If you like one of these, you're welcome to. Could you put this on the back table, please? When I gave the Heart Sutra class, did I give you this calligraphy? It says, everything's empty of the imputational character. Also, I finished the interviews last night so that I could sit with you this morning.

[01:02]

And I'm sorry if you were disappointed not to have a discussion last night. But I think it's important for me to sit with you, sometimes. Also, some people told me that they're experiencing information overload, so I didn't want to introduce too much at the end of the retreat. So in a sense I may say some, give some new images today but they're probably not that, they're about what you've already heard. So I have some closing comments about excavating the road.

[02:04]

and reentering the river. And conveniently, excavating means to carve out or make a cave. So in a sense, that's what we've been doing somewhat during this retreat is making a cave in the road of our experience hollowing it out, and perhaps in the back of the cave we'll find the river flowing down there. So excavating the road, excavating the road, investigating the road, investigating the path, investigating objects, excavating objects,

[03:13]

digging down into objects to find their ultimate nature. This is wisdom work. Usually we take objects in their superficial appearance, in their false appearance. And wisdom work is to listen to teachings about how to dislodge or let go of that superficial appearance, and reach the deeper nature of objects. And then when we see the deeper nature of objects, we don't believe the false appearance of them anymore. And then we somehow experience the river again. The Zen ancestors left records, or people made records of their behavior, where we can see that they

[04:35]

They had methods for loosening and letting go of strongly adhering to the road, the false nature of things, as being those things. They had methods for letting go of adhering to the road as being the river. And when we let go of strongly adhering to the road as being the river, then we see the ultimate nature of the road and the river. The nature of the river is that, is not, the ultimate nature of the river is not really the river. It's that the road doesn't reach the river, that the road isn't in the river.

[05:36]

So this is a nice unpolluted river. There's not chunks of the road floating around in it to bump into. It's a very harmonious, wonderful river of imperceptible mutual assistance among all beings. no conceptual grasping reaches the flowing, pulsing life that is life. So we don't, we can't go, we can't just loosen our belief in false appearances and go right back to the river. We loosen our false belief And then we can see, we loosen adherence to our false belief.

[06:40]

Then we can see the thoroughly established character, emptiness. Then we stop believing false appearances. And then we understand the river again. And then we let go. If we're good Zen practitioners, then like the ancestors, we let go of the thoroughly established character. We let go of the ultimate. We let go of emptiness and we join hands with beings who are in the river but think they're on the road. So really we kind of join hands with beings on the road. We come back onto the road and join hands with beings. And on the road there's birth and death. In the river there's not really birth and death. But on the road there is. And we come into the road, the muddy road now, right? the wet and muddy road, and we slosh around holding hands with all beings, walking unostentatiously, frolicking together with them through birth and death.

[07:53]

And while we hold their hands, they they pick up on the methods for letting go of adhering to the false appearances of things and get ready to start excavating themselves, themselves and also excavating their own objects of awareness and going through the same process that we have gone through on our realization of truth. One great ancestor was described by his name. Cloud Gate. Yin Min. And

[08:55]

Galen and I visited Yin Man's temple in China. And I met a monk there who gave me some nice Velcro strips to tie up my monk's pants with. And he showed me the secret transmission of how to do it. And I wanted to pay him for them. Actually, I didn't particularly want to pay for them, but my wife said, why don't you give him some money? So I tried to pay him, and he said, no, no. I want to give this to an American monk. So yin-men is described also as having no other purpose than to melt the glue and to untie the bonds, to take off the saddlebags,

[10:07]

pull out the pegs." So he offers various, he talks, you know. Mostly, I don't hear stories about Yunmin tap dancing or bopping people on the head. He mostly just talked. And he said stuff like, "'Eastern mountains move over the water.'" So the eastern mountains, you know those mountains, we talked about those mountains before, the mountains. Another word for the road. But these mountains move over the waters. And it is also pointed out, I didn't hear Yun Men point this out, but it is pointed out that the toes of the mountains

[11:17]

touch the water. The toes of the mountain are splashing in the water, and the water's splashing up at the toes of the mountain. So we need, you've got mountains, right? We need to go down the mountain to the toes of the mountain, and at the toes of the mountain, we'll find the toes of the mountain frolicking in the waters. And when we walk on the road, if you go down to your toes where your toes grip the road and look at the road, the road will crack open. and a big horse will jump out and say, Sun-faced Buddha, Moon-faced Buddha. But, you know, when the horse jumps out, you might be frightened because you're not used to such big

[12:36]

Well actually you're not used to the river. When we first see the river it's kind of shocking. The river isn't basically shocking. It's just that we're not used to handling the river. We've gotten used to this paved over version of our life. So when our life starts to emerge it seems awesome and overpowering. So in one sense I'm telling you beforehand if you do this kind of meditation and you run into some kind of feeling of meeting the overpowering, awesome nature of your life, it's not really that it's overpowering, it's just you're not used to it. It won't overpower you. It's actually your normal state. But because we've gotten used to this kind of constricted version of our life, our normal state seems kind of like scary. I've recently been giving an example, is when you become, when you've been guilty a long time, when you become innocent, you feel guilty.

[13:50]

Like some people I know, they really love their mother, but they're excessively involved with their mother. So when they start to be kind of like more normally involved, more appropriately involved with their mother, they start to feel like they're being evil, like they're being heartless, because they're not like frantic and hysterical. And they think that's like, I'm not human anymore maybe. But actually you're just becoming like, actually like a normal human, a healthy human. But you're not used to it. It's kind of scary. So part of the process of this study is to go so far that you actually come up to something quite unusual. something you're not familiar with. It's not that it's bad, it's just you're unfamiliar with it. So if you get scared, you can just go see Reverend Snowhut in Houston. She'll hold your hand. Won't you?

