I was inspired to ring this bell by my grandson. It's his birthday yesterday. One year old. He recently found this bell and he liked it. He looked like a little toku when he found it, on two of them actually. I feel like a mass of contradictions this morning. One of the main kind of contradictions I feel is one side, I want to leave you alone.

[01:11]

Leave you alone means be near to you and let you be yourself, help you be yourself. The other side, I feel like a nursing mother whose breasts are engorged and needs to give off lots of milk because it hurts to hold it. But I don't want to distract you from yourself by, you know, giving you too much milk. Now, I know that when it comes to being a mother, oftentimes, even if you don't give your milk just to relieve the pressure on your breasts, still, you feed the babies, and some babies then do a lot of vomiting because they overeat.

[02:18]

But that's just part of the thing. Anyway, I feel a conflict. So in one sense, I just thought it'd be nice for us to sit this morning. And I still do think that's a good, kind of a nice way to spend the morning together. I'm reading a children's book with my wife.

[03:21]

And in this book, it's a book about many worlds. And it's a book which proposes a vision of infinite numbers of worlds coexisting simultaneously everywhere. It proposes a vision of, for example, that wherever we are, as if we move our arm, we move our hand through infinite worlds simultaneously. And in one of the worlds in this book, each person, each human being has a demon UM, AND THE WAY THEY... THE WAY THEY SPELL DEMON IS, UM, D-A-E... WHAT DO YOU CALL THAT MARK WHERE THE A AND E ARE STUCK TOGETHER, LIKE IN CAESAR?

[04:29]

HUH? I THINK IT'S CALLED ALLYSION. ALLYSION? ALLYSION. ALLYSION. YEAH, SO, UH, D-A-E WITH THE A... A AND E STUCK TOGETHER, SORT OF OVERLAPPING, M-O-N. I THINK IT'S PRONOUNCED DEMON. AND, UM... Everybody has one of these things. And it's an animal. And it's the opposite sex from what you know, what you overtly appears to be. And children, children's demons constantly change reflecting something about the child. how the child's feeling or whatever. But at a certain point, when the person becomes an adult, the demon settles down into one form

[05:32]

AND WHEN WE'RE READING THIS, I WAS TALKING TO MY WIFE ABOUT THIS THING ABOUT SETTLING DOWN INTO WHO YOU ARE AND THEN YOUR DEMON BECOMES STABILIZED. AND THEN SHE SAID SOMETHING ABOUT ME. I DON'T REMEMBER EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS, BUT IT WAS SOMETHING LIKE, how my life has been a life of trying to be devoted to settling down into what I am. That's a big part of how she sees the practice of my life, of trying to settle into what I am. So part of me wants just to help you settle into now who you are and not do anything to, I'll put it positively, to do anything to help you do that.

[06:53]

I've heard reports from some people and the reports I've heard make me not sure that that's what everybody wants to do. So I don't want to help you become who you are if that's not what you're interested in. And if that is what you're interested in, then actually I don't want to have some fixed idea beforehand about what might be helpful for that, for that concern, for that agenda. So at the beginning of this time together, I ask you to consider... What is the most important thing for you in your life to realize before you die?

[08:46]

And how does this time here, the next few weeks, How does it go with that ultimate concern? What is your intention? How do you wish to take care of yourself and others during this time? To promote that most important thing. If you don't know what the most important thing for you is, then I guess I would ask you to please consider what it is and be open to it being revealed to you. My experience has been when I ask people this question, oftentimes they cannot answer it, in the sense that they don't know the answer to the question.

[10:11]

But sometimes they can answer it, and usually when they answer it, it's a fairly short answer. Because I'm not asking for the sixteen dozen important things, I'm asking for the most important thing in life for you. The thing around which everything else is organized. Some people might call this faith. What is your faith? What do you trust most? So because it's such a simple thing, once discovered, It's easy for, I shouldn't say easy for you to say, but easy for me to listen to it. So I invite you to tell me what it is if you hear about it, if you know. I'd like to hear. If you tell me, then I could ask you another question, and that is, what practices or what practices

[11:23]

supports and is in accord with this fundamental point. And then that's what might make sense to work on. Many times people come to me and they say, what should I practice? I say, well, I don't know. I could tell you lots of good things to do, but they might not be relevant to what's important for you. But once we know what is really most important to you, then we can see what's appropriate. It's not always obvious. For example, someone might say, the most important thing to me is to go north. And then I would say, well, it seems then going north would be, you know, walking north would be appropriate, right?

[12:32]

And they would say, no, I think actually, strangely enough, I think it would be good for me to go east and west a little bit. for starters, just to sort of warm up to the main thing. I'm not really, although that's what I want to do, I'm not really ready to do that. I have to do a little east and west. Okay. Will you be doing that today? No. What are you going to do today? Actually, I'm not going to move today. Okay, fine. Let's try that then. And then we watch and we notice the person starts wandering around. I say, I thought you were going to sit still. I say, oh, I forgot. Thank you. Or, I changed my mind. Well, did you notice that you changed your mind? Well... No, I didn't. Thank you. Or, yes, I did.

[13:32]

Okay, well, then if you want help, sitting still or whatever, and then if you change your mind, you don't want help or you want to move, then it might be good if you want help to tell me that you just changed to, I want to move. So in this way, it's possible to work together and... flexibly negotiate having a human mind and having, perhaps, within the context of having a human mind, human body, which is such a changeable sort of wild field of activity and functioning that it's quite difficult for most of us to remember for very long what is the most important thing again. But actually it's not so difficult for somebody else to remember what you said was most important.

