I may say again that there's a proposal that the Buddha way is basically leaping beyond the one and the many, or leaping beyond one difference, leaping beyond abundance and lack, leaping beyond enlightenment and delusion. It's basically leaping. And when you find your place right where you are, will occur. And when the leaping occurs, there's a possibility that

[01:03]

compassion and ethical behavior will be demonstrated in the world. And I think that, you know, there may be some compassion demonstrated in the world and ethical behavior in the world, or attempts at compassion and attempts at ethical behavior are expressed by humans and other animals and plants. and maybe the whole planet. And it just... but I don't know exactly what spiritual insights these attempts are coming from. You could say that whenever we even try to be compassionate or try to... ethically, there's some insight there, some spiritual insight. But it might not be a spiritual insight.

[02:07]

I don't really know. But I'm just saying that in some cases anyway, when there is a real spiritual insight, then we have the appearance of compassion. And compassion sometimes takes the form of speaking of words. And again, these words are, sometimes the words are we're directing people into finding their so that they can enter this leaping, this turning point where spiritual life lives and spiritual life exudes compassion. And so, coming from a spiritual insight, there are words like, train yourself thus.

[03:19]

In the scene, there will be just a scene. Or, train your attention thus. Or train attention thus. Or attend thus. Attend this way. Let the attention be thus. In the seen, there will be just the seen. In the heard, there will be just the heard. In the tasted, there will be just the tasted. In the touched, there will be just the touched. In the smelled, there will be just the smelled. And in the imagined, there will be just the imagined. Those are words that come supposedly from the spiritual insight

[04:34]

of the Buddha Shakyamuni. That was his instruction to a person to induct, invite and initiate the person into the place right where he was, where the practice would occur, where the leaping would occur. This person heard the teaching and practiced it and realized it. But even in that case there was perhaps some danger. But the Buddha saw the danger, saw the opportunity and gave the teaching. The rest of what he gave at that occasion was, he said, when the attention

[05:40]

Or when for you, your attention is thus. When for you, when you see, there's just the seeing. When you hear, there's just the heard. When you taste, there's just the tasted. When you touch, there's just the... When you smell, there's just the smell. And in the imagined, there's just the imagined. When that's how it is for you, then you will not identify with it, with the seen or the heard or whatever. You will not locate yourself in it. And then there will be no here or there or in between. And that will be the end of suffering. That was the Buddha's teaching to initiate this person into the turning point.

[06:50]

And he, right away, apparently right then, entered the turning point, realized the turning and the leaping in the Buddha way. The Buddha nicknamed this person foremost in learning rapidly. If you try this instruction, which I think is still a good instruction, even though it was given 2,500 years ago in India, it may take you more than a minute to do it like that. But it may be that when it is like that for you, you will see that you can leap beyond here and there and in between.

[07:57]

Not that it's free of here, there, and in between. And the leaping then leaps beyond suffering. And then it leaps beyond leaping beyond. It just keeps leaping. That was Buddha's instruction for find your place right where you are. When you're here, find your place right in the hearing. Just so much in the hearing that you don't even locate yourself in it. There's just the hearing. There's not you located in the hearing. Just the hearing. Not you and the hearing. Not you in the hearing. Not you of the hearing. Just the hearing. That's enough. And that's a way to meditate such that you can have this kind of spiritual experience of, you know, here or there, in between.

[09:19]

You can't really see no here or there or in between. You can see here, you can see there, and you can see in between. But you can't see none of that's there. And yet you can realize it. It can be that way for you. And actually that's the way it is, spiritually speaking. And you can know it. And based on that kind of knowing, a certain kind of psychological experience will arise from that. Psychological experience of compassion, of actions. And again, of sharing the practice and helping others do the practice and thereby find their place where they are.

[10:36]

And again, finding your place doesn't mean you find yourself in your place. It means you find your place. When you find your place, you can learn to not locate yourself. Now the... There's a little bit of narrative on both sides of that instruction. But I'm going to wait to give that narrative and give it after I ask Jasmine to ask a question. She had a question I wanted her to ask in the group. Will this pick up her question, do you think? Not necessarily. Okay, I'll carry it over there.

[11:39]

Sure. Yes, I can. I think in my life and also in my conversations with other people who study Buddhism, sometimes we just discuss one issue. The issue is confrontational. We talk about how to get over things. I think sometimes we're really good at getting over bad thoughts on our own side, but sometimes when we confront other people or things, especially obnoxious people.

[12:39]

How do we be a good fighter? Do we just get over it and not taking care of it? Or do we try to find a way to confront them? And sometimes I think that, especially when we walk away from them, they will think that we are weak. And I think it's okay for them to because I don't really care. But I also think that I don't show my compassion to him by helping him. So that's my question. So Jasmine talked about meeting or confronting, did you say powerful people? Yeah. Powerful or obnoxious people. They're not always the same thing, right? Not all powerful.

