When I was thinking about this talk, I realized that I'm kind of giving a Mother's Day talk today, which is kind of good because I won't be here on Mother's Day. And also, you know, I'm not sort of hogging Mother's Day by giving it today. I have this, this is, in a sense, what I'd like to start with is a vision. It may sound like I'm saying things are this way, and I do think that things are this way, but it's just the way I see things. It's just a vision, so you don't have to see it this way. The way I see it is that each one of us is being held, completely held and supported by the entire universe.

[01:16]

And also each one of us holds the entire universe. And I have a vision that each one of us wants to be held by the whole universe. Well, not so much wants it, but wants to wants to experience that or realize that, understand that. I actually myself, I guess I don't, honestly speaking, I don't want reality to be the reality that it is. It's not really a want, but I do want to realize reality. I do want that. I want it to be realized. Because if it switched to a different reality, I would go with it.

[02:21]

That would be my policy anyway. I might have a transition problem, but... But my vow would be, If we get a different reality, I would try to join it. So I think the reality is that we're being supported by everything, we're being held by everything, and that we hold everything and support everything. But I also, part of that reality within that reality of what we are, of the being that I am, or that we are, that is being held, many of us, most of us, some of us, are ignorant of being held.

[03:29]

We ignore the reality of our being held and we ignore the reality of holding everything. That's another part of my vision. So it's a vision that has a kind of a joke in it. But there's pain in the joke because when we ignore how we're being held and we ignore how we're holding, we feel anxious and we feel miserable. That's part of the vision. when we ignore that reality, which I just happen to think is the reality, then we feel uncomfortable. And then in our discomfort,

[04:42]

We sometimes then also try to ignore the discomfort or to disperse the discomfort or to avoid the discomfort which arises from ignoring what is our happiness. And then we do various things to distract ourselves from the discomfort or to try to make the discomfort go away. And these things which we do to distract ourselves from the discomfort postpone our real work. And our real work is that if we are ignorant of this reality and uncomfortable because of that ignorance, our real work is first of all to feel the consequences of our ignorance, to feel the discomfort,

[05:48]

to grieve the reality which we've lost and to, by feeling the consequences of our ignorance and grieving this lost reality, by opening up to that, we open our eyes to reality. We see what we've been ignoring and we realize that we are held by everything and holding everything. That's a short description of returning to reality and becoming free of the misery which comes from turning away from reality. That's my basic proposal, my basic kind of vision for today's talk.

[07:03]

Is that clear, sort of? No? I'll go do it again then. There's a Zen expression which is, it's, birth, life, is the manifestation of the whole works. Death is the manifestation of the whole works. Whole works means the whole universe, but also it's a manifestation of how the universe works. Our life is a manifestation of how the whole universe works, and it is a manifestation of the whole universe. Also, our death is a manifestation of the whole works and is how the universe works.

[08:08]

The way the universe works is it produces our individual life and produces our individual death. That's the way a Zen master put this thing I was just saying about being supported or being held and holding. One of the, in some senses, simplest examples of being held that we have in our life and holding is when we live in a womb, when we were in our mother's womb. At that time we were being held by the whole universe. We didn't think about it, I guess, too much, but we were being held. And all of the wombs which held us were successful, because here we are.

[09:14]

They held us, they supported our life, those wombs. But also, we held the womb, because the baby makes the womb do its thing. The womb doesn't get big, the placenta doesn't form if there's not a baby there. Maybe there's some strange examples of where the placenta forms and there's no baby that we have, but where there's a kind of like phantom baby that makes the placenta form and the mother thinks she's pregnant or something. But basically, in these normal lives, the baby makes the mother do her thing and the mother makes the baby do it. They're holding each other. But behind the mother is the whole universe and the history of our race and the history of life on the planet makes it possible for this womb to support this baby. But also all the babies in history have made the mothers be able to do this. So it's, you know, it's a pretty good deal.

[10:18]

And if this holding works, then the life goes on. And if the holding doesn't work, Then there's a different kind of holding, the holding of death, and the baby dies. But that's also supported by the womb, and it also supports the womb. But anyway, we're not dead, so that didn't happen for us. We got this life thing, and soon we'll have the death thing. But right now we've got the life thing and right now we're being supported. Actually, we're in a womb right now. But when we came out of that literal womb, we gradually started to lose our sense. We started to feel like we weren't supported. So that now a lot of us feel unsupported. And between now and back then, we've gone through various phases of grieving that connection, that feeling held.

[11:33]

And I think it's healthy and normal and fine to want to feel again or understand again that we are being held. Wanting to be held is a perfectly healthy feeling, because it actually is wanting to realize reality. It's fine to want to feel held again, and it's also fine to want to hold, because that's reality too. But there's a little, there's an issue here, and that is, what is the way to understand and realize the fact that we are being held, and what is the way to try to get that, which actually further ignores that we are being held, okay?

[12:51]

So what is the way to understand that we are being held, and how to watch out for another way which we have a tendency towards, which is to do things where we're trying to get back that sense of being held, but those ways distract us from the real work of understanding that we are already being held. So, simply put, maybe this might not wind up simply by the time I get it out of my mouth, but anyway, trying to say it simply, what we often do is we approach various, we act in various ways to try, I think we're, you know, basically we're trying to reestablish or realize this being held, The joy of realizing being held and the joy of realizing holding.