[14:58]

If you're in town. So it is kind of scary when you go down to the mountain and the water starts splashing up and the horses start running and life starts emerging again. But it's not that it's really that big and rough, it's just you're not familiar with it. Like a horse, you know. Some people see a wild horse and they think, no problem, you know. They're not afraid of the horse. They don't know. They're not close enough to see how powerful it is. But then when you get closer to it, you start to get scared, a wild horse especially, because they are strong. But as you hang out with it a long time, you gradually start to get over the fear. So, this dimension of practice

[16:03]

opening up to the ultimate truth and in that way releasing ourselves from our sticking points and letting life start flow again, there is potentially some fright involved in the process. So I'm just telling you ahead of time. And also to remind you that as you approach this kind of study of the nature of phenomena, if you get scared, If you're afraid of what will happen to you, it's OK to take a break and just go back to tranquility practice until you feel relaxed again. And then when you feel relaxed and not so frightened, then you can start excavating again. Maybe that's enough for review.

[17:13]

Becky, would you help me by asking me a question? I'd be pleased to help you in a way. I've been thinking about choices in regular lives and wondering Well, it's a big topic, but hey, why not? if I can take an example of like, let's say, an enlightened person dying, like we have these stories of these enlightened people on the verge of death, like Matsu.

[18:26]

In a sense, in a sense, even Matsu or other great Zen masters or the Buddha, at the time of dying, in a sense, they commit suicide, you could say, because they actually don't take another breath at some point. They like exhale. Period. They don't inhale again. So in a sense they say, okay. They kind of go along with no more inhales. So in that sense, you know, they're not giving themselves oxygen, so that's, you know, not... And also their body like cooperates. Sometimes if you like exhale and force yourself not to inhale when your body wants to, even if you really force hard, some people can do this, they can actually hold their breath so hard that they pass out. But then as soon after they pass out, the body causes them to inhale again.

[19:29]

So it's pretty hard if your body doesn't want, if your body isn't cooperating, it's pretty hard to force yourself to stop breathing and die. But there comes a time when your body kind of is willing to go along with that. And your body and mind make an exhale and don't make an inhale. So it's a kind of suicide. But side means killing, right? But for an enlightened person, they don't think that they make themselves inhale and they make themselves exhale. So this self-sui side, self-killing is not really the case. It's not really killing. It's, they just let go. They don't, excuse me, there is letting go. They don't even think they let go. They don't think they kill themselves. They don't think they die themselves. They just come to a place where the body and the mind are willing to go with an exhale, and then the dependent core rising is not an inhale anymore.

[20:36]

But in a sense, it looks like they're deciding. You could look down and say, well, there's a decision there not to inhale again. So it looks, you could pin it, you could pin a decision not to inhale, and then you could pin a killing of the person by making that decision on that person. But the person may not see it that way, and also a lot of other people might not see it that way too. They might say, well, just the body and the mind just exhaled, and that was it. And there was a letting go, and there wasn't a pulling another inhale. But still, and at that point, most people at that point actually do not think dualistically. At that last moment of death, most people actually kind of like get pretty close to the truth that they're not doing this dying. And yet, you could say they choose to die. But if they're ignorant, if there's some residue of ignorance, there's still a little bit of maybe, let's say,

[21:39]

pattern of believing that they do things. So there's maybe the potential for that way of thinking can arise again, which gets us into rebirth. That some people, even though the idea that they do things has been severely attenuated and letting go can happen and there's very little sense of anybody doing it, but just causes and conditions coming together such that there's dying, then in that case there's a little bit of a suicide there. But if that attitude of duality has been completely dropped, there's dying without any decision to die, even though it looks like a decision to die. Because we all will, in a sense, you could say, decide to die. Apparently, that will happen.

[22:42]

The question is, do you think that you decided to do it at that time? And if you think that way generally, you to some extent will think of that at that time. Now suicide, what we usually mean by suicide is that the person does something to themselves so that this decision to die will occur. So if you take heavy sedatives, you turn the body down so far that on some exhale, the body kind of says, well, yeah, okay. And it doesn't say, let's have an inhale. You turn things way down so that the life process isn't saying, more oxygen, please. And the mind is sort of like not saying, more oxygen, please. So at some point... process the body functions stop but then the person did something so that would happen and if they did it from the point of view of I'm doing it then it's like in some sense from the way they think about it they did that to themselves and they did commit suicide so it's just another another act another karmic act of I do this rather than causes and conditions come together and this happened dying

[24:03]

end of breathing happened. And then what you do to yourself if you traumatize yourself so that your body gets thrown into a situation where the death is more likely to occur, you think, then you put yourself in a real difficult situation where it's hard to be very conscious. So it's really kind of a big disturbance to your practice. Yeah. It's like a severe intoxication, right? Toxins mean poisons, right? You poison yourself, but you also just really severely disorient yourself, so you're just basically messing yourself up. But it's possible at the time of death for a lot of people to be pretty calm, like we saw yesterday. Beth seemed really good, didn't she?

[25:06]

Maybe we got her at a good moment, but she seemed really clear about what she wanted to commit to at this time in her life. She didn't seem much intoxicated. She had some pain medications, but she seemed pretty clear what she cared about and what she wanted to do. And so on that track, she's on a good track. And when I actually told her the precept about no intoxicants, partly I thought, this is kind of a funny thing to tell her. But now today I think, well, no, it's not. Because sick people often do take intoxicants. They often do take drugs to mess with themselves. So actually... part of her commitment is to like take care of herself in such a way that she doesn't intoxicate herself. So that precept still counts for a person who's really sick.

[26:10]

To be aware of whether you're intoxicating yourself or whether you're using medical assistance in such a way as to kind of like have a good state of mind so you're not having so much pain that you can't be present at all. So I think the point is to find that middle way, right? And so if you go too far, take too much painkillers, you intoxicate yourself. But you could also intoxicate yourself by trying to be too strong and fight the pain too hard. So even at the time I thought, this is a funny precept for you, but This morning I think, oh yeah, that's a really important precept, especially these days when we have so much medications which can easily turn into intoxicants, right? So suicide in some ways is in a continuum with our daily life practice.