[13:41]

Sometimes powerful and obnoxious go together. Sometimes obnoxious is not so powerful. But actually often obnoxious is pretty powerful because you wouldn't call it obnoxious if it was really wimpy. Like one time I was walking by a person on the street. He smelled like, you know, he had a very strong smell. It sounded like he never took his clothes off when he needed to urinate. So he had a very strong smell and I thought, wow, that's a very strong smell, very strong smell, powerful smell. So it was kind of obnoxious and it was powerful. But some powerful people are not terribly obnoxious, right? For example, the Buddha, very powerful, but not terribly obnoxious, usually. So... Part of the reason why I postponed the narrative of this story, where this instruction was given about how to enter into the spiritual process of our life, was because of, I thought it would go with her question, because the Buddha is a powerful, you could say powerful dude, very powerful being,

[15:11]

And this person, I believe his name was... Yeah. So there's a number of stories where in the tradition around the time of Buddha, there were a number of stories about spiritual teachers who had... quite a bit of understanding and spiritual power, but they also were not terribly arrogant. And so they were open to the possibility that they had more to learn. Although they seemed to understand quite a bit, and a lot of people appreciated them, they were wondering if maybe there were some areas where they were weak or needed to learn more. There were people like that. And even today there are people like that who have quite a bit of understanding but still wonder if they understand perfectly, completely.

[16:21]

So Bahia was one of those sages, actually, in India who wondered if he really understood well. And in his wondering, he got a visitation. A visitor came to him and told him that actually he didn't understand very well. And the visitor said, however, there just happens to be on the subcontinent which you live, there happens to be somebody who does have perfect understanding and you could go visit him and get checked out and maybe even developed. So he went to see the Buddha, Shakyamuni. He traveled. and he came to where Buddha was living with his students and he saw these students walking around and he didn't see the Buddha and he asked them where the Buddha was and they said, he's begging for his food.

[17:26]

He's doing his morning begging. So this person, Bahiya, went to look for the Buddha And he saw him, and he went up to him and he said to the Buddha. He was a sage, but he was willing to bow to the Buddha. And then he said, please give me instruction. And the Buddha said, it's not a good time, sir. I'm doing my begging now. And the man said, Reverend Sir, life is unpredictable, constantly changing. We don't know when we will die. We may be dead this afternoon. So please, give me teaching now. Please, and the Buddha said, it's not a good time.

[18:30]

I'm begging now. He said, but sir, life is uncertain. We never know when we will die. I may need to receive the teaching from you. Please give me the teaching. That's the third time. Okay? Buddha said, okay. Did I do it three times? If you ask Buddha three times, he gives in. Even trying to get his lunch. Usually if he's trying to get his lunch and you ask him, he says, later, I'm trying to get lunch. I don't know, usually, anyway, this time. So he gave the guy his teaching, you just heard it, okay? And the guy woke up, entered the source, spun around and leaped beyond delusion and attained liberation. Like that. And then he said, thank you.

[19:34]

And then he said, I would like to take refuge in you, in the Buddha. I would like to go to you for refuge. I'd like to return to you and become your disciple. And the Buddha said, do you have the requisites for ordination? Which I think he wanted to become a monk with the Buddha. But in order to become, you're supposed to bring the Buddha a robe and a bowl, which then he gives to you. in the ceremony, somehow you get the robe and the bowl and you give to him, then he gives them back to you. If you're a layperson, maybe you just bring the robe and give to the Buddha, and the Buddha gives it back to you. And he said, do you have the requisites? And he said, no. He said, well, get the requisites, bring them to me, and I will ordain you in my group. So he said, okay. And then he went off to get the requisites, but he got between a water buffalo and her calf.

[20:39]

And she killed him that very afternoon. Just like he thought might happen. So it was good that he got the Buddha to give him the teaching. And then people told the Buddha that he died. And they said, well, it's a story with this guy. And Buddha said, don't worry. He attained liberation this morning, and although he died before he could even become a monk, he will actually go to this heaven, and from that heaven he will attain liberation. So he's in fine shape. He was a great dharma student. So don't worry about him. He's free. And I tell that story for various reasons. One is that this monk wanted to receive the teaching from the Buddha and he dared to go up to the Buddha and ask for it.

[21:45]

Now the Buddha is not terribly obnoxious, but the Buddha is powerful. And he dared to go up to this powerful teacher and meet the teacher humbly and respectfully. And then, not a good time. And he said, excuse me. What do we say? Hello. He didn't say, whatever. He didn't say that. In a way, he confronted the Buddha. He met the Buddha. He met the Buddha. And this is meeting the Buddha. Confronting the Buddha is the basic practice situation in this tradition is to meet the Buddha face to face. And you can say, confront, together, put the fronts together, kan the fronts. Do you understand? Kan means together, the root kan, front.

[22:49]

Put your front to the Buddha front. Confrontation is part of Buddhist practice. However, we do it respectfully if possible. But we do confront. Here's a story. The monk confronted the Buddha respectfully and the Buddha said, not a good time. So he again respectfully confronted the Buddha and he again respectfully confronted the Buddha And they confront each other and in that confrontation the Dharma was transmitted. And then he confronted a water buffalo. And the water buffalo confronted him and he died. But he was spiritually free. Not a problem. We do confront. And Jasmine says, I think she said, if we go away, or earlier she said to me, if we yield, if we yield to the person.

