I got a message from the Society for the Promotion of Samadhi, which is also called the Committee for Concentration. And they wanted to make sure that I was encouraging people to be calm and concentrated. The sound system is a little too strong, I think. Can it be turned down a little bit? No? Okay, how's that? Is it okay? All right. Okay. Thank you very much for setting it up. And I... Someone said to me recently that... the way that they like to practice concentration is by just being present and not doing something to be concentrated.

[01:14]

And that reminded me of the statement that the ancestor Bodhidharma encouraged calming the mind with no contrivance Contrivance means some kind of device, or you could even say technique. It has other nuances, the word contrivance. But anyway, Bodhidharma encouraged calming the mind, but without using something to calm the mind. And there are many techniques for calming the mind. And in a place that's encouraging calming of the mind, it's maybe good to allow people to use techniques to calm the mind. Because part of being calm and part of encouraging calm is to be gracious to people who are trying to do something to be calm.

[02:18]

But it's not necessary, actually. You don't have to do something to become. You can just become. It's okay. With no device. With no... With no means. Or you could say, by all means, become. And cultivate that constantly, or aspire, consider aspiring to cultivating calm and tranquility continuously. And I'd like to return to the topic of delusion. I suggested actually something like, I don't have to tell people to be deluded.

[03:29]

My feeling is I don't have to tell myself or you to be deluded. That's already been accomplished. There is a teaching that all sentient beings are deluded. all sentient beings just have deluded karmic consciousness. And it's boundless. Karmic consciousness imagines boundaries. Deluded consciousness thinks that there are boundaries, but actually You can't find boundaries. But also, I'm not saying that there aren't any boundaries, because, in fact, deluded consciousness imagines them. So in a sense, they exist conventionally. Depending on the idea of boundaries, there are boundaries.

[04:32]

And we need to be gracious and respectful of deluded consciousness. and the boundaries that it imagines. Ultimately, no boundaries can be found, which means there's no boundaries to deluded consciousness. It may be difficult for us to accept the teaching that sentient beings are circumscribed by mental construction. The sentient beings live within a mental construction of the world. Sentient beings have minds that construct a world around them.

[05:37]

It's not that there's no world, it's just that the world we live in is a mentally constructed one. Is there another world? There is, but it's not in a dual relationship to the one we're constructing. And I suggest it being authentically deluded. And authentic means something worthy of trust or belief. And the root of the word authentic is also... Another meaning of authentic is of undeniable, irrefutable origin. So, in a sense, deluded consciousness... and delusions are authentic.

[06:40]

They are authentically deluded and their authentic undeniable origin is ignorance and karmic formation. So the Buddha discovered on the occasion of awakening, the Buddha discovered dependent co-arising and he described it something like depending on ignorance karmic formations arise. Depending on karmic formations, consciousness arises. But the consciousness he's talking about, which he called vijnana, is a consciousness which has origins in ignorance. So it is deluded consciousness. And vijnana means V-I. In Sanskrit, V-I means difference or cutting. And jnana means knowing. It's a knowing of difference or a knowing of separation.

[07:41]

The consciousness which knows difference arises from ignorance." Sentient beings live in this discriminating, separating, deluded consciousness. They live within that sphere which their mind creates. So authentic, in one sense, there's a teaching which is worthy of trust, I feel. It's the teaching that we have this kind of consciousness. So it is an authentic teaching, and we can trust it, or we can at least experiment with trusting that we live within delusion. And then we can study whatever is happening for us, and that will be studying delusion. But if we forget and think that we're studying reality, then the teaching which we give ourselves, which is that we're studying reality and we're studying our experience, that teaching is not an authentic teaching.

