If I may say again, Master Tsao-Shan said that the true Dharma body of the Buddha manifests in response to beings. So I said, Please look into your heart and see what your focus of intention for this session is. And then there was a response to this being. Many responses. And I feel that the response that came to my request manifests the true body of Buddha in this world, in this session.

[01:19]

The responses which you made and wrote on the paper is a manifestation of Buddha. I feel that. I can see Buddha on the paper. It wasn't just what you wrote that was Buddha, but that it came in response. It was a response. And then I could read it and see the response. I felt when I read the latest wave of responses to my request the same thing I felt when I read the first set, and that is, these people are headed in the right direction.

[02:50]

They're headed on the path to liberation. Now what can I do to help? Perhaps at least I could not distract you. But then I also thought, that even though a person is very clear about their direction, right after they see the direction and head off towards the goal, the kinds of goals which I heard from you, then things happen, things arise.

[04:01]

And as they hit our face, they hit our heart, pain and confusion arise in the one who wants to sail straight ahead to freedom and peace. Confusion arises and one isn't sure, what was the point again? What was it that I wanted to do? Right now I feel I just want to punch somebody. I just want to curl up and hide. I just feel terrible and sorry for myself. I can't remember what that thing was I just wrote down on that piece of paper. What was it? Oh, yeah. And then another wave comes and hits us. So sometimes it helps to hear our intention reflected back to us.

[05:21]

Now when I came in here I offered incense to the Buddha and the Bodhisattvas and we all bowed and then we chanted about the Buddha's and Bodhisattva's help and when bowing I thought it's kind of nice to bow to Buddha as though Buddha were somebody else. Kind of like, oh hi Buddha, sweet Buddha, I love Buddha, my friend Buddha, my pal, my boss, my ancestor. Kind of like, you're over there, I'm over here, and what a nice relationship we have. Here I am bowing to you like I'm supposed to. And look at all these other people, it's so nice. But then another part of me says, well you know, that's not really Zen.

[07:11]

Zen is to bow to Buddha without indulging in this thing about Buddha being over there. How do we bow? dearly bow, sweetly, kindly, reverently bow to Buddha and cut through that distinction between this one who's bowing and the one who's bowed to. It doesn't mean that we switch to the other side and say, I'm the same as Buddha. Without identifying with Buddha, and without having a relationship with Buddha where Buddha is separate from us. This is certainly what Buddha wants, us to realize unity, which is intimacy,

[08:19]

which is not that we're separate from or the same and identified with Buddha. So Wang Bo teaches, says to us, hey you better be watch out, you better watch out, don't be drag slurpers. Drag slurpers means reach over there and get Buddha, you know. Get Buddha's teaching from the ancestors. the wonderful Buddha's teaching, pick it up and drink it. And even your own intentions, your own wonderful vows, even to reach over there and get them, it's the same thing. Because your vows are Buddhist vows. I feel perfectly a Buddha has your vows. Buddhas in the past had vows just like yours. Buddhas in the past sat in sesshin with the same focuses that you have

[09:24]

But Wang Bo says, don't turn your own intention into dregs and drink them. How do you relate to your own intention without making it separate from yourself? and without forgetting about it? How do you remember it without dragging it back in? How do you remember your own intention without importing it to yourself? Wang Bo is consistently saying the same thing to us over and over.

[10:30]

Give up the distinction, the discrimination between ordinary and holy. Give it up. Give up the separation between yourself and Buddha. Now this is the loftiest thing. The loftiest thing is to give up the distinction between lowly and lofty. So I think

[11:43]

What I want to do now is go down into the sewer of distinctions. In some sense the sewer of distinction can be found in the Buddha's teaching because The Buddhist teaching is the place where Buddhists are most likely to get into discrimination. So the Four Noble Truths, see the Four Noble Truths, this is big time distinction, heavy duty distinction. Samsara and Nirvana, big distinction. Eightfold Noble Path.

