I feel this wish to give you a sense of how I see the relationship between everything. So I drew this picture over here, that circle, and inside the circle it says SFS. which means San Francisco Samadhi. So that's an acronym for Samadhi. It's a Samadhi that I practice in San Francisco. It's also called self-fulfillment Samadhi. And then another acronym would be Sres? Sres?

[01:03]

Are you familiar with Sres? Huh? Sres, the self-receiving and employing samadhi, or self-receiving and employing samadhi. So that's in the center of our practice. And in that circle is that self-perceiving and employing samadhi. And then the E with the circle around it means... And also in that circle is zazen. So those are synonyms, almost, in this tradition. Zazen, the zazen we're talking about is the zazen of the Buddha, and the zazen of the Buddha, the sitting meditation of the Buddha, is enlightenment, of course. Also, whatever of the Buddha is enlightenment.

[02:06]

But in this tradition, this self-fulfilling samadhi is enlightenment. In a sense, this tradition starts with zazen. And coming from zazen, we have the bodhisattva precepts. And then, so we practice the bodhisattva precepts based on zazen. So they come from zazen, and we practice the precepts together with zazen, so then the precepts take us back into zazen. So the precepts, the ethical behavior, and then the person who's practicing these precepts also regularly, hopefully continuously, returns to zazen.

[03:11]

But in a sense, the precepts are emphasizing activity. You say the same thing, that bodhisattva precepts emerge from enlightenment and are practiced together with enlightenment and return to enlightenment. So as those who have the chance to practice rituals, practice sitting meditation often, to reiterate that the life of ethical discipline is constantly being together with the sitting meditation, which is enlightenment. So that we sit to point out that our life is practiced together with enlightenment. And then our ethical life emerges from it.

[04:17]

So that's God. Then that connects over here to this expression, from the first time you meet a master without engaging in incense offering, bowing, chanting Buddha's name, confession, repentance, reading scriptures, practicing precepts. As soon as you meet a teacher without doing any of those practices, just wholeheartedly sit and drop away body and mind. So, that means, one way to understand that is, as soon as you meet a teacher who taught how to enter into zazen without doing any other practices, Just practice zazen. And zazen is dropping away body and mind, which is the same as zazen is enlightenment.

[05:18]

Dropping away body and mind is enlightenment. So, as soon as you meet a master, realize enlightenment without doing any of those other practices. Then do those other practices. It doesn't say that, but of course he did those practices. He met his master, and he did them after. But he's just saying, before you start any practices, realize enlightenment. And then, of course, do those practices. Those practices will naturally emerge. And I guess a lot of people would say, well, fine, I'd be happy to. just wholeheartedly sit and drop away body and mind, and realize essential Buddha Dharma. That sounds like a problem. I mean, I wouldn't mind that if it happened.

[06:19]

It sounds unlikely it's going to happen in my life, but anyway, it sounds good. So another way to say this is, before you do any of these practices, receive instruction to do these practices as enlightenment, do these practices as self-receiving and employing. Now, if you look at the Noble Eightfold Path, Noble Eightfold Path starts with Right View. And the eighth part of it is right concentration. Right view.

[07:21]

Self-receiving and employing samadhi. Or it's wisdom. It's enlightenment. The Eightfold Path starts with enlightenment. The first thing is enlightenment. And then from enlightenment the right intention, to practice, you know, right intention, which is renunciation. And then you practice right conduct, right speech, right livelihood. In other words, you start with enlightenment, then you practice renunciation, and then you practice... But you practice these precepts that you're practicing in the Eightfold Path are practiced from enlightenment. You start with enlightenment on the Noble Eightfold Path. The beginning is enlightenment. And then you practice the precepts. And since the practice is based on enlightenment, practicing the precepts will flow very nicely.

[08:28]

And then, based on practicing the precepts very nicely, which is based on enlightenment, then you practice Right mindfulness, right effort, or right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. And those also will flow quite nicely because they started, the whole process started with enlightenment, with right view. And then from there you go into, you know, right understanding and right liberation. There is different ways of looking at the practice of the Buddha way, though. As a matter of fact, a lot of people teach the Eightfold Path. They teach that you start with the third fold. You start with right speech, right conduct, right livelihood.