[08:53]

Well, it is authentic, too, in the sense that it also is a delusion that arises from ignorance. But I wouldn't trust it. I wouldn't trust it that you can see the truth and what you see is the truth. can we accept for a moment that we live within such a deluded consciousness? Someone said to me also recently, I was saying, well, another way to put it is, we live within mental construction. And the person said, well, I feel more comfortable with that we live within mental construction, that what we see is our mental constructions. And I said, that's fine. The advantage of the word deluded is that we realize our mental constructions, not we realize, but we have the additional information that our mental constructions are basically, not entirely, but basically deceptive.

[10:00]

So, for example, the mental construction I have that you're present here, that's not exactly deceptive because I think you are present here. But there's a deceptive way that you appear here. in the sense that you appear to be a way that you're not, and also it kind of deceives me. I kind of believe it. And the way you appear that you're not is you appear to be, from my perspective, you appear to be existing separate from me. and the walls appear to be separate from me, and the trees appear to be existing separate from me. This is a false appearance. They aren't actually existing that way. They don't walk around being separate from me. But they appear that way to me, and they're deceptive in the sense that I tend to believe it. I tend to agree, yes, things are separate from me.

[11:03]

So in that sense, these mental constructions are deceptive or deluding, and therefore I'm easily deluded by these seductive, deceptive appearances. And also I heard from one of the small groups that someone thought that maybe in direct sense perception this deceptiveness isn't going on. And again, I would propose to you that Basically, there's two ways we know things. We know things directly and indirectly. Directly means without interpreting the data conceptually, and the other is interpreting the data conceptually. Most people are not able to apprehend direct sense perception even though direct sense perception is going on, most people do not apprehend it.

[12:08]

Most people, if they have many direct sense perceptions of a certain type, like for example a pain of the color blue, many direct sense perceptions can accumulate to a point where they will then have a conceptual cognition of blue or pain, and that they will apprehend. So most people are living in the realm of indirect conceptual cognition most of the time. You have to be very concentrated or something very, very intense has to happen sometimes to be able to apprehend sense consciousness. But even in sense consciousness, even in direct sense consciousness, the color blue or the pain still appears to be out there separate from the awareness of it, and it's not. No object is separate from a subject.

[13:15]

There's no subject separate from an object. But the way the mind arises is that it arises in such a way that it has mind and objects, and it appears that the objects that are the mind are separate from the mind. The mind rises up and says, Hi, I'm not you. The mind says to itself, Hello, I'm separate from you. And you believe that, don't you? And we used to say mother, but now we sometimes say primary caregivers teach children that. I'm your mommy and you're the greatest. And we need to go through that. We need that reinforced, that Although we own our mommy, she's out there.

[14:16]

Buddhas understand delusion greatly. They really understand. They are greatly enlightened about delusions. What I'm saying about these delusions, it doesn't mean delusions are bad, by the way. As a matter of fact, I would propose to you that delusions are enlightenment itself, by the way. But if we don't understand that delusions are delusions, we won't realize enlightenment, which is what delusions themselves are. And we have a difficult time accepting and then after accepting we have a hard time remembering that we are deluded and that we live within this deluded situation.

[15:33]

We have a hard time. We have been and may still be somewhat afraid of being small. of being enclosed, of being trapped within something. Or somewhat afraid of not being good. And therefore we try to be better instead of realizing that the way we are right now, or instead of realizing the way we are right now, Because we're afraid of being deluded, we have trouble realizing our delusion right now, which is the same as realizing enlightenment right now. Being calm really helps, really supports us in accepting our deluded condition.

[16:47]

And in order to be calm, we must, as I mentioned day before yesterday or whenever it was, we must be gracious and welcoming to what's happening and careful with it and patient with it. And if we can be that way with within our deluded consciousness, we can be calm with it. And then in the calm, we receive lots of support, energy, and stillness, and ease to look at something which we're not used to looking at, namely how our mind is tricking us. and how we don't like to be tricked and how we're afraid of being small and misguided.