[12:48]

Big distinctions. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. So can these be brought up, these distinctions, without falling into these distinctions? So as I mentioned before, People often wonder, where are the Four Noble Truths taught in Zen? In all of Zen literature, there's very little mention of the Four Noble Truths. In the thousands of pages of Dogen Zenji's recorded sayings and writings, there's about one and a half pages on the Four Noble Truths. And there's about ten pages or less on the Eightfold Path. My guess about why the Zen teachers talk so little about these teachings, these fundamental teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha, who is their Buddha, is because people get so dualistic about these teachings.

[14:04]

Maybe in Zen monasteries in China, in Japan, in Korea, on the days off when the monks sort of gather under some waterfall when no one else is around, they secretly discuss the Four Noble Truths. And they actually talk about samsara and nirvana in the Eightfold Path and never tell their teacher that they did it. Maybe some go and confess and the teacher says, I hear you and I will never let anyone know that you've done this. There are steps and stages up the great mountain. How can you not fall into them?

[15:25]

Well, one way to say, well, I'm not going to climb the mountain. That's one way. Just avoid the whole thing. How could you climb it without getting into steps and stages? Hey, we're halfway up. Oops, we slipped down. Now we're halfway up again. Now we're three quarters of the way up. How could you not get concerned with where you are? Especially as you get really close to the top, how could you not be concerned with where you are? and how far you've progressed. Segen Gyoshi Daisho went to Daikan Eno Daisho and said, How can I avoid falling into steps and stages? And Eno said,

[16:32]

well what have you been practicing and Sagan said I haven't even been practicing the Four Noble Truths and Eno said what stage have you fallen into and Sagan said if I haven't even been practicing the Four Noble Truths what stage could I have fallen into Okay, now, if we practice them, can we do so without falling into them? Want to see? Or maybe you should cover your ears. The fourth truth is the truth of the path which leads to

[17:35]

the end of suffering. Already that sounds dualistic. And it's the eightfold path. The eightfold path is the path which leads to the end of suffering. Five plus three, right? Two plus six, seven plus one, ten minus two, and so on. What are the two we lost when we took them away from ten? Do you know? Do you know what the one you lost when you took it away from nine was? Eightfold path.

[18:38]

Everybody know the eightfold path? Anybody not know it? Raise your hand. Ah, okay. Now I'm going to teach you this and see if you can learn this without falling into learning something. These are called, first one's called right understanding or right view. This little piggy's called right view. Next one's called right understanding. Next one's called right intention or right thinking. Next one's called right speech. Next, right action. Next, right livelihood. Then, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. Those are the eight folds of the noble path.

[19:45]

During the last seven weeks we studied three of them. The three we studied were right speech, right action, and right livelihood. These eight can be subdivided into wisdom, ethics, and concentration. The first two Right understanding and right thinking have to do with wisdom. The next three, right speech, right action, right livelihood, are about ethical conduct. The last three, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration, about concentration. I started with the middle three to lay an ethical foundation in practical life.

[21:06]

You have to have an ethical foundation in order to actually be successful at practicing concentration and wisdom. The usual order is lay the ethical foundation, then develop concentration, and then take that concentration and turn it on right view and right thinking. You have to have a little bit of right view in order to practice ethics and concentration. But the actual culmination of wisdom requires concentration and concentration of the proper kind. The kind that leads to wisdom is based on ethics. So during this session I'm not going to be talking too much about those first three, those middle three.

[22:12]

right speech, right action, and right livelihood. I'm going to talk about, start with right effort, mindfulness and concentration. Because I think that's good. And then, if we can do that, we'll in the end turn the concentration onto the first two aspects of the path, the wisdom aspect. The intentions which you have expressed in which can be practiced here during this session will be supported by these three practices of concentration, which will help you concentrate on your intention, help you stay focused on your focus.

[23:20]

these three right effort right mindfulness and right concentration sometimes one analogy in the scriptures is they're like three girls who go to a park to play and they go to the park and they see a flowering tree and they want to pick the flowers from the tree but the flowers are too high to reach So one girl says, you can use my back. So she bends over, and the tallest girl stands on her back. But just as she's about to stand there, she thinks, actually, I feel unstable. And if I reach for the flower, I might fall over. So then the other girl says, you can use my shoulder to stabilize yourself. So the tallest girl stands in the back of one of the girls and puts her hand on the shoulder of the other girl and reaches up and gets the flower.

