Spiritual experience. And from the spiritual experience came compassion, ethical behavior, and also the giving, a part of compassion, the giving of words. And the words, some of the words were about how to meditate. So I told you this story of somebody goes up to the Buddha who's coming from this turning point, and the Buddha then offers these words, the person hears them, and the person practices meditation, and the person then enters the same place. Okay? And then that person, in this case, died. And the type of meditation instruction that I gave this morning is kind of, I would say, the type of meditation instruction the kind of training by which you enter this space.

[01:03]

And Dave said, well, you wouldn't keep doing this practice in the herd or just the herd. You wouldn't keep doing that forever, would you? That's sort of what you were asking? No, you wouldn't. You would do that until you got into the state. You would train yourself that way until you got into that state. And when you got into that state, you would enter this state. In this state, there's no here or there or in between. In this state, the enlightenment of all things is massaging you and then resonating from you back to all things. This is the state of the chant we do at noon service. The chant at noon service describes the state you enter, the state of spiritual experience, where the enlightenment of all things is resonating between you and then back to them.

[02:21]

You're helping everybody Everybody's helping you in this inconceivable dance. That's the realm of spiritual experience. And in that realm where you're constantly turning and leaping and everybody's turning and leaping with you, that's the realm where you don't have to train anymore because you realize that everybody's supporting your training and you're supporting everybody else's training. However, when you see somebody who's not appreciating this situation, you feel compassion for them and you talk to them and you give them training. Like, for example, train your attention thus. And there's millions of training words. And some people listen to the training and practice the training, and then they join in on the fun.

[03:27]

Which was always there, but their eyes were closed, their ears were closed, their heart was closed. They just somehow couldn't bring themselves to leap into that realm. those who have realized that, who have entered there, who have awakened to that, they give them mostly words, but also the tone, the way they say the words is also part of it, which means they're giving their body, their nice, soft, open body is saying the words. So Buddha didn't harshly say, train yourself thus. Of course, he said it in a in a way that really was easy for that monk to just let it in all the way. So it's both the body and the voice together. But the body may not be enough. So some people might see the Buddha, but they wouldn't quite understand, just by seeing the Buddha, how to train themselves.

[04:32]

So this person I talked about, he saw the Buddha, he went to see the Buddha, he saw the Buddha, but seeing the Buddha wasn't enough. He wanted the Buddha to give him some teaching. some words, besides just seeing the nice Buddha. And the Buddha did give him no words. And another point about this story, which Amy's going to remind me, right? Very good. That the first part of the story is that you see the person is going to the Buddha and wants the teaching, and not just wants it, but asks for it, and asks three times, and then the teaching comes, and then after receiving the teachings, then after really appreciating the teachings, then he says, can I formally go for refuge with you?

[05:37]

So that's an example of Some people would go to a really good teacher and they have not taken refuge with that teacher, but they're still quite open and hear the teaching, and then after they understand, they ask to go for refuge. And there's a lot of stories in the tradition of monks going to the Buddha, hearing the teaching, understanding really well, and then asking for refuge. Some people take refuge even before they understand. You don't have to be enlightened to ask for refuge. But a lot of the stories, the enlightened disciple then asked for refuge. Now people ask for refuge even before they're enlightened, which is okay. But it just goes to show that some people get enlightened before they even go for refuge. So, In some sense, there's no big hurry for you to do that.

[06:41]

Yeah. So what does that refuge mean? Does that mean being committed to the teacher? Or does it mean more than that? I think that, yeah, I think it means to be committed to what you want to return to. See, because this person, in his story, he wanted to go study with Buddha. He already, he already, and he made a commitment to make this long trip, and he asked the Buddha... But he didn't do the formal ceremony. And so after that, if he had done the ceremony, it would have formalized his commitment, which he already felt. And formalizing things does something over and above your just basic feeling. And then there's different levels of commitment. Some people commit Oh, what an interesting animal up there on the lawn. What kind of animal is that?

[07:43]

I think it's a groundhog. I saw him earlier. Wow, cool. I saw him earlier. It's got kind of a reddish... Huh? That was the one? That was the guy? Wow. So Caddyshack doesn't just have gophers. It's got groundhogs. Groundhogs. Woodchucks. Well, this one has a red fur and a black tail. This one here. The main part of the body was red fur. Close to the ground? Very close to the ground. Not elevating at all. Huh? They can? Oh, yeah. They can leap. So some people receive the precepts and commit to the precepts formally, and then after training for many years, sometimes you receive the precepts and then you commit to transmit the precepts.

[08:51]

So that's another level of commitment, that you not only say, okay, I commit to practice these precepts, but I commit to transmit these precepts. So that's another level of responsibility and commitment. But I just pointed out in the story, okay? And so basically, though, this turning point, this leaping place, which we find, actually, right under our nose when we settle down completely, then at that point, in some sense, there's not really any training going on in the sense of before. It's more like just everybody coping with all the help they're giving and coping with all the help that they're giving, coping with all the help they're getting and receiving and coping with all the help they're giving. So again, you're coping with receiving with a self which is totally given, which is totally a gift, like nothing but gift.

[09:55]

You're just one big fat gift, one big gift hog. And you can leap and stand up, be upright and all that stuff. While you can be upright in the middle of this overwhelming gift that you are, which is also the same as overwhelming receiving which you are, but also overwhelming giving, which you are. So you're a receiver and a giver, and you're just like totally overwhelmed with this in this space. But still, you can talk from there. No words can get there. There's no self or other. You can't figure out who's helping who. That's the miraculous realm of the self-fulfilling samadhi. self-perceiving and employing. But that can express itself in many ways to help others enter it.

[10:59]

And so we go round and round that way. Yes? Is your name Jan? Oh, hi. Yes, Jan? It definitely, well, you just did. That was a question. Okay. Yesterday afternoon, you were talking about resolving the duality between something and enlightenment. So I was meditating on this, trying to figure out how I can use this in everyday life. And I thought, okay, in those moments, if I... If I dissolve the duality, If I come to the place where the duality has been dissolved, and if the duality is dissolved, if the duality is dissolving, I don't really need any strength.

[12:35]

That's right, you don't. You're totally potent at that point. I mean, you are like non-dual with the great strength. So you don't need any strength because you've already got your jam-packed full of strength. Which, you know... So then she's a powerful person that you can confront. Yes? Okay, then this morning, in response to what Jasmine and Mark were saying about You were talking about courage and effort. Well, I don't need strength, then why do I need courage and effort? Oh, you mean how do you need courage and effort? Well, I mean... When you're non-dual with enlightenment, okay, you're non-dual with inexhaustible effort. Enlightened people are like, hey... What should we do with this?

