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Embracing Stereotypes in Zen Practice
AI Suggested Keywords:
The talk primarily explores the teaching of "suchness" in Zen, focusing on the dual aspects of source and process in both practice and understanding. The key discussion points include the concept of integrating these dualities without flagging them distinctly, the teachings of significant Zen figures such as Daoxing, and the role of understanding skillful means. The idea of stereotypes and clichés, particularly in relation to Zen teachings like the Lotus Sutra, and the experiential practice of descending into these clichés to understand emptiness, are emphasized. The narrative also includes an exploration of how perception of stereotypical experiences and the breaking of such perception leads to deeper realizations in Zen practice.
Referenced Works and Concepts:
- Lotus Sutra: Cited as an example of "source teaching" emphasizing unity and the oneness of life, integral to the practice of "suchness."
- Dao Shun's Teaching: Illustrates the importance of continuous mindfulness and awareness of life's unity.
- The Descent of the Goddess: Used as an allegory for spiritual renewal and liberation through embracing and shedding stereotypes.
- The Abhidhamma Lists: Mentioned as a form of clichés or stereotypes in Buddhism that practitioners must engage with to realize their emptiness.
- The Burning House (from the Lotus Sutra): Presented as a metaphor for samsaric entrapment, and the call to transcend by recognizing and engaging with one's current state.
Central Figures:
- Daoxin: Highlighted as having the courage to publicly disseminate Zen teachings and engage with the emperor while maintaining independence from political entanglements.
- Bodhidharma and the Third Ancestor: Mentioned in relation to their challenges in teaching and spreading Zen amidst societal opposition.
AI Suggested Title: Embracing Stereotypes in Zen Practice
Side: A
Possible Title: Lecture #5
Additional text: Sosshin
Side: B
Possible Title: Lecture #5
Additional text: N.R.
@AI-Vision_v003
So I've been talking about, for the whole practice period, the teaching of suchness. And as the poem says, the teaching of suchness... What does it say? Speaking of the Communicator. Oh yeah, speaking of the Communicator. It includes integration and includes a road. It includes process and source. So it has these two sides, this teaching or this practice of substance has these two sides. and process.
[01:01]
And I jump back and forth between the two in my life and in my teaching. I don't always put a flag saying which one is which. Sometimes I do and sometimes you have to figure out for yourself whether I'm talking about the source or the process. So, for example, I talked about, struck upon the word going down. And, what does that sound like? Process or source? Hmm? Process. Yeah, it sounds like process. So, the discussion and instruction is about going down are process types of And instructions about basically doing whatever you can do without delay is a kind of source instruction.
[02:10]
The Lotus Sutra, as the Third Ancestor says, the Lotus Sutra says there is just one thing. It's a kind of source teaching. ride the same car. All the Buddhas ride just one suchness. And part of Dao Shun's teaching is to constantly ride this one suchness. to constantly have unified mindfulness, uninterrupted awareness of the oneness of all life, of the unified activity of life, never forgetting that one thing.
[03:33]
But also, if people don't want to practice that way, then Dao Shing Gyi is what we call skill and means. An example of skill and means is you should definitely, thoroughly understand the teaching of form itself as emptiness. And then he will offer more information about how to understand one's emptiness. I'm very happy to have met a little bit with Tao Hsing, his practice period.
[04:45]
I feel much closer to him. I hardly felt much relationship with him before the practice period started, so I really feel good to have immersed in his compassionate teaching for two months now. And although in the way of the ancestors there is no superiority or inferiority still, this one was constantly steadfast in the religion of emptiness from boyhood as if He started in a former life. And again, his historical circumstance was that if you look at the life of Bodhidharma and the Quaker, they both were harassed for teaching Zen, for teaching suchness.