[24:28]

So in this analogy, right effort is the one who offers her back to stand on. Right concentration is the tallest girl who reaches and gets the flower. And right mindfulness is the one who steadies and stabilizes the concentration. The three working together are the practice of concentration. But again, don't slurp the dregs. When you hear this stuff, okay, here comes right effort, all right? Right effort. There's two main ways that I've worked with right effort.

[25:37]

One way is the oldest way, the way that the Buddha taught. And the other way is, not strictly speaking called right effort, but which is called the perfection of effort, which is the way that is presented on the bodhisattva path. So in the early teachings of Buddha, he taught right effort as part of the Eightfold Path. And in later teachings, the perfection of effort was taught as one of the six perfections. So first the Buddha taught right effort in this way of right effort in four aspects. And I must confess, I always felt uncomfortable with this teaching of the four aspects, partly because it was so simple and partly because it seemed so pushy or dualistic.

[26:41]

Anyway, the four aspects of right effort are basically to stop the arising of defilement and mental negativities. To stop the arising of unwholesome, unskillful states of body and mind. That's the first aspect of right effort. Again, I don't like that. Stopping the arising. But anyway, it's a negative thing in my part. Next is to abandon those unwholesome states of mind which have arisen. So first is to prevent the arising of unskillful and wholesome states.

[27:45]

Next is, after they've arisen, to abandon them. The third one is to encourage and arouse wholesome states, skillful states. skillful factors of mind and body. And the next is to, once these wholesome, skillful states have arisen, to support them and continue them. So these are the four aspects of right effort. Is that clear? So the intentions that I hear from you all are very skillful intentions or intentions and focuses on skill. Everybody stated a skill that they wanted to focus on. But as you're sitting here,

[28:48]

experiencing moment by moment, various negative, unwholesome, unskillful responses can arise with your experience, which can pretty much obliterate the skill you want to develop. So when you see something or hear something or smell something or taste something or feel something with your body, and of course feeling something with your body is a big one during You're feeling things in your knees, in your hips, in your lower back, middle back, upper back, neck, head, arms, feet, other places too.

[30:06]

Oh, seat, the seating area. You're feeling things there, right? Sensations are occurring. then in response to those sensations, then there can be responses to those sensations. And the responses to those sensations basically can be wisdom and compassion, right? But they also can be greed, hate, and delusions. Then also, of course, there's mental arisings. Various thoughts can arise in your mind. And you can have even sort of like a thought like green, yellow, Tuesday, session, you know, Patty, Jim, John, even things like that, which themselves are just concepts.

[31:24]

Also right, wrong, late on time, good, bad. These words can arise in your mind. The word good is not a defilement, it's just a word. Right? But you can have a response to the word good or bad. And the response to the word good or bad can be wisdom and compassion, or it can be greed, hate, or delusions. Is that okay? Does that make sense to everybody so far? No? What doesn't make sense? You don't understand what? Oh, you don't understand what a compassionate response is? Okay. Well, many people said what they wanted their response to be. So actually someone asked me what one person's intention was to keep her eyes open, to keep her hands together in the mudra, and to be present.

[32:30]

That was one person's focus. And the person said, but I wonder about the relationship between presence and compassion. And I said, well, for me, what I mean by presence is compassion and wisdom. That's what I mean by presence. When I say be present, that's what I mean. Present means you feel you're open to the suffering that's at hand. You're open to it. you wish that the suffering would be released, that the people would be released from suffering, and you are completely with what's happening. You're exactly with the suffering that's arising, and although you wish that the suffering would be released,

[33:38]

alleviated and that beings would be free of it, you are also completely with what's happening. You're not holding yourself back a little bit from the suffering. The being with what's happening, and not even like you with it, but the fact of just what's happening, is the wisdom part of presence. the appreciation of how wonderful it would be for beings to be free of it is the compassion aspect of being with it. So it's possible to have compassion without wisdom. You could sense suffering in yourself and others sincerely wish that they would be free, really not feel okay about their suffering and really want it to be liberated, but still not be settled with the situation, still be so nervous, worried, agitated, impatient, angry, and so on, while you simultaneously feel compassion.

