I want to work together with all living beings to create a container for life, for living. container which will protect life and nurture life, but also protect life from being suffocated and And part of protecting life is also to protect life as it is constantly creating and recreating itself.

[01:19]

That's how I feel. And in the process of creation, in the process of our mind creating the world, there is violence. And I want to make a container that can hold the violence of creation, of the creative process, the sharp quality of creating phenomena so that the violence doesn't jump out of the container and go wild

[02:27]

and become destructive so that the violent processes of creation do not turn in, do not become excluded from our life and attack our life and hurt us. This morning when I got up and was washing my face, a story came to me. And this is a story, it's a very shocking story, but it came up out of me. And it means something to me, and it meant more to me this morning than it ever meant before.

[03:39]

So there's something in me which wants to share it with you. But I also want to be gentle, if I can be, when I share it with you, but it's a story that's very sharp. So I want to ask again, do you allow me to share with you a shocking story? The image that came to me was the punchline of this story. About ten years ago in Japan there was a Zen master and there are five big monasteries in Kyoto of the Rinzai school.

[04:50]

And each monastery has many temples with many masters in those temples. But each monastery complex of these five has within the big monastery, which has many temples, has one training temple where monks can gather from all over Japan to train with the leading training teachers. And the most respected, at that time, training master in the Rinzai school was at Nanzenji. And one morning they found this Zen master in his doksan room hung to death. He hung himself. And, of course, everyone was shocked. What is the Zen master saying to hang himself in his doksan room?

[05:54]

So over the years I wondered what was going on that he was driven to this place to have to hang himself. This morning it seemed like that this was an example of violence that couldn't be contained. What was being frustrated in his life that he couldn't express in the container of being a Zen master? Where he's allowed to be very aggressive, to hit his monks and scream at his monks, traditionally. What was there that he couldn't let out? That's what I felt this morning that there was some violence in his heart that being a Zen master wouldn't allow. Maybe the violence was for him to be very different from what he had ever been before.

[07:10]

Maybe it was for him to teach very sweetly and lovingly in ways that he was never allowed to show. I don't know what it was, but I felt this morning that he hung himself because he was saying, I can't hold this in anymore. Here it is. Here it is, Zen world of Japan. you're not allowing me to... you're not allowing the creative process to come through, and this is what will happen. I feel that in my life, the relationships in the Doksana room, I feel the violence can come out there.

[08:27]

As some of you know, it can. As some of you overhear. You can come out in that room, there can be violent expression, and it's okay. Violent expressions of life. But I want the expression to go out of the room and have a container in larger groups. Larger and larger groups. Not just in the one room. And that's what I'm hoping can happen in groups this size, but I don't know how.

[09:37]

In the picture of practice, which I drew on the board and now Gail has made a nice calligraphed version of it, which you can have a copy later today, I suppose. It says that after realizing the pinnacle arising with our whole body and mind, then great compassion spontaneously emerges, and great compassion expresses itself then as the bodhisattva precepts. Someone said to me that she would make the drawing a little different. She would have compassion earlier in the process. And I said, that's right. So, in other words, the Bodhisattva precepts, as soon as you receive them, you're starting to practice compassion.

[11:12]

As soon as you want to receive the precept of not killing, and not stealing, and not lying, and not misusing sexual energy, and not intoxicating yourself or others and not speaking or thinking or acting to express disrespect or slander of anything, when you don't praise yourself and put things down, when you aren't possessive of things or angry at things. This is compassion. This is training in compassion. Even when you first want to do these practices before you even act upon that desire. Wanting to do those practices is compassion, is actually the desire for beings to be free from suffering.

[12:15]

Not killing is an expression of not wanting beings to suffer. So the compassion runs throughout the whole diagram. I wanted Gail to draw the arrows around the diagram in red because the Bodhisattva precepts are the red bloodline, the red blood artery of the whole process of the Buddha way. Compassion runs throughout the whole process. So please understand in the drawing that that line that connects all those different aspects of the process, of the life of the Bodhisattva precepts is going all the way around that drawing. Now, it turns out it costs 89 cents to do a color Xerox. So we're not going to give you a color Xerox. It's a little too expensive.

[13:19]

But you can take your red pen or crayon with your, you take those chubby little hands and take ahold of your crayon and you can draw a red line around all those arrows so you understand that compassion is running through the whole process. That compassion is how you practice being upright. And compassion is how you train yourself in self-expression. And compassion is how you study creation. dependently co-created phenomena. You study it with compassion. It's with compassion that we realize wisdom. And then when the compassion which realizes wisdom is joined with wisdom, then we have great compassion. Great compassion is the compassion at the center of understanding the insubstantiality of everything.

