Readiness and vigilance and... What's the number of words you used? Alertness. Alertness. Sensory awareness. Sensory awareness. Like something like out into your fingertips or something you said. Like to the ends of... Endings. Feeling yourself to the end of your nerve endings. And I said, no, that's not anxiety. That's how to be yourself. And then when you're left that way, you feel the anxiety more. Like you're really ready. You're aware all around you. You feel these people back behind you. You know? You're vigilant. You're alert. That's the practice of being yourself. That's what that practice of being yourself is like. And then you feel the anxiety. That's not the anxiety. Like you feel like somebody might come up and touch your back. You might. And that might be just fine. Thank you. So... The posture is an example of a ritual to inhabit your body in a way that you can feel yourself and feel what it's like to be more and more yourself.

[01:13]

And then somebody comes around and makes a suggestion to your posture and says, I feel, this is not true necessarily, but I feel like you'd be more yourself if you'd sit like this. Now you check it out. And sometimes people's backs will not let me do this. They say, the back says, no, I'm not going to, the spine will not move deeper into the body. And I let it go at that. It's almost like it's not the person. It's almost like there's a muscular habit there that they will not let the spine move into the body. Okay, fine. And sometimes if a person sits that way for like a seven-day retreat, At the beginning, I go, knock, knock. Could I come in? The answer is, no, no. Go away. I've got enough problems. Don't ask that of me, too. Let me get through the day. Fine, fine. Just checking. Next day, knock, knock. Nope. Next day, knock, knock.

[02:14]

Well, maybe. Next day, knock, knock. Okay. But see, what's happening is they're sitting there and they're living with the consequences of... of not opening up to their experience. But they're not running away, they're staying in the room, they're slowed down, they're in that room, and they're feeling what it's like to not inhabit the body, and they feel the pain of that. And that's physical pain. And they feel the pain, they feel the pain, and sitting there and keeping feeling it, they soften up. Sometimes by the end of the week, I touch the back and suddenly the spine moves. My finger touches and the spine just goes into the body. The spine says, okay, this is not going to be any worse. It just goes right in. And then the person, you know, then all that pain drops away, you know, they're holding against it. Then they get to the new pain, the pain of anxiety comes, which they thought they couldn't handle some number of years ago, so they went like this.

[03:15]

So the trade-off is, at a certain point in our development, the trade-off was, okay, you can express yourself, but if you do, there's going to be some pain and some anxiety in the expression. And we say, now if I express myself less fully, will there be less anxiety and less pain? The answer is temporarily, yes. So we cut back. And we cut back and we cut back. And sometimes our own parents say that, you know, expressing ourselves. Now if I express myself less, Mom, will you, you know, will you stop looking at me like that? And the answer is yes. So you back off. We make these deals. And after a while they become institutionalized in our body. So the practice is to come back out and re-inhabit this person. It's a long, strenuous process. Okay, now, about meeting.

[04:19]

This is what you do with yourself when you're sitting and walking. This is your own work with yourself throughout the day. But it also is something you can do. This is like something that can be done in relationship to others. Or in relationship to the unknown. I shouldn't say unknown. The non-being. And in Zen we have rituals for like inhabiting and being yourself with yourself. And we have rituals for meeting another. Formal rituals for both of those things. And informal rituals... for doing those things too. And both of these are rituals for enacting our basic human situation.

[05:27]

The basic human situation of being yourself in terms of your self-expression and then the basic human situation of being yourself in a relationship and expressing yourself to another. I have a picture here of a little boy who happens to be me. You can look at it later if you can see what you think is going on with this little boy. Anybody who wants a window open near them, open it. I propose that each of us have a mudra.

[06:39]

A mudra means a circle or a ring. It also means a seal. Each of us has a mudra, our enlightened mudra, our enlightened ring or circle. And we want to close that circle and finish that circle. It's also that we have a mudra of ourself and we want to complete that circle and we complete that ring. We're driven to do that. As I say, we made some kind of deals in the past to not express ourselves, so the ring has been broken. And now we're in the process of yearning to complete the ring. In Zen, the transmission of the enlightened spirit is sometimes spoken of as face-to-face transmission.

[07:42]

There's something about a face that's important in transmitting enlightenment. That's because there's something about a self that's important in transmitting enlightenment. And selves are very closely related to faces. The funny thing about our face is that our face we can't see. But other people see our face and we can see their face when they're looking at our face. So if their face is smiling at our face, that means that there's something maybe nice about our face. That the world is smiling upon what we can't see. And the face that is here is an expression of everything that we are. It's like the focal point where people look. They look at our face partly to check out our whole body. Of course, particularly they look in our eyes to check out our whole being.

[08:50]

And we look in theirs to check out their whole being and to see if their face, what they are, approves of and appreciates what we are. And they're looking at our face as representative of our whole being. Now sometimes we look at other parts of our body and appreciate that too. But our shoulder can't see how their face is looking and approving our shoulder. So our shoulder doesn't exactly get the transmission from that person. That person's face has to be brought around in front of our face and look at our face. Somebody told me recently that I told somebody years ago, somebody asked me, who are you? And I said, I don't know if I said this, but they said that I said, I'm a heart in search of a face. A heart is looking for a face that will look back at our face and understand us, which means that we'll understand a face that understands our face.

[10:05]

All faces are looking at us, actually, and telling us who we are, but we don't get it yet. What we want to do is see a face that will, you know, show us what we're trying to learn, which will complete our circle. Approval, does that what you mean? Approval is part of it, but in particular, the type of approval we're yearning for is that the approval would be the face that looks at us and says, yes, not only is that face is your face, you have your actual face on. You have just presented your real face. It's not that I like your face or don't like your face. It's that you have just presented your inhabited face.