[34:56]

But it is also possible to be present, so completely present, that you're totally with beings, totally dedicated to their freedom and willing to work for it, and also not be the tiniest bit any other place than there in the world with them. Not the tiniest bit someplace else. No duality. And part of the problem of this Eightfold, of the Four Noble Truths is to think that you would prefer, that you would prefer, that you would prefer liberation over bondage. That's part of the problem. The Buddha who works effectively for liberating beings from bondage is the one who does not prefer liberation over bondage.

[36:04]

The world of bondage is the life of Buddha. To look at the world of bondage and wish that beings would be free of it and separate yourself from it. That's compassion, but it's not Buddha. Buddha is completely non-preferentially in the world of bondage with all beings, hoping that they'll be free without preferring their freedom to their bondage. Are you really frowning? Confusion. So greed, hatred, and confusion respond.

[37:17]

You hear something and greed, hate, and confusion can arise. So, particularly when we're focusing on concentration, the Buddha talked about five hindrances, and they are five things that arise in relationship to the greed, hate, and delusion that come up when something happens. An association with hatred is ill will. An association with greed is And then in association with confusion is actually a whole mess of things. One is dullness and sleepiness. It's kind of a pair of two aspects, dullness and sleepiness. Another one is agitation and worry. And the next one is doubt. Actually, these three, which two of them have two aspects, these arise in relationship to confusion or delusion when something happens.

[38:28]

Now, the teaching the Buddha gave, which I I never liked the way they put it. They said that the teaching that they give about what to do with these things that arise, these five hindrances, which are really seven, the thing to do that they recommend is called restraint of the senses. But I always thought, well, you can't restrain the senses. But what it means is restraining your emotional, your mental response to the senses. And the mental response to the senses are ill will, I don't like this pain. which usually people don't like the pain or a moment of comfort liking it or what often happens too sometimes is people are in pain for example in a meditation retreat in pain and so they start thinking of pleasant things like some people you know

[39:58]

They actually just sit right down and right away, as soon as the period, as soon as the session starts, they start thinking of sex and vividly entertaining themselves with thoughts about sex. And then the, not even just thoughts about it, not just images of it, but then actually getting into the lust for it. They prefer that over being angry about the pain. And some people are quite successful at that and actually have no pain during sesshin because they work so hard on this other aspect. But being angry about the pain you feel or carrying yourself into images

[41:04]

that will create pleasant sensations and then reacting to those with lust. Those are both unskillful responses to your sensations. You could also think about being famous or making a lot of money or getting promoted some Zen students actually sit and think about getting promoted in the monastery. Like, you know, from being just a regular member of the digging crew to being manager of the diggers, or being a regular vegetable cutter to being promoted to assistant head cook, and then maybe from being assistant head cook to head cook, and then maybe to be the treasurer, and then maybe to be the director, and then... And then while thinking about those things, which is a perfectly fine thing to think about, they actually kind of like desire, they actually desire those things.

[42:20]

All this based on just sitting there, you know, having various experiences, you can get it up into those realms. Are you confused again? Now you're not confused? Huh? You okay? Well, if you're okay, smile. So restraining the senses means you're actually, it sounds like you're being told to restrain that ill will that comes up around your pain. The experience of pain, because of whatever reason, like whatever reason the pain is, like this experience is painful, and then the I don't like it, you're supposed to restrain the I don't like it. And then some thought of pleasure, some pleasant experience comes up, that's okay. You're supposed to restrain the lust or attachment to that pleasant experience.

