On the first day of Sashin, I asked you to consider, to look for your deep motivation in life, the motivations that brought you to practice this Sashin. And then I have been talking to you about training of the attention, training mental attention. I heard that someone wanted me to talk about what to do with the mind during our sitting meditation.

[01:10]

So I have been talking about how to care for the mind during sitting meditation and walking meditation. And I suppose this person who asked the question had some sense of how to take care of the body during meditation. But I also will talk about that too, how to care for the body and mind together. So I am walking around this ancient training, this ancient way of training the attention, letting words and other physical gestures come forth in response to this

[02:47]

ancient training, letting things I think I've heard come out again through my mouth and hands. So this is training for yogis to learn how to not grasp anything in the mind. To learn how it would be possible for the attention to be trained in such a way that It stops. The attention stops. The mind's grasping abilities stop grasping after the characteristics of phenomena.

[04:01]

Stop grasping after the signs of phenomena. arriving at the door of this kind of training school, most people have a deep habit, most sentient beings have a deep habit for grasping after characteristics, grasping after signs. It's a deep habit. So it will be quite a challenge for us to learn this new mode of being where this grasping tendency is abandoned. And the training may take quite a while to get a foothold in the face of this very deep and all-pervasive mental gesture of grasping after the characteristics of objects of awareness.

[05:21]

Even though it's a major relearning process, still I'm encouraging you to try to give yourself over to this new way of being. to train the mind in relinquishing all thought, in giving up all views, which is what we call emptiness or ultimate truth. And this emptiness or ultimate truth, which when realized sets you free,

[06:36]

from all your misconceptions and also that you're free from your valid conceptions. This emptiness is right under your nose. It's your lip. It's your body. Your body is emptiness. Your body is letting go of all conception. Conceptions bloom from your body, but the body doesn't grasp those conceptions which bloom from it. The mind blooms from the body. The conceptions arise with mind. Consciousness arises from the body, with the body,

[07:40]

Objects of awareness arise with the awareness, conception arises with the awareness, and usually with a little training from mommy and daddy, grasping at conceptions arises, and then we're off to the misery factory. So the body is connected to this process of misery, but the body actually directly demonstrates the non-grasping, the non-elaboration of objects of awareness, the non-elaboration of concepts, the non-grasping of the signs of concepts. Right under your nose. So when we practice this sitting meditation of the Buddha, we devote ourselves, we are devoted to the body, the body which does not grasp anything in mind.

[09:00]

the body which relinquishes all views. We devote ourselves to such a body. Devoting ourselves to such a body, we approach the realization of non-grasping. We approach the realization of relinquishing all views. We approach the realization of Buddha through this devotion to the sitting, standing, walking and reclining body. The subtleties of this devotion are, as far as I know, endless. It's a very simple practice, but there's no end to the narratives of how it is accomplished. So the way we care for the mind in sitting is to train the attention onto the body, which demonstrates relinquishment of all thought.

[10:20]

So the Buddha is translated as saying, train yourself thus. In the herd, there will be just the herd. The herd is the body. The body is the herd. The sound, just sound, is not heard. Heard is when the sound touches the body. When we have a thing called, when we have a heard experience, that's the body. The seen, in the seen there will be just the seen. In the heard there will be just the heard. In the smell, there will be just the smell.

[11:35]

In the touch, there will be just the touched. In the tasted, there will be just the tasted. This means in the body, there will be just the body. Train yourself thus. Train the attention so that the body is just the body. Moment by moment, sound, touch, taste, smell, sight, sight, smell, touch, sound, sound, taste, touch, smell, moment by moment, just each physical phenomenon. Training yourself thus You also learn how in the mental phenomena, so-called mental phenomena, ideas other than the ideas of the heard and the seen, also in the cognitions there will be just the cognized.

