I can't find my glasses. If I had them, I could see the eyes of the people in the back, which I enjoy. But I can see the eyes of a few of you here. You can kind of see your eyes, the fourth row, fifth row. Anyway, if anybody sees a a kind of a black glasses case with kind of like a, what is it, crinkly cover. And on the inside, the brand name of the glasses case is Private Eyes. Please bring it to me.

[01:01]

I honor what happens to me on my way to the lecture hall. And so just as I was walking out the door, my wife said, you've got to look at this cartoon. So it was a cartoon of this kind of curmudgeon, kind of crinkled up old geezer, sitting in his chair reading the newspaper. And behind him his middle-aged wife, kind of a frumpy thing in a dress and apron. And behind her is another older purse woman, smaller and older. And they're both kind of all crunched up looking at him, and the one woman says something like, Whenever Mother is speaking, Howard, you finish her sentences in unison with her.

[02:24]

Mother does not want you to do this. And also a little boy walking up to me said, hi, how are you? And I said, fine, how are you? And he says, you know what? And I said, no, what? And he says, you look kind of like a conehead. Can I go now? Can I go on with my talk?

[03:34]

Zen practice is actually in some ways simple. but it's not easy. It's about living our lives in such a way that we, you know, come along with it. Life has this thing about that constantly transcends itself. Life lets go of itself and becomes something new all the time. Something, you know, whatever. You can say whatever you want. But whatever you say anyway, whatever I say anyway, life is transcending itself.

[04:48]

Life is leaping off of itself. by its own vitality, it can't be confined by itself. So again, you know, the way a Zen practitioner lives is... the style of living of a Zen practitioner is said to be like a vigorously jumping fish. A fish like when it jumps out of the water and breaks the water into the air by its own vitality and nothing but. And the Japanese expression for this vigorously jumping fish is kapatsu patsu. Kapatsu patsu. And the characters, the Chinese characters, have a radical for fish in them. That's really what life is like.

[05:52]

Life is constantly jumping out of itself by its own nature. Zen practice is about expressing yourself so fully that you transcend yourself. It's about a revolution of yourself. It's about self revolution. It's about being and studying and learning and admitting and being aware of and inhabiting yourself so completely that there is a complete revolution. So this also can be seen as an evolution, that human beings evolve by practicing Buddhism, by practicing studying yourself.

[07:01]

There's an evolution, and the evolution entails a revolution. So I want to talk about revolution of the self. And the way this revolution occurs is by total exertion of yourself. So are you totally exerting yourself right now? You came here today.

[08:09]

I came here today. I wonder what you came here for. I wonder what you desired that brought you here. Did you come here because you desired something? Are you yearning for something? I look up the word yearning and part of the definition is a deep desire, a deep desire to feel deep sympathy or tenderness. What are we deeply desiring? Are we deeply desiring to be ourselves? so thoroughly, so thoroughly that we can be free to be ourselves. In the dictionary, it had a little quote from one of my favorite poets, William Carlos Williams.

[09:24]

She yearns after you protectively. hopelessly, wanting nothing. She yearns after you, protectively, hopelessly, wanting nothing. So I wonder who that you is. Well, I said that total exertion or being thoroughly yourself can be a way for this revolution of the self.

[10:31]

But I also feel that complete engagement with yourself is itself the revolution. Complete engagement with the self is itself the revolution. That's a change in the way we usually approach life. It is freedom and it leads to freedom. At the limit of our individual expression, we meet the other. At the limit of our individual expression, we meet our death. We don't die, necessarily.

[11:34]

But we meet our death at the limit of our individual expression, at the tips of the fingers of our individual expression. We meet our death. Our death is right at our fingertips all the time. It's at the tip of your tongue. It's at the surface of your eyes. It's at the end of the hairs all over your body. Death is right there. But we meet it when we express ourselves to the tip of every hair. That's when we meet it. Or the other way to put it is, when you meet death, you find the limit of your personal expression. So you can use death to find your whole completely expressed self, or you can use your whole completely expressed self to meet death.

[12:41]

So it isn't just that you meet your idea of the other, because our idea of the other is actually just an aspect of our individuality. We have within our individuality an idea of the other. So to fully, for me to fully inhabit and for me to think all the way to the end of my idea of the other will be the place where I meet the actual other beyond my idea. My idea of who you are is just a fantasy. My idea of reality is just a fantasy. We all walk around all day long with an idea of reality. Nobody doesn't have an idea of reality. Everybody's got a model of the universe. But those who completely own up to and exert their idea of the universe come to the place where they meet the universe.

[14:08]

Those who think about the universe and have an idea of the universe or idea of reality and think it half-heartedly are always alone in the universe. They never experience the universe coming to meet them because they're unwilling to be completely themselves. They're unwilling to have the thoughts they have. They shirk that responsibility and don't experience everything coming to meet them. Everything's coming to meet us anyway. We don't have to make that happen. But we have to go meet it. And we don't go to meet it actually, we go and meet it by being ourselves. We work through the part of ourselves which is our idea of others. we feel like we're separated but we're actually connected.