[11:07]

What you want to see is a face that looks back at you and tells you, this is your face. It's approval of you as such, rather than as you relative to something else you could be. It's approval of you being completely yourself. It's saying, you have expressed yourself completely. If you look out and get a reflection of yourself not expressing yourself fully, that's not what you're looking for. That won't count. If you tell someone a lie and they reflect back, okay, well, it's not going to do you much good. If they say you're telling a lie, that's somewhat helpful.

[12:15]

But that's not really their job to go around telling you that. In fact, you'll notice you can tell people lots of lies and all the lies you tell them, basically what you give back is they don't understand who you are. And of course they don't because you didn't tell them. And you know you didn't. Maybe you know they didn't. But when you tell the truth, now there's a chance that they could see you. But when you tell the truth, you're at risk. Because if they don't like this, they don't like you. If you tell a lie, you're not at risk. Because if they don't like that, no problem. Also, if they do like that, no problem. So there's actually a sixth fear, and that's the fear of being loved. So the fear of losing your reputation is closely related to the fear of losing people's love. But there's just another fear which in a sense I want to emphasize, but really is included in the other one, and that's fear of being loved. Because when you're loved, you might lose your mind.

[13:18]

Do you understand? You don't? Your usual state of being, your usual state of the way you are, you might lose control of it if you really felt loved. really feeling loved, people often start crying. And not even crying in a way that they would ordinarily let themselves cry. But because they're being loved, partly it's just so moving that they're loved, plus it's also moving that they can actually cry whatever way they want to now. They can cry in all these ways that they didn't think they'd be allowed to. So all control is released. But it's not control, it's all dreams of control. Because when you're loved, you don't have to control anymore. Take it away, you don't have to pretend like you're in control anymore. So losing control and giving up control are related.

[14:23]

And when you feel loved, you can give up control. Because control is basically about getting loved. Isn't it? You have to be ready for love. You have to be ready for love? What do you mean, have to? Well, I think in life that there are times when we are being loved and we're afraid of it. Yes. We're not ready for it. Yes. So we don't let go. So we're not ready. Well, when you say not ready, first of all you said supposed to and you didn't address that, but that's okay. You say, do we have to be ready for love? And I wonder what you mean by have to be. What does have to be mean? Can we let it end before we're ready for it? Before we can handle it? Can we?

[15:24]

No, we can't. If we can't handle it, then we won't handle it. So ready means two things. Ready means, is it the right time? And also, another meaning of ready is, are you ready? Are you in a state of readiness? When you're ready, you can face love. But again, when you face it, when you face love, often you feel anxious. So then you evacuate the space where you're getting a love. Or you feel love and then you think of implications of the feeling you have when you're feeling love. Well, now what? You get into and now what? When you feel love, there's a whole bunch of and now what's and then you start feeling afraid. In other words, you can't stand to be there and just flat out feel loved. In other words, you can't be ready anymore. So readiness... is the state in which we receive love.

[16:25]

I mean, the state in which we realize and actualize that we are receiving love. We are receiving love constantly. It never doesn't come to us. It's coming at us from all directions all day long, but because we're not ready, we don't realize it. Now, feeling love all day long means feeling what you're feeling all day long. Again, if you close your eyes to some aspect of yourself, you'll close your eyes to the love. So, people, in this face-to-face transmission thing, part of the practice, the formal practice of doing that is you go see a face. You go meet a face. You go meet another face. You go bring your face into a room. The practice is called entering the room. Or sometimes called room entering. It's a formal Zen practice.

[17:27]

And so people enter the room. They voluntarily, in this community, they voluntarily enter the room. They say, may I enter the room? Would you put my name on the room entering list? Then the attendant goes and says, now would you like to enter the room? You want to go in there. And the name of the meeting, of these two faces meeting, is called Doksan, which means meeting alone. And there's two ways, or solitary meeting, there's two ways to understand it. One is that the two people in there are alone, nobody else is in there. But the other meeting is that there's only one person in the room. There's not somebody else in the room. This face over there, you're going to see that face because you want to see your face. You think maybe I'd like to see that face, but mostly people don't want to see that face. The reason why they want to go in there is it's not just another face to see. You see, that's the point.

[18:31]

There's a lot of nice faces in the world to see, and we go see them, right? There's Jim's face, I'd like to see it. There's Michael's face. There's Molly's face. There's Denise's face, okay? These are faces. I come to this workshop to see your faces. But if I come to this workshop to see my face, then I feel differently. We have some difficulty dealing with other faces, but the face that we're really wanting to see, the face that our heart is looking for, is our own face, which we cannot see, which we don't understand or see. When you go in that room, you're going in to see your own face. which people very much want to see. They come from miles around to see their face. They wait patiently to see their face. As they get closer to the opportunity of seeing their face, though, they start to feel anxiety and perhaps fear, but at least anxiety.

[19:36]

Fear, for example, of what might happen in the room or what might happen after being in the room. Fear of what wonderful things might happen. Fear of approval and disapproval. Fear of tremendous approval or tremendous disapproval. And it wouldn't take a lot of disapproval to be tremendous disapproval. A slight disapproval would be a major disapproval because you're bringing your face in there. So people very much want to go in there, but when they get in there, with all that enthusiasm and joy at the possibility of being in there, if they really feel how excited they are, and they often do, then as soon as they get in there, they want to get out. Even though they came quite a distance in order to have the opportunity to go in there and look at this face, which is going to reflect your face. I came to Zen Center to study with the founder of Zen Center, Suzuki Roshi. And I had the good fortune of spending quite a bit of time with him.

