They say that the Buddha said, or I've heard that the Buddha said, that I only teach about suffering and freedom from suffering. One old-time Zen master said that the reality body of Buddha, the real body of Buddha, manifests in response to beings.

[01:30]

The real body of Buddha's teaching manifests interactively, like the moon in the water, or like the moon reflected in the water. Now please watch and listen to this story. Maybe it's a story about the Buddha's reality body manifesting interactively. One day, a Zen teacher named Wang Bo went into the lecture hall like this.

[02:47]

And he took a big staff. He started swinging it around to chase the monks who were there out of the room. But they didn't move. They just stood there. That was the interaction that occurred. Then he said to the monks, you are all drag slurpers. If you travel like this, people will just laugh at you. And then how will you have today? That was a, you could say, I could say, you could say, an interactive manifestation of the Buddha's teaching of the real body of Buddha.

[04:06]

It was manifested there. He said to the monks, if you go on like this, if you act like this, how will you have today? Don't you know that in all of China there are no Zen masters, no teachers of Zen? And then one monk came forward and said, What about all these monasteries where people gather and there's instruction in meditation and the path to freedom? And Wang Bo said, I don't say there's no Zen in China, just that there's no teachers of Zen.

[05:15]

He's going to take my picture. So I should smile, right? What did you say? He's taking pictures for fundraising purposes. So this first one, they look pretty gum. They probably won't show people those. But underneath the picture, it should say, there are no teachers of Zen in all of America.

[06:59]

If some people hear about it, they may say, wait a minute. What about all the Zen practice that's happening in America? People appear in the world and then the Buddha manifests through the interaction which says, you know, there's no teachers. The teaching of the Buddha manifests by a Zen master saying, there's no teachers of Chan. There's no Chan teachers. There's no Zen teachers. You can say, well, isn't that guy teaching those people that? But it isn't that he's teaching them, but that the teaching happens in that interaction. The Zen happens in the interaction, not that the teacher has the teaching and teaches, but in that interaction Buddhism is manifested.

[08:13]

Now the teaching isn't in the moon, the teaching isn't in the water. It's the moon reflected in the water that manifests the teaching. The water doesn't get the moon. The moon doesn't get the water. The moon doesn't break the water. The water keeps being water. And the water doesn't make the moon wet. But exactly the way the moon is reflected in the water sets beings free from suffering.

[09:20]

This Zen teacher who told his monks, Wang Bo, who told his monks, there's no teachers of Chan in all of China. When he was younger, when he was head monk, before he was a teacher of the monastery, the future emperor of China was sort of hiding out in that monastery. He was being pursued in a severe case of sibling rivalry by his big brother. He was hiding out in the Zen monastery. And this Wang Bo, this master Wang Bo was doing prostrations. He was doing bows to the Buddha statue, to a statue of Buddha. He was paying his respects by doing bows to the Buddha.

[10:33]

And the young future emperor said, If you don't seek from Buddha, if you don't seek from the teaching of Buddha, and you don't seek from the community of practitioners, then what are you seeking in paying your respects to the Buddha in this way? And Wang Bo said, I don't seek from Buddha. I don't seek from the teaching. I don't seek from the community.

[11:38]

In this way, I bow and pay my respects to Buddha. And the young emperor, future emperor said, well then, what's the point of paying your respects if you're not seeking anything? And Wang Bo, excuse me for saying, slapped the little emperor in the face. And the little emperor said, too coarse, too rough. And Wang Bo said, what's this got to do with too coarse or too fine?

[12:49]

And slapped him again. Later when the young man became the emperor of China and one of the greatest of all time, he gave Wang Bo the national title of course acting Zen master. The great masters bow to Buddha. The masters in the Zen tradition, who were actually basically Buddhas, bowed to Buddha. But the bowing to Buddha, the purpose of bowing to Buddha is to cut through the duality between self and Buddha. The one that's bowing and the one that's bowed to, the nature of both is empty.

[14:22]

The one bowing and the one bowed to, not two. Thus I bow and I plunge into the inexhaustible practice So we might be willing to be devoted to some practice or some teaching or some Buddha and try to get something from our devotion. Such devotion makes what we're devoted to farther away. Real devotion the difference. And the devotion is not just to the Buddha, but to every person and everything in the world.

[15:46]

But particularly, it's helpful to be devoted to what you don't trust or what you have no hope of controlling or maybe what you have not much hope of controlling, like yourself your mind, your thoughts, your children, criminals, and Buddha. And also a devotion which doesn't say, well, they're not under control now, but maybe if I'm devoted to them long enough, they'll come under control. So somebody maybe tells me or I hear about somebody not trusting somebody.

[18:04]

And sometimes people say, well, how can I trust that person? Or something like that. And I sometimes say, well... Maybe it's okay that you don't trust this person. Maybe it's okay if you don't trust anybody or anything, including not trusting Buddha. I'm not saying you shouldn't, but maybe it's okay if you don't trust anything. And then if you didn't trust anything or anybody in the world, could you then be devoted to one or all of these things or people that you don't trust?

[19:14]

Or would you only be devoted to those you trust, those who perhaps wouldn't take advantage of your devotion? But can someone take advantage of your devotion if you already don't trust them and you're not being devoted to them because you trust them, but you're being devoted to them for what? Because you're being devoted to them for what? Because you're being devoted to them so that the true body of Buddha can manifest through the interaction. If we are only devoted to those we trust, what happens when they stop, when they start acting in a way that doesn't go along with what we trust?

