I am suggesting we take one step forward in the book of the Blue Cliff Record and see what we find. Maybe it'll be a story about intimate communication. Once upon a time there was a Buddhist monk. You might call him a Zen monk. His name was... This is a... Sui Yan.

[01:05]

Sui Yan. And he's a disciple of Xue Feng. Sekpo. Stepo has lots of wonderful successors. So one of his successors we talked about last week, Fa Yan, Dharma Eyes. Another one of his successors is Sui Yan. Another one of his successors is Yen Man, or Mu Mon. Another one of his successors is Bao Fung, which would be hofuku in Japanese, and this is Chang Ching. These are five of his main disciples. So the way the Blue Cliff record is structured, the first story in the Blue Cliff record is of bodhidharma,

[02:15]

And I think the next story is Master Ma is not well, I think. No, the second case is about Zhaozhou. The third case is about Master Ma, when Master Ma was about to die. And then we come to a story about a monk named Dushan, which means Poku-san in Japanese. Dushan means virtue mountain. Virtue mountain. It's a story about him being awakened by various people. and then his successor, and he's a successor of Dragon Pond, Lung Tan.

[03:30]

And then De Shan leads to Shui Fung. And then the next several cases are about Shui Fung and his successors. So this successor is named Tsing-Yang. And he led a practice period, a summer practice period, in the monastery where he was living with a large group of monks. And at the end of the summer retreat, he said to the monks, All summer long I have been talking to you brothers. Now look and see if my eyebrows are still there.

[04:42]

So there's a kind of like a folk tradition that if you talk a lot, your eyebrows will fall out. And when I first came to Zen Center, a friend of mine told me another story, which was, if you talk a lot, your eyebrows grow longer. And then he pointed to a picture of D.T. Suzuki. And D.T. Suzuki's eyebrows were like, were about six inches long. And he swirled them around up into the sky. I guess my friend was suggesting that D.T. Suzuki talked a lot and had these long eyebrows. This story is saying if you talk a lot, your eyebrows will fall out. Part of the idea here is that This is particularly applying to Zen teachers.

[06:03]

So Zen teachers, they might realize the transcendent wisdom, but they can't, the transcendent wisdom cannot talk directly. So we have to like bend down to speak it into ordinary language. But then when you bend down, if you talk too much, your eyebrows will fall out. So he's saying to the group, I've been talking to you this summer. Are my eyebrows still there? Did I talk too much, in other words? So he says he's been talking to them throughout the summer. And now he's saying, did I talk too much? Have my eyebrows fallen out? And then it's followed by comments.

[07:12]

And the comments are by his Dharma siblings. Monks who were also his Dharma brothers who studied with the same teacher, Bao Fu, Yun Men, and Chong Ching. So I don't think they were in the assembly, but I don't know for sure. Part of the reason why I don't think that they were there was because it doesn't seem like he would be leading the summer retreat and that they would be there. I think he had already left his teacher and had his own monastery. And they also probably had theirs. So I imagine that at the end of his summer retreat, he says this thing about He said, I talked to you guys. I talked to you guys.

[08:19]

Well, actually, he said, all summer long I've been talking to you guys. Do I still have eyebrows? And so three of his Dharma siblings, I think, probably heard about this. So Zen monks, at the end of the retreat with the teacher, there's a little break, and then they run all over China and tell people what happened at the party. What did you guys do for three months? How was the practice? Was it peaceful? Was it intimate? And then they said, at the end of the retreat the teacher said, I've been talking to you all summer. Do I still have eyebrows?

[09:23]

So these senior practitioners might have been in their brother's assembly But I don't think so. I think the monks in the group left the monastery, traveled around and told all these other, told his brothers what he said at the end. And of all his teachings, that he gave during his life and he had a big assembly and he taught for a long time. Of all his teachings, this is the most famous. The most famous teaching is, I've been talking to you all summer. Do I still have my eyebrows? Word gets out and these other Zen masters hear about it and they have comments on what they heard.

