Part of this assembly is residents who have been living here for a while and will be here staying on after the intensive. And part of the assembly is guests who are here for the intensive and will go back to various places afterwards. Many people from Europe here. And from many people who have come here from outside, I've heard expressions of great gratitude that there is this place where we can practice like this together. So those of you who have lived here and are living here and take care of this place, there's great gratitude for you providing such opportunities.

[01:11]

One of the members of the assembly said to me that, I think something like, I have a strong draw to solitude. I think there's places to sit up here, maybe. I have a strong drawl to solitude. But maybe I need to work a little bit more on relationship. In a way the truth is relationship and in a way the truth is solitude.

[02:59]

Many of us need solitude in order to understand relationship. And I think many of us also need relationship in order to understand solitude. I think maybe if we did a survey it would be more people need solitude to understand relationship. I hear a lot of cries from people who have a lot of relationship but they don't have enough solitude And sometimes people have enough solitude but they don't have enough relationship to understand solitude. So during this retreat there is quite a bit of opportunity for solitude.

[04:09]

And then people think about going back to work and they think, but when I get at work it's hard for me to remember solitude. Hard to remember stillness in the when I'm in intense relationship and lots of thinking and talking going on. It's hard to remember solitude. Hard to remember stillness. So then it's hard to understand the relationship. So bodhisattvas are encouraged, have been encouraged for centuries to develop and devote themselves to solitude. Bodhisattvas who are involved in caring for beings on the path to making Buddhahood, their job is to care for beings and to make Buddhahood in that process

[05:09]

they're encouraged to have solitude, to go for refuge in solitude for the sake of their relationships. When I first met Thich Nhat Hanh, he said that He opens his mail once a week. He opened his mail once a week. Once a week was like all he could deal with. But he did open it and see all the horrible relationships. And then he spent the rest of the week trying to understand in solitude. Anyway, solitude from the mail. In... In this particular lineage, going back to Dogen, we have the teaching that there's two aspects of hitting the mark, or you could say two aspects of the point, the pivotal point.

[06:26]

And the two aspects are just sitting, which you might understand as solitude, and going and meeting with the teacher. And the Chinese character goes to go meet the teacher and listen to the Dharma and the character also means ask about the Dharma or inquire about the Dharma. So go meet the teacher and listen and inquire into the Dharma. Those are two aspects of the pivotal activity So there again, it's like many of us need to just sit in order to understand the meeting with the teacher. And we need to practice just sitting in order to understand what inquiring into the Dharma is.

[07:30]

and vice versa. If you want to know what just sitting is, we need to meet and inquire into the Dharma together. We can't understand what just sitting is without a conversation. And we can't understand conversation without stillness. So the great compassionate beings who are out there swimming and in relating with all beings are also trying to remember the practice of tranquility and stillness. And those who are practicing stillness come to understand that there's relationship in solitude. Another way to say it is that we have some ideas of what relationship is, many of us, and when we're in solitude, we might think, oh, there's no relationship here.

[08:39]

There's nobody around. I'm all by myself. There's no relating. Well, solitude has the opportunity to help you wake up to that there is relationship even though you can't see anybody to relate to. I might think of saying, well, if you sit long enough you will wake up to that, but most people need some interaction because some people can sit a long time and not understand that they're sitting together with all beings. So occasionally it seems like most of us, somebody has to come up to ask us about the Dharma or we need to go ask about the Dharma. Otherwise we have a limited understanding of relationship and we sometimes don't see it. We've been chanting the two poems by two ancestors, two old-time Buddhas, one a Chinese teacher and another a person who lived in Japan.

[10:02]

And both of them start off by talking about Zazen as the essential necessary, pivotal activity of all Buddhas. Necessary, essential, pivotal are three different translations of one character. And in the Universal Encouragements for Zazen, the ancestor, the old Buddha Dogen says, think not thinking. How do you think not thinking? Non-thinking. And then he says, this is the pivotal activity of Zazen.

[11:09]

This is the pivotal activity of Zazen. This is the pivotal activity, in other words, of all Buddhas. All Buddhas are Zazen, or all Buddhas are the Zazen of all Buddhas, and their pivotal activity is characterized at this moment as think, not think, or thinking, not thinking. In stillness, in stillness, thinking is not thinking and not thinking is thinking. In stillness, I am not I. You are not you.

[12:15]

Self is not self. Self not self is self is not self is self. That's the way self and not-self are in stillness. They are pivoting on each other. They are actually an example of pivots and pivotal activity. And this is going on in stillness. And if we forget stillness, it's still going on in stillness. So if we're at work and things are very busy, still. Thinking is not thinking is thinking is not thinking. It's still that way. Somehow if we forget, it's like we miss it. If we forget stillness, we miss this activity going on in our busy work life.

[13:17]

So as many of you have heard over and over, this teaching comes from a story of one of our other ancestors named Yaoshan or Yakusan Igen Dayosho. He was sitting still one day and a monk came up to him and said, what kind of thinking is going on in this unshakable sitting? And he said, What's the question again? What kind of thinking is going on in stillness? Or how is thinking in stillness? And he said, thinking, not thinking. And then the monk said, well, how? How? Thinking, not thinking. And he said, non-thinking. So today, I might say that non-thinking is remembering stillness. remembering it.

[14:27]

And I've been meaning to talk to the seniors of our community to see if they can support a change in our session in admonitions, at least for this session. And the change I would like to suggest is that usually we say in our session in admonitions, be silent and still. I'd like to change it to please remember silence and stillness. Be silent. It sounds like you're telling somebody to do something other than... It sounds like you're asking somebody to move from here over to silence or change from here to silence. But it's more like silence is already here. We have the opportunity to remember it and receive it and practice it or practice in it.

[15:33]

And that's where this pivotal activity is living, is in this silence and stillness. And also the Chinese character that's used often for stillness also means silence and vice versa. For example, in the thing we're chanting at noon service, it says, in stillness, mind and object enter or merge in realization and go beyond enlightenment. And that character for stillness also means silence. In silence and stillness, mind and object enter realization together and go beyond it. Self and other enter realization. Knowing and known enter realization together and go beyond enlightenment in stillness and silence.

[16:35]

Yes. I think it's I think it's pronounced say. It's just one character, I think. I'll just write it. I'm not sure, but I think it's like this. That could be wrong. What do you think? Would you read it? That's say, right?

[17:39]

Say. Yeah. So that's silence and stillness. Does the other one mean purity? No. I think maybe it does. Anyway. Would you write that? The character Joe and Joshin of your name? Would you write that? Would you write that, please? The Joe? Mm-hmm. I thought there was some association there.

[18:40]

Do you see it? Yeah. So you change the character, the radical on the right and the left of the first one is word, the radical on the left of the second one is water. Change the radical from word to water and you go from silence to purity. Well, yeah, so... So I see a conversation between thinking and not thinking. Zazen is not thinking and Zazen is not not thinking. However, as it says in one of the chants, it manifests as thinking and parentheses and not thinking.

[19:45]

It's present or it manifests. Zazen's present with thinking and Zazen's present with not thinking. But Zazen isn't thinking or not thinking and is present with both. It is how thinking and not thinking are in conversation. You never have thinking without not thinking. They're always in conversation. Zazen is that conversation. And therefore Zazen is present with thinking even though you may not be able to be aware of not thinking at the same time. But it's there. Thinking is in the foreground. Not thinking is in the background. Zazen is how the foreground thinking is pivoting with the background not thinking. It's present with both. It doesn't abide in either. It's the dynamic conversation between thinking and not thinking.

[20:48]

And it lives in stillness. and it also doesn't abide in the conversation. The same applies to all the things that are going on in consciousness. A general word for the activity of conscious mind, a general term for that whole activity, is thinking. which is a definition of karma. So self-consciousness is also called karmic consciousness. Karmic consciousness has thinking, which is the overall activity, but also has feeling, it has perception, has many impulses or emotions or motivations, and it has consciousness, it is consciousness.