[23:56]

Sometimes yielding is really cool, really good. But I think the yielding goes with the confrontation. If you just yield, without confrontation, the yielding doesn't have much meaning, maybe. And then yield, and then meet him again, and yield. That can be part of the dance, meeting and yielding, confronting and yielding. Confrontation with strength is part of our practice. For the student to strongly, respectfully meet everybody and also be soft and relaxed and balanced. So you can confront, but you can turn and walk away. Turn again. So bring your compassion to the person.

[25:05]

and show them that, you know, here it is, and they say, I don't want it, and you say, okay, go away, and then you come back again. Here's another story. This is a... Sometimes some of you have heard this probably. I saw it in a movie, a Woody Allen movie. Do you know Woody Allen? He's a Jewish guy. Jewish people often confront people. Yeah. So in this story, Woody Allen is a bank robber, but not a very good one. So he gets caught in his first bank robbery and gets sent to prison. I think it seems like in the southern part of the United States, where they still have what are called chain gangs. You know what a chain gang is? They put chains on the ankles of the prisoners and they chain the prisoners together into a gang.

[26:10]

So he gets into this very old-fashioned, cruel prison. And when he's getting inducted into the prison, the head guard talks to the new prisoners and he's yelling at them and threatening them, implying that violence will come to them if they do not follow the rules. It's a little harsh, I mean, not real graphic, the way he's talking, but you get the feeling like he's threatening a lot of violence. You know, if you're good, things will be just fine, but if you're not, And he's standing there. He has big guards behind him. And he says, after he finishes, he says to the new prisoners, any questions? And Woody Allen raises his hand. The Jewish guy raises his hand and confronts the guard.

[27:14]

Yes, I have a question. And he said, what is it? Do you think it's all right to pet on a first date? Do you know what pet means? Pet means to... What did you say? What did you say? He confronted the guard. But the guard didn't slug him, in the movie anyway. He didn't know what to do. He went... Any other questions? He confronted him, but with humor and softness, but with courage. It takes courage to meet a violent person.

[28:18]

It takes courage to meet even a compassionate great Buddha, because... When we meet the great Buddha, we think, oh, will the Buddha love me? We're afraid that the Buddha won't love me. We had this meeting at the Quaker house the other night. Nice house. Did you see the nice house? Were you there? Did you see that big house? Some people used to live in that house. That was their house. In other words, rich people lived there, or rich people, you know, somebody rich built that house, probably. From that house through that neighborhood, and these huge houses, they're basically castles in Pittsburgh. You know, they talk about castles in Spain, but there's castles in Pittsburgh, these huge houses. Like, people used to live in them, and they still do.

[29:18]

I don't know who lives there now, but it used to be people, right? They had the idea to build a house that big and then they'll go live in it. And I thought, well, I kind of would like to live in a house like that too. But how would I ever get it together to build a house, you know? You have to be really powerful to build a house like that. So Pittsburgh used to have these really super powerful people in it that could build those houses. And now I guess they have somewhat powerful people that can somehow buy them. Yeah. So here we are, you know, I drive through the neighborhood like that, I feel like a little tiny ant, you know, in these giant houses. Who lives in these houses? Where are these giant people? But as a disciple of Buddha, we need to be able to go and confront those people. We need to be able to go up to them and look them in the face and meet them with strength and humility and respect and humor.

[30:30]

Not with violence, but with strength, courage and respect. Because if we meet them with violence, they may just strike back at us with violence. If we meet them with arrogance, they may strike back at us with arrogance. And they may crush us, or they may not. But we're not trying to beat them. We're trying to meet them and transmit dharma in that meeting. And being soft and flexible, part of the successful transmission of non-violent Dharma. But it takes courage too, to bring a gentleness, takes courage to bring gentleness to a powerful person, even a kind powerful person.

[31:41]

When you find that turning point, you test the turning point to see, come from that turning and see if now from that turning and that leaping you can meet powerful people. Confront them and see various things like, may I lick your money? That comes from a prayer home companion joke. Yes? Did you want to say something, Catherine? Yes? Just to mention that we had the good fortune in Cleveland last year to have a workshop on disarmament training is based on a non-violent communication.

[32:44]

It's from the Buddhist tradition. It was extremely helpful and actually a lot of role playing. It was really hard. You know, we would imagine these powerful people had a conversation with us and then we would try to do it differently using these principles of non-violent communication. We walked out of there every day completely like, you know, blocked out. It was really hard, even just to play at it. But it was very interesting to see where if you could master that skill, you could be very effective. Any other points about the shield you want to bring up, Jasmine? Oh, I was thinking that yesterday you talked about putting the arch against the bow and wait for the moment for the arrow to shoot naturally.

[33:55]

So I'm also thinking that we need powerful people. We want to fight our values. Sometimes we don't feel like we are in the right moment. Yeah. What do we do then? Do we leave it all like this and let it happen? Yeah, yeah. If you don't feel that, you know, if you haven't really found that your place, then if I haven't found my place, I wouldn't expect to be able to meet a politician, maybe almost anybody, and be able to confront them in a skillful and playful and non-violent way. So in that case, I would feel like I'm not ready for this meeting. That's right.