[14:22]

Before we understand insubstantiality, we can have real living compassion, but it isn't fully realized until it lives at the center of understanding dependent core rising and insubstantiality. And then this great compassion expresses and teaches the bodhisattva precepts. And then beings can be drawn into receiving them and starting on the path of realizing them. So, as I said, you know, and as it is said, receiving the bodhisattva precepts is the gate to being upright, to sitting upright and dropping body and mind.

[15:26]

So when you sit in meditation, or when you stand in meditation, or when you walk in meditation, or you recline in meditation, as you endeavor to practice non-thinking, these bodhisattva precepts are the way you achieve a balanced state. In being upright all these precepts are realized. There's no lying about what's happening. There's no slandering what's happening. Now, in fact, as you're sitting, there might be a bird in the tree nearby or a bird in your ear saying, you have a lousy practice.

[16:31]

You're a terrible Zen student or you're a great Zen student. There might be a voice praising yourself coming in your ear. praising yourself and putting down, for example, somebody sitting next to you or somebody in some other school. Oh, we're really good. I'm really good. We're really good. And they're not good. That chirping might be there. Or you might hear disparaging, criticizing others or criticizing yourself or criticizing your practice. These sounds may be there. And they may be loud sometimes, or they may be provocative, or they may be convincing, but they don't reach the being upright. You don't grasp these stories, which means you practice the precepts.

[17:40]

You don't grasp slandering. You don't grasp praising yourself at the expense of others. The mind can generate these things, but you don't grasp them. Giving up control, giving up control, you cannot violate these precepts. But as soon as you try to control things, even a little bit, You go off balance, your practice goes off balance, the precepts are violated. The precepts are violated, you go off balance. If you're practicing being upright and you see yourself or someone else violating the precepts,

[18:52]

someone who sits before you and saying, I'm violating the precepts. I'm selling drugs. I'm being cruel to myself. I'm being cruel to others. I'm being angry. I'm slandering myself. When you see that, your mind can see, oh, this seems to be precept violation. A terrible, sad, painful, leaning, imbalance, prejudiced heart is being shown to me. How painful to see. In the face of that pain, There's a strong impulse to try to manipulate the situation, to control it into a better way.

[20:01]

I'm saying that impulse to control is okay. It's natural that that might come up. Natural means habitual. It's okay. But if I grab that impulse to control, I say, I lose my uprightness. My heart becomes prejudiced. I violate the precepts. Someone would say, well, what if you see someone about to hurt themselves? Not only do they tell you that they have a violent impulse or a harmful impulse, but they're going to act on it right now shouldn't you try to control that? Or if the impulse to control it comes up, shouldn't you grab that impulse? I would say, well, what I think is possible is that if you stay balanced with an open, unprejudiced heart, I think your hand can reach out, can reach out into the world and touch

[21:30]

the living being can touch the phenomena, can intervene without trying to control, without falling into the lie, into the slander, into the praising self at expense of others, into the intoxication into the possession, into the anger, into the disparaging the triple treasure of thinking that you can control another living being. Touching someone is not controlling them. Loving someone is not controlling them. I say that. I say you cannot control another living being, but you can touch them. And you can touch them in a way which says, I'm here, I have feelings about you, and I'm touching you.

[22:45]

I'm not trying to control you. I'm trying to contact you and let you know I'm here, and I care about you, and I'm not trying to control you. But I am trying to tell you, I'm here and I am trying to tell you I feel this way. For example, I hate it when you hurt yourself. I hate it when you hurt yourself. I hate it when you hurt yourself. But I'm not telling you that to control you. And I know that I can't. But I can talk to you. And I am. And I'm saying exactly what I'm saying. And this is really what I mean. And I don't mean anything else. And here it is. I think we're constantly intervening in the lives of all other living beings.

[23:48]

Intervening. Having an effect. And I think we don't control anything. And if... we take responsibility for our relationship with beings and give up control, I think we have an enlightening intervention. They may not get it now, it may have no effect now, but we plant a seed, a seed of love, a seed of, I care about you enough to give my very best. I will hold your hand and walk into hell with you. I will not try to stop you from going there. And I know I can't. I know you have to go. If someone's, if myself or someone else is heading for a little bit of trouble, I may feel a little bit of an impulse to try to stop myself or that person in a controlling way.

[25:34]

And sometimes in that case, I may be able to say, well, I'll just try not controlling I say, that works. But I still might say to myself, I don't want you to go that way. I don't want you to do that harmful thing. I might say that to myself. But again, not to control myself, but just to let myself know how I feel. And I might say that to someone else. If they're going to do something or I'm going to do something really bad, then I might not just say how I feel, but say, now this case, I've got to try to control In a way, I wouldn't necessarily say, and this is sort of subtle, I wouldn't necessarily say that we get in more trouble and do more damage by trying to control a small impulse, by acting on a small impulse to control.

