Well, the first one that came to my mind is I might have this vision of somebody, actually somebody mentioned this to me recently. I was talking about being friends, being friends to people, good friends to people, and she said, should I be friends even to people who are narrow-minded? And I said, well, yes, but the way you work on that is to be friends to your view that they're narrow-minded. So in this context, I would say if you saw somebody who was narrow-minded or somebody who was giving weight to what they thought or, yeah, you know, like what I think is true, just happens to be that way. Or somebody who says, you know, what I think must not be true, kind of denial. If you saw that, then I wouldn't, I wouldn't, what I would do is I'd discipline my view that they're taking things lightly, or my view that they're giving weight to things.

[01:12]

I would, I wouldn't take my, I would try not to give weight to my view of them. If that was my question, it's by not giving weight to your own view. Yeah. So I think this person is, what, narrow-minded. I have that thought. So I don't discount that. And I don't give it weight. I don't lean into it. I don't think, well, this is... They actually are narrow-minded. I don't know what they are, but... I don't just stand there and not know what they are. I make up a story about them, right? To defend myself from the awesomeness of this person. So I make them into somebody who's broad-minded or narrow-minded. But the person probably wouldn't ask me, should I be... Actually, some people might say, should I be friendly to even people who are broad-minded? Like in some contexts, people feel that some people are too broad-minded, that they're not...

[02:16]

I heard Ronald Reagan said, always be friendly to Republicans. So some people would say, you're too broad-minded if you're friendly to Republicans and Democrats, or vice versa. That's too broad-minded. You've got to be more with this group. And so some people would say, would not really like, would have trouble being friendly to somebody who was more broad-minded than they think they should be. So then I would say, well, don't take your view that they're too broad-minded. Don't give it weight. Don't lean into it. But also don't lean away from it. Say, this is my view. What's your view? My view is they're narrow-minded. And so start with that, my view is they're narrow-minded. That's my problem to work on.

[03:20]

And I want to be free of my view of them. And if I discipline my view, I will realize my view is emptiness. And I will be relieved of suffering and distress around my view that they're narrow-minded. Or my view that they need discipline, or my view, that they don't need discipline. So a Buddhist teacher might see someone and they might have this view, wow, somebody who doesn't need discipline. I've seen people like that actually. I've seen people, like that means, I've seen people who I thought, this person doesn't need any discipline. Now I know that's strange, so I say, I probably should watch a little while longer. But I watched one Zen student for many years before I saw any need for discipline. He was just amazing. But anyway, I would think that a bodhisattva, when they look at someone and think, this looks like somebody who does not need discipline, that they would not give that weight.

[04:29]

And they would be free of that view that this person is beyond discipline. Actually, now a thought comes to my mind. Some people look at certain teachers and they think, oh, this teacher is supposed to be enlightened or this teacher is beyond discipline, so I should... And then they give weight to it. So then they think, I shouldn't think that they need any discipline. But I should discipline my view. And if I discipline my view, I might say, you know, I have this view that you're beyond discipline, but I just thought I might offer you some disciplines you could work on. I think it'd be good if you did this, this, and this. But that's not coming from giving weight to you do need discipline or that you don't need discipline. It's coming from actually liberation from my view that you don't. Otherwise, we have problem stress if we give weight to our view that somebody doesn't need discipline or does.

[05:33]

Does that make sense? Want to come up? You don't want to. Would you pull forward a little bit? Thank you. I think that might be nice if you used it. Push the little button. Yeah. So I'm a little troubled with the word discipline because it sounds pretty much like controlling to me. It's related to the word disciple. And it has the root...

[06:35]

has the root dociere in Latin, I think, which means, you know, having to do with learning. There's a Sanskrit word, I think it's sambhara, and there's an expression which is often translated of restraining your senses which is, in Sanskrit, it's endriya sambhara. I didn't like that feeling of restraining yourself. How can you restrain your eyes, you know, or strain your ears? It just seems really... But then I found that the word was sambhara, which means to discipline, it's to train your senses. But sometimes there's an element of restraint in training sometimes. So you restrain giving weight, and you restrain taking lightly. So there is a restraint element. There's a not killing element.