[20:42]

And sometimes he really was there for me. And when he was really there for me, I really wanted to get away. Oh, no, you're too busy. I'll go now. Thank you. That's enough. And he sometimes said, no, no, it's okay. I have more time. No, no, not right. Or like, you know, if you haven't seen your lover for a long time, you know, and you're traveling over the highways, you know, yearning to be back with your lover. And you get in the room and suddenly, where's the newspaper? Do I have any mail? You know, go to the answering machine. anything but face this face that you want to see because when you see this face you see your own face it's very difficult to go there and look at that face that face which loves you so much that you can see your own face and the only way you can see your face is through the other

[21:53]

So that's how we ritually and theatrically enact this meeting with non-being. Which our self needs to feel complete. Because our self is born of non-being and non-being is born of our self. What's your name again? Sam. Sam. I'll never forget. Sam. Take advantage of this time. Yes, please do. When we left to go down to Desendo, I was feeling really good. I walked outside and I just truly enjoyed the beauty and I didn't know what I was going to be anxious about. And then I got down there in Desendo and what I became anxious about was actually talking to you. I don't know what I'd say.

[23:00]

I want to take advantage of the opportunity of meeting. So I don't know what else to say about this right now. How are you feeling? Tell us about the anxiety, would you? Well, I feel a lot of my stomach and I'm turning around and you were talking of the loving and I have a tremendous appreciation for you but you're really doing what you're saying and I have a love for beauty and I experienced that with you too and what I was anxious about is part of the unknown, the only part of where he's going to go.

[24:03]

Okay, can you stop there for a second? Sure. Okay. Now, one of the ways we objectify the anxiety is to call it the unknown. It isn't even the unknown, because the unknown is still a way of conceiving of the non-being. Okay? And if the unknown, for example, if our relationship would convert the unknown into something known, and the unknown would drop away then, you realize you still feel anxious. It's not the unknown. I said it a minute ago, but I retract. It's not the unknown. The unknown is still a category we can put non-being into. The thing about non-being is that it doesn't even go in the category of the unknown. Non-being doesn't even go in the category of not being. that's why non-being can go into the category can be here it can be my face it's not my face though you're just using my face to meet this thing and if you can open up to this face as a symbol not of anything else like on the unknown but as a symbol of non-being which is your you know what gives you life

[25:21]

now judith you i said i would talk is there more about this you want to bring up since i deferred your is this am i speaking to what you you're speaking to it is there some aspect you'd like to bring out of this meeting when i was sitting down here when i was kind of trying to notice it and And what I noticed was how the inhabitant in the body seemed very much a part of it. And it seemed to me, and it seems to me right now, fairly like a kind of a giving way or making way. It's an allowing you to kind of steer it. And it's the movement of the needle. Okay. So part of meeting is an allowing spirit.

[26:26]

Okay? Another part of meeting is a recognizing spirit. All right? Usually, that's part of it. But another part of meeting is not just the recognizing or the empathizing or the acknowledging or even deferring Okay? Not just that. Not just the listening. Not just the obedience. But all that. That's part of it. But the other side. The commanding. The expressing. The asking for acknowledgement. It's recognizing somebody else, finding somebody who you think is somebody and going to that person who you think is, whose face means something to you, who's got a face that's on a person who is somebody, going to that face and looking at that face and saying that face, I recognize you and I want you to recognize me. And not only that, but I'm gonna show you something to recognize.

[27:28]

Partly just asking you for recognition, I'm expressing myself. Do you recognize my request for recognition? And there's no guarantee of what that person will say. Because what that person may say, may reflect, is that you really haven't yet asked for recognition. So I'm not going to give it to you because you haven't asked for it yet and you don't want me to recognize you yet because you haven't shown me yourself yet. So I'm not going to say okay because you didn't tell me the truth yet. But that's part of the meeting is in opening spirit and accepting and allowing... And now that you've allowed, the person can express himself. Now you can recognize it and listen to it. But that's only part of meeting. The other part is you had to go there and do that. And you had to recognize, I've gone there now and taken a position where I can listen. I've expressed myself as a listener. Martin, what's happening?

[28:33]

Anything? No? Okay. Okay. So that's part of the meeting thing, and it's very dynamic, the balance between expressing yourself and being recognized. And recognizing the other person and encouraging them and letting them express themselves and recognizing them, back and forth, back and forth. That's all that's involved in the meeting. And they have to do their part, too. If they don't do their part, if they're not expressing themselves, then you don't have much to recognize. And also, their recognition doesn't mean much if they don't express themselves. So if you get into a pattern with somebody where you're doing all the expressing and they're not expressing anything, their recognition gradually becomes less and less because they become less and less somebody. But if they express themselves too much, they can't recognize you. They're somebody, all right, because they're expressing themselves and you're recognizing it. But they're giving you no space. So how do you get in there? That's meeting. Molly?

[29:35]

What if I... I feel my anxiety. I feel in touch with my anxiety. I feel it. I carry it in my back. I feel it in my heart of vulnerability. I often try to express it in specific fears that I can make that I carry around. I'm working on So for me, I'm feeling it, I'm living with it, I can name it and express it, but it drives me to action. I want to go through it, go beyond it, I want to get it solved. Yeah, it drives you to action. Part of it is that it drives you to leave or to become afraid. put it in the future, to anticipate, to go someplace, it drives you to, and now what?

[30:41]

And what next? It drives you there. That's a natural potential of this anxiety that drives you to make it into something, to objectify, therefore to be afraid, or to get out of the room. As soon as they get in the room, they want to get out. That's natural. But take one step back to her beautiful expression of her anxiety now. She feels vulnerable. What else did you say? Vulnerable, emotional. Vulnerable, emotional, what? Full of the pain of it. Full of the pain of it, okay. Now, can you feel that and also have confidence? The answer is... You may not be able to, but you should know. Not you should know. I will tell you. And you can listen. So that all the Buddhas feel that way.