[27:15]

If you have realized selflessness, then there is no suicide. You don't kill yourself. If you haven't realized selflessness, then in some sense, even if you don't do anything violent, you do finally, if you still have an idea of self, you would finally decide, I'm not going to breathe again. But I say you would decide that because you have that perspective. But if you didn't have the perspective, you wouldn't decide. then it would happen, but you wouldn't be thinking of it as a self-powered activity. And then it wouldn't be suicide. But once again, everybody who's caught on self-concern, then everything that happens is kind of like colored by that self, so then death is kind of like killing, self-killing. That's kind of how I see it. Yes?

[28:20]

You know, it's funny. The onus on suicide seems to be not so strong in Buddhism, not quite as strong as some other religions. As a matter of fact, this is an amazing story. The Buddha gave some instruction about going down in the green dragon cave. excavating the nature of phenomena and so on. And then he left town for a while. And then he came back. And he looked around his kind of like meditation camp. And he noticed that there weren't very many monks left. And he said to, I think he said maybe to Ananda, but I'm not sure. He said anyway to the head monk, where are all the monks? And the monk said, Lord, a lot of them committed suicide. He said, you remember that instruction you gave before you left? Well, they did that instruction and they became so morbid and so depressed that they killed themselves.

[29:35]

So, Lord, would you please not give that instruction anymore? And he said, oh, okay. And he stopped giving that instruction, which... took people to a place in their psyche which was so dark and terrifying and unhappy that they actually committed suicide. But he didn't, in that case, the Buddha didn't jump up and down and say, you know, oh, this is terrible, those people, blah, blah, blah. He didn't seem to be too upset about, he didn't seem to be too upset about it, especially that they had done some really bad thing. It's interesting, you know. And I think it's more like, we can say this in Buddhism, I think we can say, we definitely do not recommend suicide. We can say that. And that we do not recommend, what do you call it, what is it, self-immolation.

[30:39]

even though self-immolation is something that some monks have done for a good cause and has had perhaps some positive impact of inspiring a lot of people to peace. But still, we do not recommend that, even though we recognize there's something beneficial about these people burning themselves for peace. Partly just to show that somebody cares that much about it is very impressive in that they're not afraid of pain, that they can stay present in pain. That was very impressive to me when I saw a picture of a monk burning back in the 60s. And I saw this charred figure in the flames. And I thought the monk, I figured the guy was dead, you know, because he looked like a little charcoal pile. But I couldn't figure out how he was sitting up.

[31:41]

And then it fell over, and I thought, well, yeah, that makes sense. But then it sat up again. And I went, wow, there's somebody still in there. And not only that, but he's sitting up. And I thought, that's impressive that a human being can like make the effort to sit zazen during the flames. We have a little trouble sitting zazen during the rain. Or during when we're tired a little bit, right? Or have a cough. Imagine like sitting up when you're burning rather than just passing out. which I'm not criticizing passing out, it's okay, but to not pass out and then to sit up to tell people that you're there, I thought, wow, that's impressive. That kind of encouraged me to learn Zen meditation.

[32:44]

To have that kind of like presence in the flames, I thought, that seems like a good thing. And And Buddha also said when he was, you know, he said, you know, my disciples don't hate people. My disciples don't have ill will for people. It's okay to get angry about unskillfulness, but it's not okay to wish some ill on somebody. Does that make sense? Anger is okay if it's towards some evil, but you don't want evil person to be ill. You want them to stop it. So when people are mean to you and you hate them or want to hurt them back, this is not a disciple of Buddha. And then Buddha says, in our place he says, when I was being cut up into little pieces by King Kalinga, I did not hate him. Hate did not arise in my heart because I had practiced patience so well.

[33:47]

So we want to be able to practice patience so that even if we're being, even if we're in great pain and it looks like somebody else is intentionally causing it to us, we won't turn around and wish that they were suffering and that somebody would hurt them. So anyway, I kind of got off the track of the suicide thing, but the Buddha didn't seem to get too upset about people committing suicide. But I think basically the idea in Buddhism is I'm kind of laughing because we don't even want us, we don't want people to do anything to themselves which would disturb their mindfulness and their balance at all. So we wouldn't want them to do anything violent to themselves that would disturb them. So if you could commit suicide and it wouldn't disturb you at all, then that's not usually what we call suicide.

[34:54]

But if you would do anything to yourself, even if it doesn't kill you, but it disturbs you, it's called intoxication. It's called manipulating yourself in a way that knocks you off balance. So that's much more clear. The Buddha's like talking about how to become free, and he recommends that we don't do anything to ourselves that will knock us off the middle. So indulgence in sense pleasure, or indulgence in self-mortification. So if you could like, I don't know what to yourself, some kind of mortification, if you could do it, but you weren't indulging in it, and it wasn't knocking you off balance, it would be okay. So the Buddha didn't say no sense pleasure, And he didn't say, no self-mortification. He didn't say, don't get really cold or get really hot and don't get really comfortable. It's okay to have sense pleasure and it's okay to have pain.

[35:57]

The point is being addicted to them. That's what throws you off. So some people are, you know, people don't sleep on nails that much in Texas, as far as I know, but they do mortify themselves You know, they do criticize themselves and hate themselves, and they're addicted to it. You know, right? People do that, right? They're addicted to being hard on themselves, to giving themselves less than they need. It's sometimes okay to give yourself less than you need. It's okay. But to be addicted to it knocks you off. And it's sometimes okay to give yourself more than you need, more pleasure. than you need, but when it's an addiction, it'll knock you off. You can sometimes overeat without it hurting your meditation too much, but if you do it on a regular basis, see what I mean? So if that's the teaching, then suicide, the way some people would get involved in it, would be, of course, way off the charts.

