Last week, at this time, Hal was in cardiac intensive care. So... Is that right? Well, sort of, yeah. Congestion, heart failure. Emergency. So, this is Hal. Hal. Andy. Marioko. Pam. Shannon. Cindy. Dikran. Jennifer. Clay. Michael. Diana. John. Grant. David. Eugene. Carolyn.

[01:03]

Deborah. Vivi. Berndt. Alethea. Jennifer. Anna. Susan. Peter. Rosemary. Kathy. Micah. Jennifer. Christy. Nora. Robin. Maria. Hector. Jenny. Chris. Bruce. Caroline. Julie. Michelle. Jenny. Mark. Dino. Beverly.

[02:05]

Rob. Fred. Terry. Elizabeth. Meg. Miriam. Paul. Could you turn the lights up just a little bit behind you, Jeremy? Okay. Thanks. Thanks. There's a number of little tidbits that I thought might be good to mention tonight. One is that tomorrow I'm going to fly in an airplane, I think, to the Midwest, to the land of 10,000 lakes,

[03:13]

to the land of lakes, which is Minnesota, to the city of lakes, which is Minneapolis, and to this creek called Minnehaha, which means laughing waters, where I grew up. And I'm going to give a Memorial Weekend retreat in St. Paul, Minnesota. Then I'm going to go to Chaska, Minnesota, and visit my mother. Then I'm going to go to Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, see if I can find some Wonder Boys. And then I'm going to go to New York City. And just by coincidence, my daughter and grandson are going to be in New York City at that time,

[04:18]

which I didn't know about until a couple of days ago. So I get to, I guess, go to Central Park with my grandson. Yeah, it's cool. So anyway, and then I'm going to go to London, and then I'm going to go to southwestern England, Devon, and do a retreat there. And then I'll come back and do a session at Green Gulch. So, I'm in trouble. And so all that finishes on around June 25th, all that stuff, all those retreats. I guess one, two, three, four, four retreats. So the 28th will be the next time I'll be here. And one other thing I wanted to mention for your future life is that in the fall, for various reasons,

[05:25]

the sitting group will be probably moving to Tuesday night for October and November and December. I don't know if that works for the city center, but if it does, they'll move to Tuesday night. So I just thought I might tell you that ahead of time. And let's see, and I also wanted to thank Jennifer for writing a summary of last week. Thank you very much. And it would be nice to go through her summary, because it's very interesting. What'd you say? Oh, no? Well, I'll try to restrain myself. But anyway, I wanted to just say that I thought to myself that for the last few weeks here, and I have been talking with you about a practice,

[06:29]

which is the mode of admission to the Buddhadharma. It's the mode of admission, or the price of admission, to Buddha's wisdom and compassion. It's the mode of admission into the creation of the world, or into the creativity of the universe, which is being thus. It's the mode of entry into the way we really are, which is the way we really are, is we are the creativity of the universe. The whole universe makes each one of us. And the practice I've been talking with you about is a way to enter that realm where you're made,

[07:37]

where you're created together with the rest of us, and to understand and fully participate. And I just might mention that this is the greatest peace and joy and freedom and love, to be in this realm and live fully there. And the practice, the mode of entry, is non-attachment, non-seeking, non-grasping. That's how you sort of drop through the floor of the world where things are already made

[08:40]

into the world where things are being made. It's quite a high price, apparently. It's a simple practice. It's a simple price. Just don't grasp anything or seek anything. It's simple, but not too many people want to pay. As some people say, everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. So it means you die of your usual power thing of grasping and seeking, or it means you're completely relaxed. And that's the mode of entry into creativity. I just thought I might mention, that's kind of a summary of what I've been talking about for a while. Does that make sense to anybody? The new people probably don't know what I'm talking about, but... They probably do. What? They probably do.

[09:41]

I hope so. Do you understand, Christy? No. Vivi says you probably do, but, you know, she'll explain to you later how you probably understand. You said we're the creativity of the whole universe. Pardon? We are the creativity. Well, you are the creativity, and also, yes, and the whole universe creates you, both. Wow. Yeah, cool. That's exact. Yeah, that's it, you got it. It's like, wow. Wow. That's what Buddha said when Buddha got in on this. Buddha said, wow, everybody's like, totally like the creativity of the universe, fantastic, but they don't seem to get it, because they're holding on.

