I overheard some people say that they appreciate if there was some kind of theme for the practice period. So I tried to fix the theme. But when I fixed the theme, the theme started to grow branches and leaves and started to get to be a big tree, a big forest. And I kept trying to cut through that forest to find a theme to go on. So it's hard to pick a theme. It's not so simple that people say, well, we already know that. But still, I guess the theme is a good way of the theme.

[01:09]

And it occurs to me to mention what Dodie's Engine says is a good way. And that is, it has two aspects. One aspect is, in Japanese, san-shin-mon-to, you go to a teacher and ask about the teaching. That's one aspect of the Buddha way. The other aspect of the Buddha way is called da-gen. While Ryukyu-ryo-shi was visiting, he mentioned that Noi-ryo-shi said that to put on, this is for priests,

[02:42]

to put on the okesa, and to sit down and listen to Zen. To put on the okesa and to go bow to the teacher and ask about Dharma. These are five precepts, precept practice. So within the overall topic or theme of the Buddha way, a sub-theme that occurs to me in each of these aspects of the Buddha way, a sub-theme that runs through both of them, is intimacy. Intimacy. Intimacy when you're alone, when you're with others, and intimacy when you're interacting with others.

[03:56]

Da-gen is the relationship. And the sitting da-gen emphasizes the relationship between subject and object when you're alone. And talking with someone else, relating to others, practicing the precepts, is about subject and object when you're with others. All the precepts are about relationships. So, first, about intimacy with others, I'd like to say a little bit.

[05:07]

And as I start to talk about this, then I realize another theme which I want to mention, which occurs to me for a sub-theme, and that is the theme of the sangho kai, the merging of difference and unity, and the dual-mere samadhi. These are the intimate songs of our practice daily life. And they are about how to do da-gen, or how da-gen is done, and they're also about how to relate with other living creatures and all things. In particular, in relationship to intimacy, the sangho kai starts out like this. Chikugo-dai-sen-no-shin-ho-zai-mitsu...

[06:16]

If you look it up in the dictionary, I think it will say secret. But we translate it as intimate. The mind of the great sage of India is intimately there between East and West. Do you know what it means? I do. So, in this lineage, in this source gate, we understand secret means intimate. Both the sangho kai and the bhaktas-dharma are things about intimacy. Many of the statements inside are about intimacy, for example. Inquiry and response come up together.

[07:31]

And it responds to the inquiry impulse. Yesterday, you came up to talk to me about something I said in the to-san a while ago, about offering to adopt a baby when couples or single women tell me that they're thinking of having an abortion. And I even made some side comments about how strange it seems to me that I might agree with Ronald Regan. And this person told me that she felt that perhaps some people felt like I was more concerned for the baby than I was for the pregnant woman or for the father.

[08:49]

Well, actually, I feel equally concerned for the parents and for the child. Really, that's my legal concern. And the reason why I'm bringing this up right now is not so much to discuss that again, which I will have to do sometime, but rather to point out that in response to the inquiry impulse, if someone says something, what you hear or what you see is not necessarily what they mean. You might not hear one word in misunderstanding, or you might hear what they say but not know what they're actually meaning. You might misunderstand them.

[10:00]

Whatever somebody says, we have our cake on it. But that is not what they mean necessarily at all. And I was talking to this woman about the fact that in response to the inquiry impulse, in other words, if someone says something, you think they mean this. Probably they mean this. If you think they mean this and you don't agree, you may get angry. But that may not be what they mean anyway. This may be what they mean. If you knew that this was, if you thought that this is what they meant, you might even be more angry. What they actually mean might even be something you disagree with more. But what I am proposing as a possibility to you, is that when someone says something and you think they mean this and you disagree,

[11:04]

if you inquire, rather than respond to what you think they're saying, and if you disagree with it, probably getting angry or irritated, inquire into what they actually mean. And I would suggest that the process of inquiry might lead you to find out that you really do disagree with them, and perhaps you disagree with them even more than you originally thought. However, the process of inquiry may totally avoid being angry and let you be totally in disagreement with them and intimate with them and at peace with them. The process of inquiry, it responds. The truth comes to our aid