[26:47]

I wouldn't necessarily say that does less damage than acting on and grasping a large impulse to control, a strong impulse to control. I think that both of them could be very destructive and harmful. It's just that I think the funny thing is, is that we often feel like we can sometimes let go of the small impulses to control, and we grab the strong ones. But I think they both violate the precepts, and I don't know which is worse. In some ways, the strong ones are better because we see more vividly how damaging that is. We have a chance to see that. A friend of mine works with kids in, what do you call it?

[27:50]

Anyway, what do they call them? Kids that are at risk, right? Kids who are at risk of harming themselves. Well, actually not in the home yet, in school, but kids that are on the verge of jumping into real harmful activity. And this person said to watch these kids and she looks at these kids and she can see kind of, you can kind of see, I shouldn't say you can kind of see, you do see, in other words, you think you see that they're heading towards, well, activity which will put them in prison or worse. You kind of see that. You kind of see the causes and conditions coming together for violation of laws and imprisonment. And this woman, this teacher who sees these kids this way, she went to talk to one of her friends because she also works with prisoners and actually she's in love with a man who's in prison.

[29:02]

And she said to him, you know, what about this, you know? She says, I tell these kids that I see them heading towards, you know, towards, not just towards breaking the law, but breaking the law in such a way that they're going to go to prison. And I even tell them that. And the kids even say, uh-huh, I know. They know. And they even can say, and there's nothing I can do about it, I got to go this way. So she talked to this guy in prison and she said, when you were a kid, did you see yourself heading in that direction? He said, uh-huh. And would it have helped if anybody tried to stop you? And he said, wouldn't have stopped me. He said, but if somebody would come to me and tell me,

[30:09]

that that's where I was going and that they cared about me and planted that seed of awareness. Although I still would have done the same thing, later that seed would have been useful to me. So with ourselves and others, when we're headed when we're going off course and heading for trouble, if we just tell ourselves, if we plant that seed of, I don't like it, I'm worried about you, but this is just who I am. I'm not saying that to you to try to control you because I know I can't and I know you can't. But somebody here loves you and cares about you and wishes that somehow you'll survive and learn.

[31:24]

And they go right in the same course, they get in this trouble, and if they survive, the seed can seeds germinating through that whole process, they're verifying the experiment and it can later be useful. Sometimes people turn around on a dime. As soon as you tell them that you hate it, they feel it and snap out of it. They wake up. But it's not because you control them or they control themselves. It's actually... that you demonstrated love rather than power. They saw how beautiful it was and they dropped power and entered love and woke up." So, being upright

[32:36]

If we actually are well balanced and we start to express ourselves, it's possible that this expression is full expression without the slightest bit of controlling energy, controlling impulse, or the controlling impulse is not touched at all. It's just, this is who I am today. Like, you know, this pops up, here I stand. Martin Luther just stood there. Here I stand. Here I stand. I don't know. I can't read his mind hundreds of years later. I don't know his life story very well. But I feel in that statement is the spirit of what I'm talking about. He's not saying, okay, here I am and I'm going to now control history. I'm going to change the course of religious history now

[33:41]

and create the Reformation and change the Catholic Church and start this whole new way of relating to the Christian way. I don't think that's what was going on. I think he just said, here I stand. And that transforms the world. I told you before about a piece of music, it's called Stabat Mata by Pergolisi. Young guy wrote a piece of music called Stabat Mata, which means Mother Stood. When Jesus was on the cross, what did his mother do?

[34:44]

She stood there. Did she try to control the Roman Empire? Maybe. I don't know. She might have tried. Did she succeed? No. But anyway, that's not what the piece of music is about. It doesn't say, Mothers do try sometimes, but when mothers try and when fathers try to control, they violate the precepts. When children try to control, they violate the precepts. But when mother stands, she saves her son. She shows her son, who is in great agony, what he needs to do. Mother stood and son hung. In her pain, she just stood there in her pain.

[35:48]

She didn't try to control what cannot be controlled, namely what's happening. And she saved him. and he saved her. His suffering showed her what to do, and she showed him what to do, and they both did their part. They contained the violence, the violence of creation, the violence of birth, the violence of death, How? By standing, just standing, and feeling what you're feeling, and not hating it, not being angry at it, not grabbing it, not calling it names, not praising yourself for having it, not putting others down for not having it, not intoxicating yourself with it, not lying about it, not killing it,

[37:02]

and being generous, letting it be, giving it itself. In other words, you practice the Bodhisattva precepts with what's happening and you express yourself as the Bodhisattva precepts, as what's happening. We don't kick the phenomena out of the Buddha's world. Nothing is excluded. Nothing. No matter what it is, we embrace it. There's nothing outside Buddha's Dharma. Nothing so horrible that it's outside. Therefore, nothing can cause any harm. And these feelings come up These feelings come up, I hate this, and that feeling just allowed to come up itself allows everything.

