It seems like life has a kind of superficial version and an ultimate version. And these two versions are not really different. One version is a life where there's birth and death. Another version is where there's life but there's no birth and death. There's no birth.

[01:06]

It's living without birth. So, of course, there's no death. If we live in the... I hope it doesn't sound disparaging to say the superficial version of life, where there's birth and death, where birth and death are appearing, where birth and death are appearing, if we're living in such a way, and if we really believe that's the way things are, then this birth and death can be very miserable. We can have lots of difficulty, not because so much of the birth and death, but because of believing it as real and attaching to it.

[02:11]

Living within the understanding of no birth and no death and not attaching to that either, life is free of suffering, peaceful and harmonious. And we can even, because we're not attached to that version of life, we can enter into and look straight at the world, the superficial version of life, where it seems to be born and dying. We can look at that world and not be caught by it and be in that world too with serenity, harmony and freedom. Part of the reason why that would allow us to live in the world of birth and death with serenity is that we are happy to let go of the world of nirvana, the world of no birth and no death.

[03:33]

We're happy to let go of it. And we understand that it's not really different from the world of birth and death. They contradict each other, but they're one They're not two different entities. They're one entity. So freedom of the world of birth and death is the world of no birth, no death. There's a meditation practice which has innumerable forms to help beings become free of getting stuck in the superficial version of life and also to help them from being stuck in the profound version of life.

[04:57]

People actually have been able to get free of birth and death and get stuck there too. In the history of the tradition of the Buddha, some people became free of birth and death, achieved a state of freedom from birth and death, but thought that freedom was different from bondage and thereby got stalled in freedom and it stopped being living freedom. So the meditation of the Buddha is to constantly move forward in life and not attach even to liberation. To become liberated from liberation is the Buddha's liberation.

[06:02]

Human beings are gifted with the ability to see things inaccurately. We're gifted with inaccurate perception. We see things that don't exist. we see substantial separations where there aren't any substantial separations. We look at situations where there's no birth and death, there's just life constantly flowing, and the way we see it is we parcel it up.

[08:41]

And the way we see it is we project images upon this flow of life, this constantly pulsing, changing life. It's changing, it's changing, but it's not dying and not being born. We project onto it a packaging. We project images upon it so that we can grasp it and talk about it. And this projection leads us to grasp it and in grasping it also to seek it. and to seek further grasping. This grasping and seeking in relationship to our life creates the illusion of birth and death, which we then also project images upon those phenomena which result from projecting other images.

[09:57]

We project images on those and cling to those and cause further appearance of birth and death. continuing to grasp and hold and confuse life with misconceptions about the way it is. Applying ideas to how things are, which actually never reaches them, never touches them, but gives us a kind of way to capitalize on them, which simultaneously kind of isolates us from life. It doesn't really, but we feel like that. And then we become frightened of life, which is separate from us. do various things to try to make ourselves safe with a life that's birth and death and a life that manifests as other beings who are separate from us.

[11:06]

And then part of our way of trying to make ourselves safe from the world that we've separated ourselves from is to judge that other form of life and try to see whether it's you know, being nice to us or not, likes us or not. So we're, in the world of birth and death, we're pretty constantly trying to judge whether people are being nice to us or not, whether they approve of us or not, whether they support us or not. And so that's why it's so uncomfortable in birth and death, sometimes. Zen practice is sometimes offered as a way to become free within birth and death.

[12:11]

In other words, it's presented as a way of practice which can help us let go of our misconceptions about what's going on. And sometimes even when our conceptions are not misconceptions, even when they're correct conceptions, they're still conceptions. And our conceptions of things, even if they're correct conceptions of the things, are still not the things. So we have misconceptions and we have correct conceptions, and the correct conceptions also separate us from things, and the misconceptions really distort our understanding of things. So we need somehow to learn how to let go of our conceptual thoughts.

[13:27]

And then we have a chance to see the way things ultimately are. The way things ultimately are. And when we see the way things ultimately are, we become free of birth and death. we become free of birth and death and the fear and misery and unskillful actions that arise when we're not free of birth and death. And one way that practice is described is having basically two sides One side is called going to the teacher or visiting the teacher or consulting with the teacher and listening to the teaching.

