In your talk, we are behind the tree. I find that after staying behind the tree for a while with the watching, when I I say, okay, that's it. Time to get up. I go back. I'm often... Did you say go back? Yeah, return to, return to the meal or something. That is to say, I've stopped my formal meditation. Mm-hmm. I am very irritable, very ill-tempered.

[01:10]

I'm much distressed by it. You're distressed by the ill-temper? Yes. And so I'm regarding it as some kind of transition instead of continuing the generosity. Could you please offer me some help in that? I can offer you... The first thing that came to mind was in the process of delivering a baby, through the birth canal. Because the most difficult time is called, I think, transition these days. Is that right? The most difficult time is called transition. Transitions are really difficult.

[02:12]

So once you're settled, that's great. And then when the transition comes it challenges the settleness, challenges it and in that challenge you maybe lose your patience and become irritable. So then realize, oh this is a very challenging time, this transition. There was a The teacher I mentioned earlier that said after practicing a long time, when he was 65, he was able to be mindful all day, his name was Hakuin, great practitioner, tremendous energy and enthusiasm for practice. He used to take his monks out of the temple and they would ride horseback through the marketplace to see if they could continue their practice through that transition.

[03:17]

So we want to challenge our practice by offering it these transitions and see if we can continue through the transitions and sometimes we lose it. But that's part of growing. we need to be challenged to grow. So these transitions are pushing you to deepen your practice so that it can continue through the transition. But sometimes you fail. And so part of the practice is to notice that you fail at what you aspire to and then notice that you feel some regret at failing at what you aspire to. and that regret will bring you to a place of not failing anymore someday. So failure isn't what brings you to not failing.

[04:24]

It's noticing it and feeling sorry or regretful. Noticing and feeling sorry and regretful over and over leads to no more failure. Success at what you aspire to is possible, but it's a normal ingredient in the practice that receive the practice, aspire to it, aspire to it and receive it, fail, feel sorry, feel regret, aspire, receive, fail, feel sorry, aspire, feel sorry, and then finally aspire, period. Aspire and practice, no failure. But that's a long process in the bodhisattva path. So thank you for sharing this so everybody knows about this. Thank you. You're welcome. Those four aspects are sometimes called the essence of bodhisattva ethics.

[05:40]

receive the precept, aspire to practice it, fail and not fail. Fail and confess and repent and eventually there's no more failure at what you aspire to. But the quickness or longness of the coming has no rapport with the success of the picture. Anything else that you'd like to bring up? This has to do a little bit with your previous talk last week.

[06:56]

I hadn't thought about it that much. And in sitting last night in the final period, I was having some kinds of difficulty sitting and I felt really impatient and I thought well I'm glad it's not as hard as it was for me two months ago though something and then I thought oh no um I realized that um I had thought it was getting better, and then I realized really quickly, oh, that's not the way it works. And I'm going to have to have so much patience, much more than I have. And then I thought about your talk, about when you were asking people, us,

[08:07]

how to consider a vow to become a Buddha. And because I'm new to Buddhism, I'm just learning about the terms. And I thought, if a Buddha is a being who wishes to or somehow enacts realization or wellness with all other beings and that you had mentioned in a couple of your talks that that would require a commitment to endless rebirths, whether that's physical rebirths or just learning the sufferings over and over again. And I thought, wow, I just don't have that patience at all. And then I thought, and I don't, and I thought, well, if I think I have some more compassion or something and less patience, it made me realize, actually, my compassion, I thought, well, how can you have compassion without patience?

[09:26]

And I thought, actually, my compassion is really... like high and shallow. High and shallow? Like it goes high dramatically, but it actually is kind of not very depth. And like you talked about the term sentimental compassion. And I'm sorry, I don't really have a question for you, and I'm kind of selfishly asking if you'd say something that would help speed up my process around this. Yes. Yes. I've heard that you need patience to make a Buddha.

[10:36]

So practicing patience is part of making a Buddha, which means suffering is part of making a Buddha. So sometimes you or we have some sense of being patient and then we feel like, oh, it's getting close to the edge of the pain. I think, I don't know if I can keep being patient with this. In other words, keep being present. But then I say, in response to you, I think, but would I actually like to be able to be present as this pain gets stronger? But I'd like to actually continue to be present with it. And I would. I would like to, yeah. So sometimes I go swimming in the ocean or the bay when the water is cold.