[17:55]

It's hard to relax when we're being misguided and be calm when we're being misguided and we're being tricked. But consciousness is basically basically a trickster. It's not just a trickster, but it's basically a trickster in the sense that its root is ignorance and then action based on that ignorance. I'll just say this word now at the beginning. So we are, in karmic consciousness, we are actors. And actors in two senses. One is that we're active beings based on ignorance. We're active beings and that also, but we're also acting based on

[19:03]

based on a delusion. And again, that's hard for us to accept. And ethical discipline goes very well with being an actor because ethical discipline is very much about our actions. And it's encouraging us to be very careful since we're deluded, we should be very careful. If we weren't deluded, in a sense, we wouldn't have to be careful anymore. We wouldn't have to be vigilant and cautious and meticulous. Our being would naturally, in some sense, be careful and meticulous. In a sense, the Buddhas don't need ethical discipline anymore because they're perfectly in accord with reality. But if we live in delusion, we should be very careful with this delusion.

[20:10]

Like, if you open a door, you should be careful. If you walk down some steps, be careful. But even walking on level ground, you are walking on level ground, maybe. You could say, yes, you are, but you're walking within a diluted version of level ground. And you are walking, but you're walking within a cognitive construction, a misleading cognitive construction of walking. So that makes walking something to be very careful of. And part of us doesn't want to be careful, wants to have lots of fun and be carefree. And the Buddhas are carefree. They care, but they're free of care at the same time. So Buddhas study delusion, accept delusion, they love delusion, they feel compassion for all types of delusion, and they're not any more tricked by it.

[21:24]

We can become Buddhas by studying delusion. And there are infinite opportunities for study. So in some sense, I feel like, well, there's nothing more to say. And also in some sense, I feel like, let's continue, because everything will be studying delusion. And we can watch how each other study delusion. We can see how people are studying it. Or we can see how it seems that they're distracted from it, from the study. No one's actually distracted from delusion. You can't get distracted from it. But you can not trust it as delusion and get distracted from it as delusion and think it's true. Like, you're deluded, but what I'm thinking is not. We sometimes think like that. And then someone said, well, how could you work in a mental hospital where you have these deluded people?

[22:34]

And if you're the psychiatrist, don't you have to like, mm-hmm? It makes it hard to understand how you could help people if you're as equally deluded as they are. And I think there's some There's some, I don't know, a rumor or some kind of sense that there's somebody or some bodies in this valley who are less deluded than the other people. Somebody coughed at that time, so I'll say it again. There's some people feel like some people are more or less deluded here. I think there's different varieties of delusion. That's why I like that definition I mentioned, is that delusion is an idiosyncratic belief. So my delusions are different from yours. The way I think about you is not the way you do or the way Connie does.

[23:41]

And part of my mind holds to my idiosyncratic view and belief of what you are. So my job is to watch to see how tightly I hold to my view of you, to my belief of what you are. Because of this teaching, I am committed to watch that. So once again, as far as I know, we're all deluded, but I have this story. I have this story, which I don't hold too tightly, but kind of tightly, that we don't necessarily take care of our delusions, that we don't tend to them as, in a sense, precious opportunities for awakening. because in fact delusion itself is enlightenment. But if we don't take care of delusion as well as we would take care of a Buddha or a great bodhisattva or something else that we really, really value and think is really, really worthwhile, if we don't take care of our delusions like that, there will be more and more suffering.

[25:01]

from inattention and lack of thorough, wholehearted compassion for deluded consciousness. I think almost all of us can be more consistent and more wholehearted in caring for our mind. and caring for our mind include caring for our body, because if you try to take care of your body, you're always circumscribed in a cognitive construction of your body. You do have a body, and your body's not a cognitive construction, but it depends on the mind, and we live within a cognitive version of our body. And we relate to the body through our cognitive, our diluted cognitive construction about it. So caring for the mind is necessary in order to skillfully care for the body.