[12:44]

In the cognized there will be just the cognized. But all of these phenomena are concepts. You're training your attention to just let them be such without getting into grasping their signs, without getting into elaborating on them, without getting involved in the trains of thought which bloom from these sounds, which bloom from these sights, which bloom from these tastes, and so on. Train the attention onto the basic percept or concept. The mind in this way is trained into stability. And once stable, the mind then naturally looks at what it's not elaborating upon

[13:48]

and has penetrating vision into the emptiness of it. So calm and insight are developed by this training. The body does not talk back to what is happening. It doesn't argue. It's free of the ability to do so. Training the mind to learn from the body

[15:02]

is abiding in the mind itself, is turning the attention into the state of mind itself, the state of awareness itself. And awareness just knows. It doesn't talk back. It doesn't fight. It doesn't grasp. It doesn't possess. It doesn't reject. It just knows, knows, knows. The body shows you this. This awareness arises with the body and the body shows you the non-grasping nature of the mind, the non-grasping nature of awareness. Yesterday I mentioned something about the first pure precept in Soto Zen, and the 16 Bodhisattva precepts are on a piece of paper on the bulletin board in Cloud Hall, if you want to read them.

[16:34]

And the second set of three are the three pure precepts. The first pure precept is to satsu, is to embrace and sustain ceremonies and regulations. The precept of embracing and sustaining ceremonies and regulations. And so someone asked me, I thought the first pure precept was to avoid all evil or something like that. And I said that, or I say that in Soto Zen It's phrased as to embrace and sustain not evil, but to embrace and sustain these practices.

[17:41]

It's of course related to avoiding evil, because if we learn to embrace and sustain the forms and ceremonies, in that process evil is avoided. or evil is not touched, or evil loses its power to hurt. That precept is closely related to what I've been talking about that precept could be stated as to embrace and sustain the forms in such a way that you realize not grasping anything in mind. So these forms and regulations are opportunities to practice

[18:50]

relinquishing all views. And in relinquishing all views we avoid all evil because the root of all evil, the root of all harm in our life is grasping misconception. fundamentally the misconception that the things of our life are out there on their own, separate from us. The misconception that we're really separate from each other. Relinquishing, truly relinquishing at its root that misconception, no evil is any longer possible for the one who understands how she is all beings.

[20:09]

This is a wonderful release. This release of misconception is also a release from suffering, and it is also you get a driver's license. You get to drive the big bus and take everybody to Buddha Land. So this same person who asked about the relationship between the precept of embracing and sustaining ceremonies and regulations and avoiding evil, he said, what about the sloppy practice of the forms? How come there's this apparent sloppiness in the practice of these forms?

[21:20]

And I would say that the sloppiness in practicing the forms and actually the anythingness in the practicing of the forms is due to grasping. And this grasping is a very deep habit, a deep disposition. So when the human, when the yogi comes to try to learn to embrace and sustain the forms, when the yogi tries to setzu the ritsu gi kai, when the yogi tries to embrace and sustain these forms and ceremonies, the habits of clinging manifest in the way the form appears.

[22:33]

For some people that makes the form look sloppy. For other people it makes the form look fascist. For some other people it makes the form look outstandingly skillful. For somebody else it makes the form look Whatever way the person grasps it manifests and shows in the form. So when the yogi meets the form, what we have there is the form plus their dispositions, plus their habits. Any habits they're holding on to will warp the form. Sometimes in a very endearing way. or funny way, or awesome way. So I remember when we had our very ancient tea teacher, Nakamura Sensei, here at Green Gulch.

[23:42]

She had a very good eye for seeing how these tea students brought their trip to the tea farm. So she knew what the tea farm looked like. She had seen the tea form a few times in her life, performed by people who had trained for many lifetimes as tea people, and finally they could do the tea, and all there was was the tea. There wasn't like the yogi practicing tea. There wasn't the yogi grasping the form. There was just the form. There was nobody's way of doing it there. the person who has some way that they do things was not there anymore. That person had been relinquished. And so there was a tea form. So she knew what it looked like to see a person that way.

[24:43]

So whenever we came to do tea, we brought some things with us, and then she could see how that which we brought, our dispositions, our habits, our clingings, would show up in the forms. And she knew some of the styles so she could, you know, name them. Like, I remember one of our very nice tea students was actually a dancer. I don't know if she was a ballet dancer, but maybe she was. So you can imagine this ballet dancer doing tea. So she, like, literally did this ballet dance. So there was the tea plus a ballet dancer. It was very nice, but it was also like once pointed out, it was kind of funny that she was ballet dancing the tea. And another person who is a well-trained pianist, he brought the piano playing into the thing.