[06:07]
And the third ancestor, being a leper, didn't want to try the same thing. In those days in China, they didn't have black people or Jews. So lepers were good candidates for a minority group to harass. So he wasn't about to do a radical teaching and be a leper. So he kept quiet for one generation and taught only one person. But Daoxin, I guess probably was a nice looking guy and he had certain powers such that he wasn't afraid to expose the teaching widely. One time he went to a town and the town had been under siege from bandits for some time and he went inside with some of his followers and the bandits looked over the wall to see what was going on because they felt like something was happening inside the city as though an army had moved inside.
[07:26]
And really there wasn't an army but there was some presence there as though an army had moved in. As though, as I said yesterday, the cavalry had come. Reinforcements or something. And they figured that this man must be somebody that they should respect, and they left. So Daoxin dared to put the teaching out in public and make it available and known to people. So he had lots of disciples. And even the emperor heard about him, the emperor of China, Taizong. And he invited Daoxin to come to the capital. But Daoxin refused three times. The third time, saying that he couldn't come because of illness. He didn't say who's. So the emperor
[08:39]
sent an emissary a fourth time with a message that if he didn't come this time, he should bring his head back. So Daoxing took his head out and exposed his neck for the emissary's sword. And he continued, of course, practice Samadhi while he did that, right? And be aware of the unified quality, the unified activity of life as he stuck his neck out for the sorry. The emissary noticed that something was up. Went back to the emperor and told the emperor about this guy. And of course he respected him all the more and sent him some rare cloth and let him have his way.
[09:42]
So Dao Shin has a reputation of teaching for 60 years and never hobnobbing with big wheels. That may not sound like an important point but there's a strong tradition in Buddhism and particularly also in Daoism to stay away from famous people when you get to be a spiritual teacher. And you get involved in politics and pretty soon your teaching stump starts to become politics. You start trying to please the important people. It's a real burden. So it's better not to get involved in the first place. You can possibly avoid it. And he succeeded. Although there was a scary moment. So he made, during his life, Zen Buddhism, or the lineage that became Zen Buddhism, started to become nationally known.
[10:57]
And so we still know him today. Really a nice person. Now, also yesterday I'd like to go into a little bit more detail in this thing about Huang's emptiness, about how to practice that, how to go down. And again I propose to you that we live, at least I live, in a world of rigid structures Like for example, bones, teeth, walls, doors, schedules, telephone bills, jails, birth and death.
[12:02]
Real significant rigid structures. Perhaps some of you have noticed these things. These are also called stereotypes. See this? What is that? Huh? Yeah, hand. In other words, it's a stereotype. So she can recognize it. It's called a hand. And again, I call it a cliché. It's a cliché for something. For what? It's a cliché for what? Hand is a cliché for what? This is really what? Who knows what this is? I don't know. But we have a cliché for it. What is it? Hand. The cliche for her, Eleanor. Stereotypes, okay? All the things she is and has become throughout her life that we've seen, all the changes she goes through, all the different kinds of things she is to us that we perceive, what do we call it?
[13:09]
Stereotype. Eleanor, everything in that same little box. And after a while, she even falls for it. Maybe she doesn't, but some people do. They fall for the stereotypes about themselves. Well this is not so good in terms of absolute unhindered existence. So what we want to do is become free of these stereotypes, free of this crap. But the way to become free of it is through respecting it and being grateful to it. Which is the same as going down. I mean by going down. Someone gave me an article called Cliche Capers. It's an instruction for jazz musicians.
[14:09]
And the basic instruction is copy the cliches of the best musicians. consciously try on their clichés, those musical activities which not only they do, but which everybody else in their generation copies, which no one can avoid dealing with. So there are these clichés in art that all artists have to deal with. Either they have to copy it or react to it. But he says consciously copy them. So in Buddhism we have clichés that generation after generation almost everyone has to copy, try out. For example, the Abhidhamma list. Those are clichés.
[15:10]
Those are stereotypes. Or form itself is emptiness. That's a cliché. It's a teaching which you're going to have trouble avoiding. You can resist it, but you're going to have trouble not hearing it. And again, the clichés of the dharmas, or these rigid structures of experience, these stereotypes, in order to realize their emptiness, you have to try it on, precisely. That's what I mean by going down. The descent of the goddess into a form, into a feeling, into a name, into a story. Stories are also stereotypes.