[10:45]

So I want to teach them how to let go. How can I help them let go? So he started to pay them. If I give you a dollar, will you let go? And most people said, yeah, and they gave him a dollar and they let go. So he got all these people to let go and enter the creativity of the universe and experience great peace and freedom and joy and love. But then he died, and then things have been tough ever since, because he had a certain way of giving that dollar that was very skillful. Kind of, he winked when he did it. People went, wow. Don't worry, Jennifer, I'm one to it. So somebody came to me the other day and she said something like, I think I said something like, do you have something to report?

[11:52]

And she said, she was smiling quite a bit, and she said, I feel blessed. And she said, but there's still quite a bit of karmic negativity. In other words, negativity which is due to her past karma. But she felt blessed. And then I said, there is an understanding that blessings are bestowed upon beings even when they're up to their eyeballs in karmic negativity. The blessed one, the big blesser, does not look at people who are afflicted by negativity and say, well, I'm not going to bless them. I'm not going to bless these miserable people. No, that's not what the blessed one does. The blessed one gives blessings to those who are afflicted by karmic negativities.

[12:57]

Showers blessings on them 24 hours a day. If you are suffering from any negativity, the blessings are coming to you right now from the blessed ones. They're giving you blessings. And this person who experiences karmic negativities, this person felt it. Even though she was feeling this negativity, she felt the blessings. So she was happy. The blessings are coming. Please feel free to feel them, although you can't really feel them. I mean, you can feel them, but you can't... You can feel blessed and you can feel blessings, but the blessings are more than you can feel. They're better than what you feel because they keep happening after you stop feeling them and they're going before you start feeling them. So anyway, I said, there is that understanding. And she said to me,

[14:01]

is that your understanding? I said, well, yes. I'm one of the people who has that understanding. That's what I think is going on, is that right now you're all receiving blessings. And I hope you can soon say thank you. Back to page one. Somebody else came to talk to me and I was talking to him about this practice of meeting whatever comes without trying to grasp it or seek anything other than what's happening. And he said something like, I'm having trouble grasping this. So that's another point. Of course, grasping the instruction about not grasping is antithetical to the practice. So you don't get to grasp the instruction of non-grasping.

[15:03]

You've got to just receive it without getting a hold of it. So as it comes to you, as this wonderful teaching of non-grasping comes to you, just let it come and keep your hand on it. Keep your hand sort of behind your back and just let it penetrate. Let it just take over your whole body and mind and just become one big living non-grasper, non-grasping, non-seeking, without possessing that practice or that teaching. So then I started singing, and I sang a song which I don't really know the words to very well. But it goes something like this. Who knows? Could be something's coming, something good.

[16:07]

Do-do-do-do. I got a feeling there's a miracle, do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. What? What? Gonna come to me. Who knows? Could be. Could be, don't you think? A miracle called your enlightenment could be coming to get you. Are you ready for the miracle to come? Another conversation. In our koan class, we study these stories of koans, so I try to get the people to memorize the story. And then one person I suggested he memorize the story and the commentary. I think I did, but anyway.

[17:07]

I suggested he memorize something. And he came back to me and he said, I'm trying to memorize and I'm finding it very painful. And I said, well, how is it painful? And I think he said something like, it's like, it's like it's me and me. And it's like you start to feel like, you know, me and the text. You start to feel that more. When you just walk up to a text, you know, and you can read it like, that's that. But if you try to memorize it, you can't just go, you have to get very close to it. And as you get closer, lots of stuff starts happening. You start to feel closer, but you also start to feel

[18:09]

almost like farther. You start to feel the distance. The closer you get, the more you feel the distance. When you first look at a poem or something, the first time you look at it, you don't necessarily feel close to it, but as you start to memorize it, you get close. Sometimes you read a poem and you're immediately like totally close. But sometimes a poem is not, you have to work at it. You have to work at, you have to get close, you have to work at getting close to it. And that can be quite difficult. So I just want to recommend to you, for your consideration, for a practice, that you take a text and memorize it. And when it starts to get difficult, I tell you beforehand that the difficulty is not just that you're getting senile, which in some cases is the reason, but if you're getting senile, then as you start to memorize, you start to become intimate with your senility.