[38:16]

So I was going to tell a story. The story is about this little kid. I was a little boy and he was born and when he was a little boy he got sick, got polio, and got a lot of support. and love and he couldn't walk but then finally he could walk again and he grew up and when he was a teenager he decided that he was going to have a lot of fun and the most fun thing that he could think of was to be as bad as he could be. So he tried to be as bad as he could be. And then a big man came to him and said, you can do better than that.

[39:41]

It's easy to do this bad thing you're doing. You can be good. See if you can do that. And the boy said, okay, I'll be good. And he tried to be good. And he had a hard time being good. He had a hard time remembering to be good because he lived in a labyrinth. and kept forgetting where he was or what direction he was going. But whenever he heard stories of people being good, he always thought, oh yeah, that's it. That's the real interesting thing to do. And he kept saying, I want to be like that. And then he found out about a training program for being good. So he traveled thousands of miles and started training. at being good, training in being upright, in sitting upright. He came to train and practice and he came to be with a teacher.

[40:47]

He didn't come to be a teacher. He didn't come to teach other people how to train at being good. He came to learn how to be good rather than just sort of waiting until somehow it happened by chance. But then finally his teacher died and he got older and older and people asked him to be teacher. So he started teaching himself. And he had a lot of fun teaching and teaching something he really loved. And then one day he started to get these big surges of creative visions about how everybody could participate in this wonderful practice of being good. But when he started talking about it, people got upset.

[41:54]

He wasn't sure if they got upset because he was talking about it, but sometimes they said that that's why they got upset, the way he was talking about it. He tried to find out what it was about the way he was talking about that was upsetting them. He didn't understand, but he kept feeling the same way, like there was this strong desire to express this enthusiasm about the possibility of being good in this very vital living true way that nobody's in control of, that actually emerges from when we stop trying to control. Then he actually went and told a bunch of people a story about that story. Then he told them that they can finish the story.

[42:56]

They can say what happens after that. There's many ways to end the story. One way to end the story was he went off by himself and sat in a mountain valley where he could express himself. And the mountains didn't get upset. They jiggled a little bit now and then. But, you know, basically, it seemed like they were all right. The rivers kept coursing down the valley, but this seemed all right. It rained and the wind blew, but he felt like he was okay. And he lived happily ever after. Another way to end the story is he hung himself.

[44:00]

Because he couldn't express himself, he felt like he was, that he'd become a monster. He heard people saying he was a monster all over the country. He heard rumors of him being a monster. People came and told him, gee, you don't seem to be a monster, but that's what I heard you were. And little by little, he started to smother himself, and finally he hung himself because he felt like he was a menace. Another story is that he just kind of like, he started to pretend he was somebody else from who he was. He started to be what people like and easy for people. And he convinced himself and he became completely domesticated and everybody was happy.

[45:08]

And he was happy too. He actually signed an agreement saying that he was happy and had it notarized. And then everyone said he was really nice now. And they stopped calling him a monster. And then there's another way, several other ways to do the story, which I'd like you to tell and make come true, where he worked together with people and everybody created this environment where everybody could really be who they were and also tell each other that they hated each other in a non-manipulative, loving way. And people could tell each other that they loved each other, too, and they liked what each other did, too.

[46:14]

That was okay, too. And this wonderful thing happened that the whole world became you know, the drama of Buddha's teaching. That the entire sky turned into enlightenment. And the whole earth became a drama of imperceptible mutual assistance. And everyone understood it. And everyone became a flower and spread seeds all over the world. And there's many other ways a story can end. Or anyway, there's many other ways a story can be told and told and told. And each one of you can tell the story, and each one of you will. But I hope

[47:18]

I really hope that whatever way you tell the story, you feel that that story is included and contained in Buddha's world and that you're not outside and that you can tell the story and you can listen to the story and you can appreciate the story. and that you're completely included in the story as an integral creative element, which I think is reality. That's just a story, okay? It's just a story. Just a story. It's not true. It's just a story. So I told a story, right?

[48:20]

Some people wanted me to tell a story, right? So I did it, right? So I was a good boy, right? You want to tell a story? Okay. I want to tell a story about a reaction to a violence. Because I... In my heart, I feel like I support what I think you're saying about creation. And I think that creation has a lot of energy and chaos, but if we call it violence, it picks up certain images, because that's what we use words in that way, that also is being taken for a certain kind of behavior rather than an invitation, actually, for maybe just looking or appreciating or not.