[20:28]

How do we select who we trust by the way they're acting? Does some act a trustworthy way and others don't act a trustworthy way? Is that how we can tell? But what if they change? then do we withdraw the trust and withdraw the devotion? Well, people do. If some little kid asks me for the keys to a car, he says they want to go drive it, of course I don't give him the keys as an act of devotion. I maybe say, do you have a driver's license? And if they say yes, I say, well, prove it. Let's see the driver's license. And so on. If they show me the driver's license, and it really does look like that in the picture on the driver's license, I might go further in this experiment and see, you know, maybe ride with them for a while first. But does that mean I trust that they won't get in an accident?

[21:40]

You say, yeah, when I ride with someone, let them drive me, I trust that they won't drive. Fine. If you want to live that way, it's a free country. You can trust that the person will not have an accident. What I'm talking about is that whoever you're riding with You're devoted to that person and to that ride. You give your total devotion to that experience. We, some of us, will survive a certain number more automobile rides. But in order that the Buddha body of reality manifests, we have to be devoted to the ride. regardless of who's driving.

[22:44]

And many of us have a difficulty being devoted to what's happening and who we're talking to. Unless, again, the person has certain qualities like, I don't know what, nice looking Buddha. But again, if we're devoted to a person because they're so golden and enlightened looking, so kind and compassionate, that's the reason for the devotion. It's not the kind of devotion that creates the interaction which manifests the Buddha. it actually then isolates you from the Buddha, makes the Buddha separate from you, if your respect for the Buddha is because of what you think.

[23:46]

And then if the Buddha changes, you withdraw your respect, your devotion. So, it seems to me that it's good to not be devoted to things because of their qualities, but to be devoted because of the value of devotion. Then when people do good things, you're devoted to them. When they do bad things, or when you see them and you think they're doing good things, you're devoted to them. And when you see them and you think they're doing bad things, you're devoted to them. When they're good-looking, you're devoted to them. When they're ugly, you're devoted to them. When the Buddha swings a staff at you, you're devoted to the Buddha. When the Buddha doesn't, you're devoted to the Buddha. You're always paying your respects to each person you meet, everybody you meet in your heart you bow to deeply in an act of devotion.

[24:53]

You may not formally do it, or you may formally do it, but that's the feeling with each person you meet. But not seeking anything. So it's not just that we don't seek. One thing is no seeking. The other is devotion. The two together. Not trying to get anything from Buddha and also becoming intimate with Buddha. Not trying to get anything from anybody. Not seeking anything from anybody. Not seeking anything from your own thoughts, from your own feelings. Not seeking anything and being totally devoted.

[25:57]

And not only that, but not seeking from things which are constantly changing and out of control on top of that. Okay, you know, like I'm not trying to get anything from you. And I'm willing to be devoted to you, but at least, you know, hold still. so I can keep track of where you are so I can, you know, know where to put my devotion and to know where to watch out for, you know, my seeking. So in one sense, the way that the Dharma, the true body of Buddha manifests in the world, one of the ways it manifests is the Buddha manifests in the world And the message appears, don't seek this manifestation. There is a manifestation right now which says to you, don't seek it. And then another way it manifests is it says, be devoted to what you don't try to get anything from.

[27:01]

But it doesn't just manifest from those words happening. It manifests when you respond intimately with that manifestation. So actually I said it wrong. It's not that it manifests as those words. It's that it manifests when those words are interacted with in an intimate way. Before you and I give up seeking and are devoted to the way of not trying to get anything, before that happens, it hasn't manifested. But when that teaching happens and we are one and intimate with that teaching, then I say, the body is manifested in this world. And you and I at that time stop demeaning our moment-by-moment life by trying to make it some other way.

[28:17]

We stop resisting what's happening. I say, you know, there's two ways of resisting what's happening. One way is to say, this is really good. Another way to resist it is to say, this is really no good. To demean or esteem what's happening are both resistance to what's happening. Of course, if you say, I esteem this, you can say that, and that can be what's happening. And then you can neither esteem nor demean that. That's okay. But there's a way of being prior to

[29:18]

messing with it. That is intimacy. And that is the interaction. An interaction prior to messing with what's happening. Something happens and before you can do anything about it, it has happened. That is our life, actually. Our life happens before we can do anything about it. And then we demean it. Then we think, what can I get out of this or get away from here? Usually we do that.

[30:24]

Not always. When we don't, the Buddha is manifested at that moment. Now I want to make a plug for sadness. I couldn't quite bring myself to make this whole talk about sadness. I always think I want to do that sometime, to have a whole talk about sadness. What I mean by sadness is, what some of us call sadness is different from what some of us call depression. There's this thing that happens to me, which I call sadness. And I seem to sense that it happens to others.

[31:26]

And it's a very good thing. Or just a regular good thing. And it's a thing that happens to... that arises in us when we're holding on to something that is already gone. And the sadness... is our lives offering us something to feel. And if we will feel this thing, this sadness, at another part of our being we let go of our holding on to something that's not there anymore anyway. Our life does not want to spend itself holding on to what's not here anymore. But it can't really tell us sometimes what it is that we're holding on to that's not here.