[26:04]

And of course, you have to care for the body in order to care for the mind because caring for the body teaches you about your mind because you're dealing with your mental version of your body all the time. So again, being careful. of your body means being careful of your mind and vice versa. I also had the thought that what I'm talking to you about is strong medicine or you could also say very rich food, high fat content. I hope no trans fats. But anyway, so I don't want to make you sick by giving you too much of this strong medicine or too much of this rich food. today or ever actually.

[27:05]

I'd like to administer it in digestible servings. So I think maybe I should stop now because that's a lot. And again, I think it's hard for me and you to accept such a teaching. you're saying that all sentient beings just have karmic consciousness? Yeah. Just have deluded karmic consciousness? Mm-hmm. But once again, it doesn't mean karmic consciousness is bad. Karmic consciousness itself is what we mean by enlightenment. And Buddhas study and understand karmic consciousness. That's pretty much their work. So if you're taking care of this, you're doing Buddha work. Any feedback you care to offer?

[28:15]

We could do that for a while. Or we can just sit here calmly contemplating deluded consciousness for a while. Yesterday, Sunday, when you were talking about delusions, you used the synonym affliction. Yeah. And that brought to mind the idea of kleshas, of some kind of a... Yeah, klesha, it's a synonym, klesha. You use this thing here, huh? So, klesha... Kleshas can be translated as defilement, defilement or affliction.

[29:25]

And the Chinese, I think, goes something like, let's see if I can remember it. It's too complicated. Anyway, bono. Bono is a Japanese pronunciation character, so it means affliction, And among the afflictions are delusion, greed and hate, and also, and kleshet. These words are synonym. This is Sanskrit. This is Chinese. And defilement. And again, affliction partly means painful, but its root meaning is the cause of pain. These are causes of pain. Delusion is a cause of pain. Delusion itself is not pain, but it causes pain.

[30:26]

Hatred and greed themselves are not really pain, but they cause pain. That's really all I wanted to... Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. So we live within klesha. It changes to kliṣṭha. Kliṣṭha means defiled. Klesha means defilement. Kliṣṭha means defiled. So we live within kliṣṭha karmic consciousness, defiled karmic consciousness, afflicted karmic consciousness. I have to check if I understand something.

[31:37]

To be present in the presence of the present, is it a medicine to go beyond your own world and to realize So being present with the present is a way to go beyond our world and realize intimacy with all beings. And also delusion, your own delusion. Realize intimacy. Being present with the present is a basic practice to realize intimacy with our delusion. Yes, but I said to be present in the presence of the present.

[32:45]

That too. So, could I say it's like... Shikantaza? You can say it's like Shikantaza, yeah. The different understandings of Shikantaza, but I understand Shikantaza to mean not just presence, but presence with delusion. Yes, it includes, it's a part of, yeah. Some people think that Shikantaza, just sitting, means that there's no thinking going on, that there's no delusion. But I don't think that's Dogen Zenji's understanding. I think he wants us to, like he said, first thing he said, you want to check. So checking is part of the way to study delusion. It isn't I'm checking so that I make sure I'm not deluded. I'm checking my delusions.

[33:47]

Let's get our delusions well coordinated, okay? So I want to check, can I make my delusion in relationship to yours? Can deluded beings play together using forms, for example, of Zen practice as a way to be intimate? So we can be intimate even though we're deluded. And when deluded beings are intimate, they realize enlightenment. Yes, in the awareness of this. Of course, it will be a dance. Yes. But not just my dance by myself. No, no, of course not. But still we have to check. But it isn't that we check and then now I check so now I realize I wasn't deluded. I am already deluded, but I'm trying to deepen my understanding of my delusion by checking with you. And if I don't want to check with you, I think I'm moving away from my delusion. I'm like saying, I don't want to be deluded. I don't want to check with you because you might disagree with me. You might refute my position.

[34:57]

But I actually, in this process, I kind of want my position to be refuted. Because even though I think it's refutable, I'm still secretly holding on to it. Thank you, Sam. You brought up something for me, clarified my question. In taking care of our delusions, you've said to wholeheartedly pay attention and have compassion. And then you just said something about refute. So... Well, refute means that I refute the... I refute what I think as reality.