[31:44]

That this is what it's like to have a heart. Hearts are vulnerable. And competence means you settle into that feeling of vulnerability. And you say, I have a heart. I can be hurt. And I am willing to be a person who can be hurt. Not because I'm some kind of a hero exactly, although that is rather heroic, but primarily because that's where I'm at. That's what I am. That's just simply the way I am. And to have confidence means partly to open your heart to that, but also settle into that. The Buddhist word for faith, I'm sometimes trying to say it as confidence, is to sink down into it, you settle into it. So you have some like, here I am vulnerable, and yeah, I am vulnerable. And I sing the song of vulnerability with my whole heart, which makes me all the more vulnerable. Now everybody knows.

[32:46]

But I was vulnerable before, and I thought if I stuck my head in the ground, I wouldn't know. And maybe nobody else will either. And in fact, the funny thing is, if you go up to people and say, I'm not vulnerable, they often will say, oh, okay, you know, fine. Let's make the agreement. Otherwise, they're vulnerable. Let's call it off. And then everybody sort of stays away from everybody, and everybody feels fine, except actually they're scared to death. Mary Lee? What about when the whole environment in which you're functioning requires you to not be fully yourself? Or that if you are fully yourself, you become marginalized in the environment in which you've planted, which is what my situation matches, or how I feel about it. Whenever I'm really fully, what I feel is fully expressive of who I am,

[33:48]

I live and work in Silicon Valley, so the message I usually get back is that I'm really strange and funny and people laugh and amusing. Strange Mary Lee, she's funny. So this is very hard. Very hard. The more I am myself, the more sheer, raw courage that takes. And I don't know how much to be that. I don't really know. Do I do a dance with what people want me to be? Yeah, that would be a good idea. Do a dance with it. Laying low, not being too much myself. No, no, no. Dance with it. Dance. Now, if it's a lay low dance, then do the lay low dance. That's like you're laying low. This is what you're doing. That's your dance. Now, if they're not dancing with you when you're laying low, then it's not dance. This is not about submission.

[34:49]

This is not the submission dance. Submitting is not dancing because when you submit, you make yourself, you don't take risks. And submission is very much to do with self-accusation. Yeah, that's what I do more. Yeah. Well, yeah. So you do the self-accusation submission thing, and then they just don't pay any attention to you. If you try to pop up from that, they'll laugh at you, laugh you back down into submission. Yeah. Yeah, right. That's what happens. And those people who are, they're also frightened to death of actual human beings. So if you stay, if you're not human, they don't have to be human, everybody's fine. Make our money, go home and watch TV. Yeah. Got it. That's it. Okay, that's it. That's where you live? Yeah. That's a usual place to live. Most people live in places like that. So how do you practice in a place like that? There's no question. Well, what do you think? Tell me. How do you practice it? Well, so far my strategy has been mostly the laying low strategy.

[35:54]

Is that practice? Probably not. Is laying low practice? Is submission practice? Is submission expressing yourself? No. Then that's not practice. What's practice? Well, I don't know. I mean, I guess... You don't have to know. Just tell me. You express myself and watch what happens? Yep. Watch what happens within me when it happens? Yep. What else? It's a dance. That's a hint. Listen to what the other person gives Dad. See what they do. See what your dance partner does. Also, when nobody else is around, express yourself and see what your dance partner there does.

[36:58]

See how you feel about expressing yourself. Fine when I'm alone. Well, good. Do the same thing when you're with other people. Not the same thing, but express yourself in the same way. And then if they say, this is not fine, Mary Lee. You're not fine. Not fine, not fine, not fine, not fine. Then you have a response to that, like lift your eyebrows. I don't know what you're going to do, but you know you will do something. If I say, not fine, you're going to do something. You are going to do something. You're not going to not do something. Whatever I do, you will do something. If you do something, I will do something. It always is that way between us. Everything you do, every time you blink your eyes, I blink back, or I don't blink back. We're responding to each other all the time. Check it out. But don't just check out me responding to you. Check out what you do, too. Because you're doing something. When you blink, I blink. When you smile, I frown. You're doing something over there, too.

[38:00]

You know, I'm reflecting you. You're reflecting me. We're doing something together. Check it out. Be there. Check it out. If you keep checking me out, Mary Lee, I'm going to marginalize you big time. You're going to have a response to that. What is it? That's your response, huh? Yeah. Not necessarily, but you might think, well, what will marginalization be like? Okay, well then, what should you do? What's the practice when you start thinking? What will marginalization be like? What's the practice? Try it. Try what? Experience it. Experience what? Being marginalized. No. That's later. That's later. Right away now you've got this fear of marginalization. You're thinking about what marginalization is like. That's not marginalization. That's fear of marginalization. What do you do with the fear of marginalization? Well, in that case, you sit with it.

[39:00]

You go into it. You go into it. You participate with it right now. Marginalization has not been established. This guy hasn't had time to go out and get everybody to marginalize you. It's just a threat that he's made. And actually, he was really just teasing you. He was your one friend at work. And what he was saying to you is, if you keep being like this wonderful person you are, you know what they're going to do to you? You know what I'm going to do to you if you keep being this beautiful creature? I'm going to like, you know, you're going to get in trouble for this. You can't just keep being this lovely. So I say, they're going to marginalize you, Mary Lee. And you think I'm serious. But anyway, it doesn't matter. Anyway, you start thinking about this marginalization and you feel fear. What do you do with that fear? You sit with it. How do you sit with it? You're in the office. How do you sit with it? What do you mean by sit with it? Dance with that too.

[40:06]

when you think of fear you have a response get in there, work with it and as you get totally involved with your fear the fear will drop and you'll be standing there in the office just anxious again you will and you'll be anxious because you have just faced your fear so now you can face being there a woman in the office standing on the ground with her feet in shoes or whatever or maybe you take your shoes off I don't know I'm not recommending, you know, what to wear. Yeah. So if you don't understand what the practice is, the practice is you yourself all day long, how about owning up to it? Say, okay, but then as soon as you do it, you say, but now I'm anxious, right? Now what? Keep it up. Or do it even more fully. When you meet somebody, be there. And if you're somebody being there, this person is going to have a response to that.