[13:39]

Let's help everybody. Okay. You know, it's like enlightened people are like bursting with energy, bursting with diligent devotion to beings. They just want to like, you know, like grandmas, they just want to make cookies for those little guys. Come on, open. Oh, don't feed them sugar. Oh, okay. Okay. Now, here's a cookie that doesn't have any sugar in it. I found a new way to make cookies. When I was visiting my grandchildren in Minnesota, my daughter took me to this food store and they have this stuff called oats cream. I thought it was oats scream, but it's oats cream. Oats cream, and it's like this cold stuff that comes out of a machine and goes in this little circle and goes into a cup or into a cone.

[14:41]

Now, the cone may have sugar in it. I don't know. But the oats cream is just oats and water and salt. But they malt the oats, and the malting process makes it sweet, but there's no sugar in it. in the oats cream. And it's cold and it has a texture of soft ice cream. It looks like it. It's a little bit sweet. Kids who are used to Haagen-Dazs probably say, what's wrong with this? But it has that texture. It has the coldness. It has that nice shape. It's up there like 80% as much of a jolt as... regular ice cream, but there's no sugar, so they eat it and they're getting oats and water, and so they get some nourishment in the afternoon, but then they don't totally go nuts. So there it is. So you just want to give these kids oat cream, you know, and you want to give them all kinds of delicious good water, and you want to, like grandmas and granddaddies want to do for their little kids.

[15:53]

You are diligent about that. You love to do that. You don't need any energy. It's just coming through you. Where's it coming from? Where does that energy to be devoted to your grandchildren come from? Where do you get that? It's because you're non-dual with the Buddhas. That's where it comes from. You're not separate from the great enlightened beings. Somebody might think, oh, so there's a powerful person. Well, you know, a radio isn't really powerful. But if you have a cord on it and you plug it into the power grid, the radio can blast a neighborhood. So it's not that people are necessarily powerful, but some people plug into the power of the universe, so a lot of noise comes out of them sometimes. Yeah? Okay, but this morning when you were talking about having courage, that... Courage, yeah. Courage, well, usually we talk about courage... Like, you would serve the kids nourishing treats even if people were going to be mean to you.

[16:59]

You'd take the risk. Even if someone you loved was in a dangerous situation, you still would have the courage to go in there to help them. Even if you were a little bit scared. In a way... It's not something you seek, it's something you... Courage isn't something you seek? If you were in the non-dual place, you would just acquire it. However, to get to the non-dual place, you have to have courage. Some... Well, like, in order to practice meditation, you have to have courage. It takes courage to, like, look at somebody and just... not interpret them. Usually we interpret people because we're scared of them. You know, we're trying to figure, is he my friend or my enemy, you know? I think it's my enemy, you know?

[18:02]

So, then it takes, if you think, look at somebody, you think they're your enemy, and then you hear instruction, just look at them without interpreting them as your enemy. Just give up the interpretation and just look at the person. And don't switch over to, oh, it's my friend. Just look at somebody without... That takes courage. You hear the instruction from some good source, you know, that you trust, and then you say, try to do it, but then you start thinking, well, is this safe? When you practice this kind of meditation, in some sense, you're letting down your defenses. And one of our main forms of defense is interpreting the situation. It's part of leaping, yeah. Now, once you leap and you enter this realm of self-fulfilling samadhi, other dimensions of courage might arise, might be given to you.

[19:03]

But the thing is that when you enter that samadhi, you realize that the courage is given to you. Before you enter into this self-fulfilling samadhi, you might have some misunderstanding where the energy and the courage come from. And again, the word that's used in describing the bodhisattva's courage and the bodhisattva's energy are kind of the same word. Talk about the six basic practices of bodhisattvas. Giving, number one. Ethics. Patience. And the third one is called, sometimes translated as courage and sometimes translated as energy and sometimes translated as heroic effort or courageous effort. So courage and energy are very similar in the bodhisattva path. And when you're first developing it, you may feel like you're developing it, or you're doing things to make it happen, and you don't yet understand that it's actually a gift, that it's being given to you.

[20:10]

And actually it's being given to you all day long, But again, usually when we're not in this self-receiving awareness, we don't understand that it's a gift. But by practicing it, even misunderstanding and not understanding it's a gift, practicing it and practicing meditation, you enter into the understanding that all the practices you ever were doing were gifts. to you and from you. When you practice patience, it's a gift to the world. When you practice giving, it's a gift to the world. When you practice ethics, it's a gift to the world. The world appreciates you being ethical. But also the world gives you ethical behavior. You don't pump it up all by yourself, just like a radio doesn't blast by itself. You plug into the Buddha's And then you get lit up with giving. You plug into the bodhisattvas and you get lit up with courage. You don't understand that at the beginning because you don't have wisdom.

[21:16]

But by accepting these gifts, more and more you start to understand, oh, I didn't do these things. These were gifts. And also they were gifts in and out of me. Yeah. Two of our wonderful We have demonstrated for years and years, tremendous energy, commitment to teaching, have both been really stricken down with conditions that exhaust them. They have to be very, very, very careful not to do too much, and I treat them. What do you say about that? What I say about that? I mean, they haven't had it, and it's like they're burning out.

[22:35]

Well, the first thing I have to say about it is what I was just saying to somebody a moment ago. I want to do this much for the sake of the recording system. I have my arms wide apart, gesturing a very large, almost universal desire to do lots of good things. And I actually feel requested to do a tremendous amount of giving. And I want to, but I can only do this tiny little bit. So what I want to do and am requested to do compared to what I kind of feel like is actually happening, you know, I do so little, but I'm so happy to do a tiny bit. If I try to do, if I don't appreciate the tiny bit I'm doing, then that's kind of difficult. But I'm glad I can do a little, and I'm just a little bit pained that I can't do, that there's not more, but at the same time, I prefer it this way rather than the other way around, of like, I'm doing more than I want to.

[23:53]

Well, yeah. I'm accomplishing more than I wish to, or I'm available but nobody wants me to do anything. So I think they're in a nice position of what little they can give among what is requested of them is highly appreciated. So when they do give a little, people say, thank you very much for whatever they give, because they can see that it's that even a person who's tired can still give gifts. Couldn't you imagine that it might feel like getting smacked in the head and saying, listen, you're just being stupid and not taking care of yourself. You could have gone on much longer if you had moved out. Could it be that way?

[24:54]

Is it possible? You want to say that? It's possible that they could be like that. On the other hand, Suzuki Roshi died, I think, how old are they? Aren't they? How old are those two women? I think 20 must be, sir. I have no idea how old they are. You know, Suzuki Roshi also, when we started Tassajara, we had this really great diet at Tassajara, which was actually kind of macrobiotic. And a lot of people went to Tassajara, partly because they heard that it had macrobiotic meals. And so it's really good macrobiotic food, but Suzuki Roshi wasn't used to it. He was actually used to having white rice, not brown rice.