[09:36]

You start with the ethical part. and then you proceed. But I propose to you that my, I propose to you, my understanding is that's not the Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path starts with right view. But people would like, some people would like to start with the third step because these people understand something when they want people to start with the third step because they say, how can we start with right view? Because that's enlightenment. But we can start with right conduct or right livelihood because, you know, people can work on precepts, we know that. How are they going to work on enlightenment? Got a problem there. So let's start with number three. And there's some justification for that, people feel, because the Buddha taught that there's three learnings. And in order of saying the three learnings is often shila, dhyana, prajna, or precepts, concentration, and wisdom.

[10:39]

Seems reasonable. Practice ethics. Of course you have to practice ethics if you're going to practice concentration. You can't get concentrated if you don't practice ethics. Because we're trying to concentrate, but then the police keep pulling you to... Come on, you didn't pay your parking meter. You have to go to jail now. Can I practice concentration when I get there? We'll see about that. Or another way, you didn't turn the... You didn't turn the gas off when you left home. Your house blew up. Your house is on fire. I've got to leave the retreat now. See you later. Of course you need to practice ethics. Or another way, of course, if you're mean to people, then you go sit down. Then it's hard to calm down because you feel so bad that you're cruel to them. And also you know they're going to come beat you up sometime during the meditation. So you need to practice Śila in order to practice Jhana, and you need to practice Śila and Jhana in order to have wisdom, of course.

[11:55]

Makes sense, right? So then people probably go that way. Start with Śila and go to concentration and then back to wisdom. Does that make sense? Everybody following that? But that's not the three learnings over there, that's the Noble Eightfold Path. The Noble Eightfold Path starts at number three. And then, from number three, from wisdom, then you can start practicing dhyana, sila, and, yeah, dhyana, sila, and dana, or giving precepts and concentration. And I wrote over there, from the first time you meet a master. Okay? You can... And I also mentioned to you that in... Really, the practice starts with giving.

[13:03]

Now, giving is not different from sila, but first people practice giving. Then they practice sila. Then they practice concentration. And a lot of Theravada teachers say, when Westerners come, they want to start with meditation. That's what they usually say. But sometimes they want to start with wisdom. But anyway, they haven't practiced giving and precepts, so it's hard for them to start with concentration. I agree with that. But, so, somebody is generous, you know, like some of you have been generous in your life, you have practiced precepts, so then you can practice concentration. And then you're somewhat ready to meet a master in wisdom. So once you've met a master, you don't have to, for the time being, put aside giving, because

[14:11]

Unless you haven't practiced. If you meet a master and the master noticed you haven't practiced giving, you haven't practiced precepts, then the master might say, actually you should offer incense, do some bowing and chanting and so on. But the master might say, oh, you're ready and teach you wisdom. And then, there, you can practice giving, precepts, and concentration. In those two stories I told you earlier in the retreat, of these, basically these guys who were sages, Phukasati and Bahiya, and also the Buddha taught first five people who were his former yogi friends. These people, I assume, were, you know, they were generous.

[15:14]

They were giving their life to spiritual practice. They must have been ethical because they were extremely very adept at concentration. So these people that the Buddha first taught were already good at giving precepts in concentration. So when the Buddha met them, the Buddha taught them right view. And then they developed from there. Or he taught them . He taught them where they could see. He talked to them and they heard the true Dharma. And their Dharma eye opened and they were enlightened and then they could practice.

[16:15]

But these five I'm talking about, plus those two I talked about, these people were already... on the spiritual path. But they weren't on the Eightfold Path until they met the Buddha. And then, when they met the Buddha, he talked to them. What he said wasn't the true Dharma. But while he was talking, they heard the true Dharma. When they heard the true Dharma, they opened to right view. they were enlightened. Enlightenment with the Buddha. The first five, on the first talk, one of the five developed right view. And then in the succeeding weeks, that first one went from the first enlightenment of what we call an arhat to a full arhat.

[17:25]

The other four also, in succeeding days, developed right view and went through four stages to full realization. Not Buddhahood, but realization in the form we call the arhat. In the two stories I told you, those people were in some sense faster than the first four, Actually, the first five, the first five was, I think, slightly faster than Pukasati, but not as fast as Bahiya. But anyway, all seven of these people had been practicing before, and they met the Buddha and developed right view. You can't practice giving by yourself. You can't practice precepts by yourself.