[32:31]

So what it does is it exudes this thing called sadness. And if we can feel the sadness, we let go of this thing we're holding on to, which isn't even there. We hold onto something which is a burden for us to hold onto, but we're sorry to let go of it. I call it my 4,000 pound teddy bear. It's really hard to carry around and I would like to set it aside, but it's my teddy bear. And actually, I lost it a long time ago anyway. That's why it's so heavy. Actually, when I had it, it was only weighed a pound and a half. But by holding on to it after I lose it, it gets heavy.

[33:35]

But still, I'm willing to carry it because I don't even know that's what the weight's from. I don't understand that that's what's bogging me down. Because if I looked at what I was holding at, there wouldn't be a teddy bear there. So I'm holding on to something that's not there. I can't figure out how to let go of it. So my body and mind says, oh, here's some sadness. If you'll feel this, that will take care of it. So without saying, oh, I said sadness is good, but without saying it's good, just feel it completely. And then by being open to feeling it completely, we let go of this place that we don't know we're holding and we feel lighter. Like the image of the bamboo with the snow on it.

[34:42]

As the snow accumulates on the bamboo, it bends. And the snow gets heavier and heavier. It bends and it bends and it bends until the leaves are almost vertical. And then the snow drops off the leaves and the bamboo flies back up, light and free. But it has to bend way down so that the stuff can fall off. So there's stuff that's stuck to us and burdening us, and we have to let it take us down. We have to go down with it. And as we go down with it, without even a gaining idea, but just, I guess, devotion to the experience, and we'll be set free. Also another, now that's sadness, okay? Then the other thing is confession. This is part about how to be devoted.

[35:49]

This sadness, experiencing sadness is how to be devoted to your own experience. Another thing is confession. Sometimes a person confesses. I hear a confession. And what I sense that what's being confessed is not so much that a bad thing was done, What's being confessed is something that keeps coming up for this person year after year. Something that keeps bothering this person year after year. When I hear the thing, it doesn't sound so bad a lot of times. But they feel guilty or uneasy about this thing that they did perhaps long ago. And in some cases it might be what people would call a bad thing. Even something I would think was kind of bad. It might be that. But it's already happened. And it's still bothering this person. My feeling is that the reason why it's still bothering them is because they have not yet fully experienced what it was.

[37:00]

And until... We fully experience certain things, not even necessarily things that we have done, but just things that we've experienced, things that have happened to us. If things happen to us where we don't feel like we're even being active, but we don't fully experience it, we can feel guilty about things that happened to us. If someone is cruel to us, we can feel guilty about it for years. So the confession is that I let someone be cruel to me. And that I felt guilty about letting someone feel cruel to me for many years. Because until today, I was unable to fully admit what happened and fully experience what happened. Not over-experience it, not under-experience it. And until we fully experience certain events that we only could partially, only minutely, or a very small percentage of us could experience in the past, our mind keeps wanting us to catch up with our life and keeps presenting these things to us, which finally we have to fully confess, fully experience.

[38:23]

And then it's over. It's already over, but because we weren't there, we have to try again and again and again until we can fully have that life. By fully experiencing things that we couldn't fully experience and letting go of things that we've already let go of, then we're ready to be like dealing with a full experience of what's happening right now and also to let go of this But there is some kind of medicinal or remedial work sometimes necessary in order to get to the point where we're actually now here and ready to have this experience. And have this experience without overdoing it or underdoing it, without esteeming or demeaning this experience. So it may be that some of us don't feel ready to have an experience right now and really just unhesitating, without any resistance, have this present moment without slurping any dregs from the past.

[39:58]

That may be the case. So how... How much remedial work do we have to do before we can have an actual present experience completely without any gaining idea? I don't know. Maybe I have to do that work, though. Devotion to another person is for you to be yourself with that person.

[41:06]

For you to be yourself with that person is to give yourself 100% to that person. Not 110%. And, of course, not 95%. 100%. I heard some instruction on a handstand a couple of weeks ago. You know a handstand? If you do a handstand like from the floor, put your hands on the floor, put your head down, and then you kick your feet up. Does that make sense? So you've got the body like this, the hands are down like this, and you kick the legs up. But you have to put the brakes on as you go up at some point. There's another kind of handstand where you can push straight up, some people can do, but the kind I'm talking about is where you have your hands down and your feet are back and you kick your feet up.

[42:39]

But as you get close to the top, you have to start putting your brakes on, otherwise you'll fall over backwards, right? If you put the brakes on too soon, you never get up. I don't know, actually, I can't figure out whether we mostly put the brakes on too soon... too late when we express ourselves like you come up to somebody okay one two three like to come right up you know come right up and like just oh I know a lot of times we hold back we go oh no hold back no I can't do this this is too much but I think a lot of times we go too far we come right up and go overdo it say a little too much put a little extra twist on it. Just dip out right. We just can't... Because of the momentum, you know? Like if you're suffering, you know, some pain or some sadness again, you know, you come up to that pain and then we often, of course, shrink back from it.