[37:06]

Just like some people... get into sensual indulgence, which is way off the charts, and then it flips to suicide, right? Overdose on painkillers, and then it flips to the other side. Overdose on heroin, and then it turns into suicide, practically. You know what I mean? Sometimes we never know. Were they trying to get higher and higher or were they trying to kill themselves? It's kind of like the same thing. But they're both extremes. And that's what the Buddha is really clear about. So I think suicide usually would fall into an extreme of self-mortification. But if it didn't, if someone could do what people usually call suicide and stay right in the middle, it doesn't matter that much. Because the main thing is that you're on the middle way, which is the path of liberation and peace. And if you can do what people call suicide and stay on the path, it's like having breakfast. But who can do that?

[38:11]

Who can be present in the middle of a barbecue when you're the barbecue? Not too many people. That's kind of I think the most important thing in Buddhism and the activity itself isn't really that important if you can be in the middle. So that opens up the possibility in Buddhism that you can do a lot of stuff and if you're in the middle it will be beneficial. You can do things that are quite surprising sometimes. You can be, yeah, quite surprising. Like Matsu was quite surprising. When he was younger and healthier, he was quite surprising. When he was old and almost dead, he said something quite surprising. When he was younger, though, he used to yell at people and they were deaf for days. Or he used to sometimes twist people's noses and they would wake up.

[39:19]

You remember, what is it, Master High? Do you remember Master Hai? He was the one with the black head. Master Hai and Master Ma were taking a walk one day, and Master Ma said to Master Hai, What's that? Some geese flew over. And Master Hai said, Wild geese. And Master Ma said, Where'd they go? And Master Hai said, They flew away. Master Ma grabbed Master Hai's nose and twisted it several turns. And Master Hai cried out in pain. And Master Ma said, so they're gone, are they? Or you think they're gone? And Master Hai had a great awakening. So, yes?

[40:21]

Yes? Well, can you wait a second? So anyway, Master Ma, usually that would be considered rather violent, but Master Ma was a master of the middle way, so he did that in a middle way, so it was very beneficial to Master Hai. Master Hai had a great awakening. But it was kind of surprising and outrageous. Usually we should not twist people's nose real hard like that. Usually you probably shouldn't even put your finger, touch anybody's nose without asking beforehand. He didn't say, may I twist your nose? May I insert my finger in your nostril and pull? No, he didn't say that. He just did it. Usually we don't do that. We're very polite, aren't we? We Buddhists. We have a reputation for being very polite. But some of the masters who are really in the middle, sometimes their great activity does these things like twist people's nose and yell at them and break their legs and stuff. Yes, Galen?

[41:24]

Weights on And the rain and the lightning storms, too. And sometimes that would upset some people because even though for you it was in the middle, the concern that it caused them made them ask you maybe not to do that sometimes. And you would acquiesce. I would? I would acquiesce? So in terms of making decisions, would it be... Well, sometimes a person in the middle, in a certain situation, checks with people beforehand, before doing something unusual, and sometimes they don't check.

[42:46]

See, Master Ma lived in China, where, you know, it was a different world. In China, the legal system was not like in America. They didn't have so many lawyers. People would just get their arms cut off and so on for being rude without trial sometimes. I don't know. But now we have all these lawyers, so it's a different environment. So I can't say what the person in the middle would do. Sometimes the person in the middle won't ask. And sometimes they will. And I'm not saying I, used to you compliment me by saying I was in the middle, but maybe, maybe when I ask sometimes it's because I'm not in the middle. But also maybe I ask because I am in the middle, but I'm in the middle of America, which is full of lawyers. So if I don't ask somebody before I adjust their posture, they can sue me. You know, that's an interesting example that just popped in my mind.

[44:01]

These monks were in a position where if they committed suicide, it probably wouldn't hurt people as much as if somebody in a family did. That's one big difference. Whereas if any of you committed suicide, you might not notice it, but everybody that loves you would think that you hated them because they would experience not just a loss of you. If you died, it wouldn't be as hard as if you committed suicide for most people. So you can know that probably everybody in your Buddhist Sangha, probably, and everybody in your family would probably feel like you were really trying to hurt them, and it would disturb the rest of their life, probably, more or less. And what often happens is when one family member commits suicide, then another one does. Suicide rates in a family that has suicides is much higher If you just look at a family that's got one suicide, the likelihood of another one is very high compared to one where there hasn't been any.

[45:08]

So like in my family, looking over the whole range of my family, actually there is one suicide, but that person was not a person who had any children in the family. But of the people who actually were part of the reproductive process, I don't know of any suicides. But I look at other families where there's one and there's usually several. So yeah, it's different. But those monks were in a different society. So sometimes when you remove yourself from society, then things are different. Because in India, when they left home, it was a big deal. I mean, people really just let them go do whatever they wanted to. So that's why they could starve to death and stuff like that. I don't know if they did, because the Buddha was gone, right, and he came back and they didn't check with their teacher before they did it. However, they were following their teacher's meditation instruction.

[46:12]

So, but anyway, I generally, I don't know what you're suggesting, but I generally think it is a good idea, I think it is a good idea to talk to other people about what you're thinking about doing. Even if you're thinking about doing something good, I don't think it's so important to talk to people about bad things that you're thinking of not doing. Not doing? Yeah. I don't think you have to, like, for example, I don't particularly want people to come and tell me all the bad things that they've been thinking of that they're not going to do. But if you're thinking of doing a bad thing, I'd like to hear about that. And if you're thinking of doing a good thing, I'd like to hear about it. But the bad things you're not going to do, and I would like to also hear about the good things you're not going to do. So I'd like to hear about good things you're not going to do, good things you are going to do, and bad things you are going to do. They're all pretty important. But the bad things you aren't going to do, you keep to yourself. And I know there's a lot of those. Right? Those are really highly available.

[47:17]

Yes? Hey, there you go. You know what was good, I think? That you told us. Thank you so much for telling us, because otherwise we wouldn't have been able to say bye. And thanks for your steady sitting through the flames. Monks that commit suicide, do they have intention? Did they? You know, I really do not know the state of their mental development, of their meditative development. I don't know. Because they announced that they were going to do it. And they had a big crowd, and they had reporters, photographers. Oh, the ones you're talking about are the burning ones. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Plenty of people there. Yeah. If they had no intention, they could have just gone, if they hated the war enough, they could have just gone to the forest and killed themselves in quiet, by themselves with no reporters and observers.

