This weekend, 20 of us have been meditating on fear. Maybe more than 20 of us. Have any of you been noticing any fear? I mentioned the other morning that about 30 years ago, I was reading a book by Krishnamurti. And the book was called Think on These Things. And the first page was, you know, the first page was not taken up entirely, so it was just about a paragraph. And it said something like, all over the world, thank you, People are involved in their various activities and differences, but there's one thing they all have in common.

[01:12]

They are all, and I turned the page and it said, afraid. And I don't know if I thought that was true. I was quite surprised when he said that. I thought he was going to say they are all something other than that. And we brought up many things around the issue of fear and fearlessness. And I guess I felt at the beginning of the weekend, and I suggested at the beginning of the weekend, that I felt that Fearlessness is, in a sense, fearlessness is having the courage to be what we are right now, to be all of what we are right now, to embrace

[02:31]

our total being. And our total being includes being and non-being. So not only willing to embrace our usual idea of being, but embrace non-being. Not just embrace I can talk about this in various complex ways, but That's a simple way to put it. And you don't have to go through lots of complications.

[03:35]

You can just consider whether you can just be upright in the present. whether you want to be upright in the present. The initial impulse to be upright comes as a gift. It's a gift that may have come to all of you, I'm not sure. when suddenly at some point in your life you saw how beautiful it would be just to be upright, just to stand up on the earth and be a human being, how noble a thing that is.

[04:53]

And in some sense, a good part of our life we live like a shadow of that upright person. We are afraid to be that upright person. We have many causes and reasons and excuses why we can't just be upright in the present. And today I'd like to talk about how we try to talk ourselves out of being present, how we try to make excuses for being afraid, and to encourage us to be fearless

[06:02]

Some of you have received the gift already of wanting to be upright and fearless. Some of you may not have received that gift. For those of you who have already received it, my words will be an encouragement for you to discipline yourself and concentrate on having the courage to be yourself. For those of you who have not had this gift, maybe it will come today. I hear this story in my own heart and I hear it through my ears and see it with my eyes. The story I hear is,

[07:09]

I'm afraid. I'm afraid to be with my own most intimate self. It's what I want to do in this lifetime. I really want to settle into my inmost heart. I want to be intimate with my inmost heart but I'm afraid I'm afraid I'll lose control. As you walk down into your heart as you settle down into your heart as you get closer and closer to embracing

[08:13]

yourself and other, you have to let go of all your baggage. You can't bring any crutches with you. You don't need any crutches to help you be yourself. You have all you need to be yourself. You don't need any equipment or excuses. All you need is wanting to and courage. And you just have to give up everything else but that. Trusting that this, if you have this gift, if you have this desire, Not even trusting. Seeing if you really understand that that's the best thing you can do for everyone else.

[09:18]

Seeing if you really trust that everybody wants you to realize this self. Some of us, all of us, I'm not sure, are very close to being this person. Sometimes I look into people's eyes and I see their eyes are just almost perfectly set in their skull. and their body's almost completely there. And they want to close the slight gap and really be there. But there's this little or big fear of, what will happen if I let go of past and future?

[10:26]

Will I survive? Will I go insane? Will I lose my reputation? Will I do something crazy? Who will be here to control me? If I don't stand outside and watch over myself and make sure, if I throw myself into the present, who will make sure I don't do something wrong? Who will protect me? And as I often say, that's right. You will be protected by WHO. And WHO is an acronym for World Honored One. Buddha will take care of you in the present. And Buddha is not somebody else.

[11:32]

Buddha is your total being, and not your total being, but the totality of what is yours and what is the other. Buddha is embracing life and death, or Buddha is embracing the death which is part of the totality of life. Embracing that will take care of you. And when you're in the present, that's there. supporting you. So another way to put it is that what we're afraid of is, in some sense, we're not so much afraid of being still and quiet, but to test whether we really trust the present What we're often afraid to do is express ourselves from there.

[12:37]

That's the test in a way. Can you express yourself from the present? And again, we think people won't accept it. They won't let me express myself. I have to edit myself. I'm getting flooded by information. I'll tell you a story though before I protect myself from that. I just got a letter a couple of days ago from a member of this community who doesn't live here anymore. She just went through the death of her nephew.

[13:46]

And she wrote me a letter. She said she wanted me to know about her nephew. And I asked her if I could tell the story, but she didn't answer the phone, so I don't know if it's okay for me to tell the story, so I'm not going to say his name. Anyway, her nephew was nine years old or ten years old. And he had Down syndrome, and he also had leukemia. And this little boy, she says, loved everyone. There was one exception, I guess. There was one person he said he didn't like, and that was somebody who was mean to his sister. But otherwise, he loved everyone, apparently.

[14:49]

And she said, because of her receiving chemotherapy, he lost his hair at various points. And at that time, he looked exactly like a little baby Buddha. And he would be sitting sometimes like on the kitchen counter, cross-legged, watching over what was going on in the kitchen, looking just like a little Buddha. And not too long ago, there was kind of like his health seemed to be improving, but then he went in to have some convulsions due to the damage to the brain stem from the chemotherapy And my friend took her niece, the little boy's sister, back to her house to give his mother some space.

[16:06]

And she was lying in bed with her niece. holding her niece's foot and chanting a scripture for protecting life. And she noticed thoughts were starting to come to her, prayers were coming to her, and the prayers were, you know, for his well-being, but also she noticed she was starting to hope that maybe there would be some medical intervention that would end his suffering. by ending his life. And she felt herself sending him messages that maybe he should leave his body and thinking that maybe she should say to her sister to let him go.