[12:08]

and frees us from having a dualistic attitude about what's going on. Even though in the end you may still disagree with the person, but if you disagree with them without finding out if they actually hold what you think you disagree with, then you get angry or confused if they're afraid of you and you're afraid of being angry with them. Or perhaps you even love them because they have such strange ideas. But this love is not intimate. This confusion is not intimate. And this anger is not intimate. This person who talked to me got more intimate with me and I'm more intimate with her in the process of her finding out that actually I didn't mean what she thought anyway,

[13:09]

but I could have. I could have agreed with her on a different man. But still, if she didn't assume that I did and inquired, the process of inquiry changes it. It responds to the inquiring impulse. It doesn't respond to the accusing impulse. One of the members of our community who's a lawyer, I named him, inquiring mind. I didn't name him accusing mind. A lawyer doesn't have to accuse. A lawyer can be a Buddhist and inquire, try to find out what's going on. And you may find out that the person did such and such. You may. But you can find that out through a process of decency rather than the process of alienation, hatred, and opposition.

[14:11]

The response to the inquiring impulse can also be translated as it responds to the arrival of energy. It could be many things. But, in short, it is the cosmos. It is totality. The cosmos responds to the arrival of microbial energy. The cosmos, then, totality. Then means totality in this case. The Zen responds to the arrival of energy. Ki. Zen Ki. Zen Ki means that the totality responds to the arrival of energy. Totality responds to asking a question. Not just the person that you ask.

[15:23]

You go up to a person and you say, Do you really think that nobody should ever have an abortion? And they do the bogus thing. That person you're asking a question, but actually the entire cosmos responds to a question. If you say to the person, you know, I'm angry at you for thinking that, before you even ask the question, this is just a fight between two people. But if you bring your energy to the situation, contribute your energy to the situation, ask the question, inquire, something wonderful grows up out of that. Another thing that Suzuki Roshi mentioned when he was here, and I like the pun on that, is he said,

[16:25]

when you, if you're in a group of people, other people around, or if you're at a distance from your teacher, his sense, his aesthetic, what he thinks is beautiful, is you don't say across the room to your own teacher, Roshi, what do you think about such and such? And you don't, if you see your teacher at a distance, you don't say, Roshi! Or, or, rough quote, you say, Roshi, or, hey Roshi. If it's not your teacher, and you're using Roshi as a, as a, title, you can yell it across the room, and there's a lot of other people around, and the person will say, oh this person is addressing me with a title of respect.

[17:27]

But if it's your own teacher, it's not a title of respect. It's not disrespect either, it's a title of intimacy, and you don't yell it across the room, or say it across the room. That's what he said. So what does he know? Anyway, yesterday, also, I remember eating a lunch with Tuan. And the day before too. I went out of a, I went out of a room, and I thought Tuan was walking behind me. And, so I just kept walking. And then, a minute later,

[18:29]

someone yelled across, yelled at some distance to me, would you please close the door after yourself. I turned around and looked, and there was a face, and it looked like an enemy face. And I just sort of, looked at it. And then turned around and walked away. I wasn't even sure the person was yelling at me, because I thought maybe they were yelling at Tuan. I didn't exactly know what they said, but they might have even said, would you guys please close the door after yourself. And immediately, there was a little bit of a pain from this person saying that, from the look on his face. So I thought, well, he's listening. I have a kind of thick skin, and sometimes, things just bounce off. So I walked from, I put my dishes away, and I walked up to a cabin, and it started to hurt more. And it hurt more.

[19:33]

And I thought, excuse me, my body's got a problem. It's starting to shake. And it's on my heart. I better take care of it. And then I thought, no, I might cause some, some disturbance. In sangha, I might cause some disharmony in sangha. So I'll just try to drop it. But they couldn't. My body wouldn't drop it. And I thought, am I going to walk around all day holding this pain in my chest? I better take care of it. My body, it's not, you know, not up to me. It hurts. And I know how to fix it. I know just how to fix it. Folks, talk to the person who said the thing that hurt. So I went back and I asked the person if I could talk to her. And she came up and talked to me and said, I just want to tell you that what you said hurt me. And that's just what happened