[18:29]

You can't practice concentration by yourself. But you can do all those practices thinking that you're practicing by yourself. Does that make sense? Any questions about that? You know that, right? As a matter of fact, you probably know some people who do practice like that. They practice generosity. They think they're doing it by themselves. They don't notice the other people that they're giving to. They say, here, I'm giving this to you. They practice ethics. They're doing it with people. Not to mention they don't think they're doing it with the Buddha. Well, they are, but they don't think so. And it still counts, though, that you're trying... I mean, it's still meritorious that you're trying to practice giving, that you're trying to tell the truth, that you're trying to practice concentration, relatively, even though you think you're doing it by yourself, it's still good. And then if you practice that long enough and get concentrated and virtuous enough, then you can meet somebody and realize that you're meeting somebody.

[19:35]

And you can realize that you're having a conversation with somebody. And when you finally realize what's going on between the two of you, you have right view. And then you realize, oh my God, I've been practicing with people all along. Wow. And then you continue to practice right intention and so on, but then you realize, oh, I'm doing it with everybody. That because of right view, you've entered into this self-fulfilling samadhi. You're practicing zazen, you're enlightened. So then you practice precepts and so on, but you understand that you're practicing it with everybody. And you understand you used to do that too, but you didn't understand it. Yeah, so that's what I wanted to say.

[20:36]

There is also taught sometimes an eightfold path, the Arya part. You can practice the eightfold path and don't call it the Arya eightfold path. And then it's just like, you know, I'm practicing in it. I don't say I'm enlightened. I don't feel enlightened. Nobody says I'm enlightened. And I'm just trying to do my best with the eightfold path. That seems fine. Try to practice right view. But you're not saying that the right view you're trying to practice is the enlightened right view. So the Buddha actually taught the right view, you know, like he taught is action has consequence. It is possible to attain the way. There is rebirth. He taught those things as part of right view. But the noble right view is the view that comes after the Buddha is talking to these people and saying stuff that has consequence, compounded phenomena are impermanent.

[22:05]

He's talking to them and then they hear the Dharma and then his teaching has taken effect. Yeah, his teaching has taken effect and they hear the Dharma. and the eye opens and they develop right view. Then they're not just hearing about right view, but they actually have realized the noble right view, the Arya right view, that actually practice of the Buddhas. Now, I'd like to connect it to the story about the karma. So the people who have right view, they're actually on a path to attain arhatship.

[23:16]

And in attaining arhatship, there's this story, in a way, that you will actually attain nirvana and you will actually be kind of like ejected from the karmic cycle that you will no longer rebirth. So there is a kind of implication that these highly cultivated beings will not fall into cause and effect, karmic cause and effect. So in that sense, the monk's answer was not so bad. But apparently, but I might guess that under the circumstances, the world had, his destiny was such that his answer, which might be for somebody who was in the universe of becoming

[24:24]

personally liberated, that his destiny was that this was no longer appropriate to say to this person. Maybe this person was actually not supposed to walk the path of checking out of karmic causation. So, although according to in some sense, good report, it is possible that an arhat would actually not fall into cause and effect in a certain sense of cause and effect of birth and death. That they actually get liberated from birth and death. But that teaching might be wrong for the person he was talking to. Because maybe the person he was talking to wanted to be a buddha. And if you want to be a Buddha, you don't check out.

[25:29]

The Buddha didn't check out. The Buddha kept falling back into karmic causation again and again. So the Buddha lives in cause and effect and eventually becomes clear about it. So for somebody on the bodhisattva path, it could be misleading and sort of not appropriate to say, yes, they don't. Because that person needs to, who's asking questions about, you know, if one was or I became more highly cultivated, would I still have to study karmic causation? And the answer is yes, you would have to continue to study. However, when you become very cultivated, you will understand karmic causation. That will be the difference. For example, you will understand that while you were working in the realm of karmic causation, you actually weren't working alone.