[15:23]

But the way we're actually connected we do not know and we can never know objectively. We do have an objective sense of our connection but that's not our real connection. Our real connection is innocent of our mental projections is innocent of our objective sense of our connection. It's completely direct. It's sensory. It's going on right now and it's not in the realm of objective knowledge. It never will be. It's safe from our objective knowledge. It's safe from our conceptions of it. It's safe, period. If we want to get cozy with this realm of safety, what we have to do is completely exert the realm of danger.

[16:37]

The realm of danger is where there's somebody else. where we think there's somebody else. And inhabiting or exerting or completely engaging with the realm of danger means engaging with yourself because it's only you that thinks there's somebody else. The others also think that there's somebody else too, but you're the one who makes the other. That's your responsibility, is to own up to that. From the point of view of this objective universe which we're projecting, the harbinger, the messenger, The frontier of the realm of direct experience will often seem to be nonsense.

[17:46]

The realm of direct sense experience, as we meet it at the limit of our realm of sense, will seem like nonsense. Our realm of sense, the realm we usually live in which makes sense to us, is not the realm of sense. It's the realm of thinking. But as you reach the limit of the realm of thinking, which makes sense to us, at the limit of it you start to meet the boundary of the realm of direct sense. And the realm of direct sense will seem like nonsense. And it will seem like losing control. Your thinking program loses control in the realm of direct sensation. As a matter of fact, it completely breaks down. It does not operate there. Part of what we yearn for is that realm.

[18:57]

And the reason why we yearn for it is because it's us. It's us beyond our idea of us. Part of the way we tumble into a realm beyond our knowing, the process by which we do that, the way we get to the place where we totally inhabit ourselves is musical. there's some music, there's some musical aspect or a musical way that we learn to be ourselves completely.

[20:06]

Ezra Pond said that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from dance. Music won't atrophy when it departs a little bit from dance, in other words. But it can't get too far away from dance, he says. And poetry begins to atrophy, excuse me, music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from dance. And poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music. And that's not to say that all good music is dance music or all good poetry is lyrics. Bach and Mozart never get too far from physical movement.

[21:36]

In the process of, in this work, in this play of completely engaging with ourselves, the language there should never get too far from music. And the music there should never get too far from dance. Someone came to talk to me recently about the practice of breath awareness. We're having a practice period now, and one of the texts that I'm talking about during this practice period is a text about breathing practices. You might say six ways, six styles of dancing with your breath. Six styles of dancing with your breath, which are called counting, following, stopping,

[22:47]

contemplating, returning, and purifying. These are the six dance steps that you can do with your breath. Counting is usually done by counting your breath, one to ten. So as you exhale, you count. Exhaling, one. Then, next exhale, two. Next exhale, three. And so on, up to ten. And then start over again. This is a one way to count the breath. Most of you have heard about that, I suppose.

[23:56]

And following means without saying the number, you just follow the breath. You apply your awareness, you pay attention to the breath going out and the breath coming in. When you count the breath also, you pay attention to the breath going out and the breath coming in. Because if you're going to count the exhales, you have to know when the inhale ends. Or at least I would say, if you're going to count, if you're going to get thoroughly into the counting, you need to know when the inhale ends and when the exhale ends. part of what I've been talking about is how these practices are always these six dance steps with your breath always include the other ones because when you count your breath you also have to follow your breath.

[24:59]

So this person was counting her breath and she said that when she first started counting when she first started practicing here, when she first tried to do that practice, she was quite successful. She sat down and counted her breath, one to ten. And I think she was able to count, do that several cycles of counting one to ten. But now she can't do it anymore. And this is not her idea of progress. Seems to her that if you came here and on the first day you count your breath one to ten, maybe you were able to do several cycles of that during a period, that maybe the next day you'd be able to do more cycles. You'd be able to pay more attention, more closely attentive to your breath.

[26:08]

But now she's not able to count to ten almost ever. and I told her that this is quite common that people when they first start trying to count the breath they're able to do it and then after doing it for a month or two months or three months or four months or a few years they aren't able to do it at all I know a guy who lives nearby who spent a number of years not being able to count to number two. Number one he could do. One. And that was it. Well, the next period of meditation, one.

[27:10]

Now, I feel, you know, I said to this person, what a hero that guy was. To spend, you know, to go for long periods of time just going in there to try to count his breath and go, one. To keep coming back to that. Also, how stupid. Anyway, this consolation that a lot of other people have gone through this didn't actually register much with this person. So since it didn't, I got into a little bit more with her.

[28:26]

And I told her some stories. I told her a story about, it's a part of a longer story about the, it's a Greek myth called amor and psyche. Love in the mind or love in the soul. Amor and psyche were together at one point. And there, love and the soul are together at the level of direct sensory experience. But as we move into the realm of objective knowledge, the psyche and love become separated because the psyche can imagine separation. So it applies that to love, too. It makes love something out there, which isn't the kind of thing love is. So, Psyche, a feminine form, is told various works that she can do, various exercises she can do to be reunited with love, with Cupid.