[07:40]

Some precepts are not killing, not stealing. That can be turned into a control. But not killing is different from don't kill. But dealing with turning restraint into controlling is right there, even though we're talking about giving up trying to control, which is One of the ways we try to control is by taking things lightly or giving them weight. So the issue of control is not going to be banished because it's a natural part of our habit structure. When we're scared, we try to control, like we try to control our robes, rather than not giving them weight and not taking them lightly. So disciplining, during your talk, first I was kind of surprised because I heard you say something like disciplining the sound, which... Yeah, discipline the sound.

[08:49]

I was puzzled because sound is nothing... Yeah, but discipline, that means don't give the weight to the sound. So it's, if I get it right, it's not the sound and it's not the hearing, but it's the way of relating to it. Yes. Okay. But in the way of relating to it is that the sound you're looking at is your version of the sound. So you're really relating to your own superficial understanding of the sound. So if you train the way you relate to the sound, then you become more intimate with this superficial thing, and then you become more intimate with the profound sound, which is right there. but we do have a superficial take on this sound.

[09:51]

We train that superficiality. So the superficiality is composed of the name I give it, and it's also... It's the way karmic consciousness takes sound and makes it into a graspable concept. Mm-hmm. And that hides, it's profound. It hides the sound there which this concept can't reach. But we don't take this lightly. We take good care of it. We discipline the way we take care of it. So would you say that there could be sound or that there could be hearing without grasping? Yes.

[10:54]

Right while there's hearing and even there can be not grasping right while there's grasping. If I don't grasp the grasping. The world of grasping where there's stress is inseparable from the world of no grasping where there's peace. They're inseparable. And so we're training in that non-duality. And if you would realize non-duality, you would not grasp anything, even those grasping. Linda? Would you like to? I have a task in front of me, which is to work with a person who has had a lot of suffering in their family of origin, family history.

[12:33]

So on top of that has befallen more personal suffering now, great suffering. I find myself, I think in terms of discipline, like giving it weight, like this is, you know, over and above the usual kind of suffering and I need to attend to this. I can't take it lightly, but I think I'm giving it too much weight, which then... affects my ability to think clearly, I think, about what to do or how to... I think I'm merging, I'm tending to merge with this... Anyway, it's troubling for me how to be upright and caring.

[13:37]

Yeah. As you know, one of our frequently recited things is to interact and they do not interact. in Japanese, ego fu ego. And then also recently we've been chanting something which says that our wisdom knows without interacting or without merging. It knows without merging. But in parentheses or in brackets, it knows without merging or not merging. IT'S SOMEHOW THE MERGING AND NOT MERGING ARE RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER TOO.

[14:37]

SO YOU DON'T WANT TO GET AWAY FROM MERGING, FROM BEING KIND OF LIKE MERGING AND THEREFORE KIND OF UNCLEAR BECAUSE YOU'RE MERGING WITH ALL THIS SUFFERING. BUT ALSO YOU DON'T WANT TO LIKE, YOU DON'T WANT TO NOT DO THAT. YOU DON'T WANT TO BE JUST OVER INTO NOT MERGING. SO YOU WANT TO BOTH NOT MERGE, NOT GIVE WAY and also not not merge, which is kind of like taking it lightly. So if you notice merging, okay, that's giving it weight. Where's the not giving it weight? Well, that would be like, I'm not going to merge. So the not giving away, turning away and touching are both wrong. Neither of those is... Right. So you just, well, you can just, you can stay and face it, you know, because it's like a massive fire.

[15:45]

You can just stay and keep warm, not touching it. Or else you can walk around it so that, you know, usually walk clockwise, but you might want to walk counterclockwise too so you warm both sides. But anyway, just stay close, but don't really do anything. And then notice that you are sort of, oh, I touched. Oh, I turned away. I think that doing something, there needs to be some decisions, like administratively. And I feel kind of, not exactly paralysis, but Yeah, I heard that expression, paralysis, just the other day. What was it? Oh, Andrew used it. Andrew? Yeah. He said sometimes he noticed that he was... He sometimes noticed that what he's doing is... When he's doing things, he's a fool. And then he feels paralyzed.