[26:35]

You were working together with everyone. You will understand that. And that will make a big difference. And then you will continue to plunge into the huge ocean of sentient beings, joyfully plunging in to birth and death because it's so wonderful to help people. And you will bring your clarity about it. You will bring that to people. You will want to. It won't be like an accident that you are in common cause and effect. You won't be there from compulsion and inattention, but mostly by compulsion. The return of this is that a highly cultivated person will not be reborn by compulsion. And some highly cultivated people who will not be born by compulsion and obsession, they will uncompulsively pass on rebirth.

[27:43]

They will pass on getting involved in birth and death. They'll pass on it. And it's okay to pass on birth and death even while you're walking around Pittsburgh. It doesn't actually exist. You can't actually find it. So it's okay to pass on it. And the easiest way to pass on it is to look for it and verify that it cannot be found. And then you would naturally not get involved in it. The emptiness the ungraspability, the unfindability of birth and death. And you can do this without becoming an arhat. But you need the wisdom that they have in order to see this. However, if you're a bodhisattva, even though you can take a break from birth and death, in other words, pass on it for the moment, then in the next moment,

[28:53]

because you vowed to help everybody who is compulsively, you snap right back in there, happily, back into birth and death. And now, rather than not even being able to find birth and death, now you see birth and death and you see how it comes to be. And you're happy to be there with these people because you can help them see both how to find out that it doesn't actually offer an opportunity to be found, and also you can show them how to see how it comes to appear and how, again, it comes to not be found. So the bodhisattvas live in the world of birth and death, the world of karmic causation, but they live there willingly. They go there because there's such a great happiness there, the happiness of caring for people and suffering.

[29:59]

Then the other step is that This koan can be interpreted from the point of view of the non-duality of the arhats who check out and the bodhisattvas who check in, who need to check out, but they can't because of their vow, but they check in to karma and cause and effect and study it all the time joyfully as part of the education program. But again, Dogen first went along with the non-duality of the bodhisattva. And later he said, forget about the non-duality. Let's just focus on the bodhisattva way. So that, I think, is most of the things I wanted to say. And one more thing I want to say. As somebody pointed out to me today, this is traditionally the day which we call the solstice.

[31:07]

Now, there's also a science called astronomy which has other things to say about the solstice other than that it's always on the 21st. I don't know actually what day the solstice is. We say it's on the 21st, but I don't know when on the 21st it's happening. It's almost never on the 20th. But I guess it could be sometimes. I never heard of it on the 20th, though. And I almost never, and I really never heard of it on the 19th or the 14th. To the 22nd. So I don't know. The solstice is somewhere nearby. Which means it's a day with the most light. And I just want to draw one more thing. And that is that Zen sickness and that there's some light but it's not circulating fully. So I think literally during this session the light has been increasing and it has now reached pretty much its max.

[32:14]

And some of you and you want to take it home with you. But obviously it's going to start decreasing quite soon. And what I recommend for us is that we let it decrease. But don't just let it decrease. Since it's going to decrease anyway, give it away. Don't just have the light taken from you, give it away. If you give the light away, although it decreases, I mean, although it's decreasing and you give it away, that makes it circulate. It can circulate even while it's decreasing. The important thing is that it circulates. Even on the winter solstice you can circulate the light.

[33:19]

You can circulate it. Like I'm going to Sweden pretty soon. Now everybody in Sweden is happy. It's worldly happiness because they're happy because they get the light. In the winter, some of them are very unhappy because they lost the light. We want to circulate the light. Whatever amount of light we have, circulate it. So now you've got tons of light, and pretty soon you're going to have less. But while you've got tons, circulate it. And tomorrow when you have less, circulate it. The day after when it gets darker, circulate it. The day after when it's darker, circulate it. Keep circulating it until December 22nd. And then when you get more light, circulate it. Don't say, oh, finally I'm getting more. Now I'm happy. So I'm happy that we have this. and low humidity, it's great.

[34:23]

And I'm watching to be careful of my worldly happiness for getting less hidden humidity. But what I'm stressing is whatever light we have from the sun or from our heart, don't hold on to it. Circulate it. Give it away. So whenever we do anything here, in the ceremonial situation, and accumulate lots of merit, then at the end we give it away, we dedicate it. Everybody else, rather than, okay, got our merit, let's get out of here. We give it away before the end of the retreat. But then there's still, look into your heart and see whether you really gave it away, or whether you're still holding on a little bit. Because you can get sick if you hold it. Yes?

