I came back a little later because after I took Luisa to the airport, my wife asked me to stay another day to have a meeting or a conference with our daughter about certain things she has in mind for her life. So we had dinner and we had a good meeting and she made some good suggestions. And then I was going to leave, but then she said she wanted to go to Tassajara. So she asked me to wait until Friday to bring her back. So that's why I came late. And also, this is a kind of a... Just to tell you something about her, many things are going on, but one of the things that we sort of stumbled upon was that There was a funeral ceremony at Green Gulch about two weeks ago.

[01:03]

And she went to it, and it was somebody that she knew. So she's getting older, and now she's seeing people she knows dying. And she didn't realize at the time, but it had a deep effect on her. And she had some kind of like a nihilistic reaction to it, kind of like, well, what's the point of it all kind of reaction to the person's death. Now, I think part of the reason for her upset and confusion and thinking that she really didn't want any kind of restraint, since it's not necessary to have restraint or something like that, couldn't stand it. So it helped to see that. It was the person who died was about 40, late 40s.

[02:06]

And somebody we've known for a while. Not a student, a kind of friend of Zen Center's. This woman is named Lacey Flossberg. She's a writer. She's married to David Harris, the SDS guy. Joan's husband, Joan Baez's husband. So we, again, continue on the theme of studying the self. What just came up in my head just then was, how is your How is your study of the self going? How's it going? Yeah. You got a question?

[03:09]

Yeah, it's a question. How's it going? How's your individual study of the self? How's your study of the self going? I'm asking you people. How's it going? Everything is going well. My memory is coming up. It's charging. We might need to take the collection back because of the re-zapping is going on. You need a combination of painful and boring. Painful and boring? Your study? Every time I look at myself, I think, yeah, I'm really so stressed. I'm 90% of the time, it's supposed to be my mind.

[04:11]

It's so projectable and blinding. I look at that a lot. I'm not quite as stressed as I thought I was. I'm joking. How about delusion? How's delusion these days? Any delusions? I just looked at the first poem in The Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire, where he talks about all the delusion that we're afflicted by. and how we consider some kind of virtue or some kind of vow, some kind of wholesome vow. But we would like to know if it's worth it beforehand.

[05:14]

And we're kind of sorry for all the delusions, but our repentance is really kind of lame. It doesn't have much bite to it. And he also said that among all the... He has this long list of despicable creatures that are crawling and gambling and slithering and walking along the earth. The ugliest one of them all is Anhui. is boredom, which sits there smoking on its pipe. Just as soon let the whole world be gobbled up with a yawn as not. So what? Which again is a kind of, in a sense, a nihilistic reaction to the deadliness and the sickliness of that we see manifesting here and there in the death and illness of ourselves and others.

[06:22]

One reaction to that is, who cares? But also, as I was talking about last time, in terms of this, the opportunity, the working, the way everything's working, the opportunity of the working, sometimes the way it works is it works and it manifests in the ugliest possible way. Death is not the ugliest thing. Birth is not the ugliest thing. There's more difficult challenges than that. For Baudelaire, the most ugly thing is boredom. Maybe for some other people that's not the ugliest way that the opportunity manifests itself. Maybe that's not the most vulgar and terrible manifestation of our life. I also wrote down, you know, I wrote down, you know, Thay's spiritual emergency in relationship to this death, and I wrote down, open the doors to, open the doors to, I remember we had our early meeting here when we talked about this experiment we're doing here of having a different basis

[07:56]

or looking at the basis for everything we're doing. And Stanley said, are you opening the doors to anarchy? And I said, well, I guess so. I mean, how can you open some doors and not open the door to anarchy? And then I heard somebody say something about anarchy the other day. They said anarchy, and then they said warring principalities. So when there's not a hierarchy, when there's anarchy, then there can be war among the principalities. When they're not a strong king or sovereign over the whole show, then the different power sources can fight with each other. So in anarchy, there's a possibility for small scale conflicts that might not be allowed in a more hierarchical situation.

[08:59]

Anyway, the door to anarchy is open, but also the door to patriarchy is open. And the door to hierarchy is open. The door to matriarchy is open. The door to spring is open. The door to sex is open. The door to death, the door to autumn is open. The door to summer, to confusion is open. The door to winter stillness is open. The door to depression is open. The door to hate is open. The door to chaos is open. The door to violence is open. And so on. And the door, the most horrible door of all, the door of truth is open. And so I feel that, that's how I feel.

[10:03]

There's many doors are open now to us. And in one sense, we are afraid to go through them. In another sense, we're tempted to go through them. And I'm not saying what to do, because if I say what to do, then I just went through a door. Maybe the door of hierarchy, or the door of patriarchy, or the door of clarity, the door of oppression, the door of control. But I feel best about just sitting in the middle of all these open doors and just let them all be open. And let them, moment after moment, all be open. And we're going to do things, but I don't know if we have to go through any of these doors. I'm not saying. You check it out. I do feel maybe, I would guess that some of you sympathize with the many doors being opened now. Do you?