[36:08]

That seems to me to be different. It is kind of different. And like the job of the teacher to refute? Sort of pull the rug out? You could say that. You could say not just teacher, student can refute too. But anyway, the refuting is just, the purpose of refuting is not to establish a truth so much in this context, but rather test to see if there's flexibility around the delusion. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Would you allow your truth to be refuted? Mm-hmm. Like, it's nice to remember the English words in the Christian wedding ceremony. I plight thee my troth. I plight thee my troth. I put my troth, which means truth, I put my truth in plight to thee.

[37:17]

I let you refute my truth. I want to be intimate with you, so even my truth you can refute. Because more important than me having the truth is being intimate with you. And so in that sense, we offer our truth and we check to see if we're willing to have our truth refuted. And we also can check to see if other people are willing to let us refute their truth. May I refute your truths? One might ask. There's this famous story which is in the public domain about me and my wife. You know that story? We're having dinner with some people. And she says, it's a couple that we're having dinner with, and she says to the husband of the couple, she says, where do you work?

[38:18]

And he says, I work in Irvine, California. And she says, my wife says, well, what's Irvine like? And he says, it's beautiful. And then his wife says, it's ugly. And then he says, it's ugly. And then my wife said to me, you should learn that. We should learn that. We should learn that. Did I learn it? To your health. There's one more part of the question. When you talk about being intimate with the delusion, I can feel the tendency to want to get involved in the content of the delusion. So that being that close, it feels like it would be easy to fall in to wanting to be involved with the content.

[39:24]

Well, on Sunday, Jackie came up and said, well, what about the, she said, you said to welcome everything. And she said, but you also teach being upright. And she said, it seems like welcoming is kind of like going like this, leaning in, like your guest comes, you go. So it's not, so how can you like be available to your guest, be there for your guest, your delusion, without leaning into it? So the graciousness, the welcoming, you're welcoming, but you're also upright. You're not like caring too much for your guest or too little. So to be balanced is a refinement in the practice of giving, in the practice of welcoming delusion. To watch and see if there's any prying, trying to grasp any content Or avoiding content.

[40:30]

Like, okay, I'll welcome you, but no details. I've never been to Irvine. I was wondering if you would go... I've heard that. If my wife says it, it's true. I was wondering if you'd go back over what you were saying about the relationship of body and mind. I managed to miss part of it, but it almost sounded as though you were talking of them as though they were two, and I was kind of hoping we'd get away from that Descartian stuff. Well, they can be two, but not separate. Like you and I can be two, but not separate. And we're not separate.

[41:32]

What I am right now depends on you. There's no mind without body, but they're different. One is located, the other isn't. So in a sense, they are different. In Buddhism, there is duality, but there's also non-duality in Buddhism. So there is a body-mind duality in Buddhism, but it's an illusion. So we accept the illusion, which for most people is a delusion, of mind and body or self and other being separate. We accept that as a delusion. It's not true, but it does appear. It's a conventional truth. And if we accept that, then we can realize that not just body and mind are non-dual. Non-duality does not mean eliminating duality. If it did, it wouldn't be non-duality.

[42:33]

So we don't have a Cartesian duality here. We have a a dharmic duality, which includes that it's an illusion, that you can never find it. It can never be verified if you study deeply enough. You can never find any physical thing in the universe, not just your own sense organs. You can't find any atoms or parts of atoms that are separate from mind. Everything is mind dependent, but also mind is not just located So, yeah. I'm developing a new form of how to bow to people holding a microphone.