[13:57]

We want that. And that's healthy. But the way we reach for it is we try to get something which will, outside of ourselves, which will make that happen. But that flies in the face of the reality that it's already so. We try to have relationships which will make that so. That's okay, except that if we make it outside of ourself to make it so, there's a kind of short-term way that we try to make that happen that distracts us from the place where it really is happening. This is already not so simple. So in other words, there's some people we can meet or animals or plants or chemicals or physical objects that make us feel for a moment, not exactly, but something like we're being held again.

[15:06]

Like if we have someone would hold us, just go to someone and say, hold me. Put your arms around me. That doesn't seem so bad. Or let me put my arms around you. That doesn't seem so bad. And it's not. But if that being held distracts us from facing the anxiety which comes from not understanding that we're held before this person puts her arms around us, then I would say it is simply that, a distraction. And it feels good to be distracted from that pain. It's a nice break from the pain of not feeling supported and held. Such a relationship

[16:11]

in modern Bay Area lingo, is called codependent. In other words, you get somebody else to cooperate in your avoiding facing your work. Your work of facing the pain of ignorance. A relationship that postpones your grieving. Maybe just for a moment, but maybe for years and years, if you're lucky at the program of getting that person to help you avoid your grieving. So someone said to me, well, what kind of relationship would be good?

[17:32]

Does that mean you shouldn't have any relationships? No. Actually, relationships are what this is all about. But what kind of relationships actually address what this is all about? Well, I would say relationships that support you in grieving your loss of the understanding that you're already supported. Relationships, not where somebody's going to necessarily stick your nose into your grief, but someone who will be with you while you're grieving, rather than saying, oh no, you haven't lost anything. I'm here. I'm supporting you. I've got my arms around you. You haven't lost anything. That's not true. See? Or if they don't say it, you think they do that for you and they go along with it.

[18:37]

They don't say to you, what are you using me for? Who are you seeing in my face? Do you think I'm your mother? Do you think I'm the whole universe embracing you right now? Is that what you're using me for? Am I a shortcut in your meditation practice? Could this guy actually be suggesting that this is the kind of person you would have a relationship with? Yes, I am.

[19:41]

This is a friend, this is a lover that holds your hands while you walk into reality. And it's the reality that you want, that you're yearning for. This is a friend who won't distract you from going where you really want to go. And they won't say, hey, you don't have to go there, I'm it. I'm what you're looking for. I'm what holds you. See, doesn't that feel good? This person can be really close to you and really intimate with you without distracting you. It's possible. And you can be close to them and intimate with them without distracting them. Both of you encouraging each other to grieve that feeling of being out of touch with being held.

[20:58]

So someone told me, you know, that he was, you know, he wanted to be held. And I guess, I'm not sure, but I guess, maybe he wanted me to hold him. And the reason why I guessed that maybe he wanted me to hold him was because I felt like holding him. Even though he's a big man, I felt like saying, come on over, sit on my lap, I'll hold you. I didn't say it though because I don't think that's really what he wants. I think part of him wants me to hold him. But I think he wants actually to be held in a bigger way than my little arms. But I think I could feel, I guess because I felt that, maybe he was feeling that, that he wanted me to hold him. And I felt like I wanted to hold him. Not wanted to, but sort of wanted to and sort of thought that might be good.

[22:04]

Anyway, I did feel that, that I wanted to just say, okay, come here, I'll hold you. You'll be held right now. I didn't say that, though. What I encouraged him to do was... To feel the pain of the longing to be held. That was the way I held him. To support him. To say, I'll help you. I want to help you face the pain. To do the grieving of this... of this loss to do the yearning of wanting the whole universe to love you. But that hurts, and to feel that pain and to grieve that loss, if you can feel that fully, if you can open to that fully, you can also start facing the world of the true self.

[23:21]

the world of your actual life, your actual life, which is being held. Feeling the pain of our ignorance opening to the pain of our ignorance also opens our eyes to the truth. Feeling the pain and grief that goes with our delusion opens us to see the self, the real self which is held by the whole universe and which holds the real universe, the whole universe.

[25:18]

Our inability to feel the pain of the loss of this held self goes with our inability to face the intense light of the held self, the vision of the held self. The inability to feel the pain of turning away from the held self to the self that's trying to get held, being held, Now that it's not held, that pain, facing that pain is pretty much the same thing as being able to face the self which is being held, which is not the self which we're used to. Even though it's the self we want, it's hard to get used to it. It's such a shock. Part of the reason is that the way we're being supported is like this.

[26:29]

The way we're supported is that support doesn't always come in the ways which we would imagine support coming. Support comes in the way that we're living moment by moment. That's the way it comes, not some other way. Support comes by the person saying to you, rather than, hey, you're being held, I'm holding you. Let me be the whole universe for you. The person doesn't talk to you like that. The person says these other kinds of things. What are you doing? What are you using me for? Are you doing your work? So in my life, people, you know, help me that way.

[27:35]

Sounds like they're criticizing me sometimes or unhappy with me or think I'm, I don't know what, weird. But that's the way they're supporting me at that moment. Sometimes it's relatively easy for me to get the joke. Sometimes I have a hard time remembering that I'm being supported by this. Which means what I was saying earlier that I'm now in the transition from what I was able to see as reality to this new reality. This new way I'm being supported. This new form. So this is what I'm about to say.