[21:55]

self-consciousness. So the same could be asked about everything going on in consciousness. So thinking that generally, generally speaking, what's going on in consciousness? Not what's going on in consciousness. What's going on in consciousness is not what's going on in consciousness. And the foreground of thinking, when thinking is in the foreground, that thinking is explicitly known by in the consciousness. However, the not thinking is not explicitly known. It's implicitly known. It's quietly known. some people actually are able to actually access not thinking.

[23:04]

That is an experience that can be had of not thinking. That can be the foreground. And then the background is thinking. So whenever we have consciousness, almost always we have explicit, kind of audible, almost audible or spoken knowing. And the same could be said of feeling. Feeling in stillness is not feeling. Perception in stillness is not perception. And so all this dynamic interaction does not appear within any of the elements, doesn't appear within thinking, doesn't appear within feeling, but the feeling is not feeling as feeling, that's in the stillness.

[24:22]

The whole field of phenomena is in the stillness. and its whole field of phenomena is in the consciousness, and it's in every element of the consciousness. So every element of the consciousness is the whole field of the consciousness. So that's why every element is not every element. Because the element is pivoting with the whole field, and the whole field of phenomena is pivoting with the element. And again, in stillness, that's where that's living, in stillness. So that's what those two poems are talking about. The poems by Hung Ger and the poem by Dogen, they're talking about this pivotal activity.

[25:31]

This is the Zazen they're talking about. Do you have any questions about that text or about anything else I brought up today? Yes? I noticed the transliteration of the title of the dog is called Sazen Shin. Is that the same Shin you were earlier talking about for heart and mind? No, it's a Shin which means acupuncture needle. So it's the acupuncture needle of Zazen. In the old days, maybe they had a variety of acupuncture needles. Maybe some of them were bamboo, some metal. But it's referring actually to the needle. But it could also, one translation, English translation that's offered is of thinking of that needle as an adjective.

[26:36]

Needleness. Sometimes some of the translations are the point of zazen. But as the next line to me suggests, the point of Zazen is this pivotal activity of the Buddhas. Another pivotal activity is Buddhas are pivoting with sentient beings. Buddhas and sentient beings are identical. pivoting. You never have sentient beings without Buddhas and vice versa. That's also the pivotal activity of Buddhas is to pivot with sentient beings. Yes? I'm finding it interesting to think about the relationship between the words in English stillness and silence and their use to translate a single character where there is maybe some

[27:41]

places where they might not overlap. In English you should, or I'm wondering how you think about the relationship between stillness and silence. It's an English word. Could I also mention, which you probably know, that there's a German word which means both? So in German there's a word that means both silence and stillness. And so you're thinking about where we'd have one without the other? Well, sound is a vibration, isn't it? So when there's vibration, there's no vibration. And when there's no vibration, you could say, or when in the vibration there's no movement, or when the vibration is occurring within no movement, then we call that stillness.

[28:43]

So the stillness that we're talking about here doesn't eliminate vibration. But it's referring to how things are not, how they are actually in their actual position. They're in their Dharma position and they're nowhere else and also they're not that. But not that isn't a movement. it's a pivoting in its nature is that it's a pivot between being here and not being here. It's not being pivoting from here to some other place. So it's not here and there. It's here and not here. There is also here. And here and there are in not here. So you don't have to move to be where you are. And so that's why I'd suggest maybe trying to say, remember stillness rather than be still, because be still sounds a little bit like, got to go.

[29:51]

We also say, if you're excited, it's a pitfall, or move and you're trapped. Yes, ma'am? In a poem, though, it says, the sound of valley streams enters the ears, moonlight pierces Yeah, I think that the description of stillness, the moon pierces the eye and that's the position of the moonlight and the eye.

[30:56]

They're doing that together right now and there's nothing not included there. The whole universe is pivoting on moonlight piercing eye, and sound of the stream piercing the ear. That's it. Right there. And there's the stillness right there. And so there's pivoting, you could say, between sound and sense organ, but also there's pivoting between sound and no sound. The whole works is in this thing right here. There's nothing more You have no more work to do than to be there and watch how the pivotal activity is living in that thing. By the way, I just wanted to mention that that particular poem was calligraphed by Kobuchino Roshi.

[32:00]

And it's an inauspicious position in the abbot's cabinet to us all right now. It's sort of over, you know, on the side of the wall by the tea stuff. I think it'd be nice to move it to some other place, you know, some more, you know, I don't know what. The only people who see it are people who go into and look in the tea room and, what's that? Not tea room, but it's like the tea storage area. It's safe. Last I saw it, it was still there. And he wrote it in 1967 when Tosar opened. So it's a nice piece. It's not a piece of wood, you know? 67. 67, yeah. It says it, 1967, that poem. Since you put your hearing aids, your voices drop. Oh, thank you, thank you. How's my, is that better? That's better. Okay, thank you. Yeah, that happens.

[33:03]

Anything else right now? Yes? Yes? Lakota. Lakota. I think when I first heard the line, the pivotal activity, thinking, not thinking, is the pivotal activity, I think I interpret it as it's the essential, necessary activity. It is, yeah. Yeah, and so I'm going to try to move from where I'm at with thinking to non-thinking. Yeah. It's some kind of exertion of will or even kind of maybe manipulation of control, but it sounds like that's not really what you're talking about. That's right. It's a different... It's spontaneous. Oh, by the way, I just realized I misinformed you. It doesn't say, this is the essential activity. It says, this is the essential art. At that point he says, this is the essential, this is the pivotal art of Zazen. But later in the text it says pivotal activity. So you could say, well, it seems a little bit...

[34:12]

willful to remember stillness. Like remembering is an act of will. You could see it that way, but strictly speaking, again, in Buddhist psychology, mindfulness is not seen as an intention. mindfulness is not seen as thinking. In the overall situation of consciousness, the overall activity is thinking, and also sometimes translated as intention. Within that field, there is sometimes mindfulness, which means, basically mindfulness means remembering. So remembering isn't really a will, it isn't will. However, it exists in a field where the total configuration of the field is intention. It's an element in the field.

[35:18]

And mindfulness is not always in the field of intention. And you could also intend to be mindful and not be mindful. Like you'd have the idea, I want to be mindful, that's an intention, and not be mindful. And you could also not have the intention to be mindful, but in the overall intention of the mind at that moment is supporting a moment of mindfulness. And a lot of people, when they hear about how good mindfulness is, they say, well, how can I make mindfulness be there all the time? which is, you know, I intend for mindfulness to be there all the time. Seems like that's a wholesome intention. It's not the same as mindfulness. And maybe it helps mindfulness, but mindfulness sometimes pops up and you're not intending to be mindful at that moment. So remembering stillness doesn't need to be an intention. It isn't really an intention. It's just, it's a blessing.

[36:20]

that you're blessed now with the remembering of stillness, with the remembering of the teaching, and then with that blessing, one of the blessings is that that remembering of mindfulness of stillness, that remembering of thinking not thinking, this is the essential art, or thinking not thinking, remember that, is non-thinking, this is the essential art. that transforms your consciousness. I mean that transforms your unconscious cognitive process to support more memory. So that phrase is in Soto Zen training temples, monks are trained to say that every day, at least once. by reciting the universal encouragements of Zazen. At least once a day they say, thinking, not thinking, how thinking, not thinking, non-thinking, this is the pivotal art of Zazen.