[14:41]

And the character for listening can also be translated as asking. So it both means asking and listening. So one side of the practice is to go to the teacher and listen to the teaching and ask about the teaching or consult about the teaching. And the other side is called a wholeheartedly sitting. So in In Zen practice, many people practice sitting and do their best to sit wholeheartedly. And this room has all these seats here, these cushions and these chairs for people to sit on, to wholeheartedly sit. So the sitting is kind of the...

[15:47]

the exemplary opportunity for realizing freedom from birth and death. So you wholeheartedly sit and then when you feel like it, when you're ready, you go visit the teacher and then You listen to the teaching about the sitting that you're trying to wholeheartedly practice. And you might tell the teacher about your sitting practice and the teacher might say, hmm, well that's your idea of sitting. That's not actually the sitting. Or that's the superficial version of the sitting. That's your image of the sitting. That's the form of the sitting.

[16:50]

You got that right. But you haven't reached the actual sitting that's beyond your idea of sitting. And then you listen to the talk about that and you ask questions and you listen and you ask questions and then over some time your understanding of the sitting evolves to such a point that you become free of your ideas of the sitting, while you still have ideas of the sitting. And you understand also how you need to have ideas of the sitting in order to become free of your ideas of the sitting. And you understand how there wouldn't be any sitting if you didn't have ideas of the sitting.

[17:52]

But if you attach to the ideas of the sitting, you don't reach the actual sitting. And this way you listen to the teacher tell you about sitting, then you go sit. And then you listen to the teacher tell you about sitting and you go sit. And then you ask the teacher questions about the sitting and you go sit. And then you go sit and you go ask teachers about the sitting you're doing. And you go back and forth like that until someday you actually understand what sitting is. And when you understand what sitting is, you're a Buddha. And you can understand some about what sitting is and make great strides just understanding a little bit about what sitting is in addition to your idea of sitting. So I guess most of you have some idea of sitting, I guess. I imagine that you wouldn't have been able to get into the sitting posture. Almost everybody here is sitting. Almost no one's reclining or standing.

[18:56]

So you somehow got into sitting posture, as it seems to me, superficially, I see that, and you used probably the idea of sitting to arrive at the sitting. Sometimes going to see the teacher, you go to see the teacher with a bunch of other people. Like sometimes 200 people listen to the teacher talk about sitting. Sometimes you go in groups of 15 or 3, and sometimes you go all by yourself. And sometimes there's no teacher in the room with you, and you're just thinking about and remembering what the teacher said. and remembering what you read in the scriptures which tell you about the nature of the sitting practice. But the understanding of sitting, the correct understanding of sitting applies to every experience, every phenomenon. We just use the sitting as a traditional ceremony for the study of everything.

[20:03]

But you could use anything to study. When you first meet a teacher, you should just wholeheartedly sit and thus, body and mind drop away. Actually, even before you meet a teacher, body and mind thus drop away. Zen meditation is body and mind dropping away.

[21:15]

So you and I, I think, it looks like, I have a body and mind that thinks you have a body and mind. or a body-mind complex. And what Zen meditation is right now, Zen meditation is the way that your body and mind is dropping off. That's actually going on right now. Zen meditation is actually happening right now for each of us. It's the way your mind is actually and the way your body is actually working together and moving forward on the path of life. You, I could say, you don't have to make your body and mind drop away. It is dropping away. It's dropping away and actually is dropping away even without being born and dying.

[22:22]

It's just constantly liberating itself by its true nature. And as I said just a minute ago, you don't have to make that happen, but in fact you do make it happen because that's the way you are. The way you are is you are actually a dropping away of what you are. So what? You know? That way of being, well, the so what is that that way that you are is free. That way you are, that way you are is free and seeing and understanding that way you are liberates you from other versions of the way you are, which if you believe, you will not feel free.

[23:27]

So believing the image which your mind creates of a body and mind which are not dropping away. And again, we are gifted with the ability to see a body that's not dropping away. that's not constantly liberating by its nature. We see things that way, and if we believe that, then it's hard for us to see and understand how we are actually constantly being liberated, liberated from being stuck. And I don't recommend that you pretend to feel unstuck when you feel stuck. If you feel stuck, I think it's good to say, I feel stuck. And I actually suggest that your ability to say, I feel stuck, is because you're not. And actually, your inability to say that you're stuck

[24:43]

And you're even lying and saying, hey, I feel free when you really feel struck. Everything you do is sponsored by your actual freedom. So now I'm playing the role of teacher telling you about your body and mind. telling you about how the sitting you're doing right now is actually Zen meditation. And the way it's Zen meditation is the way your body and mind are dropping off, dropping off. But again, so I go on. Shall I go on for a while about this? About this, what do you call it, Zen practice?