[11:05]

Do you know what I mean? Does that sympathize or resonate with that? You can understand what I mean? Do you feel many doors are opened? Yeah, that's sort of like open door. Yeah. Can you hear what she said? She said she feels like the open doors are allowing her to take care of herself. Do you feel that the questions are allowing you to take care of yourself? Yeah, there's actually a lot of relief in it. You know, it feels like there's relief in the tension about it all.

[12:13]

Um... I just sort of feel like there's a possible thing here is that when you sit in the middle of open doors or you sit in the middle of... If you sit in this chamber where all the doors are open and all the questions are hovering, then you don't have to go through them to take care of yourself. Maybe you can take care of yourself. To go through the door, maybe it's hard to take care of yourself. Maybe this... Somehow your life opportunity is manifesting in the middle of all these opportunities. These doors are not the opportunity that's manifesting right now. They're just part of the landscape around your actual manifestation that you can actually work with. Maybe now, or maybe in a situation like this, you actually can take care of this as it's coming up. But I don't know if that's how you met, taking care of yourself. I don't know if other people can, if that makes sense.

[13:15]

Excuse me, I want to say something. There's a problem. I bet those people can't hear your conversation, right? I asked Carol what she meant by taking care of herself. Could you hear that? Yes. So maybe talk about that one when you answer, Carol. Okay. I mentioned on a more specific level, but perhaps it's true to me on a level that Rev was talking about as well, too, that I don't have, not feeling that I need to blind and follow the figures. that I can take a period of rest when I need it. If, you know, a certain situation could happen, I've been out in the rain all day, and it got wet, and I feel like I need a period of rest, well, I can do that, and I can be comfortable doing that, you know, supported doing that, and not have a lot of anguish about doing that. That's the level I'm at with it.

[14:20]

Yeah, and that's the level which I was responding to, too, that, first of all, you... You can work with the fact that you're tired. You can work with the fact that you're cold. That's your life manifesting in that form. You can feel like that's what you should be taking care of. You can trust this particular manifestation. And at the same time, when I sit a whole morning group, I'm very happy about what I'm doing. I'm really happy about what I'm doing, but I really wanted to do it. And there's a certain joy in it that I'm experiencing. I, um... Again, this is studying the cell, I feel, and this is zazen.

[15:23]

I hear zazen. I look over here. I have this thing right here. It's Chinese for... I think something you studied last practice period, some of you, called the lancet of zazen or the point of zazen, sometimes called the acupuncture needle of zazen. Did you have chanting practice again? Can I erase this again? What I just saw here on this thing is it said... Buddha, Buddha, which you could read as Buddha after Buddha, or every Buddha.

[16:28]

And then I'd write Buddha. This means essential. And this means a character key, which means working or opportunity or function or the motive energy from which action comes from. Or a loom also. A loom. Buddha after Buddha or every Buddha's essential function And then it says ancestor or pioneer after pioneer, every pioneer's functioning essence versus their characters.

[17:51]

So the essential function of all Buddhas and the functioning essence of all the pioneers. That's the concern here. That's the point of zazen. The point of zazen is the essential functioning, this functioning, the essential opportunity, the essential loom. The center, the point of the workshop of all Buddhas, where all Buddhas are working, where all Buddhas are turning and changing, this place where they work. It's called studying the self, right? It's the point of zazen, this pivotal point. And also, the working essence. The essence is not a thing like a fixed thing. The essence is not a fixed thing. It's an opportune thing.

[18:54]

which again takes us back to radical politeness, to find the point of zazen moment after moment. And then it says, not knowing... I won't write Chinese for that, but anyway, it says, not knowing manifests. And then it says, not... Looks like not figuring out or not calculating and figuring out. It's realized. It's manifested in not thinking. It's realized in not figuring out. which is something like sitting in the middle of all these opportunities and not trying to figure out which is the best one.

[20:13]

Actually, one of the doors is figuring out which is the best one. One of the doors is thinking about this. But the essential working, the point of zazen, is actually manifested When you watch all this stuff happening, you watch cause and effect, you see how it's all coming down without trying to figure it out. Or, again, you watch how trying to figure it out is coming down and you just watch how trying to figure it out is happening. You put your faith in that rather than your faith in trying to figure out something or get control. And I'm, for example, I'll tell it's a horror right now with things kind of looser and flowing more. You know, certain people come to me and say, they say things like, well, in one sense what I hear, the question is, can we actually allow this to happen?

[21:20]

Can we actually, don't we need to actually like pull in the reins a little bit or get control again? Don't we need to figure out whether this is okay or not? The mind keeps leaping back to that. Do you know what I mean? Does that make sense? And I try to keep going back to what's actually happening. I think there is naturally limitation and things coming up to work with in what's happening. It's not like nothing's happening. It's not like you don't have opinions and feelings and stuff. And it's not like you don't express yourself right out of that. Oh, and then I, where did I hear this?