[43:29]

Then various thoughts occur in your mind, like that you're a jerk, or the person next to you is a jerk, The thought occurs in your mind, that's okay. The thought jerk is not an unwholesome thought. It's just a word, you know, jerk. J-E-R-K, right? Just a word. No, that's not an unwholesome thing. That's just a word. It's the I don't like this jerk, which is me or my neighbor. The dislike of the jerk, that's the thing which hinders or obstructs your path. of concentration on the wonderful intentions you have to be happy, awake, and so on. This is obstructing wisdom and compassion, magically obstructs it. I don't like the pain. I don't like the jerk. The jerk's bad. I'm a bad jerk.

[44:31]

I hate myself. I hate myself for hating myself. And so on. and I hate this person for making me hate them," and so on. This is ill will. You're supposed to restrain that ill will. And again, with the lust. And this is like before it arises, right? The sensation happens. That's why something happens, like a pain happens, painful physical sensation or a painful, pleasurable physical sensation, or a painful thought or a pleasant thought. These things happen. These are sensory events. before the negativity even arises, you're supposed to restrain it before it arises.

[45:38]

And the way you restrain it is basically you just stay with the sensation before there's even an opportunity for these ill will and sensual desire to arise. But in a way, you know, that's why I don't like the word restraint because you're not restraining anything because nothing's happened yet. That's why I like, in some sense, the Zen teaching better of the teaching of make your mind like a wall. It's more positive. But what Bodhidharma means when he says, make your mind like a wall, is he means, he says, when an object arises, don't activate your mind around the object.

[46:39]

When a pain arises, or a pleasure arises, or a neutral sensation arises, just deal with it as it's given. just pain. Restraining the senses means just stay right there with that, like you would if you were a wall. The event arises and the ability to respond to it, to do something with it, to get active with it, You don't do that. You just go really stupid, like, oh, pain. Oh, pain. Oh, pain. Not even oh. Pain. Pain. Pain. And then, of course, after a while, enough already. Now, I've been doing this practice for quite a while, and still it doesn't make the pain go away.

[47:50]

Where's the payoff? No, none of that. None of that. None of that. Well, is this going to go on forever? No, none of that. How long is this going to happen? None of that. When will the bell ring? None of that. I can't stand this. None of that. I don't like this. I hate this. Just for physical pain. Then for mental pain, which is trickier. Jerk. Stupid jerk. Just stupid jerk. That's it. No deals, no strategies, no even way of dealing with it. Just like, duh, duh, duh. Pain, pain, pain. You can't even remember that it happened before.

[48:53]

Pain, pain, pain. No adaptation to it. Pain, pain, pain. Pleasure, pain, pleasure, pain. Neutral sensation. In a neutral sense, people tend not to sleep so much when it's going pain, pain, pain, or pleasure, pleasure, pleasure. They don't tend to sleep so much for those, except if pain, sleep would be pleasure, sleep, pleasure, sleep, pleasure. When you're sleeping and you're having a pleasant dream in the meditation hall, you don't go to sleep usually for your dream. In other words, you don't wake up, you stay with it. But when the sensation is neutral, that's when the drowsiness comes. Neutral, confused delusion. It's not that interesting. So, I got better things to do.

[49:55]

See you later. Like for example, I could, you know, nothing much is happening. I can always worry. That'll make it more interesting. So there's worry. And you can get agitated, be nervous, be restless. That'll make it more interesting. And then you get into pain. That'll keep you awake and jazz things up a little bit. Then the delusion won't be so predominant. You can turn over into the negativity and the pain of your delusion by agitation and worry. And doubt also. Doubt the whole project here. Now, you stated your intentions, and I didn't hear any doubt in those statements.

[51:00]

But, you know... if you have those wonderful intentions that you have, and then moment after moment a kind of neutral, confused experience arising, a little doubt makes it a little dicier, more interesting. I don't know if I really want to commit to this thing. If it's pain, we know how to entertain ourselves, get angry, hate it. If it's pleasure, attach to it. And if it's neutral, when the pain, the ill will, the ill will and the lust don't find much to hold on to there, well, then we got drowsiness, dullness, agitation, worry and doubt to entertain ourselves.