[37:24]

They say that they remember it because they say it, and they say it because they remember it. And this transforms the basis of our consciousness and makes it more likely that we remember Feeling, not feeling, how do you feel, not feeling, non-feeling. In other words, remember, when you're feeling, remember stillness. When you're thinking, remember stillness. When you're perceiving, remember stillness. And then you can say perceiving, fine, not perceiving. Perceiving is not perceiving. Yes? What is the relationship between those poems about sort of not facing and knowing and face-to-face transmission? Thank you. Yeah, they're related. They're describing Zazen because these poems are about Zazen.

[38:26]

But you can see, maybe, and it seems like you see, in the description of Zazen, it sounds a little bit like a description of meeting something. Because it does say, it doesn't say meeting without, what? Meeting without... Touching. Yeah. Without facing. Yeah. So it's getting, so it's, I've intended to bring it with me. I'm sorry, does anybody have a copy of it with you? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. So the Chinese Zen master says, it, zazen, it knows without touching. It illumines without facing objects.

[39:32]

Here we have a knowing which doesn't have to touch to know. And we have an illumination. Like, for example, like right now I could be looking at your face and there's illumination, but I understand that your face is not external. Your face isn't really an object. Usually it's like subject, object. That's the usual way of knowing. Okay? Yeah. Subject, knowing, object. That's the usual way. This pivotal activity is an illumination or it illuminates the situation without the subject facing the object. And yet, we're talking about face-to-face transmission. So it's like this facing this without this being an object of that.

[40:41]

It's like face-to-face transmission where the subject and the object are arising together, not separately. Not like a pre-existing subject facing a pre-existing object and they're coming together. there's an illumination, an awareness without facing the object, and that is face-to-face transmission. That's the transmission that we're talking about as zazen, is a face-to-face meeting where there's not facing of objects, where you understand miraculously that the object, what is usually the object, is actually a subject. And what is usually the subject can be an object. You understand that others are a self.

[41:46]

which is another line in one of our poems is, You are not it, in truth it is you. That's another example of this face-to-face transmission, which is also another example of zazen. You are not it, in truth it is you. You are not the object, in truth the object is the subject. this pivotal activity between it and you, between self and other, between subject and object, without abiding in either. That's the illumination. How are you doing? You can contemplate that? Yeah, great. Yes. There's three things that have been coming up. One is just now what came up was grass, trees, walls, and pebbles all radiated great light, that line.

[42:57]

And I was wondering if the radiated great light is this illumination. Is that what that's referring to? Yeah. Another way to say it is, so the monk asked the national teacher, National Teacher Jung, and National Teacher Jung's monument was where Xiang Yan was sweeping when he heard the pebble hit bamboo. So National Teacher Jung Jung had this teaching that sentient beings, I know that, in non-feeling, beings without feeling, teach the Dharma. Someone said to him, what's the mind of the ancient Buddhas? And he said, No, he said, walls, tiles, and pebbles. And then the monk says, well, if they're the mind of Buddhas, do they teach the Dharma? And he said, yes, they teach incandescently and incessantly.

[43:59]

So they have this brilliant teaching of the Dharma. And then the guy says, well, aren't they insentient? And I think the teacher says, yes. He says, well, why can't I hear it? And he said, oh, you can't hear it? Although you can't hear it, don't hinder that which hears it." And then the monk said, well, who does hear it? And he said, well, the sages, the arhats hear it. And also the Buddhas. Because Buddhas are, among other things, arhats. And then the monk says, well then, we who are not arhats, do we have any access to this incandescent teaching, this illumination? And he said, are we left out? And he said, I teach sentient beings, not sages. So this teaching of this illumination is for bodhisattvas, not for sages.

[45:05]

although sages can actually see or hear inanimate beings teaching the dharmas and ordinary people cannot, the teaching about this illumination is for bodhisattvas. That's kind of a... Yeah, somebody just tilted his head like... Yeah, that is kind of a... So it's kind of... Excuse the expression, a little bit kinky. It's kind of... So you have this thing of Ordinary people cannot hear the teaching of inanimate things, but the teaching that inanimate things are teaching is for the people who can't hear it. They're being taught something which is an illumination which is not for like, what do you call it, facing objects and touching to know. You don't have to touch this to know, and you don't have to face objects. Matter of fact, you have to give up that kind of knowing to open to this illumination.

[46:12]

And this teaching is for bodhisattvas, not for the people who can already hear it. It's for the people who can't hear it. They're being trained to be Buddhas, not arhats. So yeah, it's the same illumination. The other question had to do with those two circles you had with the noses, then the I, me, and mine inside, and then they're facing each other and the arrows between them are conversing. And what I was wondering about was if they actually are I, me, and mine caught, how is it that that conversing between them if you're caught in I, me, and mine, the conversation, how is that transmission? You have like somebody, you have ascension being caught in the self-conscious enclosure of me and mine.

[47:22]

I'm sick of my self-land. Okay? Simultaneously with that, There is a conversation and that conversation is like among other things is compassion for this situation. There is compassion simultaneous with this mud of karmic consciousness. The compassion is not the slightest bit someplace else. And this compassion actually, every moment that it lives with this entrapment, it grows and [...] grows. That's the conversation. That's the face-to-face transmission. And it grows on every moment of karmic consciousness. It grows on that. And it is living between karmic consciousnesses.

[48:27]

It's living with each one. and it's living also between, it's living with each and between all. And sentient beings can enact conversations to appreciate the compassion, which is not just inside their, like they can be thinking, I'm practicing compassion, which is fine, but that thought is still within this realm of affliction. Simultaneous is the actual compassion, which is not thinking, I'm compassionate. It's these practices of generosity and so on. That's the conversation. And it's living, I think I used the word the other day, it's in solidarity with suffering. It's not solidity. it's together with, in a very committed way, it's always there. There's always this compassion with all this suffering.

[49:30]

And that's the conversation. Yes, number three? Number three has to do with the thinking. To me, when I hear that, I think that's prajnaparamita lingo. That's just how you talk about the teaching wisdom which has gone beyond emptiness, that's the only way. But I feel like I need a little remedial, like A, when A is completely A equals not A, therefore it is A, that kind of grammar, syntax, I don't know what it is, oppression, being bilingual, you're not talking sort of in riddles, you're trying to speak it directly as you can, Pressure part, that's how I, that's my confidence in that. And I can feel the words, like, throw me around a little bit, you know.

[50:35]

Like I get, like, which is thinking, which is not. So I just wanted to say that maybe I need some remedial pressure. I need language lessons or something to help. Maybe. And one type of remedial, one type of remedial, which may not be the type you were thinking of, is to become familiar with this strange lingo. Like, there's this, in our unconscious cognitive process, when we often, if we haven't heard of something before, we often think it's not true.

[51:36]

But the more we hear it, the more it seems true. Or the more it seems safe. If we see something unusual, we often feel a little unsafe. As we become more familiar, as our unconscious processes become more familiar with it, they feel more like it might be true and more like it might be safe. When you hear unusual teachings, one way to train is just to hear them more often. So another place where this is recommended is where Dogen quotes another teacher who says, all Buddhas are practicing together with each sentient being. And then he says, don't think that all Buddhas are not practicing together with sentient beings.

[52:46]

Don't think that. And then he says, so this is not quite, this is going off the example I was giving, but I'll say, I'll try to stay with the example. If you have trouble believing this, one route to go is think of this teaching as of all Buddhas are practicing together with each being, and the more you think it, the more you believe it. So it's kind of talking yourself into it. The other one is, consider what is the practice of a Buddha. Well, the practice of a Buddha is to practice in exactly the same manner as all sentient beings. Therefore, they're practicing together with all sentient beings. And that too, if that seems strange, the more you say it, the more you're unconscious, which is, the unconscious is the place where we're kind of saying, this is unusual, so the problem might be wrong. The unconscious will get more and more kind of like, okay. But it needs to be familiarized

[53:54]

And they say, well, so you're kind of hypnotizing yourself into believing these teachings. And so there is, I can see that. Do you want to hypnotize yourself into believing that all Buddhas are practicing together in the same manner as all sentient beings? Do you want that not to be strange anymore and have that be like, okay? If so, it may be necessary to familiarize the part of you that's all watching out for what's unusual and being suspicious of what's unusual. in this way do you want it to believe this? So that would be like the logic is one thing, the familiarity is another. The Heart Sutra, we chant every day and the more we chant it, the more we believe it.