[29:10]

Well, I'm sorry, it sounds like bragging. But anyway, I chose my wife not because she made me feel like she was, you know, holding me. I chose her, I think, actually I didn't even choose her. She got chosen for me. by the whole universe. And it was a good choice that the universe made. You know, I could sort of like try to get some credit for it. But really, that's not my vision of it. I had this vision one time that these two huge wheels moved together.

[30:11]

And the cogs of these two wheels joined and started turning together. And there was her. Or there was her and these two wheels came together. We both look at each other quite frequently and say, it's so weird. Here's this guy from Minnesota married to this lady from Shanghai. It's so strange. I'm married to a Chinese person. And she says that she's been living in a foreign country for like all these years being with me. It's just really foreign. And so this morning she recounted about 24 years ago when her parents came to meet their future son-in-law here at Green Gulch.

[31:26]

It was, I think, December. It was cold and rainy here. They came in the evening in the cold and the rain and the dark. And so they came to meet their son-in-law and the place they met me was in my room over in the main house there where the kitchen is. And I had a kind of a nice room actually and there was nothing in it. I mean, there was walls, but that was it. Walls and nice carpet and ceiling and everything, you know. But there was no furniture, really. So they came in and my future wife got some chairs to stick so they could sit on chairs. And they sat there waiting for me to come. And while they were sitting waiting, they contemplated the cold and emptiness of the room.

[32:39]

Maybe a little smell of mold also. And wafting up from the kitchen down below was the smell of gruel. Gruel for the monks, leftovers, re-concocted into something that they could eat without wasting any of the food that people didn't want to eat before. This is our gruel. They smelled that. These are Chinese people, right? It didn't smell good. And then he arrives. My wife's recounting this story. Then he arrived, this son-in-law. What is he? He's got no hair. Piercing blue eyes and wearing... A black see-through dress.

[33:44]

Fresh from a period of silent grieving in the Zendo. Norwegian social skills. They had probably always hoped that she would marry, if not a, maybe a Chinese man, but anyway, some, you know, a nice businessman. And here he was. And so my wife told this story to me about, she recounted that time, which I've heard before. From the time it happened, I've heard this before. I was there at the time. Her father said to me some stuff like, you know, where do you get your water here? And then, not that night, but some other night, her mother said, you know, we've kind of spoiled our daughter.

[35:10]

We've given her, like, everything, and we hope that, you know, while they do it, we hope that you will continue to treat her in the manner in which she's become accustomed. And I said, uh-huh, sure. I will, I will. But I wasn't exactly lying, but I meant I would try sort of to do that. So my wife, this is the kind of wife I have, that tells stories like that about me. Funny stories, actually. And those stories hold me very nicely. Very nicely. But they don't distract me from facing any ignorance I have of how everything holds me. She's not the only one who holds me. She holds me in her way. which is not the way a lot of men would expect being held.

[36:14]

It's the way she does. And the way we expect people to hold us is not necessarily the way they are holding us. The way spring holds us is not necessarily the way we would expect spring to hold us. The way autumn holds us is not necessarily the way we would expect autumn to hold us. But spring does hold us right now very nicely, exactly the way spring is. It's holding us. It's supporting us right now. Fall is not, but it will when it comes. This day has the qualities of this day.

[37:23]

It can be no other way, moment by moment. It has to be just like it is, and that holds us. And if we don't understand that, that hurts. And part of us also remembers what it's like to understand being held by spring completely. And we grieve the loss of that understanding. I should say, we can grieve the loss of that understanding. But again, as we grieve the loss of that understanding, at the same time, we open to a renewed understanding of how the moment holds us, of how this spring day holds us, and how later this afternoon, when the clouds come and it starts raining, that holds us too. So part of us wishes for something other than this.

[38:44]

Part of us wishes to know what it's like to be loved by everyone. And it hurts to want to be loved by everyone and not feel loved by everyone. That hurts. But we do want that because that is true. We are loved by everyone. And the way everyone loves us is not the way we could make it happen or think of it. The way everyone loves us is like this. This is the way everyone loves us right now. This is how it is. This is the manifestation of the entire universe loving us right now. And this is the manifestation of us loving the entire universe right now. This is our life. And it also lets us be someone who wishes it was otherwise.

[39:51]

The love does not prevent us from being ignorant of what I just said. The love is not in a rush for us to stop being ignorant of the love. The love says, be ignorant as long as you need to be ignorant. Ignore this love as long as you need to love it. Ignore it. But it's there anyway. And I hope that you can feel the pain of ignoring this love which we all offer you right now. Because if you can feel that grief, you will stop ignoring this love. But I understand if you can't feel the grief, And it's not just because I love you that I understand, it's just simply I see that you have trouble feeling the pain of ignoring this love.

[41:08]

So I know it may take you a while to open up to this pain of your own ignorance. And I know it may take me a while to open up to the pain of my own ignorance. So I'm patient with that. I understand that that would be quite a feat. This person I was talking to about the kind of relationship that supports you in facing the pain of ignoring the love said, that kind of relationship is a tall order. It's a tall order. It's a tall order to face this pain. But there it is. That's the order. And the love also supports us in our gradual process of facing the pain of ignoring the love.