[29:40]

And one of them is to collect golden fleece from rams who live in a certain which is surrounded by brambles. So she heads off to this meadow where the rams are in the middle of the day. And as she's approaching the field, the reeds in the approach whisper to her softly, don't go to the meadow now. Wait, it's noon, wait until sunset. And even then, don't approach the rams directly, but go around the edge of their pasture and collect the fleece from the brambles. When I told her this story, I don't think it made much sense to her at first.

[30:48]

What does it mean to collect the fleece from the brambles around the outside of the pasture when you're trying to count your breathing? What does it mean there? If you sit and count your breath, what may happen to you is that you will tell your, some part of you will say to your mind, some part of your mind will say to another part of your mind, count the breath. There will be this kind of instruction from yourself to yourself. The instructor will tell the follower to do this work. And when you first come into a Zen center and you hear the instruction and the instructor tells you to follow, you may just do it.

[31:50]

But then in succeeding days when you become the instructor and you tell yourself to follow, you may notice that there's some kind of disharmony in your mind. Namely, one part of your mind is saying, follow this breathing, count it. Another part is saying, oh yeah? I'm going to think about something else. You can't tell me what to do. I'm a free agent. I'm going to think about the birdies. I'm going to think about tomorrow. I'm going to think about many things. I might think about, I might count the breath once for you. Okay, okay. One. And now, we'll think about some other things. When you're following your breath, you are not really following your breath.

[32:56]

You're following your thought of your breath. The breath you follow when you sit and try to follow your breathing is not your real breathing. It's your idea of your breathing. You're following your fantasy of your breath. If you can follow and count or just follow your breath, your fantasy of your breath, completely you will meet your actual breath. And your actual breath will be like a death to this little person who thinks that the world that they're thinking they're in is the real world. And by completely applying yourself to your awareness, to your breathing awareness, to your awareness of your fantasy of your breath, you will come to the frontier where you'll meet the actual direct sensation of breath.

[33:57]

And that breath is directly connected to all living beings' breath. But in the meantime, as you're trying to completely engage with your breathing, which means to completely engage with yourself, in the meantime you don't know how to tell yourself to do that. You know it would be good, or you kind of sense that it would be good, or you've heard it would be good, and you actually think you want to do it because you've heard it's good. But you don't know how to talk to yourself about it. So the way you talk to yourself about it is, okay, count the breath. But you don't like to be talked to that way, so it's uninteresting to hear that over and over, count the breath. Okay, one... There's some, you know, it's not total war. It's just mostly war. There's some obedience to that kind of talk because it's somewhat reasonable.

[35:02]

But it's not musical. It's not dance. How are you going to dance with the rams? Usually when we approach a meditation practice, we think, okay, there's a meditation practice, fine. Okay, I'm going to do it. That's not dancing. And the nature of the mind is it rebels against that kind of oppression. What would it be like to sit around the edge of the breath, around the edge, and pick up the fleece?

[36:17]

What's that like? Suzuki Roshi said, I think many of you have heard this analogy, the worst thing to do is to ignore the cow or ignore the ram. That's the worst. They're not paying any attention to your breath is the worst. Next best or next worst is to try to get control of it, to take a hold of it. But the best way is to give it a big field, to give it a big dance floor. and figure out what's the appropriate relationship with it. And when it comes to reality, the instruction is that turning away and touching are both wrong.

[37:25]

When it comes to reality or meditations on reality, turning away and touching are both wrong. To go and grab the practice is wrong. It'll throw you off. But to forget it also won't work. One, you'll get burned. The other, you'll freeze. The same with your breath. The same with yourself. If you try to grab yourself, you'll just get burned. If you turn away from yourself, you'll freeze. If you try to get a hold of it, it'll throw you off and then you say, okay, I quit. Then you won't have that problem anymore of what happens when you try to get a hold of yourself, but then you'll just simply be trapped by yourself and driven by your sense of self. So now if I'm sitting there and I'm breathing and I think maybe I'm going to count my breath, what would it mean for me not to turn away from that project and not to grab it?

[39:14]

What would that be like? How could I give that practice a big field? One of the ways of giving a practice a big field is to rest or give it up. Not give it up in disgust, like I quit, but just say, I'm going to take a break. One of the antidotes to laziness is resting. This person that I was talking to is quite diligent. She was working really hard to get herself to count the breath. But while she was talking to me, she said to me, but would it be all right if I just followed the breath? And I said, fine, try it.

[40:18]

Sometimes, again, when you're doing a practice and you're being lazy about it, the way to overcome the laziness is to quit the practice and go on to a different one. Sometimes it's lazy to continue doing something, and what you should do is stop and go on to the next thing. Sometimes it's lazy to try something before you're ready to do it, and you should take a step backwards. Flexibility is part of the effort. Again, the dance. Or change the pace. She said that part of the reason why she likes the counting is because if you're counting... the advantage of counting is you get more immediate feedback on when you get distracted.