[54:57]

And so I saw a bunch of hands, I don't know how many, let's see, one... Two, three, four, I think you two were the earlier ones. Five, yes. For which I read, Some quite different interpretations are known here, which is one is about when the Buddha gave teaching about whether it was in or it's about observing, being mindful of the breath internally, externally, and internally and externally, whether this piloting can be useful. The other one is about the fourth foundation of mindfulness application, for which I also have different interpretations about, I think it's dharma or phenomena, or all other phenomena, they say, after the first three.

[56:10]

And Buddha included the five skandhas, the five aggregates, and then the hindrances, and then the four noble truths, in the sense also of dharma, in the sense of dharma and whether how we could understand this. Okay. This is bringing up some technical teachings on the four foundations of mindfulness. Can I do the last part first? I think it will work. So this first category is the frame of body, which includes bodily posture and breathing, and also meditations in cemeteries, and also meditation on repulsiveness.

[57:11]

Those are the body mindfulness practices. And in the West, mindfulness of posture and breathing are quite popular. The other two are not so popular. Also, they used to have corpses lying around for people to look at. We don't have that so much except, you know, in a morgue. The next one is mindfulness of feeling. The next one is mindfulness of consciousness. And mindfulness of... Do we need something? Do you need water? Is there water in your cup? Yes, thank you. So mindfulness of feeling is usually understood as mindfulness of whether you feel pleasure, pain, or you can't tell. If you are practicing that type of mindfulness, you often will be able to feel, I feel kind of neutral or I feel, you know, pleasure or pain, pleasure, pleasure, pain, pain, pain, pleasure, pain, neutral, pain.

[58:21]

Observing that. And then mindfulness of consciousness is mindfulness of this whole self-conscious space. like, oh, it seems to be depressed or seem to be happy or confused, kind of foggy, pretty clear, kind of like the weather of the consciousness. Kind of general. Then there's mindfulness of dharma. And dharma can mean phenomena and also teaching. And the Sanskrit word is, or the Pali word is dharma. It's It's indistinguishable when you see it. They don't have capitals as far as I know. So the word dharma can mean teaching or phenomena and some other stuff too. If you look at the things under the heading of the fourth category, which is called mindfulness of dharmas, some of the things under there are obviously phenomena. And also feeling and feelings are also phenomena.

[59:28]

So the previous three were also mindfulness of phenomena, kind of warming up to more subtle mindfulness of phenomena. but also listed under that category of mindfulness of dharma dash phenomena are teachings. So it looks like that's dharma in the sense of a teaching. But also when you hear the dharma, it's actually, when you hear these teachings, the skandhas are actually categories of phenomena. So you're hearing an encouragement to be mindful of phenomena, and then you're being encouraged to be mindful of categories of phenomena. Like the feeling category actually has three phenomena in it. The formations category, aggregate, has lots of phenomena in it. And each one of those phenomena would be also addressed by mindfulness of phenomena.

[60:32]

But now we're moving up also to categories which are also teachings of special categories that are conducive to liberation from this self-enclosure. So I think it means both, it has both meanings of Dharma. One is, and Four Noble Truths are also categories of phenomena, like the phenomena of the truth of suffering, the phenomena of the arising of suffering. These are teachings about phenomena too. So I think you can see as both teaching and phenomena, or either one, I think would work. The other point, our Japanese visitor is now going away. Bye bye. Sayonara. Travel safely back to Nihon. The other point that I thought Nino was making is that he talks about, for example, mindfulness of posture or breathing, and it says mindfulness inwardly, internally, externally, and both.

[61:50]

So one way to understand that is when you're sitting and you're mindful of your posture sitting, you're mindful of other people's posture. You're mindful of your posture walking, and you watch other people's posture, and you do both. you can actually be mindful of your breathing, but you can also watch other people's breathing. So that's the way I understand that. So then this meditation on relationship. Yes? Another phrase that is decided often, maybe daily, and you mentioned it about 15 minutes ago or so, is moving beyond enlightenment. Yeah. Well, it's Buddha. Buddha is always going beyond Buddha. Buddha, of course, does this amazing thing called realizing enlightenment, but Buddha does not abide in it.

[62:51]

It goes beyond it. It gives it away. Whatever state we attain in the path to Buddhahood, we give that state away. We don't abide in it. Buddha is not abiding in anything, even enlightenment. Buddhas are constantly transcending Buddhahood. That's the kind of Buddhas we have. You said something like conversation between self-consciousness and another self-consciousness is the enlightenment. Do you agree with this statement? The conversation between also includes them, right? The conversation of sentient beings with sentient beings, that's face-to-face transmission.

[63:56]

That is the great way of the Buddhas, is this conversation. I'm still thinking about this self-consciousness as me, Yuki. So Yuki is supported by all... Well, Yuki's in that self-consciousness. The sense of Yuki lives in that consciousness. So Yuki is supported by all not-Yuki, right? Yeah. And then what I thought was this conversation is the way it is, the conversation, And enlightenment is the process which realizes the way it is, that enlightenment? Enlightenment realizes the way it is. The process. And it realizes that everything, that all phenomena are a conversation. You are a conversation. So the conversation is the way it is. The conversation is the way it is, and the way it is is a conversation.

[65:01]

But the conversation isn't just between you and me, it's between you and the whole universe and me and the whole universe. So you and I are two phenomena having a conversation, and we always are doing this, but each of us is also the conversation of the universe with itself. The universe can't realize itself. The only way the universe realizes itself is through us. Then you're saying that enlightenment is the non-thinking. The process for to realize the way is the non-thinking. Well, but again, remember non-thinking is not just non-thinking. Non-thinking is Yeah, non-thinking is the conversation. In a way, then, non-thinking is the way it is. It's not the process.

[66:04]

I saw that non-thinking is the process which is realizing thinking is not thinking. It's a non-thinking. If what you mean by non-thinking is face-to-face transmission, if what you mean by non-thinking is... the conversation between each thing and everything that it's not, if that's what you mean by non-thinking, yes, non-thinking is enlightenment. It is not just enlightenment, like waking up, it's the life of enlightenment, it's the way of the Buddhas. It's the actual activity of the universe is this conversation, which is the whole universe coming as you and the whole universe is coming to me, meeting each other and giving rise to the whole universe. That conversation is face-to-face transmission. That's Zazen. One more question.

[67:06]

Also, from last lecture, you talked about awareness of object as a consciousness and awareness of knowing as a mind, an example of knowing as an interaction between a finger and a piano creates music. Could you expand what this difference between differentiation of consciousness and mind, how you use it differently? Well, I'm using the word consciousness as a variety of mind. One type of mind. One type of mind is consciousness. Another type of mind is a mind which, for example, makes it possible for me to speak English with you. I don't consciously orchestrate my English. And also, when you play the piano, you may consciously exercise and so on and so forth. But coming back now to control, when you really learn how to play the piano, when you're really into the piece, the conscious mind is not trying to control the fingers on the keys anymore.