[16:45]

So I think we need to, like, be able to see that we're a fool and not be paralyzed. So say, oh, I'm foolish, but not be paralyzed by that. Or see that I'm... Like if I think I'm taking things lightly, I might be paralyzed because I'm not supposed to take things lightly. I might be paralyzed if I thought I didn't care about this person very much or I discounted their suffering. That might paralyze me. Or the other way is I take their suffering so much I feel paralyzed. Both ways are kind of foolish. We're not supposed to go those ways. But if we go those ways, then we shouldn't let those paralyze us. So administratively, decisions, you know, time. Yeah. So again, how can we not take time lightly? And how can we not give it weight? People are saying, time, time, time, time. How do you listen to that without going, and also without going,

[17:52]

Yeah. I think I'm on the ugh side right now. Yeah. And if you make a decision from ugh or huh, either way, you probably feel like, I don't feel good about that decision. And maybe when you say, I don't feel good about the decision, maybe you could be just right with that. Like, I'm not giving that weight. And I'm not taking it lightly. But that's how I feel very clearly. I don't feel good about that. And I think the reason is because the decision came from, and then people put a lot of pressure on you. Even though you're, you still need to make a decision. We're not going to wait for you to get beyond. And you might say, okay, well, I'll make it from there, but I'm not going to feel good because I'm not in a balanced place yet. Thank you. Thank you very much.

[18:54]

You know that song, What Kind of Fool Am I? Every time we bring up fools, I want you to break into song, but I don't know the lyrics. You don't know the lyrics? Do you know the tune? What kind of fool am I? What's the next line? I don't even know. What? I wish I knew. That's a good line. What kind of fool am I? I'll learn it. It sounds right up my alley. Avalokiteshvara in the form of Bodhidharma, he's talking to the Emperor of China and the Emperor of China says, who is this that's standing in front of me?

[20:00]

And he says, don't know. Avalokiteshvara can say, I don't know. See you later, mamas. Would you like to come up? I feel a little nervous about being up here in front of all these people asking my question. Yes, like this. Okay. Did you hear her? She feels a little nervous being up here. So I heard you say a few things this morning that bodhisattvas and aspiring bodhisattvas discipline their hearing.

[21:11]

And you used the example of Martin Luther King. You said that you thought early on his hearing, his listening wasn't as disciplined as it was later in life. And you thought he seemed early on to feel he needed to do something. Or that that listening was not enough, so he had to do more than listen to the cries of the world. I feel that he thought he had to do more than just listen to the cries of the world in the early phase of his career as a listener. I also had the dream that there was a time in his life when he wasn't listening much. when he was just, you know, a bright college student who had a beautiful girlfriend and they wanted to like, you know, have a nice little church and nice family and help the people in the church. But he wasn't, he hadn't yet heard the cries and then he started to hear them.

[22:19]

And Buddha was like that too, right? Shakyamuni Buddha was in this really nice situation at his dad's house, very comfortable. He was not hearing the cries. And then he went outside and heard them. And then he said, whoa, I got to do something about this. I think Martin Luther King's story is like that too, that he was pretty comfortable. And then he started to hear the cries. And then he felt motivated to help these people. But I think at the beginning of his career, he thought he had to listen and do something more than listen. And then later I think he more felt like all I got to do is show people. All I got to do is demonstrate nonviolence. That's what will help people. But I think he evolved to that position. I don't think he started there. I think his story shows a deepening understanding that listening is nonviolent.

[23:21]

It's not like you listen and then you do something. It's that you listen and then listen again. Show people that when you hear a cry of injustice, you listen to it, and then you listen to the next moment, too, and you keep showing people the power of nonviolence. That's my dream of him. Yes. And... He also continued to demonstrate his listening in ways that people felt were conceivable. Were what? Conceivable. Yeah. He showed, he let himself be conceived of. Right. Yeah. So I was wanting to ask you to elaborate a little on disciplining, listening, not implying non-action. Say again? Disciplining, listening, the fact that it doesn't imply non-action. Disciplining doesn't imply non-action.

[24:25]

Disciplining is action. It's a type of action. To demonstrate nonviolence is a type of action. So, like, if somebody attacks me and I respond to them nonviolently, that's an action, which they may be able to conceive of and see, oh, that was nonviolent. But they might also conceive of it as just, I don't know what. They might see too much of what it is and get scared by it. Sometimes you might get scared if you saw somebody respond nonviolently to attack. You might be frightened by that. That's not good that they didn't fight back. That scares me. When somebody is attacked and they don't come back with violence, that might scare some people. Because they might say, well, what would happen to me if somebody attacked me and I didn't come back with violence? So even demonstrating, if you demonstrate nonviolence, it doesn't mean everybody's ready to conceive of that in a way that they can face.

