I've mentioned the teaching, the basic teaching of the Buddha from the early days of teaching about dependent co-arising, that all phenomena arise dependently. All phenomena are dependent co-arisings. The principle of dependent co-arising or the dependently co-arising nature of things can also be called interdependence. and it also can be called creativity.

[01:04]

And perhaps you could say that more than anything else, the apperception and understanding of dependent co-arising or creativity is what makes life worth living. It is the vision of beauty. And the practice of what we call samadhi or concentration and also what I've been calling playing is the realm in which we are playful, is the realm in which there is the actual apperception of creativity. And when we witness dependent core rising or creativity of anything in that way of witnessing and then acting from or upon this creativity, this is

[02:58]

being fully alive. Even when we're not fully alive, still, our life, in any way that we're living, belongs to creativity or dependent core rising. But when we can witness it, participate with it, and act from it, then we appreciate fully what life is. So I'm coming to use playing and concentration in a playful way, almost as synonymous So I could say that samadhi, concentration, calm abiding, those aren't three things, those are three names for one thing, that this state of

[04:23]

calm mental one-pointedness, the state of calm which is realized, the state of flexibility and lightness which is realized in mental one-pointedness is itself therapeutic to our mind and body. Therapy has the origin, the etymology of to attend to. It is a way of attending to our mind and body. And therapy also has the connotation of healing. So samadhi is a way of healing our body and mind. Healing it from the affliction

[05:26]

from the wound of feeling like things are not interdependent. When we are witnessing things existing independently of each other, when that's what we witness, that way of witnessing and acting upon that way of witnessing creates a kind of affliction in our life, a kind of wound. and acting upon this scene, this scene of split up, isolated things, acting upon it reaffirms this vision of separateness and develops the wound further. So samadhi actually heals the wound. However, it is a temporary healing because the mind is innately inclined towards re-envisioning the world of separateness

[07:02]

and re-witnessing the world of separateness and re-wounding itself even after we enter into samadhi where we appreciate mental one-pointedness. In other words, where we see that mind and object are not independent things. Even when we give up the idea that they're independent and give up running back and forth between objects, So as soon as we stop doing the concentration practice, this basic misconception reasserts itself and we're wounded again. In other words, samadhi does not by itself transform the way we see things. It more heals, it temporarily changes the way we see things. It temporarily changes the way we see things. subdues or takes a rest from splitting things into separate entities.

[08:19]

To arrange, to make arrangements so that beings just to make the arrangements for it, is part of the healing process, is a healing process. When beings actually can enter into the concentration, this calm mental one-pointedness, that is a further healing. In the state of concentration, this is a dynamic concentration. In other words, it's calm, but it's also flowing and interactive. and in the calm of that interactive space, in that space we come to actually participate in and then finally witness the interdependence.

[09:34]

And then, if that witnessing is then reflected back to us, our actual way of perceiving changes then there's no further healing, I mean no further wounding. So there's finally a transformation of the basic way that the mind operates rather than just a temporary resting of it. I have a feeling that the word concentration and even the words like calming stabilizing tranquilizing practicing serenity that these words that one of the problems of those words which are usually used for this process which I just used for this process of realizing mental one-pointedness and calm

[10:45]

is that they sound a little static, a little too still. That's why I'm using this synonym, this new word, playful, being playful. So to say what I said before, but just say, exchanging the word playful or playing, to just make arrangements to set things up so that there can be playfulness or so that there can be playing. That in itself is a healing process. And then actually when the playing starts, that heals this wound of splitting the world up into isolated, independent, separate things. in playing, this dependent core arising is discovered, revealed, participated with.

[11:54]

And then there is an understanding that the things that we're aware of, like our self, And then we understand, for example, who we are and what we are. We understand the way we actually exist. We start seeing things. We start seeing the way we actually exist. Not just giving up our usual way, our usual misunderstanding, and we start seeing things giving it up and calming down as a result. But in that dynamic space of playing with everything, we get to see how everything is playing with everything, and we understand the way things are. One more thing I want to say at this point is that part of setting up, part of making arrangements so that one can practice concentration, so that one can play

[13:27]

part of it is what we've been doing last few weeks, and that is to develop a positive attitude towards concentration, a positive attitude towards playing. there's some feeling or some attitude floating around in the world, some attitude, some negative attitude towards playing in adulthood. And it's closely related to a negative attitude towards samadhi, a negative attitude towards concentration, which is not just focusing on your work, but focusing on what you're doing. relaxed, flexible, and now we start to move into the more and more unaccepted area, playful, buoyant, happy.

[14:40]

I think there's a negative, some, some negative attitude floating around that, um, you know, like you're being irresponsible to go someplace and sit and be quiet for a while and relax. We have too many problems for you to relax. We have too many problems for you to be playful. And if things are going all right, it's partly because you've been working hard and not playing around. So Now, another thing that this positive attitude towards playing, positive attitude towards concentration, involves is the recognition that playing is always vulnerable to being frightened.

[15:55]

Samadhi involves being vulnerable. In some sense, when you concentrate, you stop worrying about your boundaries and your borders and you start paying attention inwardly. When you're playing, like a child, when they become absorbed in their play, they do that when they're not frightened. and yet when you are not frightened and then you concentrate, you make yourself vulnerable to becoming frightened. The vulnerability, the openness to being hurt, which is what vulnerability means, also opens you to play and opens you to creativity. If we close

[17:04]

If we concentrate on our boundaries, protecting ourselves, then of course we can't play. If we tense up and get rigid, we can't play. But we might not feel so vulnerable then. But then we're also not vulnerable to dependent core rising. So samadhi and playfulness occurs when we're calm and when we have some some vulnerability is being recognized and accepted so we can let something in. But it always can turn to can always turn to fright or fear very easily. That's part of what we need to take into account in this practice.