[68:10]

And the keys and the fingers, it's not clear who's... It's not like the fingers are in charge of the keys or the keys are in charge of the fingers when you're really into playing. And the movement of the fingers is not just coming from this person, it's also coming from the keys. The way the keys relate to the fingers tells the fingers how to move. And the mind can get the information from the keys through the fingers about how the fingers should move in relationship with the key. All that orchestration, which makes possible the playing the piano in certain ways to create music, that is not conscious activity. It's a mind. It's an unconscious mind. It's a non-conscious mind. It's cognitive activity. Again, as I used the example recently, our unconscious mind, when you open your eyes, it creates a picture of a three-dimensional space.

[69:16]

We don't consciously say, okay, now I'm going to make three dimensions again and again. We don't have to do that. But a mind does that. And it does it based on the body in relationship to the environment. And it conjures up this picture of... of the world, of a world, of the world, of a world. That's done by a mind, but it's not done by a conscious mind. And conscious mind is not in charge of this. Also our unconscious mind makes associations. It hears somebody say something and then it remembers that somebody else said something like that before. and also that that person said something before, and it puts these associations together into a story. And that kind of activity is going on all the time, not consciously. And then all those associations that are made between various kinds of data are being done very fast, very complexly,

[70:25]

And then out of all that data, also a story is being made up about it, and the story is being fed to consciousness. So the relationship between the unconscious mind and the conscious mind is the mind? The relationship between them is perfect wisdom. The relationship with them is wisdom. The actual way that they're related, the way they're working together, That's a wisdom. That's another mind. But wisdom is not consciousness. So you are saying mind is conscious mind and unconscious mind. Because relationship is... Did you say mind is conscious of? No, conscious of. Consist of. Consist of. Yeah. Mind consists, wisdom consists of all consciousnesses. and all unconsciousnesses. Because it is the reality of how conscious and unconscious minds are relating to each other, and how conscious minds are relating to each other.

[71:33]

Understanding all that is another mind. It's a wisdom mind. It's not a consciousness. So what's the difference between a wisdom mind and mind, just a mind? Wisdom mind is one type of mind. We have consciousness, we have unconsciousness, and then we have wisdom. Those are all minds. I'd rather not call them consciousnesses, but we're in a kind of just a social thing here of some people are using consciousness for all of those things. Some people are using consciousness the way I am. as a synonym for self-consciousness. Some people are using consciousness for self-consciousness, for unconsciousness and for wisdom consciousness. So that's part of the confusion in our current world that I'm living in.

[72:37]

I see some different uses of these terms, but I'm saying basically three kinds of conscious, three kinds of mind. Self-conscious, unconscious, where there's not a self there, you know, present, and wisdom, which is the understanding of the conversation between mind and body, unconscious and unconscious, and also the relationship between various conscious minds, and also the relationship between various conscious minds and the unconscious, and the body. The way all that's working can be realized because it's right there. It's like stillness is right there. In the stillness is this wisdom. And this wisdom has told us practices to do to open to this wisdom. And people do these practices and they do open. And then when they open, they often think, oh, I can see why I hadn't opened before.

[73:39]

This is like really scary. So the unconscious, part of our mind is unconscious and it basically does not like unusual stuff. When it sees something unusual, it has developed to be suspicious of it and afraid of it, generally. And little children are really good examples, you know. When somebody introduces you to their kids, the kids are kind of hiding behind their parents, you know. When they first see you, they're scared. And then they watch you from behind their parents and they watch you and they watch you and then gradually the unconscious says, okay, maybe they're safe and pretty soon they're all over you. After about a half an hour they, you know, this is my new best friend. But when they first saw you it was like unusual. And that's part of our background is unusual people were usually dangerous. unusual animals, unusual people, we're afraid of them from our unconscious coast.

[74:46]

It sees all this data and it makes all these associations and says, watch out. And then gradually it changes the story by all these associations. Very fast, very skillfully, that's the unconscious process. And that's the mind. And it supports the consciousness. It's giving the consciousness stories all the time. It almost never says to the consciousness, this is a random process. What's going on here is random. It doesn't say that. It doesn't like stories like that. And also the consciousness doesn't particularly like them either. So it gives the consciousness really nice stories when there's actually no story to be given other than this is by chance. It makes up a reason for it. So this is a mind that's going on all the time. And when you're in deep sleep, your consciousness is turned off.

[75:47]

There's not a mind where I'm here anymore. It's off for a little while. but the unconscious is still watching the whole world, checking things out, making sure it's okay for me to continue to sleep, and especially to sleep deeply, so you can sleep deeply now. But some unconsciouses do not let people sleep deeply. People have trouble sleeping because their unconscious says, I don't know, I think you should stay on duty for a while longer here. Or, you know, you can go to sleep for a couple hours, but we're going to wake you up again because we don't think it's safe for you to sleep like six whole hours. Those are minds. And wisdom is the way they really are. And wisdom is giving us teachings like these about the way they are and how they interact. And when we actually open to that way, after we hear about it, with the aid of teachings, of practices we've heard about, which open us.

[76:51]

So one of the basic things that Buddhas do is they open sentient beings to Buddha's wisdom. The first thing they do. Then they demonstrate it. So they open people to look at the mind and then they demonstrate the mind, the various minds. And then as they demonstrate the various minds, people wake up from what they thought the mind was. And then they enter it. And Buddhas are trying to work that. But the first thing they do is to open beings to these minds. So that the wisdom, not only is the way things are, but the wisdom is to illuminate these minds to get them to practice in ways that they will be open to the illumination. Does that make sense? I don't know who was next. Yes, by the way, I have some feedback for you on chanting. Yes? While you were talking about making you think about how that released the courage, how wisdom was the courage.

[77:54]

Yes. Because if If you're in some relationship with an unconscious mind that sees it as story-making, then you might be more able to act in a way that's out of accord with an old story, as opposed to acting through the story, which is more of your base way of living. Does that make sense to you? It's getting close. Say it again, please. So I'm talking about a relationship between courage and wisdom. They're very closely related. We need courage to dare to open to wisdom teachings. But what were you saying? I was saying, when you were talking about the wisdom mind seeing the unconscious, or having a clear understanding of the unconscious and how it works, that that would allow courage to arise because it's a way of seeing through some of the stories that might keep you in a more operating out of your unconscious habits.

[78:59]

If you see that they're unconscious habits, you might say, okay, there I am telling myself I can't do that, but I'm going to step over here and do it anyway. With realizing, living in the fear, moving or living in fear and moving anyway, I think that is courage. Or living in fear But, for example, living in fear when you hear unusual teachings and listening anyway, that's courage. So the perfect wisdom scriptures often speak of when somebody can hear these teachings and not be cowed And you can be afraid, but be courageous. If you can be courageous with these teachings, then you can receive them. But they're kind of scary. They're unusual. They're shocking. They're surprising. So courage is part of what allows you to enter these wisdom teachings.

[80:04]

Now, when you have the wisdom, there's no fear. The wisdom doesn't get rid of the courage, it's just that there's no fear anymore because the basis of the fear has been seen through. Which is basically duality. Our unconscious process is built up of duality. Strangers, enemies, danger. And it works pretty well for us. Before you're there, just knowing that you think there's duality might be a way to find courage. Knowing that duality is just something you're making up might be a way to find courage. Knowing that you're making something up about a situation. That might help you find courage and also courage might help you listen to that teaching. Because that's a kind of scary teaching that it's duality that's making you scared. But then you can say, well, actually, I'm glad to know that duality is why I'm afraid.

[81:09]

That that's the reason that helps me. I still believe it, and I'm still afraid, but I can see that's the focal point of the fear. I can almost imagine if that duality dropped away, maybe the fear would drop, and that's right. When the duality drops, the fear drops. And you hear about that before you can almost feel. And then as you contemplate letting the duality drop, you get afraid, well, what will happen to me if the duality drops? So before you're afraid of the other side of the duality, then you get afraid of what would happen to you if you weren't holding it up. If you weren't maintaining it, what would you be? Well, that's a perfectly scary implication of this process. And to stay with and face that, that's what it takes. It takes that kind of courage. And the teaching maybe will encourage you to say, okay, I heard that this is scary and I've heard that people have faced it, passed through it, and saw in a way that it's eliminated the duality.