[48:23]

So they must have had some intention. Well, again, there can be intention without self-clinging. Your mind can have a, like you can go to the bathroom with or without self-clinging. So your mind forms this image, you know, of a trajectory of walking across the room to the toilet. So the mind seems to be shaped that way, that this action is going to occur, and then the body falls along with that. But there can be self-clinging or not. So, again, intention is, in some sense, is just the shape of the mind. And intention is, in some sense, the definition of karma. And the In the Buddhist tradition, that's the definition of karma is intention. So the mental factor of the intention of the state of consciousness is the definition of the karma. Okay? It's called cetana in Sanskrit.

[49:25]

It means the shape of the consciousness at a given moment. And that's the definition of action. of mental action. And then body follows that mental confirmation, and voice can follow that mental confirmation. However, I'm saying not so much a definition of karma, but I'm sort of suggesting that what makes that intention into karma in the sense that it accumulates karma, is that this intention is operating in conjunction with the belief in self. That makes it karmically accumulating and developing obstructions to the path. So the Buddha's consciousness would have a shape, but the shape would not be a shape under the auspices of belief in a self. So it doesn't do karmic — it's activity, but there's no karmic accumulation for the enlightened person.

[50:29]

There's karmic fulfillment of past karma, they still have a body and so on and a life, but they're not generating any new karmic accumulations because the activity or their intentions are not in a mind that believes in a self. The mind can still have the idea of a self, It could still be the concept of something that's independent and that could be applied to a person, but they don't believe it. So the Buddha could talk. Most of the Buddha's talk was in kind of false language in the sense of the Buddha talked as though there was a self. The Buddha says, I did this and I did that, and I did this and I did that, most of the time. I went to town, I came back, you do this, you do that. So mostly he was talking as though there was a self. But he did this so people could understand him. And then sometimes he said, sometimes he mentioned, that way of talking is conventional and it's not true.

[51:33]

And so the Abhidharma, or the analytic way of talking about what's happening, isn't that I do this and I do that, but that the consciousness has a shape and there's a belief in a self, an image of a self, or not. And then activity arises in that way. But there's no person who has a self who's doing this stuff. So even in the early teachings it says, there's action but no actor. But when there's a belief in an actor, then we call it karma. When there's not a belief in the actor, there's activity, but it's not karma. Just like I use the example of when your doctor taps your knee and your knee flips out, most people don't think they did that. It's an activity, perfectly good activity, but People don't think they did it. They think it's just causes and conditions come together and your knee goes boop. And sometimes when they test your reflexes on your arm and stuff, they tap it.

[52:39]

I don't even notice what the reflex is. I don't even see the reflex in some of the places. But there are these reflexes they've been trying to see. Do you know what I mean? When they tap other places, you don't get a big... movement, but they see a little thing happening someplace. So there's an activity there that you don't even notice, so certainly you don't think you do those. And then if the tap the knee and it doesn't go, you don't think you made it not go. So we have activity, there is activity, Buddha has activity, but Buddha doesn't believe that the person Buddha, or the living being Buddha, is making those things happen. They understand them as dependent core risings. But those monks that you're talking about, again, I don't know their state of meditation. It's obviously advanced in certain ways. They're probably really good at samadhi, because if you get into deep samadhi, you can stand that pain.

[53:41]

But what their understanding of what their wisdom was like, I can't assess. Or they're ethical. I can't really assess. We can't really judge. Unless we're a Buddha, we can't really tell other people's state of development very well. What I'm trying to say is, what I'm trying to find out is, they had the intention. Now, was there a self there that wanted an outcome? Yeah, I don't know. And if there was... I can't know their mind, but from what they had arranged, it looked like they wanted an outcome. Perhaps it was compassion. Can you... Perhaps it was compassion. The old stories of the Buddha giving his life to feed a hungry tiger. Those monks, especially, I think there were five or six, but especially the first one, In the West, we all thought, well, this is just to shock us. But maybe there was the compassionate aspect, because they would protest against what the Dean family was doing, and what all of these people, this really heavy counter that all of these people were incurring.

[54:50]

And so maybe compassion, I mean, that's how I always thought. I agree, the compassion. But I look at the skillful means aspect, and maybe it influencing people, but it also negatively influenced people, because now there is a movement of Buddhist young monks that say, hey, you must give us permission to kill ourselves. I mean, twisting your nose several times has a negative impact too, but it's also later in life, and maybe that was their intention. The monk gave his teacher permission to twist his nose. The student always said, when you go in to be a student, you say, OK, test me. This is the thing. But when you broadcast this on TV, a lot of people were horrified because they didn't get permission to be tested. They weren't being barred either. But they were influenced. I don't think so for me. I sometimes make the distinction between, like, if I go visit somebody in the hospital who's sick, and if I do actually, if I want them to be healthy, I might say,

[56:02]

I want you to be healthy." But I don't say that to get the effect of them being healthy. I just tell them that's what I want. I want you to be healthy. I want you to be happy. But that doesn't mean I'm doing that to get an effect, and it doesn't mean that if they don't get healthy, I'm going to get angry at them for not doing what I wanted. So I think compassion can be that you wish, you really want the best for people, But at the same time, you appreciate them the way they are. So if they don't change either by what you say or what you do, you still keep loving them. So there can be compassion, but compassion can be a little dualistic. And so I don't know about these people, the state of the... the state of their compassion, whether it was pure of duality or not. But you can look at yourself and see if when you express compassion, you know, and when you want someone to get healthy and they don't, does that faze you?