[41:27]

But if you count successfully, it tends to soften your mind and refine your mind. And as your mind becomes more refined, it doesn't like to count. The numbers are too rough. So it wants to go on to a more subtle relationship with the breath which doesn't have the counting. So it might have been actually that she, after a very short period of time, was ready to go on to the next practice of following, but kept doing the counting too long. But still, even though she may have been counting too long, or still she may not have been giving herself the right kind of instructions about how to apply herself, still she was learning about herself. she was learning about that there was conflict in her mind, that the mind was not at peace, that the way she approached this meditation exercise, which is partly intended to lead to peace, the way she approached it made her aware that there's conflict in her mind.

[42:41]

She was getting upset about the way she was doing a mind-calming exercise. But again, part of the dance-like quality of this is that in order to calm the mind, one of the first things you need to find out about is that there's conflict in your mind. So at one level we feel fairly calm, and then we maybe do some kind of exercise to become even more calm. And then as a result of that calm, which is deeper than our ordinary calm, we dare to be able to admit that we're actually in conflict. And then if you can live in that realm of conflict and find out that it's actually not conflict, but it's actually the tango,

[43:52]

It looks like conflict, but it's actually a dance called the tango. And it takes two. It takes two to do this tango. And once you get into the apparent conflict of this dance, you become calm. You realize there is a calm in this apparent conflict. That there is a stability in the dance, which we call the tango. There is a presence, there is an immovability in this dun, da-dun, dun, dun. Is that the right thing? There is a stability there. Can you see it? Dun, da-dun, dun, dun, dun. There is something not moving there. But when you first come down into that level, you go, oh, god, I thought this unit. You were just sitting there, cool, and then suddenly, I didn't know that was going to happen here.

[44:58]

But once you get into it, then there's another level of calm, and then a new dance comes up. And it comes up right, a new step comes up, and it comes up right at the time when you settle into the latest upset. And when you're settled, and settled means you completely are there with it and you're not shirking the experience. You're completely with that new step, that new music. And then what seemed to be there is forgotten, and you're just flowing with it. And as you settle into the flow of that, a new shock will come. for you to settle into and then again that calm will surface a new step. And as you go through these various dances you finally completely engage with yourself.

[46:05]

This particular teaching shows six different ways to engage with yourself by engaging with your breathing. There's infinite steps and yet you can also say there's six or five or one. But if it's not musical, if it doesn't have rhythm, if it doesn't have rhythm and music to it, then somehow we tend to get stuck and it just seems to be conflict. But again, if you just sit at the edge of the field, if you run out in the middle and start getting butting heads with these rams, you may not be able to understand that this head butting is music, is dance.

[47:17]

But if you sit along the edge, you can start to see, at sunset particularly, that there's a beautiful movement to these rams. And you can then just collect the fleece off the brambles while you watch them dance. And by collecting this fleece, while watching the dance, a revolution then occurs. But it occurs already in the process of being willing to do this work, of entering into this engagement with yourself is already the revolution. I mentioned a while ago that I was listening to some Vivaldi a while ago, and it was a female vocalist accompanied by, I believe, a male recorder player, or recorders like this.

[48:51]

And I was listening to the music. I was enjoying the music and I was listening to the woman's beautiful voice singing Italian. And I was listening to the lovely sounds of the recorder. But these, anyway, as I listened more, I I heard another sound in addition to the sound of the recorder resonating with his breath and the vocal cords resonating, and I guess her whole body resonating with her breath. I heard some additional sound. I heard this kind of, I heard inhaling.

[49:55]

I heard the recorder player inhaling. And when I first heard that sound, I thought it was kind of harsh and annoying. And it's not written on the music sheet to make those sounds, as far as I know. I wouldn't know, actually. It doesn't say hit a certain tone on the inhale. So this other sound was coming in there. I had this idea, you know, I was enjoying this music, and then this music became something other than what I was expecting. And when it became something other than what I was expecting, I was disturbed by this urgent, harsh,

[51:02]

inhaling and but I continued to listen and in sense I continued to follow his I got more into his breathing I wasn't just in his exhaling which was the recorder sound I started to get into his inhaling and his inhaling was urgent he really wanted to get that air so he could make this sound And I started to feel more sympathy for him. Before that, I was just enjoying his recorder sounds, but I started to feel sympathy for this musician. I could feel the urgency with which he was living his life, with which he was trying to play this piece of music for us. And I started to feel sympathy not just for him, but for myself and for all of us who are urgently trying to live.

[52:10]

And then the music had a deeper meaning for me, a greater meaning. But originally, it was annoying and disturbing to hear this poor creature trying to get air. I wasn't planning on hearing that as part of the music. But that is involved. Somebody's struggling for life playing that recorder and struggling for life and struggling for breath in order to make music in this world. and we don't necessarily uh... we're not necessarily cotton or fleece to that idea we don't like to become aware of how urgent we feel about our life how urgent we are about this breath but i think part of the music is

[53:37]

to get in touch with that urgency of our breathing, that intense interest in breath. Because that's the kind of creatures we are. That's part of it. I want to sing a song.

