions In other words, he was ready to start relating again. I think he needed to know that he could control the intensity somewhat, you know. Like here he is, and this man's just like giving him all this adoration, and how does he cope with it, you know?

[28:25]

Well, he'll say, stop looking at me. And then the old man says, okay. You can have a break from this attention. And after he realized that he could get a break, then he reinitiated, and it got some attention back. He set up a boundary. He offered a boundary. He asked for a boundary. He asked for a boundary. He kind of said, enough adoration, granddaddy. Not literally, but he wanted to know, can he put that up there, and can I work with that? And I said, yes. So part of good friendship is offering boundaries, and offering boundaries can be difficult sometimes. A lot of people think good friendship has generosity in it. Do you? Huh?

[29:28]

Does perfect wisdom have generosity? Yeah, so perfect wisdom is actually generosity. And it's generosity completely freed of any idea of generosity. And good friendship is too. So when people hear that, which they do from me quite frequently, like you're hearing it right now, right? Good friendship involves generosity. Then people say, what about boundaries? People don't think boundaries are part of generosity. I shouldn't say they don't. Most people I meet do not understand that generosity can work with boundaries, can work with other people giving me boundaries, and can work with me giving other people boundaries. Part of perfect wisdom is boundary work. But to offer the boundary free of the idea of the boundary.

[30:37]

So I could offer a boundary to Suzuki Roshi like, well, that's enough time for you to be donating to me. And he could say, oh, yeah, no, I can give you more. You want more, right? That's what you're here for, isn't it? Yeah. Before that practice period started, in early January in San Francisco, when I was saying goodbye to Suzuki Roshi, he stayed in San Francisco that winter. the winter of 1970. And I went to Tosar. But before I left, I said goodbye to him. And he said, the teacher who's coming is a very good chanter. I want you to learn to chant from him. So he actually gave me that work to do during that practice period. and asked me to learn and asked the teacher to teach me, and other people too.

[31:44]

So that was an assignment. Then he came down in the summer to check out what I learned. And then while he was checking me out, I kind of wanted to say, kind of like, could you stop staring at me? But more like, could you stop listening to me? and hearing my voice and how I'm doing with this chant, I didn't go that far. But I kind of was having trouble getting all that attention to my voice chanting these Buddhist chants in Japanese. And didn't you sit with that for a while? Because that was such a contrast. You know, at that time, I was not aware of the contradiction.

[32:45]

But in retrospect, I thought, you know, I learned, and I say to people over and over, that the person you most want to meet with when you actually get there, you often want to get away from them. Like also, sometimes when I was away from my wife in the mountains, when I would come home, as I'm driving home, I'm thinking about, I get to see my wife. And I walk into the door and say hi and go listen to my answering machine. You know, I wasn't driving up from the mountains, you know, 160 miles. Oh, I'm going to listen to my answering machine. I almost never find my intimacy too intense or can't stand the intimacy. Perfect wisdom is intimacy. So I think people, oh yeah, good friendships, intimacy is right.

[33:47]

Perfect wisdom is intimacy. Perfect wisdom is like, Freedom from, it's like free from fear. Intimacy is free from fear. But as you get closer, before you get to intimacy, as you get closer, oftentimes you get more scared. But when you actually arrive at intimacy, there's no fear for the moment that you arrive. Also in intimacy, like you said, there's no separation. In intimacy there's no separation, like in perfect wisdom. And when there's no separation you can't get a hold of, for example, what you're intimate with. You can't get a hold of it because you're not separate from it.

[34:48]

Yes? Did you say, is part of good friendship intensity? Yes. Yes. I think asking for growth can be very intense. But sometimes asking for growth is less, not so intense. Somebody read to me just last night something about healing often involves pain. And when we're not intimate, to heal that lack of intimacy, I would say, often involves pain.

[36:03]

And the pain, this statement said, this pain mobilizes lots of resources. So the healing involves pain, which mobilizes lots of resources. And also, therefore, the healing process can be very expensive. Well, these three people are on the line. You all three have your hands raised. Any particular order I should be going here? Charlie's pointing at Betsy and Linda. Well, it seems like the intimacy, the closer one gets to that, but it's still not there. That it really is asking that, I mean, the requirement is you have to give up yourself, your picture of you at that moment.