[22:31]

Who said this? Anyway, when I was up there, I heard somebody... Oh, I know, Joseph Campbell. I was watching a tape of Joseph Campbell. He's talking to Bill Moyer. And he quotes this Gnostic gospel, the gospel of Thomas, which has been pointed out to me as a Buddhist gospel. And at the end of Thomas... Just before it gets sexist, it says, someone says to Jesus, when will the kingdom come? And Jesus says, it will not come by waiting or expectation for it. It will not be a matter of saying, here it is or there it is. Rather, the kingdom of the father or the mother, actually this is more like the kingdom of the mother if you think about it, the kingdom of the mother is spread upon the earth and people do not see it.

[23:44]

It's spread upon the earth. It's here and here and here and here. It's everywhere. This is actually the kingdom of the mother. But people do not see it. They're waiting for it or they're expecting it. They don't see it. It's already spread upon the earth. Particularly, it's in the other. But that doesn't mean you should grab it. It's manifested in not knowing or not thinking. That's how it's manifested. It's there all the time anyway, but particularly it gets manifested in the non-thinking part of the program. It gets manifested in the not trying to figure out. I mean, that's enough maybe. What do you think?

[24:52]

How's it going? I'm wondering, what made you say that I was more the great mother than the great father? Well, because the mother, the maternal, accepts all this, you know, includes it all, rather than the paternal, which is more like, you know, you're Steve and he's Matt, rather than like discriminating. to feel, to understand that divinity is spread everywhere on the earth. It's more of a maternal kind of a feeling of seeing the value of life in all its forms is more of a maternal thing rather than a more paternal thing, which is saying, yes, but this is this way and that way. But it literally says in the book, this is the kingdom of the Father. But the spirit is more maternal, I think. That's my feeling. The eternal thing in the psyche is all-forgiving, all-inclusive.

[25:57]

And that's another thing about the word key, this opportunity, when you put it together with zen, zen key, again, as I mentioned before, it means the whole works, it means everything, but it also means everything's working through something. So the totality fosters the individual. The individual fosters the totality. That's why each individual thing fosters the cosmos, and the cosmos fosters each individual thing. That's, again, radical politeness, that you really do appreciate this person as they're manifesting right now. And you really do appreciate that you have a problem with them. And you appreciate specifically the kind of problem you have. But you don't then degrade another being because you have a problem with them. And you also don't uplift them because you have a problem with them.

[27:04]

You uplift them because they are the working of the universe at this locale. They are the local color of universal harmony. You study that. Yes? Can you hear me? I can hear you. Can you hear me? Yes. Can everybody hear us? I'm not sure which question to ask. I have two questions, but... Well, why don't you ask one? When I have people called me, the way things are going in my life... Yes? I have an attack. I feel like I have this mental energy that... Well, it seems to me to go out of my mind and attack other people. Or, you know, I think it's probably just mine. I'm a patriot of the situation. I dislike the situation. But I realize it's not correct.

[28:06]

You know, it's harmful for other people. Also, somehow that energy ends up coming back to me. It's harmful to me, too. But... I'm trying very hard to stop it, but yet, when things get tight, you know, I turn that, I turn to, like, attack. You know what I'm saying? I do. It's one of your, what do you call it? It's one of the easy doors for you to go through. It's a familiar door. Just, whew, right through it. And trying to stop yourself... from going through the door is another door, I would propose to you. So what's hard to do, it's hard to learn to do is to stay with the manifestation, namely your opinion or your value that things are bad. It's hard to sit there with that and not go through some door.

[29:07]

It's very difficult to just sit there with it. Patience is difficult. But patience makes possible to stay in this room. We're all being open to everything. Patience makes that possible. But it works with the current manifestation. It works with this manifestation. Patience is not practiced in general. It's practiced with this difficulty. That's the advantage of difficulty, is that we don't necessarily practice patience, we don't necessarily work with pleasant things. But if you don't work with unpleasant things, you often go through one of these bad doors. So that's why the manifestation of difficulty is such a great opportunity, because if you don't stay with it, it's very obvious that it doesn't work.

[30:17]

Because, I'd like to add to what you said, because there's certain times in my life when I feel like, boy, I'm not in there trying to control things. Actually, it's like riding a wave or something. Things are just moving along, and I'm part of it, and it's great. But then, somehow, I don't know how I fall out of that. I felt like, oh, you know, and it's great, and that's something, and it's very difficult, a very difficult place to be, you know? So then, I feel like, well, okay. Thank you. I'd say on the board of the Council of Miami, we'd love to return to it, and what do we know? We'd just like to go back into the mayor. Let's have a little room today. We'd like to stay here with this entity. this place of the actual manifestation right now of your life in all of the most intense situation. Pretty intense right now. Yeah, it's the most intense.