[35:33]

I kind of thought that's what you were talking about the other day when you were speaking about arhats, like the spirituality and then you check out. And I had a sort of sense that it was sort of a less desirable or conditioned It's a great state. Your arhat, you shouldn't... The Buddha was an arhat in his final life, but he wasn't an arhat before because he kept coming back to develop more. So arhat is a great attainment But it's just that if a bodhisattva path, and I never heard this understanding of that story before, that the monk that the former bhajan was talking to was somebody on the bodhisattva path. So he shouldn't have given him instruction, which might have been okay for an arhat.

[36:41]

This is like something that came up this morning. That that's maybe why he made a mistake. That it was oftentimes it's a perfectly good answer, but it was the wrong time to say that answer. And saying a good answer some other time has consequence of whatever, you know, having a red beard for quite a while. Foxes have red beards, I understand. Yes? Which is another little thing in this story. If an arhat held on to his light or her light, she would have Zen sickness. And it could be possible, because arhats aren't Buddhas. It could be possible that we some... Because if they're not Buddhas, then there must be some spiritual potential that hasn't been fully realized.

[37:53]

However, they're personally liberated. But if you think about it more and more, you think, well, really, they're birth and death, but not... They still haven't necessarily realized the full potential. However, if they completely check out of rebirth... it's hard to say exactly what their causal situation is. And then they could even hold on to anything. Or how could they give? Yeah, how could they give? How could they practice giving anymore? So the spiritual life of the arhats, after they are fully... They're in arhat and they die. Their spiritual life is as an inspiration. We have a chant here where we dedicate merit to arhats. Their spiritual benefit of their life still exists, or still comes to be, I should say.

[38:58]

We're still in arhats. In the Zen tradition, we worship arhats, traditionally. And we even, in this retreat, mentioned them and gave them merit. So that's something to circulate, that whole arhat thing. So I think I got everything off my chest. Anything you want to talk about? Yes? K.P.? Yes. Not necessarily fraught with fear, fraught with danger. So the Buddha recommends meditating on danger, but he doesn't recommend becoming afraid of the danger. Meditating on danger is sobering. But he doesn't say, be aware that you're subject to death, loss of health, and so on.

[40:06]

These are dangers. But he doesn't say become afraid of them, he says look at them clearly and you'll become sober. So the fear part, we're not encouraging you to be afraid of fear, we're encouraging you to face danger, which is there if you're turning. Exactly. about the community level. We raised the question yesterday that you might want to raise a question about community rules or guidelines that we really hadn't talked about in the community. So when all of us are leaping and turning and it's fraught with danger, then without having those guidelines, is it the community's trust in the teacher, trust in you?

[41:19]

carries us forward in that process. I'd like to . When I did an opportunity When you open to the danger and see it clearly, who else wants the opportunity and the dangers to live? So then, like you said, someone might feel when they see the danger that they often don't want. One of the things when you see the dangers, in addition to how you see all these dangers, one additional danger to the wound you see now is that you'll try to hold on to something to deal with the dangers. And you might think holding on to the precepts would help you deal with the dangers. But I would say holding on to the precepts will not help you deal with the dangers.

[42:25]

However, precepts will help you deal with the dangers. It's just like holding on to them all. Because holding on to them will hinder the opportunity to lead. We connect to the precepts. We receive the precepts. and give the precepts, and receive the precepts, and give the precepts. Do you want to learn how to do that? If we hold on to the precepts, these wonderful precepts, which are of enlightenment, then we start blocking the enlightenment. We block the securitization of the enlightenment. So, conceive the precepts and character the precepts without holding on to them. Like conceiving a character without coming to it. It's very tricky. And again, that's part of the balance thing.

[43:27]

So, when you see a precept, once you've got these precepts, you have a great opportunity to realize them. To realize and not kill them. Great. The major now will be Because it's so wonderful to cling to that precept. So receiving that precept, seeing the danger of holding on to that danger, facing the danger, then the opportunity to be realized. The opportunity to realize that precept. Precepts are not there. Precepts are not there. I'm not going to hold on to the precepts. Precepts are not there until we turn to the teacher.