[57:10]

And if it does, there's probably some duality in your compassion, which is not good because then eventually, you know, you can stop visiting them in the hospital because it annoys you that they're continuing to be sick. And that happens with people, that they actually get upset with people that are mentally or physically ill for a long time because there's some duality in their well-wishing of the person. Yes, Terry? A little bit more about excavating love. Would I say more about it? Yeah. Well, I would say that what I've been emphasizing during this retreat and also generally I feel like most of the people I meet are at the level of hearing about how to excavate and learning about how to excavate.

[58:12]

And then, if they feel calm enough, to start to excavate. And the way you start to excavate is you listen to the teaching. In some way, some form, you listen to the teaching that phenomena lack the nature of producing themselves. Or phenomena are dependent co-arising. Somehow, you find some way to listen to that teaching and be mindful of that Dharma teaching fairly steadily. So the beginning of the excavation is to listen to that teaching, and by listening to that teaching, when that teaching starts to sink into you, I'm telling you that one of the ways you can tell it's starting to sink into you is that your attitude towards things start to change. You know? People who are like really bright and shiny to you start to kind of like become like normal people. And people who are kind of like dull and kind of uninteresting, start to become like normal people.

[59:14]

They don't turn into movie stars, but they become kind of like a normal person. Like there's some people who you run into and it's easy for you to like, in a sense, do the right thing. And these are often ordinary people. But if you meet somebody like the governor of the state, or the president, or a movie star, or a sports star, and you kind of like see them in those ways, and they seem to be big and shiny because of the causes and conditions of their history and their reputation in your mind, oftentimes you don't relate to them very well. You know what I mean? You're kind of nervous and you say something you don't mean, like, I really like the way you dunk. And that's not so bad, but, you know, But it's kind of bad because you think Michael Jordan wants to hear somebody tell him that they like the way he dunks.

[60:27]

It's kind of not that interesting, right? He probably thinks, get me out of here. What would you say to somebody like that if you were in the right state of mind? You might say, hi. Yeah. You might say, nice to see you. No big deal, you know? Like you'd say if you met just an ordinary person. And he probably would like that if somebody would just say hi. You know? That would probably be kind of an unusual thing for him to hear, right? Or he's like, oh, human. Hi. Hi. Yeah. Like a kid would probably say to him that didn't know who he was. But even a kid, you know, sometimes who meets a sports star, even when they know about him, they still may be not caught by it as much as an adult. So if you're doing this meditation, you'll start to notice that you won't be so involved in things, in things, in objects, that things will start calming down.

[61:41]

And then you'll notice that your response to things will be more just sort of not super great, just like not weird as usual. Usually things are a little off, right? Because we're not seeing things right on the money. And when you see things right on the money, you do sometimes say, not only is it nice to see them that way, but I act this nice way too. Like that story I told you before. Well, I actually changed the story. I forgot what the story was. I changed the story about this guy who got all this money given to him. No, he got all this money taken away, and he said, is that so? Then he got all this money given to him, and he said, is that so? Actually, the story was a guy was severely insulted for doing something he didn't do, and he said, is that so? Then he got severely praised for something he did do. And he said, is that so? You know, it's like he could see he was on the money in both cases, you know.

[62:50]

It's not such a big deal that people are insulting you. It's not that big a deal when you listen to this teaching, because this teaching says any minute you could get insulted by anybody. Any minute you could get praised by anybody, and then they could turn around and insult you. Any minute you could get a lot and have it taken away, or vice versa. But also you could be given a little and have it taken away. In other words, you do not cast this... I should say, no, you don't. But you soften your belief... and you soften your casting of spells upon yourself about things when you listen to this teaching. And you notice that, you start to notice that, you start to notice that. Before you notice that, the teaching hasn't sunk in much yet. Some people, they listen to it for a few seconds and they start to feel different. And then they forget, and then they notice that they snap back into their usual mood.

[63:57]

Some people have to listen to it a long time before it makes much impact. In some ways, some people are better, what do you call it, spell makers. Some people cast spells upon themselves more powerfully than other people do, which is both good and bad. It's good in the sense that they have a nice, active imagination, which can be used to learn teachings. And it's bad in the sense that they're pushed around by it and then do inappropriate things because they're self-hypnotized about the world. So I'm basically recommending at this point in your practice, I'm emphasizing that practice. Now if you want to start then excavating from there, then you can start studying the nature of the imputation. In other words, you can start looking to see if you can identify the imputation.

[65:01]

And you look for it, you'll know it by observing that it depends on names in association with signs. It's associated with names that are associated with signs, which means hooked into belief that there's some substantial thing in the object that justifies the use of that word about it. Or an example I used the other day, when you're well grounded in meditation on the other dependent, and you're not so... and the virtue practice is working very nicely, then you can look at things and you can see if you think there's something more to the identity of something than just a word. So I'm saying that the identity of Terry, your identity, not you, but your identity, is nothing more than the word Terry.

[66:08]

And if you, what do you call it, bridle at that, if you resist that, that seems not quite right, that's the imputational. That you think there's something more to you than, more to your identity than that. or that you have an identity that justifies the word tearing more than just, period. And then if you can look at that, if you can find that imputational, then you can start studying that and see if that really is, what do I say, something other than absurd. and start to think about that and try to find out how absurd it is that you think there's something more to your identity than the word Terry. Because most people do. Other people think that about you too. Other people look at you that way. It might be even easier to do it on other people.

[67:10]

You know, to look at me and say, do you think there's something more to my identity than the word Reb? And then check to see, follow through on that, and see if there's some absurdity in that. Because there is, actually. But that will require, perhaps, you know, quite a bit of reasoning and thinking about that point. And you can also start studying this sutra, which I brought here a while ago, the Samdhi Nirmacana Sutra, which presents these three characteristics and goes into how to meditate on them. But basically, once you listen to this teaching, then just basically investigate

[68:13]

the objects, once you're hearing that they're dependent core risings, investigate them. Hear their dependent core risings, investigate them. Hear their dependent core risings, investigate them. Hear their dependent core risings, investigate them. I don't recommend trying to figure out how their dependent core rises, but just hear that they are. And then investigate. If you start to see, if you start to have some revelation of how there are dependent core risings, that's okay. If it's forced upon you, if it just is revealed, that's okay. But don't try to find it. Does that make sense? Don't look for the dependent core rising. listen to that things are dependent co-arising, and then look at things and study them, investigate, examine, investigate, analyze, examine, and then if some revelation comes, fine, but that revelation then will be another object to listen to the teaching and examine that.