[10:35]

So this is an intimate communion Chinese Tang Dynasty, or actually at the late, late, at the very end of the Tang Dynasty, beginning of the Song Dynasty, this conversation between Cui Yan and his monks, and between his monks and the other teachers around the country, this conversation is happening either in the late 9th century or early 10th, about a thousand years ago. And the method was face-to-face, and then sometimes people walked along ways, and then face-to-face they transmitted. Sometimes they sent letters, but the letters were usually delivered by hand by the practitioners to other practitioners and teachers. Then after this story, which I just told you, of this conversation between the teacher and the students, it doesn't say, I don't know if these people were in the assembly or not.

[11:52]

But anyways, this is a response. And the first response is from Bao Fu. And what he says is, the thief's heart is cowardly. Another translation would be, the thief has a guilty conscience. We can talk more about that later, okay? So, do I still have my eyebrows? As that master says, the thief's heart is cowardly. Then comes Chongqing, who says, growth, they've grown.

[12:57]

Not only do you still have them, they've grown. And then Yunmen, the most famous of all Shui Fung's disciples, and the one that has the most stories about him in the book of the Blue Cliff Record, Yun-Man says, barrier. I don't know how long Yun-Man's eyebrows were, but Yun-Man often gave very short talks like this one, barrier. What was the Buddha's teaching her whole life? An appropriate statement, an appropriate response. What is Buddha? A dried turd. Do you know what a turd is, Francesca?

[14:00]

Do you know what a turd is, Anna? No. Shaitza. Dried shaitza. What is Buddha? The great Zen master says, a dried turd. Sometimes they translate it as, you know, toilet paper. In other words, what dries afterwards. Or sometimes they translate it as a turd stick. Sometimes they would use sticks to clean. So you can take your choice. It's either the turd itself, after drying quite a bit, Because, you know, it's not only is it a turd, but it's a dried up one, not even a fresh one. Or it's the thing you use to clean after turding. That's the kind of responses Yunnan gave.

[15:15]

And people came from all over China to study that. Great, great bodhisattva. who did not talk too much. Maybe even that was too much. Barrier. That's what he said. So this is the example for tonight. And the person who compiled the book of these cases, his name is Sui Du. And he collected a hundred stories and then he wrote verses after each one. And his poetry is really, I don't know Chinese well enough to be able to tell what Chinese poetry is really good, but his poetry, Sui Du's poetry, is highly appreciated. Very beautiful poetry. And before this poem, or actually after this poem,

[16:19]

a commentator says, how could Suede Doe have been a good friend if he did not have the compassion to write these verses about this story? So here's his verse, English translation. Suiyun teaches the followers. For a thousand ages, there is no reply. The word barrier answers him back. He loses his money and suffers punishment. Decrepit old bao fu. So maybe bao fu is even, is older than Tzu Yan, I don't know.

[17:24]

Decrepit old bao fu. Censure or praise are impossible to apply. Do you know what censure means? Censure? No. It means to like criticize or judge not good. Another translation is, another translation is, decrepit old Bao Fu, was he nimble or did he mumble? Do you know nimble? Do you know mumble? Do you know mumble? So the mumble is like... Do you remember what he said?

[18:29]

I think he said... Yeah, he said, the thief's heart is cowardly. Was that nimble or was that mumbling? The thief's heart is cowardly. So, you know, if you're not a thief and you're not a murderer, if you practice the precepts, when you go out of your house, your heart is not cowardly. You have a courageous heart. If you practice the precepts, your heart is courageous. You're not afraid of going out of your house and the police are going to stop you. But if you steal or kill, you're scared of going out of the house because you know you're in trouble. That's what Bao Fu said, and so the verse is saying, decrepit old Bao Fu, nimble or mumbling.

[19:36]

That's one translation. The other translation is, those don't apply. Any kind of praise or blame do not apply to this teacher's response. And then, And then he says, the word barrier answers him back. That's Yon-Men, who said barrier. And then he says, he loses his money and suffers punishment. Yes? Yes. obstacle. In other words, yeah, so the teacher comes in, his name's Tsui Yun. He says, I've been talking to you all summer. Do I still have eyebrows?

[20:40]

That's like a barrier. That's like, how are you going to respond to this, Jessica? And then, apparently, In the Zen tradition, that barrier kept drawing people's attention about how to meet it, how to walk through it. And then Sui Du says, Sui Du didn't quote himself, he wasn't around at that time, but now he's 100, 200 years later, he says, talkative Tzu Yen is clearly a thief. Oh, I should say, when it says... The word barrier answers him back. He loses his money and suffers punishment.