[44:28]

The teacher is a preceptor. The teacher is a preceptor. You look at teachers like you're in this situation. Maybe it's like ...and you're walking through the storm, and everything's swirling around, and nobody gave you any precepts. This person's standing next to you, and you look at him, and you're just walking along with him. You're walking together, and you kind of get any idea. You fall down, and the person stays there. And you look up, and he's looking at you. looking up at him and her, and he says, how are you doing? I say, well, I'm on the ground now. He says, stay there. And you start to get up, and he's watching you, and he walks together. So when the Buddha was first around, that's what it was like.

[45:32]

He's walking along, he's like, hi, hi. And they just sort of got it by hanging out with him. He talked to him a little bit, and whoa, he woke up. But he didn't give him any precepts. He needed the precepts. He didn't say, I have the precepts, so I'm going to put it. So just watch. So yeah, the teacher is the main precept. As a precept, the teacher says precepts. That's the difference between precepts. In the early days at the top of the heart, they'd say, would you please give us some rules or some way to be stricter? They'd say, OK. When you're done sleeping, you put the broom head up. And you put it down. You know, when you put it down, they tend to trend right away. It's still like that, and you put them up. You put them up, and you put them on the side.

[46:33]

And you work better when you're going to sleep. The Buddha, for a while, didn't give his students any precepts. And then, as I mentioned the other day, people found out that precepts are useful, because then after the teacher's gone, sometimes it's good to have some precepts. So they did have precepts, and also the group was so big that not everybody could walk nearby the Buddha and sort of get the idea. And even if you're walking with the Buddha, a teacher, and you sort of think, this is nice. I'm getting good at walking through pain in various climates. This is nice to have somebody to walk with. Sometimes even the teacher will do something which you kind of wonder about if it's so skillful that can happen. And you say, well, what did you do that for?

[47:35]

Sometimes the teacher says, oh, thanks, I slipped. And sometimes the teacher explains and you say, oh, I see that. Okay. In other words, you have a precept in your mind that doesn't look like the teacher's following it. And you talk it over and you find out, you know, in that way. Usually when you find a teacher that you like, they're a little bit going along with what you think is right. Oh yeah, you're a good teacher because you're doing what I think is right. Okay. And then because of that, then they say something really weird, and you're kind of like, whoa. And then a little while later, you say, oh, yeah. And then you kind of say, oh, that could be so. I never thought of that, but yeah, I guess maybe that isn't so stupid. And then you start developing confidence that maybe you can learn something here. But again, the same thing that applies to the precepts would apply, I think, to the teacher, that you shouldn't cling to the teacher. Otherwise... You can't turn.

[48:38]

You should be able to walk while you're walking. And even trade places. Can I be the teacher for a while? Or would you please be the teacher for a while? And there are stories like that where the Buddha had a student be the teacher and he was lying down listening to the teaching. So the teacher hasn't mentioned any precepts, then the teacher is the precept. So the same thing would apply, though. Don't hold on to the teacher. The teacher is wonderful, but don't hold on to it. The teacher emerges from enlightenment, but don't hold on to what emerges from enlightenment, and don't hold on to enlightenment. That's the main precept in all schools. Don't hold on to anything because actually that's the way things are, is that they're not supposed to be held on to, they're supposed to be interacted with. And not supposed to be, but in fact you don't hold on to anything And you do interact with everything. So that's the main precept in a way. If you're not grasping, you're not going to steal.

[49:44]

None of the precepts will be violated if you are interacting without holding. And then again, after you hang out with the teacher for a while, then it might be useful to have some other precepts. And as you know, there's quite a few Zen stories where students come and they say, give me some precepts. Give me some teachings. And the teacher says, would you put the room handle up? Or, I have a headache. Would you clean the toilets? Or, this is not a good place for you. Go away. And maybe... And sometimes a student comes and doesn't seem to be asking for... I have a precept for you. The main thing they're trying to teach is enlightenment.