[43:57]

But sometimes we come up to the pain and then we go... And in the expression of the feeling of the pain, sometimes we distract ourselves from it. We get really into it and then we get a little bit too into it. To resist, to shrink back from the pain is indulging in the pain. Does that make sense? Usually we do it the other way. Does that make sense? And you could apply indulging to shrinking back from your experience, like overdoing it, but to come right into the experience and feel the pain just as it is without wiggling and squishing your face in it or shrinking back from it, but just bring your face right up to the feeling and just right on the mark. And meeting a person is very much like this because we like bring our face up into our face and just bring it right to the face but not too far.

[45:03]

Then we see their face and we think, can they handle this face being right on my face? Probably usually we think it's a little easier on them if I'm a little bit behind my face. Just maybe a quarter of an inch, half an inch. Not too far behind my face because then they might feel like I'm not paying attention. But in fact, When I don't bring my face right up to my face, I'm not paying attention because a lot of my attention is going to protecting my face and not bothering the other person with my face either. I'm into calculating rather than just having this face and dealing with what happens, which is a problem a lot. Or overdo it. Overdo it. It's another way to avoid that feeling of what it's like to meet another face. This is what I mean by devotion to your relationship with this other person. Again, to put your whole self into yourself, just up to that point and not overdo it.

[46:16]

It's hard to get that, come right up to it and not overdo it. Because there's some momentum of bringing yourself into your presence. And that momentum tends to go over when you get there. It's hard to just get to the point and stop right there. So you have to come in sort of to land on yourself. You have to come in and know that you have to really slow down and be gentle at the final settling. Otherwise you'll overdo it. Does that make sense? If it doesn't make sense, you can ask questions about it in question and answer. So it's eleven, eleven, that's a nice time to stop. I mean, nice number, eleven, eleven. I do have a song about this.

[47:22]

It's called the Hokey Pokey. This can be done, I guess, indefinitely, this song. But I'm going to do a short version. Most of you probably know it, but I'll just tell you a little bit about it. So you can start, for example, with your right hand. And you say... You put your right hand in, you take your right hand out. You put your right hand in and you shake it all about. You do the hokey pokey and you shelf around. That's what it's all about. And then you can do your left hand, right? And your nose, your head, your legs, your rear. Various parts you can do, right? And then it ends, right? At the end it says, you put your whole self in, you take your whole self out, you put your whole self in and you shake it all about.

[48:43]

You do the hokey pokey and you turn yourself around. That's what it's all about. They are intentionally Okay, well, if something happened to us, and then I feel that if we fully experience it at the time, that's it. And it doesn't tend to haunt us afterwards. We may feel bad about it or good about it.

[49:46]

We may say, that was a big mistake or that was really unfortunate, you know, or that was really good. We may feel that way about it, but if we fully experience it, it's done and we're ready to go on to live our life based on what we learned from that experience. But if we're not present for what happens, something happens to us and we can't stand it, we close our eyes to it or, you know, can't cope with the experience itself and try to, like, deny or retreat from it. But it really did happen. And sometimes what happens is that really intense things we only experience partly and then they haunt us for years. So then if we go back and confess the experience, confess what we did or confess what happened to us, like I said, the funny thing is that

[50:49]

Sometimes things that even we don't, where we just have something done to us, we don't fully experience and we feel guilty. But what a child often does, they feel guilty for the act, but what they're really guilty about is guilty of incomplete experience, which is kind of a mistake that we make. But we think, I can't handle this, so I'm only going to experience 5% of it so I can survive. But the psyche says later, no, you've got to live your life. So it keeps popping up. If we go back and say, this happened, and fully say it, then finally we fully experience it, and then we're clean. One example that I didn't mention during the talk, which might have been helpful, is it's not always a big thing. When I was about eight years old, I became aware, particularly when I was alone and quiet in my room, I became aware of a kind of ringing in my ear, but it wasn't like an actual ringing.

[51:56]

I knew it wasn't an external ringing, and it wasn't even really an internal ringing. It was more like I called it a ringing. Something was bothering me anymore, and it seemed like it was in my ear, and I thought, maybe this is my conscience. Maybe there's something, I did something, right? And that would happen periodically. But when I was about 13, I had that same kind... One time when I was having that same kind of experience, I... I don't know exactly what happened, but I realized what it was. And what it was is that some... Is that during the day, some minor thing had happened where, like... Maybe somebody paid more attention to another person than me. I felt, you know, slightly neglected.

[53:02]

Small pain. But I didn't, like, say, you know, I didn't really recognize to myself that it happened. I just felt that little pain and didn't say anything to anyone about it and hardly even thought of it myself. But I didn't really, you know, I didn't really experience it. So then later in the day when I felt this ringing, and then when I remembered it, when I remembered that slight, slight, that small slight, when I remembered it, the ringing went away. So then I learned that whenever I felt that ringing, usually the ringing, if I reviewed the day, I could find some minor piece of bad news, some minor ego up front, But at the time, it didn't turn into me saying something. It wouldn't take the form of, you know, that really hurt my feelings. If I would do that, I wouldn't get the ringy. But these small little things that happened to us, these little things like maybe your baseball team loses, or maybe your stocks drop, or...

[54:10]

Maybe you hear, whatever it is, something that bothers you, or even it could be something that, usually it's something that bothers you, I've found, but that you don't stop and say, this bothers me. Then I get this ringing. And if I look through my day and remember it, as soon as I remember it, it goes off. It goes away. It didn't take that much more to fully experience it, because it wasn't that big a deal. Another example, one time I was in the meditation hall and I was watching someone across the room eating. They were being served food. And I looked at them, I just looked at them, and I looked away and I saw a ghost. What the ghost was, it was a ghost of that experience. In other words, I didn't really pay attention just to the visual experience of looking at the person.