[18:07]

Helen? Well, the way I heard it was very much a practice, a sustained interpersonal practice. Because I think the examples were teacher, counselor, therapist, you know, the different examples. I was just about to open that up. And again, There can be playfulness by oneself and also playfulness with another.

[19:23]

Playfulness to other is the second stage. It is possible to play with someone who can't play with you or to play with something that can't play with you. But the fullness of creativity, fullest realization is to play with somebody who knows how to play. So let's go back to the playground. I'm now going to make an effort to arrange a playground, a calming ground, a samadhi ground. And that is by helping you by describing that the boundaries of the playground are, one side of the playground is your inner reality. your moment-by-moment conception or fantasy about what's going on. The sense you have of things right now which other people have perhaps some sense of if they've been doing some communication with you and have empathy but basically only you know what it's like to think of how it is

[20:43]

and then there is an outer or external reality which is shared. And then in between those two is where the play activity occurs. And people who are adults, who are children, stay mostly in their inner version of what's going on and have not much contact with the factual realm of objective perception, which can be verified by other perceivers, which is shared by other perceivers, people who and expect others to accommodate to them, are ill in a certain way, and they're called schizoid.

[21:55]

And if it becomes extreme, they're called schizophrenic. But we all, to some extent, have that inner, inner sense. It's our imagination, our fantasizing, our fancy. It's part of our life. It's a part of our life. It's just a question of whether you're in touch with it or not. And to be in touch with it is good, but to be in touch with it and expect others to go along with it is unreasonable in adulthood. And again, with babies, very young babies, they need somebody to go along with it almost 100 percent for a while until that person or somebody else teaches them how to tolerate the frustration that happens when people don't go along with it.

[23:03]

So as we grow up we learn to tolerate. the frustration of losing control of other people in terms of getting them to agree with our sense of things. That's part of weaning. The other extreme is people who are firmly anchored in shared reality. so firmly anchored there that they're out of touch with their inner creativity, with their imagination, with their fantasies. They're out of touch. They are complying too much to shared reality. They're fitting in too much with our shared reality.

[24:03]

And I would suggest that people who fit in too much are people who sometimes have fits, that have some kind of neurological or other kind of fit as a kind of physical symptom of complying too much to shared reality. The advantage of our inner reality is it provides us with all kinds of resources for being creative with shared reality. So an artist, an architect, whatever, if they're in touch with their inner fantasy, then they can relate to the outer shared reality in a creative way. But shared reality is not playing. And inner fantasy, even though it's kind of creative, is not playing.

[25:12]

The play occurs in a place that's not inner or outer, that's not subject or object. That's the samadhi realm. In the samadhi realm, subject and object are together. But that realm means it's not my idea, it's not your idea, and it's not our idea. It's not our shared version, it's not our individual versions, and it's not even all of them added together. It's something more dynamic than even our imagination. It is actually the dynamism and creativity and the interdependence of our imagination. And it's the dynamism and creativity and interdependence of our shared reality. So we have to kind of like let go of both the shared reality and the inner reality to enter the play space, the samadhi space. That's why I said outwardly cease all involvements. Inwardly, softly accepting and letting go

[26:21]

and not rejecting your fantasies, your creative attitudes, all your inner stuff, just let it go. Don't get involved in that and don't get involved outside either. Give that up and go in the middle. But in the middle, again, I told you, if you're kind of considering it, if you think maybe it's a good idea, also remind you that in that place you're very vulnerable to And also that middle place is very precarious and fragile because these other two, the parameters of the playing field, the inner and the outer, keep popping up all the time. So it's very, very hard to stay balanced and not swing from one side to the other. Some people are not, the people who are not having any problems swinging from one side to the other are the sickest people. In other words, they're way over on one side all the time, or over on the other side all the time.

[27:30]

They're either overly compliant or totally not in compliance with external reality, or totally compliant with external reality and not compliant with inner reality. So those people aren't, they're not so subject to fear. These are people who are not so frightened because they're being stuck. They're not so vulnerable in a way. I mean, they really are. They're being hurt all the time because they're sick, but they're not vulnerable to the dynamism of creativity. People who are in the creative middle are constantly having trouble staying balanced. and slipping from one side to the other. And if you're balanced and you slip towards, and you feel yourself slipping towards the inner world, then you get frightened that you're not going to be fitting in with society. If you move to the outer world, from the balanced place you move to the outer world, then you feel you're going to be betraying yourself, your inner self.

[28:38]

Either way, it's dangerous. But, and that's why we need, that's why we need and that's why we have this wonderful resource is that in letting go of these actually you do calm down and relax or in relaxing you calm down and that calm sustains us and helps us tolerate the dynamism of creativity, the dynamism of samadhi and if we can stand it gradually we start to see it. When we start to see it, then the wisdom's starting to come out. So to go back to that story I told last week, I think, about Milton Erickson, he's a person who I feel looks like he knows how to play. He's, like, in touch with his... with his creative...