[69:20]

Sound like fun? Well, if it is, good. If it gets to be a little bit too hectic, take a breath and go back to tranquility practice. And actually, when you're tranquil, this kind of investigation is much easier. Just like sewing a Buddhist robe, If you're not calm, if you're not fairly tranquil, sometimes sewing it, you become more concentrated and calm. But sometimes sewing it, you might feel kind of like irritated by having to look at all these little things. But when you're calm, it's really wonderful to sew. So when you're calm, it's really wonderful to investigate things like ants, flowers, sand, building materials, people's teeth, eyebrows, songbirds.

[70:26]

You know, everything is quite interesting to examine when you're calm, because it's so enlightening. But if you're not calm enough, then examination can get kind of like agitating. So if that's the case, it's good to take a rest from the examination and go back to the calming. So just like at some of these discussions or some classes we have to discuss these teachings, some people find it very interesting, other people get upset. When people are getting upset, I say, why don't you just try to relax? Don't try to get this stuff, just relax. Try to sit in a room and relax. If you have to, leave the room and just, you know, in your regular sitting, don't try to think about this stuff. Just practice relaxation with whatever is happening. And eventually, when you're more calm, this material will be able to be listened to and studied without agitating you. It'll just be like fascinating rather than agitating.

[71:31]

Anything else? Anybody want to help me by asking me a question? Yes? Joe? Your name's Joe, right? My name is Joe. I'm the one asking all the questions. I had one dream while I was here. Not surprisingly, because usually I dream a lot and I pay attention to my dreams. But the dream that I had last night was that I was back in the pectic working environment. My working environment is one that ranks very, very low on the Buddhist right vocation scale. But in this dream we were. walking meditation and we were doing it counterclockwise and everyone was very angry. And I see this as, I interpret this dream as anxiety about having to go back into a very unreal world. So my question to you is can you give me a basic meditation that I can use in the dynamic as this is happening?

[72:42]

to ease the pain. Well, starting with that point right there, during this retreat and the last few retreats that I've been at here at Margaret Austin Center, we've been emphasizing wisdom practices. But I also haven't said so during this retreat, but wisdom is based on compassion. Buddhist wisdom is based on compassion. Compassion is first, actually. Compassion is really the basis. And one important compassion practice which is necessary is patience. And most of us are in situations quite frequently where we experience pain, pain from physical pain, from hardship and environmental conditions, and also emotional pain.

[73:46]

And our emotional pain, I think, comes mostly from when we feel we're being disrespected. And disrespect can come in the form of an insult, what we feel like is an insult, or people being condescending to us. But basically, people just being insulting, being disrespectful in the sense of people just looking at us, seeing us some way, and then just sort of thinking we're that way. It's quite insulting, and it's quite painful if we see them doing that to us. I think it's possible for it to become less painful at some point, but I think being disrespected is pretty painful for us. And in most work environments, I think there's quite a bit of disrespect going on. from what I hear. Not too many work environments are people respectful. I think even at Zen centers sometimes people are not respectful to each other. But generally I think the level of respect in the work situation in Buddhist temples in America, I think the level of respect is above average.

[74:57]

And sometimes it's really high. There are times at Zen Center when I feel like it's like almost everybody respects everybody. But usually that's at the end of a long retreat. At the beginning of a retreat, I think when people look around the room, they have kind of disrespectful views of each other. But by the end, after suffering from the pain of disrespecting people and being disrespected, we usually like practice patience with that. And then we start to open up to seeing actually how there is more respect. So how do you practice patience? Well, one way to practice patience is to be grateful when people are insulting you. because you say, they're being disrespectful to me, here's a great chance to practice patience.

[75:58]

So practicing patience, number one, I don't know number one, but one aspect of practicing patience is it makes me more comfortable with being in pain. Practicing patience makes me more comfortable with being disrespected. But again, when I'm disrespected, if I can remember to practice patience, then I quickly say, oh, a chance for practicing patience, I'm being disrespected. I'm being overlooked. I'm being disregarded. I'm being, you know, and so on. Now I can practice patience. You can't really practice patience if everybody's nice to you. I mean, I guess you could practice patience if you got irritated with people being too nice to you, like, you know, a movie star or something. But it has to be irritation. If people are being nice to you and it's irritating, then you can practice patience. So I guess it's not so much the way people are being to you, but if you feel irritated with the way people are being towards you, then you can practice patience. And you can't practice it unless you're irritated or in pain.

[76:59]

So you're grateful for the opportunity to practice patience. So you sound like you're in an environment where you have a lot of opportunities to practice patience. Many, many opportunities. Yeah. So then you can, like, have the teaching that when you have these opportunities to say, oh, good, good, now I can practice patience. And Buddhas need these kinds of things because Buddhas need to practice patience. And so even Buddhas need to be irritated in order to function. And actually Shakyamuni Buddha was irritated. He did get irritated pain coming to him. And he continued to practice patience his whole life up to the end. Another thing about patience which I recommend is that you try to experience the pain in the smallest possible doses. So if you're in pain, try to experience just the present moment of it. The present moment of it. Don't think about how long it's been going on. So if someone's insulting you, try to deal with the present insult rather than that they've done that before.

[78:04]

And don't think about how long the pain is going to go on in the future. Try to just deal with the present delivery in the smallest time zone that you can do that with. And then you're going to be most able to handle it. You probably can handle almost even really strong pain if you really deal with it in the present. But sometimes when people insult you and then you think, oh, they always do that, then you really get upset. But if you're just feeling the pain right now, it's not so bad as if you think of it for a long time. So that's something about patience. That's one of the things you can do in the work situation and also, of course, on the highway and so on. Because a lot of the situations we're in, people are acting in such a way that we can feel disrespected. Another practice, so that's the precept practice, compassion, okay?