[25:36]

So I think that's part of what he opened himself to, is all the different people's conception of what he was presenting them. But my dream of him is that he more and more showed what really brings peace, which is non-violence in the face of violence. And that he more and more had confidence that showing that is really the most effective thing to bring peace to people. And various things happened to him earlier in his career which showed him that doing something more than nonviolence, in other words violence, is just going to bring violence. So he stopped meeting violence with violence. More and more [...] violence got met with nonviolence. And it didn't stop the violence right away. But he got more and more courageous about, and people joined him, and they got courageous of meeting the violence with nonviolence, which is not giving the violence weight and not making light of it.

[26:54]

It's really important, and I'm going to meet it with nonviolence. And I'm going to listen to it. I'm going to listen to the violence. I'm going to observe the violence. Yeah. When you say that later in life, he didn't seem to think he needed to do anything in addition. Actually, that microphone's making it harder for me to hear you. Why don't you just push it, put it around? Okay. Later in life, you... believe that he didn't feel he needed to do something in addition to disciplining, listening. And yet he appeared to continue doing things. For instance, speaking to... We're non-stop doing things. Yes. And some of the things he started to do later in life were like to go to the White House and watch the president sign certain documents.

[28:01]

He did that. He rode in airplanes. He took walks. So he, like you and I, he did things all day long. But the discipline is to discipline what we're doing. It's not what we're doing. And the more we discipline what we do, the more what we do will show nonviolence. But it's not like you don't do things. We're constantly doing things. It's our action that we're disciplining. We're listening to each other. We're looking at each other. We're touching each other. We're smelling each other. We're thinking about each other. We're feeling emotions. We're moving our body. We're speaking. That's going to go on. But is that being trained? Is it getting disciplined? Is why we're active here together, are we leaning one way or the other? What do we trust? Do we trust our activity? I wouldn't trust the activity.

[29:07]

I would accept it. I would accept that we're active. I don't trust it. I don't trust being a man. I accept it, and then I train it. If we train our activity, Then we show the unity of the world of suffering and the world of freedom. But we train our activity all day long. We are active. But the activity isn't what brings peace. It's the training of the activity. It's the listening to it. It's the observing it in this upright way that brings peace. And another way to say it is to listen non-violently, to look non-violently. Because it's a little bit violent to take things lightly and to give them weight. So it's not that he wasn't active. He was. in many ways. He walked, he stood, he talked. But when he was talking, which people found so compelling, I feel that the real benefit of his talk was if he could talk without giving weight to what he said.

[30:20]

Maybe sometimes he did. I think when he was young, he probably said, I'm really a great speaker. Or that was really a bad talk. And maybe he gave way to, or maybe he sometimes took lightly what he said, even though what he said should not be taken lightly. Nothing we say should be taken lightly. Everything we do has consequence. So we shouldn't take what we say lightly, and we shouldn't give weight to what we say. And I feel that he actually could feel the place where he wasn't giving weight to what he was saying, and he wasn't taking what he was saying lightly. And that was so powerful in this world. And that was what inspired people to practice that way, which is nonviolence. and people still think maybe it's a good idea even though a new generation constantly comes up and somebody has to show them that non-violence is really beautiful.

[31:27]

Otherwise they're going to drift off into other stuff like giving weight and taking too lightly what those people think, giving too much weight to what these people think. So I think he got really good at it, at speaking from this middle place where he could see the suffering and he could also see a realm of harmony. He could see the harmony and he could see the suffering, and he wasn't leaning any other way. And speaking from there is so wonderful to hear. And I think he got more and more there. And the more he got there, the more some people could feel the power of nonviolence, and they got scared by that power because they're afraid and they feel like without violence, they couldn't control the world, which is a terrible place.

[32:32]

So those frightened people who were in charge of the violence equipment, they were afraid of him. Isn't it? I guess so. I don't know how it happened, but he got more and more frightening to the practitioners of violence. Not all of them, some of them got converted. He got converted. Somehow he got converted by causes and conditions to more and more settled and confident position of nonviolence. Just like Gandhi got converted. Just like Shakyamuni Buddha got converted. When we're children, like my granddaughter, she smashes me in the head with a toy. Nobody taught her that. It's just easy to be violent. It's easy to give too much weight to stuff. She gave too much weight to how much fun it would be to hit me and too little weight to what it would feel like to get hit.