[25:57]

And he actually belonged to a brown rice promotion group in Japan many years before. But in America, he had been eating white rice. Partly because brown rice required lots of chewing and he had false teeth in that latter part of his life. So he wasn't used to the diet and he lost a lot of weight. And I don't really know, but it might be that because of going to Tassajara and eating what the other monks ate rather than have special diet, it may have shortened his life. But he decided to just do it. There wasn't a bunch of other teachers there to demonstrate to the young students the way to practice in Zendo. So he showed them. but I think it may have cost him some help to do so. But he gave, in some sense, he sacrificed himself to show the monks the practice.

[27:05]

If he had protected himself more, his example might not have been as clear, and he might have lived longer. We don't know. So some of the people who give, who kind of sacrifice their health, That may be their special teaching of like, yeah, I didn't take care of myself. I sacrificed myself for the students. It was stupid, but at the same time, it did set a kind of nice example of just give yourself away. So there's something in that. And then there's something for people who are more careful. and like live to be 90 and are good help to the end and say, see you later, you guys. There's various possible ways to help. So that may be their way. I don't know. I don't know them well enough to be in there and say, oh, you know what, I think you should do things, I request that you do things differently. I don't really know the details. But I do know that for years I've seen Pamela taking retreats from her teaching career

[28:12]

So I thought that's good that she does take those retreats and rest during those times. So, I don't know. And Jhumpa certainly didn't take care of himself. Right? He had a very bad diet. So, but you know... You have to go into this self-fulfilling samadhi to figure out what people are up to, really. Otherwise, it's just kind of opinion. And opinions are okay, it's just that we shouldn't hold on to them. So I don't really have a clear opinion about their practice, but it sounds to me like both of them are really helping people. That's my impression. It might be longer and easier than that. It is much easier.

[29:14]

Yeah, right. Yes. This morning you mentioned the story of the little conversation I think was kind of a distraction. Maybe you know about caring. Right. Right. Let's take that one more moment. You hear about something, and you never text it, Then you, then you're kind of like, what do you call it, at risk of immediate pain.

[30:18]

But the pain, your pain is, the pain hardly comes from the carry-on, right? But when you have the body pain, it comes from the attachment. And then you might think, but it's hard to turn off attachment. It's easier to turn off care. But if you turn out the attachment, then you can lead the carer in one way, and then you're going to a pain which is a great happiness. So the people who care for beings without attachment are the so-called Bodhisattvas and Buddhas. They care for beings hugely and widely with no attachment. They still feel pain, but the pain they feel is only Because they care about it. So that means that anything might create happiness in any worldly happiness.

[31:21]

That's what they say. They used to have worldly happiness. Maybe they can still feel worldly happiness occasionally. I think that's sort of the meaning of that. Worldly happiness means that when you have pleasure, you feel happiness. Pleasure is not worldly unhappiness, but to be happy that you've got pleasure, that you've got something. That's a worldly unhappiness. And then pain itself is not unhappiness, because really it wasn't pain, it was not unhappiness. A worldly unhappiness is when you get unhappy because you're in pain. And when you're not happy with people, say you're a jerk. You see, if somebody says you're a jerk, then you're all happy. Then that's your whole world of unhappiness. Did she just experience that?

[32:24]

And if somebody praises you, and you get happy because you're praising them, then, oh, they're praising somebody. Oh, gee, oh. To get happy about that, they're praising you. That's worldly happiness. To be happy that they're praising somebody, to be happy for them, that's not worldly happiness. That's bodhisattva happiness. And even a greater happiness is the happiness you feel when you feel pain about that person and you do not feel pain. You feel pain, you got there, you're decided. The greater the being, you see someone doing it, and because you care for that person, you're demeaning the other. And also, you also care for the demeaning, who might not, who might experience a world of unhappiness, being trashed. Because you're careful that you're going to have good things, you feel happiness that you care about them that much that it hurts you.

[33:40]

And that happiness is radiating to you. Thank you so much. So I think I got maybe the first two of the half of them. There's eight. There's four worldly happenings, four worldly unhappinesses. Doing something you want. You see something. I've told you. And it'd be... Well, you basically hard for your work when we still kill them to test be you know What will happen there?

[35:20]

I am getting jacked up Let's That's a squirrel. This is a squirrel here. Thank you. So noticing, oh, here I go again. Here we go again. You know, somebody praises me and I'm getting jacked up. Somebody's trashing me and I'm getting squished down. Again, one of the main stories that turned me to Zen was somebody got insulted and he didn't get pushed down. Somebody got praised and he didn't get jacked up. He got trashed and he just went,

[36:22]

He didn't say whatever, but he kind of like, he said, oh, is this happening? And then people said, no, here, you take care of this baby. And he said, okay. Took care of the baby. And then he comes and says, give me the baby back. Thanks a lot, you did a great job. Give me the baby back. Yeah. So how can you not get jacked up by... You don't get jacked up by pleasure and get knocked down by pain. How can you get not jacked up by praise, direct and indirect, and puked down by insults, direct and indirect? Lack of appreciation and cruelty. Cruelty hurts. It hurts when people spit in your face. That's okay. You're not supposed to not feel something when somebody pushes your cheek at you. But to get unhappy because people are pushing your cheek in, that's worldly unhappiness.

[37:26]

It's like, oh, that really hurts. Wow. How come this is happening? Wow. This is cheek-pressing time here. This is like an out-of-worldly reaction. It's more like that. It's the way the Buddha would be. It's a Buddha reaction. Cheeks are getting squished. Cheeks are getting pulled out. Heads are being removed. Arms are being cut off. It hurts. Yeah, it hurts. That's it. Practice patience with that. Ooh, it hurts. Ooh, God, this is a really challenging patience practice. Whoa, this is a big one. Ooh, good. Oh, it's so wonderful. I'm not hating this person who's cutting my body in pieces. It's so wonderful. Buddha said, our nice Buddha said, when they were cutting me up in pieces, I did not hate them.

[38:29]

Our Buddha, our boy, he got that good in past life. So, that's not a world of unhappiness. That's just regular Buddha pain. And then even the greater pain is the pain you feel for others. And that's the greatest happiness. You care tremendously for Pain and care. Others are not happy. And that's the great happiness. That's the happiness of compassion. Compassion basically means happy. Compassion is basically happy. With the pain. Happiness with the dentin. It's a bigger happiness than the happiness that pops up with getting stuff and goes away with losing stuff.