[17:08]

She was starting to hope that he would let go so that all the suffering for him and his family would end. And she was thinking these thoughts in and out of sleep, in and out of chanting this scripture, this compassion scripture. And she got up in the morning and took a walk with her niece in the hills around her house. And while she was walking, she said the words of a song came to her, the sweet, sad words of a song, which goes something like, If you love me, come and sit by my side.

[18:20]

If you love me, do not hasten to bid me adieu. But remember the Red River Valley and the cowboy who loves you so true. And she didn't understand why those words were coming. Maybe you already get it. But the words kept going through her mind as she drove her niece back to her home. And then the next day she went to the hospital and she was sitting on her nephew's bed and he was curled all around her. And she had her hands on his tummy and his back.

[19:27]

calm and sweet, and her calm and sweet. And she finally got the message that she was doing what the song told her. And she came and sat by his side because she loved him. And she stopped. She did not hasten to bid him adieu. But she remembered the Red River Valley and the cowboy who loved her so true. somebody's calling from deep inside and they're saying to come and sit by her side or sit by his side if you love her.

[22:02]

It takes courage to come and sit by this person because this person is suffering. This person is suffering because we're not sitting by her side. If we sit by his side, there's no fear there. That's fearlessness. But we may think we have to move on now or stand back a little to take care of things, that we have to do something more than that, that just being there won't be enough.

[23:45]

On one side, we don't trust ourselves enough. On the other side, we're afraid what will happen to us if we do. Who will take care of us? Who will take care of him if we just live in the present? So we use that as an excuse. We justify our fear. And there's good justifications.

[24:52]

One time I was doing tea ceremony And the old tea lady said to me, when you're doing tea, don't think about your girlfriend. And you know, she was wrong about the gender. I wasn't thinking of my girlfriend, but she was right. I was thinking of someone in the next room who I could hear talking. I wasn't taking care of what I was doing. I thought something else had to be listened to also. So when you do tea ceremony, don't think of your girlfriend. That sounds pretty easy.

[26:04]

And then she said, but if you have an akachon, you can't help it. Now, akachon is a Japanese word for little baby. So when you're doing tea ceremony, don't think of your girlfriend, but if you have a baby, you can't help but think of your baby. In other words, that's too good an excuse. Isn't that a good excuse? Huh? Huh? Don't you think that when you're doing tea ceremony, your baby wants you to think of him or her? Well, they do. It's true. So because they want you to, you think you should. In other words, distraction is good. And you would be afraid of being a bad mother or a bad father if you didn't think of your baby while you were doing this. Good excuse. And also, if your baby's suffering, you should want them not to suffer, right? But will it help them not to suffer to wish that they also won't be where they are and that they should think of their girlfriend?

[27:20]

Or would it help them actually... Do you trust that if they're suffering, the way for them to be at peace is for them to be willing to suffer? But we can get confused and we think, not wanting my nephew to suffer means I want my nephew to die. Anything but this suffering. But who are we really trying to protect from this suffering? Who is really the one who's afraid? Was the nephew afraid? Maybe not. Maybe he was doing just fine. Maybe he could have suffered forever. But at a certain point he decided he had enough.

[28:22]

He can decide. But can we wait for him to suffer as long as he wants to And part of what we talked about this weekend is what it's like to wait. What's a healthy way of waiting? And I started out by also mentioning T.S. Eliot saying, wait without hope. It's tricky because we want all beings to be free of suffering, but still it's recommended to wait without hope because if you hope for the end of their suffering, how will you hope?

[29:40]

What will it look like? Perhaps the end of their suffering will be that they sit in the middle of their suffering and don't move at all from it. You don't know. Wait without hope because it might be hope for the wrong thing. Or maybe he didn't say that. Maybe he said, wait without hope because to hope would be to hope for the wrong thing. Our mind can only hope for the wrong thing. Our mind can only hope for part of what's going on. But if you want your nephew to be happy, what you should hope for is for your nephew to embrace the totality of his life. My friend couldn't embrace, was having trouble embracing the totality of her nephew's life.

[30:43]

So she wanted it to end. The totality of it was knocking on the door, saying, come and sit by me. So then we think we should hope for someone to be different from what they are. And again, that comes from our feeling that we have to be different from what we are. that this suffering person isn't good enough? Do I have the courage to be this suffering person in the present, not hoping to be better, not hoping to be worse?

[31:48]

And just by coincidence, not just by coincidence, by divine plan, there was another workshop yesterday here at Green Gulch where people got together and told stories. And a lot of the people were Vietnam veterans. And one of the veterans who came was a person who wrote the book, Born on the Fourth of July. And when he heard people's stories, the feedback he gave was, some of you people don't sound like you feel worthy to be who you are. But you are worthy, and you should speak from that sense and understanding of your worthiness. Many years ago I heard a story about a French woman, Simone Weil, who for some reason or other heard that there was a poem that would be good to memorize, so she memorized it.

[33:30]

And she memorized it and she thought about it all the time and meditated on it all the time. And the poem was called Love, number three. by George Herbert. She memorized it in English. And at one point she had an illumination while meditating on this poem. So I thought, well, I don't usually meditate on Christian poems, but I'll just give it a try. So I memorized it too. And when I heard the story about the man saying, you people are worthy And you should speak from your worthiness, courage to be, the courage to be, the worthiness to be. That's called sitting upright.