[14:36]

It's hard for you to remember what you said was most important. But it's not so difficult for you to remember what somebody else said because you don't have to live in their body. So if you say the most important thing, when I was 13, not in school but outside of school, at home, in the cool of the night, it dawned on me that if I would just be nice to everybody at school, I wouldn't have any problems if that was my focus. And so I just felt great that I saw that that would, you know, that would like just take me away from all the things that caused me anxiety. Like, was I this or was I that? Rather just be nice to everybody, just be kind to everybody. And that would make life in high school or junior high school really much easier.

[15:36]

That was my ultimate concern at that time that I thought that would, I trusted that. And you know, I still do. But when I got to the school, as soon as I opened the door and I saw all those energetic beings flying to and away and towards me in their very engaging ways, I forgot about my ultimate concern. And I got back into like status and protection and concern for what they thought of me and concern for whether this face was a face showing me that it liked me or disliked me. So if I had told somebody else my insight the night before they would have remembered what I understood but I forgot because I had to live in the body where that thing occurred and now other things are occurring

[16:39]

which say, forget about being nice, this person has just been cruel to me, they need to be punished. Or, this person is just nice to me and they need to be rewarded. I hope that what I've been saying is helping you be yourself.

[18:05]

It's helping me so much. Once again, in a sense, slightly differently. An implication, I think, that I'm trying to convey is that it would be good if you look into your mind and heart and see what is the most important thing in life for you. What is the most important thing for you to be accomplished by you or by everyone in life?

[19:36]

And if you find something about that, even if it's not perfectly clear, I would suggest to you that you express that to somebody who would like to hear about it, that you can trust to tell this to. And I hope there's somebody here that you trust enough to say that to, who I guess maybe... It isn't necessarily the case that somebody you trust enough to say this to is someone who would like to hear it, but it might be the case. That would make you feel more trusting if the person wanted to hear. But some people might feel like, I want you to hear whether you wanted to hear it or not. I want you to know what my main thing is. No, don't tell me. Don't tell me. No, I want you to hear. You'll want you to hear. But I'd like to hear. But you may not trust me enough to tell me. Which I understand that you might.

[20:38]

But I hope you can tell somebody else then if you find it. I think it's good if your secret love's no secret anymore. The way, for me, mine, I'm going to tell you mine. Want to hear it? Mine is, in various ways to put it, I want to live the life of a bodhisattva. I want to live the life of the great vehicle practice. I want to be part of the practice of the great vehicle. That's what I want. And I'm willing to do it Zen style, although I'm not set on it being Zen style.

[21:42]

I'm open to it being Vajrayana style. It could even be Nichiren, maybe, or Pure Land. It could be even a different school of Zen from Soto. It could be Rinzai. It could even be a form of Buddhism usually not considered to be Mahayana, like it could be Theravada Buddhism, but secretly I'd be a bodhisattva practicing in the form of a Theravada Buddhist. Or it could be something that's not Buddhist. But I'm particularly open for the next few months anyway to do it kind of like in the forms of Soto Zen. But I'm not attached to them.

[22:46]

And you don't have to be either from my point of view. And so what I mean by that is... I want to be devoted to all beings. I want to live the life of being devoted to every living being, and that means every human too, not just every frog and every mountain lion and every, you know, newt, but all people, all of them, every single one. That's what I want. That's the life I want to live with no exception. That's the life I want to live and be completely devoted to to each one. That's the way I want to live and that's the way I wanted to live when I was first attracted to the Zen style of bodhisattva. Because I saw some Zen style bodhisattvas who seemed to be kind of like able to like be devoted to whatever, whatever shows up.

[23:56]

I thought, I want to be like that. And I still do. I'm not saying I've arrived there, but that's what I want. And I'm telling you so you can hold me accountable to that. That's my program I wish to enter. And... I was talking to someone recently and I told him that that was my agenda. This person was saying something like they didn't know if... I don't know exactly what they didn't know, but it was something like they didn't know if we should continue to meet like this, to go on like this. And I said, well, that's up to you, but I have no choice. I'm devoted to you from now on until you're completely enlightened.

[25:07]

And of course after that I'll be devoted to you as a Buddha. But there's no way for me to end my relationship with anybody. and I don't want to. I mean, sure, like today I'd like to end my relationship with some of you, but that's not my program. That's just my human impulsiveness. I've had enough of you. That's not the way I want to be. I've already accomplished that a long time ago. Impatience, lack of devotion, selfishness. I knew that when I was a little kid. But what I'm aspiring to, what I want to be, is in this practice of being a bodhisattva, of feeling like no matter what comes, it's not irrelevant to this program. There's nothing like, oh, well, this is not, you know, this is not, I don't have to pay attention to this. No. Not that way. The other way, yes, this is relevant.

[26:13]

I do have to pay attention to this. This is my life. This is my opportunity. You are my opportunity. You who have had enough of this and are thinking that you'd like to just like say goodbye or whatever, this is like a waste of time to you. You who are saying that I'm a waste of time to you, you are not a waste of time to me. And those of you who don't think I'm a waste of time, you're also relevant. But fortunately or unfortunately, not everybody is on the same page in a sense, so people offer all kinds of different opportunities. Some people offer you a tense, angry body to meet, Some offer you a shocked, frightened face to meet.

