Hi.  How many people were not in the zendo last night for my talk?  Well, I stopped last night because I didn’t want to keep you up late, and I was going to do a little summary at the end, but if I do a summary now maybe the new people will have trouble with the summary.  So I guess I have to give the whole thing over—(laughter)  but short, short.
    So I started last night by saying that my ultimate concern is to endeavor to work for the enlightenment of all beings before myself.  And I mentioned another way to put it is to work so that all beings will not take themselves too seriously because the idea that taking ourselves seriously is the fundamental cause of our suffering.  So if we just don’t take ourselves too seriously we can become free of suffering . . . . By the way, not taking yourself too seriously could also be called ‘self-respect’.  So in a way, self-respect is the way to become free of suffering.  Deep self-respect.  And also in a sense, self-respect means ‘to look again’.  So usually the way we see ourselves, it’s there, and we should be respectful of ourselves and look again.  Take another look; maybe we didn’t see quite clearly who we are.  Maybe we overestimated or underestimated ourselves.  
    So the way to realize the Boddhisattva vow…so the ultimate concern of a Boddhisattva is to work for the welfare of others before oneself.  This is an example of not taking yourself too seriously.  We’re not so worried in that case about our own welfare, but primarily concerned for the welfare of others.  If we’re concerned for our own welfare first, we will be very miserable.  If we are concerned for others’ welfare first, we will be very happy.  So if wanting others to become free before us, if really wanting that is what we want, then in fact others never become free before us.   Because as soon as others are free, we’re free.  Others are not benefited before us because as soon as we help others, we’re helped simultaneously.  But we want to help them before ourselves.  Because if we wan to help ourselves before them, or even at the same time as them, we’re still taking ourselves a little too seriously-- we’re still not really respecting ourselves.   
    And the practice, the practice in Zen to sort of like embody prototypically, or archetypically embody, this ‘not taking ourselves seriously’ is just to be upright.   Is to be upright.   Is the way to save all beings.  Just being upright, right where you are, is enlightenment.  And that enlightenment is the fulfillment of your vow to help others before yourself.  So if you want to help others before yourself, just be upright.  Being upright is not taking yourself seriously.  If you take yourself seriously, too seriously, you are not upright.  
    And being upright is also, as I said last night, is also to refrain from all evil.  To be upright is to refrain from evil; to be upright is to practice good; to be upright is to save all beings; to be upright is not killing; to be upright is not stealing.  But also, to not take yourself too seriously is to refrain from all evil.  To not take yourself too seriously is not killing.  Not stealing is not taking yourself too seriously.  Not lying is not taking yourself too seriously.
    Or to put it the other way: lying is taking yourself too seriously.  Stealing is taking yourself too seriously.  Praising yourself at the expense of self is taking yourself too seriously.   Being possessive is taking yourself too seriously. Being angry is taking yourself too seriously.  Speaking of others’ faults is taking yourself too seriously.
    Wanting to help others before yourself, you don’t kill, you don’t steal, you don’t lie, you’re not possessive, you don’t get angry, you don’t speak of other’s faults, you don’t praise yourself ahead of them, and so on.   So just being upright where you are is like that.  Being upright right where you are with complete composure, when you don’t know who you are or where you are, because knowing who you are is taking yourself too seriously.  It’s not self-respect if you think you know who you are.  It is taking a mystery and bringing it into something familiar, which is an insult and causes anxiety.   Fortunately.  (laughter)   And it also goes against . . .(silence)  . . . When you bring yourself from the great mystery into something you can know, you kill something, you steal something, you lie, you slander, and so on.    
    So the summary statement I was going to make last night was, “Yeah, though I walked . . .”—I don’t know if I’ve got this quote right but I’ll just say it and you can correct me—-“Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me”.  Now, what is ‘thou’ in this case? Did I do the correct quote right?  (“Uh-huh”, laughter)  What is thou? . . . What is thou?  Thou is not taking yourself seriously.  “Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death”, “yeah though I walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I will fear no evil” because I am not taking myself too seriously.  If you don’t take yourself seriously, even though you’re walking through the valley of the shadow of death, and evil’s all around you, if you don’t take yourself seriously, too seriously, evil can’t touch you.  Evil can’t overwhelm you, and you don’t—you’re not the great, you know, knight in shining armor, dragon killer— you don’t destroy the evil, evil’s all around.  It doesn’t touch you, you don’t touch it; you’re on peaceful terms with evil.  You don’t destroy it, but it doesn’t take effect. And everybody with you that you can teach how to not take themselves seriously, they also won’t be touched by evil and they also won’t touch evil.  You let evil be evil.   