[41:10]

If you're not there, this person will also have a response to it. If you're meeting me and you're yourself, my policy is to applaud you. To say, come on, let's have more of that. And if you come to me and you say, okay, I'm not going to be me, my thing is, what are you talking about? How can you do that? Why do that? Why pretend not to be yourself? Why to me? You know I'm not going to like that. And you might say, well, I came to do it to you because I know you'd call me on it. Like I said to somebody recently, if I see people walking around, like there's a guy with a plank, see that guy over there with a plank? See him? If I see somebody walking around with a plank, I think, hey, he doesn't want me to say anything. I run over there and say, Steve, what's the plank for? I think he's taking the plank to the shop or something. He's a carpenter.

[42:11]

Or if I see a couple of guys carrying a door from the shop over to one of the rooms, I think, oh, they're carrying a door from the shop to the room. They don't want me to say, how come you have a door? I might do that. And they might say, wow, that's a great question. Fantastic. We never thought of this. Wonderful. Thank you. Or they may say, what? But if they bring a door into my office, then I'm going to say, what's the door for? Why did you bring a door into my office? Can you imagine how I would say that if somebody came in my room, sat down with a door? What's the door for? What's the door for? So if I see people walking down the street and they're saying, don't talk to me, I don't want to say anything, don't ask me how I'm feeling, I say, well, fine, makes perfect sense.

[43:15]

But if you don't want me to talk to you, you would say, stay away. Well, why come into my room, sit down in front of me and say, I don't want to talk to you? It makes me kind of say, well, what's the door for? Why go out of your way to hide? In front of me, who's going to ask you what you're hiding for? It'd be better just to hide somewhere outside the room. Then I won't ask you, probably. Unless I really, you know, am in a creative mood. Where I would ask carpenters, what, you know, how come you have a hammer? But, like I say, if somebody comes in and says, okay, here I am, I came all the way, couldn't... the peninsula, to see you, and I'm not going to tell you who I am. I'm not going to reveal myself. Well, what did you come here for to tell me that you're not going to reveal yourself?

[44:18]

Now, most people do not want to see yourself because if they see you, then maybe you'll ask them to see them, to show themselves. So they marginalize you, which means they run away from you. But people do that with, you know, people, you know, people run away from who they want to be with. So they'll marginalize you because you're reminding them of what their life's about. That will be what they'll do to you. Maybe. Maybe they'll do that. That's a normal thing that people will do. They'll marginalize the person that reminds them of what they've abandoned. Because they've done all the trouble of abandoning you, now you're in their face reminding them of what they've abandoned. even though they're yearning to be reunited with it. It's very dynamic. This is a big job, this practice thing. Yeah, no kidding. No kidding. You've got to have a lot of courage to do it. And if marginalization is part of the price, that's not as high a price as what you really have to do, and that's face the anxiety.

[45:28]

If you can face the anxiety, marginalization is not a big problem. Marginalization is just part of the journey of a person who wakes up. Just one little mini-series in the process that you'd be marginalized for a while. And definitely you have to be open to the possibility that that will be asked of you. That's nothing compared to the work you really have to do. When you feel the fear of marginalization, courageously encounter it and it'll drop. And then the marginalization will follow or not. But the fear, you already have to deal with. Don't you understand who you are and what your job is in Silicon Valley? Yeah. Do you understand you have to save all sentient beings, including those people? Bodhisattva angels don't skip over... Because if you stop thinking about yourself, you don't evaporate.

[46:39]

Non-being is everything other than my being. And the same for each of you. There's a tremendous amount of non-being. But, you know, tremendous means... What does tremendous mean? There is an immeasurable, inconceivable quality of non-being. We don't know how big it is. It might be very tiny. All the non-being might be in some tiny little unlocated spot somewhere or nowhere. We don't know. No one can find it. But anyway, we couldn't have being without it. The kind of being we have is that we can't have being without non-being. And that non-being threatens our being, in a sense, we feel. Because it isn't us. It's the not-us. And particularly, it's the not-being part of us. It is the non-being part of us. We have non-being as part of us.

[47:44]

It's with us all the time because we give it life. But mindfulness is not non-being. Mindfulness is how you meditate on being. So you use mindfulness and awareness to be aware of. You cannot be aware of non-being. You are aware of being. And if you're willing to be aware of being, to some extent, that willingness and that fact, not willingness, the willingness and the practice of mindfulness of how you feel, of how you think, of how you're imaging, that helps you inhabit this being, the being part of you. And if you inhabit the being part of you totally, this is the very important part, if you inhabit your being totally, you're a total being. And a total being is an exact, perfect engagement with non-being.

[48:48]

And it is because of non-being that you can be a total being. And then you realize that that which you felt threatened by is actually your mother. It gives you life. And also, you in your totality give it life. One of the main images for us, one of the main images or ways we think about, when we think about non-being, the major way it comes to us, the most kind of complete image we have of it, is death. Death is not non-being. Death is one of the ways we relate to non-being. Non-being is more than death. It's death, and just death is one of the most complete ways we make it come into form for us.

[50:03]

Yes? Do we come in non-being and go back to non-being? We don't come from non-being, but we dependently co-arise with it. There wasn't non-being before us. There won't be non-being after us. There won't be non-being after us. You cannot have being before non-being. You can't have non-being before being. If you could conceive of something, if you could talk about non-being before being, you can say whatever you want about it, but basically it doesn't have any, it's got no relevance. It's not really, it's like, it's just totally a mental fabrication of a being. But non-being does come up right with being, and death comes right up with life. It's like other is born right away with self.