[33:39]

So she's learning that, you know? And can I have a nonviolent response to her violence towards me? That's what I would like to learn. And I have confidence in that. And yeah, I don't know how it works, but I have confidence in it. Thank you. Thank you. Yes? Well, I'd like you to. I've been trying not to come up this whole time, but I failed.

[34:53]

Finally, you failed. Because I know what I have to say. I know it's my story. You said you like it when people let you know they know. I know. I do know this. I'm glad you know. I do know. I'm happy to hear that. So I thought, well, why come up? I know it's my story. Just sit there with it. So I don't know why I came up. I don't either. Okay. And I really appreciate Michael, the way he, the topic he brought up is a topic I want to talk about, but he did it in a very mature fashion. And I don't feel mature. I feel upset. um about the the term discipline and um i've been trying to understand this you know i just want to cry about you using that word i don't and i i didn't have time to go to check a dictionary and i appreciated what you said about disciple that helps but

[36:07]

Also, I'm not blaming Suzuki Roshi, but I'm trying to transmit his teaching to you. He used the word discipline. Well, maybe with a Japanese accent it would sound different. You know, and it may be that I'm currently reading a novel on the English slave trade and so I've probably seen the word discipline in the last few weeks a lot but every time I hear the word I have an image and so then when I'm thinking why are you emphasizing this word and then I was trying to think well You know, it's okay for me. It doesn't reactivate me when you talk about discipline as a noun. And, you know, that's part of why I love Zen. You know, I love all this discipline here. Also, I used it as an adjective. I first used it as an adjective, right?

[37:09]

Emptiness is disciplined. Isn't disciplined an adjective? Yeah. I use it as an adjective first. Okay, okay on adjective, okay on noun. When you came to, every time you use it as a verb, to discipline, you know, we need to discipline, all of a sudden my pictures of straight-laced, awful Zen come up, which I think is in some ways part of the common misunderstanding about Zen. Or it's part of the common experience of practicing Zen is to have that image come up. So if you practice Zen, you never see that image. You have not yet gone very far into Zen. Because there is that image of straight-laced, whatever else you want to say. Right. But when you talk about not holding on, not taking too lightly, and not... What's the other one? And not giving weight.

[38:10]

Yeah, not giving way to not. That to me is like ultimate freedom. That's like the joy of Zen. That's to me like what we're talking about. And so then every time you say, so discipline, discipline, it's like it keeps fighting. It's breaking my heart. Wow. Something about discipline. Oh, I know it was. Freedom comes through discipline. That's the expression. Okay, again, but you didn't say through disciplining. It's like when it's a verb, it's like force. It's like not... I don't know. Just the way you said it sounds great. Freedom comes through discipline, yes.

[39:11]

So anyway, I'm not trying to tell you to change. I just thought it might be helpful to you to hear that at least for one person, every time it comes off as a verb, there's somebody sitting over there going, bong, bong, bong, just... you know yeah i don't i don't hear well well it certainly would be i i believe it's certainly helpful for me to listen to you and if i listen to you and listen to you and my listening is disciplined see fine wasn't not it wasn't that verb fine then maybe i'll hear you and if i hear you maybe you'll hear you Oh, we'd better say that last one again. Say that again, that last thing. About that if you hear me, then I'll hear you. I don't know what you mean by that. If I listen to you and my listening is upright, my listening is disciplined, then maybe I'll hear you.

[40:18]

And if I hear you, maybe you'll hear you. But it seems like you mean something by that. What do you mean by that? I mean, my hearing you will help you hear you. Okay. I can... But what am I not hearing that you want to mirror right now? I'm not saying you're not hearing anything. I'm saying I want you to hear. Okay. You want to know what I want you to hear? Sure, yeah. You probably can guess. What do you think I want you to hear? I hope it's not about rethinking discipline. laughter Yeah, so I heard what you hope is not. What do you think I want you to hear? That maybe that I'm attached to my story about discipline. Well, that would be fine if that was the case. I wouldn't want you to hear that if it wasn't true. What do you think I want you to hear? I don't know. I want you to hear the truth.

[41:20]

Well, that's always the case. But I thought you meant about this. What I want is what's always the case. That's what I want. And if what is not always the case appears, then I want to have a disciplined experience of what is not always so. But not just for me, but for you too, so that you can also hear the truth in what you're saying. That you listen to what you're saying in this way, and that you'll hear the truth of what you're saying. Angel?