[37:12]

I mean, that's what's happened. Yeah, you have to give it up, and also it doesn't necessarily involve having it go away. It still can be there, but you're letting go of it. So intimacy is making a request. And part of realizing intimacy is to realize that the request is coming from yourself through another person's mouth. or the request that's coming through your mouth is somebody else's request. That's part of the intensity of perfect wisdom and part of the intensity of good friendship. So good friendship does have intensity and it's free of the idea of intensity. So sometimes, you know, you can say Wow, this is really not intense.

[38:16]

Is something wrong? So, if it's not intense, you might feel like, oops. And if it is intense, you might feel like, oops. Betsy? It's a nice Chinese shirt you have on. It's a nice Chinese shirt you have on. Oh, thank you. You're welcome. So I've started taking the power of the Latins. Yes. And now my body is a wreck. But then Roger told me yesterday that your strength, your muscles, you actually break them down and they build up stronger. And so I just see this parallel. This is a relationship at the organic level with my body.

[39:17]

And I just have to be patient with it, which I'm in pain right now. But it's all going to look good and it's going to change. So I'm trying not to get attached to it. I'm feeling good. Because I have goals. I understand that this is just a process. Things are going to be organized. I think good friendship understands that this is a process. And perfect wisdom understands that this is a process. And the appearance of things usually doesn't look like a process. And even if it does look like a process, the way it looks is not a process. It's an image. The actual process is not the way the process looks. Charlie? I have a good friend who very much wants to be as good as men in this situation.

[40:27]

He aspires to that. But he's very often overwhelmed by these situations. Is there a skillful way to offer boundaries? Well, conventionally speaking, I would say yes. Or you could even say there's an art of offering boundaries. And so part of the skill or the art of offering boundaries is to look to see, number one, is this, first of all, where is this sense of a boundary coming from?

[41:37]

How is it arising in you? Usually you don't make the feeling that you need boundaries. You don't usually make it up. It comes up in you. Like if you walk to the edge of a really tall, deep cliff and you get closer, you start to feel some boundary coming up in your body. Not everybody, but you might feel like as you get to the edge of the cliff that some boundaries are rising in your body. And then it's possible to be generous with that boundary. You don't know exactly how it comes up. And you can't, you might be able to turn it off, but it's more like just being generous. There seems to be a boundary here. There's a boundary at the edge of the cliff and there's a boundary in my body where I get closer and I feel fine and then suddenly I come to the edge of the feeling fine part.

[42:41]

The feeling pine part is kind of like, oop, it stopped. And now there's this funny feeling in my stomach. It came up. So you look at that boundary. And if possible, enjoy it. Don't rush past it. You might fall off the cliff. So respect it and become intimate with that boundary and use that boundary to become intimate with yourself and with the chasm I swim in the San Francisco Bay and also in the Pacific Ocean. And I try when I go in to go in slowly. A lot of people, there's a boundary, right? You're not in the water, then you are. And then the water's maybe at your ankles. So the boundary of the water is halfway up your ankle. And then you move in and the boundary goes up and up. And actually the legs have less problem than, for example, the abdomen and the chest.

[43:49]

But a lot of people, they just run in because they don't want to feel this boundary, [...] boundary. I really try to feel it. So boundaries are wonderful opportunities to become intimate. And being gentle and careful with the boundaries as they arise in myself. And then when it seems appropriate, share my boundaries with other people. In some cases, my boundaries have to do with Well, actually, if I go in slowly and you're walking next to me, you're watching me work with my boundaries, and I'm watching you work with yours. Or if you're standing on the beach and not coming in, you're watching me work with my boundaries. But the same would happen in my relationship with you. As I walk into the relationship, as I feel this boundary, [...] I might actually, and you might want to rush in,

[45:02]

You might be the kind of person who wants to run into the cold water rather than feel all the... I might say, I need you to slow down and go into the cold water at my rate. I need you on your side to feel the cold water with me. I need that. Or if you want to, you can go in ahead of me, but if you want me to go with me, I don't want to go in with you as fast as you want to go. Does that make sense? I want to go in so I can feel every step of the way rather than rush past it. And I think we are actually, the teaching I said at the beginning, we are actually living good friendship already. It's just that we have to practice to realize it. We are already intimate. But if we don't practice it, we'll miss it.