[43:42]

When you talk about taking care of delusions, and I sit here going, uh-huh, uh-huh, sounds good. And then I try to think of, well, what does that look like? And what happens in my mind is that degrades really quickly into be careful with them. You could do harm with them, therefore restrain them. And I'm pretty sure that's a bad example. Did you say bad example? It's a bad example. Restrain. Well, again, the first practice for the bodhisattva in dealing with deluded karmic consciousness, the first practice is being gracious. And it isn't that you're gracious with your delusions and then you move on to be careful and stop being gracious. you continue giving as you move into caring. As you move into being careful, you continue to be gracious. So even if you would restrain a delusion, you wouldn't restrain it to control it.

[44:57]

You'd restrain it as a gift Like you could sit on somebody's chest who's having a fit as a gift with no sense that you're going to be able to control them or even trying to control them, but you're just interacting with them in a way you think you'd like to give yourself as some mass to place upon their chest while they're having a seizure or something. But you really don't feel like you're trying to control them. It's just a gift. And to look in your heart to see if you really feel generous about this So restraint or force can be used in a generous way rather than a controlling way. And also, of course, you can withhold force in a controlling way rather than a gracious way. Passive aggression. So the thing is, how can we give energy

[45:59]

with a sense of wholehearted gift with no expectation and then also be careful with it and vigilant of it after it's given. So it isn't just giving and then close your eyes. It's giving and watch the consequences of what happens now with what you've been generous with. Either generous towards the thing and watch how the thing responds or Or watch how your energy takes effect that you've given. So restraint is not necessarily restrained. It's just offered as a gift as part of ethical discipline. And the English word restraint is sometimes applied also to a Sanskrit term which is called samvara. Samvara. which oftentimes they talk about, they translate samvara as restraint, but another word for it is discipline.

[47:04]

And I'd like to just mention now and again and again and again that the Suzuki Roshi taught that emptiness is not nothing. Emptiness is disciplined form. You know, you've all heard form is emptiness. We've all heard emptiness is form, right? But it's not just any old form, it's a disciplined form. It's a form that you've disciplined, a form that you've been generous with, a form that you've been careful with. So, for example, if you join your palms and bow, and you do that on a regular basis, you discipline this form. this form becomes emptiness. Or rather, you realize that this form is empty when you discipline it. And discipline means be careful how you do it.

[48:09]

Be gracious how you do it. Don't grasp how you do it. Wholeheartedly do it without grasping it. That's disciplining the form. And when that form is thoroughly disciplined, it's emptiness. Thank you. You're welcome. And same with delusion. Delusion is a form. Form, feeling, consciousness, emotions, perceptions, conception, all these forms, all five skandhas, when you discipline them, they're emptiness. When you discipline them, it means you become intimate with their conventional reality, they become ultimate truth. People are standing on this side, and the people over here are getting a lot of... Stand over here, next person, so I can see the people over on the other side of the room. You were earlier, though.

[49:22]

He can wait there, and there's a seat for him. Yes. Today's an auspicious day. Today's auspicious, yes. 1-11-11. Lots of ones. 1-11-11. Yay! Right? It'll be 11-11. I thought about that, too. Yay! So, can we play? Yes. We have that potential. So, I'll be your mind. You're going to be my mind? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I want to see how you welcome me. You're not worthy. You really failed. I hear you.

[50:31]

You're saying that I'm not worthy and that I failed. What did I fail at? Your failure. You're not a good teacher. You could have treated this student differently. It's true. It's really true that I could have treated them differently. But it's also not true. I couldn't have treated them differently. What's the emotion that's coming up for you? For me? The emotion is how wonderful it is that when welcoming you can also disagree. So I'm showing my mind that I can disagree with it and still welcome it. But I don't know if my mind's noticing that. My mind seems to be looking at the ceiling. So that's the way the mind thinks sometimes.