[25:47]

So whenever he picked up anything with great skill and concentration, he would lift his hands up And then, you know, do this really skillful thing. Now, there were some other people who had some other styles, but she didn't know the name of them, like, you know, truck driver, football player, you know, whatever, drug addict. They brought their thing, but she didn't know what, she knew there was something extra, but she didn't know what to name it. But most of the artsy things that people brought, she knew about. And she could name it, and you could see there was just this extra thing, you know. And gradually she would just tease and tease as the people added this extra stuff. And over the years, their beautiful way of doing tea gradually disappeared. And finally, after many years, there's just the tea.

[26:48]

So in the body posture of sitting, each of us brings our habits to it, and each of us has our way of doing a little bit or a lot extra. And just by sitting, the consequences of carrying something to this posture creates a heat that will burn off the extra. The inefficiency of adding anything to your essential body posture, the inefficiency of all your habits will gradually become apparent to you and gradually your body will just say, you know, drop it. So the form, the basic form of the body posture in sitting and walking, if you keep bringing yourself to that form over and over, naturally the extra stuff, the habitual stuff, the dispositions get burned off.

[28:01]

But it takes a lot of time to build up the heat. And then once the heat's built up for the heat to gradually melt, the habits. But the hard part is you have to be there while this is going on. You can't just send your body to Sashin and come and collect it after 40 years when it's been all, you know, cleaned up and dropped away. Somebody has to be there and watch this whole thing because it doesn't count because the insight has to be there. You have to see this dropping away. And all the other forms, too. the joining the palms, the bowing, the chanting, the coming on time, the way of doing bells and drums, the way of greeting each other, the way of working together, all these forms offer a chance for your habit to be brought out in front of you

[29:24]

where you can see it. And these habits are what we mean by evil. They're what's hurting you and other people. These clings. So the forms give the habit a chance to appear. So one of the first ways the habit appears is, what the blankety blank is this form for? These forms are blankety blank blank blank. Who set up these blankety forms? Why do we have to do these blankety forms? I'm going to go to a blankety center where they don't do these blankety forms. These physical forms are ways for the body to manifest and for you to see the clinging and grasping, which is there, but without the form you won't necessarily see it.

[30:35]

So you do the form and, you know, you love the form, you hate the form, you do the form really well, you do the form sloppily. All that stuff is extra. All that stuff is misconception, is attachment. You don't do these forms. I don't do these forms. When the body is in this form, you do not do that. The body does not do that. That is just the form of the body. You don't do that. The way you're sitting right now, you don't do. If you think you're doing this form, There it is, that you think you're doing it. That's it right there. That's it. That is your basic misconception. And then you say, well, you know, how is it happening if I'm not doing it?

[31:37]

Right. Look to see, how does this body happen right now? If you're not doing it, well, who is? Right. Who is doing this body right now? What is doing this body right now? That is ultimate truth. How you are sitting here right now, how you are being what you are, that is what will be revealed to you when you let go of the idea that you're doing this body. You are not doing this body. You are simply a wonderful blossom of this body. The idea of you is something which comes with the human body. And the idea that you do the body comes with the human body. It is a misconception which surfaces very nicely when you put the body in a form

[32:43]

and then start to become aware that you think you've put yourself in that form and that you're putting yourself in that form rather than the whole universe is supporting this form. And the whole universe is supporting all your misconceptions which are being flushed out as you practice the form. Someone came to see me a short time ago and he was sitting talking to me and he had his arms very close, he was actually, and it was kind of cute, again, endearing presentation of style. He had his arms like glued to his ribs, you know, like right next to his body, real tightly.

[33:45]

And so I suggested to him that when he sit, he make a space between his arms and his torso. So we sometimes say, you bring the arms away from the body so that you could put a chicken egg under your armpit but not so that you could hold the chicken egg there, but just so a chicken egg would fit on your arm. In other words, I had these robes on, so it's hard for you to see, but anyway, you pull the arms away from the body so it's space between your upper arm and your armpit and your space between your upper arm and your ribs, space there. And this person received that suggestion and tried it, And there he goes on this new way of sitting, a new form for the posture.