[82:18]

Were there any outstanding yes and yes? Yes? Would you speak about faith? About faith? Well, for me, faith is what I think is most important in life. Like, you know, And then based on that I think of what practices are in accord with that. And then I devote myself to those practices. And I keep checking the faith. And then faith is related also to aspiration. So you have faith and what's important, and then you have aspirations and vows which go with that faith. So this is important, so I aspire to this, and I aspire to these practices. So you have faith, aspiration, and then practice. Yes? I think I'll save it.

[83:25]

Okay. Yes? Is body and mind dropping away? Is it in non-thinking? Do they depend on each other? And how is it related to... Okay, so you say it again more slowly. I and mind. Did you say I... Oh, body and mind drop away. Yes, uh-huh. Is it something that occurs when there's none? It occurs when there's non-thinking? Yes. That's when it occurs, yeah. And is it always stillness? It's always living in stillness. It's always living in stillness. That's what I'm saying. It's always there living in stillness. So remembering stillness is like remembering where body and mind is dropping off. And another thing that's living in stillness

[84:26]

is face-to-face transmission. So, as I mentioned before, in the chapter called Face-to-Face Transmission, Menju, written by the ancestor Dogen, he said, I think he said, because of body and mind dropping away, I was able to have face-to-face transmission with my teacher. and I would say it over, I would put two words in there, because of dropping off body and mind in stillness, I was able to enter into face-to-face transmission with my teacher in stillness. And I would say, because of face-to-face transmission with his teacher, he was able to have body and mind drop off. Because in fact, he was sitting in the zendo and his teacher came up and said, you should drop off body and mind.

[85:36]

He had face-to-face transmission with his teacher. He was sitting in stillness. His teacher comes up and transmits with him and meets with him and talks to him and says, you should drop off body and mind. So because of the face-to-face transmission, he was able to to realize dropped off body and mind, and then they went and had more face-to-face transmission about that. But then later, and that's one story, then later in the fascicle he says, I don't want to mislead you to think that that story I just told you was in the same fascicle, but in the fascicle on Menjoo he says, he turns it around and says, because of face-to-face transmission, because of dropping off body and mind, I was able to have face-to-face transmission But if you look at the historical event, he had face-to-face transmission and then he dropped out body and mind. So he went to meet his teacher and they met and his teacher said, the Dharma gate of face-to-face transmission of Buddhas and ancestors is now fully realized.

[86:38]

That's what his teacher said to him. They had this face-to-face transmission, according to his teacher. And I think Dogen believed that. And then he went and sat. And then his teacher said, drop out body and mind. So it's face-to-face transmission, drop-off body and mind, face-to-face transmission. They're going around. And that's all that's, that's reality. Is our body and mind is constantly dropping off. And it's dropping off in relationship. It isn't like I'm dropping it off. It's that my relationship with others, that conversation is the dropping off. And dropping off is that conversation. So again, it's not like, why? So when he realized dropping off body and mind, he went to see his teacher. And he said, body and mind dropped off. And the teacher said, dropped off body and mind. They continued to talk about, face to face, the dropping off body and mind.

[87:39]

So they menjewed with the dropping off. They're turning on each other. And they're both non-thinking. Okay? And all this is going on. This is available at your local stillness store. So we've been talking about thinking, non-thinking, and that's non-thinking. Can you have awareness of non-thinking? Yeah. Yeah. You can have awareness, but awareness is not exactly the same. You can have various kinds of awareness. You could have conscious awareness of non-thinking. So, for example, Dogen can say he's consciously aware, body and mind dropped off. But the body and mind drop off is not consciousness. As a matter of fact, are you ready for that again? Let me say it, okay?

[88:39]

He's sitting in the zendo. The teacher says, you should drop off body and mind. Body and mind drops off, and then he is aware of it. But the dropping on body and mind was not something he consciously did. It was that conversation. They had face-to-face transmission. He's sitting in the zendo. They have face-to-face transmission again, actually face to the back of his head transmission probably. They're having this relationship, and in that relationship, he realizes drop, drop, body, and mind. And then he thinks, oh, drop, drop, body, and mind. And he can go, with that conscious awareness, he can go talk to the teacher about it. They're sequential, maybe, or not simultaneous? Yes. The conscious awareness is, it could be simultaneous, but it's not the dropping off itself. It could be before, like you could think, okay, this has dropped off body and mind, and then this thing happens. It doesn't even happen.

[89:40]

Something lives that doesn't even happen. And this is the point. And then later you say, oh, I think that was just the point. So it can be before and after. And when it's simultaneous, it can be simultaneous too, but it's not the thing itself. If there was no before at the same time or after, it would still happen. But there can be before, during, and after. The conscious monitoring of the practice can be there or not. and sometimes it is there. So you can be consciously aware that you're trying to practice compassion or that you think something is compassionate. You can be that right at the same time when there is compassion. Also, you can think there's no compassion here and there's plenty of compassion. And then later you might say, oh, now I see there was compassion totally there. I wasn't consciously aware of it. Now I am, but it's not there anymore.

[90:43]

But now I'm wrong. It is there. And so on. It's always there, and sometimes you're conscious of it. And sometimes you're not conscious of it, and you realize it. And sometimes you're not conscious of it, and you don't realize it. But it's basically the situation, and it's realized, but not necessarily conscious. But consciousness doesn't destroy it, because it's about consciousness. So I get this thought that this is kind of subtle. I think as soon as you bring conscious awareness to non-thinking, you're thinking. That's right. But non-thinking deals with thinking. Non-thinking is a way of being with thinking that you allow it to be not thinking. Non-thinking is a very allowing, compassionate, open way of being with thinking and feeling so that you can allow this feeling to be not this feeling.

[91:52]

It's a very compassionate way to be with self so you can allow self to be others. It's a very compassionate way of being with others so you can allow others to be self. That allowing them is non-thinking. But it's inseparable from the things you're allowing. And it's great compassion. And you can be aware of it. But that's the awareness of it. The conscious awareness of it is not the same as it. Yes? Is that the merging? Is what the merging? There's... Yeah, I think so. First of all, let's stay with the merging. One translation is, in stillness, mind and object merge in realization. So that could be understood as body and mind drop off in realization or into realization.

[93:08]

Yeah? In the poem that Maya said about the moonlight piercing the eyes and the sound of the stream piercing the ear, is that merging? What's that, Mooji? If I think so, the moonlight pierces the eye, so now we have that. And we're being told there's nothing else. In other words, we're being reminded of stillness. When your eye gets pierced by moonlight, remember stillness. In that stillness, mind and object, like mind and moonlight, merge in realization. But in that stillness also, the body and mind and the moon drop away.

[94:15]

And then you go beyond that. In this stillness, the funny thing is stillness doesn't let you stay So in stillness, not only do you enter realization, but you don't stay there. Stillness is dynamic. It lets you enter realization and helps you not hang out there. So in stillness, mind and object, mind and the moonlight together drop off. the moonlight drops off with the eye and the body and mind. It all drops off. And then you go beyond that in stillness. Okay? You changed your mind? Well, since you... We can give you advanced placement. So I'm finding myself feeling...

[95:20]

not lost in abstraction, but it's really helpful for me to concretize. I like models or metaphors, and I'm still trying to... That's consciousness. Consciousness, yeah. Kind of conceptualizing what we're talking about. Yeah. Consciousness. That I continue to grapple with last class in this is how it is that we receive face-to-face transmission from mental objects, whether it's the conception of another being, a sentient being, or grass, trees, walls, tiles, and pebbles. I wonder if this, I'm thinking of Maria von Trapp and how she, like, there's no, no one needs to teach her, if she's a sage, how to hear that the hills are alive with the sound of music. She hears that song, right? And so there's nobody that needs to teach Maria. She's, when she hears the song, she gets up and sings and dances.