[49:23]

I don't know what all the words are, but it feels like violence itself has features that are just too small. I feel like there is chaos and there's disorder. And how to live in the middle of chaos and disorder and to contain that or respect that is to me like a story that is not hard and invitational. So I got stuck really early on with the word violence. And with that word, I feel like it leads to hanging and strangling and suffering. Uh-huh. So, what are you saying? I don't quite understand what you're saying. I think creation isn't violent. There's chaos and disorder.

[50:25]

It looks like you don't know what's going on. Um, well, I think that there, I think there is not, I wouldn't say that there is, but I think there is a word called chaos. I agree. There's such a word. And whether there is such a thing as chaos, I don't know. But let's just say that somehow there's this chaos. We have a concern for somehow this word chaos. To me, chaos is not creation necessarily. Creation, maybe you could say, dependently co-arises with chaos. I'm not saying that creation is violence. I'm saying violence is an unavoidable element in creation. And I'm saying if you try to get rid of violence and also the images associated with violence, you try to extract them from the process of creation, what happens is you move violence outside of the container and it goes wild.

[51:30]

And I feel like you're saying... I feel like you're kind of trying to push violence away from the situation. I feel like that. That's what I feel. Okay, I don't think so. What are you doing with it? I think that how we frame what our language frames, behave our behaviors, just inform our language. How do you want to frame it? How do you want to frame the word violence? You can make a frame for it. How do you want to use it?

[52:34]

I guess I said it and I feel like it's disorder and chaos and suppressed energy that didn't happen. and a way to, was searching for a way to express itself. And I, I feel if we use creativity, or, or saw it as simply the labyrinth, as chaos and disorder, that we might actually find ways that are not harming, and I don't know what it would be for everybody, but, but you might not have to harm yourself. I just want to say that I feel that creation is not the same as chaos. The word chaos to me, I understand the word chaos as disorder. I don't see creation as disorder.

[53:50]

Creation is when something actually manifests and appears. Creation is not a disordered thing. It is a definite phenomena. Phenomena is not disorder, it is coherent. But there is chaos too. So what I'm saying is that in the process of creation of order or phenomena out of chaos, that there is violence. That's what I'm saying. And I'm saying if you don't make a place for the violence, the violence does harm. That's what I'm saying. And I'm saying that in the process of creation, as the mind imputes stories to the disordered world that is prior to our mental imputations, the actual world where things are happening, where all the causal relationships are interpenetrating each other and flowing together prior to our mental imputation, there is no creation.

[54:59]

There are no phenomena. But when the human being comes in conjunction, when the human mind meets causal possibility, phenomena arise. Prior to that, it is chaos, undisciplined disorder, infinite possibility. But our life, when it interacts with that world of possibility, things arise. which is a creation. Creation happens between us and a world where nothing has been created yet. That's how I feel. In that process, there is violence. Our mind does violence to an uncreated world. It sharply limits things so that they can be something. If we wince at violence, we miss creation. That's what I'm saying. And not only that, not only do we miss creation, but violence starts raging back at us because we've ignored it and we haven't said, thank you, violence, for helping us.

[56:12]

Violence is the sharp aspect, is the sword aspect of creation that cuts. And if you don't watch the sword in the process of creation, it can come back and hurt us. But it's very hard to look at that process of where our mind carves out, engraves itself upon causal relationships so that things arise. And if we flinch from that, if we try to take control of the process of the carving or jump away from the process of carving, the sword goes flying free and does damage. Plus, we miss... witnessing the pinnacle arising. So we lose doubly. But in a way it's good because the violence is what tells us that we should go back and look again. If it just was that we missed out on creation, maybe we wouldn't have enough motivation to go back and look at this horrific, terrifying creative process.

[57:23]

But fortunately or unfortunately, the violence is forcing me to go and look at it. And the more I can face the violence and not cringe or run away from the violence, the more I get to see the creation. The more I can face the rending, dismembering of chaos into form, the more courage I have to stay steady and witness beauty. But when I first see beauty, it's terrifying and I shrink back because it's all so violent. That's how I feel. That's my meditation practice, kind of. And it's hard for me. And I think it's hard for others, too. from what I hear.

[58:26]

Other people share this difficulty. It's hard for me too. You seem to be saying that violence is not necessarily harming. Right, it's not harming at all. Violence isn't harming at all unless you banish it. If you exile violence, Well, if a society exiles violence, then the society becomes obsessed with it. If a society can contain violence, the society becomes obsessed with love. Just like a mother of a little boy. What do they do? They pick up those swords and start running around. Nobody teaches them to like swords. They find those swords everywhere. Little sticks.

[59:27]

And nobody tells the little girls to pay attention to them when they pick up those swords and start running around. It's quite natural. But if the mother or father, when the little boy picks up the sword, which is his sense, he's actually tapping into part of the creative process, if she tells him, no, no, no, no swords... the little boy becomes, you know, he goes crazy. But if the mother loves him and doesn't try to control him, she teaches him that the sword is not something that you use to control people. It's a metaphor for the process that you should love, too. Your mother models loving the process rather than trying to control it. But if the parents try to control the little guy, Then they teach him, oh, control is the game. We're into controlling you. So he says, okay, we're into control. So then use the sword to control people. Then it's violence outside.