[27:20]

Some offer you a very relaxed, open, adoring face to meet. All these are challenging to meet them without any grasping. So again, I just said it, what I want to do is devote my life to a way of being devoted to all beings without grasping, without possessing the beings, being devoted to something without trying to control it, being devoted to individual beings and without trying to make them go the way I might think they should go. So I might think, oh, you people should follow a schedule here. I don't think that, but I could think that.

[28:26]

And so I could be devoted to you, but I would be careful not to try to make you follow the schedule that I think you should follow. But anyway, I don't think you should follow the schedule. So I'm not tempted to try to make you follow the schedule. But I have other people here who do think you should follow the schedule. And they will try to get you to follow the schedule. You're sitting right near some of them right now. But some of you are going to follow the schedule. And you're following the schedule is going to be so lovely that others will be inspired to to help you continue. And they'll sit with you to keep you going on your lovely practice. So it is possible to encourage people to do things that you think would be good even though you're not trying to control them and to do these things.

[29:30]

This is part of the arc that I'd like to learn. So the great vehicle of the Bodhisattva, the Mahayana, is sometimes presented in terms of having three main aspects. One is great compassion. Another is great renunciation. And the other is great realization. So I'd like to be devoted to realizing these practices, these dimensions of the bodhisattva practice. And I was talking to Linda and she said that what she'd like to focus on during this time is great compassion and

[30:38]

the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, the Bodhisattva of Infinite Compassion, and some of the Mahayana scriptures which deal with Great Compassion. So I'd like you to understand that although she may be emphasizing these Mahayana teachings about Great Compassion, If she wasn't doing it, I would still want that to be understood as the context for the things I'm talking about. Because I'd like to talk more about great renunciation and great realization. But probably great renunciation will perhaps take most of the time. These three, they don't exactly... They dependently co-arise.

[31:43]

But sometimes it may seem like you can do one and then the next and then the next. But really they grow up together. Great compassion must involve the other two. But... You can have a little bit of compassion or even actually you can have a lot of compassion without renunciation and realization. And you can have a little bit of realization with not much renunciation and not much compassion. And you can have a little bit of renunciation without much realization or much compassion. I don't know if that all makes sense to you already before I say anything more than that.

[32:48]

Does it? Yeah. Does anybody? I don't remember what the last one was. Do you? I think I might have said you can have a little bit of renunciation without great realization and great compassion. Or I might have said it. It's on tape. Or I might have said you can have a little bit of renunciation with a little bit of realization and a little bit of compassion. I might have said that. But I think the realization of the bodhisattva... In order to have the deep realization, which means realization, which means making what's real, real, which means actualize reality, which means realize the freedom of all beings, that realization of emptiness, that realization of emptiness, which is the realization of selflessness,

[33:53]

that depends on not a little bit of compassion, but great compassion. You need a tremendous amount of love and devotion to many beings in order to have thorough realization of selflessness, of egolessness, of emptiness. And also, in order to have really pure compassion, you need realization of selflessness. But you can have a lot of compassion which isn't quite pure without full realization of selflessness. And you can have considerable realization of selflessness, but not full realization of selflessness, with not great pure compassion. Yes. What is into your compassion?

[34:55]

Well, like I said before, you're totally devoted to somebody, but you also want to possess them. So like you're a mother, you're probably totally devoted to your daughter, but you might have certain kind of possessive feelings about her. Or you might have some kind of like thing of trying to make her go this way rather than that way. That your way is the right way. You know, something like that. Some little sense of, well, I just happen to know what's right. I mean, you know. I mean, I'm right and you're wrong, daughter. There might be something like that. That's kind of like, I mean, you're actually like, actually attributing substantial reality to your opinion about what's best for her. Many parents have that feeling. That's actually an impurity in the compassion. Because you might be wrong. You're definitely wrong about your opinion inherently existing reality. Ultimately,

[36:00]

Even with someone, well, actually, it's a good example to start with a child. Originally, your love for your child was kind of like, had something to do with your understanding that your child is not other than you. There's kind of like something about that, that there really is no mother aside from daughter. They're not, they're different, but you can't have one without the other. They don't differ in being. They just differ in terms of being able to be differentiated And then we tend to start thinking that that difference is real. And that sense of the child being other than the mother, if the mother holds that view or if the child holds that view, that's an impurity in the love. So that's why it says in the Diamond Sutra that bodhisattvas are devoted to the welfare of all beings and all the different categories of beings. And they're devoted to carry these beings across to the other shore of peace and freedom party.

[37:10]

But in this process of being devoted to carry all beings across, there are no other beings that they carry across. In order to actually save beings thoroughly, unconditionally, and completely, we must understand that there are no other beings. As long as we think there's other beings, our love for them is impure. However, our hate is pure. You can have pure hate for beings, you know, and still think they're other. But love to be purified is purified of the otherness And purification of otherness is realization of selflessness. And if we love people and are devoted to people, we can feel the problem of the possessiveness and the otherness. And that difficulty can be

[38:13]

can be an ongoing little irritant or goad to push us to have a better, better understanding of our relationships so that finally we give up all, we're devoted to beings without trying to control them. We're devoted to them and we watch them grow and develop and we do anything we can to help but we have no fixed idea about, no fixed perspective about how that's going to go. But every time they come we meet them. Every time they come we meet them. Our vow is to meet whoever comes, meet whoever comes, meet whatever comes, meet it, [...] with no fixed perspective. This is the renunciation. The renunciation practice is to renounce our perspective about this person that we're meeting.