    Evil, like everything else, cannot be put in the category of existence.  But that doesn’t mean you can say evil doesn’t exist, that’s not right either.  You can’t say evil cannot exist; well, you can say it, but it’s not right to put it in the category of it does exist, and it would be wrong to say it doesn’t exist.  Evil appears all over the place, but it’s not graspable in the category of the existence or non-existence.  Because it doesn’t belong in any of those categories, it is all-pervasive and all-inclusive.  There’s nothing that stops evil, nothing hinders evil, and evil doesn’t hinder anything.  But, if you take yourself seriously, evil will possess you, and wherever you are, whenever it is, as soon as you take yourself seriously, evil finds a home.
    Good is neither existent nor non-existent, and it is all-pervasive and all-inclusive.  But when we don’t take ourselves too seriously good is manifested and functioning.  But also good doesn’t overwhelm the person, and the person doesn’t destroy good.  Good is just alive, and evil has no effect.  This is called refrain from evil, or as I said last night, ‘reframe’ evil.  Reframe it, put it in a new perspective; namely, realize that you ain’t gonna get away from it, and if you do, it likes to attack from the back.   What you do is, you be upright with evil.  Upright.  You don’t lean into it; you don’t lean away from it.  You don’t say it exists, you don’t say it doesn’t exist.  Just be quiet.  Respectful.  You see a little evil?  Okay, look again.  Evil is also a mystery.  If you try to package it, it’s gotcha.  And if you try to package it, you’re not upright, and again you’re taking yourself too seriously.  You think you’re the packager: “I can package evil.”   Oh yeah, sure you can, but if you do, it’s gotcha.  Even to say: “I can’t package evil” is going a little far.  Just be quiet, and still, and pay attention.  And if you are, then the causes and conditions of evil will be manifesting according to some pattern; they’ll appear, disappear before you, around you; you’ll see them, they’ll come to you, and all the patterns of evil that you have denied, or betrayed, or abandoned, they will come back for you to study again.  But you do not need to fear the lessons, these lessons about the functioning of evil; they’re there for you to learn from.  
    So.  If you’re upright, you can do this study.  So, as I said a minute ago, to be upright, right where you are, is enlightenment.  And enlightenment is to study what’s happening.  Enlightenment is to study the dependent co-arising of evil, the dependent co-arising of enlightenment, the dependent co-arising of birth and death, the dependent co-arising of the self.   And when you’re upright, all the lessons, all the causes and conditions come and show you, they show you how they work.  You can see how evil works; you can see how good works; you can see how the self was created.   
    You can see how when you hold the self, and try to do things from the self, how that creates karma and entanglement and the causes and conditions for evil. You can see how when all things come forward and then there’s you, how that creates realization and freedom.  You can see how you can switch from the side of walking around with the self and putting it on things, how that disturbs things and causes pain, and how when you study that carefully, and see how you do that and see how much trouble it causes and see how seriously you’re taking yourself and how it creates all this pain, how it can turn, and you can forget it and then suddenly everything comes forward and then there’s you and you’re awake.  You can see that stuff if you’ll just be present without holding on to knowing or not knowing who you are, and just.  . . . No one can say.   
    So that’s a summary about hearing no evil. And again, this is to become intimate with evil.  If you’re intimate with evil, it can’t hurt you and you can’t hurt it.  But if you’re a little bit away from evil, like, you know, a tiny bit away from evil, if there’s you and evil ‘s a little bit away, or even worse, a far way’s away, the farther it is, the more momentum it can build up on you.   But even if it’s a tiny bit away, it can hurt you.  But when it’s completely intimate, it can’t hurt you.  But it’s hard to not have the slightest bit of deviation, just like it’s hard to be completely present, to completely accept your situation, and completely give all your energies to this situation.   It’s hard to do that because we think we have an alternative.    But the encouragement of the ancestors is to totally always devote your energies to a way that directly indicates complete realization. And what is the way that completely indicates complete realization?  The upright. In other words, be Buddha.  
    And then, watch the show.  Watch evil for example, and, as Buddha, you’re intimate with Buddha.  As Buddha, you’re intimate with good. And to be intimate with evil, which all Buddhas are intimate with evil— all Buddhas are intimate with evil — Buddhas are not the slightest bit distant form evil.  And being intimate with evil is called refraining from evil; being intimate with good is called practicing good.   Being intimate with evil and intimate with good is called “saving all beings”.  Being intimate with evil is not killing.  And so if we want to help all beings before ourselves we must be intimate with everything.  Everything.  And the way to be intimate with everything is to be intimate with this— what’s happening right now.  And each of you have your own this to be intimate with, so you’re already a success.   Unless you hesitate a tiny bit, or a lot, and then you’re a total failure.  However, if you admit it, you’re right—and you just inhabited your situation of failure—and you’re Buddha again.  So.  That’s my summary.  Does anyone have questions before I go?