[52:06]

To show that we actually have some power in the situation. We don't have to just sit here and experience what's happening. We can do something. Sure you can. Even if there's no pain or pleasure, you can create various kinds of obstructions. So you don't need intense pain to create these obstructions. You don't need intense pleasure. You can do it. And if you've got intense pain or pleasure, then there too it'll be easy to respond. So these are all the responses, and what the right effort is The basis for concentration is to stay close to the bone of what's happening. To stay close to the bone of what's happening. To deal with sensory experience as it's given. And to stay with the gift. And not activate your mind around it.

[53:15]

Now Bodhidharma says not to activate the mind around objects but when they seem to be external and then internally no coughing or sighing. But I think what it really means is like no scoffing or sighing. No kind of like, what a lousy sensation that was. Or sighing kind of like, oh that was a nice one. That was a sweet sensation. Oh, how nice. Oh, yeah. That was a sweet one. Now, that doesn't sound so bad, does it? Kind of appreciative. Oh, what a nice experience. Thank you, Buddha. That doesn't sound so bad, does it? Well, but it's the partner of, this is a lousy life. I don't like this one. Give me another one. It's a little bit too much. Bodhidharma is actually saying, for the sake of all beings, put aside this sweet thing of sighing and scoffing at your experience.

[54:25]

Just get to the place where you let what's happening be just that. That will prevent the arising of negative, unskillful states of mind. They won't come up in the first place. Now the warning is, if we do not do this, if we're careless in the midst of sensation, you know, good old sensation, right? good old senses, we got the senses, they're working, it's happening. It's happening. To be careless in the situation of being a living creature who has sensation, these unskillful states will come up. They won't not come up, they will come up.

[55:31]

They are a potential that we have available to us and they're dying to exercise themselves. All you gotta do is just relax a little too much and not care about the immense power of these unskillful habits and they will manifest. Now I don't like, again, the feeling of pushing them away. I like more the way of just sticking to what's happening. Not sticking to it, but staying right there with what's happening. That's sufficient. If you're pushing them away, you're really moved on to the next one. where they've already arisen, and now what do you do that they've arisen?

[56:40]

If we can practice this first one, we won't even have to deal with them ever. They won't even happen. When I thought about talking about right effort, I thought, well, I wouldn't be able to do all four today, but I thought I'd at least be able to do two. But I've only been able to do one, which is the restraint of the senses, or actually the prevention of the arising of these unwholesome states. I want to say I haven't even finished that either, but... And I feel kind of sorry that you have to spend the rest of the day with whatever negative states might slip by So since I haven't yet told you, in case you don't already know, how to take care of the negative, unskillful states when they arise, since you don't know what to do with them, I would suggest you just do the practice of the first one, and you won't have to deal with them anyway.

[57:54]

So because you don't know how to handle them, you've got to be strict about the first one, and then you won't have to handle it. So do you understand how to do this? Something happens and that's it. It's like you do not indulge in your tremendous ability to react to what's happening. You watch things come up and that's it. This huge potential of reactions. You do not indulge in them. Your mind is like a wall and then you enter the way. And wisdom and compassion is right there.

[59:00]

Because when these unskillful states don't arise, wisdom and compassion is unhindered, unfettered. Just in my own mind now, I slipped. I thought, oh, today we covered one fourth of right effort. But I don't want to spend four days on this. So the thought, I covered one fourth, that's just a thought.

[60:10]

That's just something that happened. And the calculation, well, that would take four days then if I go at this rate. That's no problem either, actually. But then I don't want to spend four days on this. But I got the joke and just set it aside. Silly boy. If it takes four days, it takes four days. And we'll suffer through four days of right effort. Who knows? It may take six. I don't know. The situation is not under control. The Dharma is out of control. I vow to enter it. So I still don't like that language of endeavor to restrain the senses.

[61:30]

I don't like it. It's really endeavor to let the senses fully express themselves and be satisfied with the magnificent world of sensory life. and just let it settle with a raised hand. Yes? Yeah? They're not lurking somewhere? As a matter of fact, they are lurking somewhere. They're lurking... They tend to lurk around your ears They're like, you know, they're tiny little things. Thousands of them can hang out in the little folds of your ears.