[51:09]

Which comes first? I see no way to make self or other posterior or anterior. They come up together. And life and death come up together, and being and non-being come up together. And again, even if you could imagine non-being before there's being, it's irrelevant. But the non-being that there, after there's been, is a charged, you could even say warm non-being, or even hot non-being, or cool non-being. But anyway, it's basically a related non-being. There's nothing in the universe that's not related to everything else, is basically the idea. And things don't come up separately, they come up together. So I'm saying this to you, but the reason why I'm saying this to you is because I think this is the best way to express myself, and I think the best way to respond to you is to express myself.

[52:18]

It's not like this is truth. This is just like the conviction of this being. And in expressing this conviction, I feel somehow rapport with non-being. More and more rapport with non-being. So mindfulness is a practice that a living being can do of how she is. And as she is mindful of how she is, she gradually becomes more and more. The virtue of mindfulness is that you're mindful of yourself and you gradually then learn that you can be more and more and more yourself. And as I say, the anxiety develops, but still you can be yourself anyway. In spite of that, you can more and more settle into yourself. And the more you're yourself, the more you understand what this non-being is about and how it actually is something that we do have quite a bit of... We are really challenged to make our peace with it.

[53:27]

just like we're challenged to make our peace with death. Death is just one of the representatives, in terms of our life, one of the representatives of non-being. One of the images or symbols of it. Okay? Yes? What are some other symbols? Other symbols? Well, sort of the partner of life, of death, death is like the big threat of of my own being in terms of like images and that I can think about is death. But relatively speaking, less so is what we call fate or destiny. That's a relative threat or challenge to my being is what we call fate. And fate means, you know, some particulars other than death that I had to deal with moment by moment.

[54:33]

Another way that non-being threatens me, this is directly related to my being itself, that how my being gets manifested and situated and endowed. Maybe I'll just stop there. Destiny or fate and death. These are ways that my actual own being gets threatened by non-being. Do you have any questions about that? Well, I... Yeah, I'm really not getting it with non-being. Maybe I should want... Should I go with this and see if I pick it up later? If... I could be afraid of death, but I don't see how you can be reckoned by what's going to happen, going to be there. You don't see how you can be threatened by death? Well, sure, but I mean, I don't... I guess what I don't understand is I just don't get non-being.

[55:43]

I understand anxiety going into fear. I understand fear going back... You just don't get non-being. How does non-being give rise to anxiety? Okay, well, unbeknownst to you, this is a good question. You do know it's a good question. Yes. And what's good about it? What's good about this question besides that you don't get it? What's good about it? Because if I understand it, then I could move on. Well, that's one... Yeah, okay. But I said, what's good about this question? And he said, I don't understand. What's good about this question is he doesn't understand something. That it's an expression of you is what's good about this question. Right?

[56:43]

Yeah. And so, he says he doesn't get non-being, okay? Okay. And he's wondering about what's anxiety got to do with it? Or how does anxiety... Yeah, okay. All right. So, you don't get non-being. That's right. You do not get it. And notice how we want to get it. All right? You want to get it. You want to get it. And there is some, maybe some feeling like if you could get non-being, then you could move on. But even before going on, talking about moving on, before that, I would like to get it. But you cannot get non-being. Non-being is what you cannot get. There's something you can't get. And when you start to realize and face the fact that there's something you can't get, and yet it's not just to be written off, there's something you can't get, and you're never going to get it,

[57:52]

You're not going to get it. You can't get it. You can't get it. As soon as you get it, it's become being. Anxiety is the way you feel, is the way an individual being feels when they're faced with and admit there's something that they can't get. Then you feel a certain way. That's anxiety. And it is painful to a living being to actually admit that there's something you cannot get. So there won't be any moving on after you get this thing. However, not getting it won't stop you from moving on either. You can move on... by accepting the feeling of what it's like to be in some rapport and eventually intimate with what you cannot get.

[58:59]

Having something in our life that we cannot get is extremely valuable. Because if you can get it, then it's going to become just another thing operative of your limited self. In other words, it's going to be part of your limited self. But to have a pal that you can't get and nobody can get is a being pal. Zen practice, you know, in its essence, is something that human beings have nothing to do with in the sense that human beings, human agency cannot touch it. Zen practice cannot be touched. It is untouchable and you can become intimate with it and be its partner. You can be partners with something that you can't mess with. However, when you're hanging around with something so immeasurable, you can't even say it's big, something so immeasurable that you can't say it's big, small, you know,

[60:13]

If it was going to be big, then it would be like... You know, in its greatness, it is utterly beyond location. And its fineness is what... In its greatness it fits into spacelessness. If you want to talk about this thing, this palliers, if you want to talk about it in terms of small, it fits into spacelessness. That's where it fits. take a small thing and then make it take the space away from a small thing it fits in there and runs around yells and screams and has a good time in spacelessness in its bigness it's utterly beyond all location that's our pal we're born of that and it's born of us you cannot get a hold of it and when you start feeling that It hurts a little bit. It hurts a little bit.

[61:19]

The human, the limited human, hurts a little bit. It's anxiety. You actually feel choked by this wonderful, unraspable pal. And it goes with you everywhere. All states of being is around you. Now, most of us, again, are going too fast to notice rapport with something we can't even notice. Are you saying that is the root of our anxiety, by not being able to get a hold of it? Is that the root of it? Root of our anxiety. Is the ungraspableness the root of the anxiety? No. What is the root? Separateness? The root is we think that what we can't get a hold of might hurt us. We think we might be destroyed by something that's all around us, that gives us life, and that we can't get a hold of.