[60:33]

And that's our society. We're obsessed with violence because we don't love it. We like it or hate it, but we don't love it. Love it means embrace it. Give it space. Give it a big field, like Suzuki Roshi says. Ignoring violence is the worst. Saying it's not there is the worst. Trying to control it is next worst. The best thing is give it a field. Contain it. Give it a container. That's what I'm saying. Which means love it. Not like it, not dislike it. Love it. Attend to it. Be intimate with it. And then I think you're doing your job as an artist. An artist of life. That's what I'm saying. We often do, yeah.

[61:38]

But a violent eruption... is not necessarily harmful. Grass violently comes through the soil. It shoots right up. When we do a ceremony to sprinkle the water, One of the words we use to characterize bringing the water alive is a character, a word, a sin, which means a sharp point, like the way grass or bamboo comes up to the ground. There's a kind of violence there. Violence in some ways is speed. It has to do with speed. There's a speediness. And abruptness is an aspect of creation, that things speedily pop up. They're there, and then they weren't there, and then they're there. That's also violence. That's the violence which I think we have to make a space for.

[62:40]

And that violence is not damaging. It is just part of the process. When the baby comes out of the mother, it's sometimes characterized as a violent thing. The way the baby's head pushes through and pushes things out of the way. It's a kind of violence there. But it doesn't really, it kind of harms, but it's kind of part of the deal. And if we ignore it, we're going to have big trouble. And trying to stop it doesn't work either. So how to make room for it? How can the mother make room? And sometimes she has a hard time making room, so things get ripped, right? So violence can become anything, not just violence. Violence can become harmful when we don't contain it.

[63:44]

And so there are many examples. We are inundated with examples of violence, uncontained violence, that is causing harm. But which is causing the harm, the violence or the uncontainment? It seems to me it's a dependent co-arising, the harm. Some people bring violence and people contain it. It's not harmful at all. It's beautiful. But you try to contain it and try to push it away rather than enclose it. And I think then we have, well, we have damage. It reminds me of a quote from a European priest in our century, I can't remember his name. He said something like, After man has controlled the tides and... Tides?

[64:55]

Controlled the tides? Tides and the wind and the air, perhaps then they discover love. For the second time, they discover fire. Yeah. The power of love, I think, is so good. Right. They discover the power of love. Right. So, you know, we had this thing happening a while ago, you know, what is it, Mount St. Helena, was that it's called? Mount St. Helens, yeah. So some people, some Native Americans said, These people think that they can control the earth, you know, they can control the tides, they can control, damn the rivers, you know, blah, blah, blah. And the earth says, please, come on. Take the hint.

[65:57]

You know, lighten up. Be a little bit more respectful. Would you like, stop trying to control us, forces of nature. Work with us. Don't try to control us. Love us. So that's a violent eruption. Some people took it personally. I think Greg was next. Right. Right. You step off to get a little side track, then it seems like the violence is there.

[67:07]

It's happening. It comes out. It's something you can do. Just by focusing on violence and hating violence, you're not always going to be right on it. So you step forward. When you're a little bit off your side, Intimacy with it is how to make it not harmful. But it's hard to be intimate with anything, especially violence. It's hard to be intimate with the creative process. So, it's hard. It is. Bob? Bob? the end of the title, Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright in the Forest of God.

[68:12]

One immortal hand of I, their friend, I heard the same truth. So there's a hand that's immortal and substantial, five to four things, and there's a hand that you can say, and that I call earth. It is actually connected to the passions. And ma. Right, did he who make the lamb make the tiger? What? Right.

[69:31]

But also, the lamb he's talking about is Christ. It's not just any old lamb. It's Jesus Christ. Did the hand that made Jesus Christ make the tiger? And I think it's good to leave it as a question rather than saying yes. But it's... And that's one of the things I think is nice about Zen Center. Zen Center, in this practice period too, this practice period has a wonderful mix of people. We have some people who are, we have a range of sensitivity here. Usually, a lot of times you have, I don't know, let's say if you go into the locker room of the San Francisco 49ers, right? Now in some ways those guys are pretty insensitive, you know? You can hit those people with a lot of energy and they kind of like just, you know, yeah, so what?

[70:35]

They feel it, but, you know, they're kind of insensitive and it's useful to them in their line of work. And we have some other people who, in some other locker rooms, where people are very sensitive to... to sensation, to colors, to sounds, to smells, to ideas, to words, very sensitive. And if what is very impressive or very shocking or very disturbing to the very sensitive person is told to some other group, they might say, you know, what? Please. But to put the two groups together, I think is, you know, it's a wonderful experiment and I think this practice period has a range of people mixed together. So some people here are, you know, some people here have trouble being sympathetic to what's difficult for some others.