[34:38]

So the poem goes, Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back, guilty of dust and sin. But quick-eyed love, observing me grow slack from my first entry in, drew near to me and sweetly asked if I lacked anything. A guest, I said, worthy to be here. Ah, said love, you shall be she. I, the unkind, the ungrateful, I cannot look on thee. Love said, who gave you these eyes but I?

[35:51]

There's another excuse for not being here. You're not worthy to be here because you're guilty, because you're unkind. Because you're ungrateful. How dare you be here? You can't look on thee. But who gave you the eyes to look? So either I'm unworthy to be here or it would be dangerous to others if I was here. So I blame others or myself as an excuse for why I can't be here. Or I'll go crazy if I really were here. Anyway, there's many excuses, many fears, infinite variety of fears which keep us from being here in the present.

[37:11]

Even though you might have heard how beautiful it would be just to be here, an upright, standing person, not leaning into the future, not shrinking into the past, not choking our life around this little person, but letting go of it. and entering the present and embracing everything just by letting go of everything. Many excuses. But sweetly and gently beckon yourself into, onto the present. Gently, sadly, sweetly slip past the fear into the present.

[38:18]

Tip your hat, pay your respects to fear and say, thank you, excuse me, I'm going to the present. I'm going to be worthy to be myself. I'm going to give myself away. I'm going to dedicate myself to simply being upright. I'm going to sit with someone who I love calmly and sweetly. And when fear comes up, I'll be afraid. And again, I'll go back to the present.

[39:22]

When I get distracted, I'll be distracted. I'll admit I'm distracted. I'll let go of the distraction and be present. So many excuses, so many reasons, good reasons. They really work. They have the efficacy to distract us from our work. Let's not belittle them. But still, before it's too late, before this tender, sweet life is gone, at least once before you go, come into the present, curl yourself around yourself, and cry out,

[40:50]

what you have to say as a human being. Express yourself from that worthy place and see if it works. See if it's really so bad. Even though your kids may say, oh mom, please, oh, dad, come off it. That doesn't mean it wasn't the perfect thing. And 20 years from now, they may realize that you gave them the truth, pure and simple. Anyway, I have so many funny stories about the things we do to try to get away from the present, but I'm not going to burden you with them unless you beg me during question and answer.

[42:04]

But we are silly little creatures who make up these funny little stories about why it's just impractical to be Buddha. It's just, you know, too much, really. Come on, Dad, come off it. Okay, so we have a song. I have the second verse, too. Come and sit by my side if you love me. Do not hasten to bid me adieu. But remember the Red River Valley. And the cowboy who loves you so true From this valley they say you are going

[43:15]

I will miss your bright eyes and sweet smile. For they say you have taken the sunshine that brightens our path for a while. Me. I'm lost! It's really good. Yeah. They're kind of these people.

[44:26]

Yeah, yeah. I don't know, not this way. I'm gonna wait, should I? Yeah. Excuse me. I'm gonna set you in here. I'm having a drink. I think so. Okay. I can hear you. Yeah.

[45:48]

Thank you. ...controlling my own life. You know, I like the way I live, and I have a lot of comfort in my life. My fear is I'm going to have to give that up in some way. But I also realize that all these things that gave me happiness, the happiness of a lesson, was temporary. I've been thinking about that a lot.

[47:14]

That all this, all the things of the world, the worldly things, relationship, money, career, there could be joy in that for a while, but it always disappeared. It will not be empty. And I see more and more that it's ultimately like that. And I'm trying to let go more and more. I'm moving towards that, but it's... It's been difficult. It's not easy. Simple, but not easy. But if you live in the present, you automatically give everything up. But... It isn't that you lose your relationships, it's that you just can't hold on to anything in the present. If your relationship's happening, you can't get rid of it either.

[48:21]

If your relationship's not happening, you can't pull it in. You can't pull anything into the present, you can't push anything out of the present. You have to deal with what's happening and let go of everything else. But that's hard because we deeply believe we have a choice. We think we can actually bring things to our life, and we think we have control, or we think there's a possibility of control. So in a couple weeks, I'm doing a workshop on impermanence. So maybe that should have been first. I don't know. But anyway, once you realize that things are impermanent, one reaction to that is to try to get them to be permanent. And that's called making a self. But then we have to now turn around and have the courage to be in the present, and then that will allow us to embrace impermanence again.

[49:31]

And that embracing impermanence is to embrace Buddha nature. What was that? If you embrace impermanence, you're embracing Buddha nature. You're embracing your awakened nature when you embrace impermanence. So self is made in reflection or in reaction to a sense of being aware of impermanence. So now we need to turn around and instead of instead of making a self in reaction to impermanence we need to turn around and sit on the self and being present and then we naturally will embrace it again and the whole system is reconnected. So what are we doing in response to this impermanence is an important point. Laura?

[50:37]

I couldn't have hoped for a better talk. I wanted to say a few words about what I've been going through the past couple of weeks. And I just got back from spending 10 days in Tennessee. So much of what you said mirrored what I was going through. All the different sets of thoughts and feelings like being with him. And first of all, I noticed in myself just this intense hope that he would die to get out of this suffering. Just this... I really, really deferred that wish. And now, looking back, and particularly like what you're saying in the talk, it's so clear that it was excruciating to me.