[39:33]

Does that make sense? Yes. I had a follow-up question, actually. Is it just patience and attention that has that attention to your attachment deepens? Does that get you to that point where you can? As an example, we were talking earlier about just seeing or just hearing. And as I meditate and I'm attentive to my thoughts, my senses, I can tell that I'm not doing that. And I can tell that I'm not just seeing it. I know that there's extra there. But separating that, I can't do right now.

[40:39]

Yeah, so you notice, oh, there is some extra stuff. Yeah. So like... And that's good that you notice that. And then also, there's a recommendation by Dogen, is not only would it be good if I noticed when my practice is not quite on the mark, and where I'm noticing things, but not just noticing them, but interpreting them to protect myself. Or, you know, interpreting because I think that will help me, And I'm not sure if it's really that good for me just to feel something, period. Smell something, period. I don't have faith that that's really that good idea. And so, in fact, I don't practice that. And I notice that lack of faith in practice. And then he's saying, I also want to confess that before the Buddhists. So noticing and confessing it, period, is good.

[41:45]

but also do it in company. Show it to somebody. That seems to be even more, that's a further recommendation. So, some things you notice, and that's good that you notice them, some lack in your practice you notice, that's good that you notice it. Which is similar to you don't really believe it would be that good to do the practice fully. In some sense, if you don't do a practice, it kind of means you don't really trust it. So faith and practice are kind of too close. And if you notice it, that's very good. And so it has to start there, if you notice that. So you have something to confess. But some things that you might notice, you still might not be ready to tell people. and to tell other people, especially to tell someone you appreciate.

[42:52]

That seems to open the process up even more. So I don't really recommend that you do it to the Buddhas, and also do it to lesser beings. Buddhas, you know, approaching Buddha, and just do it. Don't do it to people who are really childish. Don't tell children, because they won't know what to do with it. People that you kind of look up to tell them all the way up to Buddha. Because children don't know what to do with confessions. They can deal with each other's confessions, but they can't deal with confessions of a more mature person. Because they don't know what the person's talking about. Because they're not more aware of that level of salt and attachment. When little kids confess to each other, they can kind of understand that. And the same treated, in some sense, older students and younger students, older teachers and younger teachers. Older teaching doesn't necessarily confess to the younger teacher, except to show the younger teacher or the younger student that they're willing to confess.

[44:03]

Sometimes they do. Just to show that even an old master can confess, like Suzuki Rishi would sometimes confess. just to show his students that he wasn't beyond confessing. And we kind of go, wow, he's confessing to us? So I take back that you wouldn't confess down the hierarchy. Sometimes confessing downward in terms of seniority encourages the juniors to know that sometimes the juniors think, well, when I got to be as developed as her, I wouldn't have to confess anymore. But actually, we say in our ceremony, even after achieving Buddhahood, we continue to practice the confession as part of our ceremony. We wouldn't have meant to confess, but hopefully I'll continue. So yeah, so the confession knocks away the root of the half-hearted or 80% or 99% practice, or not to mention 20% practice.

[45:05]

But usually 20% practice can barely get a confession going. I don't even notice that you're not doing it because you're doing so little. It's when you get to over 50% that you start noticing. I take back those percentages. But anyway. Those were jokes. Those were jokes. You laughed. That was good. Confessing melts the root of the half-hearted. That's the proposal. Confessing and repenting. So you're not just confessing to feel a little bad. Repentance means to feel pain. It's a pain that reforms. It's not just any old pain. It's a pain that reforms you. So if you notice, it wasn't quite right, and you confess it, and you did kind of bad, it's a type of bad which means, okay, now let's try it again.

[46:09]

See if you can do it all the way and stuff. That's the way I want to do it. Next one. More attention, more gentleness, more relaxation. That was worse. That was even more. Over and over until you get to the place you usually want to be. This morning I missed or didn't hear part of the story about when the student asked Buddha for teachings. Yes. The last I heard was you said for the third time, no, this is not a good time.

[47:11]

Yes, that's the last you heard. And then I remember you said, and then you got enlightened. Was there something in between that? What happened to you between the two places? Did you were in the room or you went to go to the room? Between when he gave that instruction, train your brain, Train your attention thus. In the heard, there will be the heard. In the seen, there will be the seen. He gave that instruction. Okay, that moment, the third time fasting. After the third time, he said, okay. And then he said, third time he said, okay, okay, okay. Train yourself like this. So you're saying, would you please give me some teachings? I'm busy. I'm busy. Okay, train yourself like this. In the heard, there will be just the heard. And he said, when you get to that place and you're that way, when you're actually that way, finish the training of your sins.

[48:13]

Train your attention so that you are that way. Then you won't identify with your sins. You won't locate yourself in your sins. You won't be of it. You won't be in it. Then there won't be a here and a there and an in-between and a suffering. And the guy heard the teaching, practiced it, realized it, and suffered his end. As soon as it was done practically, he goes, hey, great. Can I become your disciple? Did he get it that quickly just because he was already ready to receive it? This guy was already a sage, actually. A number of Buddha's disciples were noted teachers in India who were good enough to not be arrogant.

[49:14]

I mean, they were good enough to be humble and to be open to the fact that they had moral learning. They were sages, but they weren't Buddhas. The first person in the area to have understood what the Buddha understood was the Buddha. There wasn't another one before him had this realization that he's the first person in this cycle of history that we know about who had discovered this teaching. But he really rediscovered it. He told us he rediscovered it. He received this teaching from Buddhist people in previous lifetimes. This is part of the difficulty of this spiritual tradition, is that our founder said he got this teaching before. He was enlightened before. This wasn't a Buddha report because he was enlightened under Buddhists. If you're enlightened under a Buddha, you're not actually a Buddha. You're only a Buddha when you come into a world system and they don't have the dharma and you're remembered from previous training.

[50:17]

So he rediscovered the dharma. And there's no record in our historical information so far of anybody in this poem who'd come up with something like that before him. sense didn't get them to come up with it, but that's from him. He's already, you know, there. So Albert Einstein seems to have found out something, but the Buddha already, just a topic. Heisenberg, and all those other physicists, and all those other sages, discovered some similar stuff, but nobody put out that domain that he put out beforehand. So, He taught that guy. And that guy understood because he was very ripe. He understood very quickly. And there's a number of sages that went to the Buddha and got it. There's another guy I tell a story about named Pukasati, who was another sage, who also kind of was saying that, saying, I wonder if I really understand.