[55:02]

That way we can breathe together. Okay, I'll warn you what the name of the song is. The Red Red Robin. I know some of you have sang this song before and are maybe kind of bored with it. But I don't think it's as boring as following your breathing. You know, and I kind of want, over here, I want to suggest we do some new song, you know, partly because I want you to think I know some other songs.

[56:18]

But I also know that every time I start singing this song and I feel silly at the beginning, but at the end I feel like, yeah. I am silly. I'm a silly little bird. Are you ready? Okay. When the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbing along, along. There'll be no more sobbing when he starts throbbing his old sweet song. Wake up, wake up, you sleepyhead, get up. Get up, get out of bed. Cheer up, cheer up.

[57:22]

The sun is red. Live, love, laugh and be happy. Though I've been blue, now I'm walking through fields of flowers. Rain may glisten, but still I listen for hours and hours. I'm just a kid again, doing what I did again, singing a song. When the red, red robin comes bop, bop, bopping along, bop, bop, bop, bopping along. A little bit more about the other more advanced steps in the breathing process after pumping and following. A little bit about what they're called and what they mean.

[58:25]

Yes, okay. I have six kind of ways to work with your breathing. One is, the first is counting the breaths. Next is following them. You stop counting, you just follow the breath. Third is called stopping. Fourth is called contemplating. Fifth is called returning. And the sixth is called purifying. So very briefly, the advantage of the counting is that by having a number, it's kind of a

[59:35]

it's a clear marker about whether you're paying attention to the breathing process. At least it is at the beginning. Some people like that. When you feel like having that number there is too coarse, then naturally your mind doesn't want that device. It wants to just be more intimate with with your imagination about the breathing, and you just follow. And of course the following is also involved in the counting. You have to be following, aren't you, the counting. When you can completely give yourself to the following, when you're completely concentrated on the following, And at the end of that practice, you realize what the next practice is, which is stopping.

[60:45]

In other words, your mind stops with the breath at the culmination of following. In other words, when you completely give yourself to the following, there's nothing being given to the following to the following the breath. It's actually like this yearning, this thing. He yearns after you protectively, hopelessly, wanting nothing. When you want nothing but to be with the breathing, the mind stops, which means that things still happen. Moment by moment, things happen. body happens, breath happens, thoughts happen, images happen, everything happens, right? But when things happen, the mind is no longer, you don't feel like the mind's bouncing around what's happening.

[61:50]

They're just like, can you see, can you see this? Just that happens. There's no kind of like, oh, what's that? No words reach it, it's just this breath, this hand, this thought. And when you completely pay attention to this, the mind stops. Then this goes away and something else happens. But that sense of stopping or being stopped or being still happens while things are coming and going. So breath is coming and going, breath is coming and going, but simultaneously you realize that every moment of this coming and every moment of this going, actually nothing's moving. This is already so.

[62:53]

In fact, in every experience there's motionlessness. In every experience is actually at rest. But because we don't give ourselves completely to every experience, we don't appreciate that. When you give yourself completely to your following your breath, you realize what's called the stopped mind. Or you use following your breath as a way to realize that your mind is still, is stopped. So in a sense, these first two practices are kind of like, what do you call it, centripetal there's centripetal you know centripetal sand means the center tripital means defeat the first three the first two practices are walking towards the center pulling the mind in to one point the breath and when you when your whole being is drawing the mind drawing the attention into the breath and when that's reached its limit

[64:06]

The mind is just centered and still. That's the end of the first two ways of relating to your breath. Okay? The next one is called stopping. Stopping actually has already been achieved, but then you just steep yourself in the stopping. You just really... You... Immerse yourself in that stopped quality of your mind while continuing, of course, to breathe. And it isn't as though you can't still see that there seems to be breathing going on, that there seems to be things happening and going away, things happening and going away, you know. The changing world is still the changing world. The world of do is still the world of do.

[65:08]

There's a haiku like that. The world of do is the world of do and yet. And yet. But usually the meaning of the world of do is just the world of do and yet. And yet means the world of do is the world of do and yet. I mean, I'm miserable. Things are just coming and going, and that's just things coming and going, but I can't accept that. Now, things are coming and going, things are coming and going, and I can accept it. This is no longer an insult to me. My breath is no longer an insult. The fact that things are changing isn't attacking me anymore. I can settle with this process. There is stillness and you immerse yourself in the stillness. and become more convinced that your mind has this immovable quality. However, the perfection of this state of not just the stillness but the complete immersion in the stillness, the perfection of this is to give it up.

[66:26]

So then you go into the next practice, which is to test to make sure that you're not attached to this state of stillness. Once you find stillness and immerse yourself in it and are convinced of it, then you might become attached to it. Before you attain this state, you don't believe you're really completely still. Now you can see that you're completely still, and you can enjoy that you're completely still. But now you might become attached to that, because that's a nice thing to realize. So to make sure you're not attached, now you start contemplating. That means to start contemplating the way the mind's working. It doesn't mean to become totally revved up and excited and disturbed and hysterical or, you know, become such a compulsive again.

