I rode out here today with some people in a car. How's that? Is it okay? I rode out to Green Gulch Farm today in a car. with some people. How's that? Is that okay? And one of them asked me how I was feeling and I said, I'm feeling a little carsick and a little dull. But I think the people that I see at the lecture hall, what weight do you have?

[01:09]

Yeah, I feel . I asked her, I asked the woman who asked me, I said, how are you feeling? And she said, amazingly terrible. Not that terrible, just amazingly terrible. So maybe not, I don't know how many of you feel amazingly terrible today, or how many of you are sick, but sometimes it's amazingly terrible.

[02:12]

Some days are just like that, she said. And there was a little girl in the car, and she said, I feel marvelously terrible. How can we find this marvelous terribleness? In the midst of all of our swirling whirling sea sickness and car sickness and et cetera, where is the sweet music?

[03:19]

The unique breeze of reality. The one breeze of reality. It reaches everywhere and everything. It reaches into our greatest suffering and confusion. Can you hear it? Go. Can you see it? One of the people who lives here, I think, Norman Bishop, said the other day, he was reading the Montaigne Essays.

[04:22]

And he said he ran into one place in Essay that he thought was really nice, where Montaigne says, we must learn to endure what we cannot avoid. Our lives are composed like the harmony of the world of contrary saints, like tones that vary harsh and sweet, sharp and flat, loud and soft. If a musician were to use only some of these things, what would she have?

[05:40]

She must learn to use them together. and to blend them. The same is true of the good and evil of our lives. We must find a way to live with a mixture of that. It's impossible to live without one or the other. Most of us, this is me talking, most of us, I think, feel OK about, might feel, I don't know about most of this, some of us might feel OK about living without equal. Maybe most of us wouldn't feel OK about living without good.

[06:53]

But in fact, the way we're built is a mixture of these two. And the question is how to harmonize them. Montaigne goes on to say, to try to kick out some of these elements, it's the body of . who entered into a kicking contest with his mule. We can't beat our mind. And our mind includes all good and all evil. The question is, how? to find the music of it. How to find the music of all of our actions and the music and the song and the effects of all of our actions.

[08:16]

One day, a long time ago, there was a famous poet in China who was also a provincial governor. And within his province, there lived a Zen teacher who had a nickname. His nickname was Bird's Nest. Bolton Bear's nest because he meditated in a tree that had very tightly entangled branches. And he made a nest in the branches where he sat in meditation. The governor went to see him, looked up, and said, What a dangerous seat you have up there. And the Zen teacher said, yours looks far more dangerous than me.

[09:37]

Am I speaking loud enough still? I'm not begging? No. Feel free to let me know if I start begging. And the governor said, what do you mean? I'm the governor of this province. What could be dangerous about that? And the teacher said, when the passion's burning and the mind is unsteady, what could be more dangerous than that? the governor said, well, what is the teaching of Buddha?

[10:50]

And the Zen monk said, don't commit evil. Practice all good. Keep your heart cured. This is the teaching of the awakened one. The governor said, even a three-year-old child knows that. And Petrie said, although a three-year-old child knows it, even a person of 80 years finds it difficult to practice it.

[12:03]

So according to the teachings of Buddha, not only is this what I just said, the teachings of Buddha, but also Buddha said, if you want to practice good, and if you want to be free of evil action, keep your heart cured, you need to understand what it means to live in accordance with your mind, what your mind really is. So what is the mind? What's it like? Well, actually, it's not like anything. But nothing could be like. Include everything it could be like. It includes all comparisons and all judgments.

[13:37]

We all have access to a consciousness which includes all the images of the universe. But because of our activities and our education, the way we understood what people asked us to do as we grew up for endless lifetimes, we tend to avoid, try to avoid part of this ocean of our consciousness. We tend to try to stay a little bit away from it. We hesitate to actually sink down into totality of our mind. Somebody told us many times not to be aware of what's happened.

[14:55]

And we went along with it. We thought we'd be safer. if they stood on the ground rather than up in a tree. Last night, I listened to the prairie at Hompton Canyon, which is... from where I grew up. I hadn't listened to it for quite a while, but last night I listened to it, and I thought what they talked about there could speak pretty well for me today. A little bit I ended up on bringing up. I guess the story, he said, he said, like, life, life, life is a great banquet.