[16:15]
So pick a story about a great Zen dialogue and descend into it, go down into it. Pick a story about your own body, your own spine, your own breath and go down into it. I read a book a while ago and I asked Lori to bring it back from San Francisco but she forgot or something. And the story is, the book is called The Descent of the Goddess. And it's about this goddess that goes down into the underground and takes all her clothes off. And then another goddess basically crucifies her, pegs her to a door. And when she's pegged,
[17:24]
And when she can't move anymore, she dies. And then the water comes to her and revives her. And she's reborn and goes back up above the ground again, renewed, refreshed, and enlightened. Not afraid anymore. So in that sense, you know, going down is more, has to do more with the feminine. rather than going up and attaining we come down and attain liberation. So if I tell you a story or if I say something like trust everything to your breath and dive into the ocean of Buddha's vow.
[18:27]
You can take that as an instruction or you can take it as a description of your mind. Either way, I can say, your mind or you are empty and lucidly clear. If I say something like that to you or if you hear words like that, it's difficult to accord with those words, just like it's difficult to accord with the sound of the stream. That stream is also telling you, it's also giving you instruction about how to go down. It's a cliché, which you can descend into, if you can hear it properly. So there's the issue of resistance comes up. And there's two kinds of resistance.
[19:34]
If someone says to you, trust everything to your breath, there's two ways to resist that. One is to not do it. And the other is to do it too much. So you can resist by fight. The basic, the first meaning of resistance is to go against a place. resist, re-stance. Stance is a place, a position. To resist the position. But another way to resist is to be too accepting. To be too accepting of your hands or your body or your breath. to be too influenced by what you hear is a form of resistance. So then you overshoot the stereotype or undershoot it by trying to be too readily available.
[20:40]
You still, by being too receptive, you still retain some kind of control over and above the form, feeling or whatever. You don't really meet it completely. So it's difficult to hit that balance point where you're not leaning to the right or to the left in terms of hearing the sound of the tree stream or tasting something or hearing a teaching. And also When you get close to balancing that right amount, so you're not resisting anymore, not trying, not fighting back and not giving in too much, not being too stiff and not being too soft, when you get right to that place, then the stereotypes start to quiver and shake and crack and we get scared and we run around trying to
[21:58]
Well, we start to resist. The fear is part of it. It's a later development in the resistance process. So for example, you know, we have breaks here, both during session and during regular times, and it's hard to just go through the break without doing something, right? The breaks are kind of, they're literally breaks. You might break during the breaks. So I think all of us have some tendency to try to string some thread across the break. One of the main ways we do it is eating or talking. It's very difficult in this place during this time or during the regular schedule just to go and face that there's nothing to do during the break. Or I shouldn't say that there is nothing to do, but because we find things to do.
[23:09]
Laundry, letters, reading. But if you're too tired to do the laundry, if it's raining, or if you're too tired to read, or you're too greedy to figure out which book to read, and you're almost noticing that, and you don't feel up to writing a letter quite, reading is really easy. string a little thread across that abyss of that break. But actually I think many people here, I get the feeling, many people here are on the verge of realizing emptiness on the breaks. What a strange place to wake up to emptiness, but actually it's It's even got a nickname to tell you that that's when it's going to happen. It's a crack in the world.
[24:15]
So we have a hard time with those bricks. I know from personal experience, very hard not to fill those holes with something. Now, again, it is a vital issue to understand form itself is empty. And I say vital because that issue is, that is vitality. That is life, that edge there. That's where we get our real life, the life that can free us the full life that cannot be bound, that overarches everything.