[29:41]

concrete reality, and he's in touch with concrete reality or external reality. He goes to a hospital. He can find the hospital. He goes in. He meets this patient who is way over on the side of his fantasy of himself, his own version of himself, and He may know something about shared reality, like, I don't know, he may be able to, like, go to the toilet, say, you know, where's the toilet? It's right there. You know, yes, I agree. But the reason why he's in the hospital is because he won't come out of this core fantasy about himself. And he won't relate to anybody who won't be his mother, who won't be his mother, who won't treat him like an infant. treats a mother, treats an infant, namely go along completely with this thing for a while. Maybe if you go along for a while, then gradually you can wean him from it. But nope, the psychiatrist wouldn't go along with it, apparently. Now, if the psychiatrist wouldn't go along with it at all, then the psychiatrists are not able to what?

[30:51]

Play. It looked like before Milton got there, the other therapists couldn't play with him. asking him to fit in, and he was asking them to fit in, and neither side was playing. Milton came, and he didn't quite say, you know, you are Jesus. He said, are you a carpenter? He sort of acted like a mother. He kind of went along with it, enough so that the patient could come out and say yes. He could agree that he was a carpenter. and external and he could participate in himself not just a toilet but himself being a shared reality a shared reality of himself namely he's a carpenter this is a possible something that we could share and then he says would you build me a book bookcase and he says yes and then the guy starts working with wood and stuff

[32:00]

In other words, shared reality. He's come out of his thing a little bit, but the reason why he came out is somebody could play with him. And now he starts playing with the wood. But he's not just playing with the wood, he's playing with his identity. Because this wood is part of being a carpenter, part of being Jesus. But it's also part of not being a Jesus, just being a carpenter. And in the process of doing something like that, and also talking... he's actually entering the realm of samadhi. And also we're demonstrating here interdependence, namely that this person being able to play with him made it possible for him to play. And his identity starts being transformed because this other person's participating with him, and he becomes healed. I don't know what he went through when he was making the bookcase. But my sense is that sometimes when we're playing, we do not really think we're playing, and it doesn't necessarily feel like fun.

[33:14]

Although we're coming more and more alive, it's very dynamic and could be frightening. If he had had problems with making this bookcase, he might have gotten quite frightened that he wasn't Jesus. If a carpenter, just an ordinary carpenter, is making some piece of furniture, if they're playing, it's scarier than if they're just working with external reality. they're just working with external reality, then they're just building something which isn't them. But if they're playing, when you're playing, what you're working with is something that's you, but not you. If it's just you, then you're too inward.

[34:19]

If it's too not you, you're too outward, which is where most people do do their carpentry. But when the carpentry starts to be not just out there, not just a separate piece of furniture, but something about you, then you're more like a child playing with his toys Because when a child's playing, especially little children, they're working with something that's theirs. Who owns this and who this belongs to is key to them, very important. And yet, if it's just them, they're not playing. Then they're just on the inner side. But when it's not them and it's theirs, or even not them but them, this is the real, this is the samadhi. And also in this realm, the child, the meditator or the carpenter, does often get surprised by what happens.

[35:23]

And I might tell one Zen story about this. There was a famous Zen master named Dung Shan. So he's like the school of Zen that is the lineage that goes to Zen Center of San Francisco. He's of this line from Dung Shan. He's a Chinese Zen teacher named Dung Shan, Liang Jie. And Dung Shan is the name of the mountain the monastery where he finally sort of set up his teaching business. But his regular monk's name is Liang Jie, which means good servant. And he was studying with his teacher for quite a long time. His teacher's name is Yun Yan or Cloudy Cliff. And after he studied with Yun Yan for a long time and had a number of enlightenment experiences even before he met Yun Yan and with Yun Yan,

[36:40]

Finally, I think, I don't remember how it happened, but anyway, he said that he was going to leave. And then he asked his teacher, if somebody asked me how you were or, you know, what you taught, what should I say? And Nguyen said, there's two translations I've heard, but one of the translations is, just this person is it. And the other translation is, just this is it. I think I like just this person is it. And Liangjie said something or other and said goodbye and left the monastery and kept thinking about what the teacher said, just this is it. And I went to China a while ago, about a year and a half ago, almost two years ago.

[37:54]

And one of the places we visited was Dongshan. So I'm getting kind of mixed up now in the story, but anyway, when I used to hear this story, what I thought happened was Liang Jie left his teacher and sort of walked down the hill from the teacher's place and got to a river. And when he crossed the river, he saw his reflection in the water. And I'd seen this painting many times of him standing in the water, you know, in his robes, walking across the water of the river and looking down. There's a little reflection of him down in the water. When he saw his reflection in the water, he understood the teacher's instruction, just this person is it. So he's standing in the water, looking in the water, and he's thinking what the teacher said, just this person is it.

[38:58]

And looking at his reflection, thinking of the teaching, he understood. reality and then he his poem came up out of him which is abbreviated as everywhere I go I meet him to search for him outside is really painful now I see that I'm not him and he's exactly me. Only when you see like this do you understand reality. So this is like, this is what I'm talking about. Just this person is it.

[39:59]

So everything you look at It isn't really out there, but it's also not just your fantasy. Who you really are is this, and yet that's not you. And what I found out in my travels was when I got to the place, when I went to Dung Shan, as you go up to Dung Shan, you cross that same river. little creek, and there's a bridge going over it now. And the name of the bridge is Where He Encountered It. And I was traveling with a Chinese scholar, and I said, thinking of this story, and I said, how far from here is Yuen Yen's temple? And he said, about 150 miles. So he didn't just walk down the hill and cross the river. He walked for 150 miles and then crossed the river.