[51:44]

It was so surreal. At the times when I was able, and this came and it went, but there were times when I was just there in this experience, whatever it was, I don't know, but I was just there in the present, being myself. And it was healing. And at times I felt, when I would just be present with it, privileged, to be with him, going through this experience, and to be able to share and just... And then, you know, I came out of that and wished there were more chores I could do, more dishes to wash, or any way just to get out of it. And, um... So hearing what you have to say, and you feel peace, that I don't know

[52:48]

If it's the right thing, great, done, yeah. It made me feel less hope for that and just that it's okay for him to know when it's time. All I need to do is just be present. That seems a lot easier. Another thing that I noticed in myself is feeling that sense of not being worthy, not being able to do it, not knowing How did God do against people in the South? And feeling that it wasn't going to do it right, wasn't going to say the right thing at all. Thanks. You're welcome. When we go visit someone like that, we think, you know, what should I do? What's the right thing to do?

[53:51]

And Again, it's like we don't think that we ourselves are worthy, just ourselves. And so we think if you come without anything in your hands, maybe like you don't bring flowers or something, you feel like you're not enough. It's okay to bring flowers if that's who you are. I mean, if you're basically saying, I'm a flower bringer, that's fine. But it shouldn't be that you feel like you're not good enough without the flowers. Unless, in fact, you just happen to be always with flowers. That's okay. But we do think, you know, how could I be enough? I must have some technique or something to bring that would make me worthy to be here. Prove that I'm doing enough. But the main thing that you can give to is the truth of who you are. That's the main gift you have to give to anybody. Yes. Hi, Rick.

[54:54]

Hi. I was listening to you talk to, speak of the fear of, like, who will take care of me if I let go of past and present, sorry, let go of past and future and let go of present. And let go of present, too, while you're out. Okay, fine. That's my idea of the day. And I noticed that I had that thought before. I was like, oh, good. I'm glad you said that. I'm not the only one. And that really has me all the time. I just come upon that all the time. I just feel like if I let myself do what it feels like is appropriate in the moment, maybe not using what you're saying for something else, but I would just do all kinds of things that I shouldn't be doing. And, you know, that would stop me. It's very upsetting. Every time I think about it, I wonder if you could speak to that, the difference between trusting that your being in the present will

[56:00]

would be appropriate and being just kind of laissez-faire, like, yeah, whatever happens, you know, I can be with my brother while he's dying, but actually I could be getting, you know, medical help for him. You know, kind of a difference there. Sure. If you would sort of clarify that difference between laissez-faire, laziness, and being appropriate and present, I would appreciate it. Okay. Well, first of all, let's start with being, let's start with being Let's start with being upright, okay? And then it may be that you feel like you want to be upright, you want to be present, and you feel okay, and then some impulse comes up from that situation that arises there, okay? Right. Like, not even impulse, first of all, maybe a feeling, like a feeling of pain. feeling a pain of being separate from somebody, for example, like maybe someone that you're attracted to, or someone you're repulsed by, or someone who's sick.

[57:09]

And what we often wanna do is reach over that gap that's separating us and we feel pain about, reach over there and touch something, because we feel like if I could embrace the other, that might take the pain away. Okay? Okay. So there's, you feel pretty present, but just, even when you're present, still various things can arise. Being present doesn't mean nothing's going to happen. Okay? So what happens is... Don't worry about it. Things will come up. Things will come up, as usual. You know? However, now, if they come up in your present, you have a chance to see, oh, this is pain. And also you may see there's an impulse to, like, try to eliminate the pain. by reaching over and grabbing the other person or something and feeling one with them. Maybe if I could touch them, I'd feel one with them and then my pain would go away. Or my nervousness would go away. Or maybe I could get out of the room and that would make my nervousness go away.

[58:14]

Okay? These kind of impulses arise. Thinking of Laura talking about her father, you know, I... gave a great deal of my energy to come and study Zen here at Zen Center with Suzuki Roshi. I made myself available to him so that I could be with him. And I was available to him so I could be with him. I lived next door to him. So if he needed me for something, he could just say, come here, and I could have a chance to be with him. And he would call me in his room and give me his special attention sometimes. It was just exactly what I wanted, just exactly what I came thousands of miles and gave up everything for. But as soon as I got in the room, I wanted to get out. The impulse to go to some lower energy place, to be in a less intense situation, naturally arose in my mind.

[59:18]

But quick-eyed Suzuki Roshi, seeing me trying to get out, would often say, where are you going? Do you lack something? Yes, I lack a guest worthy to be here. I felt like I wasn't worthy to be there. I just couldn't stand it, even though that's exactly what I wanted, is to be there. You want to go there and be there, and then you want to get away. or you want to be with the person but somehow you want to be with the person but then you can't stand just be with the person because you feel nervous being with the person because you're nervous that the person is not you. You want to be with somebody and yet the people you want to be with also you don't want them not to be you. You run to be with them and then you start looking every other direction. You know, like I mentioned a couple weeks ago, you know, you've been separated from someone you love and you travel across the country thinking of them all the way and you get in the room with them and the first thing you do is go to the answering machine or open your mail rather than look at the person you came to see, you know.

[60:24]

You didn't come to open your mail, maybe you did, but you mostly came to see the person, that's what you were thinking of, not opening your mail, not getting your answers, answering machine's messages. And yet you turn away from what you came for because it's just too intense to be separated from what you really know is you. So then what you want to do is do something to get away from it. And those things are usually not appropriate. Like distracting yourself or reaching over and grabbing them to eliminate the pain. But if you keep being present and you be present now with the pain, you're present with the nervousness. Be present with the impulse to escape from this intensity. And you say, well, do you ever act on those impulses? And yes, you do. You act on them when they're ripe. You wait for the moment until the impulse tells you, now do it.