[19:10]

It's not like you and your senility, it's like you get closer and closer to your inability to memorize. But even if you have an easy time memorizing, in terms of your mind picks things up, you still get closer and that makes you uncomfortable because you feel that little bit of difference between the memorizer and the memorized. But the memory helps, is a nice, memorizing is a way to get a feeling for what intimacy is. But it's painful, because at first you're far away, and as you get closer, it gets even more difficult until you get completely united. So it's a very good practice, memorizing. And then if you're memorizing a text, then you understand the text in that intimacy.

[20:13]

But again, again, relax. You have to be relaxed while you do this too, because the relaxation will help you learn how to tolerate the intimacy. So bring the practice up. And as you start, also memorize without seeking to memorize, and memorize without grasping. So relax and get close. Get close and relax. And the text is a nice toy to play with, to get close to. The memorization work is kind of a, has a healing function, to heal the separation between you and the text, the sense of the wound between you and the text. And one other thing I wanted to mention,

[21:22]

which you may not apply to you today or tomorrow, but just as a thing to do. When you come to talk to me, and also when you go talk to anybody, but I'm particularly asking you to do it when you talk to me. See if you can come to talk to me and say what you have to say without starting with so. Like for example, so how are you? Try to just come up to somebody and say, how are you? So where are you going? Take out the so, just say, where are you going? Now some people say, no, no, say so first. I don't want you just to come up here and talk to me all of a sudden, like just come up to me and say, how are you? Just say so first. So, you know. I suggest you try that.

[22:32]

It's a very interesting mindfulness practice. Like, how are you, Pam? I'm not saying that necessarily is a bad thing. It could be like kind of like an attunement thing, like so, how are you, Pam? But it also can be a distraction from actually what you're about to say, kind of like cuts into it. And it's kind of a habit too, that doesn't, usually you don't pay attention to. But I find it kind of like the person goes, kind of goes, rather than just, Well, I have several other points, but I think that's enough. Some other day for the rest of them.

[23:34]

Except I would like to say one thing about Jennifer's thing. Would you, may I, just in front of everybody, say something? That you left out a C-O-N on conceptual. It says, Samatha is non-ceptual. It's not, Samatha is non-conceptual practice. Would you fix that, please? Put a con in there. It's a paragraph where Reb is asked, she wrote in the historical present, Reb is asked to elaborate on Samatha practice. And she wrote, Samatha is non-ceptual practice, but it's non-conceptual practice. But then you said something which was, I think, really interesting, and that is, I don't know if I said this, but she said I said it,

[24:35]

and if I did, but I think actually it was her understanding which is really quite interesting. It is, also she said, she also said that a man with long hair had a baby, and when the baby cried, he went outside. And when the baby was quiet, he came back. It's non-conceptual. Then she said that isolated objects require us to make stories. Stories. In other words, if you see something, and you see it as isolated, you have to have a story about how it's isolated. It's not isolated unless you have a story about its isolation. And we do have stories.

[25:39]

We have stories like, and I got a story about how she's not me, you know, so then she's isolated, but without the story, she's not isolated. She's an object. She's an object, and she's not the same as the subject, but without having a story, the object's not separate from the subject. Fortunately, we all have lots of stories, so we keep those objects separate, isolated from the subject. And then she said another thing. Samatha, by the way, means, for Kristi's benefit, it means tranquility, or calming practice. So calming practice is when we see this object and that object and don't make up stories about them. So when you look at,

[26:40]

when the subject is aware of various objects and you don't make up stories, or I would say, actually, when you don't grasp the stories you have, then to look at things without grasping the story you have, you calm down. So the mind is conjuring up stories like, this person's okay, this person's out there, blah, blah. But if you don't grasp those stories, if you don't grasp those stories, if you don't seek those stories, you calm down, which is also the mode of entry into reality. Also, last week, by coincidence, Nancy, who's not here, asked about the... She asked if attachment is the opposite of creation.