[25:21]
But unfortunately, the way things are set up is that complete vitality is located in that scary place between the worlds, where there seems to be kind of a hole. But unfortunately also it's not actually the hole itself, because when you're in the hole there's no problem. There's no eyes, no ears, no problems, no fear, no nothing. It's at the edge of the hole that we get scared, where we think we can back off, or we think there's a cliff to hold on to to throw a rope out over it. Once you're out in it there's no problem, Buddha will take care of you. But at the edge, we look for something to hold on to. Something to some excuse. That emptiness is lurking constantly around everything. And particularly it's lurking around something that you already know as a stereotype.
[26:32]
Something you already know as a common banal cliche. That's really circumscribed by vast emptiness. You're so suspicious of it already. So the common, the banal, the cliché is a very good place to look. You can stand it. And watch what happens around the edge. Everything's swirling. Now the promise is that if you can jump into emptiness, if you can jump into the ocean of Buddha's vows, that then a strange thing happens after that. And that is that the clichés come back.
[27:35]
But again, when they come back now, when the hands come back, when the things come back, When you make stereotypes again, you will hear that pshhh. You will hear the sound of the matrix hitting the molten metal. You will be there for when the forms are recreated. Do you recreate your own cliche of yourself? You will create a cliché of yourself, but you will do it. I mean, you will do it. It will be your life. It won't be something that's hoisted on you. It won't be something that's past you that you don't even understand where it came from. So it doesn't matter. You can make exactly the same thing again that you used to make, but you now see that you're making it.
[28:38]
And therefore, you see it's just magic. It's just something you're conjuring up out of your own vitality. It is simply your vitality, or simply is vitality. So, you know, you've heard that expression, before you go down, before you study Zen, In other words, before you go down into the cliché, before you go down into the mountain, mountains are mountains, and rivers are rivers, and mountains are never rivers, and rivers are never mountains, and you're never the mountain, and the mountain's never you. After you go down, there's no mountains, and no rivers, and no you. But then, after that, there's mountains again.
[29:39]
Like the mountains are walking, the wild mountains are dancing, the mountains are seeing. And so are you. Yes? I asked this already but I want to ask it again. So how do you know in which world you are? In what form is warm or form is emptiness? How do you know? Well, when you are in emptiness, you definitely do not know anything. Okay? You are beyond knowing, and you have no problem about being able to tell which is which. No problem whatsoever, there are no problems. There are no questions, no answers, there's nothing. There's no mona, there's no not-mona. Okay? The question is, is it mountains that are walking, is it mountains which are free, or is it mountains which are not free? That's the question. And again, when Odysseus got back home to Ithaca, he did not recognize it.
[30:50]
Why? Well, because his dear friend Athena put a mist around the coastline, so he couldn't recognize it. Why did she do that? Why didn't she just say, welcome home, here it is? Why does wisdom play that kind of game with us? You know, it's like you take your pole and you run up the edge of the stream and you stick the pole in the dirt and then you fly across the stream and you land on the other side. But you don't necessarily recognize it right away. Partly because of the shock of landing. You don't have your feet yet. But you are on the other side. And the other side is just like this side, except the difference is you went across the water. It's the same kind of thing, except you have now been freed yourself from your old ways. It looks the same, so if it looks the same, how can you tell?
[31:55]
How can you tell? Well, if you don't know, it's of no use. What? It seems that if you don't know, it's of no use. Well, you don't know, as you're flying through the air, you don't know. And when you land you don't know, but later you become certain. The mist clears and you realize you are home. But it's not because of knowing. And also he used to be, he also came from that place before, right? And you just get back to where you came from. So there's no difference. And yet you're certain that there's no difference. You're recreating the stereotypes of a place of emptiness. How can you recreate, how can you recreate them if there's no you? I mean, if you said like, there's no... That's just, that's just conventional speech. There is no, you don't do it.
[32:56]
Right? There's no you. I just said, I just say you. So like I said, if you go down to the ground where there's no movement, and you witness the first movement of the mind, That witness is empty and brilliantly clear. There's nobody there witnessing it. There's nobody at home witnessing that. But there is witnessing. There is witnessing the movement, that first movement. And this first movement is that... If you're witnessing, don't you have to have something... I mean, that's separating it already. I mean, if you're watching the first movement, you're seeing the... You're witnessing emptiness. You're witnessing the emptiness of the movement because you can see that the movement is just an illusion. And also, the witnesser is empty too. Everything's empty.