[25:49]

So right now I'm talking and some of you are listening to the teaching about body and mind or the teaching about wholehearted sitting. So wholehearted sitting, I say again, is body and mind dropping away. That's a wholehearted sitting. The price of admission to wholehearted sitting is to let go of the story that your body and mind are not dropping away. And also let go of the story that your body and mind are dropping away. So when I tell you a story like I just did about your body and mind constantly sloughing itself off and expressing its living freedom, when I tell you that story, that also deserves being released.

[26:58]

And it will be. I'm talking for the purpose of inducing, of encouraging wholehearted sitting in each of us. But actually to encourage the realization of wholehearted sitting which is always and already the way we really are. But at the same time, our wholehearted life allows us, allows us, graciously allows us to grasp our fantasies about ourselves as being what we are. And then it allows us to feel out of touch with our freedom. Our freedom is real.

[28:07]

Our bondage is not. If bondage was real, that would be that. and Buddhism should close down shop. But it's freedom that's real, and freedom goes with happiness and great compassion for other beings who are not separate from the freedom, but who have not yet accepted it. And the inability to accept the freedom goes with the inability to let go of our story about what's happening. Freedom is not necessary to not have any stories. it's necessary to let go of them.

[29:12]

Now when you let go of them, sometimes when you let go of them for a while, you don't have any. But it's not exactly that they've been destroyed, but you're just temporarily not holding them and you're looking at, not looking exactly away from the story, you're looking at the fact of having let go of the story and not grabbing another one yet. So you're looking at no story. So when you look at no story, you're looking at life without making it into something you can grasp, which is like nothing you've ever seen, so you don't know what to call it, so it's like nothing. But it's not nothing, it's just none of the things. that you usually see. You're actually looking at life now unpackaged.

[30:16]

But life unpackaged looks like nothing, looks like none of the packages. Looks like no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, no color, no sound, no smell, no taste, no objects of mind, no feelings, no emotions, no intentions, no ideas. It looks like that. which is hard to get used to, so that's why you need to go talk to the teacher some more to see if you're okay. Before I came to Zen Center, I wasn't as advanced as I just talked about, but I was having experiences and I didn't know if they were like advanced or if I needed help from a doctor. I say I didn't know whether I should go on TV or go to a psychiatrist. So I wanted to go to talk to a Zen teacher to see if what I was experiencing was okay, was part of the course.

[31:25]

My body and mind is without Well, basically my body and mind is, we say, it lacks any essence. But my mind projects an image on it of an essence. So I think it does, and therefore I'm in birth and death. But ultimately, my body has no form or no characteristic that makes my body my body. There's nothing about my body that makes my body my body. My body is empty of a character by which it's a body. But I see it as though there were a character that makes it a body.

[32:33]

I imagine that. There's no such thing. I imagine that. My body doesn't produce itself. It's not independent. I project an image onto it that it's independent, but it's not independent. It depends on things other than itself to exist. And my body ultimately cannot be found to exist. It has no essence. Look for your body. You can find some things, but you'll never find your body. You can look for your eyes, but you won't find your eyes. Superficially you can find them, but if you look in the final analysis, as we say, you will not be able to find anything to exist. You will not be able to find anything existing. That does not mean that nothing exists. It just means that the way things are is they're unfindable.

[33:37]

which is part of the difficulty of becoming free is that we have to learn to see the difference between things not existing and not being able to find them existing. The way they exist is that they can't be found. Therefore, they are in a state of freedom from the start. they're naturally beyond any way to suffer. But if we project onto things a packaging mode and an essence, then there can be suffering. In this wonderful universe, suffering has been born by the mind. Mind apprehends the universe and in particular the living part of it in such a way as to make possible suffering.

[34:56]

The stars, as far as I know, are not suffering. The moon is not suffering. The wind is not suffering. But they have no way to suffer because they have no way to project limiting ideas on things and misconstrue their existence. We like to be able to find things. And if we can't find things, we can't talk about them. If we can't talk about them, we have to go to speech therapy. we are human beings, we must be able to talk about life. But in order to talk about life, in order to talk about our sitting, we have to project a form onto it and we have to grab that form as though that were the sitting and then we can talk about it and we can suffer.