[50:48]

It's leaping and turning together. Okay? I think Lynn was next and then Amy. Okay. Just from the idea of holding on to something and the leaping and turning, what you've been saying, I just see a dance. It's like the metaphor of the dance. All of it is dance with your teacher, you dance with the precepts, you dance with Zazen. You are interacting with it, but you're not clinging to it. Right. And somebody said to me this morning, I can't really recapture... what the person said, but it was something about the way this person put it was that by various and observation, you are... Before I get into the story, I just want to say, yes, it is a dance, but the dance can evolve.

[51:56]

Now I can say that This person said that by interacting with the person, the subject, interacting with the world, and then maybe because of some blockage in the interaction or some understanding of the nature of the world that's being interacted with, conflict arises, which leads to a more accurate dealing with a bigger part of the world or a more comprehensive world, which then promotes a better understanding. Until finally you're interacting with the truth. Does that make sense? Like if you're interacting with part of the world, then because that's only part, there's some stress that starts to develop in the system, which forces you to interact with more of the world.

[52:58]

I think there's truth in that way of But another way to put it is you're always interacting with the whole world. It's just that your view is limited. So then the world pressures you to open your view. But you're always interacting with the world. And the way you interact is your current dance you're doing. But your dance can be somewhat blocked. or the light of your dance can be somewhat blocked. And as you continue to dance with the world, as your dance becomes, as you more and more fully engage with the world, I shouldn't say the truth, the world, I mean, the more you engage with the truth, which is actually the truth of the way you're engaging with the world, the more your engagement becomes more and more thorough. the more accurately you understand what's always surrounding us and being us and the way we're relating with what we're surrounded by.

[54:07]

So it is a dance, but it's also a dance when we're totally deluded, it's a dance too. So we're interacting with the world, And the way we're interacting, we're saying that we're interacting with a conceptual mediation which is false. That's the lowest level of interaction with the world, is that we're interacting with . And one of us or both of us is, one of us or both of us, now the both of us means me and the world, the world supporting me to imagine the world, to have an imaginary version of the world, an imaginary version of it, and the world supports me to believe my imaginary version of it. And I support the world to support me to misunderstand it.

[55:13]

And it supports me to suffer because I misunderstand it. That's the kind of lowest level of where I actually think my idea of my partner is my partner. And also I think my partner has a kind of essence that I can grasp. So the lowest level of dance is that I have an idea that I can grasp my partner and I believe that. So then I have problems in my dancing. When the stress puts pressure on me, to basically get over my invalid, non-valid conception or cognition, or I should say my non-valid dance, actually, which is a dance of interacting with the world through my false idea of it. And there's pressure to drop that false idea. And for the interaction to still maybe involve producing false ideas, but not... And then the dance evolves and becomes more and more valid.

[56:25]

In other words, more and more in accord perfectly with the way we're really interacting. And then the stress is And then also you can include others in that way of participating. So it is a dance, but there's different levels of dance. It's always a dance, but the dance can evolve. Dancers have really a hard time often in dance class, if there's really you know, if you're with Balanchine or somebody like that. Yes? I just wanted to say something yesterday, because after I said something yesterday, and KP initiated it, coming back to his epistemology, ontology, phenomenology thing, which I have no idea what those words mean.

[57:32]

I think probably a fair number of people in here don't. And so it was sort of like, if there would be a priest invoked i would have thought gee it seems funny road keeps allowing this conversation that half of us don't understand to happen i'm not explaining it but i think at one point you had sort of explained what those words meant a little bit but it's just so much not my usual thing that's I raised my hand and get this explained to me. Yes. Yes. My level of understanding was so low and his question seemed so alive for him. I thought for me to understand this, which is kill the whole question, would that have been a complaint to me? Sometimes, not just once. So I just figured it's fine. I don't understand it. I'll just not understand it. Ben, you all had your conversation about it. And then at the end, he said something like, so epistemology, ontology, phenomenology?

[58:37]

And he said, yes. And he said, oh. And so I felt like by letting all that happen, I got to feel like I had given a gift by not killing it. And then he gave his gift to me of showing his light bulb. Oh, yeah. And it was just like, wow. Exactly. I totally didn't understand the whole conversation. I understood the light bulb. What did you say? You might as well include Numenon while you're at it. The Numenol truck. Yeah, before you said that you realized that you gave a gift, very generous of you to postpone your course in basic philosophical terms. until that interaction might reach its completion. And because you sponsored it... Because sometimes people do have children, right?