[31:24]

And we had trouble breathing with that intention. That's why we have a hard time with it, because we have a habit of laziness of saying, you know, I don't have this. I don't have this. I know sometimes I don't. And we all go... to the lowest common denominator, and wallow in our strongest habits. Being that different, we have different habits. So we go in our to get stronger habit. Easier. Once you turn away from this light, the radiance of your light would be not that different. You wouldn't go into this old habit, which is deadly. But fortunately, your light keeps you awake. And you know, that's good. But you don't like them. It causes you pain if it turns out that way. Yeah, well, there is hierarchy.

[32:26]

Yeah, well, there is hierarchy. Yeah, I'm just saying that it's an anti-egalitarian position that we uphold on an intellectual level. On an emotional level, ideally, it's comfortable for me to be in high life and not in high life. You just said that people are not uplifting them because you think they're higher than you or that you would be very powerful, but uplifting them because they have essential work to do with you. It could be more . This is a hierarchy, right? The top is higher than the bottom. The branches are smaller at the top than at the bottom. And this is closer to the light than this is.

[33:30]

However, the dewdrops on the tie needles at the bottom reflect all the dewdrops in the rest of the tree. The dewdrops up here are reflected in the dewdrops at the bottom. That's not anarchy, necessarily. Maybe that is anarchy, in a sense. It's anarchy. So in the pine tree, in the forest, in the cool morning, you have anarchy and hierarchy manifested in the same world. So hierarchy and anarchy are realities. One is the patriarchal, namely this is higher than this. This is not in the same position as that. The matriarchal is yes, but all the different, each pine needle includes all the other pine needles.

[34:33]

And the whole tree is equally beloved. Those are two realities. in fact, that coexist in mind. And there's many others, too. There's chaos there, and so on. There's impermanence. There's death. There's birth. There's avoidance of difficulty. There's greed. For us, there's all those things we treat. I was just going to say, in the vertical dimension, the top branches are higher than the lower. But if you take the horizontal dimensions, the lower branches are higher than the upper ones. They live longer. Yeah, right. From the top, looking down, the bottom ones are bigger. There's only a certain assumption, a certain viewpoint, a certain stance that we can say that one part of the theory is higher than another.

[35:45]

And I also thought of that poem. I don't remember exactly how it goes, but I think it's maybe the moon, clear moon, the full moon is reflected in the water. When the wind blows, it breaks the water into waves, and it breaks the water. So part of the implication of that is we need to realize the stability, not make ourselves calm, but realize the stability of each moment. than in the change or the disturbance which may happen, either by impermanence or by delusion.

[37:06]

When we break up our experience into subject and object, into self and others, we break this smooth, calm mind into the experiences. But that also, that separation or that delusion also is bright light, too. So there's again a respect for disturbance. There's a respect for whatever the manifestation is. However, it's hard to see Sometimes it's hard to see how the disturbance causes the sparkliness of the water, unless you saw the water come and then experienced the disturbance and saw it as life. Somehow it helps you understand that better if you see it happen.

[38:09]

And again, that's another poem that Hoiti brought up, which I always like. Follow the stream to the place where the water comes out. Or another way is follow the stream to where there's no more water. The place where there's no more water is the same place where the water comes out. You know what I mean? So you follow the stream to the source and then you sit there and you watch for the moment when the clouds come up. You watch that I often always miss that transition between where it's calm and where it breaks up. So I'm lost after it breaks up because I don't see what's happening there in terms of the normal transition. I don't believe that once it breaks up that this is it. So I missed that step.

[39:12]

You don't have to believe it. I don't think it's necessarily illegal. This is more like the thing you need to believe. This thing I'm talking about now is something you can see. You don't have to believe this. The thing you need to believe, the place where there's faith, you need to believe and study what's happening. That's a matter of faith. Because you can't see what's happening. You can't see what's happening. But you can see the calm mind disturbed. You can see that because when it disturbs you, you see. Seeing is a disturbance of thought. But The place where you need to have faith, where you need to believe, is in a realm where you can't see.

[40:16]

And you can't see what's happening because what's happening is not something over there. It includes you. Whereas this disturbance, this place where the clouds come up, you can see that because as soon as the clouds come up, there's a disturbance. And you're there seeing the clouds come up. And what you need to do is you need that faith to work with what's happening and follow that to the place where nothing's happening anymore. When you first start meditating, when you first start putting your faith in studying something which you can't know, in fact, you're working with something you know. And you work with what you know with the faith of studying something which you can't know. And then you have to get to a place where you don't know anymore. Then you have, then your faith has brought you to, then you've reached the stage of faith. You have completely, you have consummated your faith, in other words.

[41:19]

Well, you know, it's, you know, you turn around and go. Probably maybe some people have some questions about that. Did you follow that? So Dogen has a chapter called Deep Faith in Cause and Effect. And so you put, in other words, you put your chip down on studying cause and effect. But again, as you read again in studying cause and effect, there's nobody out here studying cause and effect. When you're really studying cause and effect, then what happens is everything wakes you up. In other words, you forgot yourself. You forgot yourself. You studied yourself as something you could know. You studied yourself as something you could know.