[62:22]

We think it might overwhelm us. Because, but again, that's when it shifts into fear, is when you just imagine how it might overwhelm you as you get into its implications. Just a second. Bill's next. I mean, Michael's next. Okay. Are you using limited self in the same way you used ego last night? Yeah. Is it then our limited self that feels this anxiety? Yeah. And this threat? Yeah. Your unlimited self doesn't feel it. And with your last comment, I want to say, what's the root of the root? What's the root of the root of what? The root of this, the origin, the feeling of being overwhelmed.

[63:28]

The root of the feeling overwhelmed is to say that you're limited. If you feel limited, then you're just this. So then if suddenly I was that too, then I would be overwhelmed. Myself would be overwhelmed by also suddenly being something that I said I wasn't. So the root of the feeling of being overwhelmed or the potential of being overwhelmed is that I say that I'm this and not that. For example, you say you're not your enemies. So if they move into your house, you feel overwhelmed. It seems to me at times that... the limited self, its function is boundary-making. Yes. That's its function. And I could understand how, speaking abstractly here, but I could understand... It's not really its function. That's what it is. It's nature. It's nature. It's nature. It is to be a bounded thing, is to say, is to be individual and separate.

[64:33]

That's its nature. And I experienced... confusion at times when that begins to break down and the boundaries between myself and another when I when I perceive myself as being particularly empathic that gets that can get confusing at times although it can be It's true in a sense, when I am empathic, the self just drops away. Well, and you feel like that, but I don't think so necessarily. Well, it feels that way to me, in understanding. You have that idea, that idea across your mind that the self has dropped away, right? But it hasn't necessarily dropped away. Again, the place that the self drops away is not in backing off from it,

[65:36]

For example, if you're usually asserting yourself and then you start being empathic, in a sense you're back off of your usual routine. You may feel that your usual routine of self is suspended. So you may feel like, I'm not my usual self. So you may feel that your self is dropped away. But I don't think so. I think you just shifted into another mode. What I'm suggesting to you is that if your usual way is to assert yourself and get recognition from other people, your usual mode is to be empathic and recognize others and acknowledge others, that what we need to do is express the other side, is to balance and do the other, but not flip to the other side, but go to the other for a little while and then come back to our usual way and go to the other for a little while. And that delineates the bounded self. And by delineating the bounded self, you're ready to become actually forget about yourself and free of yourself.

[66:41]

But you have to vivify the boundaries which you have. You have to have them brought into relief so you can see exactly what you think yourself is. You need to know yourself, your bounded self, very well. And when you feel that and know that and express that, things get difficult for a while because again you feel this non-being and then you can't stand that so you veer off into the implications of what will happen to you and then you get into fear and so you do this dance for many years until you can have a moment where you're completely yourself and you feel the anxiety and you don't veer away and then you become liberated from this yourself and you understand that what you thought was your enemy is actually something knocking on the door to say, would you please wake up to what you're here for?

[67:43]

And this self is part of human nature because human beings, and I won't say that other animals can't do this, but human beings on this planet are able to know things, and by being able to know things, we had to make them external. And by making things external, we thought that they were separate from themselves, so then we thought other beings were separate from ourselves. And that's the dark side of knowing things. The dark side of knowledge is feeling separate from what we know. So there's a story, a Greek myth called Amor and Psyche, which is about this, how the psyche was in union with love, but didn't know it, and love told Psyche that if she tried to find out who he was, she would lose him. But anyway, human evolution couldn't stop, and the Psyche found out who love was.

[68:50]

In other words, the Psyche made love into an object, and then Psyche lost love. And then spiritual practices developed by which Psyches can get reunited with love. But not going backwards, but now I'm knowing what love is and having a self and yet being reunited. I can tell that story in more detail later. But anyway, Martin? You know, I woke up last night at 3 o'clock in the morning, I think, and I thought, oh, that's what you were talking about. And I remember that experience I had in the, uh, last week I was... in my house and I had this feeling inside this, I think it was anxiety. I said, what is that? What is that? What am I feeling? And I'm thinking, why is it even there? I don't even know what it was there.

[69:51]

And sometimes I have that feeling and the way I've handled this is to get through my fear. Whatever it is, I can talk in front of the group, really go interacting with people. Right. And I notice when I express myself, looking back now, it disappears completely. That feeling, you know, I feel ecstatic sometimes just by expressing myself. And then in the last room, then it comes back again. That's right. That anxiety. Right. And I think that's what you're talking about. Exactly. Exactly. So the solution is, I think, is to experience the anxiety as much as I can. It's there. I have to continue to express myself. Exactly. But there's a tendency to... The anxiety arises with self-expression, which is going on all the time. You feel the anxiety, and what's nice to do is then get into anticipating something or make an image out of it, and then become afraid, and then your self can go out and express itself by interaction with the fear, which is good.

[70:59]

Once you rise to the fear, you should definitely go out there and play with it. But temporarily, the anxiety is allayed. But as soon as you've done your good work of facing the fear and interacting with it and become fearless in that process and dropping it, then you have the fearlessness out of intimacy with fear and also the fearlessness to go back and be yourself and face this fundamental human situation, which you can distract yourself from by fear and even interacting courageously with fear. It's the anxiety, it's being the person before you run away from your anxiety is where you wake up. Buddha, when he woke up, was in anxiety, not in fear. So this is a typical process we go through. This is pretty good that he's able to do that and come back. At the beginning of

[72:00]

of some magazine, some Buddhist magazine. There's a little short story, and I wanted to find it, but I didn't have time to find it. But basically, the statement goes like this. We're human beings. We're born. We get a body. We have this equipment. We can think of things. We can listen to music. We can see sunsets. And some people are quite fortunate, you know. They can see quite a few sunsets, like here, over the ocean, you know. You get up in the morning and it's sunrise and you can go wash clothes and hang beautiful, you know, white sheets on clotheslines and watch them move in the breeze and you can say hello to children and say you love your friends and you can have lunch and then you can go to sleep at night. Why can't we just go through life like that? And just, why isn't that enough for us? And, you know, watch your P's and Q's, of course. Be a good person and you get through life. Of course, if you, like, go and rip other people's clothes off the line, you know, pretty soon your eyes will get gouged out and you won't be able to see the sunset anymore.