[41:02]

So he'd been thinking about it. And I don't know what route he took, but he had been walking for a long time thinking about this when he crossed the river. And that's where he built his monastery. And I looked in the river and saw myself. It was great. So when we're in this state of concentration, when we're playing with, in the place between the inner and outer world, where we kind of let go of the inner and outer world, and when you let go of those two worlds and don't get involved, you relax, or when you relax, you let go, you calm down, you become more flexible, you start to feel, you know, the dynamism of you and it and not you and not it and it and you, and you start to feel and participate and gradually witness

[42:13]

the reality of the interdependent person that you are. And this is how the samadhi and the wisdom become unified. Then, if you can then find a playmate and do the same thing with somebody else, the reflection, the mutual reflection and mutual affirmation then the external reality, not just my version of my neurology in my body, but the shared reality and the inner reality both become transformed by this playfulness. Now, it's also possible that you don't have an enlightenment experience or an insight while you're playing, but you're playing pretty well, and then you go and play with someone, and while you're playing, the reinforcement of playing with someone helps you settle even more into the process, in that in the mutual play is where you really fully witness the interdependence.

[43:29]

And another story I heard about was about this psychiatrist, child psychologist. This wasn't Dr. Hansen. It was Dr. Winnicott. one of the kind of like, what do you call it, what you might call one of the mystics of the psychoanalytic tradition. He had this very sick, I think he was working in a hospital, and this very little baby was very sick. She was having, yeah, I think she was having fits or I guess seizures, sometimes several times a day, maybe three or four times a day. She was six months old, and she had a lot of other problems too. She was crying almost all the time and having these fits on top of it.

[44:35]

And if you're interested sometime, I could give you more detail on this, but basically she was a very sick little girl, and he would visit her and put her on his knee, and interact with her. And several times meeting her, most of the time she just sat and cried on his knee the whole time. And I guess I would say in parentheses, I think she was, in these early meetings, she probably was developing some trust in him that she could just cry and be an unhappy little girl on his knee. Nothing much happened. And then she actually, in some sense, progressed a little bit to start biting his knuckles real hard. And then he said, in another occasion, biting hard enough, six months old, biting hard enough to almost break the skin.

[45:42]

And then he said on another occasion, she bit me again, also quite hard. but with almost no sign of guilt. I guess earlier she was kind of like a little bit. And then he said, and then she started to play. And she started to throw, no, no, he said, And another thing she started doing, he said he spoke of spatulas, and I think maybe he meant by spatulas maybe tongue depressors, I'm not sure. But I guessed that he had spatulas in his breast pocket or something, and she was reaching up and grabbing the spatulas out there and throwing them. And he said that she would do that continuously, maybe for 15 minutes, just take the spatulas and throw them on the ground, take the spatulas and throw them on the ground. and she did a number of visits she would do that and then he said she started to play and what she did was she started to feel her toes and so he took her shoes and socks off so she could get you know they're shaped quite similarly little spatulas they don't come off the foot you can't throw them on the ground

[47:12]

And she found that very interesting and again and again tested and confirmed that they don't come off. And I think like the next day she stopped having fits and stopped crying. and was released, you know, in a few days. And he saw her again, I think, in six months or something, and she's a very happy, healthy little girl. So this is like, you know, I don't know how enlightened she got, but she certainly, it looks like she got some considerable samadhi there. She learned how to play. And again, I was thinking as I read the story, like, Probably there was something going on that she was, you know, something in the dynamic of her home life that she was, like, fitting in too much, complying too much, maybe, because she was having these fits.

[48:20]

Her mother seemed to be very nice and everything, but there was, you know, sometimes mothers have problems giving the baby what they need. Like my mother had trouble giving me enough milk. I cried for eight weeks. after I was born. So then they switched me to a cow, and I was fine. But I was really hungry for the first eight weeks because my mother didn't have enough milk. And as a result of that, I got a lot of cholesterol buildup. So I had a heart attack a couple years ago, but now I'm pretty much knocked off the whole milk. So does that give you some help there, Ellen? All right. So that's maybe enough input. Anything you'd like to feedback?

[49:24]

Fran? Yes. You're saying what, no, that the... I am not he, so the I is the person that's living internally in their own fantasy reality. He is the one into it. Well, it's multidimensional. It could be he, and then the reflection there, which is, you know, everybody could come and see, yes, there's a reflection there. Is that me? Yes, okay. But you see that that is not your inner sense of yourself.

[50:32]

Just like when we look in a mirror, in a sense, that isn't us. Right? And we know that. Other people also could come and say that isn't you, but they all say that is your reflection. But they don't know that it's not us the same way we know it isn't. So that's not me. But, of course, it is me. Well, it's a reflection of me. It's my reflection. No, it's not exactly me. No. But it is exactly me. It's exactly me. Yep, looks. But also, Even that external thing is not actually separate from me.

[51:34]

So it's exactly me. It's more exactly me than my usual idea of myself. My usual idea of myself is like some idea separate from my consciousness. Now I see that that image is actually me, that I'm not anything other than the image. That's all there is. There's nothing over here. That's exactly me. And the me that wasn't it before That's really kind of an illusion. But the important thing is not either one of those versions, but the place between them, where you see your reflection in the water, and this time you're really surprised. You have a whole different take on what's going on. You're in a place where somehow you let go of that as external and you let go of yourself as internal. The one who is not in the water, the one who is not in the mirror, the one who is not the reflection, you let go of that.