[33:56]
You can actually feel the emptiness at that point. You don't cling to the thing out there, you don't cling to the awareness of it. And you can see that the emptiness is also the emptiness of that which is watching and that which is watched. That difference is also empty. That's empty, the object's empty, the difference is empty, and the subject is empty. The whole thing's empty. The whole thing is happy. There's another thing, too, that I wanted to bring up and is related to this. that while you're, for example, let's say you're sitting in the zendo or working in the kitchen, and you feel pretty calm, let's say you feel pretty calm and at peace, but you don't feel like, geez, I just understood form's emptiness, or you don't feel like, you don't think, geez, I just had this great insight, or whatever.
[35:05]
You don't know that you're creating your world firsthand. You don't see that way. So in fact, your opinion is that you have not hit the bottom of existence yet. You have not completely settled down and eliminated resistance. In other words, you're not too soft or too weak, but you're pretty good. You're pretty happy. And you can sit this way. Now, people have these kinds of experiences, both feeling fairly satisfied and at peace and grateful that they can sit, and yet not feeling that they really have hit the profundity. Now, the funny thing is that if you are actually satisfied with not getting to the bottom, if you are satisfied that you have not definitely understood form itself as emptiness,
[36:06]
that that actual satisfaction with the level of insight you have is exactly what takes you down deeper. And it doesn't take you down deeper according to some schedule that you have set up or that anybody else has set up, but actually being satisfied with this level of concentration, being grateful for this level of concentration, which all of you have right now. Okay, you all have some level of concentration at this very moment. To be grateful for that level of concentration, is exactly what takes you down to the next level. And again, being grateful for that level takes you down to the next level and the next level until you hit the bottom. You get down there by gratefulness to whatever level of concentration you have. And again, if you're too grateful, that's not quite it. If you're not grateful enough, that's not quite it. You have to be honestly grateful exactly for what you have, and that takes you down to the bottom. That's the ticket down. Yeah.
[37:09]
Some other time you talked about the burning house and coming out of the burning house. Yeah. So where does that happen as the lady just told? Where does what happen? The coming out of the burning house. Where does the coming out of the burning house happen? Can you say more about that? Burning house. Burning house metaphor. Burning house, burning house is a meta, is a cliché. Okay? So, you, once you're completely in the burning house, once you cannot resist the burning house, you come out of the burning house. And, so, actually,
[38:14]
If you're in the burning house, there is just one thing there too. You're already Buddha. Even in the burning house you're already Buddha, okay? But you certainly do not think so. You certainly do not think so. Because of the cliché. You're trapped in this stereotype called a burning house with all kinds of monsters rolling around and biting you and stuff, okay? snakes, you know, you name it. These clichés are really getting you. You have almost no hope of realizing you're just one thing, and that you're riding a Buddha vehicle. Therefore, Buddha says, okay, come on outside. And in order to coax you away from your current habits, I'll give you some new habits, various kinds of meditation practices you can do. One of them being, one of the meditation practices is accept that you're in a burning house.
[39:19]
If you won't accept that one, I'll give you a different one. But that's one of them. Another cliche is goat cart. Another cliche is horse cart. Another cliche is whatever you will be attracted by. Something that you, some stereotype that you find interesting. Not something you don't know about. It's not that we say, guess what? I'm telling you, you're in a burning house. If you believe me, you're immediately out of the burning house. Okay? The children do not believe that they're in a burning house. He says, come on out. They don't come out. If they would understand that they're in a burning house, they would leave on their own. Okay? But in fact, he's telling them that and they will not admit that. If they would admit that, then they would accept the cliché that they're in, and they would immediately leave. Huh? I mean, I completely believe that, but how did I get out?