[51:22]

And one of the disciples... A priest from Buddha before Buddha, who was now a divine being, who scouts the world for anybody who's living in the world, whether they understand or not, appeared to him and said, no, you don't understand. Well, I've got a way through. And he sent the guy to Buddha, and the guy went to Buddha. And Buddha, hundreds of thousands of Buddhists knew that this guy was coming. He was in communication with this guy who tipped him off or whatever. This guy's going to come to see you now, and he's heading to your place. But you could pet him off that while you agree on it. He's going to go, he's going to go say, walk by himself to meet this guy. Walked a long way to meet this great student. And they met in a party show. And that guy got invited to a

[52:23]

quite a much longer teaching, a six-page teaching, rather than one paragraph. Plus, before the teaching was given to him, he sat the whole night in Buddha's presence. And the Buddha sat the whole night in his presence. And Buddha watched him in meditation the whole night and thought, this is a great person. I think he's ready. So he said, what did he say? Do you want to hear the story? Do you want to hear the rest of it? So the Buddha is sitting with this guy. The Buddha knows this guy is coming to see him. But the guy doesn't know it's Buddha. Buddha has, like a lot of magicians, he had magical powers. He could put out what's called glamour. He could appear in a glamorous form. So if you saw him coming, you'd say, what's this? He could do that.

[53:24]

And he did sometimes. Like to stop an army or something. Stop their horses. But this time he took a dilemma off and went apparently wandering mendicant. Nobody knew who he was. And so he came in and he met this guy, and this guy didn't know as well. He knew he was a mendicant monk. He was going to see the Buddha, and the Buddha came to meet him. He didn't know who the Buddha was. The Buddha sat with this guy who he knew was coming to see him and didn't tell him who he was. Guess who I am? I'm the one you're coming to meet. But he sat in his potter's shed with him all night. And then either late at night or in the morning, he asked the guy, who is your teacher? Who are you studying under? And he said, I am studying under Shakyamuni Buddha.

[54:25]

Or I'm going to study under Shakyamuni Buddha. And Shakyamuni Buddha says to him, have you ever met Shakyamuni Buddha? And the guy said, no. He said, would you know? Shakyamuni Buddha, if you saw him, you'd say, no. Which is true. He's telling the truth. Buddha's like, this guy's a good meditator, and he tells the truth. And he wants to meet me. So now he wants to meet me, but he's telling the truth. He didn't like that. He wants to meet me, and then people ask him, have you met Shakyamuni? He says, yeah, I've met him, and he gave me more teachings. No, he didn't say that. He told you. Simply he said, maybe you'd like to hear some teachings. And the guy said, go ahead. He gave the teachings. And the guy listens to the teachings, which I say, going for six pages. I don't know how long it would have taken to say them. Depends on, you know, if they're ready to speak. But it could have taken an hour at least to say this. And by the time the book finishes, the guy says, oh, my teacher is coming.

[55:35]

He understood by the band who it was. And, you know, he was pretty much enlightened by the end of the talk. He was quite enlightened when he started. He was kind of pretty much fixed up by then. And he also understood, by the change, he understood who he must have been talking to. He knew it. What's the name of that sutra? It's called Discourse on Elements. Dr. Vibhanga. And Phukasati is my name. Venerable Phukasati. In the sutra, it doesn't tell you the history of Phukasati. It just says, you know, it doesn't tell you. It just tells you that the Buddha was walking by himself. Not too often did Buddha go off walks.

[56:37]

Usually he was like, when he went off walks, a lot of people went with him. Not everybody went with him everywhere, but usually people wanted to hang out with him, right? So if he went begging, a lot of people would go with him, not just to get part of the food again. And some monks would stay downtown, and he would bring back food. He'd get more food than he needed, usually. Because people gave food. They weren't just feeding him, they were representing his group. So he was getting food for the whole group. Some would stay back, maybe in that area, Continued to go back. But sometimes he walked by himself, and this is one of those cases. We took a long walk, all alone. That just was very touching. After he had walked this bit, he would go on private hikes. And he wasn't going on this hike just to have a hiatus. He was going on this hike to meet somebody. The story tells you that part, which is very touching to me. He went on this walk.

[57:39]

It doesn't tell you he went on this walk to meet this guy. And he goes into this town and he goes to a potter and asks the potter if he can stay at the potter's house. It doesn't tell you that he already knows that the guy who's coming to meet him is in the potter's hut already. It just says he went to the potter and asked the potter if he could stay at the potter's house. You can stay here, but there's already somebody staying. Buddha didn't say. I know. That guy's waiting for me. And he doesn't know where I am, and neither do you. But I'm respectful to him. I said, you can stay there if it's all right with him. So he actually goes in and he asks Phukasati, is it all right if I stay in this shed with you tonight? And Phukasati says, yeah. Cool, man. That's in the sutra. Not the cool one. He says, yes, friend. Yo, bro.

[58:40]

That kind of thing. And he apologizes after he realizes who he is, and he apologizes for talking to him kind of informally. And the Buddha says, yeah. That's a good thing. He says at that point, too, he says, when you see a mistake, as in a stick, and repented. The Dharma will do this. That's Dharma practice. Making a mistake isn't Dharma practice. That's just normal. Everybody does that. That's part of the normal way, is to make mistakes. But when you notice the mistake, and confess it as a mistake, and repent, and wish to reform yourself, that's Dharma interaction. He didn't say Dharma is not to make any mistakes. realistic. But it is realistic that you could notice a mistake. We can sometimes notice a mistake.

[59:41]

That we can do. We can notice half-heartedness. We can notice laziness. We can notice dishonesty. And we can notice those mistakes. That's not the way. We can notice that And then we can say, I'm sorry, and then we can rededicate ourselves. And that's what he did. The Buddha said, you've done that, and this is done. And then this guy also, by the way, says, can I take refuge with you? And the Buddha says, okay. Do you have requisites? And he doesn't, and he goes to get him, and he also goes to get him. And he doesn't. It worked out today. And mom's asked the Buddha again, what about this guy? He says, no problem. Don't worry about this guy. But he didn't get the prize as the fastest man. Even though it's extremely fast.

[60:42]

You know, one night with the Buddha. It's still fast, but it didn't move all the time. There were wonderful stories for me about meeting the Buddha. In one case, he knew about the Buddha. In the other case, he didn't. Waking up to the Buddha, with the Buddha. Let's see. You had one already. Did you have one already, too? Just this idea of confession. The chant that we're doing in the morning here, my ancient twisted karma. And so... doing that, and then doing the... Refuges. Refuges right after it. Yes. In my practice. And so that's a way of confessing, you know, but confession, like in our Western ideas, oh, I should go to a priest, I should do this and that. Is that confession, does that dissolve the...

[61:44]

The karma, when I'm confessing just in my practice, you know... Does that formal confession in the group dissolve it? Well, that's confession by myself in my practice room. Oh. I mean, and then the chance to meet you or to talk to a teacher only happens a couple times a year for me, you know, confessing. Yeah. So, anyway, I would say confessing by yourself is good. It's part of the practice. Because sometimes by yourself means you can't see any other humans in the room. You're in a room and you make a confession and you don't see any other humans or even groundhogs. Hey man, no groundhogs even to confess to. It looks like there's only one person in the room. You can't see all the little animals flying in the air, you know, hey, you guys. You kind of feel alone.