[16:18]

He didn't say life. He said love. Love is a great banquet. But I think he can say the same thing. Life is a great banquet. It's not a light lunch. Now, although he didn't mention this, I think I should mention to you folks that In Minnesota, lunch means something different than it does with California. I know this. I grew up in Minnesota, but I didn't actually realize what lunch meant until I got the Minnesota Language System tapes. And those tapes, you can learn how to speak like people from Minnesota.

[17:32]

They give you the proper accent and definitions of the words that they use so that after two weeks of reading these tapes, people will think that you've lived in Minnesota your whole life. Anyway, one of the lessons in this tape is lunch, the meaning of lunch, and lunch It is a meal, a light meal, which happens two hours before or after dinner. Dinner is the meal you have at noon. Supper you have at evening. And lunch is two hours before or after dinner. This is in Minnesota. When they say that life or love, same thing, life and love are the same thing.

[18:37]

It's a banquet. It's not like lunch. You can't nibble along the edges. You have to dive in. That's pretty much it. You have to dive in, and when you dive in, then you have to endure what happens. Not trying to control it, but be big enough for it. You've got to have the data. You've got to have the full selection of the material of your life, of your love. You can't love from the edge. You can't love control. You can't live with control. We do not have control. Once you've got the data, then your work starts.

[19:46]

But first of all, actually, your work starts before the data. Your first work is to get the data to open up big enough to get the information you need to create your symphony, to create your love. It's like you can't really love just these people or these people. That's not love. That's not life. Life is to open up to everything. And all you've got to do to open up everything is to dive right into it without saying anything, without making a deal before anything. Of course, we're afraid of this because somehow we got the idea that we had no primitive. Who would want to open up to such a complex situation? You would want to take on everything if you had a way out. I don't think anybody would unless they were already there.

[20:54]

I think Whitehead said, too, you know, the main danger in philosophy is in too limited a selection of data. That's the main danger. If you've got enough data, you'll know what to do with it. Maybe you scream. Maybe you cry. Maybe you laugh. But what you do under the circumstances of having it all there, that's low, that's your light. It's not like you're supposed to do something special at that moment. Whatever you do will be right. Because you'll be totally tied down by the total circumstances. And you'll be doing exactly, precisely the only thing you could possibly do, and you'll see it. But if you select, if you think you can select, you cut out part of it.

[22:07]

Like if I don't like the people on this side of the room, and I only love the people on this side of the room, and I scream at them, well, I might not be right. I might be not very confident. But if I open to everybody, I know that I can't do otherwise. I know by my complete openness, by my complete awareness not to be better than anybody, not to have the slightest distance above any creature on the planet, not to be better than any creature on the planet. If I want to be better than anybody, this is not what they do. This is trying to have a life launch. Or even a medium-sized bunch. But anyway, it's not the Great Banquet of Light and Love. You know, well, I want to first tell you a story about a friend, and I want to tell you something I feel myself, kind of part of my losing.

[23:18]

It's about selection. First of all, I have this friend, this woman friend. We've got a baby, just got a mother, just got a father. She had a stepfather that married to her mother, a grown woman, and all of her parents are religious. And she runs around the country taking care of them. They've got cancer and things like that. And so she spends all her time taking care of these people that she loved and the people who she has a pain with and need help. And one day she said, went and I didn't start living my own life. And then she said, oh my God, seeing my own life. And you know, when I get a talk on Zen and Buddhism, I actually sometimes, it's hard to say, but I actually sometimes select among the things in my life to tell you about.

[24:51]

I even sometimes afraid to use the word love because it kind of has Christian overtones. And I don't want any Christianity. Mixed up with my Buddhism. But God bless it. My Buddhism is contaminated by Christianity. I can't take Christianity out because it works like love, you know? The Christians are in that. I can't get them out, but I want to. I want to give you a Buddhist lecture, because I cannot qualify to lecture about Christianity, right? Why aren't I? Who is it? Actually, I have a card that says I'm an Episcopal. So I feel myself this thing of selection, you know, that I'm supposed to talk about China, Japan, not about France and Jesus.