[27:51]

Okay, so I'm suggesting to you that the practice of non-attachment is the way we enter into creation. Of course, we're in the middle of creation all the time, but by practicing non-attachment, we fully participate in the creation that's already going on. So it's not exactly that attachment is the opposite of creation or creativity. It's just that attachment makes creativity separate. We lose contact, we lose realization of creativity if we cling. So non-attachment is not the opposite... Non-attachment is not the same as creativity. Non-attachment reveals creativity, and attachment obscures creativity. Letting go of attachment, we enter creation. So, I said that before tonight, right?

[28:59]

All right? Anything you want to bring up before we say goodnight? Oh, I wanted to say one more thing before I forget. Another aspect of all this, of course, is this practice of non-attachment helps us enter into creativity. And when we enter into creativity, we understand creativity. And when we understand creativity, or when we understand creation, we don't see any isolated objects. So, like in my case, I was talking at the end, I think last week I was talking about gophers, and if I don't relax, I think gophers are isolated objects, isolated from me. And these isolated objects dig isolated holes

[30:04]

in my isolated lawn, which I love, my isolated lawn. But then I'm kind of tense about my isolated lawn, and I don't want big gopher piles on my isolated lawn. They obscure the nice, green, smooth impression, and kill the grass. So I have this practice. Of course, I want to understand that me and the gophers are like totally simpatico, right? Totally like we're in the same group, me and the gophers. I want to understand that, right? And so I strongly advise myself to not go to the hardware store. And someone asked me after class, well, what do you mean go to the hardware store? And I said, well, they have poison at the hardware store that you can feed the little fellers, and then they... No more gophers for a while.

[31:05]

No more gophers to feel separate from. But someone else, fortunately or unfortunately, went to the hardware store for me and bought me this gopher relation equipment. And it's wrapped in comics. Now, I don't know if I should read these comics first. Maybe there's a message here for me about my true relationship with gophers. Anyway. Maybe I'll read the comic later. And what we have here is... Gopher bombs. These are gopher torpedoes. And it looks like Rebecca is allergic to gopher torpedoes.

[32:15]

So you just drop these on your lawn, and it blows your lawn up and all the gophers too. But I didn't buy this. Somebody else bought it and gave it to me. But all kidding aside, this is called a sonic gopher chaser. It's not a sonic gopher molester. It says, safe and effective. I think safe means safe for the gophers. It's got a picture here of the gophers, like, you know, down in their little house, and this thing sticking to the ground, making sounds, which make them want to move to another more quiet neighborhood. And I think the sounds are like, you know, Grateful Dead and stuff like that. Mozart. Beethoven. You know... So then they move.

[33:22]

Now, where do they move? I don't know. Next door. Fortunately or unfortunately, next door, there's no lawn. So I don't know if I should use this gopher sonic thing or not, but anyway, just thought I'd tell you about that. Are you okay, Carolyn? Yeah, I was just thinking about a similar type of situation that happened today, regarding, we were talking Sunday, regarding the political climate of the White House. Yes. How, if you gave compassion to the whole scenario, something would come back, or something would help them pull. That's what happened regarding the Democratic... Right. So, this guy, and I listen to this guy on the radio,

[34:29]

and this senator from Vermont, you know, says, I just, it's just, I can't be a Republican anymore. And I wanted to be a Republican, kind of, but they want me to be a Republican who agrees with the other Republicans. They won't just let me be a Republican and disagree. I'm being pressured to agree with the President's policies, and I don't agree with them in many cases, and I just can't keep doing this. And so, yeah, that happened. But I also thought, it's also possible that some Democrat might say, I can't be a Democrat anymore. I think the point is that some people have the courage to say what's in their heart, and not worry about, too much, about whether they're going to get elected again, or whether they're going to get beat up by their party. That they have the courage to say, you know, I just can't go along with this anymore, and if you won't let me be different, I'm going to drop out of this program,

[35:31]

if I'm supposed to, like, agree with everything that I don't agree with. So, that's kind of nice. And it's making things, I think it's very interesting, it's very interesting. People are, like, really looking at this, and thinking about this. It's very good. It felt really good to hear him talk. Is there anything you want to bring up, or put down? Yes? Do you have any suggestions of texts that you want to memorize? About something to memorize? Well, let's see, what could you memorize? I think the Gettysburg Address would be good.