[96:23]

she receives intimate transmission from hearing something that maybe nobody else can hear. But nevertheless, these hills continue to sing. Is this a useful model? Do you find it useful? Well, I mean, it's working for me because it points me to like, well, like right now, like, yeah, there's rain outside and in this moment the teaching that you're speaking is coming alive. So what does it point you to that you want to be pointed to? This. It points you to stillness? So I think that would be a helpful model to encourage you to do this boring thing of remembering stillness. So we need a lot of encouragement to do that. Even though we kind of, well, yeah, and part of the encouragement is that things are going to work a lot better if we remember this.

[97:29]

It's not that if we remember this we're going to be able to fix everything. It's that if we remember this, we're going to be able to allow the best response to come up in the situation. And so that encourages us to do the work of, in addition to taking care of everything else we have to do, now I have a new job called remembering stillness all the time, but it's worth it. Because if we remember it, all kinds of good activities are going to pop up in the middle of all this stuff we're taking care of. In the midst of trying to fix everything, something good's going to come up. singing in the hills. Yeah, right. Where did that come from? Well, it came from... I would say it came from... Those songs are living in stillness. I'm going to let you go ahead because you're kind of urgent here. Yes? It kind of relates, I think, to that. It probably does. If I'm in a place of mind dropping off, body dropping off,

[98:34]

That's where you are, yes. Yes, I am. And in my experience, and maybe this isn't true, because you had said there's only, everything is mine. Even embodiment is mind. I did say that, but I'm also saying that everything's body. That mind is body. But I would actually, in my experience, I would say everything is spirit. Okay. And I would even go so far as to wonder whether Buddha nature is actually pure spirit and that the mind is spending a lot of time trying to know, something that's the container of mind. So, I mean, a lot of, because Dharma is no religion only then, including Buddhists, and so mind, body, spirit, like the container of awareness. I mean, maybe the word in Buddhism for silence is spirit.

[99:43]

Would you believe in spirit? Do I believe in spirit? I'm trying to understand what the word spirit means, and one possible meaning of the word spirit is the conversation between mind and body. Or maybe body and mind dropping off is spiritual. Maybe that's a spiritual thing, which is body and mind dropping off is not body or mind. Body and mind in conversation is not body or mind. It's something about their relationship. So I think spirit might be like relationship. Maybe that's what spirit means. Who back there hasn't... Yes, John? A lot of what you're saying, the teachings, makes sense.

[100:49]

I run everything through the filter of my education at the University, studying biology. And the story that I think that is most sensible about the diversification of life and about that explains a lot by way of a specific field called evolutionary psychology, which talks about why we are the beings we are. And everything you're talking about, including the emerging field of consciousness research as an objective field, really jives with how you're talking. Is it... reasonable way to think about this pivoting activity of the non-dual scene and the dualistic mind representing reality and all its, you know, discrimination through its myriad forms, which is a later development of our evolutionary timeline as humans that we've come to be able to represent this world.

[101:56]

And really, for survival purposes, it's been our primary survival tool as social beings and the social aspect of what you're talking about with the pivot. Is Zazen practice and the Buddhist teachings a way of sort of remembering or rediscovering sort of a way that we may have been, that would have been more of an instinctual-based creature or a creature that's like a pre-, before the metacognitive mind? Is this a way of understanding how we maybe used to be? In fact, is there maybe even a neurological correlate to the non-dual seeing? There may be too many questions in there. Well, basically, yes. Buddha's wisdom will help us understand the way we used to be. as it is now.

[103:04]

The way we used to be is here. And Buddha's wisdom will understand how the way we used to be is here. Yes. But more than that, it will also illuminate how the way we used to be has to do with the way we are and the way we will be. And the way we will be is we're going to be Buddhas. And being Buddha will totally embrace understanding the way we used to be. We have access to the way we used to be right now. And we have access to the way we're going to be right now. Buddha's wisdom will show us the way we're going to be and the way we were and how they're related. It's really good. Yes, Deb. I mean, Deirdre. Would you say that again more slowly, please? but more recently in human evolution, I wonder whether cause of information overload, and that there's definitely an idea of numbing out opposite sense and feeling, and possibly a little bit, so sometimes it's practiced

[104:33]

supports us to come around to the realm of feeling. And today it felt very helpful to hear the piece of teaching about feeling non-feeling. I feel like I heard more thinking non-thinking. And it seems to me that sometimes as you progress into this teaching, it can bring up a lot of strong feeling, and maybe that's the unconscious going to preserve as it gets close to realizing it's not quite right, the model. And it seems very important that you connect with some non-feeling, pivot on the feeling to stay the course, otherwise you'll kind of back away from it. It's very helpful to be so kind to your feelings your pain, your pleasure, be so kind to it, which again, being so kind to it is summarized by remember stillness with it.

[105:35]

You're really completely there with it. You're not going someplace else. And in the stillness of the feeling, you get the blessing of seeing that feeling as not feeling. So then you can, you're free when you're in pain, you're free when you're in pleasure, and you're free when you have neither, or can't tell which. So stillness, in stillness, feelings are, what do you call it? Feelings are... merging with mind and entering realization. And in stillness there's openness to all feelings and emotions and open to letting each one be completely itself. And the more we let it be itself, the more we realize it's not itself and there's the pivotal activity. And in that space the spontaneous appropriate response arises.

[106:37]

the public response arises with giving, feeling their due. But again, it's hard to give them their full due because we tend to get a little bit busy. And oftentimes we have the experience here that people come in and they sit down, they come into the Zen room, they sit down and they start crying because they've been running around all day, you know, slightly ahead of their feelings. Your feelings can't keep up with you sometimes. You sit down and suddenly sadness comes up because you're giving it a space. It says, well, I guess we can come out now and be seen. It's getting kind of late. Is there any other, anything else we need to talk about this morning? Yes, Lauren. Sort of thinking about some of the things you've been saying, teachings and such, through the lens, my lens right now, feels very often related to my child.

[107:45]

Yeah. You know, so I think about, like, okay, I'm listening to what everybody is saying through the lens of a 36-year-old woman in this type of place, etc., and I feel like I've had a lot of responsibility to how I share this, some way, somehow, with this little being who seems to be inquiring for some answers and explanations about how things work. And some of the things that come up as sort of like, what is the best response here? There's questions of control. I exert control on her. She exerts a lot of control on me. And then I'm, so like we're talking about how to let go of control, and yet I feel like I'm actually maybe supposed to be teaching her that she can control things. And the same with like this sense of self, what we're going through our whole day, labeling things, you know, we work a lot, I am mama, that is daddy, that is me, that is so, I'll explain today.

[109:00]

You know, not that I think I'm doing her a disservice, but is there some fluid way to sort of express that, yes, you are Calliope, and I am your mama, but not. I know that it's not probably so helpful to you. Well, one story which I just quickly tell is that I met a little boy who was two years old. I think my wife was sitting next to me and he said, what's your name? And I said, and he says, what's your name? And he turned to my wife and said, what's that guy's name? He already knows that those weren't names, that he hadn't heard those before.

[110:13]

So maybe she'll tell me. Your question is really important to me and I think a lot of people are telling parents to control their children. And I kind of feel, as I watch children, I feel like they do know, they think they can control without anybody telling them that. and I think they want to control, they're trying to control, and I think you can help them with the thing they're trying to do. You can help them do it without reinforcing the idea that they're in control. Or you can reinforce the idea that they're in control. I remember my grandson when he first saw him piling up tiny, they weren't big blocks, they were tiny little blocks, like, you know, maybe... a fourth of an inch or a half inch blocks and he was piling them up with his little fingers really high and I didn't tell him to be careful.