[67:30]

It just means to activate the mind, to reactivate the mind enough, not even, I wouldn't say reactivate the mind enough, but reactivate the mind by contemplating the relationship between the awareness and the object and the medium of the awareness. The medium of the awareness in this case is the breath. So it could be anything, though, because the breath can be anything. So if you start to notice then, in this calm state, you start to notice that there's an awareness of the object of the breath, and there's some medium, that activates the mind slightly. And in a sense, it gives up some of that sense of immovability. But if you really want to be secure in your immovability, you have to be willing to give it up. Otherwise there's actually a kind of constriction around your enjoyment of that anyway.

[68:35]

So you give it up. And also you start studying the relationship between subject and object in that space. And when you're very still, you can see very clearly now the relationship between subject and object. And you can sense in this state what you could sense before, but now it's very clear. You can sense that everything that you think of as an object, or rather, whenever you think of something as an object, that hurts. it hurts, it disturbs your mind. But you're watching this from a very subtle place and you can practice patience with it very nicely at that point and still keep studying it without getting so agitated that you lose track of the fact that there is a mind which

[69:42]

doesn't have objects, and that mind is not disturbed. And there is a mind which has objects, and that mind is disturbed. And that disturbance is slightly irritating or painful. Now if you, then if you, especially if you believe those objects are outside yourself, it's painful. So you're starting then to study the nature of mind. Now were there some questions at this point? Two questions over there. When you talked about the tango, what I did realize was two people were doing the tango, and that's as far as I got. And I would like to know how to synchronize that. Well, that's a good example. See, so what you're doing is basically... Actually, you're doing some kind of dance with your breath. when you count it. It's called the counting dance. Then you're doing the following dance. When you do the following dance all the way, the dance stops.

[70:50]

At the end of the following dance, there's no movement anymore. Just like at the center of a dance, too. Once you get into it all the way, there's some presence there, you know? And you're still, even though you're moving around the floor, you know, you're working with your partner or you're working with yourself, and there's stillness. Now you get into the stillness of the dance, and you forget about the dance in a way. All is still going on, it doesn't disturb you. I mean, it doesn't make you feel disturbed. You feel the stillness of the dance. Now, at this next stage, the fourth stage, you maybe, now suddenly the tango appears, a dance you weren't expecting, and it kind of disturbs you. It'll disturb you a little bit, activate your mind a little bit. It's the dance of subject-object. And again, when you completely settle with that, you reconnect with this sense, this deep sense of calm, which you're using also in the process

[72:01]

and you can meditate on this, and you understand the relativity of this, and you start to loosen your belief in these objects being out there. And at that point, either you could say you turn to the next stage, but are we ready for the next stage, or do we have some other questions on this stage? Just so she was next. I'm just going to make one quick sentence on this stage before I say something else. About the tango, if you haven't seen Santa the Woman, see it. Right there. Does anybody know where there are tango classes? Next door to the window. Let's go. Actually, I want to go back to your name. I want to go back to your name.

[73:04]

And I've been watching my mind a lot, all the time. And it's really gotten out there, way out there. What do you mean, out there? I mean, like, out there, like, into the universe. You know, like, yesterday I was on my deck and I was thinking about the planets and all that. And I was thinking about Stephen Hawking, and I was thinking about being a scientist. I was thinking about my own brilliance, my own genius. And then when you said that this morning, I thought all of that, during it comes back to me, it just won't be long. That's it. It's like all that airing, all that out there trying to solve the problems of the world. has to do, and it's a wonderful thing to want to do that, but to come back to home, it's really just wanting to be loved. That's the bottom line.

[74:07]

Wanting to feel loved. And the reason why we want to be loved is because we are being loved. But we don't believe that thoroughly. But I'm not asking you to believe it, I'm asking you to do this practice and you will witness it you witness that everything is loving you right now. That everything is loving you into creation right now. That will, that comes from this meditation. Yes? I think my question is very fast after the steps. Okay. Yes? I have a motion. You know, this room is not so big and there's a lot of people. Maybe we could open some windows up here? Please, thank you. Oh, that feels wonderful. Do you feel that, Ruth?

[75:27]

Do you feel everything is loving you into creation, disappointed in your practice? Yep. But also, sometimes I forget. And then I'm miserable. There's another thing I wanted to say related to what Kathleen said. That's the tango. Yeah. I was reading Jack Kornfield's book, A Path Apart. At one point early on in the book, he quoted an article where someone was talking about noble laureates. And what this author said was that he asked the question, how does one become a noble laureate? And the answer is by wanting love so bad that you work really, really hard, and then finally you win this prize.

[76:29]

And really it's a consolation prize if you're not getting what you want, which is love. You're just getting this poor substitute, this second prize. I thought that was really interesting. So that's the path of fart. The path of what? You can't get everybody to love you, but you can realize that they already do. But sometimes the way they love you is that they're your enemy. And they don't think they love you. They think they hate you.