[55:14]

It wasn't a traumatic experience. It's just I didn't participate fully in the experience, and it created a kind of ghost. And I could see it. I could see the ghost. Right away, it created a kind of ghost over the experience. And then as soon as I recognized what that was about, then the ghost went away. So that's how my understanding of what a ghost is. A ghost is an incomplete experience. And it's not just one directional tool. You can have it with another person. So like, for example, the critical one is someone's dying and you're not there with the experience of dying. And then, especially someone who's close to you, you're not there with the experience of dying. And then because, partly because you're not there with the experience of dying, they're not there with the experience of dying, and they die, but neither one of you really experienced death.

[56:16]

So then you got two ghosts. You got your ghost and their ghost, and you mutually haunt each other. So it's like there's some kind of like ghostly thing that's created by incomplete experience. It's almost like there's a thing out there. But it's a thing that's conjured up by not fully living. And you can do it with somebody else so that two people can have an incomplete experience together and they both can share the ghost. And sometimes one of them can die, even. And you have this ghostly thing. And death is a very hard thing. If you're with somebody who you care about, it's very hard for both of you to fully experience the process. And therefore, death, I think, is one of the kinds of situations that creates ghosts. As a matter of fact, they're the main ghosts that we talk about, right? But there's ghosts all over the place from all those moments that we don't fully experience. And that's why they come back and haunt you with little rings in your ear or whatever until you go back and say, okay, let's have the experience.

[57:25]

And if you've got a lot of ghosts around you, it's hard to even have a present experience. So you kind of have to exercise those ghosts before you can say, okay, let's have now. Including the ghosts of Zen masters and Buddhas and stuff like that. Okay? That's confession. Yes, Dave? That if you were to try to be totally devoted to experience the present, right? and then you would try to have you be there to do it, you create a ghost. They call it the ghost in the machine, don't they? Sort of. In other words, when you really, when you really, when the time comes to fully experience something, there's not room for you to do it. And if you try to get you in on it, you create a ghost. Because there isn't somebody who has an experience, actually. And if you demand that, then it creates another kind of ghost. confess the ghosts, [...] until finally you arrive at a moment of having confessed so many ghosts that you can start to almost see the birth of the ghosts.

[58:49]

Say, oh, there I am about to try to get a hold of this experience and have me do it, and then just drop at that time and just have an experience. So actually there's probably quite a few moments when we just have the experience and don't create ghosts. But since they're just flowing right along, they're not a problem. But that's one particular kind of a thing. You know, I'm looking almost makes it impossible for me to experience. So in some ways our mind is really helpful because it creates these ghosts to tell us, you know, that wasn't quite... You feel haunted because you didn't, it wasn't quite right. Another example of a story I've told many times is when I first went to Tassajara Monastery, one of the first work projects I did, me and another guy went and repaired some pipes that had broken and arranged in the floods, some water pipes.

[59:53]

We fixed the pipe and fixed one of the brakes and went on to the next one. As we were walking to the next break, I stopped and I said, let's go back and fix the pipe. We fixed it, but we didn't really fix it. And I was haunted by that incomplete repair job that we had done in the first break. It sort of was together, but it wasn't really together. It was kind of like, fix this one and hurry up and fix the next one and fix the next one kind of thing. But I felt as we left the first repair job that we hadn't done it, and that little bit It wasn't the ringing of the ear, I don't think, but it was a little ghost came up and said, you know, you didn't do that. And he knew what I meant when I said, let's go back and fix it. He didn't say, what are you talking about? He said, yeah. He knew. So every little thing you do, part of you knows what it's like to underdo it or overdo it. You have a kind of little reality in you that kind of like says, no, you didn't, you know, you overdid it, you underdid it.

[61:00]

You didn't hit the mark. And if you listen, you often get this feedback. And then it's hard to like stop and do what the feedback says. Go back and say, you know, I'm sorry I didn't pay attention to what you said. You know? And some people may say, what? You may not even know, not know that you were there, that you weren't there. And they say, oh, it's okay. But sometimes they say, thank you. And I wasn't there either. And it's hard to be there when somebody else isn't there. Sometimes the reason why we're not present is because we don't want to, you know, one-up the people, right? Because that's kind of intense, you know, for you're there and they're not. So I won't be here either. That's the dying thing, right? Sometimes when somebody is dying and you see they're having a hard time dying, you feel like, well, do I dare be present? Well, they're not present dying. Isn't that cruel? But they're not present dying because they don't want to be present dying if you won't be present with them dying.

[62:06]

So you mutually undermine each other. But if one person will step forward and say, you know, I just realized I wasn't really present, then that person can say, yeah, well, I wasn't either. Now they're both present. both present, admitting our lack of presence. And sometimes the other person was present, they just said, thank you, I noticed, I felt, I appreciate that you came back and finished the interaction. Like is very urgent situation, right? So we sometimes confuse urgency with hurry up. But because of the urgency of this life, that's exactly the reason why we shouldn't hurry. It's so urgent that we not rush ahead. But because it's so urgent that we not rush ahead, we rush ahead, or we shrink back. It's hard. It's hard to be right there, isn't it? So if you're not, your little ghost reminds you.