[34:57]

Sometimes you're just not ready for a big confrontation. You can't meet the Buddha either. You can hear instruction from the Buddha, like this man got the instruction from Buddha, but he hadn't really met the Buddha. He met the Buddha somewhat, but after he heard the teaching and practiced the teaching, then he said, I want to return to Buddha. After he heard the instruction and understood it, then he really was ready to meet Buddha. Before that, he did pretty well. But still, he was somewhat separate from Buddha. And there was a little bit of struggle there. But he was ready, the Buddha, for instruction. So like pulling the bow back and holding it is like training the mind. It's like when you're holding the bow, it's like you're more in the phase of learning how to, in the seen, there's just a seen.

[36:01]

In the heard, there's just a heard. In the tasted, there's just a tasted. And that's interesting. You're not really doing anything. You're not letting go of the string. But you're holding the string. You're making this circle of effort. And you're not really doing anything. And you're learning to not do anything. You're learning to, in some sense, waste your time by just holding the string. Usually we pull the string in order to shoot the arrow. You're not going to shoot the arrow. So most people would think, well, if I'm not going to shoot the arrow, I'll just put the bow down. Bow up, pull the string, and then don't shoot the arrow. So sit in meditation and don't do anything. Don't see things in order to make comments. Don't listen to things in order to make interpretations. Just sit there and experience. String pulled.

[37:01]

And just be there with what's happening without adding or subtracting. And that's like the bow strings pulled. But this is the kind of situation where the energy is there and ready. And then through this training, after a while, you are the way. The way that you're not doing anything. the way you're living, but you aren't doing it. Everything's doing it with you. Everything's doing you. And then the arrow goes . But not the arrow goes . You see, the arrow goes for individual power. It isn't like you move your fingers and the universe moves. It's the universe move your fingers and the arrow and everything, but it's like the string goes through your hand. It's like that. Then you're ready for the meeting, the full meeting. And with people that you feel powerful with, you sense that if you're not ready for the meeting, it's maybe better not to meet yet.

[38:13]

Because maybe you'll tense up and do something. And one kind of violence is called passive aggression, where you say, oh, I don't care about this person. And you just leave them. You don't strike them. You walk away. But that's violent, too, because you're abandoning your compassion. You're saying, no, you're not worth it. And they may say, who cares about you? But actually they felt hurt. They can feel that you don't care about them. It hurts them. But maybe they got so powerful to defend themselves from some people. So some of the most powerful people are the people who have been most hurt in building the biggest castles to protect themselves. And the people, the Buddha didn't have any castles. He didn't have a castle. When he was a boy, he had a castle.

[39:19]

He lived in his father's castle. But when he grew up and became Buddha, he didn't have castles anymore. Now, he visited castles. And we can visit castles, too. Like, just drive in that neighborhood around the... to look at the castles. You have to look at them and see how nicely they're built, and you don't have to manage the maids and the lawn workers. You don't have to worry about the security system. You don't have to be afraid of those places getting robbed. You can just enjoy them, too, to enjoy. You can even go knock on the door and say, I'm not a Jehovah's Witness. And I don't have time to talk to you. I'm begging for lunch. Anything else about this very important point anybody wants to bring up?

[40:32]

Yes? Sometimes, you know, when people are inviting you to have a fight with them, I mean, you haven't come from of that kind of some verbal abuse in the child, sometimes the coping mechanism is to say, no, I'm not going to fight. To protect yourself. You know, we walk away from our offering to abuse. Well, you change from offering to fight to offering to abuse. I think if somebody actually offers me a fight, I might say, okay. Like my grandson offers me fights quite frequently. I might say okay to a fight. I used to voluntarily... I didn't say they abused me. And I don't think they said I abused them either. I voluntarily entered into fights with people and had a good time.

[41:33]

Actually. It was fun. And I think they had fun too. Often. But if you don't want to, that's a different story. But fighting is not necessarily abuse if you want to fight. And one of the things, I practice tango. When I was a kid, I liked the tango because they were dancing, but they were almost like, the way I saw it was on stage, you know? It's almost like they were fighting the dancers. Something about that captivated me is that they were lovingly fighting. But it was consenting adults in a very beautiful dance. And now that I practice tango, I understand it to be totally about, from the teachers I met, totally about taking care of your partner, making things go well for your partner.

[42:39]

But it's in the context of making things go well for your partner in a context of meeting and confronting each other and opposing each other cooperatively. But if you don't want to fight, that's different. And if you don't want to, I think it's good to say, to give the gift of, I don't want to fight. There's a skillful way to decline a fight rather than just walk away. I think there's lots of skillful ways to decline a fight. And there's to accept the invitation and turn it into a peacefulness So, you know, also when I was a young person, I practiced judo. And judo means gentle way. Ju means gentle and do means way. And I heard a story about judo in Japan.

[43:42]

He was on a ship, I think, in the Indian Ocean, and there was a and he was not a very big man. I think he was maybe, I don't know how tall, five feet tall or something. He was a very big man in a boat who was storming around in the deck, pushing people around, almost overboard, I think. And he came to this Jigaro Kano, the founder of Judo, and I don't know if he pushed him or what, but They had some confrontation, some meeting, and Mr. Kano threw this big man up in the air and flipped him in the air and put him back down on his feet. This man took this voyage into the sky and back to the earth. And he wasn't hurt, but he snapped out of his, you know, he changed. He met this great skill. since, you could say, skillfully refused to fight him, and yet he skillfully took him on a trip.