[52:39]

Okay? And you also let go of the one that's in the water or that's in the mirror. You let go of that too. You're in the place between the two, which is neither and both, where they're woven together, and where you can say things like, that's not me, like you used to say, and now you can say it's exactly me, like maybe you couldn't say before. Let's get the feeling for it, the playfulness of the space. Yeah, I thought there was a reflection of the meeting. Say it again. No, the playfulness isn't happening inside. The playfulness is not happening inside you. That's the thing about playfulness and the thing about samadhi. Samadhi is not happening in me or out there.

[53:42]

It's between in me and out there. which for many people, between in here and out there, there's nothing. They stay away from that place. They just scoot back and forth between the two. Or, that's what most adults do, they go back and forth, that discursive thought, which is rather agitating. You don't appreciate the samadhi and the joyfulness of samadhi or playfulness because you're going back from one to the other. and also you're running back and forth between all the others. That's our usual way. And a healthy adult can tell, this is the inner, this is the outer, and you know how they're related, and you know how to go back and forth, and you know how to check, you know, was that a dream or did that actually happen? You realize the difference and you know how to check. We have reality checking, right? you could tell the difference you know they're different you know how they're related but this is like not about how they're related this is like letting go of both of them it's relaxing for a while and playing just like when a child is playing they let go of this thing that they're playing with they let go of it being out there they let go of the doll being not them and also let go of them playing with the doll it's just this

[55:06]

adjective-adjective-adjective place, a playfulness which is like beyond time and space, but it happens in time and space. This Zen teacher, Tung Shan, Liang Jie, who finally wound up living at Tung Shan, up the hill from where the river was, he wrote the song of the precious mirror samadhi. which we chat at Zen Center regularly, and which is, it's in that rare book, what's it called? Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains. So in that, this poem, this song is in that book. And in this song, which he wrote, he said, it's like facing a precious mirror. Form and reflection behold each other. You are not it. It actually is you. So this is called the precious mirror samadhi.

[56:12]

So his teacher transmitted this samadhi to him. And this samadhi, this precious mirror, is a mirror in which you are looking in the mirror, and the image in the mirror is looking at you. not only you looking at that thing, but it's looking at you. And to be in the playful space between you looking at it and it looking at you, and it being you and you not being it, and vice versa, that's the playfulness of the interdependently existing self, the actual self of reality. And so, and so Dung Shan, and he tells, you know, he says the stuff in here like turning away and touching are both wrong. So when you're looking at this mirror, don't turn away from it because this is very, this is your life, you know, but don't try to get a hold of it either.

[57:19]

So it's just that same space. Don't go away from that space between the form and the body and the image. Don't go away from it, but don't try to get a hold of it. You can get a hold of the image, you can get a hold of this body. But the mirror actually is like this dynamic space which is neither and both. And the more you meditate on this and play with this, the more possible your understanding starts, all different angles on it keep happening. Just like this story, like I said, the story of Milton Erickson, The more I think about it, the more interesting it gets, the more I see it going on. And that's the thing. When you meditate on samadhis, you start to realize that they're not just, you know, this original idea of just being calm and undistracted. That's an aspect.

[58:19]

But when you start getting... It also has this quality of flexibility, and as you get into the flexibility, unlimited... perspective start to arise and that's the unlimited perspectives of interdependence start to dawn on the samadhi. Yes? So when fear pops up, isn't that a way of turning away from it? Yeah, well, it's... Yeah. Like if you're, like in yoga, if you're doing a headstand and you become afraid that you're going to fall... you kind of start to fall. If you're afraid you're going to get off balance, that thought throws you a little off. You may not fall down, but thinking of anything other than being balanced, and you can't even think of being balanced because it's not balanced, isn't. Because the idea of even thinking of balance might throw you a little off. When you're balanced, you're not even thinking, you're not thinking of And so being afraid that you'll fall, in a sense, makes it more precarious.

[59:25]

But we don't necessarily always invite the fear. Invite the fear? No, don't invite the fear. No, no. Don't invite fear. It arises. But it arises because it's very precarious. The balance, it's hard to balance. It's hard to not like... Again, it's hard to not like... If you're balanced, it's very easy for the thought to arise, other people would probably criticize me for being in this balanced state because I'm not like doing my usual sycophant thing to external reality. I'm not going over this. Yes, I believe in external reality. I'm totally in accord. I'm fitting in. I'm a good boy. And if you don't do that, you know that somebody will criticize you for it. But what you're doing when you're doing this kind of work is you're letting go of that for a little while. That's why we start with, do you trust that you could temporarily, like, let go of the external world, that you could forget about things that are shared reality?

[60:27]

Could you just let go of it for a minute? Because you know that if you let go of it for a really long time, somebody probably who hasn't got used to you doing that will probably say, hey, mom, what are you doing? you know when you first start doing it actually if somebody who knows you in your usual way would see you doing that see you like relax where you're usually holding on they would think something was strange so you know actually the world will give you some feedback some questioning feedback if you start letting go of some of your old habits And so when you actually do let go, it's easy to start becoming afraid that someone will criticize you for being selfish. Like, shouldn't you be vigilant of your children's welfare? How could you just relax for a little bit? So I think we have a general sense that when taking care of beings,

[61:31]

where there's some part of the message is when you're taking care of beings you should be uptight should not be relaxed about that this is serious you should be tense about it you should be gripping you know make sure nobody gets hurt and of course if you keep this up pretty soon you break and run away from the beings the only way to stay present with beings in a steady way is to do it in a relaxed way but part of it says no no That's not, I'm being an irresponsible caregiver if I relax. Right? Isn't there some message like that floating around? Hmm? Even the beings you're caring for might say that to you. So, when you are balanced, easy for the thought to arise, I'm not being responsible to the external world. And vice versa, if you are supposedly balanced, but unbalanced, not balanced, but you're concentrated, you're undistracted in taking care of the external world.