[63:09]

Until Casper goes, the friendly ghost. Hey, hey, hey, hey, live your life. Live your life. Sonia? If your father was, if you feel like your father was a person who was willing to go, you know, you feel like he was willing to go, he didn't want to go. Well, you know, in some ways the people who don't want to go and say they don't want to go, in some ways they're there. Maybe he was really present not wanting to go until finally he did go. And then he did go. So maybe he did his job, and therefore maybe you can do your job of losing your father.

[64:15]

Really. But I think it's good to be open to the possibility that this is really an effective job of denial. one of the better ones that actually gives you some peace, might be. But then maybe, later, some ghost might come and visit you and tell you that you have more work to do. But if they don't come, then your father did a good job of dying to let his daughter live her life. And then you can be grateful to him for his good job of dying. So maybe there is no ghost in this case. Maybe you really were there and really felt it. But the more fully you feel things, the more you will be aware of any ghosts that there are to deal with.

[65:17]

If you're not experiencing one thing after another, you don't tend to notice the ghosts. The more present you are, the more you notice when you're not present. So if you can be present with this piece. That's good. Are you? Yes. You need to ask about the handstand? Yes. Yes. Handstands, as you can tell, when it's 100%. Because you just come up, you know, and then there's a moment there where you're just there. The next moment you may not be able to be 100% and then you fall. But usually it's at least 101% or 99%.

[66:20]

It's not always as clear. No, it's true. That's why people like to do handstands. That's why yoga is nice, is because it sometimes clarifies when you hit the mark. It's this direct feedback, special setup to give you a feeling of what it's like to be balanced. So in an interpersonal reaction, it's much more dynamic. So like right now between you and me, okay? Are we doing 100% now? Hmm? Are we? Yeah, so you know? Pretty good? So this is, you got the feeling for it? Where are you going? Where did you just go? Yes? Yes? Sometimes later you get a sense that you went too far and not enough, right?

[67:43]

Yes. Sometimes you can ask the person, did I go too far? Am I going too far? You can ask them. So, in fact, that's part of the way we learn is by saying, am I going too far? And the person may say, no, but that may not be true. Because they may be afraid to say no, because they don't want to hurt your feelings, because they might think they're going too far to tell you the truth. So then you say, am I going too far? And the person says, no. And then you say, really? And they say, no. And you say, really? And they say, No, and you say, you know, you really can say, yes, I have, it's really all right. I really want the truth. More important than nice answer, I want the truth. And then you say, yes, you did go too far. You sometimes really have to beg the person to tell the truth before they really think you mean it.

[68:46]

And then if you ask them and you don't really make sure that they know you want it, They can tell you a lie and think you forced them into lying. So it's very, you know, it's hard, but that kind of stuff, generally speaking, works. Because, first of all, you say something, you try, you do your best, first of all. Let's say you do pretty well. I think maybe you really did. That you really were there and you kind of like, you were talking to the person, you were telling the truth. And also you were trying to pay attention to them while you were talking. Now if you think you weren't, then you're right. If you think you weren't present, you're right. Okay? Is that right? But what if you think maybe you were okay? Then you check. And you check repeatedly, and that effort gradually starts to work.

[69:48]

You look like your face is frowning. What does that mean? You said sometimes our perceptions aren't accurate. And I would say that our perceptions are not accurate except that it's accurate that those are our perceptions. Okay? Our perceptions are just our perceptions. So my perception is that you were frowning. But what that meant, if I would guess what that meant, it could have meant a lot of things. Now maybe you would agree with me, but still, it's just my perception, even if you agree with me. What I was talking about today is not trusting your own perceptions. Don't trust them. Be devoted to them. It's different.

[70:54]

Like a little kid, you know, comes up to you and says, Daddy, I did blah, blah. You don't trust what they said. You're devoted to what they said. Oh, you did, did you? Oh, and how did that happen, you know? Was the tiger a green tiger or a red tiger? You don't trust it or distrust it. Also, maybe I didn't be clear, you don't distrust either. You just listen and study and are devoted to what the person is saying. So you have a perception of me. I have a perception of you. We're devoted to this process of perception. We don't trust our perceptions. We are devoted to them. Like trusting, you don't trust a poisonous snake. But your perceptions are like poisonous snakes. If you ignore them, that's dangerous. If you grab them unskillfully, that's dangerous. If you think that they're not poisonous snakes, that's dangerous. If you think they are poisonous snakes, that's dangerous.

[71:57]

No matter what you think, your perceptions are as dangerous as poisonous snakes. Take care of your perceptions as though they have potential. or good or evil, depending on your devotion. If your devotion is right, things are not harmful anymore. If your devotion is off, even harmless things become harmful. So don't trust your perceptions. Take good care of them. Don't trust your children. Take good care of them. Don't trust your own thinking. Take good care. Be devoted. then in that interaction between the event and the devotion, the truth, the liberating truth, is manifested. It's a little bit different approach from the usual, which is, I trust my perceptions, yours I trust if they're in accord with mine, and so on.