[46:06]

Again, like going into cold water. You're intimate with that cold water. But if you go too fast, you're going to miss it. And you're going to sometimes want to go too fast because it's so intense to feel all these boundaries as the water goes up your skin. If the water's 98.6, you don't feel the boundaries. You can still feel the boundary, the texture of the water. But you don't feel as much as when it's cold or hot. And anyway, it's the same in our relationships with people. Ted? What makes a good chanter? What makes a good chanter? I don't know. I don't know what makes a good chanter. This morning, as we ended the practice period, the person at Green Gulch who's sort of in charge of the forms in the Zendo, she was chanting a dedication celebrating

[47:29]

the teachings of our tradition and saying, you know, how grateful we are for these teachings and that during these practice periods we can really, like, study these teachings and practice these teachings. And while she was chanting, she was choking up. She could barely speak. I guess she was just so moved by her gratitude for the teachings. So the chanting, I think a lot of people probably would have felt, this is really good chanting. A lot of people thought that's really good chanting. There's a lot of feeling there. But you don't have to be choked up to have good chanting. I think good chanting in this context means chanting where you're totally involved and not abiding in your idea of good chanting.

[48:48]

But if you're not very involved in something, it's hard for you to tell whether you're not abiding in your idea of it. Like all the people I haven't yet met, it's hard for me to tell that I'm abiding in my idea of them, even though I might be. And even the people I have met, if they stay far enough away, I may not notice that I'm abiding in my idea of them. But as I get close, I may start feeling like, boy, this person is really getting close to me. In other words, I kind of am abiding in the idea that they're getting very close. And I can feel what that's like to abide in that idea. And the closer they get, the more I can feel if there's any abiding. You know, I was not assessing his level of perfect wisdom.

[50:15]

But his voice was very nice sounding. And I was, in a sense, one of his students. And I learned his chanting quite well, in the sense that I sounded very much like him. And then when my teacher listened to me chant, he said, when this teacher, Tatsugami Roshi, chants like that, it's very nice. But he's an old Japanese man from the country. So he has like a country accent and he's an old man. He said, but when you do it, it's not really the way you should chant it, because you're a young man, not from the Japanese countryside. So there was various little decorations in the chanting, which the teacher did and which I copied. And Suzuki Rishi sort of ironed out those decorations, these little things in my voice.

[51:20]

He sort of smoothed them out. So my chanting after being with him got in some sense streamlined, and in some ways maybe not so interesting, but more appropriate to me. And that ironing process, this person ironing my voice, ironing my chanting, was very intimate. And then he got to watch how I responded to the ironing he did. and I got to be there with him watching. And it was just, you know, hard. So another way to approach this is, Karen was at the session so please excuse me Karen for repeating things that you've heard is that okay is it okay if I repeat some things I talked about during session yeah so good friendship perfect wisdom has been intimately transmitted by this tradition

[52:45]

And we have a chant which says that the teaching of the way things are, which is the teaching of perfect wisdom, has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors. Now you have it. So please take care of it. And then it goes on to talk about how to take care of it. But please understand, you have it to take care of right now. And then now, here's some instruction about how to take care of it. Following me? What is it that's been intimately transmitted? The teaching of suchness, which is the teaching of wisdom. Perfect wisdom. Now it says, one of the things it says, is turning away and touching are both off. So, starting over. The teaching of good friendship has been intimately communicated by Buddhas and ancestors.

[53:53]

Now you have it. You have this good friendship. You've got it. Turning away from it and touching it are both wrong. For it's like a mass of fire. It comes back to the intensity. If you touch this perfect wisdom, if you touch this good friendship, you'll get burned. Burned. If you turn away from it, you'll freeze. One of our yoga room regulars is Simon Moyes. Do you know him? Simon, he's been in a lot of classes here. You don't remember him? No? Kim does. Anyway, he was the head student in this practice period we just finished. And they had a ceremony yesterday where everybody asked him a question. And somebody said to him, what's the difference between contentment and complacency?