[61:26]

And it stands there and it's very clear. And it says, this isn't just a distraction from this presence. This isn't just an escape. This is something you should do. It's time to go to the bathroom and take a leak. Really. This is not an escape. You really want to go. And if you're looking for some kind of rule for how to figure it out, there isn't one. Things come to the right time, and in the present, You can tell when it's the right time or when you think it's the right time. And if you're wrong and you act, you'll see you were wrong. You'll get feedback. I was too soon or I was too late. If you get excited, you fall on your face. If you hesitate, if you hesitate, you miss it and you keep thinking about it. There is a time to do the thing.

[62:28]

And you can see that in the present. If you're not in the present, you're always off. You're just always grasping for straws. You're just always off. In the present, you have a chance, anyway, to watch the moment when it comes up. If you just sit still, the world will present it to you. It will show itself to you. It will take off its mask and say, now. It will happily offer itself to you and tell you what's going on if you sit still quietly. If you're impatient, you'll either act too soon or you'll be excited and miss the opportunity. Now you say, what about, how is this like being laissez-faire? You know, like you're sitting there and... Huh? Or negligent. Like you're sitting there and... Let's see, two examples. I'll give you two examples. One example is,

[63:29]

You're a mother, you're a father, you're traveling with your kids out in the woods. He falls down and hurts his leg, and you look carefully and you realize it's broken. What do you want to do? You want to help them. You want to put them out of their pain. Right? But you don't know how to set the leg. What should you do? If you try to set it, you might make it worse. But you don't want to just sit there in the pain. And also you don't want to be negligent. So, not only are you feeling pain over their pain, but you're feeling pain over wondering if you're doing the right thing by even sitting still. So then you think, oh, you can't stand the pain. You get excited, so you run off and leave them there. And get lost in the woods. And they go into shock and die. You know? Because you can't stand to sit there with them and admit you don't know what to do. You don't know how to fix the leg. You don't know whether you should leave or not yet.

[64:33]

You don't know anything. You're in pain and you can't stand it, so you run away. You say, I'm gonna go, I'll go get a doctor. You don't know where the doctor is. But if you sit there with the pain, maybe you're being negligent. Maybe you should immediately run off and get a doctor. Maybe you should, but maybe you shouldn't. Because people don't necessarily die of broken legs in 10 minutes, or two hours even, or even in a day. But they can die of shock in a half an hour. So maybe if you sat there, you might start noticing he's shivering. You might realize that one thing you could do is keep him warm. It might dawn on you if you could stand there and feel the pain of watching his suffering and knowing that you don't know what to do. But you want to reach over and get out of that place of not knowing what to do and that impulse of not being able to stand that pain of not knowing what to do. do will drive you away from your responsibility even though you feel well I'm certainly not being negligent I'm not being laissez faire I'm trying to do something I'm trying to be helpful so I'll set the leg or I'll go get a doctor but it may not be the right thing to do maybe you should wait a little bit longer and see what's going on and maybe the thing to do first of all is to make sure the person doesn't go into shock cover them keep them warm then you think now is now that they're now that they're warm now is there a possibility of finding a doctor where would a doctor be

[65:56]

All the time you're thinking of that, you're upset, you're worried, you're wondering what to do. You're in pain. And if you don't work with that patiently, your mind is lost in confusion. You can't think straight. You have to sit there long enough to calm down. In this story I'm telling anyway. And you may even realize how to set the leg. You may sit there and realize, I'm too far from a doctor. There's not time. I have to set the leg. And you may sit there and study and feel and touch and finally realize you have to set it. And you have to, that's what you decide. And maybe you're wrong. And maybe you're right. And maybe you can feel and maybe you set the leg, even though you don't know how. And all you know is by feeling the bones. And maybe you set it and maybe you put a splint on it and maybe you carry your boy out of your back. Maybe that's a story. But what I'm emphasizing is you've got to sit there with the not knowing and realize you don't know and feel the pain until you get some clarity, some message, some answer to what you think is right.

[67:10]

It doesn't mean you are right, but it certainly doesn't mean you're being negligent. But a lot of times what we do... is we can't stand the possibility of being negligent and we rush off to do something so that at least nobody can fault us for not doing something. You say, see, I tried. I ran for miles and miles to try to find a doctor. So I ran even though it wasn't appropriate, but at least I'm not worried that I, I know that I tried. To just stay there with them might be wrong. It might be wrong, but you have to face that you might do the wrong thing. If you can face that you might do the wrong thing, You might be able to calm down with that possibility and some insight might arise in your mind. As a general principle, I offer you a mouthful that to arrive to see the answer to the question of what you want to do in the midst of evolving contingencies will not be arrived at by discursive thinking.

[68:13]

Does discursive mean like logical proceeding? Logical discursive also means like going back and forth, like setting the parameters and making various judgments. Because the parameters keep, the contingencies keep changing in certain situations. If it's a math problem, You can set down the parameters and you can solve it discursively by checking out the relationships and then make a decision. But in a real-life situation, the contingencies are changing, so you can't figure it out by thinking, especially about what you want to do, because any time your desires come into it, you know it's an evolving situation. That doesn't mean that you won't have an insight and you won't see what has to be done. It just doesn't come by discursive thinking, it comes by wisdom. And the wisdom only comes to those who are willing to sit there with the pain of not yet having the answer. So, anyway, I believe in this. I believe in what I'm saying. But it's still very hard to stay present with the person and wait until the tumblers fall in place. They do eventually. But until they do, it is painful.