[20:37]

to the pain. It went away. I didn't get angry. I just got close. And my theory about why that hurt was number one, I thought the person was angry. I don't know if the person was, actually. I didn't really ask. I thought the person was angry and they were at a distance. And that's what anger is, a lot of it. It's being at a distance. It's being off intimate. It's the person that came up to me and whispered in my ear, you dirty rat. Would you please close the door for yourself? And then I said, oh, sure. I didn't even know that I wasn't being close to her, as a matter of fact. When you're close to somebody

[21:40]

and I'm close to everybody at Tassajara, some little thing like, would you please close the door for yourself with an angry feeling, a little thing like that can hurt. If I was somebody who I have a very long distance relationship with, like, I don't know what, maybe with some people, maybe a bus driver, I don't even know, and get off a bus and yell at the window or something like that from a distance, that person has such a long distance relationship with me, that fits right in there. If somebody is close to me, if they do something that's not close, it confuses, it's like there's a string from my heart to each of your hearts and if you loosen it or tighten it without consulting with me, it affects my body. Or if you cut it, it hurts. And the one who loosens it

[22:41]

and the one who cuts it does not necessarily get hurt because they thought it, because they know, they're prepared for it. It's like if you're going steady with somebody and you break up, the one who breaks up, they have the advantage. They know it's coming. The one who's sort of been told about it by the other one, what? It hurts. It's kind of nice to sort of get warmed up that both of you simultaneously rather than one bringing up way ahead of the other one. So, I think that if you have a criticism to make of me,

[23:42]

I ask that you make it up close. That's more intimate and it's also a more scary problem too because if you're going to reach, you know it. But I'm going to, I try, just for my own health, when something like that happens, I try to go get close to the person and that's what seems to cure the relationship. Cure it. So, those are two kinds of exercises. Those are two exercises in what I would call the precept kind of exercises or the exercises of intimacy and they're also exercises that you can do around the dining room with somebody too. When they say something,

[24:45]

and you hear it, and you think, hmm, that's neat, well, that's nice, but that's not necessarily what they mean. Still, even though you agree with them and think that they said mean things, you might inquire. You might feel more urgent to inquire if you don't agree. And in some ways, that's why some teachers are more effective when they say things that almost all their students disagree with. Because the students feel uncomfortable and therefore they feel urgency to come and ask about it. Do you really think that there should be a law against abortion? You sort of have to ask about it. But if a person says something really beautiful,

[25:45]

you think, I don't have to ask about that, I'll just sort of enjoy that. Well, that's okay, but still, inquire even about the things you like. Or even about the things you're sure you already understand. I know some people, you know, fine people, and they listen to a teacher for many years and they think the teacher is great, you know. And they sometimes, once in a while, by accident, they wind up talking to a teacher and they say, well, I tell you that everything you've been saying all these years that I feel is completely in accord completely with my attitudes and my opinion. And I think you're right. But that person has no intimacy with that teacher. None. Almost worse than someone who doesn't know them. Even though, and in fact, they probably don't agree

[26:46]

with those, because they never talk to him. And even the great master Linji never went to talk to his teacher. Why should he not need to talk to him? He's already enlightened, he understood the teacher, he understood Wong Bo completely, no problem. Why talk to him? No problem. Why talk to him? So finally, after a number of years of doing that, the, uh, Shih Tzu noticed that he wasn't going and said, go talk to him anyway. So he went and talked to him and said, well, what should I ask? Ask him what good is. Okay, what's good? The teacher beat him up. That's not exactly that he disagreed with the teacher That's not what, it wasn't that he was bad, it was that he got beat up. That was not exactly what he was asking about. And, uh,

[27:48]

at the point of that, everyone said go back and ask him again. And, went back and asked him again and again and got beat up. And one more time, and then said, get out of here and go see what his name is. What's his name? Tiger. Tiger Cave? Just Tiger. Tiger. Oh, Great Pool. Go see the Great Pool. Which is Jim Jordan's name. Go see the Great Idiot. He went and saw him and the Great Idiot said, oh, my god, he asked him. Well, that's good. God, that's the magic thing of the book, right? And it was so nice that Lin Ji got kind of hung up on him. He beat up all his disciples. None of them were ever killed, by the way. Most of them were woke up. He kind of learned