I’m not sure what distinguishes being intimate with evil from being intimate from good.   What distinguishes it? Same thing.  Why refrain from evil then, and do good and not the other way around if they’re both the same things.   No, no, you refrain from evil and do good; you do both, it’s not either/or.  But if you’re intimate with both of them, what’s the difference between good and evil?  What’s the difference between good and evil? Yes.  Oh, well, evil, is like, um, taking yourself seriously. That’s evil.  If you take yourself too seriously, that’s evil. If you take yourself too seriously, it’s evil, it’s evil, it’s evil.  However, there really is no such thing as taking yourself too seriously, it doesn’t exist or not exist, but that’s what evil is, it’s taking yourself too seriously.  And when you take yourself too seriously, you know what you do? You know what you do? You steal, you kill, you lie, you misuse sexuality.  Okay? Shall I go on?  No.  (laughter).
     Okay.  That’s what we mean by evil.  However, killing does not exist— you can’t say killing exists; killing cannot be established.  But also you can’t say killing does not exist; killing is all pervasive, okay?  However, you can refrain from it if you don’t take yourself too seriously.  You can take away the effect; you can make sure evil takes no effect if you refrain from it.   Good is not the same as evil. Good is not taking yourself seriously.  And when you don’t take yourself seriously, you don’t kill, you don’t steal, you’re kind to everyone, you’re generous, you protect life, you admit your mistakes.  And when you’re evil, you take yourself so seriously you don’t admit your mistakes.  When you’re evil, you do evil and make mistakes: you kill, steal, and so on; you don’t admit any of it because you’re too important to admit that you do these things.  Also, too busy doing your things to admit to them: “I’ve got better things to do than to admit my problems, and I don’t have any anyway, but if I did, I ‘d still be too busy to admit them.”  This is called taking yourself really seriously.   But if you don’t take yourself seriously, you’re willing to do kind of petty stuff like admit you just killed, stealed [sic], lied, connived, cheated, hated, thought of killing more; if you’re not taking yourself seriously, then you’re willing to do such petty Buddhist work.  Good is what makes people happy, free, in touch with their vitality, and also helps them face the problems they’ve got to face in order to be upright.  Because most of us don’t know how to be upright, so we’ve got to like make about a million, trillion errors to figure out what upright is.  You’ve got to catch yourself at leaning zillions of times before you kind of get in the hang of it.  
    If I can just ask another question: it just seems contradictory to me that if you’re being intimate with good, and you’re intimate with evil, I don’t understand why you’re being intimate with evil-- if you’re intimate with evil, it negates evil, but it you’re intimate with good, it brings forth good.
No, no, intimate with evil doesn’t negate evil; it just doesn’t take any effect.  Okay.   But then if you’re intimate with good, it brings forth good?
    Intimate with good is good. Intimate with evil is avoiding evil.  So, let’s say, what’s evil? Okay?  What’s evil?  Taking yourself too seriously.  Let’s start with that.  If you’re intimate with taking yourself too seriously, guess what that is? Guess what being intimate with taking yourself too seriously is?  That’s not taking yourself very seriously.  People that take themselves seriously will not be bothered being intimate with such a thing as the fact that they’re taking themselves seriously, that’s not very important to people that take themselves seriously.  That to notice how arrogant and self-righteous they are is not really that interesting to them, they’ve got more important things to do than to notice what they’re doing.  Okay?  Okay.  So when you’re intimate with evil, you don’t destroy it, you don’t negate it, you kind of like, uh, disarm it.  You kind of like de-fang it in a sense.  Because in fact being intimate with it, you’re not like using it, you don’t like use evil, you can’t use it— that’s what a lot of people do, they use it—and also to try to destroy it would also be taking yourself too seriously.  To use it is taking yourself too seriously, to try to stop it is taking yourself too seriously, but intimacy with it is like doing your meditation work, it’s like admitting what’s happening.  So if you notice you’re taking yourself seriously, and you’re being mindful and aware, this is not taking yourself very seriously; this is like doing your work as a kind of, I don’t know what, Buddhist worker, meditation worker.   In other words, you’re doing your job and paying attention to what you’re up to and you notice, all the time probably, that you’re taking yourself seriously.  But noticing that is not taking yourself seriously.  