[44:46]

Educated him. And the Buddha, too, you know. There's a story of Buddha, you know, you can hardly believe this is, could this really have happened? That the Buddha, murderer, who was about to kill his own mother, and the Buddha walked between the murderer and and his mother. Can you believe such a thing would happen? That the great sage would run into a mass murderer who was about to kill somebody, and then he walked in the way of the woman? And then the man starts chasing the Buddha. And the Buddha just walks like he was before. And the man runs really fast, and the Buddha's walking. But the man can't catch the Buddha. And the man yells, hey yogi, why can't I catch you? And the Buddha said, because I stopped. And he woke up. So in this case, the Buddha, did he decline the fight?

[45:51]

He didn't decline the confrontation. This man didn't want to fight the Buddha. This man wanted to kill the Buddha. He met that man. And in the interaction, But the Buddha is pretty skillful. The Buddhists are very skillful. So if you see a mass murderer, maybe you feel like, I don't know how to convert this guy. So you do 911 instead. That's the way you meet him. I've met some dangerous people, and sometimes I've converted them. But one time, when I was a director in San Francisco. Thieves would often come in the building to rob people. It happened quite frequently that people would come in and go around the building and go into the students' rooms and steal stuff.

[46:56]

And one time this happened, caught the guy, and he had a lot of money on him, and we didn't know exactly which rooms he got the money from or He might have had some money when he came in. Anyway, he had quite a bit of money. And he was apprehended by a number of strong young men, Zen students. But he said, I didn't steal this money. I had this money with me. So they brought him to me. I was the director. And I wasn't afraid of this guy. And I said to him, just give me all your money. And when we get reports, if we get any reports, we'll give them the money back from this money. And if there's any left over, we'll give you the remainder. Because maybe you did have some money when you came in here. But I don't know which, you know, you were going around these rooms, and so if nobody comes forward and says the money was stolen from them, I'll give it all back to you.

[47:58]

Some people come and say $20 was taken from my room, I'll give them 20 of this money. And again, if there's some left over, you come back next week, I'll give it to you. Or come back in a couple of days, I'll give it to you. And he said, I don't want to do that. And I said to him, then you won't be welcome here anymore. And I said, it wouldn't be good for you not to be welcome here, would it? He actually still wanted to be welcomed, you know, by the people he robbed. But I felt like, you know, I wasn't going to go to the police at this point. I wasn't at that level. I just said, you know, I wouldn't welcome you here if you won't go along with this. And he said, okay. And he gave me all the money. And then the people came and we gave the money to the people. And there was some left over. And he didn't come back to get it. So I had interactions like that with thieves and other people who came into the Zen Center in San Francisco when I was living there.

[49:10]

And one day I went to the entryway and I saw, actually some people called me to go to the entryway because one of our students had come into the building with another person from the street who was threatening him with a knife. And I saw them from a distance, the man with the knife and the student. In this case, I felt like I didn't have the skill to go and help the situation. I had a different feeling that this was beyond my ability to deal with this person with this knife. He was a different... I sensed he was over my head. So I just went into the office and dialed 911. And the police were there in 45 seconds. And when they came in, with their big weapons, he just said, oh, hi, and gave him his knife. I didn't have the power to disarm that man under those circumstances, but I sensed, I don't have the power in this case.

[50:17]

I'm not skillful enough to handle it. I've got to get help. So sometimes you're not ready and you have to wait until you can get help. Some people were not ready to convert or wake up from their dream. But the police woke him up. He said, oh, well, I got to get my knife up here. Here's my knife. And so nobody got hurt at that moment. And then later... we found out that this man had just thrown his baby into the ocean. So he was totally crazy. And his idea was to throw his baby back to God. That was his idea. And then he came to Zen Center with his knife. So some people are so crazy that only a Buddha would be able... A Buddha or a bunch of police... can handle their insanity by power meeting power and the Buddha does it by you know transcendent compassion but most of us are not that skillful that we can convert any violent situation so then we have to say this is too much for me I'm not up for it and you know

[51:43]

But sometimes it's like, oh, you want to fight? Let's fight. Let's do it. How do you want to do it? And they say, let's have a discussion about what form the fight will take. How about arm wrestling? Yeah. How about chess? I'll challenge you to a stone-throwing contest. Yeah. Who can skip the rocks the most times on the water? There are various kinds of fights we could have. But sometimes you don't want to fight. Sometimes you say, I don't want to fight. Did you hear that story about the girl sticking her tongue out at me? Anybody heard that story? No? It's not about my grandson, but... So this took place when I was seven.

[52:48]

And so I'm playing tag or something with boys. It's a boys game. And we're playing in this grassy area. And there was a bunch of girls who happened to be sitting there watching us play. I don't know. Sometimes girls do that. They watch boys play. Boys in this culture don't very often watch girls play. Right? Huh? What? Pardon? They take a few, yeah. But they're not supposed to be sitting there watching girls like doll carts or whatever. They're not supposed to be sitting there watching girls dress up or cook. Whereas girls feel okay about watching boys play baseball or whatever. So anyway, there was like three or four girls sitting there kind of like watching us play tag. And every time I ran by, struck her tongue out at me and went, and she repeatedly did that, and she got my attention.