[39:16]

And this can be a human person or a non-human person. But we renounce, we relinquish our perspective of who this is. Oh, this is like a good teacher. This is like a good student. This is like a good son. This is a good daughter. This is a good mother. We have these perspectives. Our brain generates perspectives. It's never, well, as long as it's a healthy brain, it's always putting those perspectives out. Perspectives are to be relinquished, to be renounced. Not killed, but relinquished. If you have no perspectives, that's a perspective. It's not the having a perspective or not having a perspective that's important.

[40:20]

It's the renunciation of the perspective. And great compassion, we need great compassion in order to practice renunciation fully. And we need to practice renunciation to purify the great compassion. And working with those practices, we're setting the conditions for the realization of Buddha's wisdom. Yes? When you said perspectives are to be relinquished, I'm thinking also about your saying with not to control anything.

[41:21]

Well, not to control... Actually, we just watch them go away rather than some action called relinquish them. Watch them go away, that would be fine. Watch them come, watch them go. But watching them arise and watching them cease... having the intention to watch them arise and watch them cease rather than to grab on. Pushing them away is very similar to grabbing onto them. So pushing them away or holding onto them. Grasping or rejecting are in the realm of control. Neither grasping nor rejecting Your perspectives means you watch your perspectives arise and you watch your perspectives cease. So you watch the perspective, oh, this person is, oh, this is so-and-so. Like this is foo. You watch that perspective arise and you watch that perspective go away.

[42:23]

And another one might come, oh, this is my friend. And that goes away. This is my enemy that arises and goes away. This is my helper. This person is being helpful to me. And then that comes and goes away. Now this person is being unhelpful to me. This arises and goes away. That's relinquishment. The relinquishment is just to watch dharmas arise and cease. And watching them arise and cease... helps you settle into the reality of things, in the realm of where things arise and cease, you're settling into the reality of arising and ceasing. Relinquishment means, partly, part of what relinquishment means is you're letting go of the behaviors that hold you away from what's happening.

[43:25]

So what's happening is perspectives are arising and ceasing. Opinions about people, judgments about people are arising and ceasing. Have you noticed? If you haven't, then that would be, if you wanted to practice renunciation in this great vehicle practice, then part of what you would do would be to start to notice these perspectives arising and ceasing. Once you can notice them arising and ceasing, you're very close to relinquishing them. It's kind of the same thing. The definitions of things are what? You stop grasping your definitions. The definitions still arise and cease, but you don't grasp them anymore. Like I have definitions maybe, I think I have definitions for what it would be for you to be a good man.

[44:38]

And I have a definition of man, and according to my definition of man, I say you fall into that category. You know, whereas I have definition of a boy, and then you don't fall in that category. But, what I'm recommending is, if my definition, actually when my definition of man drags with the definition of boy, the related definitions. Boys go from here to here and then men start here. Maybe there's a gray zone between. So I have all these definitions of men, boys, and gray areas. And then every time I meet somebody, I have all these categories available. I means my mind, my brain has all these categories available. And some of them fly up and maybe one of them gets chosen. This is the appropriate one. This is a man. This is not a boy. So the practice of renunciation is to not grasp

[45:42]

the conclusion based on the category of man, not grasp the conclusion, this is a man. But just watch, oh, this seems like this category of man has arisen and ceased. The more I can just watch this idea of a man arising and ceasing, the more I can let go of believing that that's really what I'm seeing over there is a man, that you are, So in discussing renunciation with you, I will bring to you examples of how we think and look at how we think because intimacy with how we think is the same as renouncing how we think. relinquishing how we think, not stopping how we think, but just letting our thinking process go, but by becoming intimate with it and understanding it, we can become free of it. When we're free of our thinking,

[46:45]

we actually realize great compassion and great realization. But we need great compassion to study our thinking. Because without great compassion, we're going to get angry at our thinking. And sometimes the way we get angry at our thinking is we get angry at our thinking in the form of getting angry at what we're thinking about other people. But really, it's your thinking. Like that story I told about my daughter when she was, I think, maybe, I don't know how old she was, seven or eight. You know that story? How many people know this story? One, two, three, four, five. This is a story about getting angry at her friend. So her friend came over to visit and they had an intimate time together.

[48:00]

I don't know what they were thinking of each other at the time, but anyway, the way they were thinking about each other, the way my daughter was thinking about her friend, she liked what she was thinking about her friend. And then her friend's mother came to pick her up after she stayed overnight. And the girl ran to her mother and jumped on her mother's lap and gave her a big hug or something. And then the girl and her mother went home. And then after the girl and the mother left our house, my daughter said to her mother and me, She did that just to make me mad. In other words, she got in her mother's lap just to make me jealous. So at that time, we can see now, we can see, looking at my daughter's thinking, the way my daughter was thinking about that, she had this view that that girl went and hugged her mother just to make my daughter jealous.

[49:04]

That's what my daughter actually thought. Can you imagine thinking that way? And also, she thought that way, but she grasped it. And when she grasped it, she became angry at this person that she loved a few minutes before. Isn't that funny? You love somebody, then you think something about them, you grasp it, and then you hate them. This is called impure compassion. But if you love someone and you think something about them, and you don't grasp it, you don't hate them. As a matter of fact, you're not grasping it is a way for you to continue unstoppably loving them. So no matter what they bring you, you just say, okay, I guess you're bringing me this. Okay, well, I'm not going to grasp that. [...] So you can't stop me from loving you. I'm thinking of my sister and thinking of the throne now in this.