    Good is: you’re intimate with good, you’re intimate with giving.  Okay? Intimate with it.   At that point that you’re intimate with generosity and giving, it doesn’t mean that you give.  You don’t take yourself so seriously that you say, “I give”.  I mean, I’m talking about when you’re intimate.  When you first start practicing giving, when you’re not so intimate with it, when you’re here, and giving is over there, ‘you’ do the giving, at that point you’re not intimate with it.  But when you get intimate with the practice of giving, you’re not taking yourself so seriously as to think that you do the practice; the giving just happens.  Also patience.  When you’re intimate with patience, there is patience, but it’s not like “I’m doing the patience."  Which also makes patience a lot easier if you’re not taking yourself so seriously because when people slap you, spit on you, and insult you, if you take yourself seriously, it’s a lot more painful.  I see the difference.  Getting it? Yeah.
    So all the practices of good: giving, generosity, observing the precepts, you know, (and when you’re observing the precepts, noticing your errors with the precepts), concentration, enthusiasm, wisdom—all these practices, you’re intimate with them.  First of all you approach them and try to do them, which is good, but when you’re intimate, you’re non-dual with the practice: you are generosity. You are kindness, you are wisdom, you are concentration, you are ethics.   That’s intimacy with good.  Of course, then, if you do these first two, you also save all beings.  Because you demonstrate to beings how to refrain from evil and how to practice good.  They see you doing it.  And if they like it, they can say, “well then, how do you do it?”   You can say, “I dunno.”  (laughter)   If you don’t take yourself very seriously, you don’t really know how you’re doing it, and so they wander off and come back in a couple of years and look again.  But little by little, they may notice what you’re doing.  You can’t really show them exactly, you just do it.   And they pick it up if they want to, if they don’t take themselves too seriously.   Does that make any sense?  
    It makes sense to me.
    Good.  It’s hard to practice, though. Yes?
    I’d like to make sure I understand.  It sounds like you’re saying that good and evil are not objective states but they relate to a direct experience with yourself.
    When you say they’re not objective states, what do you mean by not objective states?  
    Well they are not out there . . . they’re a way to relate one’s experiences to oneself.
    Yes, uh-huh.  Yes.   Good and evil are intimately related with us, how we are, how we understand.  So if you don’t understand yourself, you take yourself too seriously, that’s evil.  You think you’re a big shot, you think you can kill… you can kill… I don’t know what, ants? Dogs?  Maybe people if you don’t like them— if they’re not good according to your definition, and you can tell.  So you think you’re like, you’re pretty hot stuff; you can tell who’s good and who’s bad, who should live and who should die, so you can do all this stuff like murder people.  You can also tell whose stuff to confiscate and where it should go— maybe it should go to your house, or your family.  You can tell what countries to conquer, and how much you should mutilate the population, because you know, because you take yourself seriously.   Self-righteousness, arrogance, this is evil.  However, you can’t exactly say it’s over there, or what it is, because it’s all mixed up with…it’s not like it’s something you can say it exists.  If it really existed then we’d have to live with it; then we’d have to sort of like say, "well, there it is."    But it can’t actually be established as a reality, but if you reject it, then it takes you over.  So everything evil, and all things, are subtly mysterious and if you’re upright you can live with them in peace. So the way to live in peace with evil is be upright with it, and then it won’t hurt you or anybody else.  And good is the same.  If good is separate from you, then you get in trouble with that, too.   So everything’s interconnected— that’s what we mean by when you’re upright, you see the dependent co-arising of evil, the dependent co-arising of good, how all the causes and conditions create evil.  The causes and conditions of evil are different than the causes and conditions of good.  The causes and conditions of cyclic birth and death and bondage are different from the causes and conditions of liberation.  The causes and conditions of liberation are: being upright.   And being upright is not just what you do, it’s what you do in a particular situation at this moment--and then whole situation changes and you’re upright in a new situation. So you’re uprighteousness is totally created by the circumstances. And when you are totally created by the circumstances you can’t be anything but that. If you were deciding to be upright on your own then you could get to be upright this way, upright that way, but this is again taking yourself too seriously.  It's not upright.   Upright is when everything comes together and makes you just as you are and you go with that.  That’s the dependent co-arising of you, and that’s the dependent co-arising of enlightenment.  And you can never move the slightest bit from that; if you appreciate that, you are in alignment with reality.  And that’s good, and it refrains from evil, and it saves all beings, and it's not killing, and so on.  And you will never kill in that state, and you will teach others how not to kill, the meaning of not killing.   Okay?  Any other questions?      Yes.