[42:34]

Sure. I'll stay here too. Is that okay? Is it okay if I come over there? Okay. I think my question has a little bit to do with what Kristen brought up, the last question. I think I'm beginning to understand, or to kind of see how it works to, you know, the D-word, with the self, and within the self, and a situation comes up, and I just, you know, not take it, not give it too much weight, and not take it too lightly, and how that works. And like you said, with the road falling down, situations keep on coming up every day, and we just kind of keep on practicing every day.

[43:39]

And where I kind of seem to get stuck is how this plays into an action, or how this could be expressed skillfully when interacting with someone else or interacting with a situation. outside of myself, how this could be expressed. And I would like an example of such a situation where you could use skillfully expressed or this kind of self-discipline. So the Buddha is working on herself, training herself to not give weight or take things lightly.

[44:47]

And he sees a person who is a murderer about to kill his own mother. So the Buddha walks between that person and his mother. That action flowed from being trained in being upright and not leaning into violence and not leaning away from it. So this apparent, this specter of violence starts to come up. So the Buddha moves to meet the violent person. to show the violent person uprightness to show the violent person I'm not giving weight to your violence and I'm not taking your violence lightly because I don't want you to kill your mother so I'm going to move in between you and offer myself to you as a friend as an example and how's that so far?

[45:55]

Well, how about me talking to you? Right now. I'm trying to talk to you. And I'm trying to not give weight to what I'm saying to you or take lightly what I'm saying to you. I'm trying to practice being nonviolent with you. Any questions about that? I'm right here. This is a current example. Can you relate to it? Yes, kind of. Yes, kind of? So what's... Some further question about this meeting we're having now? Yeah, I guess I was just thinking of, you know, a situation such as...

[47:02]

Something that can occur every day, like if I felt like I had a problem with another person, then I could pray. Well, like in this conversation here, is this... Oh, you mean... Anyway, right now in this conversation, do you have any problems with me? Yeah, do you have any problems with me? You don't? Is that a problem? Is it okay that you don't? So you wanted me to give an example other than the one I gave, but this one wasn't what you were looking for. You were looking for something between that unusual one and this one? Yeah, well, I asked, what should I say about that? I've got an actual situation here, and this is not what you want to talk about.

[48:09]

You want to talk about something else. Sounds like. But not so far as to talk about Buddha thousands of years ago. So maybe you should tell me what you want to talk about. I'm giving you an example of an actual situation right now, and you're telling me you want to talk about something else, so why don't you tell me what you want to talk about. I guess I just didn't feel that this actual situation... I mean, I don't understand how this actual situation is. No. So what I think is going on is I have this dream that we're having a conversation and you just said to me that you thought what I was saying to you was that what I was saying was skillful means. You thought I was saying that to you. that I was praising myself to say that what I was doing was skillful means.

[49:15]

But I'm not saying what I'm doing is skillful means. But I am saying I would like what I'm doing to be skillful means. I would like to speak to you respectfully right now. I do not feel that if I speak to you and think that I am speaking to you more skillfully than you're speaking to me, I don't think that's very respectful. So I don't want to talk that way to you. And yet this conversation, I would say, I don't want to take this conversation lightly and have to talk about some other conversation that seems more important than this one. And I also don't want to give this conversation weight. So I want to actually talk to you right now in the way I'm talking about.

[50:21]

I actually would wish that you would talk to me that way too, but I'm mostly working on the way I'm talking to you. Do you see me Do you hear me? Do you? And are you training your listening to me? Are you trying to be upright as you listen to me? Yeah. So if you're trying to be upright as you listen to me now, and I'm trying to be upright as I listen to you now, then I say, we have a current example of this. And if, I don't know what, if you would act in a way that I would think was wonderful or not, then I would try to be

[51:32]

not give weight to my thought that what you did was wonderful, and not give weight to my thought that what you did was below wonderful. And if you thought that about me, that what he said was not very helpful or what he said was helpful, then what I'm saying is that the path of nonviolence is for you not to give weight to what he said was helpful and not to give weight to what he said was not helpful and not to take either of those lightly, if that should happen. And maybe it's not right now. Maybe you're not thinking such thoughts like, he's helpful. But maybe I could ask you, what thoughts are you having about this conversation? You think you have a thought that's helpful? Yeah.