[34:51]

Now, the form is not totally arbitrary. There are certain opportunities for holding hands that way. It makes it easier to hold the hands in this mudra, this cosmic concentration mudra, which also symbolizes or expresses the openness of the body, expresses that the body is a receptive thing. It hears, it's touched, it smells, it receives all these data in an open way without arguing. So you make this mudra, you make the arms in the mudra this way. So by learning this form, Now he can see what comes up as he learns this form. He can see how his style maybe was originally to hold his arms against his body. This is what he naturally brought to the sitting. Now I'm suggesting he do this other way so he can see, you know, this form can show him something about what does he want to do.

[36:02]

Whereas he may not even notice before that he had this style. So this form will be a way for him to see the style and for me to see the style. Because then when I look at him sit, I can see what was his response to the suggestion. And is it just, do I get to see now just the form? Or is there the form plus or minus his contribution? And then I can keep touching that form to see what's there and he can see what's there too. So it's not so much that the form of the posture is, you know, like itself the true way, it's just that the form of the posture is a way to find out, to expose our habits and dispositions. We could choose some other form. like tea or dancing or whatever.

[37:04]

And in dance there's some reason why they have certain forms, but the main opportunity for them is not to execute those forms and realize those forms just for themselves, but that in realizing those forms the body that realizes them is free of all self-clinging. So it's a liberated body. And when we see certain dancers who have realized the essential form of the dance, we're not just seeing the form, we're seeing freedom. And that's what really electrifies us and inspires us, is to see. You can actually see freedom because this person has disciplined themselves, disciplined their mind in relationship to the body. And when they're doing this dance, there's no clinging. On Buddhism, we want that not clinging to pervade the rest of our life, not just in the classical form.

[38:12]

That's why we have forms for not just sitting in the zendo, but eating, walking, brushing the teeth, using the toilet, wearing our clothes, cutting our hair, and so on. We have forms for everything so that this non-attachment can be tested throughout our entire life. And our entire life has had the bodies there the whole time so our Sangha mates can see In the Zendo, she stands up straight, but the rest of the time she walks stooped over. She doesn't pay attention to her body outside the Zendo. So then we can say, hmm. Hmm, hmm, hmm. Do you want to hear what that hmm, hmm is about?

[39:14]

So Sangha, that's why Sangha is so important. Sangha can help us fill in the gaps in the practice. So it isn't just that we learn the classical forms in the meditation hall. We gradually use all the different times in our day to become aware of our habit of our clinging and to open to feedback on our clinging. And in this way of surfacing, the self-clinging, which is the source of the evil, We realize that embracing and sustaining, you know, touching, accepting these forms, these ceremonies, that realizing this precept is freedom from evil. And we cannot realize this

[40:20]

freedom from evil without something like this, I don't think. In other words, without putting ourselves in a situation where we say, okay, I'm going to do X, and please give me feedback on how I do X. In other words, you have to express yourself, and you have to express yourself, first of all, you have to express yourself by saying what you're about, what you want to try to do. Like, I would like to be compassionate. plus I also am telling you that I would like to be compassionate, and I'd like your feedback on if I am or not. And also I'd like to know if you will give me your feedback. Because some people might go up to somebody and say, I would like to be compassionate, I would like your feedback, but they say it to somebody who doesn't understand what they're saying, so they won't get any feedback from that person. Do you understand? So you could say it in English to somebody who doesn't understand English, and you've expressed yourself, you've made yourself vulnerable, but to somebody who doesn't even know that you have, so you haven't made yourself vulnerable.

[41:35]

You can even go up to somebody and say, please give me your feedback, and they say, mm-hmm, but you don't check to see whether they will. And actually, they may not really believe you want it. So you have to start to say, and will you give it to me? And then they might say, well, actually, I don't dare. I'm afraid to because I'm afraid of what you'll do to me if I actually would tell you, you know, how you are doing that thing. Can you imagine such a thing happening? Someone asks you for feedback, you give it to them and they say, it's the last time I'll ever ask you to do that. People ask me for feedback and they say, will you give me feedback about such and such and I say, Well, I can't say that I will. I would like to help you in this way, but I won't necessarily be able to because even if I see you doing something which I don't understand in relationship to what we're talking about here, I might not be sure you really want the feedback.