[62:34]

In other words, you're paying attention to the shared reality. For example, pay attention to the shared reality of your body. There's an inner thing, which hopefully if you're healthy, the inner thing will say, well, that's nice that you're doing that, but you're betraying yourself. you're really like selling something very precious inside, you're selling out to be a good blah-de-blah. Does that make sense? So, but, and when you're in a balanced place, you can get it from both sides. When you're over on one of the extremes, you get it from the, which one you just abandon. If you're healthy. If you're unhealthy, you just go over the extreme and stay there for a while. But then, instead of feeling guilty, or frightened, you have fits and seizures or you get locked up. So eventually, anyway, the world does give us feedback to practice Zen.

[63:35]

But sometimes you have to get really sick before you get the message. Did I answer your question okay? Michael? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. . Yeah. . Okay, great. So I wanted to play with you with that. Okay, you just did. That was good. I think looking at it as an opportunity to play is a really good way to look at it. And I really appreciate you bringing that up because I think that's one of the areas where when people bring it up, a lot of times other practitioners or teachers aren't very playful about it.

[64:45]

And as a result, I think people miss the opportunity to...it's like they're turning that teaching into...it is another way to go to one extreme or the other, but particularly, I think, to go to the extreme of external reality. People want to establish whether it's a fact or not. So they argue about whether it can be established in a shared reality. And there's lots of debate and it's a very interesting conversation. It's very interesting because we're talking about something which is pretty difficult to establish as an external reality. So that's why people actually like to bring it up and talk about it, because it's so hard. But we're on fairly equal footing, though, in that regard. Everybody has a hard time doing it that way. It has not actually been very often. Actually, maybe there's very few examples where there's been much consensus about that it's been established as an external fact.

[65:55]

certain yogis experience it inwardly, but it's pretty hard to establish it externally. I'm not saying there's no even shreds of evidence. Like, for example, I think it was in Kundun, that movie Kundun, they take the Dalai Lama to his old home, you know, and I think he says something like, would you open the chest of drawers over there so I can get my toys? You know? He knows what's in the... Goes into his house. This little boy has never been there before. Goes back in his old house, and he knows where his old ritual toys are in his chest. Maybe they ask him what's inside, and he says, well, there's a blah, blah, and a blah, blah, and blah, blah, and they take it out, and there they are. So for them, anyway, that's... In Tibet, they think that they have... a shared reality and proof of rebirth.

[67:05]

But in the West we're having trouble getting establishment of it. So it may be that part of setting up the field, the playing field, The place to be creative about this teaching is that we have to maybe develop this shared reality side more and then let go of it. once we think we've got some shared reality. That would be one way to approach understanding actually in a very dynamic and related way, related to the ordinary world way of this teaching. But it seems like we need more of that uh... maybe can go further on this and i think a lot of people say that that that's what we need now we need scientific work on this to go deeper to bring this teaching uh... into the modern world there needs to be more of that yes jenny or jenny is it jenny or jenny

[68:20]

Letting go of it doesn't mean it goes away. Probably, yeah. Say it again. in that very moment, is that an example of when I let go? It doesn't have to be that traumatic, but is that kind of experience you're talking about? Yeah, right. But these skaters have to have a lot of... They have the inner sense of what they're doing, and then the coach or the teacher says various things to them so that they develop a shared sense with the coach. But all the while, as they're doing these various things, they have their sense of what the external world is, you know. And then the coach also sometimes introduces things into the external world, their external world, which they never thought of, various suggestions.

[69:56]

And then they work with that until they have a shared reality about what the coach just said to them. And they work with that. And then they have their ongoing inner sense of what's going on. And then they work with that. like opinions about themselves, their own take, their own sense. The coach is not teaching them stuff like, the name of this move is, I'm scared of this move. They've got that kind of stuff going on inside. But then also there's this place where they let go of both. You can't be thinking of external reality too much when you're doing these things at that speed, but yet you have gone through this thing many, many times relating to it, and now you enter the space between. And people maybe understand things that they never understood before when they're flying through that space.

[70:57]

Well, I think that's what Buddhism's for. It's for people who aren't Olympic skaters. You don't have to be able to do that. All you've got to be able to do is to devote time to letting go of those two, which is, you know, more people can do that. It's almost... If you have the karmic affinities or the karmic conditions such that you can hear the teaching in such a way that you feel you can trust or have confidence that you could do this meditation, basically it can happen. Because it's basically about letting go of resistance. We resist in these two ways, too much external, too much internal, or too much of both, or too little of both, all these different possibilities.

[72:11]

But basically, we have our personality styles. Some people like to do too much here and a little bit here, too much there, a little bit there, different styles, different patterns of combinations. I think the Enneagram, you know, is an example of how people handle the inner and outer, different styles. And but it seems that studying this field and learning about this field and what's in between is available to everybody and you don't have to have any, whatever your equipment is, is fine. Can you say something about relaxing with fear when you were talking about the elliptic actually, I was thinking of seeing the fear that comes up when somebody's in the middle of a triple axel and they think they're not going to make it. Yeah. And just seeing, as you were talking about fear before, as kind of the manifestation of the resistance to the plane.