[42:22]

You studied yourself as something you could know. You studied, you studied, you studied. In other words, you followed the stream, which you could see as a stream. However, you followed it in opposite direction from the way you usually follow it. You reverse the direction of your study, and you're going back to the place where the stream of self comes from. And when you exhaustively study this stream backwards, you get to the place where there's no self anymore. You reach the end of self. You forget the self by exhaustively studying the self. And then you see the beginning of the self. But then anything that happens will be the beginning of the self. And then that's the breaking of the water. And then anything that happens will be light. And you'll see the self as light. That you don't have to believe in. That you will see.

[43:23]

That will be the confirmation of your faith. And you will see that in not thinking. But the place you get that way by reversing your thinking But by studying your thinking backwards, by reversing your thinking backwards to the place where there's no more thinking, and that's where it manifests. And it comes forth now as thinking, but the thinking now is light. It's the clouds coming up out of the source. In other words, everything realizes you. The 10,000 things realize you. They realize you. They realize you. The self is realized by these things. Everything advances forward and realizes the self rather than the self practicing things. Everything comes and realizes the self at that place. The faith is to study this and to study this.

[44:25]

I think Charlie was most... So the deep paper problem with that is really willing at the deep problem, right? Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm. It's not shaped in something. It's the faith that these creatures have. It's the faith of Buddhists. It's the kind of faith that Buddhists have. It's the kind of faith that the pioneers had or have. It's the same kind of faith that they have. It's not in something. It's the faith of this manifestation. which you could say it's faith in this manifestation, but there's nobody over here. It's not again, because that's again like carry the self forward and you trust things.

[45:28]

And sit down. You watch yourself sit there. You watch yourself sit there. You watch yourself sit there. All you do is watch yourself sit there. Sit there, sit [...] there. And it's all you do. This is the reverse of the way we usually deal with the self. We think we have to use the self to do, to confirm, to realize Buddha's way or helping people or whatever. This is now, you just come to the self. The self does come and you just keep coming to the self. Come to the self. This is going up the stream backward. Going back up the stream. You're still dealing with the stream. The stream of self, [...] self. Body, body, [...] body.

[46:39]

Same stream, but backwards. No longer a body going to do things, now it's just back to body, body, follow the body to the place where there isn't any more body, where the body comes out. When you get to the place where there's no more body, that's the place where the body comes. Then the body has settled on the body. You're no longer thinking, you're just a body, being a body. That's the place where you're not moving and that's the place where you can realize the self, the self which is now born of everything coming forward. This essential working of the Buddhas will be manifested in not thinking, will be actualized in not trying to figure out. And you don't have to be in the zendo to do this, but it is especially set up room for that purpose.

[47:46]

So that's kind of nice. I really plan to go up there and do that. And I'm also thinking about some way to... How do I put it? Well, for myself, some way to make it comfortable for myself to do a lot of sitting. And I'll be trying to figure that out, and I'll let you know what I find out. I thought about having an arsacin, but somehow that didn't seem to be, somehow it wasn't understood when I said it that way. I'm going to try another way to say it. But again, not thinking in that case means that not thinking means all you think about is your body, which means you think body, [...] body. You think body so completely or you think breath so completely.

[48:54]

You trust. You put yourself so much into your body and breath so thoroughly at the extremity of that dedication to your posture and breathing. That's called not thinking. So it's a place where your faith is confirmed, your faith that actually this manifestation is the manifestation of totality. Yes? get to acknowledge doubt? Yeah, well, that faith would acknowledge doubt. That faith would say, hey, this is doubt. Saying this is doubt is not doubt. That's faith. I mean, that's mindfulness born of faith. I got doubt. This is a faithful person that says that.

[49:56]

A corrosive doubt wouldn't necessarily even honor the doubt. Grosser doubt would kind of, I don't know what it would do, kind of say, oh, there's something wrong with me because I have doubt or something like that. Faith would trust doubt or utilize doubt as well as it would utilize confidence or enthusiasm or, you know. If this is radical politeness, it is at root polite to everything, right down to the root. Everything. But I think, you know, as we explore this, as I explore this, it's hard to practice it. It's hard to not make a few exceptions. But that's not radical. That's, you know, short of the root. When you go back upstream to the place where the water becomes Uh-huh.

[51:03]

Yeah. Yeah. You need a little speck of delusion to manifest enlightenment. Because enlightenment is actually understanding that speck of delusion has light. Enlightenment is that delusion, that is that disturbance, that separation, that break, that crack, in the harmony of the universe, that little fracture, that little imperfection, the tiniest fault in the universe is actually radiance.