[21:45]

That's a kind of a poetic rendition of he gave his bribe money to get out of trouble, but he got punished anyway. Who's bribing who? And he did make his bribe, he made his bribe, he offered his bribe to get out of punishment, and yet he got punished anyway. And his bribery is barrier. And then again, Suedu says, talkative, Tzu Yun is clearly a thief, and then he says, the clear jewel has no flaws.

[22:50]

Who can distinguish true from false? Chongqing knows him well. Tzu Yun's eyebrows have grown. Old men's eyebrows sometimes get long.

[23:59]

And I myself do not like them when they get long and come down into my eyes. But even though they're getting longer, they're also falling out. So maybe they make up in length for what they lack in number. So it's possible that I've been talking too much. And the retribution is the eyebrow is falling out. I don't know if you start talking if they'll grow back. Where's the intimacy? Here tonight, as we look at this story, is the intimacy in the story?

[25:12]

Can you see it? Is it here in this room? They also say about Suiyan that he was solitary and steep. Steep, like a steep cliff. He was like a solitary peak out in the forest that was hard to climb. So maybe this story is hard to climb. And I also want to say that solitude is part of the bodhisattva practice. But bodhisattvas don't necessarily avoid

[26:20]

other beings in order to get solitude. But they do need solitude. Solitude is part of the practice. Solitude is a delight and we need it. So how can we have solitude living together? This is an ongoing wondering how is Zen practice solitude? How is this bodhisattva? How are these bodhisattvas practicing solitude? How does the solitude intimately communicate and how is intimate communication solitude? This is part of this particular teacher's message that he's a solitary teacher.

[27:25]

He has a big group and he lives with them and he's solitary. He's not living alone out in the forest, he's living alone in the middle of his friends. And he's steep. Intimacy with him requires tremendous effort. But intimacy with each of us also requires tremendous effort. We are not easy to be intimate with. Yes. I have a hard time understanding this case. And I'm unsure whether Sui-Yan asked this as a rhetorical question or an attest to a statement.

[28:34]

It's not given as a question. Oh, it was a question, wasn't it? Do I still have eyebrows? You're wondering if it's rhetorical? Is it a test for his students? Definitely. It's a test for his students. It's a test for their intimacy with him. And I guess they thought it was a really interesting test because it's still here. The barrier is still here. It's a barrier. It's not a barrier to intimacy. It's a barrier which allows us to wonder about intimacy. It's a barrier which is an opportunity for us to realize intimacy. It looks like, it doesn't look like, well, that's really intimate. But it is. And Suedu's poem, and also, why did Suedu call him a thief? Suedu says he's definitely a thief.

[29:36]

Baofu doesn't say he is a thief. He just says that thieves have guilty conscience. Yes? Is it because he's a thief because he's trying to trip them up? Could be. Or it could be he's a thief because he talks too much. Or he's a thief because he talks too little. Or he's a thief because he acts too much. Yeah. But the great Sway Du says he's definitely a thief. I thought thief was sometimes used as a compliment. It could be a definite compliment. It's also possible that Sway Du put stories of teachers in here of teachers that are no good. But that's not the usual. Usually it's like they put the greatest teachers in here.

[30:42]

Yeah, so Thief, what I mean is, my sense is Thief has a kind of idiomatic, you know, it's an idiom in the tradition. It doesn't just mean some of the steels. No. Yeah. It doesn't just mean that. It could be an ironic statement. I was going to use the word. You can't afford to lose any more eyebrows. Yes? Yes? Did you have your hand raised? You know, just speaking about the Dharma is already sort of committing crime. Speaking about the Dharma is kind of a crime. Well, it's okay to speak about it as long as you don't let anybody know you are. I was checking out with a student. Did they say anything or not?

[31:43]

Yeah, right. So the other thing, I think that I read someplace that... This idea of eyebrows falling out is also telling a lie. That's what happens when people tell lies. So it's kind of saying, did I lie to you? Did I lie to you? Did I say too much? Dry dirt. Thank you. Yes, Carolyn? I was thinking about the and pecking in and pushing out. Perhaps the teacher is giving too much and not allowing the students to reach. Yeah, he could have been saying, have I been pecking too hard? If I've been pecking ahead of schedule? Did I peck before you?