    What does zazen have to do with uprightness?
    Same thing.
    So zazen is the practice of being upright? And if you don’t do zazen?
    If you don’t do zazen? Well if you don’t do zazen, then what do you do?
    You’re not upright if you don’t do zazen?
    Tell me what you’re talking about-- you don’t do zazen, what is that? Tell me about it.
    You don’t sit.
    You don’t sit in the zendo? Yes, if you mean, if you‘re outside the zendo, standing outside the zendo?
    Well let’s say, if you’re a Christian praying.
    Let’s say you’re a Christian praying. Okay, I’m a Christian praying.  I am Christian.  I am praying.   Let’s say I’m saying, "Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death...for thou art with me” and if I really do that prayer with my whole being, then I’m upright.  
    And if you’re an atheist?
    What’s a prayer of atheists?  I don’t know what atheists are.  But let’s say atheists are… let’s say do the prayer, “I stand here right now thinking there’s no God.”  Is that it? (laughter) No. “I stand here now taking the position that God belongs in the category of nonexistent. Okay, that's the position I’m in.  I'm in that position, and I accept that position and I choose to be in that position, and if I do that with my whole being, I will notice the causes and conditions of that situation, and I will notice how taking that position will be the dependent co-arising of taking myself too seriously.  So I’m not saying all atheists… if atheists say God belongs in the category of nonexistence, then I would say that atheists are taking themselves too seriously that they could take god and put god in the category of nonexisting.  I’m not sure that that’s what atheists are, but if that’s what they are, then if they were present with that and noticed what disturbance and turbulence it causes to take anything, including God… actually as far as I know, it doesn’t cause any more disturbance to put God in the category of non existing than it does to put Kern in the category of non-existing.  (To Kern) Could you imagine that I put you in the category of nonexistence, what that would do?  Let’s say I say Kern doesn’t exist and I really believe that.  Wouldn’t that cause some turbulence in the world?  Hmmm?  Pardon?  
    I don’t know.
    Well, it would, Kern. If you thought so, it would also create some turbulence.  See now, if I think ‘Kern exists’, then it also causes turbulence.  If I put you in the category of existence… I look over there and think ‘that exists’, that creates turbulence.  If I would say ‘you don’t exist,’ that creates turbulence and suffering. Anything you put in that category will cause disturbance.  And also anything that you put in that category means that you think that you can do that, and most people go around doing this, without noticing, that they think that they can do that-- that they can put people in various categories and get by with it.  But if you’re upright, you will notice how much trouble it causes you, not to mention your loved ones, not to mention what you just put in it. Anything you put in that category, you kill.  If I put you in the category of nonexistence, I kill you.  You’re gone.  If I also put you in the category of existence, I kill you.  
So I’m just saying it isn’t as if atheists are damned forever, because if they would be upright in their categorizations-- in their arrogant categorizations-- and notice what happens, they would see the causes and conditions of their misery and their bondage, and they would be liberated, and they would stop taking that position and become a Buddha.
Without sitting zazen?
    That is zazen, what I just described is zazen.
    That is zazen.  What I just described is zazen. Zazen has nothing to do with sitting in that zendo with your legs crossed. Nothing to do with it.  I like to go up there, cross my legs and sit in the zendo, but to me it is a ritual about enlightenment.   It’s a ritual which I like to do; some people don’t.  You like to do it too, I guess, sometimes.   But when you’re not doing that ritual, you can do some other ritual called ‘work in the kitchen,’ called, ‘go in and babble in the yurt’.  (laughter).  You must… zazen is-- you’re upright in the position just as you are without knowing anything. Now you do think, “Oh, I am in the yurt and it’s nighttime, and my name is Reb"--- you think that but you don’t know that.  If I grab that stuff, it’s not zazen. But to let that stuff fly around me, and not reach me, or me not reach it-- that’s zazen, that’s the mind which has no abode, that’s zazen. Zazen is totally formless, and therefore we can do this little ritual of sitting in the zendo with our legs crossed to celebrate the formless.  And let’s do it a lot, shall we?  Because it’s so much fun to celebrate the formless sight of enlightenment with this wonderful yogic posture but if you don’t have time to do that, celebrate some other way.