[36:07]

In order to be a sitting Buddha, You must grasp the form of sitting. You can't sit without grasping the characteristic of sitting. And there is no characteristic of sitting. There is no characteristic by which sitting becomes sitting. There is no characteristic. But we can't sit without grasping the form, the mark, the characteristic of sitting. When we are sitting, when Buddha is sitting, when we are sitting Buddhas, when we are Buddha becoming people, As we're sitting, we cannot avoid grasping the form of sitting, which doesn't actually make sitting, sitting. We have to do that. Simultaneously, we hear the teaching that this grasping of the form of sitting does not reach the principle, the liberating principle of what sitting is.

[37:28]

holding these. And also I would say, too, that grasping the form of sitting, sitting can be really great, really wonderful. It also can be kind of not so good. But it can be really wonderful, but it can't be really wonderful in certain ways unless you grasp it. But even so, that does not reach the principle, the liberating principle of body and mind sitting. But you can't reach the liberating principle of your body and mind sitting in meditation unless you grasp the form of sitting which does not reach the principle of sitting. You can't realize the principle without the grasping which doesn't realize the principle. The effort to deal with what I just said, if you are dealing with it right now, is the practice of wholehearted sitting.

[38:39]

It's the practice of body and mind dropping away. There's no body and mind dropping away without grasping body and mind. which don't reach the principle by which body and mind drop away. We have to work with this dynamic. So you go and sit and when you go and sit or when you are already sitting you have not failed to grasp the mark of sitting and in that way that you are able to sit in meditation or stand in meditation or walk in meditation or swim in meditation, that way that you grasp this experience does not reach the principle that you need to reach in order to be free. And realizing that, at that time, realizes freedom.

[39:42]

you've let go of your conceptual activity. And then if you think you've let go of your conceptual activity, and so you're finally wholeheartedly sitting, and finally realize dropping off body and mind, you're doing the practice, finally you've realized the practice of dropping off body and mind, and you realize that this has always been your life from the from the even... there wasn't even a beginning to this. You see that this wasn't even born, this life. And you're a happy meditator. And then you go see the teacher. And the teacher says to you that this is just your story. That you've just grasped the mark, again, of this great liberation. And in this way of understanding it, you haven't reached the principle of your liberation. And then there you are again sitting, now can you drop that?

[40:50]

And you may say wonderfully, yes, it's dropping. And then again the teacher says, no. Or the teacher says, congratulations, and you realize that you weren't dropping. Sickeningly sentimental. So people who grow up around Iowa and Minnesota have a tendency to be sickeningly sentimental. Which you may have noticed about those people. Corny. So there's a TV, and there's a radio show, a corny radio show from this area.

[41:58]

It travels all over the world, but it takes the corniness all over the world. So I heard that last night on the show, I didn't hear this, but I heard, this was heard, is the host says, you know, democracy is kind of like sex. And his interlocutor says, hmm, how so? And he said, well, when it's good, it's really good. And when it's not good, it's still pretty good. So when you're practicing meditation, part of the thing is to check. Go and talk about the meditation and then have a conversation that you can use to go back to the meditation.

[43:06]

So when you're meditating, part of what you can be working on is actually looking to see what is actually happening and notice or remember the teaching that part of what's happening is that you're grasping what's happening in a way that doesn't reach what's happening. Get used to living with that teaching that we are grasping what's happening in a way that doesn't reach what's happening. And then also that what's happening, which is not reached by our version, by our story about what's happening, that what's happening actually is free of our ideas and our clinging to our ideas. So we cling to our ideas of what's happening as what's happening, but what's happening is free of our ideas. It's always free. But part of what's happening

[44:14]

also which is free of our ideas of happening is that we keep thinking part of what's happening is that we keep thinking that things are a way that they're not. That's part of what's happening. But the way that's actually happening is beyond my idea and the words I just used to speak of it. And in order to access and live in what's happening, we have to make this kind of effort of being aware of this. In a way, I'm sorry, because I know it's kind of nauseating to have to be mindful of the constant projection of misconceptions on things. It's kind of insulting to us to remember that. Or in a positive way, it's kind of humbling while you're saying how things are, to remember the teaching that what you're saying about the way things are actually doesn't actually reach them.