[28:49]

how to do it from a teacher. It's very kind hitting. Hitting is very intimate. And also, you can hit back. But, at a distance, it's horrible. It's scary. Your body can do it. Anything is possible if you can do it. Even the Zazen can be practiced if you can do it. Could you believe that they knew the practice of Zazen? If you could live the life of your ancestors' Samadhi, but, you can't do it by yourself. You individually can't do it, right? Only through intimacy with all sentient beings can Zazen practice happen. Just this morning

[30:00]

someone told me about sitting during Tantra and being quite still. However, there was still some movement in Zendo and movement in Narada which was distracting. Distracting. And then at some point the walls around the Zazen outside of which were these movements and noises. These walls came down and the Zazen was not practiced each side as near the cocoon but the Zazen was practiced on a bigger scale. They included all that stuff. Then a real stability

[31:01]

comes. That's called sitting with all sentient beings. That's what real stillness is. And that's intensity too. Guru Mir Samadhi said

[32:07]

the response to the inquiring impulse to the arrival of energy. A great teacher Humong Yinmong when asked what was the teaching of the inquiring impulse of the entire lifetime of the Buddha he then said an appropriate response. It's that response that it makes when the inquiring mind comes. That's the teaching of the entire lifetime of Buddha. It's not just what Buddha said but when he said it he said it in relationship to the arrival of some energy. That is the Buddha teaching. Our

[33:10]

Buddha teaching is the response of living beings the response of living beings. It's not what he says by itself or what he says when he says it to whom when. It is appropriate. For it to be appropriate there has to be equality. And also remember that or forget that it's kind of dropping order around

[34:10]

our gazan and letting it be something all sentient beings help us do is not necessarily something we willfully do. We just make our gazan our best effort now to sit still and sit with all sentient beings and at some point that actually will happen. But actually all sentient beings have to have to help. And you may not be in a mood for this week or this year. And when we sit tight we sit still we make our contribution towards the activity of sitting still and towards the activity of the Ancestry Samadhi and we wait for the time when everybody else is going to help us. As it stands now everybody

[35:11]

else is helping new people via Tassabara everybody else is helping new people follow the schedule you've got all sentient beings working for you that's fine pretty good all sentient beings are letting you be alive pretty good all sentient beings are letting you breathe Someday all sentient beings will help you practice true practice If some of you have already had moments of that when you felt that all sentient beings are helping you So the point I'd like to concentrate on is the point where all sentient beings create me and where I create all sentient beings That's that point

[36:19]

where it arrives that it will get a lot different in response to the inquiring impulse where my inquiring mind tickles all sentient beings and where all sentient beings come and make my inquiring mind This is to concentrate on the whole work This is to cope creatively with suffering and to experience the flow of quality out of the foundations of the world This is to

[37:28]

respond to the inquiring impulse Life is life when one goes riding a boat Although you work the sails the rudder and the pole you are nothing without the boat The boat makes you but also you make the boat and the entire universe Thurman's Engine suggests to concentrate on that point just as intimately as sitting at our

[38:28]

point and then see if you can do it in the presence of another in other words if you can concentrate on that point see that you can concentrate on that point with another person or if you can concentrate on that point with another person then see if you can do it alone Some people catch on to doing it with another before they understand how to do it by themselves Like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are nothing without the diving You need both aspects you need the intimacy of

[39:29]

sitting alone concentrated on this point where the world makes us and we make the world and also to do that same practice with another person and I just want to give a review now of last night's class it's the same thing I said last night that Vasudandu said is that I think I mentioned it some other place that the zazen could be said the za of zazen means not to have any objects before you when you look at me you don't see an object that's the za and the zazen is to not be confused and to see the nature

[40:29]

of things so Vasudandu's Abhidharma says that the path is that among the things that have outflows which itself does not have an outflow so as you're aware of all these phenomena each one of which leaks you have there's an objectless awareness of these things that leak such an intimate relationship with these things that leak there is an objectless awareness an objectless discernment of experience so objectlessness doesn't count unless you're having an experience it's in the