[54:56]

And he said, I think he said, contentment is warm and complacency is cold. Perfect wisdom, good friendship is warm. It's hot. Not the contemporary hot. It's hot like a fire, a big fire. So it's good to stay close to it, but don't touch it and don't turn away from it. yes I'll go on I'll give you more information about this touching okay another way to say it is what is it here it's good friendship it's perfect wisdom it's the precious mirror okay the precious mirror where you can see who you really are like mirror mirror on the wall who am I anyway

[56:17]

That one, which is going to tell you who you really are and set you free. This is a pretty good mirror. And the text, which is telling you how to take care of it, it says, turning away and touching are both wrong. It also says, if you're excited, it becomes a pitfall. If you hesitate, you're filled with doubt. So another instruction to parallel, you're saying, is it touching, attaching? It's like attaching, but it can look like excitement. Whoopee, good friendship. You can get excited about it. And then this good friendship can turn into a pit. The good friendship is not a pit. But if I get excited about it, I can fall into a pit. Or if I hesitate, I'm filled with doubt. There's another way to say it. You're taking care of this good friendship, so let go of fanaticism and obsession.

[57:25]

Let go of hysteria and obsession, hysteria and opposition. So don't oppose it, don't get excited about it, don't touch it. But you know, that's getting excited, that's getting hysterical, that's getting fanatical. This is like the best thing that there is. Nothing's better than the perfect wisdom. Nothing's better than good friendship which relieves all suffering and distress, right? Nothing's better. But don't get excited about it, otherwise you're going to fall in a pit. However, if you do fall in a pit, don't get excited about that, and it will turn into the precious mirror. So the instruction is, here's this precious wisdom. Here's this good friendship. Here's this jewel mirror. Okay? You've got it. Now take care of it. How do you take care of it? The way of taking care of it, if you take care of everything that way, everything will turn into good friendships. If you meet somebody and you let go of being fanatical about them or obsessive about them, they'll turn into a good friend.

[58:49]

They'll turn into a precious mirror. If you become excited, you fall into a pit. But if you then, when you look at the pit, if you don't touch it or turn away from it, the pit will turn into perfect wisdom. So the various instructions are about how to be upright with everybody so that everybody turns into good friendship. Or rather, to relate to people in this way such that all relations become good friendship. A few years ago I asked somebody, when I read this thing about turning away and touching them both wrong, I wondered, did Buddha ever touch anybody? If you read the Buddhist scriptures about the historical Buddha, people come to see him and they get fairly close. But usually they walk around him three times and then kneel and sit to one side. It doesn't say they come up and hug the Buddha.

[59:52]

They don't slap the Buddha on the back. They don't shake hands. But they're coming to be intimate with this teacher, right? I didn't think of examples where Buddha reached out and touched the person. So I have people look around for when Buddha touched people, and I found some examples of where he did touch. But most of the scriptures, there's nothing about Buddha actually touching people. But there's some scriptures where he does touch people. One of them was, he was walking along the street, the road in India. And he found one of his students sort of lying on the ground, really sick. And he'd been lying there for quite a while and really sick. So he was really dirty and had sores on him and everything like that.

[60:55]

And nobody had been helping him either. So the Buddha, with his attendant, picked up the monk and carried him over to a bed and washed him and put on new clothes for him. So the Buddha did touch this monk and took care of him, nursed him, and nurtured him. Of course, the Buddha was compassionate to the monks who aren't sick, too. This monkey actually touched and carried, cleaned, and so on. Then he went and talked to the group of healthy monks, and he said, I want you people to know that when one of you becomes sick, it should be one of your practices to take care of them. And when you take care of them, please understand you're taking care of me.

[61:57]

So that kind of touching, when you're cleaning somebody who's dirty, or you're dressing a wound, or you're picking somebody up off the ground, that kind of touching, you do that without getting fanatical about it. Like, oh God, I'm a great, I'm a great blah-de-blah. And you also don't oppose it. And also you don't do it obsessively. And you don't get excited about it. And you don't hesitate. You don't hesitate. Every time you touch, you just touch. Your hand's here when it's here. And then it's here when it's here. And it's here when it's here. You don't hesitate. Every place you are, you're right there. And in not hesitating, this is the way to take care of the perfect wisdom which has been intimately communicated to you.

[63:03]

This is the way to meet people. And if you meet people this way, it will be good friendship. And it will help you let go of who you think this person is and who you are. Letting go of who you think other people are and letting go of who you think you are is how to help others. And this good friendship is for helping others. Perfect wisdom is for helping others. Right? That makes sense, doesn't it? Perfect wisdom is to help others. Good friendship is to help others. Some people call each other friends, right? And they take poison together. They drink liquids that are not good to drink in large quantities, and they drink large quantities of them together, and they call each other friends.