[42:16]

It doesn't rush us. It holds our hand while we're not even walking forward. It holds our hand while we walk backward away from what we need to do. It stays with us, step by step, backwards and forwards, right and left. It's always with us, loving us no matter how foolish we are, actually holding us through our ignorance. and holding us through our facing the consequence of ignorance, and holding us as we walk towards the love, as we walk towards the realization of reality. And it doesn't, you know, it might say, you're on the right track. It might say that. It might say, you're on the wrong track. It might say, you're a funny duck. It might say various things, but it's not saying those to manipulate us. It's just laughing at us for being the strange thing that we are.

[43:24]

Not strange, but unique. You know, weird, the word weird is, what do you call it? It's a Norse word, and it's the Norse equivalent of fortuna. The Latin word fortuna, which means fate. Weird means fate. Each of us is weird, because each of us is our present fate, our present destiny. We have to be this person that we are. And we have to have these relationships that we have. These are what we work with. These are what are supporting us. This is how everybody's helping us face our anxiety of feeling unsupported.

[44:31]

It's like this. And that doesn't mean you couldn't say to somebody, would you please support me some other way? You can say that. But what are you asking them to support you in? Are you asking them to support you in ignoring your work? Are you asking them to distract you from your work? Or are you asking them to support you in fulfilling your work of enlightenment? Which is it? Let them know. And maybe the ones, you know, and some of them will say, I'm not going to help you get enlightened. That's the way they help you. Others will say, I'll help you. That's the way they help you. There's all kinds of responses. Every response will support you if that's what you want. And if you don't want it,

[45:36]

Then will every relationship support you? If you don't want to do your work, everybody will help you. Because they love you. They'll help you no matter what. So the key thing is, what do you want to do? Do you want to keep on the track of distracting yourself from the work which will take you to realize what you really want? namely to realize the love of the entire universe is exactly your life. Your life is nothing other than the whole universe working to support it. Do you want to realize that? Well, then look at it. And that means look at the fact that you don't think so right now, that you're ignoring that, and it's painful. Look at the anxiety, which is there because you don't really believe that what you want is already happening.

[46:43]

Look at the anxiety which is there because you think that this unsupported person can make the world where you're supported happen. Which of course is ridiculous. this unsupported person cannot make the whole universe love him. But this person who the whole universe is loving can wake up to that. That's no great feat of manipulation. It's a great feat, however, of facing what's happening. Because what's happening is pain and ignorance. That's the thing that's manifesting right now.

[47:47]

But if I have confidence in the vision that everything's supporting me, I can face my present ignorance of everything supporting me. So the vision, the Buddha's vision that everything is supporting me, and I am supporting everything, supports me to look at the world and face the world where I don't see it that way. So wimpy vision may be in the face of strong ignorance. Well, that's the way it is then. Wimpy little vision, okay, this is how this person insulting me, these people being, you know, against me, this is how the universe is supporting me right now. This is how I'm being held. Strong vision of alienation, weak vision of being loved. But the more I can face that, the consequences of my strong vision of alienation, the more I can face that, the more I actually start to be more and more convinced that I'm actually being supported, held, and loved.

[49:12]

The more I actually start to see that the entire universe He's supporting me, and I'm supporting it. So this is, you know, basically I've been going over the same thing again and again. And, you know, of course I could continue for eons. And part of the reason why I did it over and over again is because it just has to be done over and over again. I have to do this over and over again. Not just in this hour here, and I have not yet been talking an hour. Not just in this talk, but for the rest of my life.

[50:22]

I have to do this over and over again and again. I have to do it. Otherwise, the powers of ignorance will resurface and take over my life. I have to keep encouraging myself to feel what's happening, to grieve what needs to be grieved. to feel what needs to be felt because it's happening, to face what needs to be faced in order to realize this vision. The logic of this vision requires facing the ignorance of this vision. The logic of realizing this vision implies and entails facing the ignorance of this vision. The logic of realizing Buddha's mind entails facing what it's like to ignore Buddha's mind.

[51:25]

And ignoring Buddha's mind is really painful. But you can't just turn and look at Buddha's mind and skip over facing the fact that you're ignoring Buddha's mind. As a matter of fact, I just said you can't just turn and face Buddha's mind, but that's not right. You can actually turn and face Buddha's mind And the way you face it is by looking at your ignorance of it. Buddha's mind is right on the other side of your ignoring it. Your ignoring it is facing the Buddha's mind and saying no. If you face that no, you see Buddha's face right there. So every face that you meet that's not Buddha's face, face that not Buddha's face and there's Buddha's face. But really just face it. Don't face it and say, come on, change to Buddha's face. Come on, Buddha, wink. No, just face this face.

[52:29]

And also those faces which are really nice and which you really like to look at, let them change to Buddha's face too. which means maybe they change from, oh, you're so cute to, oh, you're so weird, or whatever. Really just let that face be that face. Let that feeling be that feeling. That's the way directly to Buddha's face, to that face that looks at you and represents the entire universe supporting you, just like your mother's womb represented that. And your mother's face, for a while anyway, represented that. When you first came out, your mother's face maybe said, yes, this is the meaning of the universe. And little by little, she stopped saying that.