[69:18]

It is distressing to wait until the situation reveals itself. And not just wait, but stay aware of how uncomfortable you are when someone seems to need help or when you yourself need help. Okay. So I was always thinking that being present, that ignoring something else like the past. There is a past in the present. Yeah. And there is a future in the present. Okay. But you realize this is not the past. This is in the present. This is an image of the past. This is not the future. This is an image of the future. So the word future doesn't take you off to some other place. The word past doesn't take you someplace else. You're here. You trust this. Just like the word that doesn't take you somewhere else, but you can trick yourself when you say that and think it's someplace else. You're always present to something, so it could just be not the present somehow?

[70:19]

Say it again? Well, like you were talking about, when we talked about Siddhik Sazhaya now, concentrating on the present, your mind will wander off to think about the other side. Right. Like your girlfriend. Right. But you're still present to something. You're being present. That's right. How can you not be present in a way you can't? Yeah, you cannot be not present. Distraction and wandering is really something you're doing in the present. Your imagination is fooling you. You think you're someplace else. You are present. And when you say, I'm not dreaming of Hawaii, you can be present doing that. So, you know, there's this, there's a text, one of the texts we study here in the Book of Serenity, the first story says, clearly observe the teaching of the sovereign of the truth. I looked up the word clearly observe in Chinese one time to see what the characters were, and I thought it would be the word clear with the character for observe or contemplate.

[71:24]

But I was surprised to find out that the character that went with contemplation was not clear, but was meant to resign or submit or accept. Didn't mean like clear, literally. But in other words, clearly observing is when you're observing what you resign to, what you should resign yourself to, what should you accept, what's happening. So clear observation is to observe what's happening. And resignation is an interesting word because it means re-sign or re-seal, which you can understand as un-seal or re-seal. We somehow unseal the present. We also need to reseal the present. Or like I was talking to some people recently about, we need to make a virtue of necessity. We need to make necessity a virtue. You need to make the fact that you're present not just something which, of course, is happening.

[72:27]

You need to resign that. You need to resign to the present. Somehow, you need to assert and celebrate and affirm the present. Otherwise, you may think that thinking of Hawaii is being someplace else, or thinking of the past you're someplace else, or thinking of the future you're someplace else. Actually, you can't be anywhere else, but you need to reaffirm that. That's the practice of being upright. So being not present is really a misnomer in a sense. It can't be established. It's just a dream. But we do sit in the present dreaming of the future. And when you dream of the certain futures, you feel frightened. But if you realize that that's a dream of the future, your fear goes away because you're back in the present. You can't be afraid in the present. You can be anxious in the present. You can be in the presence of your teacher or your lover and barely be able to stand it and be anxious. Be anxious to get out of the room. Be anxious to go anywhere else but be with this beloved person.

[73:29]

You feel anxious because you're choked around yourself. You're choked at being yourself. You're tormented by being separate. And you feel most strongly with someone that you really love. You can be in the present and feel that. That can happen in the present. That splitting yourself into two parts can happen in the present. But then to put it in the future makes fear. So you should have the fearlessness to come back and live in the present and feel that anxiety, that anxiety, that natural human anxiety which comes from thinking that the people we love are not us and the people we hate we can't get away from. And the things we love will be taken away from us. If we can settle with that anxiety, we'll realize eventually that it doesn't hold, that really it's a dream that they're separate.

[74:31]

But again, we can't stand the intensity of that anxiety, so we can make it into an object and put it in the future. And then it's easier to deal with. Then it's like we've got fear. And we get into all that. So I'm recommending that you come back to the present, that you be fearless and come back to the present. And in the present, you don't have to fight fear anymore. It naturally drops off. It can't live in the present. But when you get there, it isn't like your problems are over. It's that you're getting down to your more basic problem, getting down to the problem which you will probably in a few minutes try to get away from again. And then notice, here I'm running away again. Come back. Come back to this. which is not without pain. There is pain in the present. However, the pain is caused by splitting ourselves in two. If you live with that split long enough, you realize the split doesn't hold and then the pain drops too. In the next moment, try to get away again.

[75:36]

So you keep disciplining yourself so that initial impulse to be present, when you feel that, it's a gift. And that gift can come more than once in life. But in order to carry that forth on the path, you have to discipline yourself. You have to concentrate on this issue. You have to keep being present. You have to keep coming back. You have to keep noticing the pain. You have to keep watching the cause of the pain. Until again and again, millions and millions of times, it drops. It clears. And more and more, you become more and more skillful at it. And somebody I was talking to said, and it becomes automatic, and it doesn't become automatic. It's not automatic. What's automatic is change. You can just, don't worry about change. Change is on automatic pilot. You don't have to make things change. They'll change automatically. But because they change, you have to reassert your practice. You have to reestablish your intention again and again and again. You have to keep recommitting yourself to the path, refocusing on being present. And you need to do that in a way that's sweet and enjoyable and lovely.