[111:22]

He wanted to pile them up and he could see and he was trying to do that. He was trying to control them. I don't know, maybe he wasn't. Maybe he was just piling them up and just seeing what would happen if he did it this way rather than that way. And then when he finished he knocked the whole pile down. I think basically that children do not have to be taught to be afraid. Nobody has to teach them that. I think they're naturally, I think at night it's hard for them to go to sleep because they kind of sense that they're going into the unknown and they need some support like, you know, milk and stories and massage and all that. Then they kind of feel like, okay, maybe they can let the conscious mind go and let go of control and get some rest. And so we don't want them to eat a lot of sugar before bedtime because then it's hard for them to let go. So we're trying to help them go to sleep.

[112:23]

And can we help them go to sleep without trying to control them to go to sleep? Children are afraid to go to sleep and parents are afraid that children won't go to sleep. trying to control, I basically think, comes from fear. We're afraid the child's going to get hurt, or they're not going to get enough sleep, or whatever. And yeah, so it's time to go to sleep, and they don't want to go to sleep, and again, I'm in the privileged position of being a grandparent, so if the child does not want to go to sleep, I usually can just work with that and not try to control them into sleep, even though I'm trying to help them go to sleep. So I'm trying to help him or her go to sleep, and I'm not trying to control, and if she's not going to sleep, I can just keep trying to help her go to sleep.

[113:26]

And if this goes on and on and on, I can just keep helping her and helping her and helping her, and she will someday go to sleep. but it may be really late. And sometimes when I'm taking care of her, when her parents go out and leave me with her, they sometimes say, she doesn't really have to go to bed at her usual time. In other words, you don't have to try to control her like we do. So I can actually, like, if she doesn't go to sleep, we can go later than usual. Could we go all night? Actually, I'm open to that. That would be an amazing thing, and I might not be invited back. I really do not try to control her. And again, I'm in a privileged position. But still, if she wants to, like when we cross the street, for quite a few years now, she's not causing any trouble.

[114:28]

She holds my hand. And if she doesn't want to hold my hand, I beg her not to go in the street and hold my hand. And I try to do that without trying to control her. And so one of our great moments together was, before she could say playground, she had this way of saying it, I don't know how she said it, but anyway, she said, let's go to the playground. So we head off to the playground, holding hands across the street, walking down towards the playground. And she says, I don't want to go to the playground. I want to go home. So then we go home. And then before we get home, she says, I want to go to the playground. And then she said, I don't want to go to the playground. I want to go home. So we go back. And I am, this is one of the happiest moments of my life. That I, you know, I'll go anywhere with this kid and I'll protect her as best I can.

[115:30]

But I can't control, you know, if some crazy person comes over and hits us with a car. Like my niece just got hit by a car. I can't control it, but I'm going to be there and I'm going to protect her as best I can. And I'm not trying to control her. And it's such a blessing to be able to do this with her. And then finally she says, let's go to the playground. And we go and we arrive at the playground. And then she gives me various other instructions. And then she's had enough of the playground. She wants to go home. But this thing about I was not trying to control her. I was just assisting her. and protecting her, but I can't control protecting her, but I'm trying to protect her. And it helps that I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid of getting fired as caregiver. I'm not afraid of not getting to the playground. I'm not afraid of not getting home. And when I'm not afraid, I don't have to control anybody.

[116:32]

but it's hard not to be afraid that your baby's going to get hurt. And when you're afraid, then it's hard not to try to control. And I don't want her to get hurt in any way, but I'm not afraid that she's going to get hurt. I'm ready to protect her as best I can, but that doesn't mean she's not going to get hurt. So then how would you compare this idea, so that I think I understand, sort of that idea of control, how would you compare that or... What would you say about the relationship then between, like, teaching... Thank you for reminding me. ...agency, you know, speaking out for yourself. Like, so there's this thing, and we know we can stand up for ourselves, but there won't be any outcome. Can I address that, but also remember that you also asked about the teaching of wisdom earlier. Okay? So I'm just going to say something about the teaching of wisdom and come back to what you're talking about. I believe that this kind of training of a child, to show a child that here's a person who's here to serve them and is basically going to support them and love them no matter what they do, that kind of teaching where you can see you're not trying to control them, they see that possibility, that sets the stage for them being able to understand that wisdom.

[117:58]

And part of agency is, again, we often say, you did it. You did it. You did it. You did it. We say that. I think that's too, I'm OK with that, of saying you did it. It's not yet time to say the whole universe supported you to do it. But being generous and uncontrolling with her when she did it, she's going to open to the fact that she didn't do it by herself, that she did it with you. Also, when she was younger, I mentioned to her one time that I was her mother's father. And she said, no you're not, she's my mother. She's my mother, that's it. She's not somebody's daughter. Your mother's my daughter. No, she's my mother.

[119:01]

And I didn't try to control her into accepting that I was her mother's father and she was my daughter. I just let her say that and she could feel that she could tell me this world is that way. But that kind of generosity, I think, helps a child learn, well, actually, my mother is somebody's daughter And my mother also has another child. She's also the mother of somebody else. This kind of generosity opens up the mind to not be afraid that your mother might be somebody else's mother too, and that might be a reality you can open to. How about agency? I can say to her, I can say to the child, I don't feel comfortable giving you sugar at this time of night because then it's harder for us to go to sleep at night. You're showing her that you actually have wishes and although you're not trying to control her, you have values and you have difficulty doing some things that you don't think are going to be good.

[120:11]

And they can feel the difference between you're afraid and trying to control them, and you're just actually giving them a gift of telling them who their mom is, which she's totally interested in. She wants to know, and she wants to know all about you, and also can you be that way and respect me, not trust me, respect me, that I'm not something you can control. But I am something you can love, and part of your love is to tell me what you want. I need to know what you want. That's one of my main things to learn is what my mom wants. But my main thing to learn is not to do what my mom wants. Sorry. It's to learn that my mom's generous, and I can be generous, and she has things she wants from me, and I could do them or not. And if I do... it goes this way, and I get to know what generosity is, and if I don't, I get to learn what that is, and she's there to help me learn.

[121:15]

So you do teach her agency. You show her how you're giving to her without controlling. She sees how you act that way. And then sometimes you don't act that way, and you get, maybe you don't, but some mothers and some fathers get oppressive And they're really disrespectful of their children. And then they say, sometimes they say, you know, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I put getting you to school on time sort of ahead of being kind to you. I'm sorry. I'd like to find a way to go to school where we can do this together rather than me overpowering you. And one other story I just popped in my mind was one time Fu was taken care of my daughter, the mother of this girl I'm talking about, and we came home and Fu was sitting on the girl's chest, I think. Something like that. And you can sit on somebody's chest without trying to control them.

[122:22]

You're just showing them how much you weigh. You know, I actually weigh twice as much as you, and I'm much stronger, and if we were actually going to have a fight, it would be like, you know, it would be like this, like I would woo, because I'm bigger. So, you know, you're actually a little girl, and I'm a big woman, and this is information. This is not controlling her. She couldn't control what the girl's doing underneath her weight. The girl's got her life, but the girl's getting information. that people are bigger than me. And that's a reality that we can teach them. It's a force. I am more force than you because I have more mass. And this is information that you can give them. And if you look carefully, you see they're totally surprising me, the way they're receiving my weight and the way they're responding. It's not under my control. It's a miraculous face-to-face transmission. And the girl, the little girl, she got it.

[123:28]

She learned something from that. And because she had... And she's really a great mom. And I think Calliope is going to be a great mom too. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, being a parent and grandparent is... so educational.

[123:58]

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