[50:06]

Right. Watch out for the telephone. Before you pick up the telephone, say, you know, here it comes. Don't get caught off guard, you know? Right. Right. Where's the thought? Where's the thought in a tense muscle, you mean? Well, like you hear a voice, you know, you hear a voice, right? Like, I often say, you know, if I ever commit suicide, it'll probably be because of getting an unhelpful long-distance operator. You know, like you call up, you say, could I have a... You know, so very quickly you can hear a voice and hear, this is my sister. And then you think, this is my sister. And when you think this is my sister, you got something to hold onto there.

[51:10]

And as soon as you grasp this category of my sister, your whole body goes into spasm. But your mind can very quickly categorize, this is not my baby calling for help, this is my sister. All these different things, over all these years, have gone into the same package. And every time those packages arise, and I grasp it, I have this strong habit to grasp that category called sister, very strong, and when I grasp that category, then all this body stuff happens, and it happens very fast. This is like, you're not a slow being. We're not slow beings. We can instantly go into spasm. We also can go into spasm slowly. We have all kinds of varieties of tensing and reacting. But you can very quickly pick up a phone and immediately feel relaxed or tense depending on how you grip something. Let me finish the story about my daughter.

[52:15]

Can we open a few windows? Yeah. Yeah, that's... So... So my daughter said she... My friend did that just to make me... Just to make me... Mad. And then a few minutes later, my daughter was sitting on my lap, and her mother said, Are you doing that just to make me mad? Yeah. And my daughter said, okay, I'll give her another chance. In other words, she could see that it isn't necessarily the case when you express love to one person, you're trying to make somebody else jealous. It isn't necessarily the case. It could be, but it's not necessarily the case. She said, okay, I'll give her another chance. I'll watch her at school tomorrow. So when she came home from school, one or the other of us said to her, well, what did you see?

[53:25]

And she said, I saw that I was getting angry at her for what I was thinking about her. That's what we get angry about, people about, is what we think about the person. You can also get angry at a behavior by what you think about a behavior. But it's not so bad to get angry at behaviors. Behaviors don't get hurt by anger. Beings do. It's okay to be angry at something, at a harmful action. But it's not okay to get angry at beings. They don't need your anger. But it's okay to get angry, you know, as something that is good to get angry at, like cruelty. But if somebody's being cruel, you can get angry that they're being cruel, but you don't get angry at them. You don't want them to get hurt because they're being cruel. You want them to get over the cruelty. But it's good to notice, to see how you think.

[54:31]

We need to understand how we think. So the practice of... Great renunciation is the practice of studying how our mind doesn't renounce, doesn't relinquish, but grasps, grasps, grasps, grasps. And we need great compassion to study this field because we go along certain amount of the time grasping things and being tense about it and stressing our system about it but we kind of you know we get by we kind of we kind of adapt to being tense and stressed and we start to meditate on how you're doing that you might feel even more stressed and And so we need to be patient and kind and gentle with ourselves as we study how rough we are with ourselves.

[55:32]

We need to be patient and kind with ourselves and with others as we study how we think of ourselves and how we think of others. This is difficult work, that's why we need great compassion and great love in order to study this difficult material of the thought, oh, over there is a tense, nasty person. There is a person who is not being nice to me, who is not being open to me, who is disrespecting me. There's my view. Now how do I not push that view away and not grasp it? I mean, it's just, couldn't I just like get away from this person? Or couldn't I just like eliminate this person and have some other assignment right now? No. This is your assignment.

[56:33]

This is who's there. And they're really challenging you. And this is where you're going to grow. Now, of course, your sister or your mother, these are like the last people you're going to be able to relax with. So don't expect to be like with the big ones like that to like do this practice in the near future. But with some other people you have a chance maybe to loosen up a little bit and to like consider possibly relinquishing your perspective. You might be able to survive the encounter without grasping your perspective about who this is. And again you will have a perspective. You know Once in a while, there's a gap. You meet somebody, and there's, like, no perspective. You know, like... You know, no perspective. Like, just, what? What? What? What? You know, not even, like, okay, well, it's a man, at least.

[57:39]

It's an adult. No, and once in a while, that happens. But usually, you've got a few possibilities, right? This is a man. He's kind of a Zen student. He's a little bit over 20. You've got some stuff available. And if time comes and there's nothing available, okay, fine. But most of the time, you're getting challenged by some category. And some of them aren't that powerful or obnoxious. So then you feel like, well, what's the harm in grasping human? That's not going to hurt, is it? But, you know, you grasp the ones that aren't so bad, and then you sort of lull yourself into grasping the ones that are bad. Like, you go from human to female to cute to she doesn't like me to I hate her, you know. So actually, we need to, like, practice on the things which don't seem so bad, too. practice not grasping any of our perspectives.

[58:46]

You mentioned that the mothers and the sisters and those are the last, the big ones, and I was just wondering if you could say something about the human process of where you take all that that's with your sister and you kind of put it on sort of a regular old Zen student that it might seem like you could easily relinquish, but it comes with all this other baggage which makes it also well-asked to go, maybe. Right. That's part of the, what do you call it, the usefulness of the transference process is that you have... sometimes a little better chance of understanding the transference with somebody who knows that, you know, that really they're not your father or they're not your mother or they're not your lover. So that they can actually, they have some detachment themselves because although they have sometimes what's called counter-transference, they're trained to know, oh, this is counter-transference that's happening.