[11:44]

And some people run into the water and scream when they go in. I try to go in and I try to feel what it's like when the cold touches my skin. I try to like feel it and feel it moment by moment. It's very difficult to feel it as it sort of inches its way up the torso. Like if you go in and feel every step of the way it's really hard to be present there with every new revelation of it seems kind of uncomfortable. It's a kind of pain. And just to feel it. But I actually try to do that.

[12:47]

And I did it I did it before I had a heart attack. But after I had a heart attack, I thought it was even more important because when you go in the water, in the cold water, I think your heartbeat speeds up quite a bit. Even if you put your hands in cold water, your heartbeat speeds up. So when you go in the cold water, your heartbeat speeds up. But if you scream and jump around and with the elevation of your heartbeat and then also elevate it by getting really excited. And it's a huge elevation. It's so much of an elevation that you feel, you can feel a real kind of a pain in your chest. And so I thought it's probably good to like have two different sets of elevation. One is just experience the elevation from the cold. and sort of settle with that. And then feel the elevation of what comes when you start swimming.

[13:52]

And then, because otherwise, you might think, well, maybe, yeah, maybe I'm going to die now. And it is possible to go into cold water. And there's some, I think it's the vagus nerve can respond to the cold in such a way that it says, stop, heart. So I think just as a matter of carefulness, I think it's safer to just feel the cold and watch what happens to your heart when you do that. But it's actually harder to do that than to just run in and not feel it much. Just feel this big, huge shock, but not be present. You can't but not be present for it. Now some people can also be present with the shock, but the reason why they're running in is they don't want to feel it. They just want to get in there. but actually I try to feel every moment, and it's really hard to be there. Each little tiny moment of going into the water, and you can also stop and not have it go up, and then you just feel this light with the water going up and down on its own.

[15:00]

So I aspire to be able to be present with intense feeling. I aspire to it. I aspire to it. I would like to actually be there. I also sometimes think, when I watch people doing various sports when I was a kid, I wish I could be in my young body doing those sports with my present, you know, my present presence. I'm much more present now in general. than I was when I was a teenager. I would like to bring this presence into that body. Now, the things that body did wouldn't be good for this body to do, like play football. But I'd like to be in that young body and see if I could be present in that young body, which, you know, I wasn't very present. There were a lot of moments there where I was not there in my body, thinking of something other than

[16:03]

I aspire to be present through the transitions. And some of them, sometimes going into the water, I do pretty well, like maybe 80%. I'm 80% there, which is really good. But there's these little hesitations, these little gaps where I... trying to shrink back a little bit or get a little bit ahead. But I wish to learn it. I think that would really be cool to be able to be present through the transitions, through sickness and death, to ride through them and just be there moment by moment. Otherwise, we miss out on life. And then life becomes birth and death rather than good old nirvana. But now, there's moments when we just get distracted.

[17:15]

We turn away. We rush ahead. Being patient means you're in the present. You're not thinking, how much longer is this going to go on? Or, this has been going on a long time. You're like, this is really something. And now this is. And now this is. Wow. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. How much is bigger? No, don't think about it. Come back. This is a lot to deal with. This is a lot to deal with. This is how we train ourselves at Patience. This is not about speeding it up, sorry. This is about getting more into the present. And it's the best place to be. And when you get there, you notice that when you lean into the future, the flames flare up. When you get into the past, when you get to the present, you realize it's painful, but it's a lot better here than a moment's a lot better than five moments or five minutes.

[18:21]

You know how many moments there are in five minutes? So you train yourself into the present, and then you get distracted, but you learn that when you get distracted, it gets... it's more painful. The best place to be is in the smallest increment of pain. But... Not increment, the smallest segment. And then when the segment's small, and then it gets... and the pain gets more, then we tend to... what do we do? We... One of our knee jerk reactions when the pain goes up is to think, what if it goes up more? And then it goes up more. Even before it goes up more, it goes up more because you think about it going up more. And then if it does go up more, then you even more freak out. and so on. So, this is the training process. And this training process makes Buddhas.