[53:33]

Literally. Literally. Okay, so here's the song for this thing. And I don't know this song very well, and probably you don't either. It's called My Mammy. Ah, so when I sing it, it sounds like this. Mammy Mammy, the sun shines east, the sun shines west, but I've just learned where the sun shines best. Mammy, Mammy, my heartstrings are tangled around Alabama.

[54:40]

Eyes are coming, sorry I made you wait Eyes are coming, hope and pray I'm not too late Mammy, mammy I'd walk a million miles for one of your smiles, my mammy Now, this guy here supports me. He has a little bell striker. And he supports me by always just dying to stop me from talking. Attention. Yes. Yes. Uh-huh.

[55:54]

Uh-huh. It's great. I feel when you have done something Uh-huh. So she remembers a story I told, but it's a little different than the way she said it. The story was that it was here at Green Gulch, and a deer, I think, maybe ran into one of our deer fences. I'm not sure. I think the deer ran into a fence and broke her, I think, one of her legs, I think one of the rear legs, a compound fracture.

[57:08]

And one of the people who lived at Green Gulch found the deer. And he wanted to, as they say, put the deer out of her misery. In other words, kill the deer so she wouldn't be suffering anymore. And he asked me, as a priest, to accompany him in this killing of the deer to be kind to the deer. Okay? And so he went there and he was going to kill the deer, not with a gun, but with an axe. He was going to cut the deer's neck. That was the way he thought to end the deer's life so the deer wouldn't be suffering anymore. And I went along with him, but then in the actual process, I felt like it was not helpful to the deer. That... It wasn't clear to me that it put the deer out of its misery.

[58:14]

It seemed like it caused the deer a little bit more misery before it died. So then after that I felt like I won't do that again because it's not clear to me that that was any help to the deer. So in the future, if someone finds an animal like that, or actually people have found animals like that, rather than speeding up their dying process by some means, I feel like if you really want to help them, then help them live as long as they want to live. So one of the reasons for Protecting animals that are injured is to protect them from being maybe torn apart by raccoons or dogs or something.

[59:16]

You might feel like that would be a terrible way. So if you feel that way and you want to protect them, why don't you protect them from that rather than kill them to protect them from that? So you could maybe make fences around them and sit with them. or move them to a place where you could protect them. So recently someone found a rabbit, injured a rabbit. So rather than leave the rabbit out in the open through the night where it might have been perhaps, who knows what, traumatized in some way by raccoons or dogs, I just brought it into my house. There was nothing I could do. I gave it water and and grass and stuff. But it wasn't up to drinking any water or any grass. But anyway, it was in a place that was warm and quiet.

[60:19]

And so that's the best I could do for it, I felt. And it just was in my house until it died. And deer is bigger, so it's harder to move a deer into your house, but you can do the same for the deer. So I'm not saying that's the best way, but that's one way that you could let the animal die quietly, rather than being attacked in the last moment of its life by predators. And in this case, I guess my intention was not to harm the deer, but to help the deer. That was my intention, but I was wrong. So I think I learned by my mistake. And I feel good that I learned by that mistake and that I won't do that anymore. So I'm sorry I did it, but it's not the same as I'm sorry that I wanted to hurt the deer.

[61:20]

Because I didn't want to hurt the deer. But I'm sorry that, in fact, I was mis... I was mis... misunderstanding the reality of what was helpful to that animal, I think. I don't think that was the most skillful way to relate to this injured animal. Yeah, I think not meddling is a better way. So I don't think it's necessarily meddling to put up a fence around an animal or pick it up and move it someplace else. I don't feel like that's meddling. If the animal seemed like it didn't want to be moved, which a deer might, in the process of moving the deer, the deer might become frightened. And that might make me feel like, don't move it. So then I might have to do something like protect the deer where it was.

[62:24]

So I guess I would be sensitive to feedback from the deer about whether I was interfering or whether I was protecting. Sometimes you may feel like you're protecting and animals or humans maybe give you feedback that they don't like it. Like, you know, children sometimes taking off a bandage off their arm, you know, if you take it off, you know, They may not want you to take the bandage off because it hurts, but you may have to take it off. So that's why they usually take off a bandage fast rather than slowly. Just a... It's better than a... And sometimes other animals don't want to take medicine, but you feel like you want to give them the medicine. But you're not exactly... You don't have to think that you're meddling with the animal. You're just doing something yourself. You're giving the animal something. You're trying to help the animal, but you're not trying to meddle with the way they are. You're happy with the way they are. You accept them for who they are, and you're just making your gesture towards them.

[63:31]

But in the case of the deer, I didn't feel like I didn't think that with a wild animal you can set the bone and, you know, I don't think that's going to work out necessarily. In some cases you can take wild animals, they have this, what's called wild, I think it's called wild animal or something like that. There's a thing in Moran where you can take injured wild animals and they will actually, they have some skills to take care of some of them and when they get better they release them again. I don't know if they take deer though. And I don't know if you can move the deer without the deer getting more hurt. I guess you could, like, anesthetize the deer and then move it. But it's not clear that's the way to go to me. Okay? It was going to be about regret. What do you do when you've done something that you later think you shouldn't have done?