[62:47]

So that's a good thing to do, to confess when you think you're all alone. You can also confess that you think you're all alone. You can say, I must confess, I don't think there are any Buddhas in this room. And the Buddhas go, okay, darling, that's okay. We accept your confession. It's not very nice, but you accept it. Now, if you feel bad that you don't think any Buddha is in your room, and you wish to get over that, that's the Dharma's working. But there are Buddhas in all rooms. There's no room for error even when the Buddhas aren't there with you. You could say, okay, I heard that teaching, but I don't really believe that teaching. I don't really understand that teaching. I don't really think there's Buddhas in this room. That's another confession. So since I don't think there's a Buddhist in the room, when I confess in this room, I don't think I'm confessing before the Buddhists. Because I don't think the Buddhists are here. So I have a double confession. I did this stupid thing, plus I don't think the Buddhists listen to me.

[63:56]

But some people are recommending to you that when you confess to your shortcomings, that you do it in the face of the Buddhists. And I'm saying in the face of the Buddha, and all Buddha's disciples do it in their face too. And some people say that Doksang, the original meeting with the teacher, was actually a confession. The monks would go to the Buddha and confess to the Buddha in private, in addition to the group confession. So, anyway, confession basically, really, is always done in company. And if you don't get that, you confess that you don't get it. And then, maybe occasionally, do it in company, if you can. I can do it here. And since then, we do it every day in company. We do it every morning. When I was a young market dancer, we didn't do that.

[64:59]

We didn't do the confession. I just couldn't put up with that. I'm trying to get away from that. But around the time I was starting to translate a certain Zen text on precepts, I was talking to Kadagiri Rishi, and he told me that he was becoming more and more impressed how important the confessionary meetings was for Dogen. So I little by little encouraged Zen Center to start doing a confession practice. So now we do it in a group. But really, you're always in a group. So if you understand that, that's good. But it's also good when you're in a group that you can see, like actual gross human beings, to do it with them too. So do it in the group, do it in the doktsang, and do it wherever you are at any time, do it in the presence of the buddhas.

[66:04]

Isn't that amazing to talk like that? So, Vic hasn't asked a question yet. Now he's doing it. Yes. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about crazy wisdom and how it relates to following the precepts. What I mean by that is I've heard stories about some teachers using these... techniques, I guess you could say, where they break one or more of the precepts in the name of promoting growth of their students. And, I mean, if that's the case, then it's hard to understand how there's ultimately any ultimate benefit in involving precepts if they can be used in that sense. Or if they're purposely or if they're expressly not used or broken to advance someone's understanding?

[67:13]

Well, there's almost no... I don't know of any stories of Shakyamuni Buddha breaking any precepts, in a sense, in the way you're talking about. But someone said to me this morning, When you brush your teeth, you break a precept. Maybe the person meant you're disturbing bacteria communities or something. I don't know. So maybe Buddha, when he cleaned his teeth, pushed colonies of bacteria around or something. I don't know. But there's almost no record where people are saying Buddha broke a precept in order to help a student. But there is a story of a past life of Buddha.

[68:19]

Supposedly, when in order to protect 500 people who he could see, he had enough development so that he could see that this person, this robber was going to like, I don't know, sink the ship or something that had 500 people on it. And in order to protect the robber, and the 500 people, protect the robber from the karma of being a murderer, and protect the 500 people from dying prematurely, he killed the robber. There's that story. I don't know where it lives, but there's a story of the Buddha killing someone in order to protect beings. But the killing is out of compassion for everybody concerned. It's not killing out of ill will. So, in his life as the Buddha, he didn't have... he had enough skill so he didn't have to ever do that. When he was less skillful, in order to stop the robber, he had to kill the robber.

[69:27]

If he was more skillful, he might have been able to say to the robber, you know, do you think it's okay to pet on first dates? You know, he might have been more skillful and not have to kill him, but be able to stop him anyway. So, and the Dalai Lama was asked, if you, if somehow you knew that this person was going to press a button and release a nuclear weapon upon a large population, and you couldn't just pull a person away from the button, or get a gang of monks to pull a person away from the button. And the only way to stop him was to kill him. Would you kill him? And I think he said yes. And that strange turn of fate that someone was going to do something really bad for themselves. So I think the idea is that if it would help somebody to kill them, it would help that person.

[70:33]

Even though it's not the way I want to help people, that I would help them. Not to mention if the person was about to... But the only situation where it would help to kill the person would be when the person is going to do something really bad. Otherwise, you know, I almost never do kill people. But if they were about to do something really horrible, and the only way to stop them would be to kill them, and therefore it would help them, and you could see that, then a Buddha wouldn't have to do that. They're so skillful. a person on the path to Buddhahood, that might be appropriate for them. And that's not crazy wisdom, no, I don't think. It's compassion. But you'd have to have some wisdom, I guess, to see that this would be helpful. You'd have to have a lot of wisdom to know how terrible this thing was going to be and that you really were helping the person. So that's possible.

[71:36]

But it's fairly rare. I know. Like there's like among the billion of people, whatever number of billion people that are practicing the Dharma since the Buddha's time, there's like just a few stories like that, of where people... But they're noted. They're noted because they're so outstanding. And there's a story of the Zen master killing the cat. And Zen master cutting somebody's finger off, you know. They're stories like that, and they're like really awesome to look at those stories because, I mean, I heard one Zen teacher, when he talked about that story of the Zen master killing the cat, whenever he talked to the monks, he got off of his seat and sat on the floor with them. He didn't talk above them, because this is such a painful issue of killing the cat in order to help the monks. That what he's trying to do is he's trying to help the monks and the cat.

[72:41]

And this is, you know, there's some debate about whether he really killed the cat, but even consider even talking like that is very risky. Do you think there's any danger in maybe getting attached to the idea of, you know, being, you know, ...following the precepts of being... Say it again. Is there any something about getting attached to the precepts? ...becoming attached to the idea of being this good... One of the precepts in early Buddhism is attachment. to the conventional understanding of the precepts. That's one of the precepts. It's not a precept exactly, it's a false view, is attaching to the precepts. Attaching to your limited understanding of the precepts.

[73:44]

In other words, attaching means that you think the precepts can be grasped. That's one of the false views in the Buddhist tradition, is attaching to ethical regulations. If you have the correct understanding of ethical regulations, then you can't help but be them. But when you think there's something you could attach to, that's considered a false view. So the crisis around ethics, like the crisis around religion in general, is the crisis around becoming dogmatic. Ethics are, ethical principles are dogmas in a way. their teachings, their doctrines about conduct. And if you are overly positive about what not killing means and what not stealing means, if you get arrogant about them, then this becomes extremely harmful.