[71:43]

Like somebody told me, you know, when he heard about this, me talking about this, he says, well, you know, how come he has to stop talking for those people? Get those wimps out of here. But then he thought better of it. But to have the full range together and practicing together, that seems wonderful that we have that. And we do. Let's see, Martha, did you have something? It sort of stopped midway. It was like, as you were talking, I heard you saying that the seed of violence is thought itself. And that's just the question. That's what you were saying, what we impose on that. That's the first imposition on the way things are prior to our mental participation in the world.

[73:03]

Everything's possible. In order for something to happen, in order for there to be a thing, we have to pick up one possibility rather than another. So, you know, modern physics is saying all there really is is everything is just a possibility. Anything can happen, but for something to happen rather than not happen, there has to be some other kind of energy interjected in the system, and the mind can do that. And there's a kind of violence to the situation prior to that, and it creates things. It's not to diffuse it, but to be practicing awareness in such a way that you see it, that you can actually see. First of all, it is to have the conviction that the Buddha's teaching, that that's how we create things, that that's how things are created, that that's what they are, is they aren't really that.

[74:07]

They're a combination of many causes and conditions and our mental imputation. If you're convinced that that's a good story and you practice in accord with that, what you do is you gradually verify it with your body. In other words, you realize the body prior to your thought constructions. But you don't stop your thought constructions. You just realize it's more fundamental reality. And your body starts acting from there, even in the world where your mind is still making things. And so your body enters into this peaceable, harmonious relationships prior to any kind of you know, emphasizing this possibility rather than that possibility. You enter into and realize this ultimate reality by first of all being convinced of it and training yourself at the precepts which arise from this ultimate reality. Yes. Yes.

[75:08]

And you demonstrate love. You demonstrate that you can love Like, you know, thinking of Bob, you know, in my mind, when I think of, you know, of a tiger in the forest or that people would, like, import bear into the California mountains, part of me goes, geez, that might be dangerous. But bear are so beautiful and tigers are so beautiful that humans, some humans anyway, feel like it's worth the danger. of having a few tigers out there in the forest, to have that beauty. But they're still out there, and if you run into them, it could be dangerous, right? But have no tigers just because they're dangerous? It seems horrible to have no tigers. They're so beautiful. So part of us is willing to have those beautiful, powerful creatures out there. this awesome being on the planet, if we can contain it somehow, if the forest can contain the bears and contain the tigers, we kind of like it.

[76:17]

But another part of us feels like, let's get rid of the tigers because it's too dangerous. I think it's possible to get in touch with a place that you somehow can can love the dangerous ones and even the ugly tigers. What if there are some really ugly animals out there that were equally violent as a tiger? What would we feel about them? Did the hand that made the ugly tiger and the gorgeous tiger the same hand? I think you get in touch with that and you see it is the same hand. The universe doesn't make mistakes. We should make space for everything. And it's really tough now in this world. You know, we have, well, you know what we have. It's really hard to say, let those people live too. Let the terrorists, you know, embrace the terrorists. Embrace the fundamentalists. Make space for them. Hard. Hard not to prefer. Hard not to prefer this rather than that.

[77:18]

You did leave out a chapter of the young boy's life. that he was a boxer at one point. And I think he noticed that what boxers do is that they really express themselves and hit each other. But when they're not hitting each other, they're hugging each other. You're invited to embellish this story. So I see several. Linnea, and Miriam, and Matthew, and Kyoki. Yes? Please, I have a question about . I was thinking about my experience yesterday .

[78:22]

There are times when I've actually just experienced being very intimate with people. So it's like this kind of process. And I guess what I'm asking is, in this process of being upright, I find that when I'm tilting, will I flood in my face? And I am expressing myself as I'm going down. I hear you saying that's where the compassion is essential to not get discouraged. That's one of the places it's essential to not... When you go off course, to not... Going off course means, you know, in some sense you're not practicing compassion.

[79:32]

But then, once you go off course, then practice compassion. At some point, the compassion has to be brought back into action to lovingly contain us. We're there, and we don't contain something, so we veer off. In other words, we feel like, I've got to control this. I've got to change this. I've got to stop this. That's where I guess I was coming from. Right, yeah. Right. So that's more of the same thing. Compassion would be more like, you know, a tender embracing of Linnea the angry. It is.