[76:44]

Otherwise, you won't do it. You have to make this a beautiful thing. You have to attract yourself to the path over and over. You have to talk yourself into it and talk others into it. And when you talk others into it, you hear yourself say it. So teaching yourself, teaching others, reading the scriptures, hearing the talks, being with people who are dedicated to being present and being fearless, and who are also unafraid to admit that they're afraid. So I feel a lot of people here have the courage to admit they're afraid. And then, once you have the courage to admit you're afraid and feel that you're afraid, you're already a little bit fearless to admit that you're afraid because you're afraid in the present even though it's caused by thinking of the future. So being able to admit that you're afraid is fearless. So you've already been a success.

[77:45]

To feel the fear, really you're fearless. And if you feel it fully, you're fully fearless. And eventually you can become fearless Fosdick. That's a story for the older people. Fearless Fosdick is like, you know, Dick Tracy is a cartoon figure. Fearless Fosdick is a cartoon within the Dick Tracy cartoon. Fearless Fosdick is a cartoon that Dick Tracy reads, right? He looks a lot like Dick Tracy, but not quite as handsome. Yes. I think that I find myself struggling with both things. I'm a therapist, and a lot of times I'm working with being with others in their anxiety. Yes. And also in my personal life, I found it coming up that it's... I feel like I struggle...

[78:55]

I have this sense of being present with someone in their anxiety. And then it's like they start to sense that I'm pretty comfortable being with them and that. Yes. And then suddenly I find that they're turning and like attacking me for just being with them. Why aren't you doing more? Or why aren't you feeling more? You're so insensitive. How can you sit there and be with me when I'm just in this pain about this and I'm getting blasted? It's like... There's something there like, do I just continue to be with that? I want to say, wait a second. And then I get like, no, it's not okay to blaspheme. I don't like this. And then it becomes this fight. And I'm struggling with how to stay with... Getting that lasting from them. And then I start to think, well, am I just being narcissistic and insensitive, being in my own piece, being with them while they're suffering so much? Or, you know, what?

[79:58]

I don't know, it's a real tough place there to sit in. Yes. And then where to say, no, it's not, I don't like what you're doing right now. Be strong and face the blast. Mm-hmm. And not sure, like, what's my, you know, it's like something out of boundaries there. What's happening with my just being with their blasting versus setting boundaries and saying, wait, this isn't me doing anything bad to you. I'm being with you right now. So, I don't know if that's clear. Yeah, it's really clear. So, yeah, it's like that. That's how it is. And the more present you are, the more present you are, the easier target you are. You see, if you're not present, one of the advantages of not being present is that if they attack you, they don't get you.

[81:03]

They get your presentation. So you watch him shoot, you watch him shoot, sort of this guy, this kind of decoy you put out there. And you kind of pretend to say, ouch. But if you're really yourself, if they shoot at you, they get you. And then you feel like, well, that's what I get for being present and honest. So then you think, well, I'm not going to do that anymore. So then you move off the center, and it's much, you know, it's better in a way, except you're not present. And you feel like you're being dishonest and you know, betraying yourself and that kind of stuff. So then you start being present again, you feel, maybe I should, might as well go back to my real present then. And when you're getting blasted, sometimes you should say, I'd like to set up a little boundary here so that it won't hurt so much, okay? Could I put up a little guard all shield between us? You know? Or you might just fall off your chair and say, ouch, [...] ouch.

[82:09]

In fact, if they're getting you, why not tell them? Sometimes you should tell them. And also I know sometimes psychotherapists think they shouldn't reveal that the person's getting to them. But sometimes maybe you should. Even if your school says you shouldn't. Sometimes you, you know, I guess Freudians don't say anything about what's, if the patient gets to them, they don't say. And I guess they're sitting behind the patient sometimes anyway. So even if they are going, ooh, ooh, the patient doesn't know. And there's some advantage to not showing them. Sometimes what they want to do is find out that they can hit you all they want and you just sit there. They want to know that they can hit you as hard as they want and you'll survive and they can't destroy you. And then other times what they want to find out is that what they're doing, they're successful at getting you to hate them.

[83:10]

They want to find that out. Especially, not necessarily your own kids, but if you're working with disturbed children, they don't want to try to get you to love them and fail at that. So the first thing they try is they try to see if they can get you to hate them. And sometimes they're quite successful at getting you to hate them, and if you tell them, they feel some success. Then if they can be successful at getting you to hate them, maybe they can get you to love them. But they don't really want you to hate them, but they have to work their way up to trying to get what they really want from you, and they're not going to fail at that. So if they can't get you to hate them, then there's not much chance that they'll be able to get you to love them. So when they're trying to get you to hate them, maybe you should, as a child, maybe you should say, hey, you're a success. I hate you when you do that. I hate you. It's terrible. I want to kill you when you do that. And they think, that makes sense. They're scared. But they know that that makes sense. That's what they're trying to do. And then they may try to do something to get you to love them.

[84:13]

And then you can say, you're successful at that now. I love you. I love that when you do that. I love it. They're not going to try that in some cases before they can first be successful at hurting you. For a long time my daughter would do this to me and do that to me and I would just look at her and think, you know, this kid used to vomit in my face and I just sort of just go, you know, this is, there's nothing she can do, you know. And even when she tells me that I'm a jerk or I'm a bum or terrible blah, blah, blah, I know she loves me so it doesn't really hurt but it took me many years before I realized that really she doesn't want to hear that and she feels laughed at and impotent when she tries to hurt me and I just sort of go, and basically just chuckle when she does it, you know. It's just like I become this Iron wall. It seems like to me, it's like I'm loving her, but to her it seems like, can't get to me. No way, no access. So finally, in her teenage years, I actually decided to let her know that she was getting to me because she finally figured out how to get to me.