[42:45]

But what I might be able to do is ask you again if you really do. And if you say yes, then I might be able to give it. But if I don't have the opportunity to ask you, I might not really feel that you want it. Because sometimes it's very painful to get the very feedback you asked for, especially if you're in some situations of feeling in a lot of pain or something. Because even the feedback you want might be a little painful. Even though you want it, sometimes it may be too much. That's part of the deal, is that sometimes you want the feedback, which is somewhat difficult, but today is not the day you want it. You just don't want it today. But that doesn't mean you don't want it tomorrow. So you might be able to say, well, actually, I don't want to call off the whole program of training, but today I've had... I'm having enough training today, so actually I don't want to incorporate this more information. And that's the way it works sometimes, and that's fine.

[43:51]

Like I used to sometimes, and this didn't happen so much in like a yoga class, but like if I was practicing yoga at home and just learning a new posture, and my wife's a yoga teacher, she sometimes would, I'd barely be able to do the posture and then she'd come and give me some more instruction. And I felt like if I took her instruction, I would fall over, you know. Like if you're doing a headstand or a handstand and you're barely able to be up and then somebody comes walk by and says, you know, lengthen your left side of your hip. And if you try to do that, you fall over, you know. So you might say, no thank you right now. Maybe later. Maybe later that information would be helpful. But right now it's too much. That's okay. Okay. But anyway, we do need that kind of input in order to fully express the form, which means become aware of where we're overdoing and underdoing it.

[44:53]

And when you're doing something, like a handstand or a headstand or falling over backwards or whatever, As you're expressing yourself, especially as you express yourself more and more fully, naturally you feel some anxiety. So a lot of people, I'm getting the information, a lot of you are feeling anxiety in this session. I don't think that when we relinquish all of our views, I propose to you that we are freed of anxiety. Anxiety is something that comes from the way we think. And not just from the way we think, but grasping the way we think. So we think that we are you know, inherently existing beings, or that we exist separate from each other really, and because of that kind of thinking, or because of grasping that kind of idea, we experience anxiety.

[46:13]

When we let go of those, really let go of those views, which means usually that we have to like see them and let go of them, rather than let go of them in theory, in actuality when we actually and see how they're released. The anxiety goes away. But before that, we have anxiety in our life. The anxiety is not, to me, is not good or bad. In a way, I would say anxiety is good in the sense that anxiety, although very painful and almost impossible to be able to endure, it does indicate to us it is a hint, it is a lead, it is a cue about our misconceptions and attachments. So in a sense, anxiety is good. It's a hint about where our misconceptions and attachments are to be discovered.

[47:18]

And I think I mentioned to you at the beginning of this session that when the Buddha wakes up, the Buddha sees that all beings fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the Buddha. Did I mention that at the beginning? I didn't? Did I? Do you remember that? Nobody else does? You do? You remember too? Well, now does everybody know about this? That's a story in the Buddhist tradition that when the Buddha woke up, the Buddha said, now I see, this is in the Avatamsaka Sutra, now I see that all beings, that means like Buddha sees that you, You fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the Buddhas. The Buddha saw that and the Buddha sees that. Now I have to restrain this talk because there's a strong tendency for me to get into now whether you believe what the Buddha sees. Do you believe that you fully possess the wisdom and the virtues of all Buddhas?

[48:24]

I'm not going to get into that right now. I'm just going to say that the Buddha said in the Avatamsaka Sutra that, I saw that. I saw that every living being, not just humans even, but all living beings fully possess the wisdom and virtues of the Buddhas. But because of attachments and misconceptions, they don't understand that. Humans have attachments and misconceptions. Ants have attachments and misconceptions. So we are hindered from seeing this virtue and wisdom of the Buddhas as what we actually are. We are hindered by misconceptions and attachments. And answer also hindered by their version, their style of misconception and attachment. The advantage of being human is that we can hear about our actual situation and our problem

[49:28]

So because of misconception and attachment, we have anxiety. Now, to look at our misconception means to become intimate with our misconception, to become intimate with the place where misconception is dropped. To be intimate with that means also to be intimate with the anxiety. So to get close to our source problem means to be close to the thing that tips us off to our source problem. the anxiety. So part of the practice needs to be, part of the practice needs to be that we need to feel, we need to be in such a way that we feel supported to face this anxiety. And none of us None of us, as far as I've heard anyway, I haven't heard about anybody who's so tough, who's so powerful, who's so courageous, who's so whatever, that they're able to actually all on their own face this anxiety.