[73:09]

But even if you're careful and you have a nice life where you can see lots of sunsets and sunrises and have good food and good friends, still these people are the people who feel anxiety. who take good enough care to be able to not have to deal with major problems, of major feedback that you haven't been taking care of yourself, and major fear, then still, something's not exactly missing, but kind of missing, namely, non-being isn't included in your life, and you feel anxious about it. And the pain may be fairly subtle at some points, but at some points it's extremely... Subtle things are often the most difficult things to face. We turn away from them by making them into something easier to face, like a monster. So, let's see, some people who haven't spoken yet.

[74:12]

Yes? What is your name? Judy. Judy. Can you say anything about the meeting with non-being there? If you're in that anxious place, then you want to not run away, and you're able to keep coming back to that, the same thing about that rapport, that muting. Yeah. I would like to have one whole session talking about meeting non-being, okay? So maybe the next session will be about that. Okay? What I'd like to do now is in a few minutes have meditation. Let's see now, your name is Marsha. I'd kind of like to return to the boundaries and the unlimited self. And the what self? The unlimited self. Is it Bill? Michael. It was Bill originally and I changed it to Michael. Because before that it was Michael. It seems to me that our whole life is about trying to find those boundaries.

[75:18]

I mean, to define ourself. That's one of the things, it's not all about that, no. But that's a very important part of it, is to find the boundaries. And it's kind of a starting point. And that's kind of what makes us anxious. Definitely. Well, it's not the trying to find it. It's once you find it, then you feel anxious. And you already have some vague sense of what it is, even though you may not be clear. And that vague sense is enough for you to feel anxious. But when you get more clear, you'll feel more anxious. Because you'll be more clear about what you could be threatened by. If you have a vague sense of yourself, that's why in some cultures where there's a high level of collectivism and they have rituals to maintain it, they feel a little less anxious because they might get them first, right? But do you ever get to a point where you feel less anxious? You feel less anxious primarily by being less alive and less yourself and less admitting your boundaries.

[76:25]

Take a lot of drugs, you feel less anxious. I understand, I've never taken heroin, but I understand that when people are on, when they have the stuff running through the blood, they don't feel anxious, from what I understand. Anybody heard about that? No anxiety. There's various other drugs which temporarily ally anxiety or like wipe it out completely for a little while. Alcohol. Yeah, let's have some alcohol. But no, no drinking allowed here. But probably if we drank a lot of alcohol temporarily, most of us wouldn't know what we're talking about anymore. Anxiety and fear? Anyway, relax. Here, have another one. Anyway, that's one of these. These are kind of like, these ways are forbidden at Zen Center, actually. We have other ways at Zen Center called not be yourself. That's another way to be. Just, you know, don't express yourself.

[77:29]

Just stay in your seat. Be good little boys and girls. Stay in your seat. Don't say anything, you know, that would be, perhaps ruffle anybody's feathers. Keep your clothes on. You know, brush your teeth. Follow the schedule. Do your work. And maybe there won't be any anxiety. Stay in the present, then there won't be any fear. Okay? This is good. But it doesn't work. You still feel some anxious, anxiety. Because you know there's certain things you'd like to say. So rather than just sort of like know that there's certain things you'd like to say, I would encourage you to say them. And it isn't that once you say them that you don't feel any anxiety, you feel it more clearly when you do express yourself. And having a sense of yourself, you need to have a sense of yourself in order to know what is your self-expression, what you have to say. So part of it is to find yourself and then say, what does that person have to say?

[78:30]

And then let that person talk and see how that feels for that person. When you feel the anxiety and you feel the person, you are doing the work that is required in order to be this thing which you really are. which is not exactly a small self and is not exactly a big self. It is just that your small self, your small self and her small self and her small self and his small self, all these small selves are perfectly and completely endowed with the wisdom and compassion of all the Buddhas. Now, there may be other reasons to face this anxiety, but that's the one I'm interested in. That we realize our fundamentally wondrous nature, which is found in the limited person that we are, and is found all around it too.

[79:35]

Everywhere. It's all pervasive wisdom and compassion. That can be realized if you're willing to be yourself, to be compassionate enough to inhabit your body, even in the midst of anxiety. And it's difficult work. And it's especially difficult, I think, when someone is not acknowledging. It's especially difficult when someone's not acknowledging you, yes. It's also difficult when someone is acknowledging you. But maybe especially difficult for you when someone is not acknowledging you. But for other people, and you too, it's difficult when they are acknowledging. Because when they are acknowledging you, perhaps you might feel so good that they're acknowledging you that you might say, well, maybe I'll take a break on expressing myself then because now that I'm acknowledged. Or they might acknowledge you and you might like it so much that you stop acknowledging them and just sit back and be acknowledged. Come on, just have some more. And then if you stop noticing them, then you're not really yourself because part of what you are

[80:42]

is that you really do care about other people. And you really do want to acknowledge them and really do want to feel them. That's what you actually are. But when you're being acknowledged, sometimes you want to take a little break from that. When you're not being acknowledged, part of what you are is somebody that wants to be expressed. You want to express yourself, but since you're not acknowledged, you really can't express yourself very well. That's part of the meeting, which I'll get into more later. Now, I guess what I'd like to do is this. Here's my plan for the rest of the morning. That we go into the zendo now and sit for a little while. That you go be yourself in that room. Okay? And are you people ready to do that? So let's go as a group. And then after that, come back here...

[81:40]

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