[64:39]

How do you feel? How did I feel? I felt bad about what I did, but I also felt good that I learned. I learned something about it, so I also felt good about what I learned. I felt like I made a mistake, not that I did something intentionally cruel. Even though I participated and I was there while something cruel happened, that wasn't my intention or the other person's intention, but I think in fact it turned out to be cruel. So did I regret it? I regretted it, but that's about how I felt. I regretted it. It was horrible. And so now I tell people the horrible story and they can reflect on what they're going to do in similar situations. That's how I'm doing it.

[65:44]

That's how I related to it. I'm not saying that's the way. That's how I did. Somebody else may have a better way. Yes? Pardon? Why do we make love personal? I mean, why does a person make love personal? I think because they're a person. And love has made a person. So love is personal. Pardon? Pardon? Maybe it's not so much about a particular entity. Maybe it's just there. It seems like you want to own it or hold on to it. I think that's personal.

[66:48]

But maybe honestly, it will seem removed from the concept. Well, I guess I'm maybe missing the bite of your question. Because a person is... Every person is, in the vision of being held, each person is the realization of being held. You can't hold, you know, there's a certain kind of holding which is a holding of a person. That's a certain type of holding. There's holding of other things too, but the holding of a person comes to fruit as a person. So the love manifests as a person, but you don't have to necessarily call that love personal, but the fruit of the love is a person. So what's your question?

[67:52]

Why do we cling to the love? I think we cling to the love because we ignore the love. When you ignore love, then you cling to it. Because when you ignore love, you don't see how it's coming. So your sense of how it's coming is a partial version of how it's coming. And in that partial version of how it's coming... The partial version of how love comes to you is that it comes in discrete, limited ways. I take away discrete because I think it comes in unlimited discrete ways. But when you have a limited view of how love comes, then you think now it's here and now it's not. So in that limited view, when you see it coming, you want to grab it because you want it. So it's because you don't understand or we don't understand how love is actually coming that when we get an inkling of it, we grab that inkling.

[68:57]

But that's not how it's really coming anyway. And another reason why we grab the inkling of love is because we're in so much pain about not seeing how it's coming that when we get a glimmering of it or the glimmering and we want to get it, Then we grab, but that grabbing, again, is antithetical to realizing it. Because the grabbing is based on ignoring it. So when you ignore love, you grab it. When you face love, you don't grab it. When you actually see how love is actually operating, you see you can't grab it. You just put your hands together and say thank you. And you realize these hands can never get a hold of it. Okay? So grasping comes with ignorance. But seeing the reality of love, you don't grasp it. Because you see you can't.

[70:00]

Because you see you are it. You are the results of love. You're not something that gets, that grasps love. Yes? You gave examples this morning how people support each other, how people don't support each other, so it became quite clear to me. Could you also give examples of grieving, which is still very abstract? Examples of grieving? Yeah, and what rules of grieving? Well, grieving, basically what I mean by grieving is that is the feeling, I often call grieving and sadness kind of the same thing. And lately I've been speaking of grieving as like engine oil. Like engine oil, oil that you put in the engine which lubricates the moving parts. And the engine, I guess the engine is love.

[71:01]

or it's the body of love. But when you lose something, when something changes and you lose something, the engine tends to stop and get stuck. If you lose something and you hold on to it, you don't just let it go. So the way love is manifesting is that things are coming and going all the time. We're receiving things and giving things away all the time. That's the way it's actually happening. We're being manifested as this, we're being supported and loved into this, and then the love supports us to change and go into that. And again, so we're appearing and disappearing, and this is like the working of love. Our life appearing and disappearing is the working of love, or it's the working of the whole universe. In that process, as this present manifestation of love goes away, if we hold on to it and say, no, no, the engine stops.

[72:10]

It freezes. The process of love is blocked by attaching to something that's actually gone. Okay? This is not, the system doesn't like this. The system wants to keep moving and the system's stuck because somebody's holding on to something that's gone. So grief comes, and if you start feeling the grief, you feel the grief, you let go. So the grief starts, it's like WD-40. You spray it into the place where you're holding, and then you're holding onto things which are already gone, and then they start being pulled out of your hands. And it starts moving again. Then you're fresh again. Or another image I sometimes have is like, grieving is like, you know, bamboo in the snow. When the snow falls in the bamboo, sometimes the snow sticks. If the snow sticks, the bamboo bends.

[73:15]

If more snow comes and more snow sticks, the bamboo bends more. And so on, the more, until finally, the snow has pushed the bamboo way down and the snow falls off the bamboo and then the bamboo springs back light and fresh again so the the clinging of the snow to the bamboo is like our attachment to things but the bending down is like the grieving and when you bend all the way down you let go of the stuff you were holding onto and then you're fresh again so grieving And sadness, in that way, are processes which relieve you of holding on to things which have already changed, which we tend to do because of ignorance. We hold on to what's already gone. This is not good for us. The holding on is not good.

[74:19]

So a healthy system sets up grieving. So most people, because there's some attachment to the passing of their life, for most people there's always a little attachment to the passing of their life. A little at least. And some people are really into holding on to the passing of their life. As you get older, you know, you lose all these previous selves, these younger selves, some of which you're willing to let go of, others of which you don't want to let go of. Also your children, you lose all your children. All these past children you get, lose. And you get new children, but you're holding on to the old children so you can't see the new children. You're losing your younger bodies, you can't appreciate your older bodies. Right? This is normal, to hold on. So therefore grieving is kind of normal, ongoing process. You only would stop grieving when you finish grieving for all the things you held on to in the past, and when you stop clinging to the present things going away.