[50:47]

It's like too big to face on your own. The Buddha didn't face it on his own. And if you look at the story of all the heroes, none of them faced this thing on their own. They all got help. They all get help. If we try to face it on our own, we're just simply going to run away and hide in a hole. Or, which is the same thing, take lots of drugs, do lots of addictive things to turn away from the intensity of the consequences of ignorance. So in order to face this, we have to feel a lot of help. We have to feel a lot of love and support in order to face this. That's why we get together in this Tashin, so you can feel you've got about 80 people right nearby who are helping you face what it's like to be like this.

[51:52]

And with all this help, in fact, people are coming to me and telling me that they're noticing some anxiety. In other words, they're able to see it and face it a little, at least a little, enough to, like, feel it in the zendo and then remember that they felt it all the way to that little room over there. And then even, like, come in the room and feel it, too. Like, feel it right now. This is pretty good. Facing anxiety even a little bit is good. So I guess some of you are feeling enough support to dare to face it, and I think that's great. And I think you need to also continue to check in on whether you feel held and supported enough to do this work of facing the pain of anxiety, which is the most difficult pain, and then all the other pains, all the other pains. which aren't as difficult, but are pretty difficult.

[52:56]

The pain is in your knee, the pain in your butt, the pain in your neck, the pain in your eyes, the pain in your jaw, the pain in your heart, the pain in your gut, the pain in your fingers, the pain in your elbows, the pain in your shoulders, etc. All those pains, they're pretty difficult to face, and anxiety is more difficult. you need to feel supported in order to have the courage to face this. And we are supported, and the Buddhas were supported in order to do this. And the Buddhas support us, and we support each other. So we have Buddha, Dharma, Sangha to support us to face our difficulty. And the way of facing the difficulty is The difficulty comes in these six categories. It comes in the seen, in the heard, in the tasted, in the touched, in the smelled, and in the cognized. Those are the six ways we have difficulty.

[53:57]

And if you can train yourself that in the seen there's just a seen, in the heard there's just a heard, and so on, you can be there for this pain. And you are supported by the Buddha and the Buddha's teaching to train yourself like this, to train yourself to be able to actually experience moment, little tiny moment by little tiny moment, the pain of your life. And in that training, not only do you experience it in a way you can be there for because it's a little package of pain rather than a big clump of pain. We can't stand big clumps of pain. We can't be present for them. They're too much. We can only be present for the little ones. We can be present for big clumps of pleasure. somewhat actually we can't be present for even big clumps of pleasure because uh that's not being present because being you're present you're not present for big clumps you're present for little particles of experience but we can like not be present with pleasure and feel okay yeah so what if i'm not present it's still comfortable

[55:19]

But when you're not present with pain, the pain tends to accumulate and then dump on you in like five-minute sections or one-hour sections, and that's overwhelming. But in the minute moment of pain, you can... it's workable. And in that minute moment of pain, you're training your mind to be free of the habits which are the source of the pain. So being intimate with the pain is the same as training yourself to be free of the habits which are the source of it. Being intimate with the pain entails training yourself and not grasping anything. And not grasping anything is the end of suffering. This is something I've heard about, something I've witnessed.