[80:35]

It's love, you know. You can love this angry person and then she's back in line again. She got off because she couldn't love this obnoxious phenomena of so-and-so doesn't want to play today. So-and-so is, you know, he won't play with me. I hate that. But again, if you just hate it, that's it. But if you hate it to try to control, then you're getting angry. But then again, you can bring it in and say, okay, now we can take care of her. Miriam? Miriam? Well, in other words, it's violent to impose my mind upon, for example, over in that area, something's happening, and I use my mind and suddenly I got Miriam.

[81:44]

There's not Miriam before I look over there. Sure. Am I sure? Well, there's two levels of sure. That's the Buddha's teaching, okay? And I'm convinced. By practicing in accordance with that conviction, I eventually will actually be able to realize that that's so. And the Buddha actually realized it. The Buddha became the world prior to Miriam and Buddha. And then he spoke from that world and said, yeah. And from that world he said, this phenomena of Miriam is actually fully imbued with Buddha's wisdom. In other words, fully imbued with the world prior to Miriam. But what I'm calling violence is, first of all, that our mind imposes itself and its stories upon reality.

[82:48]

prior to our mental impositions and does violence to it and compartmentalizes a process which is not really compartmentalized. We do that. We categorize. We chunk things up. We make them into things. We separate them from their friends and make them all by themselves. And if we lose track of that process, we suffer. And we do cruel things based on that world view. If we don't understand how it's really, how it happens. If we understand how it happened, we stop acting from that misunderstanding. That's what I'm proposing. Yes. Yes. Yes. that has significance, and I'll sort of claim it, and then maybe you can pay. Yes.

[83:50]

Yes. Right. The imagination, the creative imagination, the way it makes a thing and cuts it off from its friends, the way it pulls something out of its context and looks at the thing, that is the violence of the creative imagination. It is inevitable. It is part of the deal of having phenomena. Now, part of what artists can do then is try to bring that image into form and partly to meditate on the whole process. And if you get completely into it, you start to bring yourself back down to the place prior to that mental imputation. And that is reality prior to our messing with it. And that's reality. There is no separation between anything.

[84:52]

Everything is related. Now, we can't see that, though. This is the realm of imperceptible mutual assistance. This is actual dependent core arising. Actually, it's prior to dependent core arising. Dependent core arising is when we impose... our mental process, and then by that interaction, things happen. If we see that process, that takes us back down. And being convinced of that, we start practicing the precepts and practicing meditation, which is in line with that reality and that conviction and practicing that conviction. Gradually, it brings our mental and our physical practice down to actually bring that into being. So the wisdom actually is manifested as our behavior. And we start acting like we're connected to everybody. We act like... Huh? That is art.

[85:54]

That is art. And artists work in whatever way they work. They work to approach that place where they're actually finally touching... this place, and participating in the creation of the moment through the artwork. Okay. Koki? Okay. You're welcome. I think Matthew is next, I think. Yes, part of the talk? Yeah, and the process of practice we've been talking about. The precept of to not harbor ill will. And then we were talking about full expression also.

[86:57]

And there's a part in the story about a friend of yours who works with people at risk. And they said, boy, I hate to see you with... hurt yourself, or I hate to see, I hate when you hurt yourself. That makes sense to me. But then later on we'll be talking about ending and possible endings of the stories. And it is a land, it is a practice place where you can equally say, I hate you and I love you. No, no, no, no. So it's not I hate you or I love you. It's that I hate you. Means I'm expressing myself that I hate you. It doesn't mean I hate you. It means I hate you. Yeah. Well, if I say it stronger and stronger, you finally would get it. But then it might get too violent. In other words, when you just say I hate you, with no sense of trying to control a person, but just, you know, being a stupid human being who hates something and cares about something.

[88:06]

Okay? That's love. But people don't just hate something. They hate to get an effect, to control, you know. They want to hurt, you know. They want to hurt or influence or frighten. That's anger. You don't... When you say, I hate you, you don't say, I want you to be different. What I mean by love is when you love something, you don't want it to be different. If someone's miserable, you want them to be happy, but you don't want them to be different from the way they are right now. You love them the way they are, and you want them to be happy, but you don't think something is wrong with them the way they are. You love them in their way of being that you hate. But if you hate with the slightest bit of trying to control, you give up love and switch to power.

[89:09]

Does that make sense? Right, I know. That's like that New Yorker cartoon I told people about. It's called Mob Psychiatrist. Okay? Okay. That's the heading. And then there's this gangster sort of out on the couch, right? And the psychiatrist says, extortion and prostitution and drug running and murder are bad acts, but that doesn't make you a bad person. And I'm not saying... I'm not saying that I disagree with the psychiatrist, okay? But what I'm saying is that, in fact, when you... Sometimes you love someone. You love someone. I mean, they're like... I mean, if... You love someone and they do something and you hate it, okay?

[90:15]

You just happen to hate it. And... But, you know, actually, you don't as much hate it. You hate them. You just hate them. Or you say, another way to put it is,

[90:27]

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