[73:18]

Yeah. Well, it's not the manifestation, it's just something that might come up. When you, again, when you're balanced... You're not afraid. But as soon as you think about being balanced, you're a little off and then you become afraid. So when you're playing, when you're actually just playing, you're not afraid. And when you're pretty much not afraid and you have confidence that it would be okay to play, you play. So this little girl learned that she could bite this doctor's finger a few times and throw these spatulas all over the place. And then she could play with her toes, and then he would take, you know, somehow she wasn't afraid so that she could play. And then when you are playing, however, when you are playing, after not being afraid, first you're not afraid, then you're playing. But while you're playing, if you then start to hesitate in your playing, it also says in this Juhamir Samadhi, what does it say? The old translation used to say, if you hesitate, you're lost in confusion. or you're lost in retrospective confusion.

[74:23]

This present one says, move and you are trapped. Miss it and you fall into doubt and vacillation. So if you're playing and you tighten up or something again, or try to get a hold of the process, then you get frightened. Or you can get frightened. But I think when they're doing these things, what I would think and what I hear from them, when they're just skating along, you know, it's part of this activity. They're doing nice stuff, but they're doing stuff that they can do in their sleep for part of the time, right? For us to do that part would require tremendous concentration. And if we did that part of the thing, we probably would not... We would probably not be afraid if we were able to do that because we'd be totally present to do that. But part of the time they're out there, they can think. Like they can think, okay, here it comes.

[75:25]

I'm going to do it now. But when people, when they've been interviewed, when I hear them interview, when they say, when you were up there doing that, What was it like? From what I've got heard is they can't tell you anything. All they can tell you about was before and after. But when they're actually in that space, when the times they fall, they can tell you what they were thinking. If they go up there and start thinking, they fall. But when they go up and manage to not space out and not think, there's really nothing going on there. Playfulness is not a thought. It's a way of thinking. It's the way you're thinking. It's not the thought. It's not the content. It's not the touching your toes and pulling on them. That's the playing. That's not the playing. The playing, what is the playing? It's this place that's, you know, completely relaxed. It's not you. It is you. It's all that.

[76:26]

It's the totality of the situation. It's not the situation. It's the interdependence of it. So it's not the contents. So that's my feeling of what they're doing is that if they're afraid, they're lucky to get through the thing. Because there's not room in those things for any kind of thoughts of past or future. Before it happens, they could maybe think, well, here it comes. But when they actually go in, they had to put aside, you know, here it comes, or there it went, and just let it happen. That's what I think it's like. And I think maybe a lot of us have had some experiences like that, not maybe skating, but in some things. Like I told you that story about judo, right? where I threw my coach and I didn't know what happened. But I was relaxed. I was not really thinking of throwing my coach.

[77:28]

I was thinking of being thrown by my coach. That's what I was thinking was going to happen. And I was just kind of getting ready to get thrown by my coach. And I didn't know what way he was going to throw me. So I was just in the process of him throwing me, and he got thrown. And everybody was surprised. And that's, again, part of the playing, is that playing is often very surprising. because it isn't what you planned. And I think that some of these Olympic athletes are also surprised by some of the things that they do. Right? When we enter that space, you know, we do want it to happen, but when it happens, we're also surprised because we didn't know what it felt like before. Now we actually, this is what, you know, we got to be there, right? Something like that, I think, is what it's like. Yes? Did you have your hand raised, Linda? Or Gwen? Yeah, witnessing.

[78:28]

Well, seeing. Well, yeah, I mean... If you look at the reflection of the water, you witness the reflection of the water. And while you're looking at the reflection of the water, usually you're also witnessing your sense of yourself. Like you're witnessing, I'm here standing in the water. You witness that and you also witness your reflection in the water and you witness the water. That's witnessing too. But in particular, I was talking about witnessing yourself be born interdependently Okay, looking at the image in the water, you could look at the image in the water but not see yourself born interdependently. Just say, well, there's an image of me, and I'm over here. So that's fine. But you could also be there in this playful space in the samadhi.

[79:34]

You see yourself born. there's you, there's me, and there's a picture of me, and there's me in the water, and there's the water around me, and then suddenly you let go of all that, the inner and outer, you let go of it, and suddenly you see yourself born. And yourself is not you separate from the image or the image separate from you. It's yourself. You see the self that's born depending on the image, depending on the external reality, depending on the inner reality, and being neither of them, but depending on both and everything else. You see that self. Witnessing that self is enlightenment. So, like Dogen says, to go over to the stream carrying yourself and then say, okay, now here I am and now I am looking in the water. This is our usual way. This is delusion.

[80:35]

or to carry yourself forward and then witness various things like, okay, there's Gloria, and that's not me. There's Vera, that's not me. And there's Gary, that's not me. Okay? And, you know, I'm practicing and they're practicing or I'm not and they are. But anyway, I already got myself. Myself came along first and now I'm practicing and seeing all the things. But when it's the other way around, that there's gloria and there's the water and there's my clothes or there's the clothes and there's the body all that stuff's happening all rather than me bringing this self being brought forward all this stuff is arising and all that makes me that's in like to see that's enlightenment and not just to see it but to live from it that's enlightenment so it just the tables get turned So I'm not here on one side of the equation anymore.