[56:26]

I haven't heard anybody with a different story about the end of suffering. So I really encourage you to train yourself thus. to just experience the moment without grasping, experience the moment without grasping, and use the body as your teacher, because your body shows you how to be with no grasping. So devote your attentions to this body of not grasping. this body of not grasping. And again, although you do devote yourself to this body of not grasping, your devotion may not yet be complete enough, so there may still be some grasping and some pain because of the grasping, but then just continue to devote yourself

[57:52]

and devote yourself until there is no grasping. And remember that until there is no grasping, there would naturally be some problems which arise from the grasping. That makes sense, that there would be. It's not a happy thing that there is these problems which come from grasping, but it maybe is a happy thing to understand that that's the way things, that is the dharma of grasping, is that grasping is painful. But we may have to see that example quite a few times before the body manifests in such a way that there's no grasping in the mind. The mind is trained into non-grasping through the feedback of what happens when there's grasping. And if we don't feel enough support to face this dragon, to face the dragon which arises out of clinging, then the way of feeling the support partly comes by

[59:43]

a somewhat different practice from training the mind in non-thinking or training the mind in non-grasping. And that is a somewhat different training, which is to think about how much you support all other beings to be able to do this work. how much you would love to support other people to do this work, how much you care about other people and want them to be able to do the work of facing their dragons. And if you really feel more and more that you really do want to help all beings face the difficult things that they need to face to become free of these difficult things, The more you feel that way, the more you'll feel that other people are supporting you. The Buddhas, you don't have to help facing their dragons.

[60:46]

They've already faced them. But the Buddhas, what you do is you say thank you to the Buddhas. And then the more you feel grateful to the Buddha and the more you appreciate the Buddha, the more you feel the Buddha is supporting you to face your dragons. The Buddhas are supporting you to face what they faced, what they faced and became free of. So I hope you also develop the love and compassion for yourself and others so that you can dare to open your mind to your body, because your body is open to this. Again, the word sesshin, the training of attention in some sense is to train our attention to attend to Buddha's compassion, to attend to the reality of Buddha's compassion coming to us.

[64:40]

every moment, helping us be present. Buddha's compassion, which is helping us be present and to face what we need to face. You're not doing this. You're being supported for it to happen. You're being supported to face what it's like to be alive. This is Buddha's compassion to help us face being alive, to not run away, to be intimate. So, if we get into thinking, you know, this is difficult, I can't face it. Well, yes, that's right.

[65:42]

I can't face it. It's difficult and how are the Buddhas helping me be able to be here with this life? How are the Buddhas showing me the way to sit, the way to attend such that I can really fully be here in this moment? It's not just that I'm a powerful yogi and I can make myself be present. It's that many beings, many Buddhas are helping me. Matter of fact, I'm such a lousy yogi that I need a lot of help. But the lousy part of my yogi practice is not so much that I can't do this practice,

[66:42]

But the lousy part of my yogi practice is that I think that I can do it. The good yogi is the yogi who accepts all the help that's being offered. And then you can become the yogi which is your potential. Your potential is to be a great buddha yogi. but you have to receive tremendous help in order to be what you can be. The help's there. Can you open to it? moment by moment. Because if you don't open to it moment by moment, then the power trips come back in and take that openness away and say, okay, now I'm going to do it. And I'm going to get credit for being a great yogi. No. We get credit for you being a great yogi.

[67:49]

We, your friends, and your lovers, and the Buddhas, they get credit. It's their success that you're a great yogi, that you're able to be present. You're just giving yourself to them to be successes. But there are karmic hindrances, and one of them is, well, I don't want them to be successful. I know this doctor who has a patient, and this doctor loves this patient, but this patient does not want to get well because that would make the doctor successful. I know why you want me to get well, so you'll be a successful doctor. Well, I'm not going to do it. I'm going to stay sick. I'm not going to make you like a famous charlatan. I'll prevent the world from being misled by you by me staying sick.

[68:59]

So anyway, if you become a Buddha, you know, it's going to make us all famous. Because we were the people that supported you. So anyway, karmic hindrance might interfere with you letting us help you. We understand that, and we're patient. Take as long as you want to realize your potential. And we'll just keep pumping love towards you and supporting you until you're ready to accept your destiny and your potential as a Buddha. Some people actually do not want to be motivated. They say, I don't want to be... I ask them, you know, even priests, I say, do you want to be a Buddha? They say, no. I want to be a little less harmful, yes, but I don't want to lie. I'm not going to say I want to be a Buddha.

[70:04]

I'm not going to go that far. Okay, fine. They are intentional.

[70:17]

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