[75:26]

Then you wouldn't have any grieving. So if you're completely enlightened and also had done all your grieving, then you wouldn't have to do any grieving after that. But most people are holding on a little bit, so grieving is an ongoing thing. But like I say, it's like lubricant. It keeps you moving. It lets you go with the changes. Does that make any sense? She says, is it like out of the sadness and grieving you're looking for a way out? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, it could be like that. But the grieving works better if you're not like grieving to get out of something, but just grieving to grieve. That's the best way to grieve. But it's okay to grieve with the sense that this is a healthy thing. Grieving is healthy.

[76:27]

The attachment, which grieving is medicine for attachment. The attachment's not so healthy, but normal, common. But the grieving is healthy. Grieving is medicine. So I think it's better just to grieve without trying to get something out of the grieving. Because if you're trying to get something out of the grieving, you're not really wholeheartedly grieving. Another way to put this is that if you're holding on to something or if you like something and you're attached to it at all, it hurts a little bit when it goes away. So sometimes we lose something and we can't stand to feel the pain at the time. We turn away from the pain of losing something right at the time. It's another way to look at it. And some things we lose unconsciously and we're holding onto unconsciously so we can't even know what we're holding onto. So it's kind of like grieving and sadness are like a substitute suffering for the suffering we weren't willing to feel.

[77:33]

It's like maybe you're holding on up here in your shoulder, up in your shoulder, your neck you're holding on, maybe, because of some tension in your hand. And if you let go up here, maybe you let go down here, or if you let go down here, you let go up here. Something like that. So grieving refers to the place where you weren't willing to feel it and let's go there. Something like that. These are various ways to talk about this process. Yes? I have a problem in that my ordinary association with grieving is itself as a kind of clinging. That grieving is a kind of clinging rather than a letting go. So that's... I have to sort of do some kind of shift to see it as a positive thing. To me it seems as if it's an extension of holding on.

[78:38]

It is an extension of holding on. It's an extension of holding on in a way, yeah. But it's an extension you can relate to. Because you may not know where you're holding on. So now you have this extension or this... referral of the place you're holding on in the form of grief. And if you can feel the grief, then the willingness to feel that then extends itself back to the place where you weren't willing to feel. Being willing to just feel the grief, there's no holding there when you just feel it. If you overdo it or underdo it, then you're still holding there. But just to grieve purely is an example of doing the very thing which the grief was an extension of. I mean, it's the antidote to what the grief grew out of. Yes?

[79:45]

I've struggled with that, too, for a long time, because grieving meant to me death. I mean, the word grief and grieving and people dying. And that's my history, people dying when I was a child. So as years went by, my process was mostly to look at grieving as a way of dealing with losses. And the losses don't have to just be death losses or loss of a love, which is the other thing that I used to think of loss. Losses are all these little teeny things Because every day you change. It's a loss of the status quo. It's a loss of the way we were yesterday versus today. Every teeny little shift in time and thinking and way of being is a loss. So that's been reading makes a lot of sense to me. And it lets me to let go and move on. Yeah. So again, the image of snow is falling, you know? Snow is falling.

[80:48]

And if snow falls, hey, no problem. But if snow sticks to the bamboo, that's kind of a problem for the bamboo, straining the bamboo. So things are falling all the time. But if they stick to us as they fall, they weight us down. If we're willing to feel the weighting down and flex with it, the stuff will fall off eventually. And various little things happened to us during the day that stick to us. They happened earlier in the day, but they stick to us because we didn't really feel them at the time. So we come home sometimes from work or school or whatever, and we feel kind of bogged down for some, we hardly know what the reason is. Something happened during the day that we didn't really like fully feel. We feel some weight. And myself, I had this experience when I was a kid, starting, I think, the first time I noticed it, I was about eight. I heard this ringing in my ear.

[81:49]

And I would hear it when I was alone in my room. If people were talking to me or TV was on or I was running around playing with other kids, I wouldn't hear this ringing. But if I was just alone in my room... you know, reading Buddhist scriptures or whatever, I would hear the ringing. And I thought, maybe this ringing is my conscious. Maybe I did something wrong, I thought. And it wasn't, it was, I knew it wasn't really a real ringing. It's kind of, it's not a ringing like a real sound. I could tell it was in my ear, in my head. But I didn't know what it was about. Like I said, I thought, maybe it's my conscience. And in a way, now I guess it really was. But when I was about maybe, I don't know, in my teens, I think it was in my teens, that when I heard this ringing, I remembered something that happened earlier in the day, usually in the same day.

[82:53]

Sometimes if it was early in the morning, it was the night before, the day before. But my experience often was that it was later in the day, in the evening, And I remember something about during the day. And the thing I would remember would be something like maybe some girl would look at another boy in a more friendly way than she would look at me. Something not too big like that. But let's say it wasn't too big. But it bothered me a little bit. Or some teacher would maybe praise some other student's work a little bit more than mine. Something like that. Something pretty minor was usually what I remembered. Or even something less painful than that. And as soon as I remembered the thing, the ringing would go away. And what I thought was, what it was, is it was something that happened during the day that bothered me, but wasn't bad enough for me to like to stop and say, hey, this bothers me.