[32:47]

Did I peck on your shell before you pecked inside? Or did I peck two for every one of your ones? Did I steal your opportunity by being so talkative? Thanks to you all for this. My original read or response was that saying I've been talking to you all summer, I'm doing this all summer. But meanwhile, the whole time, the eyebrows are just there. Are they still there? Like beyond all the talking.

[33:53]

very simple, silent happening has still been there. Is it there? You know, has my talk distracted you guys from what has been there all along? If so, maybe it's reasonable punishment for my eyebrows to fall off. Because I don't want my talk to distract you from reality. Yes? It feels like something really sweet for someone of authority, the teacher, to ask for feedback from their students in that way. Did I do this in a way that was effective for you? And that feels like, because I don't know what's going on in anyone else's head but mine, it's kind of a nice reminder, like, it's nice to ask each other, how is my behavior affecting you?

[35:11]

Is it working for you? Yeah. Yes and yes. I guess. I mean, yes, yes, and yes. He's asking his students, are they still looking for his eyebrows, or have they found to look for that? Mm-hmm. And maybe none of them said anything. They just waited for the practice period to be over and then they went and told somebody else, not him. Yes? Could it be an apology? Yeah, it could be an apology. An ironic one, having to say I've said too much. Well, yeah, or just in case I've said too much, I'm open to that possibility that I've said too much.

[36:22]

I see you, and I'm going to go to Amelia, and I'll be right back. Yes? You said at the beginning that it was likely that none of these... Dharma Buddhas were in attendance. And that it's possible that that's happened in the stone and sometimes the students left and then they talked about what had happened. And so these Dharma Buddhas may have got a flavor the whole summer. And I'm wondering whether actually the comments they made have to do with that this question wasn't intimate with his teaching throughout the summer. That it didn't cut the mustard of his teaching in the summer, sort of missed it.

[37:33]

He was lying when he asked that question, because he didn't touch the period of his teaching. I don't know how we would know that, because we don't know what he taught. We don't know what the pivot of his teaching during the summer was, which is getting there, but they might have. Well, we have a basic principle of practice, which is the meaning is not in the words, but it responds to our... So, it's not so much that we're going to know what those words mean, but rather, if we bring our life to those words, there'll be a response. Right. And maybe you haven't brought enough energy to these words yet for the response.

[38:38]

Maybe not enough energy has come to these words yet for the response to come. Okay. Miles? When you ask, it's like, I guess I'm falling out. That's a possibility. That's sort of what Courtney said. I'll be right with you, Alenia. Bob? The first thing that occurred to me was, I can't look at your eyebrows without having intimacy of looking at your face and looking at your eyes.

[39:39]

Because when you ask me, do my eyebrows fall out? Naturally, my first instinct is to look and see, did your eyebrows fall out? Yeah, and so maybe they did look, and maybe they saw his eyebrows, and then they thought, I wonder what he's talking about. Alenia? Alenia? That's your name. I found one of your eyebrows that I would I have some concern or some consideration about whether to enshrine it. They actually have little shrines in the bookstore that you can put my eyebrows in.

[40:45]

And there's a limited number of them, so. I don't know for sure, but I think I'm talking less than I used to. Does it matter whether it was a question or a statement? Because when you said it, you said he said, look and see if my eyebrows are still there. Is that a question or does it make any... Well, the first... It looks like he's making a statement that he's confessing, I've been talking to you all summer. And then it seems like there's a question. Do you... Do I still have my eyebrows? Did I talk too much?

[41:58]

Did I rob you of some opportunity by saying a word or two too many? It's also possible maybe to be a thief and not say anything, but I think a lot of teachers are concerned if they say too much, they rob the students. of their own energy. Like they say, oh, that was a great talk, thank you. Rather than, what are you talking about? And then, you know, think about it for a thousand years. It says that even in a thousand years there's no reply. In a way there's, yeah, can the teacher talk in a way that people don't, put it positively, so they come back with a lot of energy? you know, forever.