[60:03]

I'm feeling like her mother even though I'm not her mother. And she doesn't really want me to be her mother, but she's actually treating me as though I were her mother. And if I would actually ask her maybe if she wants, if I tell her about how I'm feeling this way, she could tell me that actually she doesn't want me to be her mother and she would know maybe that she has that feeling for me. So having relationships where these categories, these very difficult to deal with, very deep categories, are being brought out into the relationship offer a chance to get to know them in a way that you maybe not be able to work with them with the actual person, with the actual mother, who's saying, yes, I am your mother. That's right. And yes, I am trying to control you still. And yes, you do belong to me, and so on and so forth. And yes, and I do want to know why you are wearing that dress.

[61:05]

You know? And why do you wear your hair that way? Or why aren't you wearing that dress? Why aren't you wearing that dress? Right. And, you know... I walked my mother and my sister together, and it's like, it's what do you call it? It's mythic. My sister loves my mother so much. When I look at my sister's face when she's looking at my mother, I just, intense love and devotion. My sister feels for my mother. And my mother, who's in the position of receiving this incredible love, says to this person, why do you wear your hair that way? Mothers say those things to these totally devoted beings, and it crushes them. It doesn't seem that bad. Why do you wear your hair that way? But in the context of this tremendous love, it is crushing, and they can't stop it.

[62:09]

I mean, they don't. Maybe someday they will. So this person needs somebody else to go talk to who they think is going to say something about their hair. and maybe never does, or maybe says, guess what I feel like saying to you right now? It has something to do with your hair. Want to go through that one? When you're ready? So we can play these things out and test to see, finally, finally find out that there is something about love in that thing about the hair. It's not total cruelty, even though it crushes you. It's just that you weren't able to understand what's this as love. What does it mean to not grasp that I think that you're human?

[63:18]

Well, one thing it could mean, in terms of what I just mentioned, like food, is you can watch your thinking and watch the idea, watch the category of human arise to actually see, oh, I think you're a human, to actually be able to observe that you've got that category. You know, like sometimes I watch people serve in the Zendo. The servers serve the meals, the zendo. And sometimes the things they do are unusual relative to the traditional forms. But sometimes I've noticed when I'm watching them I've noticed that it's because I think they're human that I'm so surprised that they're doing certain things. And I think, now, if that was my dog, one time when I was at Tassajara, I had my big dog with me who was about this human-sized dog. And I thought, now, if my dog Eric was carrying the water bowl in, you know, in his mouth, I would think, you know, fine.

[64:31]

or around his neck, or whatever, you know, or dragging it behind him, attached to his tail, I would think, cool, you know? That's neat how he did that. Whereas if a server drags the pot in on a little rope or something, I think, that's very strange, you know? But it's because I had this category of human, I realized that I thought the servers were human. So then I thought, humans will serve this way. But when I saw that, I relaxed around the way the servers behave. And now it's like this show of possible ways of doing things. But it's not like, I no longer have this feeling like get them in control because they're supposed to be this kind of human and they're supposed to be this Soto Zen server and all these categories. Then you get very tight about this stuff and then you don't appreciate the relevance of this presentation. the relevance of an opportunity to love this being. Just like you would love a dog who did whatever they were doing.

[65:36]

Or a child. There's humor in it. There's a great deal of... There's beauty in it. But if you have a category of human and Zen student... Or, you know, a Zen student that's been around for more than two weeks. If you have those categories, then certain behaviors come and you tense up and you lose your appreciation. But your mind actually does create these things and you can't see how... We can talk about how you cannot see how these categories are created, but you can see the arising and ceasing of the categories. And you can notice that they're there, and you can see how they work, even though you can't see how they're concocted, because they're concocted unconsciously. So they're just relaxing? Relaxing will help you actually see them. And then sometimes when you see them, you're even more challenged. You have to relax again with your reaction to seeing them. The more relaxed you can be, but relaxed up close, not relaxed at a distance, but relaxed in the actual rising and ceasing of these categories like this person doesn't care about me, this person doesn't respect me,

[66:52]

That means you're at a category of what care would look like and what respect would look like. You can see there's a category there, and you can watch it arise and cease. And the more you're just watching the arising and ceasing of your thinking, the closer you get into relaxing with it, and the deeper your understanding of how the process goes, and the better you understand the limits also of your understanding. The more you relax with your limited understanding, the more you understand that your limited understanding is limited. But when you tense up around your limited understanding, you think, this is real. And as a matter of fact, yes? I'm sorry. As a matter of fact, the funny thing is, is that when we get tense, it's often the time when we think, yes, I really do need to be tense on this because this is really real. And when we don't take it so real and we feel relaxed, we say, well, I don't have to be attached to this because, you know, it's not so real.

[67:59]

So the tension comes from grasping, and then because we're grasping, we think, yes, we really do need to grasp. I just wanted to clarify something. There might be some sokus in the room right now. Yes. And in some of what you're saying, should they pay attention to it in such a way, when they give instructions to their crews, do you think they should continue to give them the traditional instructions about how they bring in the food? Yes, I think the traditional instructions are wonderful opportunities to realize non-attachment. And the more precise and detailed you are in the instruction, the more opportunities there are for non-attachment.