[79:11]

It's an aspect of compassion. Another aspect of compassion is precepts. And bodhisattva precepts in work situations, bodhisattva precepts, the two that come to my mind first of all are not slandering and not praising self at the expense of others. So this is for bodhisattvas. In other words, bodhisattvas are susceptible sometimes to slipping off the path and thinking that they're superior to other people. Now if you're practicing precepts, that's good. It's okay to say, it's good that I'm practicing precepts. It's good that I'm practicing compassion. That's okay. But to praise yourself at the expense of others is to think about how other people are not as good as you are. So if you think that you're better than anybody at your work situation, then that's another precept to try to, like, practice. It's okay to think well of yourself as long as you don't think you're better than the other people around you.

[80:14]

So you don't have to — sometimes people say, think of yourself as the lowest. There's some virtue to that. But If we can just not think of ourselves as better than anybody, that's really good to do in a work situation. And also just notice if you're thinking any slandering thoughts, any defaming or demeaning thoughts about anybody. And if you are, try to like let go of those. Don't get involved too much in that kind of thought. It's okay to think that somebody did something unskillful. Right? That's okay. Like a child. If you see a child do something unskillful, you don't think badly of the child. You know, you love the child, but they didn't do a very good job. Like they, you know, they don't even know how to hold the crayon, right? But you don't think badly of them.

[81:16]

You think they're delightful. Maybe. Like some people actually might get mad at the kid for not being good at drawing, right? That's highly inappropriate. Right? Right? So if someone is unskillful at work, it's okay to notice that they're unskillful because that may be necessary to do the work. But treat them as though the way a good teacher would treat them. Try to find some way to help them become more skillful rather than like thinking of them in a way that puts them down. Or even talking to other people about their mistakes in such a way that other people would think less of them So somehow, this is tough, but somehow think of a way to talk about everybody at work when you talk about them to other people in such a way that the other people will respect them more. So that you will raise the opinion of people about people at work rather than lower the opinion of people about people at work.

[82:22]

And even if you have a critical opinion of somebody and you need to talk to somebody about how that person didn't do that work properly, you can talk, it is possible to learn to talk to this other person in such a way that the person sees the mistake but respects the person. It's not easy to learn that, but it is possible to say, Joe made a mistake here, but he's really a good worker. He's having trouble learning this, But he's a great guy. Could you help him?" So this other person goes over there and helps him learn it, but he's coming to help him, not like I don't know what. So those are some things you can work on at work and, of course, also other places. Does that give you a start? I have a short follow-on.

[83:27]

A follow-on, yes. That was an important question and an important answer. If you've already been slandered and you missed the opportunity to be compassionate and be slandered at that person's back, I've already made up my mind to apologize to the person that I had this transaction with. But I'm not sure what the correct way to do it is where I'm not just assuaging my own sense of guilt. I think it's okay to assuage your sense of guilt by confession and apology. It's okay. If you do something bad and then you apologize and you feel good, that's okay. That's part of the reason to do it. Make it right? With the other person? That may be expecting too much. Oh. Because sometimes you apologize to somebody and, you know, they don't accept the apology.

[84:31]

Accept what? Or they don't think it was a good enough apology. But if you start apologizing, you're going to feel, that's going to be a skill for you to learn. That's good. But it doesn't mean the other person is going to think you did a good job. As a matter of fact, they might say, that's a lousy apology. And it might be a lousy apology. Sometimes people come to see me, you know, and they're late for the appointment, and they say, sorry, I'm slightly late. And I sometimes say, how come you said slightly? You went out of your way to sort of apologize, and then you said slightly? So anyway... Or sometimes the people tell me about... You should apologize without qualifying. Yeah, without sort of like protecting yourself. What did you say?

[85:31]

Expectations. Yeah, with expectations. Just say it. But again, that may take some practice to like learn to say it. Also, sometimes people confess things to, not necessarily apologies to me directly, but they tell me things that they feel I did wrong and I don't understand what they're talking about. And then when they hear that I don't understand what they're talking about, they tell me the rest of the story. And then I go, oh, yeah, okay, I hear you. And sometimes people might tell me, apologize to me for doing something to me, and I don't know what they're talking about. And then sometimes they tell me the rest of the story, and I go, oh, okay, thank you. Because they gave me a abbreviated version, a condensed version, they know what it means. It's code for what they actually did. But they don't know how to say the thing. So most of us can get more accurate at saying what we did, but what we really feel bad about.

[86:36]

And not saying too much, just kind of disguise it, not over-report it to disguise it or under-report it, but learn to say just the thing. And then still the person may not be satisfied with it, but there is a tendency for it to work better when you actually say it straight. It usually is encouraging to the other person that you are aware of what you did. Because sometimes people hurt us, and if we know they know what they did, we can let it go. But if we don't think they recognized the harm of what they did, it's kind of hard for us to let it go until they tell us. If they tell us, you know, I think I was really cruel to you, they say, okay, great, now I can let it go. But if they do something and then they don't say anything for a long time, we feel like we have to kind of carry it until they apologize, which is really, it's too bad, but sometimes we feel that way.

[87:42]

I'm not saying that's true, that we have to carry it, but in this case I would say this is a good chance to start practicing the great art of apology, which is also related to confession. Is that enough for this retreat? Okay, so I just have one more song. This is one you've heard before but I think it somewhat applies here. As usual. There may be trouble ahead, so while there's music and moonlight and love and romance, Let's face the music and dance Before the fiddlers have fled Before they ask us to pay the bill And while there's still a chance Let's face the music and dance

[89:02]

Soon we'll be without the moon Humming a different tune And then There may be teardrops to shed So while there's music and moonlight And love and romance Let's face the music and dance May our intention equally penetrate every

[89:42]

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