[45:27]

It relates to them. It's based on them. It's not separate from them. But it's a misreading, a misreporting. But again, in order to have an experience we have to sort of misreport. Without misreporting we don't have experiences. We're alive, but our life is not accessible to our grasping without some graspable version being offered of an ungraspable process. The simple part is that what I'm proposing is that I'm proposing a picture of Zen practice. A picture of Zen practice. This doesn't really reach Zen practice, though, okay? It's just an image of it which doesn't reach it.

[46:29]

But without this image of it or some other image of it, there can't be any Zen practice. So here's an image of it. You do something. wholeheartedly. And that something that you're doing wholeheartedly is dropping off body and mind. Whatever it is, however you're living, the Zen meditation is dropping off body and mind. And you go see somebody, one-on-one, two-on-one, two-on-one, one-on-two, six-on-one, one-on-six, hundred-on-one, you go see somebody, you interact to check to see if you're remembering and understanding and applying and being wholehearted. And it isn't because the other person tells you that you're wholehearted that you're wholehearted. And it isn't that you're going to see them as why you're wholehearted.

[47:31]

And yet, without this interaction, I haven't heard of anybody who is able to be wholehearted. Most people get into, again, sometimes get stuck in their version of wholeheartedness. So I'm actually not trying to make more work for the teachers of meditation, but if you listen to this, they would have more difficult lives in a way, because a lot of you who are meditating we start looking for people to interact with, to ask questions and to hear teachings about the meditation practice that you're doing. I feel like I should shut up, but I have something that I want to say.

[51:49]

May I say it? Another way I feel about this is it's, what I'm talking about is, it's kind of like a dream I have, you know, like tomorrow we celebrate Martin Luther King Day nationally. And he said he had a dream. But the kind of strange dream I have is a dream, it's a dream of being free of my dreams. That's my dream. In this dream of being free of my dreams, I'm not afraid to wade into life. When I believe my dreams, my dreams interfere, they make me afraid to wade into life because my dream, I have a dream of what's right and what's wrong, of what I can do and what's safe

[52:57]

what's harmful, who I like, who I don't, who likes me, who doesn't. I have a dream of those dreams dropping away and entering into actual life. And also that I would be totally unafraid of life. I wouldn't even have to package life in this painful way of birth and death. Birth and death is painful, but at least we got it packaged. And at least you then can try to avoid birth and avoid death, or promote birth and avoid death. You can mess with it. You can relate to it. You can wiggle. You can squirm. You can push and shove. It's nice, huh? But to wade in it with no dream, I shouldn't say with no dream, but to wade into it, letting go of the dream,

[54:05]

I just see that possibility. And I think that's really what I came to Zen for, is to just be able to wade into actual life, free of my constant dreaming of it. And that's always just sort of sitting there, available, this actual life. and just let go of our dream of it for a second and leap into it. Or maybe not leap, whatever. Walk, step, tiptoe, open, anyway, enter. There, moment after moment being offered, it's dependently co-arising that it's not born and it doesn't die. So I kind of feel like I want to enter, enter life.

[55:14]

I feel like it's possible. So I was encouraged by what I said today. I hope you were, too. May our intention Yes. I had a question. When you drop one body in line, it seems like that's where we cut the reel to the . And then, to revert that, there's necessarily fear.

[56:19]

It's just kind of what I'm trying to understand. And I wonder if that is always true. Like, whenever we try a successful life with the Buddha, we hear what he is teaching, and that's not funny. And then we have to draw from his body and mind, because usually it's like there's a way that it conceivably The speaking from... speaking from having dropped away the... the kind of imputations or imaginations, speaking from the place of having dropped away imaginations and being where there aren't any imaginations, that place can be a source of speech.

[57:30]

Coming back into and using some resources of fantasy again or imagination again in order to speak in a sense there, you might say you're incorporating error again. But, what can I say, it still can be very helpful, such speech. And there is understanding of the error. So you don't think that you're actually, like, You don't think that your expression is really reaching what's the source from which it's coming. So you're not expecting too much. You're not exaggerating the truth of what you're saying when you're coming from that place of realization.