    Nobody knows what zazen is.  I said what it was, but that doesn't mean I know it.  Nobody knows what zazen is-- nobody.  I’m talking about like nobody.  And the people who you most suspect of knowing it, those are the ones who most emphatically say, “I don’t know, and not only that, but I’m pretty sure my friends don’t know either.” (laughter) So the Buddhas have said to us, “We don’t know what zazen is”.  Each one of us doesn’t’ know; all of us together don’t know what it is; we don’t know what it is. However, we are totally devoted to it.  Just like my daughter-- I don’t know what she is, but I’m totally devoted to her.   Although I slip and slide and can’t face my devotion sometimes, and miss a lot of chances, which I regret, I’m still totally devoted.   And I don’t know what she is.  And I’m totally devoted to you, and I don’t know who you are, either; and also none of the Buddhas know who you are, either; and you don’t know who you are, either.  (laughter)  But anybody who thinks they know who Kern is, is taking themselves too seriously.  Which is fine-- then notice what that does for you.  Notice what it does to you to go around thinking you know  who somebody is.  Notice what kind of life that is, notice how diminishing that is, notice how squelching, notice how it covers your aliveness.  Okay? Notice how if you don't do that, you start opening up to your anxiety and your fear, and all that stuff, and how if you open to that, underneath that is your life.  Notice.  And the best way to notice is to be upright.  And if you’re upright, gradually the stuff you’ve been hiding from will walk out in front of you and say hi, and then you might say, “oh now I’m doing zazen”.  Which is fine--you can say you’re doing zazen, but you don’t know what it is.  You can go to the zendo and sit there and say “I’m doing zazen”, but still not know what it is.  You could practice Zen, and you could say you practice Zen, but you don’t know what it is.  You could also say you’re not practicing Zen and still not know what it is.  It’s a free country, freedom of speech.  (Reb laughs)  Any other questions?
    What’s knowledge?
    What’s knowledge? I don’t know.
    How do you use the word ’know’ if you don’t have any idea what knowledge is.  I mean,  you’ve used the concept ‘I don’t know’ which in some way  seems to presuppose we have some idea of what knowing  is.  Like if we  have no idea what knowing is…
    I didn’t’ say I have no idea what knowing is.  But you didn’t ask me what my idea  of it was, you asked me what it was.  Pay attention to what you’re saying. (laughter)
    I’m sorry.  What’s your idea of what knowing is?
    Oh, my idea?  My idea is to take a concept and say that it’s real.
    um-hum.. um-hum.    (silence).
    Okay?
    For now.
    But I don’t know what that is.  And I certainly don’t think that’s the truth: to take one of my fantasies and attribute reality to it, but that’s how I envision the process of knowing. And zazen is not about that.  Zazen is to be calm without getting into that, and also with out rejecting it.  Rejecting it is also getting into it.  Just having all this psychic process going on around you, all these perceptions of images and concepts, and attributing reality and falsehood to them, this is going on all around you all the time.   This stuff is happening, it’s always going to happen, and even if you should happen to stop--under some sedation or something--other people would keep  it going .  And as soon as you come out of the sedation or yogic trance, you’re right back in the middle of it again.  But a Buddha, in the middle of all that, just is upright and unfooled by it.  But also doesn't mess with it  or diminish it or try to tranquilize it or jazz it up.  Just let it alone.   It’s got plenty of life, don’t worry about it.  So you study the dependent co-arisings of that--you watch the dependent co-arisings of images; you watch how that works, what effects that has.  Then you watch the dependent co-arisings of images and attributing reality to it and see the turbulence and disturbance and self-righteousness that causes, and watch all the precepts break around that.  You watch all this stuff.
Can language be meaningful?
    Meaningful?  You just asked me something in language, yes?
    Yes.   
    And my answer is: No.  
    What is your idea of what meaning is?
    Happiness, and misery.  Body.  Life. These are meaningful things.
    Can language be useful?
    Yes.  It can liberate people from language, which is how people are in bondage.  They are in bondage by language in which they say, “I’m important” or “I exist” or “this is true and this is false” and “that exists, and that doesn’t.”   This is language and this is how you are in bondage.  I’m trying to use language to interface with language to cause beings to turn around the way they are using language.  So I’m saying things like “take yourself seriously and see what that does”.  So, if the meaning is not in the language, and yet the effort that I’m making with these words can evoke the meaning…
It’s not just verbal, right?
    It’s primarily energy, but energy transmitted into words in order to bring forth what is important-- namely happiness.