[62:30]

They're just sitting there lurking, you know, waiting to take over. Like, when am I going to get my day, you know? Give me at least one period where I can totally wail away at my thing. They are lurking. They are potentials. In our mind, we have gone through these things before. We have enacted these scenarios of these unwholesome, unskillful states. They have lived before. And they have strength of their past life, of their habit strength. And they're waiting for their chance to be inflated into full technicolor. And I'm going to call it Dolby Stereo. They are. They are, you know, they're in our sort of unconscious reserve of potential stories. We have them always available.

[63:32]

They're always right around our ear waiting for us to, like, indulge them. They are lurking. Yes? Did you want some rebuttal? You're not settled with their lurking? What's the problem with their lurking? He says they exist. No, I didn't say they exist. They're lurking. That's why I say they're dying to express themselves because if they don't express themselves, they won't live. Say they lose their life, you know. It's like they lose their life if they don't get to be expressed. And in fact, they do get weaker if they don't get reused. If you don't bring them out to play and exercise themselves, they're going to get weaker. The fact that they were ever used keeps them going for a long time, but they can get stronger by exercise programs, and we're the place to exercise.

[64:43]

So lurking, they don't exist. That's why it's all magic. All these obstructions are really magical, magical creations which can obstruct our intention. So all of you have the right intention. The question is, while you're sitting here, is anything coming up which obscures or distracts or in any way undermines these wonderful intentions which you have? And these are called unskillful, unproductive, interfering defilements. And whenever anything happens, whenever you have any kind of sensory experience, any kind of mental thought, you can always Get angry about it or attach to it. You can always get into lazy about it, sleep about it, worry about it, doubt about it.

[65:47]

You can always do these things. These are always available. That's their lurkingness. They're always flying around you. They're always perched on top of the wall, waiting to respond. Like yesterday when we had that bird in the room, those birds flying around. Everybody, I don't know everybody, but a lot of people were experiencing those birds. We were sharing the experience of the birds. And I think we get confused. Many of us thought, what should we do? Many of us thought, well, we should help the birds. But then many of us thought, well, how can you help the birds? They won't be helped. They won't go out the door. What can we do? If anybody had an idea, they would be welcome to say so, but basically we were in the room with the birds, experiencing the sound and the sight of the birds and the droppings of the birds. But our minds, how did your mind, did you notice how your mind was working?

[66:55]

What was it doing? Was there a reactiveness there, you know? Was there a tension? Was there a worry? Or was there just experiencing moment by moment the birds, the flying, the concern for their welfare without any of these unskillful responses? Or were there these unskillful responses? Were they there? Did they help? Or did just being with the birds, just flat out, you and the birds, was that actually sufficient to deal with the situation? What I thought was, they need to come down lower, you know, because they can't get out the places they're trying to get out. They kept looking for, they used to come in through the holes up there. In the old days, there was holes there that they used to come in. So one of the places they get out is through the holes in barns, right?

[67:59]

These are barn swallows. But they came in through the big door in the barn. But I think my theory is that they didn't want to come back down because there's people down here. When they came in, They just came in. But they didn't want to come down because there were people here. So when we left, they felt comfortable and came down and went out the doors. I saw them come down, but they'd come down and they tried the windows. The windows didn't work. They had to come lower. So how can we get them to come lower? Well, we left. And they came lower and they got out. Pardon? A stick? Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, they had to figure it out, right? We couldn't get them to understand. They had to do these experiments over and over, but all that time we could have felt many things. We could have felt many things in our response to them.

[69:00]

And some of those things we could have felt would have been wisdom and compassion. caring for the birds, our hearts stirred for the birds' welfare, and being with what's happening until the time comes when we might be able to do something to help besides just being what's happening and caring about the bird. But many other things we could feel would not have been helpful to the bird or to us. Did you feel some of those other things? I noticed my hands got kind of tense. it's hard to figure out how to set beings free. And so when the chance comes to open the door at the right time, it's good if we're there and awake, but sometimes we tire ourselves out and miss our chance.

[70:12]

Intention.

[70:57]

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