[52:34]

And so, what did you understand that I was recommending when you have thoughts like that? Yeah. So we do sometimes think that, well, so-and-so was helpful to me. I'm saying, fine, think that. But now you have opportunity to not lean into that or lean away from that. And then sometimes we think, this person was not helpful to me or not helpful to her. Like I just heard from somebody who got very upset because somebody at Green Gulch, she said, yelled at her. And I don't know if that happened, but she thought so and she gave it a lot of weight and she got extremely upset because she had this thought, so-and-so yelled at me and she gave it a huge weight and it knocked her down. And if I hear that story and I give weight to it, it'll knock me down. rather than listening to her and not taking what she said lightly, because she really got knocked down, and also not give it weight.

[53:45]

May I? Yes, you may. I think I heard in your lecture today, when you see a person narrow-minded, your work is, you're not going to say to the person, you are narrow-minded, but think about, OK, like a discipline, your thoughts of this person is narrow-minded. In that process, how you can discipline or train the student, if you see that your student, disciple, you will not you want to say something, but if your job is just, oh, maybe this person is not what I think, how can you frame the person? Well, you used the example of neuro-minded. Okay? But you used that word. No, I used it, then you used it. No, I referred to it. Oh, you referred to it. Okay, so... No, no, no, it was just that. The job of the Eno... I say to you, this is just a thought I give to you, right?

[55:00]

And I'm giving this thought, but now when I give you this thought, I will try not to give weight to this thought because I'm leading the intensive, right? I'm leading the intensive. So if I give weight to what I say to you about your job, it's pretty heavy, yeah? okay so now we have a story where she thinks i give weight to what i say to her right it's my story it's your story yeah so now we have the example now you had this the story that i give weight to what i say to you okay and then but you still could say that to me just now And if you would give weight to your thought that I give weight when I speak to you, if you give weight to that, it makes it harder for you to say to me, I think you give weight to me when you talk to me. But if you don't give weight to your thought, when he talks to me, he gives weight.

[56:05]

If you don't, then it will make it possible for you to say to me, I think you're giving weight to what you just said to me. And if I hear you and I don't give weight to what I hear, then I can listen to you better. For example, you say to me like that, walk slowly or speak quietly or a bit. I don't think I talk to you like that. How do you say that? I don't think I say to you, walk slowly. I think I say, please. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And also I think before I say it, I often say, may I say something to you? I often do. But I don't know what's going to come up. That's true. And you could say to me, well, you can say something to me, but first tell me what it's going to be. I might have such thoughts but mainly what I do is I don't tell I don't come up to you and say you walk too fast I don't say that to you

[57:21]

I don't say that to you. I don't say, you walk too fast. I say, would you please walk more slowly. I don't say, you talk too loudly. I don't say what you do to you. I don't tell you what you're doing. Sometimes I tell you you're doing a really good job. I'm sorry. But mostly I don't tell you what you're doing. Mostly I ask you to do things. Try to discipline you? Try to discipline you. I thought you begged me to discipline you. I thought you asked me to train you. So because you asked me to train you, I do. So I say to you, please do this, please do that. I want to do this, I want to do that. But I don't tell you what you're doing. I don't say, You're doing things wrong. I don't say you're doing things too fast, too slow.

[58:45]

Mostly I don't want to do that. I might think that. I might think she's walking too fast. But I don't tell you my opinions about you. I hardly ever tell you my opinions. Once in a while I say you're doing a good job. But mostly I just make requests of you. I ask things of you. I ask. I say, would you walk more slowly? I don't say don't walk... I say, would you please walk slowly? I make requests. I need that. I need you to walk more slowly. I feel a need. I don't know. I don't know why I'm the way I am. I'm just this way. And I don't feel my job is to know why I want you to walk more slowly. Skillfully. I'm not saying I express skillfully. I say I want to express skillfully. And I could even think I am expressing skillfully because you're still here.

[59:48]

I assume when you make a request, you don't have expectation. Correct. Well, at least my aspiration is not to expect. Then you tell me again and again that you don't have expectation, but ... Yes, and because I don't have expectation, I can tell you again and again. If I have expectation and you didn't do what I asked, I might stop asking. Huh? Because I'm disappointed. I might say, I asked her to do it and she didn't do it. I asked her again and she didn't do it. I'm done with her. In other words, I'll take you lightly. She's not, you know... She's not worth my effort. But because I don't expect you to do what I ask, if you don't, and I feel it again, I ask again. And if you don't, if I don't expect, if I feel it again, I feel it again.