[77:31]

And they want to hurt you. But that's giving you your life. There's a level at which we cannot, fortunately, not love each other If we knew about that realm, we would interfere with it. Fortunately, we don't, so it's safe. And we just go right on, being perfectly connected to each other and supporting all their life and being supported by all their life. That's the realm where our mind is in union with love. But we can't know that realm And the story of Amor and Psyche is about how the human mind had to evolve out of that state into a state where we could know things.

[78:35]

And in the state where we could know things, we made things separate from ourselves. And then we lost track of this love, which is imperturbable and non-ending. And we fight and have wars in this realm. And we have to completely get into the horrors of war in order to realize peace. And we are into the horrors of war. And when we completely follow those things through all the way, there will be peace. And then again, there will be the next war.

[79:37]

But the way of peace is the way of totally engaging with the war. And engaging with war totally is musical and dance-like. It's not like fighting war. It's not symmetrical. It's complementary. When you're dancing with somebody and they're leading, you don't lead back. Or when you're dancing with somebody and they're following, you don't follow back. You do something complementary. And a complementary thing to war, which is peace, is to completely engage with it. It doesn't mean engaging in war, It means engage with the war and realize peace in the war. So this woman I told you about who's trying to follow her breath, count her breath, she created a little war in her head.

[80:40]

And I tried to get her, and I tried to dance with her while I was talking to her. I tried various approaches to get, so we could do this thing called her having a little battle in her head. I tried to get in there with her. I tried to sympathize with her. I told her stories about it. I told her how good it was. Many ways I tried. And I don't know if she ever felt like we learned how to dance about this thing. But anyway, that was my attempt. I didn't try to get her to stop having a problem. I didn't fight her war. I entered her war and tried to find the dance there. and the music there. And, you know, I don't know. I think we did. She was, you know, her problem was not sincerity. She was completely sincere and diligent and a lot of other good stuff.

[81:44]

But she was also kind of rough with herself and pushy with herself and kind of boring the way she talked about her practice so I could see why her mind wasn't interested in the practice she wanted to do. It wasn't sexy. So somehow, whatever's happening, we have to be flexible enough and gentle enough to see it turn around. But usually we approach things, like I'm here going to things, and then they kindly slap me in the face. But the other way around of realizing everything is coming to me and giving me my life isn't that I just try to change from the way I am to that other way. It's that I completely accept that I'm on this trip of me doing things, of me controlling my breath or me following my breath or me counting my breath or me not liking war or me trying to stop war.

[83:00]

Me trying to stop war, that attitude is the source of war. The idea of me, I do stuff by myself, that is the source of war. I come and do things, that's the source of war. That's what the mind doesn't like to play with. It fights that way of thinking. I'm going to get myself to follow my breath. The mind says, I don't want to play that game. Why don't you come and join us? Why don't you come and join the party and see if we want to follow the breath? In fact, the mind does want to follow the breath. In fact, what the mind is following already is the breath, but we don't call it the breath. We say, that's not breath. That's not breath. This is breath. The mind says, oh, that's interesting, and then goes off and follows the breath, which is not my idea of breath, it's the actual breath. Actual breath is whatever the mind's thinking of, but we don't trust that, so we fight it.

[84:08]

And we say, okay, come on, follow the breath, this is the breath. Get the mind to follow my fantasy of breath, while the mind all the time is going with the actual breath. The breath goes this way, the breath goes that way, the breath goes that way. The mind's going all over the place to do what the real breath is, which is just a symbol, a fantasy of the breath that it's working with at that time. Where is the fantasy being created if not in the mind? It is being created in the mind. The mind has got the real breath being imposed by The idea of breath, or real breath, I mean, what I mean by real breath, sensory breath, okay, is a sensory thing. It's colors, and it's sounds, and it's tangibles, and it's smells, and it's tastes. That's the actual direct breath experience that happens in your body, okay? But you can't know that direct realm of experience because there's no subject-object going on there.

[85:12]

So there's no objective knowledge. And there's no opinions or views or images of that breath. It's just breath. It's just the living, breathing organism. But the breath instructions that we receive in meditation centers is given to us as objective thinkers. And so we think of the breath, whatever we have some idea of breath. And our idea of breath is somewhat flexible, depending on the person. And then we go and apply our attention to that fantasy of our breath. We can only know a fantasy of our breath. Meanwhile, we're directly experiencing our breath all the time. We never are not directly experiencing our breath. Directly, constantly experiencing our breath. We are basically, we are our breath all the time. But we don't know that. So when we hear the instructions, we apply our dualistic mind, our suffering mind, we apply it to the breathing process, and we of course apply it to a knowable object, which is a fantasy, which is an image, which is a notion, which is a concept of the breath.