[26:03]

Well, we all have this, you see. Or like I'm not supposed to tell you about the kid that was right over here when I sat down. It's not relevant, right? Thank you. I just sort of flipped it over the edge. Let's get this situation straightened out, okay? Let's clean up this place a little bit. What's wrong with that? Nothing's wrong with it. If you haven't closed your eyes to the mess in the first place, it's okay to clean up messes. No problem. It's fun to clean up messes. But I'm suggesting that love is to clean up the thinness. That life is to work with the totalness of all the innumerable form of suffering creatures.

[27:05]

And you can say this is Zen if you want to, what I just said. But somebody might say, that's Christian. OK. Throw that mud on Zen. Contaminate it with another religion. And then everybody gets confused. What's the difference between them? They must be different. Anyway, here I am sitting here in this Indian yoga park and my legs are crossed. all tangled up with each other for some reason. I'm sitting with my back straight. My stomach's relaxed. And I spend a good share of my life sitting in this posture.

[28:09]

What's that got to do with all this love? What's that got to do with the banquet? Why do we sit? Why do we sit still? What do these forms of Zen practice have to do with this lecture? Or whatever I just did. What's the connection? There's many ways to talk about it, but just to say, sitting still is exactly what I'm talking about. Sitting still means that you say, whether you like the cross and your back is straight, or whether you're sitting in a chair or taking a nap,

[29:20]

of falling down your face in the street. No matter where you are, your feeling, your faith give. This is my life. And also, this is my life. It's here. that I wake up in this moment. Not a better one. This is the only one I've got. And I will never move from this spot. Never ever, ever ever. And I can feel myself even now shrinking away from this place. or grasping for it betterly, or wishing to eliminate part of this data that's hovering around me right here.

[30:31]

Feel it now. But still, even though that's happening, I still am not in the mood of this experience. I trust. I stand. I sit here. Again, I'm afraid to use a Christian expression, the courage to be. Courage to be, even including the courage to be somebody who's trying to become something. I'm willing to be somebody who's striving to improve the situation. I'm willing to be somebody who's shrinking away from the situation, reaching out for something better. I'm willing to be that and be that person so completely that I have not the slightest ability

[31:35]

to judge myself as better or worse than anybody else, any other living creature. I have nothing left over to say I'm better than anybody or worse than anybody. And then I propose if I can sit like that, and stand like that, and breathe like that, That's a pure heart. And that's doing good. And that's not committing evil. And a child knows it. But an 80-year-old yoni has a hard time doing it. Here we sit right now, each of us.

[32:42]

This moment is as good an opportunity to be awake as any other moment there ever was. And again, the mind jumps up and says, oh, no, I think this one is a little better than the years ago I had done. Well, I'm in pain right now, and I think it would be a little easier for me to appreciate that teaching. I agree with the teaching, but I still think it would be a little easier to appreciate it if I had a little less pain. not imprisoned by the past, not reaching the future. Someone said to me yesterday, a news instead, she said, I have a feeling that if I keep practicing, finally I'll come.

[33:45]

She said it in a way I can hardly remember how she said it, but she said, the pain will stop enough so that I will be able to be sit still. And I said, I think another way to say it would be the pain will change enough so that we'll be able to sit still. When you first start sitting, you have pain, like right over here in the right knee, you have pain, or in the left hip, or in the lower back, or the upper back, or in all those places. And when you have pain in a certain section of your body, it's not so easy to sit still. And when your whole body is completely painful, when your pain changes from a little section of you or part of you to all of you, then you can sit still.

[34:57]

Then you know you can't get away by going like this. You can't get away by going like this. You can't get away by going like this. It's up here too. You can't jump up because it's up there. You can't go down. It's underneath you. Everywhere you go, you're pinned in completely by everything. You cannot move. You cannot move. That's why you cannot move. You don't have to work at sitting still. You already are sitting still. And yet there's a skill to it. And the more we try, the more we try out alternatives, the more we try to escape over the years, the more we realize there is no escape. That really we are living creatures, just like all the other suffering creatures we see all over the world. We're just like them. And we can't get away from them. And even if I could be happy for a moment, somebody else is.

[36:02]

I can't be happy before everybody's happy. I can't escape from pain before everybody's doing it. Now, I may wish, even though I know that I can't escape pain before all else is pain, I still might like to have the illusion of escape from pain. And I spend a little vacation on reality that I like to take. But that's not light. That's a light blush. That's not love. is a kind of what we call a limited freedom.