[36:39]

Or the Declaration of Sentiments, which is an abbreviation of Declaration of the Rights and Sentiments of Woman. That statement, which was written by Elizabeth Warren, Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1848, which kind of like was the declaration of, not independence of women, it's more like the declaration of interdependence of women, the declaration of mutuality, the declaration of equality. Because the Declaration of Independence says, we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. And she changed it to all men and women are created equal. And then she mentioned, you know, so it's a beautiful thing. It's a beautiful declaration. The Declaration of Independence is beautiful. It was a step in the right direction to say that men are equal.

[37:47]

Republicans and Democrats are equal. No kidding. Right wing and left wing are equal. They need each other. The men of different races are equal, but also men and women are equal. And if we want to understand Buddhism, we have to understand feminism. Particularly men and women need to understand feminism and understand that it is mutuality. It is not either side being dominant. It's not to like switch from the men being dominant to the women being dominant. It's to switch from dominance and submission to mutuality. And that's very difficult for human beings. It's much easier for one to be in charge and the other to follow.

[38:49]

But mutuality is very intimate and equality is hard for us. Because you can't grasp it. You can't like, you know, sit in it. It's too dynamic. It's uncontrollable. You can't control equality. The other person always has rights, but so do you. So, that would be a good thing to memorize, or part of it. If you don't have a copy, I do. And I say declaration, I say Gettysburg Address because I really like that thing. One nation, you know, for the people, by the people, of the people. To see if we can have a country like that.

[39:54]

And to realize that we have people who are not just people, who are really willing to stand up for them. And maybe we are too. And if our Zen practice can help us, great. Yes and yes? That actually brings up something really strong for me, and that is what do you, or what is your explanation or your opinion on the fact that we as human beings have these beautiful ideals that feel so right, I don't want to use the word right because that connotes a right and wrong, but that feel good. So meaningful. That feel so good that there is this huge separation between what we think and how we act.

[40:56]

I mean, you know, for instance, we have these great spiritual ideals, yet we have this technology that we are abusing to make weapons and things like that. Or we have these wonderful thoughts about how technology can help us or aid us, yet we have this tendency to abuse. We can abuse it. Is the question coming out right? Yes. Well, I would say this and see if I address it. That we have a technology, human beings, a neurological technology, which is very powerful. And it's been very useful to us. And part of this neurology, a neurological endowment, is that we are able to have a brain that makes us feel like we are a self

[41:58]

that's in control of what we do and can predict what we do. And to some extent it can. And we are also equipped to be very concerned with self-preservation. And we can be concerned for self-preservation while feeling that the others some of them are really separate from us. And we do not have to worry about preserving them. As a matter of fact, we are concerned about preserving ourselves even at the expense of those who are different from us, like people of different races, different genders, and different species. This is our basic problem. However, we suffer because of that. Even though it's useful to be able to be selfish, we suffer. So we also have a strong desire, a strong longing to become free of the self. Because we sense and have heard that that will be the end of our problems.

[43:02]

And all the equipment we have, all of our brilliant adaptations that we have, then could be re-worked to work for the benefit of all. That there was a time, thousands and thousands of years ago, when it was useful for us to feel separate. That time has passed. It is time to get over that, to get over the other. This is our struggle now. And Buddhism has been trying for 2,500 years, along with other traditions, to help humans get over selfishness, which was hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago useful to the species to help them become very successful. Now it's antithetical to our situation. But we still have the equipment. It's hard for us to let go of the equipment. So now we develop this new equipment, which is medicine to our selfishness equipment. So this is the struggle between selflessness, which is happiness for us,

[44:08]

and our ability to feel selfish and be concerned about our self-concern. This is our struggle we're in the midst of. And it's been pretty much the same for the last 2,500 years or so, that this has been the main struggle between these two sides. So we have the ideal of selflessness and love for all beings and the welfare of the whole planet. That's been going on since way back in Buddha's time. And we're just still working on it. And we've made a little progress. But every moment new beings are born with that old equipment. New darling little babies are born. And they've got this like ancient selfishness equipment. And so this is our struggle. That's one story about it. One explanation of why we have this human nature of selfishness and we have the ability to transcend it, to get over it. And we're working on that now. Yes?