[60:48]

If I don't feel it, I'm not going to ask it. I'm not asking it because I think I should. I actually feel it. Yeah. Like okay, sir. It's just like that. And, uh, If your okay-sa falls down and you don't put it back, I might say, please put your okay-sa back. And then if you don't, and I don't expect you to, and I feel like, again, I want you to do it, I'll ask you again. Maybe someday I'll say, please walk faster. Maybe I'll say that someday, because someday I might feel like I want her to walk faster. I might think in my head... When I get to you, I hate you. Yeah. And I hope I'm around when you get to be my age. At that point, I don't know if what I say will have more weight or less. He talked to you?

[61:50]

Wow. I'll be 112. I'm not done, are you? So, I started to say, if I say something to you, and I give weight, if I'm the leader of the practice period, what I say, people are tempted to give weight to, right? If the leader speaks, people are tempted to give weight to it. Rather than just listen, they give weight. Or, Maybe they're in a rebellious mood and they take it lightly. Oh, since it's the boss, so what? But anyway, I have to be careful when I speak if I'm in a leadership position because the setup makes people tempted to give weight to what I say. So I was going to say something to you and I said, before I said, I haven't said it yet.

[62:54]

And I'm going to say it now. The job of the Eno is not to think that other people are narrow-minded. That's not your job. You know that. You think you know that. And it's not my job to think that you people are narrow-minded. That's not my job. And it's not her job either. But I can ask somebody to walk more slowly without thinking that they are narrow-minded. Right? Yeah. But I might think they're narrow-minded and walking too fast. That's possible. But my job is not to think that people are narrow-minded. And my job is not to think that people are walking too fast. But I feel, this is very important now, in Zen, because of the forms, I cannot, it's very difficult for me to say to you, would you please be more open-minded?

[63:57]

So I don't say that to people very often. But I do say to people quite often, would you walk more slowly? Would you put your robe on? So these forms are ways that I can say things to people which are kind of like, would you stop being narrow-minded? But I can't say that. But with the forms, I can touch people in that way of saying, would you walk more slowly? Would you adjust your robe? Would you be more quiet with your spoon? Would you be more quiet with your heels on the floor? I can say these things to people, and they can accept them, which is very similar to saying, but I don't say it, would you be more open-minded? The opposite of putting the heel on, making a sound when you walk on the floor, the opposite of that, of being quiet, is not to be open-minded.

[65:02]

But when you touch a form like that, you touch the whole person. But maybe they accept that. Because they say, in that room, he can ask me things like, he can ask me to make a different sound with my heels in the room. He can say, would you please walk without making a pounding sound with your heels? So I can ask for that. And it's as intimate as to go into somebody and say, would you please be more open-minded? And then they might think, but if you say that to them, are you saying I'm narrow-minded? And you might say, well, yes, I did have that thought. And I'm asking you to be more open-minded. But that's very difficult to say to somebody. Because that could be devastating. So what we do is we start with the sound of the heel on the floor or something like that. Those things are the java that you know.

[66:06]

to ask people to walk more slowly or walk faster. Sometimes we ask the servers to walk faster, or to chant louder, or to chant more quietly, or to chant faster, or to chant slower. These are things that are the job of the Inno. But the training is to learn how to ask people to walk more slowly or ask people to walk more faster without giving weight to the request or taking it lightly, or giving weight to their speed or taking it lightly. So I see the speed. My job is to not give weight to it and not take it lightly. And I look in my own mind and I see I would like the person to walk faster. or slower and I don't give weight to that or take it lightly. And from that place I say, would you please walk more slowly?

[67:09]

This is how I work with it. I think if you're not happy, it doesn't mean that if you're not happy with the way I would talk that I missed. It doesn't necessarily mean that. But if you feel like, I think you just gave a lot of weight to what you asked from me, or I think you actually took too lightly what you asked from me, if you would say that to me, then I would again try to not take your feedback seriously. lightly or give weight to it. And in this way, we may be able to keep practicing until you're my age. Now I'm done. Maybe I'm done, period. What time is it?

[68:07]

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