[19:21]

And without this training process, you don't have Buddha. To make perfect enlightenment, you have to train at patience so that you can ride through the transitions. And right now, some transitions we ride through, great. Other ones, like, oops, this is too much for me right now. It's too advanced. I often tell the example of I had a hernia operation about 11 years ago and I came out and of the anesthetic I woke up and the nurse said she said we are going to give you some pain medication I wasn't particularly interested in it when she told me because I had pain medication laughter And as far as I was concerned, I didn't have much pain. She said, we're going to give you some pain medication to deal with the pain, to help you deal with the pain which might come to you.

[20:23]

I said, okay. She said, but in order to tell whether it works or not, we have to let this pain medication subside. So we're just going to let you be here for a while until the pain medication that you're under sort of isn't operating anymore. And then when the pain comes, we'll give you the other pain medication, which you can take home, and we'll be able to see if it works. So she left me there, and sure enough, this feeling started to arise down in my gut. And it's an unusual feeling. Most of us don't have the feeling of the pain of an incision or a down in that area, but that area turns out has quite a bit of nerves. That's, you know, the harakiri thing. It's really difficult to do it. Anyway, this unusual feeling started to come. It was hardly even like, it was hardly even pain.

[21:24]

It was more like, I feel like this is the beginning of something big. Something's coming. I don't know. I could feel it coming. And so I thought, okay, nurse, you can come back now. But I wasn't going to yell and say, nurse. I just said, watch it come. And I was having trouble like really being in the present. And I just felt this thing coming. I couldn't see how big it was, but I just feel this is something unusual and big coming. And also, where is the nurse? It wasn't that bad, but I could tell it was the beginning of something really big. It had that feeling, you know? We had some, I think, some intuition of the slope of something. I can tell it's like there's something huge there.

[22:25]

Like that scene in Moby Dick where they said, and then there was the whale. But the whale hadn't come yet. But I felt like I could tell by the bulge that something big was coming up. And I thought, I don't know if I'm being able to be present for this guy. I wouldn't, you know, I could tell that I probably wouldn't be able to. But I would like to be able to. And I think some women, when they're delivering and they're going through the transition, some women are present. in the moment because they learn that if they aren't it's intolerable and they find that place and some women who are not Zen masters they taste nirvana when they're giving birth, they feel that total presence in that huge pain, which they have not taken pain medication for.

[23:33]

And there it is. And it's like full scale. And they're totally there. And they look back on it as sometimes the most meaningful moment of their life. But it's really hard. And a lot of women don't find that spot, but some do. And then some women say, when they do Zen, they say, Zen's even harder than that. But I don't think it's harder. I think it's just the same thing, basically. It's dealing with those transitions and learning how to be present. And then we don't care about getting there faster. But I think we do want to learn that. There's something in us which would like to be able to stay present, to walk through the fire and not think about how much further there is to go. But right now we're not there yet, right? But would you like to?

[24:34]

Do you wish to? I wish to, but I'm not there yet. I accept that. That's the generosity part. I'm a beginner at learning this patience thing. But I'm enjoying it. And I'm a little better now than I was 45 years ago, or 50 years ago. Thank you. Good luck. See you in the transitions. And, you know, these transitions are appearances, right? And if we can be patient with them, the transitions will reveal reality. Anything else this morning? Yes?

[25:34]

It's not morning anymore. Anything else this afternoon? When you said that about birth, I remember that. At that time, I did not want to take medication, even though it took a long time and it was very, very painful. It was a very long transition. But I felt I did not want to poison the baby. So... For myself, I would have maybe taken the medication, but I thought the baby would get it much more and I didn't want to do that. So, and I, and when, when she was stuck in the birth canal for a long time and it was very, very painful, I thought she must be having even more pain. And so, and I feel whenever I think of others, I can endure it much better.