[43:03]

That's a really great barrier that people just keep going up to it and climbing on it. You know, and there's camps of people at the base of the barrier getting ready to climb day after day. That's, you know, that's, the teacher doesn't want to rob people from making the effort to climb the words. So if it's a barrier, is that the intimacy to recognize it as a barrier? If you're a student hearing that and you hear the barrier... I think the intimacy is it's already there and the barrier is saying this is coming from intimacy, now climb it as a way to realize that the barrier is an example of intimacy. But if we don't climb it, Some of the barriers just, you know, we realize that we're not going to get anything unless we climb, unless we put energy in.

[44:11]

It's like kind of useless if you just sort of sit there and listen to it. Whereas some talks, some teachers give talks and everybody thinks, that was great, we learned a lot. You know, there was no like, what are we going to do with this? Like, you know, forget everything I said here tonight. Steven? Did you have your hand raised? Yeah. This doc comes to, he's kind of calling attention to the, he's been talking all summer and now he's calling attention to the whole thing. In other words, not to this statement or that statement, but the whole message. Are you getting the whole message? And getting the whole message is the barrier. I mean, I can listen to you talk and say, oh yeah, I nod my head and say that was really good or that wasn't understandable. But the overall thing is the barrier.

[45:14]

And also, the overall thing is for you to be intimate with. And part of the intimacy is for me to ask you if I'm interfering with you doing your part to realize it. Am I? Yes? Sarah? So I'm thinking about the question of whether language obscures or illuminates. And it reminds me of talking about all phenomena being conscious constructions. And yet, conscious constructions are the currency of relationship.

[46:21]

And it's more just, I mean, it's a question about relating to other people, relating to ourselves, relating to Dharna. by using conscious constructions in order to experience through a direct experience of perception. So does language illuminate or obscure? And that question, does it illuminate or obscure? The poem, I think, said that that question doesn't apply to this situation, although you're welcome to ask it. that question is language and that language is the currency of the situation. But how do we use the currency? And they said that they were using the currency to bribe.

[47:32]

Somebody was using currency to bribe somebody so they wouldn't get punished for language. So the currency doesn't apply. It's something to use. So if you ask that question, if you realize that that was actually your bet rather than you're trying to get an answer to the question, that question was your tool to realize intimacy. Skyler? Yeah, so I don't know how many mirrors they had in monasteries back then. They had the number of people in the monastery mirrors. Yeah. Well, he probably couldn't see his own eyebrows. So it was something that was so close to him that he couldn't see it himself.

[48:39]

Right. So he uses the monks to see himself. Yeah. And maybe when he... And even though he's got the monk to look at himself, he's still not sure who he is. So he asks him questions. And maybe the monks couldn't see the intimacy when he asked him that question either. Well, you know, maybe not, but on the other hand, It seemed like they did. It kind of brought life to all of them. So his question is alive a thousand years later. People in California are talking about his question. He got in the book. And his question is not immediately of any use. Except it is useful for me to wonder, what is that about?

[49:46]

Who am I? It still works that way. And I think it worked back then and that's why everybody in China was talking about it. Somehow the magic of that language made everybody look at themselves. And so that's what we're doing here now. We're kind of like wondering, who are we? What are we doing here? He didn't tell us anything. This teacher didn't tell us anything about us. And yet he's making us wonder, what are we doing here? In this life, in this room, in this practice period? Right? Aren't you wondering? And if you're not, then you probably won't go out of here and tell a bunch of Zen masters about this. And so... Maybe that's the end of Thuyen. Ana?

[50:49]

I heard you say about solitude, that Bodhisattva needs solitude. Yeah. What I I learned that for you to be in solitude, you go on to the mountain and it's the same that happened for many years, unless you stay in solitude. But I heard you say, and maybe you just got lost in the translation here, that you have to be in solitude with everything. So you don't need to be separate from day-to-day life. Bodhisattvas do not separate from daily, daily life. And they need solitude. And thanks for coming back to that because this teacher, they characterize him, they don't say this about all the teachers, they characterize him as solitary. And his solitariness gives us solitariness.