[40:21]
Well, in their case, they got out on their feet. They just walked out. They just gave up their old habits of playing with the toys in the nursery. They just walked out. If you want to know a way, okay, then Take whatever burning house you want. Take anything. I said, for example, use your hands. Just completely become your hands against your abdomen. Put your hands someplace. And I say against your abdomen because that's a nice place. If you don't put them there, where are they going to be? You know, sliding all over your lap? So I just say, put them some definite place and then you go to that place. You put your whole attention on that hand, okay? That's a burning house. If you can settle just right on your own hand, you will get out of the burning house. And when you get out of the burning house, then we will tell you that that was just a skillful device.
[41:25]
That actually you were all right before you even left. But you couldn't believe it, so we give you some kind of thing to settle into. Your hand, your breath, your spine. And the Just like a child in a burning house, you know, if somebody yells, if your parent yells from the outside, you're in a burning house, you can say, oh no, I'm not. Or you can believe them too much. You know, you can over-believe them or under-believe them. You can believe them so much that you just curl up in a ball and die. That's too much, that's being too receptive to the instruction. And that's another kind of resistance, okay? Or you can believe them too little and say, I'll be out in a few minutes. or forget it, or don't try to trick me. There's two kinds of resistance. And also to the instruction, put your mind in your hand, or just keep your hand against your abdomen, same thing. That instruction, what is the... If you don't resist it, then that would be it, flat out, you would just do that.
[42:32]
But who can do that? If you take your all-sufficient, But anyway, it would take you quite a bit of time to actually be able to just simply do that and only that. It takes quite a while to get your mind tuned so that there's not a hair's breadth deviation. So you're actually just in your hand or your spine and that's it and you don't move and you're just doing one thing and your consciousness is unified. So, that's how to get out of the burning house. And there's many different ways to get out of the burning house, but they're all basically the same, is they're devices to just admit where you are, to go down and realize emptiness. But in the meantime anyway, At the meantime, you say, how? You say, I believe it, but how? Okay? What that means is, or what I hear that is, is that I've been trying, but I'm not doing as well as I think I should.
[43:39]
Okay? I'm trying, but I haven't been successful yet. Well, okay, that's fine. That's how you feel. Respect that idea. But, if you can also accept the level of your success so far, if you can be grateful that you've been able to make the effort you've been able to make so far, and be satisfied with what you've done so far. That, and to continue to work even though you're satisfied, that will take you down. Until finally you so understand what a burning house it is, you'll just simply get up and walk out. And when you get outside, you'll find out that there's just one thing. And what is the one thing? It's whatever happens next. It's your life that you make in the next moment after you walk outside. And you will know that. Not knowing like knowing and not knowing.
[44:42]
You'll just be certain of that. This is my life and there's no other possibility. And if Buddha wanted to be some other way, I don't care. This is who I am. This is who I am. And I'm making it so. And the mountains are walking. And there's just one thing. And that one thing is not another one thing from this one. It happens to be this one right now. This person standing on her feet in this courtyard outside this burning house. This is my life. So we are doing the one practice Samadhi and also we can get better at it.
[45:46]
The wonderful thing about Buddha nature is it has this great function is that it can get deeper. If you're at this level of practice right now, at this level of concentration right now, if you're this kind of a goddess right now, okay. This is your buddha nature. This is the one thing right now. And appreciating that this is the one thing right now, guess what? It gets deeper. It is always the one thing and yet it keeps getting deeper and deeper. Practice keeps making it deeper and wider and better. even though it's perfect now. But if you don't think it's perfect now, and when I say that I mean if you're resisting that or if you're overly accepting it, if you don't hit that right level of non-resistance to that simple teaching, one thing now, all Buddhas ride suchness. If you can get that just right, no matter where you are you go deeper.