[69:02]

If we have a vague, generalized idea of what it means to serve, people go in there and everybody's got their own idea of what it is and what should be the case, but it's vague. You generally feel like these people are not doing a very good job, or you generally feel like they are. But since it's not specific, you don't notice actually that you actually are attached to your view that they're generally doing okay or they're sort of not doing okay. You don't have any place to like catch the place. Plus, we don't have a place to interact with each other. But, you know, I know Suzuki Roshi towards the latter part of his life when he had many years probably of learning by mistakes. So when he taught me forms, he taught me in such a way that I almost never felt like he was saying, you're wrong, and this is the way to do it. It was more like, hey, you want to learn a form? And I always felt like, great, this is the way he could relate to me.

[70:07]

Now, he could relate to people more than just through forms, but with me anyway, a lot of the way he related to me was showing me how to do things. And I always felt like this is my way to be with him. So I remember one time at tea at Tassajara, afternoon tea, He pulled me away to the side. He didn't say, nice tea we're having today. He said, I'd like to teach you how to walk when you're carrying the stick. So he showed me how to put the feet down when I was carrying the stick. And you know, I can hardly remember what he said. But the feeling I had was, oh, this is like, this is, he cares about me, you know? It wasn't like, you're a bad Zen student, I'm going to teach you how to... But rather, he cares about me to spend his time showing me how to walk. And he had a form to convey to me, and maybe he wanted me to try it, but the feeling was anyway, that kind of feeling. So the sokus have this gift to give to the other people, and if they...

[71:12]

if after you give the gift, if they didn't seem to get it, to offer it again and again with the spirit of this kind of like conveying of compassion and love, then I think if you get good at it, they actually like, they like drink it up. It's like, thank you. Thank you for this, you know, this thing. And the more you watch them and see the little things that they can work on, the more you can give to them. And of course, sometimes people are feeling overwhelmed And they're not up for feedback, so you have to be sensitive to that too. Like you might say, do you have a moment? Are you ready for, are you up for some feedback? And sometimes it's good to give it to somebody else nearby rather than them. Like one time, I was having tea with Suzuki Roshi and other staff people in the city center, and I moved a Zabuton, a sitting mat, I moved it with my foot. I adjusted it on the floor with my foot. And he turned to Steve Weintraub and yelled at Steve Weintraub.

[72:20]

He said, do not move the Zabatons with your feet. And Steve looked at him like, hmm. I wonder why he mentioned that. And it didn't bother Steve. He just didn't quite understand what he was talking about. But I knew what he was talking about. And now, what is it, more than 30 years later, I remember not only to be respectful to Zapatons, and sometimes I do still move Zapatons with my feet, but every time I do, I always think of Suzuki Roshi. and his kindness to me. And also when I bend down and move with my hands, I always think of Suzuki Roshi and his kindness to me. No matter how I move his abuton on the floor, I always think of his kindness. But also his skillfulness of pointing it out, not to embarrass me.

[73:28]

He said it really loudly too, you know. Didn't hurt Steve. didn't hurt me, but I got to see that he really meant that this is a big deal to respect everything. No exceptions. And they're really emphatic with a lot of fire, but not at me and not at Steve. but just fiery passion for taking care of every single thing you meet, so that teaching penetrates. And Soku sometimes can really help the servers by giving a very passionate instruction about some point, but in such a way that nobody gets burned by that instruction, but everybody gets the point of, this is really important. And as a result, I often feel when I see these serving at Zen Center, I think this is one of the most beautiful things we do is the way we serve. That people really do a good job.

[74:29]

I mean, they really try to do well and it really comes across and it's really lovely. And at the beginning, the same, well, a lot of the same people wholeheartedness is there, but it takes a while to get it. So at the beginning of serving, sometimes a little bit, sometimes the servers are kind of like wandering around the zendo and stuff, somewhat lost. And it's interesting at Tassajara, as you do a practice period, the beginning of the practice period is one way, but if you go to Tassajara towards the end, whether you've been there the whole time or you're a visitor, towards the end of the practice period, it gets very, very nicely worked out, and it's really like a beautiful dance that they do. and it's very kind and by that time most people have worked out the hatred that they have between some of the people on the crew and some of the servers and some of the servees.

[75:29]

They work through all that and it's like it's nirvana. And then the practice period is over and then we become free of nirvana. But these forms can be great opportunities of generosity and patience on the part of the teachers, the sokus, and also patience with the skill level of the soku. Sometimes they're maybe a little tense, the way they're teaching you. But on both sides, to try to relinquish your view and meet the person in this space where you're mostly watching your mind, you know, can't really see the other person's, you're seeing your own mind, your own categories is what you're seeing. And then if you grasp your categories, then your relationship becomes focused on thinking that that person is what you think of them, which is not true. They're not what you think they are. They're not what I think they are.

[76:31]

But the more we can realize that we're studying our own mind and meet our own mind in this relaxed way, intimate and relaxed way, the more the actual relationship starts to be manifested. So it seems like there's sometimes that these perspectives or concepts come up, like a precision in the form of holding the pot. Yes. That we're going to be close to, relaxed, maybe I would say like not really believing it, but at the same time, we're going to really use that concept, right? Yeah, right, exactly. So... Is there some sort of way of knowing when we're just using a concept versus grasping the concept or the perspective? Well, if I tell you, I want to tell you, but before I tell you, I want to tell you not to grasp this. Okay? But there are certain signs of tension and sort of energetic disturbances that happen around grasping.