The Boddhisattva vow is not “I vow to say something cool”,  or “to get people to talk differently.” It is “I vow to work for people to be happy,” and people's misery is very language bound, so you use language to  interact with their language to release them.  Once they’re released, they will talk but the talking will come from a place where there’s no words. You know, it’s uncreated space but it talks, and it talks because the uncreated space wants to help people, and people are talking to themselves all the time about  “it exists, it doesn’t;  this is good, this bad; this is zazen, that’s not zazen; god exists and doesn’t; you know Ann really is that way, no she’s not.”  This is the kind of language that we’re in, which is constant torment and anxiety.  Constant torment and anxiety if you believe that stuff, and most people do, so.  So there’s this other language coming out, saying, “you’re taking yourself too seriously, you're attributing reality to your own thinking,” and so on.  Anything else?  Yes.
    Is there a condition where someone may not take  themselves seriously enough?
    Not taking yourself seriously enough is taking  yourself too seriously.   There’s a middle ground. It’s called the Middle Way. The Buddha way Is taking yourself not too seriously.  Some people-- the way they take themselves too seriously --they think, "boy I‘m one bad dude, I‘ve got to reign myself in and make myself into a little  mouse because I’m like super powerful and I'm disturbing like the whole universe, and they are going to bust me for it.”  (laughter)  So that’s taking yourself too seriously; so then you try to make yourself smaller and smaller because you think you’re such a big shot. That’s taking  yourself too seriously.  Actually the way you are actually doesn’t need to be increased or decreased-- but to try to increase it and decrease it is taking yourself too seriously.   
    (I need to think about it, you know?)
    You can think about it, but to think that what you’re thinking about actually applies to anything, that’s taking your thinking too seriously. …(tape ends, skips)….how the self is created, how you get in the position of taking yourself too seriously so you can help others understand the process and so on.  Anything else?
    Are there situations where it is either useful or meaningful to say that you know something?
    Well, watch. ‘I know something.’   Is that useful, or meaningful?
    It wasn’t particularly useful or meaningful to me.  
    To me it was.  So I guess it wasn’t, in your opinion, useful or meaningful.  So watch carefully:  so did you just judge it useful or meaningful?
    My impulsive reaction to it was that it wasn’t particularly useful or meaningful to me.
    Right. But is that what is useful or meaningful to you-- what you think is useful or meaningful?
    Well, I’m not exactly clear on either what use or meaning are.
    And yet you just said it was very meaningful.  And you seemed like you believed it.  
    I said it didn’t seem useful to me, and that’s true; I don’t think I had any ultimate claim to affect knowledge of whether it was a useful or meaningful  statement, it seemed to me not to be useful or meaningful, which it still seems not to be.
    Right.  I’m not trying to prove that it was useful or meaningful, or that it wasn’t useful or meaningful.   But I am inquiring into the fact of how you processed it, and it sounds to me that although you said it doesn’t seem useful or meaningful, I felt that you thought that it was true that it was useful or meaningful even though you also said you didn’t’ know what that was.
    Well,…..
    What are you doing?
    I’m thinking.  I’m thinking about…  
    Trying to hear yourself think, kinda?
    Am I trying to hear myself think?
    You know, you’re closing your eyes, and you’re kinda looking out toward the edge of the building.  You look like you’re kinda  like looking into yourself and listening to yourself, were you?
    Something like that, yes.
    What’s important here is that you keep track of what you’re thinking and also try to listen to me, back and forth--if you can do that, you’ll understand.  And that’s uprightness  if you can live in that place there.  So, go ahead, now do your thing.
    Sorry, what’s my thing?
    Being aware of what you think.
    I’m doing the best I can.
    Yeah, but also listen to me.   Right.  And now listen to you. Can you tell what you’re thinking now?
    It’s not entirely clear to me now what I’m thinking.  
    Well, see then, you’ve got to get back and clarify that.  Okay? And then listen to me.  See if you can keep in touch with what you’ve got going, and then with what I’ve got going.  And that will be useful; that will be your uprightness.  In that state, you will find meaning.  Are you there?
    I’m trying to pay attention both to you and my thing, and pay attention to you.
    Me too. I’m trying to do that too. So how does that feel?
    It feels somewhat angry.
    Yeah, it is a dynamic,  isn’t  it?  Kind of intense?
    This is what I recommend-- the way you study. This is uprightness. Does it feel warm?
     I’m tingling slightly.  (laughter).  