[74:44]

And some of the people who do the most harmful things are people who are attached to their narrow understanding, to a graspable understanding of ethics. All these horrible things we have happening now are about people on two sides or ten sides of a process holding to their dogmas and fighting each other. It's been going on for a long time. The Crusades, the Muslim conquest of the world, all this violence, Christian and Muslim are the leaders in a sense. But even Buddhists sometimes have Like there's Buddhists in Nepal and Sri Lanka that are fighting Hindus and stuff, right? So, precepts are a situation where there's a crisis, where there's opportunities to realize them, and dangers of attaching to them and becoming violent around them.

[75:49]

We are the good ones, they're the evil ones. or I'm good and evil myself, and I mutilate myself because I'm evil, or I mutilate other people because I'm good. This is very dangerous. That's why, again, some people just stay entirely away from ethics. It's because they realize how dangerous it is. But then what do they do? God doesn't avoid the danger. Then you're walking around without ethics. That's dangerous too. I don't think there's a way to avoid danger. But I think there is a way to face it and leap with it. Does that make total sense? That's why I'm here.

[76:57]

Yes. Yesterday you made the distinction between ethical behavior and ethical conduct. Yeah. And I remember thinking, oh, I'm pretty good at ethical behavior, but I couldn't have more than ethical conduct. Could you talk more about that distinction? What I mean by ethical conduct is the way we're practicing together in an ethical way. Conduct is not... I think of conduct as more like what we're doing together. Etymologically, it means being led together. Conduit, right? being led together rather than discursive. That's another way to practice.

[77:58]

Discursive ethics is more like my individual behavior. And the word that they use in Chinese, which means practice or conduct, it has the connotation or the etymology activity that's done in concert with other beings. So ideally, it's ethical conduct. It's not about my ethical behavior by myself, but how in relationship to you are ethics being realized. Bodhisattva precepts are very much about relationship with other people. They're not so much focused on personal purification, but more like purifying our relationships. like not killing, not stealing, and not slandering others, and not taking what people aren't giving you. Regardless of their behavior, we try to work out an ethical community activity.

[79:13]

Yes? Where's that kind of story that you mentioned that's so affected you about the monk and the baby? The monk and the baby? And giving back to the baby. Well, one place, it's in this book called Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. It's the first or second story. It's about Hakuin. When I first read it, I didn't know it was a famous Zen master, just another one of the monks. Do you spell his name? H? H-A-K-U-I-N. H-A-K-U-I-N. Yes? I'm intrigued by the aspect of recognition that it takes an almost Buddha to recognize a Buddha. That's what it seems to me like. That's right out of a sutra. It takes a Buddha to recognize a Buddha. Some people, you know, there was a Buddha, and so everybody, you know, oh, they heard this Buddha, they went to see the Buddha, but to actually recognize, to see, understand, that that's a Buddha, that thinks a Buddha, that they understand a Buddha.

[80:31]

In the story you told, that is really sort of this path in the life of a mystic, to recognize the Buddha as such, without the props of his monks following along. Without the props, and without his glamour. So with the monks and the glamour, everybody kind of gets it. radios plugged into the power grid. I remember Suzuki Roshi said one time, under certain circumstances, I would appear to be a great Zen master. And if you saw him with his American students, you know, who were like big, strong, young people. It was like seeing, if you put a magnet under a piece of paper, you don't see anything, but if you drop iron filings on it, suddenly you see it all line up. You realize there's a magnetic force under there. If you saw Suzuki Roshi walking down the street, I mean, if I saw him walking down the street, you'd see better than me.

[81:37]

You'd recognize him. But I'd think, oh, there's a little, not very tall Japanese man with that. kind of a nice outfit on going down the street. But then you see him walk into a group of Zen students and now go, something happens and now he says, oh, this must be a teacher of powerful Americans. He doesn't look powerful, but these guys look powerful. They've got a lot of energy and yet they're sort of, they become very childlike and sweet when he's around. What's going on? You see the force. the Buddhist realization happening. But to see, but to recognize, and without that, you'll probably take another master. Sometimes glamour's on, sometimes it's off. And when it's on, more people will see it. But when the glamour's not on, you may not be able to see it.

[82:38]

Radiation. Electromagnetic radiation should be hard to see unless you can see the way other magnetic materials relate to it. I'm going to put dinner down, huh? Is there anything else? It seems possible that talking about dogma that it's possible to attach to a dogma that for example violence is bad Yeah, that's a Buddhist teaching.

[83:44]

Buddhist teaching is... Buddha didn't say violence is bad, necessarily, but he said, get off the violence thing. He said, practice non-violence. Very emphatically. If you're practicing violence, don't say you're a minus cycle. You're a minus cycle, you learn non-violence. He didn't really say violence is bad. It's more like it defiles life. So he did teach non-violence, and people could get attached to that. And some people do get attached to non-violence, and then that becomes counterproductive when they get attached to it. So you can see some people who are working for peace, which is good, according to the Buddha's teaching, and then they get attached to it for the way they're working, And then they're ineffective in doing what they want to do because of attachment, rather than, OK, I'm working for peace, and I like to leap and dance with the situation.

[84:59]

And I'm not going to be rigid about it. And even the other peace workers who are rigid, who are hating me for not being rigid, I'm going to have the courage to not be rigid even though they're pummeling me to be more rigid because they feel undermined by my flexibility. So the hawks are attacking me and the peace activists who are attached to peace activism, they're attacking me and I'm trying to practice patience with all these people who are being mean to me. I'm trying to practice nonviolence and I don't really know how And I'm kind of pretty much about wrecked here. I wonder how that would look. It might look like, yeah. I wonder how it would look. Actually, it looks like it was installed. It's fostered in the day area, but we started a chapter in Washington because the war started.

[86:01]

We were using a different population in Washington to save the world. And we I mean, one of the things that we'll see is that it's going to shift. And my talk at the Quaker House was about how to practice when you're not surrounded by the choir. We have to somehow get out there with people who have different views and start finding a way to have conversations with them. Well, by the way, I wanted to say a little bit more about the story of the soap opera.