[51:54]

He throws us back on being solitary. He was into that. And his expression, he gives us solitude. Can you feel the solitude that he has given us in this room? He was in an assembly and he gave the people solitude. And they said, thank you. And they spread solitude all over China. In groups. In books. In language. We're spreading this solitude together. Yeah, so bodhisattvas need it and they need to transmit it, which is similar to they need stillness and they need to transmit it. In the middle of everything, in the middle of all kinds of life. Exactly. I was trying to see if there's a way to understand solitude in the morning life because we live in the present moment.

[53:02]

Yeah, yeah. And I'm not smart enough to figure out to present this case tonight. It just happened to be the next case. So if I wanted to promote solitude in the modern world, I might have thought, let's think of a case where that's about solitude. But I didn't do that. I just came to the next case, and this case is about solitude. this case is to encourage solitude in the modern contemporary world. And it was back in China too. For a long time there's been a lot of people in China. And so he was, among a lot of people, he was solitary and his words are transmitting solitude to his friends. And they support him to be the teacher who they call solitary. They supported him. They talked about him being that way, so they didn't say, he was solitary and we forced him to come out of solitary.

[54:07]

No, they let him be solitary. They said, thank you for being solitary. And then he's saying, did I, did I, in any way, did my solitude in any way disturb yours? I don't want to, but I have been talking to you. I hope that my talk doesn't disturb your solitude. I hope you can find solitude even when I'm talking. So I'm not going to be silent necessarily, because if I'm silent, you might not be able to find solitude when somebody else talks to you. So I want to talk to you in a way that you can be alone when I'm talking. but did I say too much Marie Well, you can say create space, but anyway, if you go in there, you need to find it.

[55:44]

Otherwise, if there's too much congestion, you can't study the self. And there is enough space inside. consciousness to study the self. So solitude is part of what we need to feel supported to look inside and what's going on with the self. Some people feel like I'm not allowed to like... Some people actually criticize people who are studying themselves and say you're too self-absorbed. So that person then seems to be interfering or not supporting the person's solitude. When people tell me about their research, I say, good. I support that research, which they're doing in solitude. So we need solitude. In other words, we need to feel that people support us and want us to look inside and study the confusion that surrounds the self and to study it compassionately so we can actually see what the self really is, what its true relationship with the other.

[56:56]

We need solitude to do that. If there's cries in the world, we need to listen to them And if we listen to them, they kind of say, thanks for listening, and I'd like you to also take care of yourself. I'd like you to give attention to yourself. And the way you listen to me makes me want to support you to listen to yourself. In other words, I want you to have solitude. there's a quote from Rilke, which is, a spiritual marriage, in a spiritual marriage the partners protect each other's solitude. So they're, in a sense, they're sometimes in each other's face, as we say. Do you know that expression? In each other's face. They're intimate. They're questioning each other.

[57:59]

They're expressing themselves. How can we be intimate and intense with someone at the same time protect their solitude so that they can be a good partner to us? Dina? What if you don't know what your self is saying? Or... Keep listening. Just keep listening. And if you don't know, listen to the, listen to, I don't know what you're saying. You can even say, I don't know what you're saying. And listen to that too. Listening and listening and listening will clarify the space where the self is talking. And you'll be able to become clear about the relationship between the self and what the self is saying, or between the self and the talking.

[59:05]

But usually there's some confusion about the self and the talking. Does the self own the talking? Does the talking own the self? Not really. Do they depend on each other? Mm-hmm. How? Well, let's listen. The conversation's going on all day long. Let's listen. Inwardly and between. It's going on all day. Are we listening? And I also hear from people that they're not sure that people really support them. Like some people don't feel that the person who's talking to them is supporting them to listen to them.

[60:07]

And similarly, some people tell me that they don't feel that people around them, even in this environment, support them to listen to themselves. Like somebody's talking to us. Sometimes people are... I'm talking to people and sometimes they say, Would you stop, please, so I can listen to myself? Would you stop talking for a little while so I can see how I feel about what you just said? And I usually say, And then they had solitude. And they look and see how they feel or what they think and what they feel about what I just said. And with that solitude, then they sometimes say, okay, would you talk some more now? And I talk some more and say, that's enough. So please, stop me if you want to have more solitude. I'm up for that.