[41:30]

midst of these dualistic phenomena that the path exists so Buddha's way is the path the zazen is the path in the Buddha's way the zazen and the path are among these phenomena all of which have outflows so but the path zazen in the Buddha's way does not have outflows

[42:30]

Dongshan studied with I think he did he did definitely but I can't think of the story but in Guishan he studied with Guishan and when he was leaving Guishan he said teacher when if anybody asks me about what your teaching is what should I tell him he said he really said nothing he said just don't telling where I am and he pressed him a little further and he said I think he said what what advice do you have to me about how to practice and Guishan said don't leak don't leak don't have outflows and then

[43:46]

he said what should I tell him your teaching he said don't tell him where I am but there's another image which I feel is part of this which I keep coming back to and that is the image of the cauldron or the image of the crucible there's an image that I'd like to find some way in myself to use to use and I I think in my first talk I was I was talking about this and that is

[44:47]

all this stuff I'm talking about this this concentration on this point where the world is created where the world creates me and I create the world that hot stuff happens inside this inside of a container our access to it is through it's through it's through the container through the cauldron the cauldron of this this stuff of cooking what's cooking in the cauldron is the relationship between the absolute and the relative this is what I'm talking about what's cooking in this crucible what's being melted down in this crucible is the entire world

[45:50]

of all living beings and me where my individual life and all living things are merged where this place and this time merges with everywhere and all time that happens in some kind of container the cauldron so following the schedule and intimacy are what make the cauldron and ethical consideration ethical study keeps it makes it hotter so precept practice down to the bottom and

[46:50]

also decency and carefulness the details making this cauldron and then inside of there you can watch the relative and absolute physical you can watch them and listen and listen how that's the next brief to teach our traditional practice with five-legged urban man and a giant thunderbolt floating around hexagrams jumping all over the place split hexagrams and it's kind of like a video talking about what we call the comet's reaction all the all the all the hexagrams in there popping away transmuting constantly

[47:54]

the cauldron I don't know where it is it's or it's this valley this valley is a cauldron this ruins a cauldron this desert a cauldron but also there's a there's a cauldron right down here called Parra so if you go down in there and find the cauldron there also that's another place to melt down different from the other not melt them down but let them dance let them dance like like bread and ginger it happens down here you gotta sort of figure out where is it? where is it? it's definitely around here some place but where exactly? what shape is it? and and when you find the when you find the cauldron down here all these distances and all these distractions just toss them in there so

[49:37]

so this cauldron is a is a calmness in the same body which realizes that everything is the same that all your different diamonds are the same don't get too excited because I can't you can't do this wonderful thing and yet ah you have to make a contribution although all sentient beings have to help us do this you're one of them and you gotta plop your body down and push and let it happen my effort is not sufficient to make it all happen but it's necessary so I cannot sit still you know

[50:38]

because I've got blood flowing through me and I've got things being digested moving around intestines and stuff I can't do this but it is being done all the time and even though I can't do it still if I don't try I can't appreciate it so I have to try to sit still make my punitive effort to sit still in order to let the real thing which is beyond my own conception be realized in this world so so my feeling is that

[51:39]

almost everything I've been saying today is also a basically I'm talking about the diamond transmission thing too so one more thing I wanted to say if I didn't get to speak it's actually just about over now and I don't want to give it too much weight I haven't been allowed I've been lecturing for quite a long time and the kind of person I am or have been lately anyway I have a lot of stories

[52:42]

to tell to offer you to see too I'm just you know bubbling over with stories all the time you think I don't want to give a lecture? I had so many plans about things I wanted to teach this practice period so many things I wanted to clarify with you I could give you a lecture several days fifty times no second one so I saw my face that's how much I like to lecture but I didn't lecture so much the reason why I didn't lecture so much is because I really wanted to make sure that you wanted to lecture so I had to meet at the beginning of the practice period the practice period got together and we thought well should we have some lectures? and people said yeah let's have some lectures well who should I have lectures by? and Donna said I think that

[53:46]