[58:34]

But you're also recognizing that there's some dialectic there. that it's not just pure, perfect expression, because the words don't reach that place. So the words that come from realization are the place where words don't reach. they still don't reach the place, so there's something a little bit misleading about that. But you know that. And you can watch yourself to see if you forget that, and you can watch other people if they seem to hold too tightly to what you've offered, or what's been offered. So other people might take what you say too seriously. because you've offered him something that can be grasped. So then you kind of like try again and again. And through the relationship, the person who's hearing the words, which are in some sense not reaching the place but are illuminated by that place, so the words are illuminated by that place of letting go, but not reached by the place of letting go,

[59:51]

and can promote people being a way that gives them access to the place beyond their worries and so on. . Supposedly for the fully enlightened person there's a simultaneous letting go with the grasping in order to speak. There's a realization of what's possible when letting go, which is simultaneous with the realization of speech which comes with grasping. For other people you switch back and forth, but you don't necessarily want to switch too rapidly back and forth, otherwise you wouldn't be able to finish sentences. And sometimes that's okay just to say a word and then let go and come back and say another word a little while later.

[60:58]

But sometimes that works. In situations like this where you can kind of go word by word. But in some places, beings can't tolerate that. So you speed up a little bit. But you don't necessarily have to get way out of touch with your breath. There's a way to learn how to be with people who are not breathing very freely and join with them and but not forsake your awareness of your own breath and they may pick up that way and gradually be able to calm down with you but sometimes maybe you just like

[62:19]

let go of letting go and just get all tangled up, because that may be helpful. And since you've basically understood letting go, you don't have to hold on to letting go. Any other things you'd like to... How to meditate on the pinnacle of rising? Well, one way is in a sense, you could say, say to yourself, or you could say, listen to the words.

[63:30]

What I'm seeing is based on a nature, an other-dependent nature. That the way you appear to me is based on an other-dependent nature that you have. You as someone I can see, or you as a being I can be aware of, the way you appear is not, you don't appear to be an other-dependent being. You appear to be kind of like sitting there on your own. in a graspable form. I don't see you as nothing more than a process of relationship, but I hear that you are. And I can be mindful of the teaching that you are an other-dependent creature, and you also appear to be an independent creature.

[64:40]

And the independent part is easy to see. The other part I can't really see because I'm superimposing your independence upon your other dependence. But I can listen to your other dependence, listen to the teaching of your other dependence. And that softens my rigidity about the way you appear, if I listen to that teaching. And it also reminds, it has implications about you. That, you know, you are not responsible, I mean, you shouldn't say you aren't responsible, but you are not uniquely responsible for what you are. You're responsible, but you don't make yourself what you are. The whole universe has supported you to be the way you are in a way that I can't see, but I can think about. I can be mindful of. And the more I listen to that teaching and the more it has impact upon me, the more I understand that you're impermanent.

[65:48]

You don't look impermanent, but I understand that you are. And that you're unstable and that you're not worthy of competence. And so my expectations of you become less distorted and exaggerated. And the way I enchant myself about you starts to subside. The way I'm enchanted by your appearance, the way I'm enchanted by the way I imagine you starts to soften and finally drop. And then I'm feeling, in my disenchanted state, certain kinds of wrong actions start to drop away. and I naturally relate to you in a more skillful way, even though I can't directly see the way I'm being taught you are.

[66:49]

And this meditation gets me ready to actually be willing to let go of the way I see you, which makes possible grasping of you. It's hard without a lot of virtue to be able to tolerate being with experience including experience of others. It's hard to tolerate being with experience of other beings without making them separate and graspable. But we can be that way with people. And we are that way. We are actually the way we are. We just imagine being in another way in our relationships. And that other way It's familiar, it's birth and death, it's fear, it's feeling manipulated, it's wanting to manipulate, it's wanting to make things go a certain way, and believing that such a way could happen, and that such a way would be what is happening, and stuff like that.

[67:54]

That's hard to let go of. With sufficient virtue, you can dare to live, not without stories, but live with letting them go so much, that the stories start flowing almost like, you know, the pentacle rising. And you start letting other people interfere with your stories. And you let go of your stories. Stories that are different from yours could possibly be the story. And so on. Does that give you some feeling for it? And this meditation basically is the kind of basic meditation that goes on all the time and sets up the possibility of meditating on letting go of dreams and images. It sets up the possibility of realizing the ultimate way things are is that they can't be found. But it's hard to see the ultimate way they are while you're still holding on to a way that they can be found.