[61:16]

I don't have to finish the sentence usually if you want me to stop. When you're in the room with a lot of people, in a class like this, or in a meeting, sometimes you're spaced out. It happens to me all the time. You mean, do I ever space out when I'm with... I space out. It happens to me all the time. Is that solitude? Well, it might be that if I'm in a group like this, and I'm talking that someone might space out in order to get some solitude, that maybe they feel like they can't listen to me and also have the solitude they need.

[62:32]

So they so-called space out. I think the attempt to get solitude is welcome. Honoring a need, a feeling that you need solitude is welcome. But I would like myself to be able to have solitude while you're talking to me. And I would like you to have solitude while I'm talking to you. It's harder sometimes. But I would like us to learn how to receive and give solitude while we're talking and also while we're silent. Some people if I'm not talking they can't stand solitude when I'm not talking. They want me to start talking to help them find solitude or to distract them from it. Because in solitude you may discover that somebody nearby is really confused.

[63:34]

We need solitude sometimes to see the confusion and we need to see the confusion in order to become free of it. And so if I'm not talking enough I mean, if I'm not talking much at all, then some people feel tremendous, they get a big taste of the confusion, and then either they start talking or they ask me to start talking to distract from the confusion. But sometimes someone might feel like, I'm just getting clarified on this thing, and he's talking too much, so I'm going to, like, go someplace else so I can study this. I welcome that. in others. And then when they go, I usually can tell they went someplace. They give some signal, and then I feel like, okay. They didn't tell me to stop talking, but I sometimes say, they're politely telling me not to talk by going someplace else. I can take a hint occasionally.

[64:41]

That's a hint. So please be quiet isn't exactly a hint, but going someplace to get solitude when you're talking to me, it's kind of a hint. And I hope I catch it. Usually people's eyes change a little bit when they go someplace looking for some solitude. There's some signal in the face. When I first looked at this story, I did not really feel, oh, this is a story about intimate communication. But again, the more I look at it, the more I see, oh, yeah, he was really trying to have intimate communication with his friends.

[65:43]

Yes? How do you tell when your eyebrows are pulling out? You mean at the very moment? Sometimes. I get some, like... Particularly when I'm at a high altitude. My face heats up. I think when I... When my eyebrows are falling out. In other words, when I'm... In terms of what we're talking about now, when... When... I'm not protecting somebody else's solitude, I think something happens to my body, which would be nice if I would just like be quiet for a little while and not move at that moment. But sometimes I can't, even though I feel it, I keep going and crushing more solitude. But I think before I kind of feel like, oops,

[66:50]

but maybe don't even say, oops. Yeah, but I don't always catch it. And sometimes people give me a hint that I haven't been taking care of their space to study themselves well enough. That's what, I guess, eyebrows falling out is. So sometimes I can feel it when it's happening and Sometimes I feel it was happening and I stop, and sometimes I feel it's happening and I keep doing it. And I feel kind of sorry at the original hint, and I feel sorry if I don't take it. This doesn't happen so much anymore but I used to sometimes go to the Dharma Hall at Green Gulch and I had a kind of something in mind that I wanted to talk about and I walk in the room and this whole other topic comes up which is very fresh.

[68:06]

Or sometimes as I'm walking into the hall somebody says something to me and I think, And that's what seems like I should talk about, you know, the latest news. And then I do. Or I did. And then after I talk about actually what is up to talk about, then I remember that I had this talk to give. And then sometimes in the past I gave the second talk, which was actually the talk I had been thinking of giving, which I thought was really going to be good. And then it's too long. Like the first talk, it wasn't really my talk, it was our talk. And it was just right for everybody because it was about everybody's solitude. And that was fine. And I felt guided to talk about this thing which was not my idea, and it wasn't somebody else's idea, just something that came up when I met someone. And that was great.

[69:10]

But then I didn't stop giving the talk I had in mind. And then people kind of gave me feedback that that wasn't good. So now it still happens that I sometimes have something in mind that I want to talk about. I come into the hall, something else comes up, and I talk about that and don't talk about the thing I was planning on talking about. Mostly I'm able to do that, to put aside that good talk. So my talks, I don't know, I didn't actually measure them, but they used to be about an hour and a half, an hour and 45 minutes usually. And now sometimes they're like 45 minutes. So shall we conclude our evening explorations

[70:16]

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