    This is the way we should talk, you see.  But it’s hard.  It’s hard for you to like to listen to these penetrating things I’m saying and also keep track of yourself.  And maybe you need to go back a little bit into yourself to see what’s going on, which is fine.  But if you go away too long, I’m going to knock on the door again and say ‘where are you?’, and then you can tell me,  ‘I need more time to find my own voice again’, and I’ll say ‘okay’, and when you find it,  then look back at me and I have more to say and we keep going like this until you can stay with your thing and listen to me and I can stay with my thing and listen to you and in this way…
    The thing that makes  me slightly anxious is that in listening to you speak there is a certain vertigo I get about words. Yes, you joke about them… (two words unclear) and at times it seems penetrating and at times it seems that words just lose their ballast.   And I tend to do a fair amount of my thinking in words although I’m aware of their tendency to float away-- that they’re not anchored on to anything…but it’s hard sometimes, I can’t quite get the ballast on your words and get the ballast on my words to see how they can hook up together.  So…I tend to get a little bit anxious cause I’m not really sure our words are in the same place.
    Right, but the anxiety is not a sign that you should start manipulating the ballast of the words; it’s more like the anxiety is a sign of some sense of separation between us.  So, rather than try to get me to talk differently, or increase ballast or something like that, if you try to manipulate the situation at all in order to reduce the anxiety, that will just create more anxiety.  Or you will have to retreat into yourself, or to listen to me.  
    Right. I didn’t feel like I was trying to be manipulative; I thought I would just go into the anxiety and figure out what it was about.
    When I heard you say you kind of wanted to clarify some things and have more ballast  in the words…
    No, that’s not quite what I said.
    What did you mean?
    I said I got anxious listening to you speak sometimes because the words don’t seem to hook on to anything. It’s very hard to talk about it.
    So I understand that.  So I thought--but maybe you didn’t mean this-- that you thought that things would go better if the words did hook on to something.
    No.
    Okay, fine.  
    In trying to do what you were talking about, which was pay attention to you and pay attention to my thoughts, it wasn’t at all clear to me what the relation ship was between the words that I thought and the words you were speaking.  In asking you questions, I was trying to gain some clarity as to what relationship was between the words that I use and the words that you were speaking.
    Are you people following this ? Yes?  So.  It’s okay that you did that, you were trying to clarify what I was meaning .   I’m just saying that the anxiety won’t be reduced by clarifying these things.   
    I’m not sure I was aiming to reduce it or not; in some ways I was moved by the anxiety I don’t know what my relationship to it was other than that.
    The anxiety is something that should also be listened to.  It’s not what you’re saying, it’s not what I’m saying, but the anxiety is almost more important than what either of us is saying.  You can ask me questions— in the midst of the anxiety, it’s fine to roller skate or ask me questions, or to tell me what you think what words mean.   All that is fine, but the anxiety is the most important thing in the conversation because the anxiety is new information over and above what you and I are saying.  The anxiety is saying one or both of us is a little off.  And the anxiety is telling us just how.  So if you can be upright in the anxiety, and still in that uprightness you still can talk and say, “I’d like to clarify a few terms,” and while you speak,  listen to the anxiety at the same time.  Cause the anxiety is giving you some information neither one of us is putting out there-- it’s a gift of our relationship.   And it is giving you a secret. Behind the anxiety is our real relationship.  So, let’s not… I would recommend that we not try to do anything to make the anxiety go away, but almost make that more important than the words we are saying.  And the vertigo, too, is more important than what I’m saying.  But in response to the vertigo, it is fine to clarify terms but not to make the vertigo go away.   But the vertigo is telling you that you’re not balanced, that you’re spinning, or tilting, or off balance, right? So how do you get balance in the situation?  One way is to go back in and check out the vertigo for a little while.  And when you feel balanced, you come back out and play with me.  Now I say something and  you feel off balance and you go back in again.  But not to reduce it, but because the vertigo is saying are you off balance, are you too much over on your side, or too much over…
    Right, I guess that’s why I reached out to find you, because it wasn’t clear to me which one of us was off balance or if it was both of us.  
    It’s not really one or both of us, but you need to be in your vertigo.  So the uprightness is to be willing to have vertigo when you’ve got it, and to choose the vertigo while it’s happening--then you will understand the causes and conditions of vertigo.  It’s not like you have vertigo and I don’t, although I might not have it; it’ s not like you’re off and I’m not-- the reality of the situation is that we are inseparable, but each of us has to check out our place. I hope you all could follow that.  (“We should stop soon”)  Shall we stop soon?  Want to sing a song before we stop?

Come and sit by my side  if you love me.
Do not hasten to bid me adieu.
But remember the Tassajara valley
and cowgirl who loves you so true.  
Now they say you are leaving this valley,
 we will  miss your bright eyes and sweet smile
for they say you are taking the sunshine
 that has brightened our path for a while.