[83:58]

You know, like teenagers don't usually stop in their tracks when somebody like looks at them a little bit not friendly enough, you know, or somebody kind of like just makes a little slight, a slightly disrespectful look. You don't usually stop and say, oh, that hurt. You feel it, but not completely, right? So that was my experience is that I would look back at that minor thing and just seeing it and feeling a little bit of pain there, that was enough to finish the experience and the ringing would go away. Now a major thing, like if I got in big trouble, if the teacher like didn't praise, not that the teacher praised me, but that I, you know, didn't do my homework at all or got in some big trouble at school, that I wouldn't get the ringing in the ear about because, hey, I would know, you know, I'd come home and I would know what it was that was bothering me. But in a sense, it was, I think I was right. It was my conscience in a sense of it's ringing in the ear means you didn't fully experience something during the day.

[85:02]

You weren't really there for that. And when the thing came back, as soon as I gave it attention and say, hey, that bothered me, then usually it was a small thing and just noticing it was enough and that would pass it and the ringing would go away. And then in my life since, I've gotten better at, as soon as the ringing comes, to look back to say where it is and it pops up, I look at it and it goes away. So throughout the day we have our experiences and the experiences that we don't fully experience at the time come back and haunt us. And they say, you know, there's unfinished business in the day. You didn't finish the business of the day. There's a movie, which I didn't think of that before, but it's called The Remains of the Day. It's a movie about an English butler and a head maid or something. Now, this is an unusual English butler and unusual head maid because they're both movie stars.

[86:06]

And both Academy Award movie stars. But anyway, now that I think of the story, the remains of the day to me means is that they didn't fully live their life. And at the end of the day, at the end of their life, they were haunted by not fully experiencing the love that they felt for each other. They really did love each other. And although the butler was a stuffy old guy, he was kind of, as a butler, he was a good butler. you know and she loved him and she was a wonderful person and he loved her but then neither one of them could like face it so in the end of the day it was a sad thing they're both haunted by what they didn't live so this in some sense this is all about fully feeling the fact that life's moving back past very rapidly we have these little momentary flashes of it And that's what we're here to live. And if we don't, fortunately, our psyche says, would you please start living your life?

[87:14]

And it comes in the form of grief and guilt at not being alive. And our psyche says, come on. I'm going to keep haunting you until you live. Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. Enjoy yourself. Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink. Pink as opposed to, you know what? Gray and dead. So that's what we're good at. We're good at like... enjoying the moment but sometimes the moment hurts so we don't want to enjoy it or sometimes the moment is you just lost something you don't want to enjoy it but that's what's happening enjoy it right can you hear her can you hear her

[88:21]

Last night she was talking to a couple of friends of her on the phone. It was a married couple. She was talking to them both at the same time on the phone? Okay, yeah. A married couple on the phone. What age? Can you hear her? Drugs, too much drugs. Too much drugs. They lost their son to drugs. So I asked them how they were experiencing their grief. And the mother said that she felt as if her son was holding her and comforting her from in her body, from the inside, not from the outside, but from every cell. She felt really supported. And those are the words she used, held and comforted. And the father really couldn't speak.

[89:25]

The mother tried to speak to the father and said, Henry's having a very hard time with this. He has a lot of regret. And then the father said that he felt that their relationship was unresolved and he wanted and now felt that there wasn't any way to resolve the relationship, and that he wanted to hold his living, breathing son and kiss his son again and again, be with him and watch him grow old. So that's what he was experiencing. I could relate to both of their experiences, but I could relate more to the father's experience. One thing I noticed with my own experience of grief is that regret comes very, first there's a pain, and then there'll be regret, and then there'll be suffering, and then there'll be anger, whatever.

[90:28]

And I noticed that it's just, it's been like a habit, kind of a smokescreen not to heal the pain. And I've also had the experience of just feeling the grief and it feels like what the mother described. And in talking to them, I also have this, I have the experience of wanting to help the father. And I didn't, I didn't know how to do that, but your talk and that conversation and that experience really, is helpful, is helpful to me, and I was wondering if you had. So, I don't know, I still want to help the father. And if you have. Well, help the father. One way to help the father is help the father feel how bad he feels.

[91:30]

Help him find what the fullness of his pain is. Not to go too far and not to go too short, but support him to feel that pain. Don't distract him from it. Don't stick his face in it, but just help him settle into the fullness of his pain with the passing of his son. Help him settle into the fullness of the pain of his unresolved relationship with his son, too. And you may want to say this to him, you may not want to say it to him, but in fact, if he can settle into the pain of the unresolved quality of his relationship with his son, that's part of resolving the relationship with the son. Sometimes we think, you know, my relationship with my son's unresolved, but tomorrow I'll resolve it, or next week I'll resolve it, you know? When I was a kid, I liked the jazz pianist, Mose Allison.

[92:38]

And if he ever came to my hometown, I would make a big effort to go see him, listen to him. And I moved to San Francisco, and he lived down the block from Zen Center. To visit Darrow is a jazz street where he used to work. I never went to see him. You know, because I can go anytime I want, right? So I do it next week, day after tomorrow, day after tomorrow, day after tomorrow. So we do that with our children and our parents.

[93:08]

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