[26:43]

And, um, Once when I was sitting here early on and I was very bored and I thought I could not stand it anymore, the Shuso said, remember, we're not sitting here for ourselves but for the benefit of all beings. And that really turned it for me. When I think of others, I can endure it better. Thank you. Anything else? Yes? I'm wondering I'm wondering about

[27:51]

talking about realizing Buddha in a way that seems like there's space and time involved, like it's far away and not now. So I have a question about that. I'm wondering if you would talk about this idea that it's a long time from now or it's not here. It's not a long time for now and it's not not here. But are you willing to deal with a long time for now and not not here? You have to deal with that stuff in order to be Buddha. And you have to be willing to deal with... You need to accept dealing with a long time for a long time in order to get over a long time. The idea of a long time.

[28:56]

There is only the idea of a long time. And you have to really deal with the idea of a long time for a long time, for the idea of a long time, in order to get over it. But it's not really for a long time, just you have to open to that. And one way to open to it is to let go of it and just be in the present. But if you really think that there is a long time, that that will obstruct being Buddha. And if you don't want a long time, that will obstruct Buddha. But if you're willing to say, if there's a long time, I mean, if that appearance comes, if the specter of a long time comes, I'm going to welcome it. I want to become free of a long time, and I'm willing to deal with the specter of a long time for a specter of a long time. Because I want to learn that. But it's not really that it's a long time. Buddha doesn't teach it's really a long time or really a short time. It's not really a short time or a long time.

[29:56]

Time is a mental construction. And if you don't like it, it's gotcha. And if you do like it, it's gotcha. But if you practice compassion towards it, it will drop away. The temptation in terms of thinking about a long time is leaning into something that isn't here and therefore pushing it away. So I wish to be upright with the idea of a long time. But not buy it. Not buy into it. Not buy into the... The idea of a long time. Well, that's what being upright means, is that you meet everybody in a way without buying into anybody. You're devoted to everybody without buying into anybody. You're... Yeah, like Bodhisattva is devoted to take all beings to peace, but there's no being to take...

[31:02]

There's kind of a paradox there, you notice? Thank you. You're welcome. Yes? Is it okay to speak from here? It is. I'm wondering if you could speak about generosity in the face of generosity to self and others in the face of excruciating pain and excruciating fear and excruciating emotion. The practice of patience actually is based on the practice of generosity. So actually the order of the practices is generosity, ethics and patience. So let's say we're dealing with pain. Of course, patience goes with pain, but also in order to practice patience with pain, we need to practice generosity towards it.

[32:11]

So first of all, we have to let it in. We have to say, welcome pain. But welcoming pain isn't the same as patience. Patience is once you welcome it, be in the present with it. You can welcome it without being very present. But the first step is, with pain, welcome. Not, I like you, pain. Just welcome. Open the door to the bird called pain. Then be careful of it. Don't say bad things about it. Don't try to hold on to it. I guess that's called masochism. Don't try to inflict it. Don't intoxicate yourself about it, now that you've let it in. Don't slander it. Don't say you're better than it. Don't hate it. Don't be possessive of it. Don't lie about it. Don't try to kill it.

[33:14]

You know, they have the painkillers. I don't like that painkillers thing. The bodhisattvas do not kill pain. They welcome it. They don't like it. They're not that sick. Usually. They welcome it. And then they're careful of it. Because pain is a... If you don't pay attention to it and you're not careful of it after you let it into your life... you can trip up on it big time, right? So once it's in the house, be careful of it. It's something that... It's not so much it will hurt you, but if you're not careful of it, you'll be hurt. So if you're walking and you have pain in your foot, be careful of that pain. Try to, you know, be respectful of that pain. Then maybe you can walk even though you have pain. But if you... deny the pain or don't pay attention to it, that's kind of being unethical.

[34:18]

And then you can really hurt yourself because you're not careful of the actions you engage in in the presence of the pain. So first generosity, welcoming it, saying, can you excuse me for saying this, thank you for coming. pain and then be careful and then you can be patient. And then you move on to heroic effort and then you become silent and still with the pain and then the appearance of the pain drops away and you realize the reality of pain. The pain is still there but now you're with the real pain. And when you're with the real pain, you're liberated with the pain without messing with the pain at all. And sometimes taking pain medication helps you be generous and patient with the pain.