Alice should give some lectures and I said I don't know she said she should give some lectures too and I said I don't know how much she should give some lectures and so on but they didn't ask me to give a lecture which is fine but also they didn't nobody asked them to ask me to give a lecture time went on time went on and pretty soon I think they got some people said that they wanted me to give a lecture right? and so they told me that some people said that they wanted me to give a lecture so I said okay I want to do it but I have I also have to think about it I think I do not have to be but that's I think part of what really makes things work is when you have a request when you have an inquiry

[54:46]

not just I want to give you a talk here come on sit down I have something to say to you I got some good ideas but you also say hey can you say something I don't I really don't you said you mentioned that several of your experience with I do I do hear that I imagine that but still you know the style has not been pre-made but the sangha asked the abbot to give a lecture there hasn't been a style right and I want to

[55:50]

change that I want to give you a chance to realize that you do want the person to give a lecture and then go through various kinds of hesitations because you see they're busy or whatever and then finally say hey I know you're busy but how about it another thing that Siddhita Roshan said was he told about two years ago he told me of a style the style for Kesho which is different from a style from a dhamma talk dhamma talk you know instead of dhamma talk everybody has been trying to give dhamma talk because he gets up and talks about dhamma no problem and some people come and some people don't but the people don't ask the Sangha doesn't ask the people to give a dhamma talk they don't say please give a dhamma talk we just schedule dhamma talk Kesho is different

[56:51]

and there's a formality to it which we haven't started yet but someday maybe we should start and that is the lecturer the person who's giving the Kesho steps to the side of the altar and the people who are at the and faces the people who are attending the lecture and they bow to each other three times and then they have Kesho the meaning of that is the people who are the audience are saying please give a lecture and the lecturer of Kesho's group is saying please listen I can't say please listen and can you say please talk when you're giving an ordinary dhamma talk you can't really say to people please listen to this this is important because they didn't ask you to start

[57:52]

telling them that what do you think they are but if you ask if you say please say something the person can say wow because you asked they can say this is what I really wanted to tell you all this time but I couldn't because you didn't ask that's the cauldron the cauldron is when you got the cauldron you can say when it cooks up long enough you can say hey give a talk or I want to talk I know I do this kind of thing and I waited and it came for the first time I really felt that and I looked at many of the encouraging speech the superintendent went to see the teacher and said you haven't given a lecture for a long time he'd like you to do so and what does the guy do he goes in gets up on the seat

[58:53]

he gets down and goes back to the room that's what he really wanted to do but if he says I want to give a talk or I want to give a lecture and then he walks in and gets up on his seat and he gets down and goes away the teacher says well what a trip but if you were to ask the teacher can do what the teacher's part is up to doing because you asked for that so today I could really say to you I didn't say it but I had a feeling of please pay attention to what I'm going to say I forgot to say that I'm sorry but that was my feeling please pay attention and I feel like I can say that because you really asked and some of you anyway I felt really asked so that gives me permission to really say what I feel and that I think is a

[59:54]

is a real step forward on both sides yes one thought? fine well I'd have to be there at the time to see but generally speaking I won't if people don't want me to they don't have to say anything because I won't unless I'm asked and if one person if the majority respond to ask and one person says I don't want you to then it would depend on when they said it if they said it in the middle of the lecture I would have a different response if they said it at the beginning or if they said it before I got in the room if I was walking down here and somebody had said to me as I was

[60:55]

walking down the road please don't give a lecture I might have gone back to my room I don't know or I might have said would you please question and talk to the people I was in instead of that person I don't know what I would have done but I I have had the experience we had a session here one time and there were no lectures I was the I was the resident head teacher so to speak and there were no lectures during the session and afterwards some people said thank you for the lectures thank you for the beautiful silence so in that case I saw some people didn't want me to give lectures or some of them didn't nobody complained and there weren't any but the way the

[61:57]

monastery is set up is actually it's not exactly you know everybody votes for giving the talk it's rather that the superintendent has a sense of the Sangha and says well I think the Sangha wants a lecture that's my feeling people have said some people have said that and that's my feeling it would be good to have one why don't you give one can we have a taisho please a taisho? yes yes