[73:00]

Several people have their hands up. Beverly and Raphael and Marion, and what's her name? Chloe. Okay. Okay, that's a complicated question, which I'm not going to attempt to repeat. So, something comes up, and so what is devotion, she's saying, right? Some impulse to speak, for example, comes up, and the question is, what's devotion? Is devotion to speak it? Is devotion to sit with it and study it? Is devotion to take a dance about it? Is devotion to do a handstand? What's devotion? First of all, devotion is not a fixed thing. It's an interactive thing in itself. So if you have an impulse to come to speak, you don't trust it. You take care of it. And some things that, when you take care of them, they're spoken. They come out. The devotion leads to the expression. Other times the devotion is a devotion such that it seems like the devoted way to be with it is to sit with it in your lap for a couple hours.

[74:07]

Okay? The appropriate response comes out of the intimacy with the event. It's not that you can say what it is. That's one-sided. Intimacy, trust the intimacy with the impulse. Intimacy, again, you're not in charge of the intimacy. The event or the other person or the other animal or the other plant has some feedback for you on the way you're trying to be intimate with it. And sometimes it says repeatedly, Beverly, now it's time to talk. I'm not kidding, Beverly. This is the talk time. And then you're intimate with it and it says, well, actually, I was just kidding. Other times it says, you know, I'm not sure talking. You sit with it quietly and suddenly it just leaps out into expression from that intimacy. So again, it's trusting devotion rather than your perceptions.

[75:19]

And that can lead to immediate responses or sometimes the immediate response of just sitting with something for a long time. But the thing that you have a sense of is you have a sense of when you're not really giving yourself fully or when you're giving yourself too much to it. You have your own sense of that. And when you feel like you're unbalanced, you're right. When you feel like you're balanced, then you should check. those times when you have a sense that you're balanced. Again, the yoga example of when you're balanced, when you're actually balanced in a headstand or a handstand, when you actually hit the balanced spot, and you think, if you're quite balanced, and not just manage to staying up, but you actually hit a place where you're actually just balanced, and you're not even trying to be balanced anymore, you're just balanced, And then if you think, I'm balanced, you can usually experience a little unsteadiness from the thought, I'm balanced.

[76:22]

Now it's also possible to think I'm balanced without the thought disturbing you, but that would be the case, I would say, when you think the thought, I'm balanced, but you don't take a hold of it, say, I'm really balanced. So, like when you're balanced, you can think, it's Tuesday, I'm balanced, I'm a woman, I'm My name is Beverly. You can think those things, and if you grab them, they'll knock you off. If you just let them buzz around you like the floor and the ceiling, they don't knock you off. So when you're balanced, you have no... There's no information about being balanced. You just don't have any information that you're not balanced. You're not holding on to anything. So when you're balanced, then for a moment, there's this thing called balance, and then the world just goes... You know... There's no more unbalanced around you. Everything spreads and it just balances all over the place. So when you're intimate or when you're really devoted to the situation, you don't even have any feedback you're devoted.

[77:29]

But still, the next moment, just for fun, you might say, well, any feedback? That might be what comes up out of you. And someone may say, you really weren't devoted. And you may say, great. Finally, I meet you. That's the laws in stories like that. When you're in a new situation and you don't know what to do, then 100% not know what to do. Not like, you know, 99% I don't know what to do. Not like, oh, I don't know what to do. Just, I don't know what to do. Just like perfect, pure, I don't know what to do for that moment. That devotion to the phenomena of Raphael, don't know what to do. That's your job. The whole universe wants you to do the job of I don't know what to do.

[78:32]

And if you're completely balanced with that, then that's over. And then a new thing comes, which who knows what that would be. And then that's your job. So how do you be intimate with this and also the transiency and changeableness? We can be intimate with this and then this and then this and then this. Intimate with events plus the transiency, then the right action blooms. out of intimacy with transiency, out of intimacy with change, rather than intimacy with, not even intimacy, but holding on to your own idea. Easy to say. Mary? Buddha is smiling at you. See if you can bow to Buddha who's smiling at you without seeking anything.

[79:43]

Feeling the sadness. The sadness is like a gift from your health. In other words, because you're healthy, Your mind and body won't allow you to hold on to things that aren't necessary anymore. For example, a mother does not need to be sad about holding on to her baby. But when it's time for her baby not to be a baby anymore, then the mother should let go of the baby and let it be a teenager. And then the healthy mind says, be sad now about this baby you don't have anymore. Let go of that baby. You don't have a baby anymore. You have a teenager. Face it. So the sadness is a gift. Feeling it. Feeling is what does the job. Yes. If it's the same sadness, if you're right, then I would say you didn't go to the bottom.

[81:00]

So, like, you know, I had this one little experience one time. I was driving along in my car, and this sadness came up, but I was driving, and I didn't feel like dealing with it. So it just keeps coming, you know. If not, sadness says, hello, sadness time. I'm sorry, I've got to drive. So then I pulled over and was waiting for a parking space. And waiting for a parking space... This is a situation where, you know, I could wait for quite a while for this parking space because it wasn't like waiting for one person to pull out. There's a whole row of cars that might pull out. So I was standing there waiting for the first one to go. And waiting for the parking space, you can't like... If you really want to wait for the parking space, you shouldn't start reading a book or listening to the radio. You should just sit there and keep your eyes peeled for the parking space, right? So I was sitting there waiting for the parking space and this sadness came back. But now I had nothing else to do. So I said, hey,

[82:06]

Go for it. So I just went down. And I kept going down. I said, this is OK. And I just kept going down, [...] down. And I hit the bottom. I felt the actual bottom. But I noticed that before it was kind of like requesting me to deal with it, but I was too busy doing other things, right? So it was nagging me, right? But then finally I stopped being nagged and I said, okay, sad, time. And I went down and I really felt the bottom and it was kind of dry. hit the bottom, and quite quickly, I don't know exactly how long it took, but it made me like, you know, it was pretty fast, like a couple of seconds, I bounced right back up, and it was like totally clear. And it was like, it wasn't exactly the sadness got worse and worse the farther I got down, and more and more intense, it just got bigger, kind of, deeper.