[64:05]

Well, they're right, they are friends, but their behavior is not what we call good friendship, even though they really are good friends. Because they're drinking so much alcohol together, they don't understand the good friendship that's there. The good friendship is not that exciting. It's not that obsessive. The touching is too much. And then it goes from touching too much to touching too little. Okay? So we have a great opportunity to call on Jocelyn. . So your job is now to do some chanting.

[65:37]

And you're going to say how grateful we are for this teaching and this practice. So you start chanting and all this emotion comes up. And that emotion might not be coming because you're excited about this wonderful teaching. That might not be the situation. And while you're chanting, you could, like, not touch that great huge emotion that's coming through you. You could not touch it. And also you could not turn away from it. Like, stay there. And she kept chanting. She kept going. She finished the chant. She almost stopped a few times, but she kept going. So I think sometimes huge emotions come running through us and we are not fanatical about it and we're not obsessive about it. It's just a huge emotion.

[66:39]

And sometimes a huge emotion is like the only boundary we have to set up is maybe, in this case, the boundary of, well, I think we should continue with the boundary, the value, the boundary. Let's just keep chanting. It's a boundary like saying, you're setting a boundary called don't stop chanting. Finish the chant. A boundary, a standard. So you just keep going. But because there's huge things coming together with your chanting, the chanting sounds really different. And you might be very happy about this intersection between your your plan to do this chant in this unexpected wave of human emotion, which is to be very moved by the words of what you're chanting.

[67:43]

When I... Some of you may have heard this story, too. I was... My father had many heart attacks, and I had been visiting him in Minneapolis, and I came back to San Francisco. And when I was with him, I felt like sometimes I was with him when he was sleeping, and he seemed like every time he exhaled, like it was going to be the last one. So he'd go... Oh, maybe he's gone. They go, he did hell again. So I went back to San Francisco. And I was in the bathtub giving my daughter a bath. And my brother called me. And a phone was given to me. And he said, Dad's gone. And I said, OK, I'm coming. So I just finished the bath and made the arrangements and went to Minneapolis.

[68:57]

I was not upset. I was not happy that he died. I was really not unhappy that he died because I had gotten used to him being right on the edge for years. I actually thought it would be nice for him to live longer because his fragile condition was very sobering and made him much more gentle and grateful. So it was really nice. He was in a nice phase, but I just felt like he was always ready for him to go. So we went, but I didn't really feel much emotion. I just thought, okay. I mean, the emotion I felt was, let's go to Minneapolis. That was my emotion. So then I went there, and then he was in this funeral home, you know, and there was this large chapel, and he was up in front in a casket. And I walked up and I looked at him, and he just, he looked just so sweet, and I just remembered all the sweet things he was to me.

[70:10]

He had problems too, but I just remembered all the sweet things he was to me, and just this wonderful tidal wave of tears came up out of me, you know, and I was just so happy. I wasn't happy he was dead. I was happy that this wonderful emotion just came in and just inhabited me. I don't know how it happened, but I was really having a great time. I was not expecting it. I didn't think I was supposed to do it or not supposed to do it. It was like, this was like real. human emotion. I was having a great time and some people got worried about me and came up and tried to stop me. And so I stopped. I didn't want to scare them. It was fun. It was in joy to feel all that love for him. And the way it came out was tears.

[71:12]

I wasn't laughing. I wasn't sad. I was, and I wasn't really grieving. It wasn't really grief. It was more like the way, it was like, what is it like? It was like an Olympic gold medal in crying. And he was Olympic gold medal winner in being a sweet father at that moment. He was so beautiful and so nice. It was like he was a champion father at that moment. And I was just so happy for him and me. It was such a great human performance, father and son event. I wasn't grieving. It was like watching my father be triumphant in death and joining him in that. It wasn't sad. And also, I didn't get angry at my uncle for stopping me. I said, okay, I gave it up.

[72:14]

I don't know how long it would have gone on if I was left to my crying. Eventually, I would have just got dehydrated. I didn't have an attendant who was pouring water on me. Anyway, thank you very much. We have one more class. Or two? Is there one more? Yeah, just one more. So I hope you come, because I'm going to, if I can. Or Hanukkah cookies. Or good friends cookies. Prajnaparamita cookies. Prajnaparamita pastry store. So now you have it. So please take care of it. I think you know how, right?

[73:09]

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