[45:09]

It seems to me that this new belief in being a separate self kind of can bloom these very creative extensions. Yes. Like a separate couple or a separate family or a separate community. Yes. And also a separate mission state. Yes. So I don't know how to do it at the moment, but I feel also turning toward Zen practice or toward Buddhist teachings in this particularly painful situation, that this is the most important perspective for me. That even the idea of a nation is kind of based on this notion of separateness. Yes. Yes. That reality can form.

[46:36]

By reality I mean some kind of presentation of what democracy is, a concept and not a God-given or natural order. And it seemed for a moment as if democracy had come to a positive end in this country. But then this was closed up. And now there's this game again of the inherently existent democracy. And there I've tried to find a way to talk about this. For example, I don't find it very helpful to talk about nations in a positive way. I don't know how to do that. I feel it's important at the moment to point to this idea of separateness that lies at the core of all these notions. But I don't really know how to do it.

[47:41]

But I don't really know how to do it and how to communicate that. Not knowing how to communicate means we don't know what is the best way to communicate. So we're just groping. But part of it is to ask for help. Please help me learn how to communicate about this. This is an important thing to communicate about. That I want to find a way to talk with other people about this sense of separateness between men and women, between races, between species, between nations, between political parties. Because even in a very intimate union, or I shouldn't say intimate union, but anyway, even in a relationship where the people are trying to be intimate, still there's a right wing and left wing usually. Still one party is usually more conservative than the other.

[48:42]

Conservative in the sense of feeling like, you know, we don't really have any problems. Don't rock the boat. Things are fine. And the other side is saying, well, no, we do have problems. And I don't really want to rock the boat, but I don't want to pretend that we don't have any problems. So usually there's a little bit of inequality. And so it's all over the place. So how can we respect the right wing if we're left wing? And how can the left wing somehow get interested? How can the liberals get interested? How can the liberals find something, some way to get intimate with the conservatives, to learn about them, rather than hope that they'll go away, which is what they hope the liberals will do, the troublemakers. Just shut up and be happy.

[49:46]

And let us do some more drilling in the face of the earth so that the United States can have more energy, because we're having an energy shortage, even though we've got more than anybody else. So instead of having 70% of the energy, we could have 90% of the energy, because we know how to use it, because we're a democracy, right? So let's just keep struggling with it. Struggle, struggle, struggle. But remember, most important thing, if you're struggling, you should relax, because otherwise you'll burn out and get uninterested again and become a drug addict. So relax, because this is a hard job. Relax, this is a big project. Relax so you can be interested in this big challenge that we have,

[50:50]

living in the Rome, the Rome of the world. We're the ones who need to dismantle the empire and make it equalize itself. Nobody else can do it, because we're the strongest. The people inside need to get the country to be more generous, get the country to be more concerned about non-Americans, which is very similar to get the men to be more concerned about the women. But how do we talk about that? This is hard. Ask for help. Yes? This is my first time here. Yes. I just recently lost somebody close to me, and I'm curious to know how you feel about death and living?

[51:54]

How do we feel about death? Well, it's hard to say how all Buddhists feel about it, but I guess we feel that when death comes, if we can meet it with complete relaxation, we will find some truth that will bring benefit to the living and the dead. There's some truth in the package, in the gift of death. There's some saving, beneficial, illuminating, liberating truth that is right there in the death. So if we can meet the death with respect and generosity and patience and relaxation,

[53:03]

we can enter into creativity through death, that death can actually show us life. But if we tense up around death and we try to reject it or don't appreciate it, then we stay locked out of the meaning of death and locked out of the meaning of life. So when life comes, we should do the same, of course. But sometimes when death comes, people say, No, no, I'm not going to respect death. I hate death. And then you say, No, thank you, death. And then death says, But I have something to tell you. We say, No, I don't want to hear it. Oh, okay. But then the problem of that is that when life comes, we do the same. So if we reject death, we reject life. If we open to death and relax with it when it comes, that helps us open to life. So basically, that's what one Buddhist might say to you about how we relate to death.

[54:08]

Okay? You're welcome. Good night. Thank you.

[54:25]

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