[85:20]

And I let her know. And she felt much better. And she let up. She can get to the all-powerful Father. In other words, she has some power, too, with a powerful person. And I set some limits with her for the sake of other people before. Like when she beat me up, I would say, you know, it doesn't really hurt me, but I don't want you to get in the habit of hurting me because you might think you can do that to other people, and you can't because they aren't as big as me. So you can't do this to your friends. You have to stop doing it to me so you don't get in the habit. and start doing it to people your own size or smaller. So I set those kinds of limits, but I never said, you know, you can't do this to me because it's too hard on me. And I don't know if I ever really did say that to her, but I did start telling her she was hurting me. And she never got angry at me when I told her that, but when I laughed when she was trying to hurt me, she got very angry. And that just made me laugh all the more. But the other way around worked. So... basically the situation you're describing is the kind of situation you get into when you live in the present.

[86:24]

And if you're, and if sometimes you're calm with a person and that doesn't work, and, and you, they don't like it. And sometimes you can even be calm with the fact that you don't like it. And sometimes they keep upping the ante until finally you're not calm. And then you say, no, I'm not calm. I'm actually upset now. And, but it's tricky, you know. And again, If you just really stay present and listen, you may see the right thing. Or at least you see a clear thing to experiment with. And you try it. You don't know if it's right. You try it and it works. Or it doesn't work. And if it doesn't work, you even try to be more present. And listen even more carefully to what they're asking. What are you really asking? What are you driving at? What do you really want from me? I think you want this. Do you want this? And then sometimes they say, and what you're picking up is counter-transference, right? They don't really want that, but they want you to feel that. And sometimes you tell them, and sometimes you don't. And that's called developing skill by trial and error in that hot situation.

[87:31]

But the best learning opportunity, I think... is the one where you're present and feeling the pain and feeling the pain and feeling no pain. Sometimes you just don't feel any pain, even though the person is telling you. And you just don't feel any. And you think, gee, there's something wrong with me, I should feel pain. Or you visit sick people in the hospital and you're just not upset and you don't feel the pain and you think, something's wrong with me, this isn't worthy, I shouldn't be visiting if I'm not upset. They don't want... But again, we think they want everybody to come in and be upset. Well, they don't necessarily want that. I think what people really want, deep down, is they want us to be ourselves. And we want them to be. However, as soon as we're successful and get what we want, we try to get away. Because it's so intense when somebody's himself or herself. And we're ourself. We want to go to the suburbs where, you know, things are calmer. You know? But not really calmer, just in denial.

[88:34]

And suddenly, you move the inner city to the middle of the suburbs, you find out how calm they are. Not calm, just running away from the intensity. But I'm afraid that the real work of art and meditation happens in the Fiery center. It's in the fiery center where the creativity happens. It's hot there. Burning flames. But in the middle of those flames, the Buddha is sitting. And there's a cool breeze across the eyebrows. You have to sit there. You have to get there. And getting there means walking through that fear. Am I doing the right thing? Am I being compassionate enough? Shouldn't I be suffering more? Walk through that stuff and get to the present. And then that's all over. You have to do it again. Yes?

[89:41]

Pardon? This is more of a statement. Statement, okay. Go ahead. But I guess it's a question that also... I was diagnosed with HIV seven years ago. It seems no matter how hard I try to accept myself, I always have this shame that keeps coming up around it. I think I've made a lot of strides with it. I just feel like it's a real obstacle for me. the shame? Is it obstacle? Yeah. Okay. I can see that it would be obstacle. And what do we do with obstacles in Zen? Sit. Yeah. We sit. And we sit in front of the obstacle with our face right up against it.

[90:47]

And when you sit still, every obstacle will turn into a door. and you go out into another world. And there'll be another obstacle there so you can keep growing and growing and growing into wider and wider worlds. But there's an obstacle, there's a wall around every world, around every circumference that we live in and we use that wall to walk through. And the way you walk through is when you're finally at peace with the wall. When you're at peace with the wall, you become the wall. And when you become the wall, the wall's not a wall anymore. The wall drops as soon as you become it. But you can't be wiggling around and become the wall. You have to just sit there and not worry about it anymore. And you'll realize after a while that you forgot that the wall is an object. You forget that the shame's an object. and walk through it and be grateful for it.

[91:51]

Because it was a door for you into a bigger world, a world of boundless life. And then, hopefully, there'll be another wall, another obstacle will come up so that you can transcend that new world. Because Buddhas don't just go into a bigger world and stay there. They keep transcending it constantly. So, use that. Don't be used by it. Yes. Okay, I'm willing to beg for excuse. Many funny stories about excuses.

[92:56]

When I was 12 years old, I went to this movie called Diabolique, Diabolique, a French movie. And at that time and since that time, I don't very often get frightened in movies. This was a really good thriller. And... so that I can tell this story in a short way. This woman and one of her friends killed her husband. And the plan was to kill him. They went away on vacation and killed him. And the plan was to, after they killed him, to put him in a bathtub so that he would be in the bathtub over the weekend. See, they would be out of town, see? They would be away from school. They'd have this alibi that they were out of town. All right? Like on Friday night, on Friday afternoon they left and they killed him on Friday, right?

[93:57]

They put him in the water on Friday. Okay? And then...

[94:04]

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