[51:37]

I accept that. That's a concentrated mind. Instead of down, up. So you just taught me a technique. is to disagree with myself. Is that right? It's not so much that it was a technique, but rather it was something that came up that I saw something that was true, and then I also saw that it wasn't. I mean, I saw I could have treated the student differently. I said, yes, that's true. And then I thought, oh, no, not that it's false, but I also couldn't treat the student differently. I had to do it that way. at that moment. Once it happened, I couldn't do it another way. But still, that's part of the reality that our delusion has trouble handling, is that the way things work is not over-determined, and it's not under-determined, that things aren't totally under control of cause and effect, and yet things don't happen randomly, and they don't happen randomly.

[52:55]

So that's part of the complexity of reality is that I could have treated the student differently, but as I was acting, it had to be that way. And in this interaction with the mind, I was accepting what was offered, and then I offered something different. And both can be part of graciousness. You can let the person in your house, and then you can say, would you please go into the dining room? But not as a control technique, but just as an offering. And then they say, no, I want to go in the living room. You might say, let's go in the garden. A lot of possibilities. In other words, being gracious doesn't mean that you don't give something back to what you welcome. You welcome the mind, but then there can be a gift. The welcoming is a gift, and then there can be a gift to what is welcomed. So it's dynamic.

[53:57]

It's changing all the time. I'm not referring to like a storm that comes. A storm that comes, yeah. How do you welcome a storm? Yeah, well, just give me a story and I'll show you how I do it. I often feel torture or a great deal of pain with my children when I see certain dysfunctions in them or ways that they're living their life. there's a lot of self-blame, and it's heart-wrenching. It's, I feel like I caused it sometimes. Yeah. And I may have actually caused it, and I may not have. So you're telling me about these delusions, right? I caused it.

[54:59]

They're stormy. They're intense delusions. My children are suffering. I caused it. Or maybe I caused it. Or even maybe I caused it. It could be a storm too. But I caused it. It seems even more stormy than maybe. Right. So their suffering, I caused it. Those are pretty big storms for you to have come into your life. So then let's welcome them. Let's welcome my children are suffering. Let's welcome it. And that's really hard for people to say. How can I welcome that my children are suffering? And that's the question. How can you? Buddha... Everyone's Buddha's child, and Buddha welcomes everybody's suffering. And by welcoming everybody's suffering, the Buddha teaches people what they need to learn to do with their suffering, too. He doesn't, Buddha doesn't like that we're suffering, but Buddha welcomes that we're suffering to instruct us.

[56:00]

So if you can welcome your children's suffering, you can, that will help them. If then the thought, I caused it, arises, then welcome that. But I would also say, I caused your children suffering too. You're not the only one that causes it. And they cause their suffering too. Everybody contributes to the suffering of everybody. And everybody contributes to the happiness of everybody. To enter the world of reality where we're contributing to each other's happiness and unhappiness, we have to accept these storms. And even if I accept that I have to accept them, it's still difficult. But some people do not accept that they should accept. They think, I should not accept the suffering of beings. I should not welcome it. But I think they're confused between liking it and letting it in.

[57:04]

You can also say, I, in theory, I know I should welcome this, but it's too much for me right now. It's too big a storm for me to welcome. I have to accept it. It's beyond my ability. And at that time, I would say to myself or someone else, well, I don't seem to be able to accept this storm, but can I accept that I can't accept? Yes, I can accept that. I can accept that it's too advanced a practice to accept this storm, this disease, this pain. It's just too big for me now. It's beyond me. I have to accept. I wish to accept that it is too big, but I can't accept. It's too big to accept, but I can accept that I can't accept. I can be gracious to my limits. And based on that, I will grow in my ability to welcome and someday be able to welcome these more enormous sufferings.

[58:07]

Again, the Buddha teaches that if you train yourself, you will be able to open to a scope and scale of suffering that you can't open to now. And then we move on to being careful with our limits in our opening and then patient with how slowly we're evolving, not letting ourself off the hook by being patient and being present with our present level of development. This is how to benefit our present level of development. So you're saying be kind to yourself. I am, definitely. Thank you. You're welcome. well maybe is that enough for today please take care of you know what

[59:16]

Thank you.

[59:23]

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