[35:28]

But it's not very nice to say pain killers. Does that make sense? And it's somewhat hard to welcome pain. But if you're successful at welcoming it, then you can be successful at being patient with it. If we don't welcome it, it makes it much harder to be patient with it. You won't be able to be very patient. Fully practicing patience depends on being generous towards the pain. But don't think that generosity is the end of the story. That's the beginning of the story of a liberating relationship with pain. And we've got the pain part, right? plenty of pain. Now the question is how to relate to the pain in a beneficial way. Which does not mean get rid of it.

[36:32]

It means in a way that leads you to become free of it, even when it's there. So you can teach other people who have pain how to become free with their pain. Does that make some sense? Yes, I think it's protecting others from it and that Yeah, so when you see others in pain, you would welcome their pain. Huh? Pardon? The way to protect them from their pain is to welcome, you welcome their pain. Because they, how are they going to learn how to, most people don't know how to welcome their own pain, right? Pardon? It's the Protecting them from my pain.

[37:33]

Oh, you want to protect them from your pain. Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Well, if you want to protect them from your pain, then they will be protected from your pain if you practice generosity towards your pain. They will be protected from, just generally they'll be protected, period, from your pain, from you, from everything. Beings will be protected if you're generous and ethical with your pain. And part of ethics is, again, to notice how you're not very good at ethics. So... to notice your failure at being ethical with your own pain protects other beings. Working on yourself is how to protect other beings. And, of course, them working on themselves is how they protect other beings, all beings, self and others. When people on some level notice when you're taking good care of your pain, even though you don't say anything, when they pick up that you're, you know, they don't even know necessarily, but they're getting some transmission of your practice, of your skillful dealing with your pain.

[38:49]

And I just have this feeling like you're all doing pretty well dealing with your pain. And I think we can all do better. We can all be more skillful. And if we become more skillful, that will be more helpful to others. And part of the way we become more skillful is to notice that we're not so skillful sometimes. We turn away from it. or we touch it and try to, you know, get it under control, which is not very respectful. But we do this sometimes. Yes, we do. Or I do anyway. Anything else this afternoon? Yes. I have some feedback for you about something.

[40:06]

Would you check with me later? Well, first of all, first and foremost, just thank you. It was quite a privilege being able to experience your Dharma talk today. You're welcome. Certainly one of the best hours I've had in quite some time. uh very helpful and very inspiring great last night i um had the chance to begin uh reading the first few pages of your of your new book and um one of the things that jumped out at me was a reference to um There's a reference to certain things being tainted right at the beginning. And it goes on to say various people have various ideas as to what that means.

[41:08]

And then one of the things that you suggest has to do with activities that are in pursuit of loss or gain. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's a little bit of an irony for me because a significant work thing just happened to have just recently made itself known to me. But my question is this. Loss or gain is so embedded... In our culture. In our nervous system. Okay. Little nerves, you know, loss, gain, loss, gain, loss, gain. Blood sugar level too high, too low, high, too high. Yeah, we're into it. Right. In the context of work and language, there's even the very commonly used phrase, I've used it myself many times, I'm gainfully employed.

[42:18]

So my question is, how does one have a job, say, and not be caught up in the taint of gain or loss? So you probably heard, you know, The founder of Zen Center said, we try to practice meditation wholeheartedly, and I think he often said, with no gaining idea. But I think what he means is that you're free of any gaining idea. It's not that the idea of gaining doesn't come up in your mind, it's just that you just welcome it and are patient with it and so on. So the... I don't know what... the thought of a gain might arise in your mind and you might learn sort of to, you know, kind of say, hi sweetheart.

[43:28]

Oh look, I'm supposed to be a Zen student and I got gaining ideas coming up in my head about, for example, Zen. I just thought the Zen got better over here. My practice got better. My practice gained more skill. So you see that thought, that calculation in your mind. Your mind goes, gain, practice gain, more skillful. And you see that and you say, you welcome it. Right here in Zen Center, we have people doing exactly what they're not supposed to be doing. Isn't that neat? Or not, maybe that's too much. Anyway. This is a place to practice wholeheartedly, free of gaining idea. And now we have gaining idea coming in the door. We welcome it. And then be careful of it. Because gain and loss, if you're not careful of them,