[52:15]

To feel harmony without testing it on a particularity, on an individual person, is not really the whole story. It's when harmony is tested on me and you, and particularly on our faults, on our difficulties, on our imperfections, on our sins, when it's tested on those and you realize those are radiance, then the enlightenment is working, is manifested, has been realized. It has saved this speck of dust from rather than being a disturbance and a problem, it is actually a manifestation of the light. Pretty much, yeah. It seems to be the case. Yep. In other words, it isn't really realized unless the...that insight doesn't seem to...that insight is always conjoined with stability.

[53:23]

However, stability is, in fact, that in reality we are stable moment by moment. We need to realize the stability in order to realize the light. But you don't have to make yourself stable. And again, some people kindly bend that truth, I would say, for those people who can't believe or trust themselves, then they have these programs where you're rude to yourself and treat yourself as some kind of a wild beast and you beat yourself into submission and you finally realize you're calm. But you always were. You just had such a low opinion of yourself, you didn't believe it until you beat yourself up for a long time and then finally said, well, I guess I am calm. It's like that story in the Lotus Sutra of that guy who got lost, you know? When he went home and saw his parents, his great parents, he couldn't believe that he was their parents, so they didn't push it.

[54:28]

And they had him shovel shit for many years. And then after he shoveled shit for many years, he said, I guess I could be chairman or whatever foreman of the shit-shoveling crew. I guess I am actually pretty good at shoveling shit. I guess I could do that." And gradually, he was able to realize that he could move into the house of this person whose presence he would faint in at first, whose presence he thought he would be killed just being near this person because he was such a yucky little speck of dust. But finally he moved, he feel like this speck of dust can move into the house with this great person. And finally he realized that he was actually the same blood as this person and actually realized finally that he always was. But he had to build up his confidence first. And so, okay. Build up confidence, shovel shit. That's part of studying yourself too, shoveling shit.

[55:30]

Or following the stream back to the source. Sometimes the stream throws you for a loop, bounces you around in the rocks, tosses you into nasty little, like right now there's a nasty little log jam up there around the hog's back, you know. And I was walking with Wren over there and What can we do with that thing? It would be such a pain in the butt to bring all that wood down here. So we're thinking maybe we could just take it across the stream and cut it up there and build some kind of big temple out of there, out of that log jam. There's enough wood there to build a nice building or an amphitheater or something. And it is not. It's kind of an eyesore and maybe even a danger. But there's a lot of good wood there. What's the appropriate way to use it? Well, I think for one reason is I think it's dangerous the way it is now.

[56:36]

If more stuff comes down there, it might build up a big thing and make a dam. And if the dam breaks, it could flood Tassajara. And I think they already did go up and cut it open a little bit, didn't they? Yeah. We did that though, didn't we? We didn't do that? Stanley didn't do that? Yeah. Right. If we didn't live here, it wouldn't be a problem, because what would happen would be that eventually it would get dammed up, it would build up, and it would blow the whole thing out of there, and it would get cleared up, and the stream would get cleared. And this whole area would get flooded and wiped out. But that's not a problem, except we live here. And if we were ready to get out of here fast and let this place get washed away, then it would be all right. But again, it's not really a problem. I don't know if I said it was a problem.

[57:37]

It's an opportunity to build a temple up there. On your day off, you can go over and take logs over there and gradually start building a temple. It should be done quite soon if we all did that. The problem is The design committee. Who's going to be on the design committee? Everyone. Sonya, did you have your hand raised? Do you have something to say? I was thinking about . I got a little lost. Now, you're talking about positive, negative, and calm?

[58:39]

Neutral and calm? Uh-huh. What's the other door? Okay, attack. It's when the door is called attack. And then there's a door called, put negative on attack, called negative feelings about attack. It's another door. Uh-huh. Okay. Well, dwelling at the door is going through the door.

[59:43]

That's what I would say. Just being... Yes? Oh, I see. Uh... Let's see, you can go through it and then... In terms of our language tonight, if you're sitting in the middle of your life and you see an opportunity called going through the door of hate or whatever, Okay, that's where you are. If you go through that door, or to say another way, if the manifestation, if the functioning of your life comes in the form of hate, it looks like you went through that door, but you really didn't go through the door. Just your life is now manifesting as hate. And then that changes and manifests some other way. So that's like going through the door, but going through without dwelling. It looks like going through the door, but you didn't really go through the door.

[60:44]

If you're practicing Zaza and you didn't go through the door, it's just that what looked like a door is now what's manifesting in your life. If you live in the realm of karma, then you do things like go through doors, and you do anger, and you do patriarchy, and you do anarchy, and you do hierarchy, and you do lust, and you do confusion, and you do death, and you do birth. You confirm these things. That's the realm of karma. But another way of looking at it is, and before I say this I want to say that I think, I believe, that the realm of subtle nondiscriminating wisdom is inseparable from the realm of karma. The karmically created experiences are identical and are the contents of wisdom. As I was talking about before, wisdom sees the karmically created as light, as radiant opportunity, in other words, as emptiness, which can be anything.