[53:50]

So after a while, I started to feel like this is very, this is like disrespectful. I didn't really think that, but anyway, I somehow found myself running after her to hit her or something. And so I did run after her. And when she saw me coming, she got up and ran away. So I ran after her. And she kept running and running and running to her. And I knocked her down on the ground and sat on her chest and raised my hand to punch her in the face. I wasn't going to punch her in the chest or the shoulder. I was going to punch her in the face. Can you believe that? Seven years old. Seven-year-old girl, seven-year-old boy. She sticks her tongue out. He chases her, knocks her down, sits on her chest and is about to punish her for her disrespectful tongue sticking out.

[54:54]

But I looked at her face and I... Did you hear the story? I looked at her face and I... I wish, I often say I wish I could see that face again because I don't know what it was about that face... I don't know if she winked at me or said, you know, guess what I really did this for? No, she probably didn't say that. But somehow I looked at that face and instead of punching her, I kissed her. And it seemed like that's exactly what she had in mind. She seemed to be very happy about that. You're a quick learner. So, what are they trying to do together?

[56:01]

Fighting is kind of a mistaken way of getting together, but sometimes it's the only way we can do it. It's something anyway. And nothing's worse than not being together. Sometimes we feel that way. So we're willing to fight to connect. But sometimes we don't want to fight, and that's okay too. But sometimes the other person wants you to fight because they're not allowed to invite you to do what they really want to do. They are allowed to ask you for a fight, and then in the fight they get something. Sometimes they get exactly what they want. In this case, the fight didn't happen. So then we were like little seven-year-old lovers for the rest of the summer. Jasmine provided an example where the protagonist was a powerful person.

[57:08]

More often than not, it seems like we're reacting to not only unfairness from powerful people, but just normal walks of life. Excuse me, why didn't she have, in her story, where the antagonist was the powerful person? Oh, the antagonist. Thank you. She's the protagonist trying to meet the antagonist who's a powerful antagonist. Yes. And then she's questioning, how do we deal with that? How do we deal with that? Yeah. And similarly, I'm asking about people who aren't necessarily powerful, but they treat you unfairly, and you feel compelled sometimes, even as an act of compassion, to address that, to confront them about that unfairness. Yes. It's hard not to do that without some emotion, I suppose.

[58:10]

Well, there can be emotion, but, you know, which emotion do we want to have? It could be an emotion of peace, an emotion of compassion, an emotion of giving. Or it could be an emotion of ill will, in this case, might be the one. Or an emotion of aggressiveness. Or an emotion of violence. Well, just the response to, you know, this is what you're doing, making them aware, and saying, stop, don't do that. That type of response. Yes, and it could be some emotion in it. Like Lynn asked for grandson stories. My grandson is like throwing rocks at the house. He wants to throw rocks at the house. And then I say, I don't like that.

[59:13]

And there's some emotion in it. I don't like that. Or even... Some emotion in it. And that works pretty well. He doesn't stop. So then I say, do you want me to tell your mother? And he says, no. I say, well then, would you stop? He says, yes. And he keeps throwing them. But anyway... And... So now let's go further with this. Well, you know, I just sometimes wonder if I should withdraw from the situation entirely until I feel a sense of equanimity, where I can maybe go back into that situation and react with full emotion. No, no. Equanimity is actually an emotion. It's an emotion of balance. Balance is an emotion. It's a wonderful emotion.

[60:18]

It's the emotion, I'm here and I'm not leaning anywhere, and I want to be this way. You have to sort of work yourself into that by careful training, into that equanimous place. And then with that emotion of balance, then you you're much more ready to deal with almost any situation, very pleasant ones and very unpleasant ones. And if you feel off balance, it is often good to send yourself to balancing camp. I heard what you said just now and I'm going to go to balancing camp. I'll be right back as soon as I can get balanced. I'd like to talk to you after I'm balanced. Right now I feel a little unbalanced. I'll see you later. And you might feel so unbalanced you can't even say that without stabbing them.

[61:19]

So you say, later, no, you say, whatever, and then you split. And whatever, whatever is like, it's actually a stab, right? So you say, please excuse me. This is too much for me right now. I'm not up for this. And you go away and you collect yourself into a state of and then you feel compassion for everybody, including this person, and you go back and you say, I'd like to talk to you about what just happened. Are you ready for that? And maybe they do something else unkind or whatever, but maybe you still balance and you say, And you say something very clever and something very funny, something very sweet, because you're like balanced, you know. So you can spin and do all kinds of things. And say, I'll show you the back of my earlobe.

[62:22]

Watch. See this? And they say, you're crazy. You say, you're right. And you start having fun with this unkind person. That was a good point. You made a good point there. And they say, oh, thanks. Now could I talk to you? I say, yeah, what do you want to say? That was really cruel, what you said. That really hurt me. I need you to talk to me more respectfully. I really need you to be more respectful. I request you to be more respectful to me, or more respectful to her. I don't like it when you talk that way to her. I want you to know that. And I'm here for you too. I'm your friend. And I'm telling you, I do not like it when you talk to her like that. Please stop. But you're not doing that to manipulate the person. You're doing it as a gift. And you know it's a gift because you're coming from a balanced place. And when you're in a balanced place, and if they say, I don't want to receive your gift, get out of my face, you can turn again and turn again and say, oh yeah?