[69:02]

Because it's so nice to be able to find them. that then you won't be caught off guard and not be able to say what they are, which you feel embarrassed about. It's like Alzheimer's. It's so embarrassing to not be able to say what happened. So I have that now. I see things, but I don't know the name of them. I just sort of live with that. Of course, I can still say that thing. Yes. Unstable, impermanent. Not worthy of trust, you could say, yeah. But I don't know.

[70:11]

Yeah, if you realize that beings aren't worthy of confidence, you will not withdraw your trust unskillfully. You'll skillfully withdraw your trust. and you will skillfully trust. But your trust will not be based on the thing being trustworthy. You'll be trusting because you think trusting, because you understand that the person is not worthy of competence, and it'll be that kind of trust. Well, like what a friend is.

[71:31]

One of the nicest demonstrations of the Socratic method is one of the dialogues called, I think it's called Lycia, where he's talking with some of the boys about what friendship is. And he never really finds out what friendship is. But he has a very loving conversation with these people. Friendship, the ultimate character, the ultimate aspect of friendship is that you can't actually find it to be existing. But the fact that you can't find friendship doesn't mean there's not friendship. It just means the true nature of friendship is that it doesn't have an essence. But it's not that there's no friendship, it's just you can't find friendship. You can enjoy it, it does dependently co-arrive, but its ultimate nature is that it can't be found, it has no essence. And another aspect of it is that friendship does not have a characteristic by which friendship is made to be friendship.

[72:44]

That's the other kind of aspect of it. And the other aspect of it is friendship is a dependent co-arising. So it lacks self-production. Friendship doesn't keep friendship going. Friendship is due to all kinds of causes and conditions. So friendship is impermanent, unstable, and not worthy of confidence. When you know that, you can enjoy friendship. This fleeting, wondrous event which ultimately cannot be found. And when you realize that friendship cannot be found, then you are enjoying friendship in freedom. But before you even understand the ultimate nature of friendship, The initial practice is to realize that friendship is not worthy of confidence. So then you approach friendship more skillfully, like, I have a friendship with this person, I don't have a friendship with that person.

[73:49]

So the presence of friendship and the lack of friendship, I don't have confidence in either the existence of friendship, the actual friendship, or the non-friendship. I don't trust either one of them. Then I can be skillful with both. This is a friendship, what's that? This is not a friendship, what's that? But if I think this is a friendship and I think I know what friendship is and I'm enchanted by my story of the friendship, then I will do things unskillfully. I will be unskillful based on that view. Not totally all the time unskillful, but generally speaking, wrong action will arise from that fixing on my idea of what friendship is. So you're my friend, I have my idea of what friendship is. If you go along with that, kind of okay, but what if you don't? Then do I freak out? Well, maybe so. Do I tell myself that I'm not seeing and I try to talk myself out of it?

[74:53]

Maybe so. Are those skillful reactions? No. So not worthy of competence, again, is like your story of thing. And your story is not worthy of competence and realizing dependent core rising. Incompetence isn't worthy of competence. Faith isn't worthy of faith. But faith can rise and cease, but faith can also be in a way that doesn't even arise or cease. It's just the true nature, the true part of our life. You can enjoy it. It can be totally functioning. But if we want to get a hold of faith, then we have to make a story of it. And the story of it is not it. Isn't the story of it.

[75:56]

So we start with remembering the dependent core rising of beings and psychological states and faith and things like that. And then we get ready to let go of our story about them and realize their ultimate nature and then really understand what they are. And that sets us free. Yes? Would that apply to relationship-based love? Yes. Pardon? Right. Yeah. Not necessarily enduring. Or just plain not enduring. Things don't last for more than a moment. That's what a moment is. A moment is how long things last. Unconditional love would be...

[77:05]

In a sense, unconditional love will be realized when you realize the nature of phenomena. When you realize the nature of phenomena, then the conditions are constantly changing, but the compassion doesn't get pushed out of existence by your view of the situation. I'll forget it.

[78:11]

Yeah. Sometimes I recommend working with questions how am I receiving help. Yes. Is that a Yes. Yes? Would you say it again louder? Yes. Well, it's hard for us to tolerate it without a shield. I mean, we're always meeting the ungraspable nature of beings. Whenever you meet somebody, you're meeting their ungraspable nature.