[61:59]

The contents of nondiscriminating wisdom is this karmically created stuff, is this stuff which looks like going through doors of greed, hate and delusion. the idea that I'm going to go through the door, that I'm going to be angry, that I'm going to stop myself, or I'm going to start myself, or I'm going to hold on to something, or I'm going to control somebody, or control myself, this is the realm of the karmically created. But to sit there with this karmic possibility, with the illusion of being able to do stuff, just to be there with that, and study, just study the karmically created, and understand it rather than be carried away with it and believe it. That's to sit in openness of all these karmic possibilities, to understand them for what they are. That's wisdom. And compassion is to allow yourself to be in this karmic situation, in this karmically created opportunity, is to trust that Buddha's compassion can reach you there and that Buddha's compassion allows you to take this seat and practice here.

[63:15]

And if you can have that compassion, you can realize that wisdom on this place. And then this idea of going through doors or being angry, you understand that But you don't even longer think of, I got angry, you more see this appearance of anger is here. This is the appearance of anger. I didn't do this. And it's also not like, well, I'm not responsible for this either. It's not like you're shirking your responsibility or taking your responsibility. You understand what anger is. Or rather, not you understand, but there is an understanding of what anger is. And it isn't that I walked over there and did an angry thing. That's not the way I see it. Now, if I do see I walk over there and do an angry thing, that's what I realize is light. And I take responsibility for that.

[64:18]

But not like I did it, but I take responsibility the way Buddhas do. of realizing the Buddha way at that opportunity. That's the way they take responsibility. They don't just say, okay, I'm at fault. That's not enough. You've got to take more responsibility than you're at fault. You also have to take responsibility that you don't understand what's going on and that you didn't, that you actually aren't so, you know, like Taylor was thinking when she first came down here, you know, she was kind of like real tired and people were talking to her and she wasn't being very responsive and she's afraid, she went into the cabin because she's afraid she's going to freak people out at being not very responsive. This is, you know, a teenage grandiosity. Thought you're going to depress all you people and freak you all out by not being her usual jovial self. We're not as powerful as we think we are.

[65:20]

We're not as anything as we think we are. We're not as powerless as we think we are either. What we are, in the sense of the good thing that we are, what we are is we are the forgotten self. That's what we really are. We are the forgotten self. We are confirmed by what we are. What we really are is what is confirmed by everybody else. That's what we really are. That's our happy self. And some of the things that aren't us, we'd rather not be confirmed by. That's our sad self, our miserable self, who doesn't want to be confirmed by things that the happy self is confirmed by.

[66:25]

The happy self is confirmed by all things. The forgotten self, the dropped off self, is confirmed by all things. Again, that's sitting. You sit, you sit, you sit. You are confirmed by all the things that are happening. By all the pain, by all the restlessness, by all the struggle to escape, by the mad pursuit, by the wild ecstasy, you're confirmed by all these things. Yeah. . They there what well I would I would I would say just about like that But you change the language a little bit you said something like when he said I don't want my pain confirmed by everything else Okay, you said I think you said that yeah rather than say I don't want my pain confirmed by the things else I would say I don't want to be confirmed by my pain Your pain doesn't have to be confirmed by other things It's that I don't want to be confirmed by pain.

[68:03]

I In other words, I don't believe in the essential function of the Buddhas at that moment. I don't believe the Buddhas would be manifesting their essential function this way, with this pain. I don't believe it. Therefore, I want to get out of here. I want to go someplace else. But then I move away from the essential function of the Buddhas, the functioning essence of the ancestors. You don't do anything. You just stay there. And everything does it for you. Then everything will give you a whole new thing to work with like that. And then you stay there. Not for long, not for short, just as long as that's happening. And then everything gives you something else. The opportunity gets changed. That word key means opportunity. It means change. It means function. You're going to get another key.

[69:03]

And also, after I asked Hody to write Cloud Hall for the Green Gulf Cloud Hall, and then he had the paper to fill it, so I asked him to write some characters from the Chobo Genro Zenki. And so I asked him to write Zenki, and I also asked him to write this character, Tigen. Zenki. and get, and it got, excuse me, key comp. Key comp. Right down here.

[70:07]

It's up here. That was up there. This character, you know the Mu Mon Khan? Mu Mon Khan. Mu means there isn't any. Mon means gate. And Khan means gate or barrier. Mu Mon Khan. The gateless, the no gate, gate. All right? It's this kan here. This character means a gate, a barrier, but also means a crisis. So ki-kan has the same meaning as gateless. This is gateless, right? Gateless gate. Or the functioning gate. Or the opportune gate. The opportune barrier, the opportune obstruction, the opportune problem, the opportune stuckness, the opportune depression, pain, whatever it is.