[77:41]

Again, I told some stories, which I won't tell the exact story over again, but I've had the experience sometimes of having a concept about some form in our practice together. It can be a form about personal posture or behavior, but it also can be about the form of the monastery, the shape of the meditation hall, the way the monastery is laid out, the way the rock garden looks, all that stuff. at Green Gulch, but particularly at Tassajara where things are kind of pretty well established. We have a rock garden outside the Founders Hall. Suzuki Roshi put those rocks there, some of them. So if anybody wants to move any rocks, it's like they have to talk to all the senior practitioners throughout Zen Center before you move any rock because you might be moving one of Suzuki Roshi's rocks. So all this kind of stuff is very carefully taken care of at Tassajara. Okay? But I've had the experience of being consulted about some form in the practice

[78:45]

And then when I first thought of it, it comes up and then it just like comes up and goes away. And that's like, I see the form, I see the concept, I see the value, I see the tradition. It comes up and it goes away. And if I was sitting in meditation, it would come up and go away. And if I was calm, it would come up and go away and I would continue to be calm. But I've actually observed in some cases where I was going along fairly calmly and then some formal, some actual formal thing, because you know, In my work, in my religion, these forms are very important. So when some form comes up and I grasp it, and then I go sit, and I notice that when I'm sitting, my mind, it's very turbulent. And I say, what happened here? I was going over the ocean pretty smoothly here, and suddenly this water's very rough. And it's actually seething with poisonous fumes. And I think it has something to do with this thing I'm holding. Now, I can't necessarily let go, but again, one time when that was happening to me, just the first line of the first case of the Book of Serenity came up in my mind.

[79:57]

Clearly observed. That word came up, and I don't know what happened. I mean, I don't know how it worked, but there was a release of the grasping of that form concept I had, and the waters became immediately tranquil. And that concept, which I still have, that value I still have, didn't change at all. It's still available, but I'm not holding it anymore. And therefore, it doesn't disturb my mind. And when my mind was disturbed, I could see it was because I was holding that. Another thing that happens when you're holding concepts is when you talk to people, You know, like if you're walking along sometimes and you're wearing like, I don't know, if you're wearing plastic or something, clothes, and you're walking on a rug or something, sometimes you develop static electricity and you don't even know it and you touch somebody and you give them a shock. If you're carrying these concepts and holding them, you may not notice it, but when you talk to people, you give them a shock.

[81:04]

You don't notice offhand that you have this charge, but when you touch them, you realize you have a charge because they don't even hear what you said. You just see them, I don't know what, they either jump backwards or they get angry, but they feel that charge that you had on this concept. There's no way sometimes it shows up to you. But that will probably be the case when you're moving around and you don't even notice. You're not feeling, you're not like actually consulting the level of your stability, so you don't notice that actually you're all agitated, so you notice it more by what you do to other people when you talk about this. And so these are some ways that you can tell that you're clinging to your view, that you're holding to a fixed perspective. It causes these kind of psychophysical disturbances, which are inside and also will show in your relationship with people too. And it's showing your body too, but you can't necessarily see your body, but if you look inside, you can see it.

[82:10]

You can also see by people's reaction to you. Once you let go, you can talk about the exact same topic, but with relaxation. So, I mean, Tim's work is work that he cares about bringing his values about certain things to people. It's a big part of what you're doing, right? You want to tell people, I have this value. I want you to look at this value I have. And if you hold the value, there's a possibility that by holding your value, you might respect someone who has a different value less. Whereas if you don't hold your value, you can respect somebody who has really a different value. And rather than see this as my enemy, you can see this person as your brother or your sister. And when they see that look in your eye, which is not even grasping the idea of sister or brother, but just open to brother, sister, lover, father, Buddha, whatever, you know, you're just open to this person.

[83:15]

They see that openness. They relax. And then you say, maybe you say, brother, I'd like to say something to you. And they say, what is it? And you say, this is how I feel about this. And they say, okay, I hear you, brother. And we're both not even clinging to the idea of brother. We mean brother means I don't know who you are, but you're me. And I'm a man, so I call you brother. Excuse me. But if you can convey your values to people that way, they may still not accept them, but they'll listen to you. Whereas even if you have a wonderful offering to give to someone of something you've really done a lot of work on and studied a lot and really have a lot of information about and you really have a gift of all the work you've done to find out about how things work, there's some dharma there. If you look down on them, the dharma doesn't get conveyed. And grasping your perspective on somebody is a kind of put-down.

[84:16]

Even if you think this is my friend, if you grasp it, it's still not really open to all the person is. They're not just your category of friend. It's not to say they're your enemy either. It's just that people are beyond our minds, our neural working with them. And, you know, one of the nice definitions, a neurological definition of category is when the input... is greater than the output. So when you get a lot of information about something, and then you simplify it into less. Because, like for example, in your eye, I think there's 100 million nerves in the eye. 100 million nerve cells in the eye. 100 million coming in, but about 100 going out. still a million going out, but 100 million going in.

[85:22]

So categories are the way that information is boiled down into a simpler form. So that's part of our nature is to boil things down into a simplified form for conveying. And then later they're expanded again. But in order to convey information, it has to be categorized. So we have to do that. So when we see each other, there's something about us which simplifies everybody on a ratio of 1 to 100 or something. We simplify people. We condense them. We summarize them. We can't help it. But we can let go of that. We can let go of what we've done to them and be open to that they're more than what we have made them into and put our hands together and say, I don't know who you are, but I'm devoted to you. So maybe we can go sit now for the rest of the morning, except for those who are going to get a service instruction.

[86:24]

Thank you. May our intentions

[86:32]

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