[87:23]

And that is... It's a situation of making a soap opera where there is a dramatic scene where someone, like for example, or a woman who is usually rather passive and just goes along with what the men are doing, doesn't agree with them on some occasion, and stands up for what she believes in and people give her a hard time, and then she goes to school and finds a way to stand up to the oppressive regime, and then the end triumphs after a very dramatic and difficult story. And then they show this series, and they notice that after a while,

[88:31]

And after the series is produced, you get a big spike in women just going to school, poor women going to school, or things like that. So they actually put these things out there to teach a lesson, and they watched the viewing audience and seeing how they respond socially. But again, their experience was, if you just teach a class on teaching poor women how to stand up for themselves, in an oppressive environment. They just don't watch the show. It's not entertaining, it's not engaging, it's not sexy. And then you show that something is really entertaining, which has commercials and stuff too. It's not public radio, not public TV. It's entertainment. They want entertainment. the same strategy in Uganda with an AIDS soap opera.

[89:37]

Yeah, and that's another example. An AIDS soap opera, but it's not about teaching people about using condoms and stuff like that. But then after they watch it, there's a big spike in people going to get AIDS consultation and use of condoms and stuff like that. In a place where almost no one was doing it, suddenly people are starting to take care of themselves. And this isn't about Catholics. This is about people who just don't even know about such things. But they won't watch the show which is run by the UN. Actually, I should take it back. The UN is sponsoring these soap operas because they can see they're more effective than educational programs. And... And then one of the structures of these programs is to have, like I said, kind of an aspirational character, somebody who's like teaching some good message for this person and has another person who is kind of like making it hard for her or him or distracting them from this possibility.

[90:52]

And you watch the person. You don't watch the person just sort of immediately go to the aspirational character. Adopt their values and be successful. It's more dramatic. It's a struggle. It's not that easy for the person. And finally they find their way and they're happy. But it has to be dramatic. Otherwise it doesn't capture the imagination. It doesn't relate to their situation. Because they don't live in a place where somebody walks up and teaches them something and they're awakened all of a sudden and everything works out. There's a lot of resistance in the culture. You have your face drowning, Kathy, wouldn't you? Yeah, I was disturbed by that yesterday, too. I think I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing. But I think it's on a couple of levels. One is, it just sounds so... And then, even though it's... And the other is, and it's an ancient technique, it's how we also...

[91:56]

or Republicans and all the things that these programs don't support. So, I have a little unease about, I mean, I can see this from what you're saying, that they're applying these kind of barrier skills to communicate with people who need to have the barrier to receive communication. But there's something about the way, I'm not sure what you're bringing forward to show to us. Oh, I'm bringing forward how to get people into conversation who don't agree with you. That's basically what I'm bringing forward. So these women, they do not agree with something you're trying to tell them. They just don't understand it, and they do not yet agree with certain health hygiene practices and so on that you're trying to teach them. They do not agree. And their friends are not teaching them this.

[93:01]

So the method by which people teach people to go to war and so on, it might be a similar method, but how do people who... And so someone who does not want to go to war How do people who want them to go to war have a conversation with them such that they will go to war? And we have some idea of what kind of conversations get people who don't want to go to war to go to war. There are kind of conversations like, perhaps they're conversations like, well, if you don't go to war, we're going to kill you. But how do you get someone to practice peace? You don't tell somebody to practice peace by telling, if you don't practice peace, we're going to kill you. Usually you don't do that. So why should they listen to you? How are you going to get somebody who does not want to practice peace to practice peace? How do you get a violent person to see the merits of nonviolence? How do you get someone who thinks it's a good idea to have this war in Iraq to have a conversation with somebody who does not think it's a good idea? How do you get someone who who thinks Islam's the only way and everybody who is not a believer should be eliminated.

[94:08]

To have a conversation when they don't want to talk to anybody who doesn't agree with them. How do you get them involved? That's what I'm trying to drive at. I guess it just seems like this is what all the... You know, a lot of monism and other dramatic forms are actually about this. About what? About presenting an idea to communicate or convince or persuade. Exactly. As a tool, it works in any direction. Yeah, and some novelists are very successful this way because they're not preaching to people, they're telling a story. It's fiction. They're telling a fiction in order to convey what they think is the truth. Sometimes there's a time... Maybe it's just a degree of, in the language that we were talking about earlier, more a degree of attachment, so that a narrative that has a purpose of teaching something has that didactic quality, even if it's more effective.

[95:20]

But there's also some narrative that is less didactic and more observant, like witnessing rather than interpreting. Not trying to create an end in the behavior of the receiver. You know, you can create something that is communicating or offering, and then you can create something that's communicating and... designed to get a result in a person with a disease. And that's where the manipulation goes. I mean, it's not for that purpose, but it still feels a little... That's, I think, where... It's storytelling. It's storytelling. But then there's... It's storytelling. ...trying to manipulate us all. It's storytelling. Well, storytelling. Yeah, well. That's what storytelling is. Thank you for telling me. Well, again, if it doesn't engage your emotions and manipulate you, then you're not interested in storytelling.

[96:25]

I'm not talking about not having emotions, but trying to create... Emotions created by the story. They've been manipulated. Rightly or wrongly, for good or for bad. That's manipulation. Well, there's a possibility of communicating where you're simply offering communication. of offering an understanding or an observation. And you're not trying to get a particular thought from the person. I think I understand there's some dilemma there for you. And I might also mention to you that the Buddha sometime was a magician. In the stories in the sutras, there's not much magic. the basic teaching of Buddhism is not magical. But the basic teaching of Buddhism is kind of for rather evolved people.

[97:29]

People who get to meet the Buddha and can see it's the Buddha. But the Buddha sometimes used his magical powers, which he had plenty of. And when Buddhism was transmitted from India to China, some of the Buddhist monks use quite a bit of magic to get the Chinese interested. It's not Buddha Dharma, actually. The Buddha's magical powers, he was like maybe way above average in magical powers, but that's not what he's remembered for. He's remembered for his wisdom. Even if he was the most magically powerful magician in history, He's not remembered for that because his Dharma was so much more important in history. And to us, we don't care much about his magical powers, actually. And a lot of his magical powers, actually, Westerners think are really weird. Like the ability to see past life. People go, give me a break.

[98:32]

The shamanic aspect of the Buddha is not that much appreciated by Western audiences. Although they're quite interested in it, they don't like it. But he could fly and stuff like that, right? He had these abilities, but he didn't use them much, but he used them some. And some of his successors also had magical powers, and when they got into rough neighborhoods, they used them. And China was an evolved country, but at the frontiers of China, when the Buddhist monks came, In the rough areas surrounding China, they used quite a bit of magical power to convert those tough people that later became the Mongol Empire. And then they could get into China. When they got into China, they didn't use magical powers that much because Chinese... had a more sophisticated culture going.

[99:35]

And then they more used their way to show them how what they were teaching had some compatibility with Taoism and Confucianism. That's the way they work with them. So actually I'm talking to some extent about magical powers in these soap operas, ways to get people into a position where they could hear the Dharma.

[99:55]

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