[71:15]

The crisis of opportunity. The crisis of opportunity, the functioning crisis, the functioning door. It's, of course, the door that opens. In other words, we always need a blockage here for this key to move. Otherwise, it doesn't really mean anything to us. So this compound appears in the Shobo Genzo classical on Zenki, and it's sometimes translated as pivotal opportunity or pivotal working, but also sometimes translated as such a working, such a working. In other words, there's always such a working. It's always such a working. It's this particular working, that particular working. It's always working like this. And the difficulty for our lives is that in some ways, Buddha's compassion sometimes works in such a way that it keeps pushing this on us until we trust it.

[72:19]

We say, no. He says, try again. No, it couldn't be this. Okay, now here it is again. I don't believe that. I don't trust it. Okay, here it is again. In the course of what you're doing today, some of my particular foibles came up really graphically, and the fact that the other ladies recognized them very sharply and very clearly kind of made me happy. Kind of made you happy? Yeah, because he said, I have the self that comes from what you really are. I have the self that comes from what you really are. And the fact that I was so well recognized by other people, it was kind of happy for me.

[73:24]

As opposed to being really, you know, hating myself for having horrible thoughts. Or embarrassed. Oh, yeah. I can't quite remember, but once I said what embarrassment was, and I can't remember what I said, but it was good. All I can remember was it was something like, you're embarrassed when you're having trouble accepting what you are. You kind of can see it. You can see it's there, but you can't quite say, okay, that's the way I am. Like you can be embarrassed for being a tall teenager, right? Or you can be embarrassed for being really pretty. You're having trouble accepting that you're pretty. You're embarrassed to be like this. And yet there's somebody who's really happy to know who it is. And studying these outflows and stuff like we were talking about before is, again, getting into the particular details, the little specs of, you know, seeing these outflows as an example of going upstream or, you know, back against the stream.

[74:52]

Usually, you're just swept by the outflows. You don't notice them as outlaws. You're just carried and pushed by them. Now you turn around and look at these sins. You see them. That means you're going up to a place where they came from, rather than just being swept away by them and going along with them. You're gradually, carefully turning around and going back up to the place where the disturbance is set up. And again, being calm, realizing our calm helps us do this work. But it's hard. It's really hard to stay with the intensity. I have a hard time staying with the intensity. It really takes a big effort to stay close

[75:54]

to what's happening and not mess around with it. It's easy and it's a form of laziness to mess around with it. It's a form of reducing the intensity to manipulate it. But to live there and to be close to this spot and just be open demands the most of us as practitioners. But I really trust that, and when I occasionally can come up to that, I never regret it. Never regret it. And from my studies, I find most everybody says that's the way to work. They all seem to say that. And also that it's not a fixed thing. It's always changing. There's not a fixed way to do it, which again is part of the intensity and radiance of the situation you cannot get a hold of a way to do this you just have to sit there and be open all these doors which are saying you can do it this way you can do it this way come on do it this way hey do it this way come on over here do it this way these are little devils the hate devil the lust devil the power devil the control devil the patriarchal devil the matriarchal devil the ain't

[77:15]

All these little devils saying, you can do it this way, you can do it this way. These are possible ways to get a control of this thing. They're all hovering around you, telling you, you don't have to sit here and just be a fool. You can accomplish something. You can get this thing under your control. Get these people in line. That reminds me of what you've been talking about, striking these chords for me. I had to come up, I didn't know how to articulate it, and I had to come up with a kind of lexicon. It only consisted of two words, but they were faithful and trust, but I had to redefine them for myself in order to have this vocabulary to kind of articulate this stuff. And realizing into talking that the way that I defined trust is trusted, you know, the self acting out, acting out with me. And faith would be, you know, things coming in. And I guess the best way to describe it, to make out about it, was within relationships.

[78:22]

And thinking that that trust is so important in a relationship. And then the way that I was thinking of trust was, I'm trusting that this person is not going to hurt me, that I'm going to put myself out there, quote, unquote, and I'm not going to get hurt. So much of myself is involved. But faith is, and then, you know, it grows in that area. And what the faith was, I'm going to get this relationship, and whatever happens, happens. And my faith in that is that I'm going to stay with this relationship. You know, and then I get some line here, even like that, that I should be in a relationship with myself. Your divinity is in this other person, not under control. Yeah, the way that... Your divinity is... It has so many constructions. Yeah, right. So many... So please, give up that lexicon. Please. Otherwise this class is going to be very confusing.

[79:25]

Right. Well, that's what I love when you said it, Brittany Harry, that faith trusts doubt. Wonderful. Faith trusts doubt. Buddhist faith thrives on doubt. Doubt is one of the tests of Buddhist faith. And I think probably Christian faith, too. What? What? I think it comes from what's happening. I think what's happening really does draw us. I think we do want to go home. I think we really do want to be at peace. We want to settle into what's happening. That's faith. Well, in his quietness, maybe we should go to bed.

[80:38]

Okay? Should we do one of our chants? Kali? English? Chinese? Chinese? Shujo mohen se ganto

[81:01]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_81.18