[63:28]

But, you know, life is very uncertain. We might die this afternoon. I don't have time. Listen to me. Would you please listen to me? And I'm not saying that to get you to listen to me. I'm saying that to give you a gift called, would you please listen to me? That's my gift to you. And if you don't want it, okay, I'll offer it again. Or I'll offer you a different one. I'm here for me. I'm here for all of us. Would you please notice that I'm here? And would you please talk to me? And you keep doing that, not to get your way, but to continue to show giving and giving and giving. And if you're in this, you can just keep coming, turn and turn and give and turn and give. But you have to be balanced to keep turning. If you're not balanced, you start falling over into passive aggression or active aggression, or trying to get something to hold on to, or trying to get the control of the situation, that kind of stuff.

[64:47]

It can take a lot of courage. It does take courage. Well, it takes courage to get into the place. It takes courage to pull that bow and hold that string. It takes courage to train your mind. In the scene, there's just a scene. In the herd, there's just a herd. It takes courage to be with things that way. to meet them without like interpreting them to get control of them so they don't hurt you. Like somebody says, you're an idiot. And it takes courage just to listen to that rather than think about what you should do to protect yourself or what they really mean or how you're better than them or how stupid they are. It takes courage to train yourself and then enter the place where you're not holding on. It takes courage to be in a place where you don't hold on.

[65:52]

But once you get there and start leaping, the courage is now... can now turn into compassion. Well, you know, courage is part of it. It can turn into... the courage can turn into giving. Because now the courage is there, but now there's also... the fruit of the courage is that you're able to spin and turn. Courage is part of the course. Courage and effort are very similar. And it takes effort to be still and quiet and simple. That's courage. That's diligence. You have to be diligent about that. It takes courage to care about anything. And by developing that courage and that diligence in terms of meditation, that diligence and that courage are the step just before devoting yourself to a meditative training.

[67:02]

Then you enter into a spiritual experience which makes it possible for you to be very flexible. Still there's courage there, but If courage now has flexibility, so you can really be helpful. Yes? Is that the Boy Scout thing? No, Cub Scout. Confrontation, did you say? Did you say confrontation? I thought maybe you said concentration. Anyway, confrontation. Yeah, right.

[68:11]

Yeah. Yeah. And that's another... That's another function of confrontation is to become aware of... Like some people never confront anybody. So if you say, do you have any attachments? They say no. They're totally out of touch with their attachments because they avoid the confrontation which would show that they're really attached. Like they don't ask for anything because they might find out that they're really giving them what they asked for. But asking for something can be a gift. Like, I ask you to help me as a gift, but I maybe don't even know that I'm attached to you. I'm attached either to you as a friend or you being grateful to me to offer you the gift of asking you to help me. So when I actually confront you with the request, I find about any kind of imperfection in my confrontation.

[69:15]

or some predisposition, clinging, gets surfaced by the confrontation. So that's another good reason for practicing confrontation, is you get to find out stuff that you won't find out unless you confront. But again, confrontation now has the connotation of aggressiveness, I think. But confrontation can be very loving. Like I said, in dancing, you can confront your partner. You put your front to your partner's front and you confront them in a very loving way. You confront them in order to serve them. That monk confronted the Buddha in order to serve the Buddha, to help the Buddha be a successful teacher. A student confronts the teacher so the teacher can teach. If the student withdraws, say, I'm not going to confront the teacher. The teacher's supposed to go find you where you're hiding. Some will, but some will look for you.

[70:21]

So if you go and confront them, they say, ah, somebody's here. And then the student finds out, oh, I had a bunch of agendas I didn't even know about until I confronted the teacher. And same with the teacher. So yeah, the confrontations ...about somebody also sometimes shows you your attachments. So that's why some people say, like some persons tell me, I'm just not going to care about you anymore, it's too painful to care about you. I'm just going to turn my care way down, I'll be much more comfortable with you then. Well, you know, you can do that if you want, but I don't recommend it. I'm not telling you to care about me, I just don't think you should... try to not care about me in order to cope with the frustration of caring about me. But I can understand that if you care about something and you feel frustrated, you might think, well, if I just cared less, then the frustration wouldn't be so painful.

[71:28]

Yeah, probably true. But also then you don't care, which is really horrible. So it's good that you care. I'm sorry that you're frustrated. I'm not actually sorry you're frustrated. I'm not even sorry that you're attached, which is the source of your frustration. I'm just happy that you're seeing that you're frustrated and how that's connected to your attachment. I'm happy about that. I'm not sorry people are deluded because that's job security. It's painful that they're deluded and attached. It's painful But I don't really begrudge that. I don't want to begrudge that. So I come forward so that we can all see how deluded we are. And if we can get our delusions out in front of us, get our attachments out in front of us, get our clinging out in front of us, then we can become free of it.