[63:23]

which in some ways could be a rather tiring thought but in fact the best way to be there for each thing is to be quite calm and waiting so it's not tiring it's not that you have to go out and fight to find those things to actualize with all you have to do is wait and they come to you and then when they come you just interact with them as accurately and openly as possible and once again it's a very bodily interaction it's what how physically do you interact with them and there we of course

[65:31]

have a lot of words involved in it and that's fine being human beings we'll probably always have a lot of words involved but the words arise from some physical place I mean they always do whether you know this is not when you're enlightened words arise from the physical place they always arise from the physical place and that's discovering this you know discovering where they come from is this you are the one you know it's you it's not somebody else there's no way you can discover it in somebody else just have to keep on sitting there with the same old body walking around with the same old body and and if it's

[66:41]

the body that doesn't understand then that's the body we've got how to how to fully realize it's the body that doesn't understand and how to be happy with that possibility is there anything any of you would like to talk about more yeah yeah relationship of emptiness and compassion to actualizing myriad forms to to allow the myriad forms to to enter

[67:42]

you have to have some sense of emptiness emptiness of is and once again this isn't doesn't have to be an intellectual sense of emptiness but our natural state is is a you know ignorance comes right along with existence and ignorance is the idea of a permanent self some self that we think that we are some idea of a self so we have to make a little space in that idea of a self in order to allow anything to come in so we do that all the time you know it's a constant play between an idea of a self and freedom from that idea and if it's the place where it's maybe easiest to see is some in one way or another

[68:51]

traumatic you know place so if there's someone who you're actually afraid of who you have to talk to you're afraid of in some way or another and you have to talk to them you can see in yourself the resistance to that coming up or the fear or the anger or the defenses coming up and if you have some sense of that person's emptiness and by that I mean you know that they're always changing too they're not this solid you know like we sometimes feel like this person is always like this they're never any different but you know I mean rationally we know that's not true they have you know they have a mother and they have they're different with somebody than they are with us and they have their you know they have their weaknesses they so if we can have

[69:52]

some sense of their impermanence is maybe the only way we can let them in if we have a sense of our impermanence and their impermanence you know that we won't I won't die if I let that person in because that's our fear actually is that somehow we'll be destroyed by this other longer event or person and from that actually letting the compassion comes from letting that in and the compassion comes from the merging somehow as I said sometimes this is not so intellectually evident but compassion comes that's the wisdom side the seeing the

[70:52]

impermanence of both yourself and the other person or the other thing or whatever it is and compassion arises when those things you know when there's real understanding when you join with it compassion comes up is that alright? yes Brian yeah I I think that's real true I find it hard though to when I feel threatened by somebody who intellectually I know it's impermanent but emotionally obviously this doesn't feel impermanent that's why I'm thrilled how do you how do you get to that point of you know feeling large minded

[71:54]

towards this person without anger regenerating more karma or whatever can you say something on how do you get to the point of seeing the person as impermanent without making matters worse well you might not be able to that's part of this you can't force yourself actually to do it all you can do is just keep looking at you know our real tendency my real tendency is definitely to start looking at and psyching out understanding the other person right oh well they always act this way it's probably because it's something that happened in their childhood or you know to try to understand them right but if we can turn that around and basically watch

[72:54]

what happens with us and it might be that you're totally petrified by fear and nothing happens you know you just you can't approach them at all or open to them at all but it's still at least this practice says it's still you know the most effective thing to do is to watch to watch yourself you know to watch that blockage to and just to you know lay it on the heart right just keep oh there it is and lay what you see there on your heart and wait and you know the truth is we'll never be perfect right we'll never be able to to be exactly the way we want to be and besides it'd be boring so yes

[74:00]

yes it is as perfect as we're gonna get which is which is perfect right but it's not that I mean it's obvious that if this is perfect perfect is a different idea than I sometimes have of perfect well idea of perfect or idea of good and bad is really just an idea and we use it a lot a lot a lot in fact in western culture we probably use it more than they do in eastern culture and it you know it has its I suppose its place but I think that we've we've really confused ourselves a lot by namely we think what isn't perfect or what isn't good somehow we've got to get rid of it