[86:24]

And we apply ourselves to that, and the mind keeps wanting to look at other things, which are actually other manifestations of the breath. And we keep saying, no, come back to this image of the breath. Don't be paying attention to that experience of the breath. And the mind says, okay. And then it goes back. Because you can't stop, you can't, well, you can try, but if you do, you'll fail. Like I did that once when I was, you know, a young Zen student. I tried to follow my breath, I noticed I didn't want to, and I said, okay, you do it. And I noticed they didn't want to do it. I said, I'm not kidding. And that wasn't enough. So I made these really rough fascist, you know, bricks. You know, I tightened down on myself. I got really tough.

[87:26]

I made a structure, iron-clad structure, to get my mind onto that breath that I said the breath was. And my mind says, are you serious? You mean you really want us to, like, you want the whole thing to come down to this narrow idea of breath? You couldn't, no, you must be kidding. No, I'm not. Are you really? No, I'm not. I'm not kidding. There's going to be damage to the system if you don't play this game. I've got to find out what it's like to succeed at this trip. And I'm going to do anything I can. I'm going to really freak out if you don't come along with this. So I did. I did not freak out. The threat was a freak out. Other people didn't freak out either. The threat was a freak out. I had to find this out. I created a fascist state in my mind about my mind vis-a-vis following my breath.

[88:31]

I got my mind to follow the breath the way I defined it. And I was successful at that. I got myself to be able to count every single breath without missing. And I also had systems to check. And not very many periods did I do that, but after doing that a couple of times, I said, I don't want this. I don't want it. This is not what I came to Pakistan for. I don't want this fascist state. It's horrible. I finally got myself under control and I almost killed myself. The threats were actually to do damage to myself if I didn't do this. And when I finally got myself under control, I had realized I had damaged myself.

[89:36]

I came to Zen to be free and happy and loving. I came to Zen because of the beautiful activity of Zen monks I heard about. This was terrible what I got into there. And I had to find that out. And so now, when other people try to control their breath, I see this, I know where it's going, and I'm sympathetic, but I don't encourage it. I don't encourage it. I tell them, if you've got to do this, fine. I know they do it to some extent, but I don't encourage it. I don't encourage it. I had a puppy once. And generally speaking, a fairly well-behaved puppy. And then it grew to be a fairly well-behaved adult female dog. And she came into heat. And when she came into heat, she actually kind of wanted to go outside. Even when I didn't want to go outside, she was like at the door.

[90:40]

Let me out of here. There's something out there I want to do. But I did not want to have puppies in the house. So I did not want her to go out unless she was with me on a leash. Usually, she wasn't out on a leash. But this time, I felt like there was something she wanted to do, which I didn't want her to do. Anyway, one day, she got out. When I lost control of her, I saw her, but then I realized she was out. I ran out to get her. And there were quite a few male dogs around her. Various types of male dogs. And I felt like, oh, my God, it's over. However, although it was pretty much over and looked like I couldn't stop it, still I had some hopes for who she would choose for her spouse. LAUGHTER

[91:41]

She was like a cross between a carrier and a golden lab. She looked like a small golden lab. Some long-haired, small golden lab. Very big. Wonderful dog. Anyway, among the crew, there was one kind of fairly big white husky. Yeah, I know. And then there was this little, I don't know what to say, kind of like a little runty spotted mongrel guy. Short-haired and kind of nervous. Anyway, I hope for the husky. but that isn't the way it worked out. I don't know if it was her choice or he was just quick, but anyway. That little runty guy got her. And still I wished that she had chosen the huskies, so I told her to come in the house.

[92:57]

And my little doggie was, in some sense, under my control. This is before I did that Zen thing. This is prior to me getting control of myself and finding out that's not what I wanted. So I told her to come to my house. But as you may know about dog reproductive activity, once it starts, there's a kind of a lock device that happens. You know about that? The male's organ swells at the end, and you can't pull it out until it's done. So once it happens, even though other dogs are pulling and trying to pull him apart and get in there, which they do, you really can't disengage them, you know, except by some kind of violent pulling apart. So she did come in the house, but she brought him with her. Oh, yes. And we lived on the second floor.

[94:02]

So she was bringing him up the stairs. She wasn't a big dog, but she was bigger than him. There she was bringing up the stairs, so I said, Okay, forget it. Go back to your work. I realized how ridiculous it was for me to try to control it. I mean, it has to get pretty graphic sometimes to get the message, right? First I thought I could keep her in the house. Couldn't do that. Then I thought I could choose the spouse. Couldn't do that. Then I thought I could disengage. I could do that, but finally I said, that's enough. It's time for acceptance. However, anyway, She got worried. I did it. She got pregnant. That was it. That's all it took. And she got pregnant, and she got big. And so I was, what do you call it?

[95:05]

Actually, I turned out to be the husband in the deal. That guy never saw her again. It was the two of us really, you know, doing the pregnancy together. And... so then you know as as the as the uh as she came to turn you know as she came to the time of delivery uh the the her backside starts to open up a little bit a little bit and starts losing stuff getting ready for this so again she was like she was like dripping some kind of organic red stuff out of the back end of her body and i I had her stay on her own bed and not come up in my bed. I didn't want that stuff all over my bed. And she, you know, sweet little thing, she cooperated with this control trip.

[96:02]

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