[37:07]

And when we feel a little bit of freedom, a little bit of freedom, boy, we like it. So we tend to cling to a little bit of freedom. Because a little bit's better than none, right? But we have to let go of a little bit of freedom. Because a little bit of freedom, holding on to a little bit of freedom, that's That's what people live. Evil is holding on to a little bit of freedom or a little bit of happiness. And good is to let go of that. Or anyway, accept that holding on to a little bit of freedom, that's what people live. And you are an evil person when you do that. Or not even an evil person. You're just but just evil. And remember, evil is lived backwards. Did you hear that back?

[38:17]

Evil is live backwards. And every time we live backwards, that's evil. Every time we live part of our life, that's the evil. That's the only kind of evil there is, because our life includes all that kind of partial evil. Our life is an ocean of partial stories, of little stories, of little clings, of little happiness, and little freedom. They're okay. We shouldn't try to avoid, we shouldn't try to kick the little clings out of there either. Just let go of them. Let them be little cleaners. Let them be little delusions. Let them be little evils. And open up to the world of our whole life, which includes all the little cleaners, all of what happens is, and all the freedoms, which are represented by all the little people we know, and all the animals, and all the .

[39:25]

Don't try to kick any of those little evils out. Don't try to kick any of those little cleaners to partial freedom out. Accept those cleanings to partial freedom for what they are. Clinging to partial freedom. Delusion. That's what they are. That's where Buddha lived. Buddha doesn't kick all those little partial cleanings out. Buddha says, partial cleaning, partial cleaning, partial cleaning. I mean, cleaning to partial freedom. Clinging to partial freedom. Quite understandable. If you're in pain and give it a break, why not? But... Call it what it is, taking a break from pain. Now, that's okay. Take a break from pain. Why not? But just don't cling to it. Or if you cling to it, then you don't cling to that. Open up to it. This is called sitting still. If you sit still, this happens from pain. You don't have to work at it.

[40:30]

Just the sitting still does this for you. And sitting still, nobody can really sit still. But you already are sitting still. So it's sitting still is a practical thing. Do you believe the Buddha is sleeping or not? Buddha says, everything is not moving. You and I can never pull off not moving. You could never do it. No Zen master has ever been able to do not moving. No Zen master has ever been able to do zazen. They never, ever once, even the greatest Buddha cannot do zazen. The great Buddha is zazen. The great Buddha cannot do not moving. The greatest Buddha is not moving. And all of us are not moving. Everyone we don't know.

[41:31]

However, we change. and change it, not movement. We'd happen, and that would go away, and we'd happen to them. We don't move. This has already been taken care of by reality. We don't have to do a thing. All we have to do is believe it with total funding to believe it and not believe it. And then, quite naturally, we stopped selecting. We stopped putting ourselves above the public people. We stopped. And our big mind starts shining back on everything that happens and every creature we need. The other day at breakfast, my daughter said, my daughter didn't say anything.

[42:44]

Actually, she was eating breakfast. And she was eating breakfast like a lot of 10-year-old children eat breakfast. And also I think like a lot of 11, 12, 15, 14, 15-year-old kids eat breakfast. That is, sort of slumped over with the head, and you're very near, slouching into the food. And so I said, please sit down. She said, it's a free country. So I said, please don't sit up. You got the first joke, but you didn't need the second.

[43:45]

The second part's most important. In other words, no matter what you're doing, make what you're doing what you're doing. No matter what you're doing, lead. Do it. Please realize that you've chosen to do it. And you never do anything you don't choose to do. You create your life, but you're not in control of it. So give up control and clean. That's called sitting still. Creation is an immovable mountain that is born and dies every moment. This is now sitting. This is light.

[44:57]

This is blood. This is Buddhism. This is Buddhism affected by Christianity. This is Christianity. This is nothing at all. It's just about to talk. And it's not about anything. I'll talk to him about that later. Anyway, I can say that I love you all. So I will. I love you all. That's the same as saying, I really want to live my life completely. And I also say, I really want to sit there. It's a different way of saying, playing that school.

[45:58]

Playing this dream, sit there. That's pretty cool. Real free.

[46:23]

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