[81:40]

And as soon as I switch to the other side of the equation, it's that I'm not even here yet. And then the moment comes up with the sound of traffic, the lights in the room, the faces in the room, the bodies in the room, the voice in the room, all this stuff just comes up. And all that makes me. To witness that is enlightenment. So it isn't that we don't have a self, it's just we have no prefab self. We have no a priori self that we assume is there at the beginning of every event. We only have this fresh new self which everything contributes to. and it's not and it's in myself isn't more over on the side of the subjective than the objective it's not on either side actually it's a subtle interplay between the two and the revelation of that comes by letting go of both sides and going to the play space in between which is the samadhi which opens up to the interdependence reed and bob

[82:57]

Did I? In the shared reality of Marine General Hospital, yes. Actually, I was in the hospital for quite a while, and the cardiologist came over and whispered to me. He says, you know, I don't think you're having a heart attack. Then he came back and he said, you know, we just got the results from a test, and I think we better do an angiogram. And so I had the angiogram, and then he came and says, Yeah, you're having a heart attack. But it wasn't a bad one, as you see. Okay. Do you want to know if I really broke my leg? I was wondering myself, did I break my leg? Yes? You mentioned that sometimes the outcome of a play is surprising. It's not really the outcome of play.

[84:08]

It's just that in the process, like, for example, in the story of that girl, I think she was surprised to find out the toes didn't come off the way the spatulas did. I think she was surprised, and then she kept doing it over and over again to check to see if that was really so. And that was really fun for her. But that wasn't really the conclusion. That isn't the outcome of the play. The outcome of the play... was not what you're surprised about. It's that play has the element of surprise. The outcome of play is healing. That was the outcome. Being a happy little girl was the outcome. But part of being a happy little girl and part of being a happy big girl is having surprise in your life. If there's no surprise, no happy. Well, if there's no surprise, there's no play. I would think that if you can't think ahead, well, play is going to be. That's right. That's right. Well, you can think ahead what play will be, but that's not playful. That's just thinking.

[85:09]

And being a person who thinks ahead about what play would be, that's perfectly all right. You don't have to like, you know, turning away from that is not the way either. So if I'm a person who thinks ahead about what playing would be, I can work with that. The way I work with it is I don't get involved in it. I relax with it. If you relax with thinking ahead about what play was going to be, that opens the door to play. One part of you can be going, I wonder what play is like. Another part of you is playing, not involved in it at all, being surprised that somebody's still thinking about what play would be. God, he's still thinking about it. We're doing it over here. Let him begin doing it. It's great. Maybe he'll, you know, make a donation. Bob? Yes. Would it be fair to say, because when I first heard that I was thinking about internal reality, trusting yourself, but would it be fair to say that it's an external reality too?

[86:30]

This vulnerability. Yeah, yeah. The vulnerability can come from either side. You could be hard on yourself for relaxing. Or you could think other people would be, like I was saying earlier. Sometimes you might be, like, doing something and you think, if I am relaxed and look relaxed, somebody might really be upset with me. So we feel outside, or you might feel inside, like, I wasn't, I was too relaxed, you know, and something bad happened because I was too relaxed. I don't think so, but we could think that way. So you have to develop confidence that it won't be, you won't be a bum if you relax. You have to maybe reason with yourself that actually it would be good for the world. It would be a healthy thing to practice samadhi, that being concentrated and present and relaxed and calm and flexible, that that's a good thing in the world. Samadhi is good, good, good, good. You have to keep talking to yourself inwardly and then check out with other people whether they support it and meet somebody who also says to you that they support you to do it.

[87:35]

Says, yeah, I want you to do this. Like the doctor with the little girl on his knee. She learned that she could relax with him. She didn't have to, like, not bite him. She could use her little teeth on his thing and really get into it. She didn't have to be a good little girl. Can you believe that a six-month-year-old could already have learned about being a good little girl? Well, it's possible. It looks like from this story that she had already learned that maybe biting is... know maybe you shouldn't play that game so you can't really relax because you got these biting impulses and if you bite maybe you get hit we don't know what happened to her but she learned anyway she was a situation where she could bite hard and not get punished so maybe she relaxed through repeated contacts with this person she could relax and finally start playing

[88:36]

And also, she could cry. She learned, I can bite him, I can cry, and the world goes on. So, hey, so she relaxes and relaxes, and then pretty soon she starts doing more than just testing the ground and doing something, you know. Well, can I throw spatulas for 15 minutes? I guess so. Okay, well, now I can do pretty much whatever. I think I'll play with my toes. So I think we do need to test the ground. We need to say to people, would it be all right when I come to the yoga room if I really relax for the first half an hour? Would that be okay? And when you leave your home, just say to your family, I'm going to go to the yoga room now. Is it okay if I really relax and even forget about you for 15 minutes? Even though I might think of you, I'm just going to let go and pause you. Would that be okay? Okay. Some people say no, you know.

[89:39]

But maybe if they say no, you need to, and you know that they say no, you may just say please, and they say, oh, okay, how about 10 minutes? For 10 minutes, you can not be thinking of me. For 10 minutes, you can let go of the whole external world, and you can let go of your whole internal world and see what that's like. So we need to start to learn this. Sometimes you have to have a special situation, or specially set up, specially arranged for samadhi, specially arranged for playing. So that's what we're trying to do here. OK? Thank you.

[90:19]

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