[46:49]
So don't think that just because you can go deeper that where you are now isn't good enough. Where you are now is perfect. If I may speak on behalf of Buddha, Buddha loves all of you. Buddha thinks each one of you are terrific and would not want you to be the slightest bit different. Now you may hear that Buddha wants you to be different, but even if you hear that about Buddha, I'm saying it's not true, but even if you hear it and somebody and somebody proves to you that really Buddha does want you to be different, then still you have to say, forget it. I don't want to. You must have had this period before where you spoke about humbleness? Whatness? I'm trying to say it in English. Hubris. Oh, hubris, yeah. Somehow it popped up in my mind again, like now. Well, hubris has to do with humus. Okay? Hubris, I believe, is etymologically related to humus.
[47:55]
You know what humus means? So hubris means that you stand up, up here, above the ground, and you say, without the ground. You have to have the ground. So you should keep touching the ground and saying, Earth, are you okay? Okay, Earth? Me to Earth, me to Earth. You understand what I mean? It's like when you're riding an airplane, you say, you know, whatever to Earth, whatever to Earth, or a spaceship. You keep checking with Earth to see how you're doing. It's not that I am Buddha, it's just that Buddha nature is functioning through this. There's nobody there. If there's anybody home, then you're up here and Earth is down here. But there's nobody home. Nobody home.
[48:56]
No witness there. It's empty. If anybody's home, sniff it out. Shakyamuni, when he was enlightened, touched the ground? No, he didn't touch the ground when he was enlightened. He touched the ground before he got enlightened. You see, he wanted to sit down and not move. He wanted to go down. So he sat down, and Mara came and said, Hey, wait a minute, you can't sit down. Get out of there. You've got better things to do. Come here, I'll show you. Or, you know, if you sit there, we'll kill you. Anyway, all the delusions of the world, as soon as anybody tries to sit still, at that edge between form and emptiness, where you try to sit down into the stereotype, all your delusions will come up to you and say, eat something. Write a letter. Read a book. Pick your nose.
[49:57]
Go to sleep. Exercise. Do something, but don't stop moving. Okay, then Shakyamuni Buddha said, wait a minute, just I'm gonna check to see if it's okay if I sit here. And he put his hand down on the earth. And he said, earth, can I sit here? And the earth said, yes. You don't have to move, sweetheart. And the earth roared. And he didn't move. Then he attained enlightenment. So you may not feel yet that you can really sit still. Many things are saying, don't sit still, keep moving. But if you can be grateful for the level of stillness you've attained, your gratitude will take you down. Your gratitude is Earth, which is saying, yes, you can sit still. You can do just one thing.
[51:01]
You can go deeper. Is it a delusion? It's a delusion. Is that important to be aware of? It's important to be aware of the delusion, yes. But also be grateful for the delusion. Don't put yourself down for being deluded about thinking that you're not very... that you're You know, people come and say, well I'm way up here and you're talking about way down here. I say, okay, that's where you are, fine. I don't want to say, you're not really up there, you're really down here. But that's what we think, we think we're here. And if you can be grateful for here, wherever here is, that takes you down. Be grateful for this cliché, be grateful for this house. Find that proper attitude and that will take you down. The bottom is a delusion too.
[52:09]
And because it's a delusion, guess what happens at the bottom? What happens at the bottom, folks? Start at the top again. Huh? Start at the top again. It goes up. When you get to the bottom, what happens? Hello! More delusion! Yay! The never-ending drama for truth, justice, and the American way. When you go down to the bottom, there's no bottom in this groove. The bottom is broken. And the whole world opens up again, but it's refreshed, it's new, and it's whatever. And you see it. And then, you forget it and you have to go down again. This is going on all the time anyway, isn't it?
[53:12]
It's going on uptime anyway. It's just a matter of tuning in and waking up. Tune into this, the Suchness channel and wake up to it. That's all. And as I said yesterday, I'm so happy I'm not going to go to sleep again. Tune into Suchness no matter what happens. It's really a great station. And again, you're all tuned in to it perfectly already. You know? This is actually it. All things. May our intention be great, that your ear may be in bliss. My friend, I can't help but love you this way.
[54:14]
Stay on the field. The beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. The illusions are impossible. I vow to end them. I love to enter them. The earth's way is unsurpassable. I love to enter them.
[55:29]
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