[83:19]

And then it was done, like I said, like the bamboo Then down, down, down, and snow drops off, and then very light, buoyant, open, clear, clean, done. And then you say, oh, that was a good one. Here's another one. So then another one can come and take care of that. But generally speaking, I found that this really works well. And when whatever it is opens up to the field of sadness, sometimes I use my hand this way. Like the hand's gripping up here, you know, holding something. There's actually nothing in my hand, right? And I'm gripping. When I open up here, maybe a better example is this is the sadness, you know. I open to the sadness. and then this part of my arm relaxes. But I didn't know this was tense. So when you open to the sadness, some other place down deeper lets go.

[84:22]

That's my experience. Try it if you want to. Sure, yeah. Yes. Well, it might be the same thing, but it might be many aspects. Like to one person, you could have multiple attachments. Like to one small event of a day, it might be that that's like a one-dimensional, one-aspect sadness, like those little rings I was telling you about. Some of the stuff that you do this about, you never know what it's about. But like with some, like with a person, that, for example, somebody whose body you're near to a lot, you don't know what attachments your body's making with the person. And there might be like quite a few, there might be like, you know, what do you call it, transatlantic cable connection, right, with lots of different filaments.

[85:31]

And in cases like that where like you've been like living right physically close to somebody, and if you really worked on this kind of grieving, I would say it takes quite a few of these experiences to unlock all those connections, even if you're really working on it. I would say if you're really working on it and not distracted by other work, six months to a year for somebody like that you've been living closely with for a long time and then they go away or whatever. In China, when a person's parents died, or the person's spouse's parents died, you'd get a year off of work. And then you can go home for that year and basically just concentrate on grieving for a year. Now, maybe that was too much. I think there is something about a year, you know. There's something about we relate to these year things.

[86:35]

I personally find that six months to a year is a time that is, for me, worked. of letting go of these things if I give attention to it. Now, if you don't give attention to it and you don't stop working, then I think the grieving process can last indefinitely. It's like water in a stream running over rocks. It can smooth them out over the years and finally just wear them down, right? The same thing happens in our own heart. If there's some stuck spot and the wire just keeps running over it, it's smooth as a knot, but it doesn't count if you're not present there for the wearing. So I think that our psyche does want not to hold onto things that are gone, but when attachments develop over time, they're there. They never were necessary, but they happen in the dark, so there they are.

[87:38]

Now, it's possible that what sometimes happens is that you're close to somebody and you didn't get attached. And you don't hold on, and then you think something's funny because, you know, the pattern of grieving is strange. But there are these unusual relationships sometimes where we don't form attachments in the usual ways, and then we don't have to grieve as much. But anyway, if we do form attachments, we have to grieve. But if we're willing to grieve, we can get over the attachments and we move on and we live. And we die. And we live. And we die. And so if you don't attach, then you flow. And if you do attach, you grieve and are sad. But if you're willing to feel the sad... then that's also a model not only to release you from attachments, but to teach you how to fully live the next moment so that you don't develop the attachments in the first place.

[88:43]

So being skillful at feeling sadness not only releases you from your past attachments, but it helps you not form them in the present. It's part of devotion to your experience, feeling sadness. And the gift of sadness is like you haven't been thoroughly devoted to your experience before, but here's a chance to compensate. Your mind is very kind to you to offer you sadness. Yes? That's a little hard for some people to listen to, but let's start with an easier example. So basically what I'm talking about is that in this moment, If you don't fully experience this moment, then you don't close this moment. Okay? And that lack of fully experiencing this moment turns into kind of a haunting. If when you die, so-called, in this life, if you don't fully experience that, then that creates a kind of ghost too.

[89:46]

Now, if you, I don't know what the right word is, but if you are working with the teaching of rebirth in some way, then in fact you might say that if there is rebirth, that the rebirth will be haunted by your incomplete experience of your death. Just like the incomplete experience of the death of each moment now, at the completion of each experience, if you didn't attend to the completion, you will be bothered and haunted by that lack of presence. and being bothered and haunted by it, I say it's good because it forces us, encourages us, to be completely present for our life and our death, and our life and our death. So, to me it makes sense, if there is rebirth, that part of the consequences of an incompletely experienced life is that you would be hobbled by the habit of incomplete devotion to the present experience.

[90:58]

So we put the emphasis then on fully experiencing the present moment, but also point out that if you don't fully experience the present moment, there's a consequence of that. Number one, you develop the habit of incomplete experience, inhabit of incomplete devotion to your experience. Plus also, fortunately, you get negative feedback which says, you know, this is going to cost you. You can't partly experience your life for free. There's going to be a problem.

[91:36]

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