[44:31]

can be extremely... I was going to say, gain and loss, if you're not careful of them, are extremely dangerous or harmful. It's not the gain and loss that's harmful. It's the not being careful of them. It's like, for example, what is it? Your blood sugar level goes up and down, gains and loses. It's not that the elevation and depression of your blood sugar level is dangerous. It's not taking care of it that's dangerous. It's normal that that happens, and it's part of life that it goes up and down. But not paying attention to it, that is what it harms. To let it get too high or too low is not beneficial. So when it comes to the issue of gain and loss about anything, first of all, we're generous towards it. We're gracious towards it. Next, we're careful of it. And then be patient with it because it's going to keep coming.

[45:34]

People are going to come up to you and say, hey, your practice is better than it used to be. Even if you say, don't say that. Oh, now it's even got better. Don't say that. Oh, now it's really good. Then you punch them in the face. No, it just got worse. Now it's really bad. You can't avoid gain and loss from inside or outside. You say our culture is part of our nervous system. But you can practice beneficial practices towards it. Generosity, ethics, patience. And part of patience is to be patient with, you know, that your ethics isn't too good. And then you can be still with the gain and loss. And when you're still with the gain and loss, you can enter into the reality of gain and loss. And there you're completely free of gain and loss. But there's a sign, there's this message to you, watch out for this. This is an important thing. Just like your blood sugar level is important, thinking in terms of gain and loss in work, in relationships with people, in practice, all those mental gains and losses are as important to take care of

[46:48]

as your blood sugar level. But it isn't that we just try to make our blood sugar level go up and up and up and up, like we do with, you know, money, fame, whatever. Try to make our health get better and better and better, our looks get better and better and better, our fame get better. We don't do that with our blood sugar level, right? It should be like, watch it go up and down. Just watch the mind do that. It's always calculating. So if you take care of it, that's part of being free of it. But we're just trying to notice that our mental activity, our blood sugar level, we have problems with that too. It's a challenge. We have to be careful what we eat and so on. But this mental thing is what really causes terrible, terrible things if we don't take care of it. Diabetics are not necessarily murderers. But if you don't take care of the gain and loss thing, you can do terribly cruel things.

[47:52]

So we have to watch it and take care of it. And if we do, we can become free. And we can become free and we become free and do that without any concern of gain and loss. But the path to freedom will involve noticing that we're concerned about it and that we're calculating it. If you don't notice any of that, you're probably just in denial. So most of us do notice it. Like sometimes people say to me, how are you? And sometimes, I don't say it too often, but sometimes I say, never been better. And then they say, oh, good. But sometimes I say, never been worse, which is always true. I've never been worse than this. And I've never been better. And if I say, never been better, they say, oh, good. And if I say, never worse, they say, oh. So I don't say anything. Okay, do you understand now how to do it? Oh, perfect.

[48:53]

Just to be brief on the work point, is maybe the essence of it just watch the extent of gaining desire? Because it would seem to be hard to be completely devoid of it while you're working. It's not to be devoid of it. It's to be aware of it. And to be... And if it's a huge, huge concern for gain, then be aware of a huge gain. If it's a little tiny one, you know, like sometimes you might do a business arrangement and you say, if I can make 1% profit, that's good. Be aware of the little concerns, concerns for a little bit of gain, be concerned for the... Be aware of the concern for big gains. Be aware of them all. Don't try to make the waves big or small. Deal with the size that they're coming in. And sometimes you get, whoa, that was a big, I wanted to get a big gain that time.

[49:58]

I wanted to get a big piece of pizza, big piece of pizza that time. I didn't want the little one, I wanted the big one. Be aware of it and be sweet about and gentle and kind and careful and patient with the fact that you wanted the biggest piece. And some other people say, I would like the smallest piece because then I would be the best person. Be patient with that. So it's not so much modifying the situation that's being presented, but rather receive the situation of a concern for gain, which sometimes is Sometimes you feel like, wow, I am really concerned for gain. I'm super concerned for it. And then welcome that one. And sometimes, I don't seem to be that concerned right now. Welcome that one. You're welcome. Thank you. So now, it seems to be the perfect time.

[51:02]

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