[75:05]

and it doesn't go away you know it just it's part of life so we can call it bad if we want but to assume that by calling it bad we can somehow uproot it isn't it just isn't true and that to see it as part of the whole and see it clearly is a much more effective way of of dealing with it than to try to either what often happens is we try to deny it especially in ourselves or in someone who we love very much how about would you say that to be with that whatever you call it the bad that we think the bad would you say you should be with that to be with the bad and be with that and by being there you can

[76:07]

see it in relation to the real perfection which is when you see it yeah you have to be with it and often when we're with it we see that it's very connected to what's the best you know what we've been calling the best in us you know that each of our worst quality is you know it's real closely connected with what our best quality is and in fact if we got rid of the one we probably wouldn't have the other if such a thing were possible and also that we probably have to somehow go through our difficult areas we have to work through them you know that's where our path of growth is so they're actually blessings for us hard as they may be

[77:09]

and then the perfect is just what you know it's just what is there isn't any I mean we can call it perfect but it's it's it's just this mixture of it's this kind of kaleidoscope of things that keep happening and changing yeah yeah there's a book called The Awakening of Faith so faith is another way of talking about trust or it's also translated as confidence and they talk about it as confidence in suchness suchness being this you know it's the perfect or it's the it's what is everything that's happening

[78:14]

so to have confidence that what is [...] and is alright and one way of having confidence is that is realizing that there isn't any choice you know which can be kind of but it's you know it's fairly useful it it kind of takes away a wishful quality of oh if only things could be you know the way I would have them if I were the creator of the universe so to some this book is about awakening that how do you awaken a confidence in suchness and it talks about it as the way you awaken it is there is a little permeate a little permeation of confidence where you get you sort of trust enough

[79:15]

to try it out a bit so like if you start sitting zazen you trust it enough to sit for a little while you know when you start sitting usually unless you're a real gung-ho type you know it's kind of testing the waters and but it takes some amount of confidence or trust or faith to sit down or you know it takes some amount of faith to come into a new situation you know like to come to Tassajara as anything you know as a guest as a guest student as a student a resident so we're doing it all the time you know it's just so already we've had this little permeation and then it's just allowing ourselves to expand that which is mostly a a case of the way to do that is mostly to stop thinking about it quite so much you know

[80:18]

that's the main way that we undermine our confidence is that we worry because in fact we basically we go along stepping on the ground you know we trust all kinds of things and that's what we're trusting suchness but in our minds we're doing a lot of worrying about oh gee you know should I be here should I leave should I have come here should I stay for the next five minutes maybe I should go maybe I should take maybe I should be looking for a job but in fact we do something but we spend enormous amounts of energy worrying about it yeah do you think fear of what exactly yeah I think so most of the time I don't know fear of what exactly except maybe fear of this idea of self being proved wrong

[81:22]

or changed or something or that it might be bad that that the self might turn out to be bad yeah yeah yeah might not be what we wanted it to be it isn't it isn't what we wanted it to be we already know that you know if we could just admit it that's the how long about making this kind of decision to fear it and to know that if we make if we leave and we don't stay or if we stay and don't leave or we change it doesn't matter that it will be bad that it will be bad so yeah so that so so the way that overcome or improve that purpose is to accept that yeah or stop

[82:25]

using those labels you know and just you'll either be a person who leaves or a person who stays and you'll still have lots of opportunities to do your best okay well i would like to thank all of you for making Tasahara what it is guests and residents and guest students alike it's certainly one of my favorite places in the world thank you good night Thank you. ♪ May our intention be to penetrate every being and place ♪

[83:33]

♪ With the true merit of Buddha's way ♪ ♪ Shed your worry and stay undone ♪ ♪ Om, om, shu, stay undone ♪ ♪ Om, om, shu, stay undone ♪ ♪ Om, om, shu, stay undone ♪ ♪ Beings are much numberless, I vow to awaken with them ♪ ♪ Diligence are inexhaustible, I vow to end them ♪

[84:43]

♪ The gates are boundless, I vow to enter them ♪ ♪ Buddha's way is unsurpassable, I vow to become it ♪

[85:02]

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