[79:14]

It's always there, otherwise there wouldn't be any meaning. But we usually defend ourselves from this ungraspable nature by wrapping this ungraspable thing in a wrapping that we can grasp. We put an image over them, and we know how to grab images. Remember, we choose images that generally we can grasp. It's always there, otherwise there wouldn't be any meaning. But we usually defend ourselves from this ungraspable nature by wrapping this ungraspable thing in a wrapping that we can grasp. We put an image over them, and we know how to grab images. Remember, we choose images that generally we can grasp. And that image is based on, the choice of the image is based on, to some extent, this ungraspable thing. It's also based on, and part of what something is for us, in its ungraspable way, is our own background.

[80:23]

So things are not out there on their own what we're relating to in the world is not actually separate from our own stuff. We're actually all kind of like receiving the help from everything we look at. But we can't get a hold of that. It's too complex and dynamic. So we throw the shield. We protect ourselves from it. We shield ourselves from it by making it into a nice little package. But to take away our protection... from the awesomeness of whatever, is hard for us to tolerate. Right? It's hard to meet somebody and drop all your ideas, which includes all the appearances of the person. It's hard to look at somebody, look at the appearance, and then say, okay, now I'm going to let the appearance drop and be with this person. The appearance may still be there, but I'm not really, I'm sort of, I'm sort of like into like that appearance is like really just an imaginary thing.

[81:29]

So this intervening image by which you grasp things, which is also separating yourself from the dynamism of the relationship, doesn't really exist. It's just an image of what exists. It does exist that you're imagining an image of what... The image exists, but what you... The image is not of something. What's being imagined does not exist. So you can kind of like... You could just drop it and kind of look through it. At what? Well, that's imageless, and that's hard to tolerate. It's hard to tolerate being with an imageless person. Especially while you still have the opportunity of saying, well, yeah, but I can just go back to the image. I have to deal with this imageless person, this formless person, which is the basis of the formed person. It's hard to tolerate that. That's why you need to meditate on this dependent co-arising for quite a while so you can develop the virtue by which you can develop the patience and tolerance for whatever that thing might be beyond your graspable equipment.

[82:40]

That's what I meant. Is there something a little bit about intimacy? Same thing. The ungraspable, other-dependent nature of beings is actually your intimacy with beings, with so-called other beings. You could also say it's hard for us to tolerate intimacy. So what we usually do as intimacy is we just have an image of intimacy, people we're intimate with. It's not always that way. Like sometimes, for example, a mother and a child at certain phases of the development, certain things happen where there's a break in the graspableness of the situation. There's some awareness of life that is not being grasped and there's just intimacy without even the word intimacy reaching the intimacy. But there's a reaching. There's a reaching of the intimacy

[83:43]

the words petered out sometime previously. So there you are living in intimacy with no way to grasp it and you can tolerate it because conditions have given you that opportunity to put you in a situation of an intimacy that you have no words for and you're able to be there and like live that way and kind of feel like like maybe later I can tell you what it's like After I get back from here, I'll tell you how about it. Well, I can't really say what it was, but I will say that I want to go back. I will say that that's where I came to be. But I also came to come back from there into this situation where I can grasp things with the understanding that I've been in this other place. This place where I drop away body and mind. Oh, body and mind are dropping away. And in dropping away body and mind, you can't get a hold of anything. You've dropped away your grabbers.

[84:45]

Your grabbing equipment has been dropped. But you're still there. This guy, this French writer named Montaigne. Is it Montaigne? How do you say it? Montaigne. Montaigne, somebody said, ìHow come you love Bautier so much?î He said, ìWell, I donít know what to say except that at the time we were together he was him and I was me.î So, yeah, this is about intimacy. Yeah, except it just changed a little bit. There can be friendship, there can be intimacy, you just can't have it. There can be serenity, there can be tranquility, there can be wisdom, you just can't have it.

[85:55]

But it can have you. Intimacy can have you. Friendship can have you. Loving relationships can have you. You can be a facility for all goodness. Hmm? Yeah, you learn to be able to accept it without possessing. Hmm? Hmm? How do you do it? Ah, exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. And then leap into the light and don't look back. Well, it's 12.30, and some people want to have lunch.

[87:07]

So if there's no other questions, people can go in various directions and have lunch. Is that all right? OK. Thank you.

[87:24]

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