[72:37]

But if we don't care about anybody, then our delusions and our fears and our attachments stay behind us and then we're just like puppets of delusions, fears and attachments. They just run us from the back. I'm fine. I don't have any attachments. I'm not even afraid. I'm not afraid either. I don't hate anybody. And then we become very powerful and start beating everybody up for their own good and controlling everybody. Because that's what those emotions want to drive us to do, to control people rather than serve people and love people. So if we can confront people and then the stuff starts coming out in front, that's good. Not pleasant, but good.

[73:39]

Is that enough for this morning? Yes. Dave? You're in this extremely direct state that is like prior to consciousness. I'm having a hard time understanding how this... It seems like you want to leave that state then, if you're turning. In other words, the ego at that point doesn't exist at all. It's not that it doesn't exist. It's more like you've let go of it. It's more like you made a deal with it.

[74:39]

Okay, you can do this meditation. I'll just take a break from getting involved in everything you see and hear. Like people, the person, can experience an ego or have a sense of an ego. And often the ego says, you can't just look at things, you've got to like, get off here. You say, well, the Buddha gave this teaching, so could you just go sit on the bench for a little while, and if this doesn't work out pretty soon, you can come back and start interpreting everything again. And so the ego says, okay, since the Buddha gave you the special instruction, I'll sit around. And you said that this direct thing, you said it's prior to consciousness? Right. It sounds like he's saying it's like in the 12 steps of co-origination. Yes, yes. Like it's before that, another elemental stage, or at least that's sort of my understanding.

[75:47]

Just hearing. Yeah, it's... I can see why you would say it seems like it's, did you say before? Did you say before? Yeah. It's a kind of cognition that's, in a sense, more direct than our usual cognition that we're talking about is conceptual cognition. The cognition in the Twelve Links of Causation is a wrong, it's an ignorance. Which means, in this case, it's a conceptual cognition which believes in a self. It's a misconceived cognition and it's conceptual. In some sense, this kind of training is to train you into a different type of cognition. It's not prior to cognition, but it's prior to the wrong cognition of ignorance. It's prior to that. It's more basic. And it means, in some sense, that you temporarily, at least, give up

[76:50]

the workings of the deluded consciousness. And you develop another kind of consciousness which calms you and clears you. But it is a state of consciousness, but it's a different type of consciousness which you're developing through this instruction. And the ego, in some sense, is allowing this to happen. Because the ego could say, don't listen to this instruction and just go ahead and do your thing. So the ego has to some sense be ready to let this instruction be listened to and let this instruction be practiced. Let this training occur. The ego somehow has to make a deal with it. Like a kid, you know, who says, Daddy, daddy, daddy. You know, he said, I'll... I hear you and I'll talk to you in ten minutes. Okay? Can you wait for ten minutes? How about five? Okay, five. I'll talk to you in five minutes. Okay. So for five minutes your ego lets you train your mind like that.

[77:55]

And then you take a break from training your mind and go back and say, what do you want? Five more minutes after I give you an ice cream cone. So you sort of have to make a... The person who's not an ego needs to make a deal with the ego, which a person needs. So the ego will let the person train himself to become free of egoless. You'll become egoless. Go ahead, ask, go ahead. It's good for you to try to understand this. Yeah, but apparently you're not going to want to leave this state. You're not going to want to stay in this state. Which state? Just hearing. No, that's right. You're not going to want to stay in that state permanently. Right. So, first you're training in just hearing. Okay? Just seeing.

[78:56]

And you calm down. And you actually start to be in this state. First you're training yourself into it. When you're training yourself into it, you're not in it yet. But finally you get to a place where that's the way you are. You're like in the state of just hearing when you're hearing. And in that state, then you start to notice something you didn't see before. You start to notice that you're not located in these things that you used to locate yourself in. And you're not dislocated from things that you used to be dislocated from. You don't identify with things that you used to identify with. you notice there's a change in your perspective. But now you're not training. Now you're doing a different thing. You're in the state, so you don't have to train anymore. And in that state, you can see things you couldn't see before. And one of the things you see is there's no here.

[79:59]

Before you thought there's here, there and in between. Now you see there's not really a here, a there and in between. This is not the same as the just hearing and seeing. That was a training thing and then you got in that state and in that state you saw something. And when you saw that thing you became free of suffering. And then that opens up a whole new vista where you can actually go back to seeing the illusion of here, there, and in between. But now you see it from the point of view of liberation. And now you see it from the point of view of... In this case, you might get hit by... So you maybe need a sort of like a chauffeur or a bodyguard for a little while when you meet water buffaloes. So it's just like a... That's right, they're skillful means, that's right. To induce you, initiate you into the Buddha mind, into the Buddha's, into the spiritual experience of the Buddha.

[81:10]

You initiate yourself into it, then you come out of it, and you come out of it, now you're back into like talking to people again, and you But you're interpreting from a different perspective. You're interpreting without really believing anymore. You're separate from the people you're talking to. And you're liberated from the suffering that comes from believing that you're separate from people. And you want to share. the joy of that liberation, by sending other people either directly back into that meditation which you learned, or telling them to go get the Buddha to send them in, if you don't feel like you've been asked by the Buddha to initiate people who the Buddha initiated you into. Does that make sense? Good. Is that enough for this morning?

[82:12]

Thank you.

[82:17]

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