[59:44]

And their children get into stuff which they have no idea what they're doing. Wholesome things too, sometimes. Like you might have a son who plays some sport that you have no interest in and don't understand anything about, but you drive him. And this wonderful thing happens for him in that sport, and you see this wonderful thing happen for him, and you have no idea what's so great about it for him, but you can tell he's happy. And you don't know anything about what he's doing, but that's all you care about. So you listen to people talking about philosophy, but because you support it, because you could interrupt it, because you have rights here. You didn't, and you let them realize that, but then you really understand what it's all about. That's what it's all about. Helping him be happy. That's what we're talking about.

[60:45]

So you had the short course, but you just didn't learn the words. However, in some ways that's what Zen is. It's like the short course to happiness. But then after you're happy, then you have to go to school. And you have to learn about ontology, epistemology, phenomenology, and numerology. Really? Yeah, really. Really. Otherwise, unless it's somebody else who's going to help KP, That's only if you want to be a Buddha. If you're an arhat, just be happy. You don't have to worry about teaching everybody everything. But Buddhas have to teach everybody everything. So we have this vow. Dharma gates are boundless. Enter them. Or learn them. We say enter, but really the character says, the Chinese character, means to learn or to awaken to.

[61:50]

So the bodhisattva is going to learn everything that's necessary. But in this case, you know, maybe what you knew was sufficient. And there are stories about... Yeah, I think it's... I think it's a story of Bajang again. And I think his student was... I think it was his student, Shitong, which means West Hall. After Shitong finished his training and was a happy camper, Bajang said, you know, now go to Buddhist college, epistemology and ontology, or learn about why we don't have ontology. Learn about ontology and then learn about why we don't have it. and learn about why it's not so good for us in terms of helping people.

[62:54]

But you have to know enough about it to know how it's not appropriate. And he says, why? I can say it this way. I'm a master now. You told me I was. Why do I have to go to school? He said, so you can help people. Because some people, it helps them to tell about the Eightfold Path and give them precepts. So in terms of the whole equipment, all the different kinds of... on your path to Buddhahood, you have to learn all this stuff. But you have to learn today. And also, even if you did want to learn about epistemology and phenomenology and ontology, even if you did want to, and you were kind of considering maybe a short course in it, you still might postpone it to take your daughter to baseball practice because she's asking you to. And you might feel not so good if you said, I don't want to take you, I'm studying epistemology here.

[63:56]

So, but even when you are happy, then still you, it might be good to learn basically everything. Like you've learned cooking somewhat, haven't you? Yeah. So there's infinite skills and we vow to learn them all. Okay? Like, I have limits, right? I haven't really learned Sanskrit, and Tibetan, and Chinese, and Japanese, and Korean, and French, and Italian, and Russian. I haven't learned those languages very well. I want to, but I haven't been able to yet. But my like, yeah, no problem. I'll learn all that stuff if it helps people. And of course, it would help people. If I go to China, it helps Chinese people if I would speak Chinese. then we can talk in Chinese rather than be translated. If I go to South America, it's nice if I speak English, but it's nice if I can speak Spanish too. It's good.

[65:01]

All these things are potentially wonderful Dharma vehicles. So your heart wants, bodhisattva heart wants to learn them all if it would help people. But, you know, right now maybe it's better to even put aside your learning to help somebody else learn. James? Some things are just intuitive. Yeah, that's right. We hear and we understand immediately that the is more important than . No question. Yeah, sometimes we do. Anybody knows . Yeah. And also, no. Yeah. Yes, Don.

[66:25]

When I was a child, I was not like you. That's what I thought. Of course. You didn't want to say, oh, mom, you're a lousy cook. I just don't know what the food was. Right. And she'd always say the same thing. Your appetite will come as you eat. And when we're talking about precepts and enlightenment, I think Zazen gives you the appetite for precepts. You tend to say, if I live the precepts, I will achieve enlightenment. No, so if I, nonetheless, you know, if I don't have a hunger, and yet I act as though I do, and I think that has that flavor that they inform each other.

[67:46]

Yeah. In appetite and eating. I think that's helpful. Another thing that came to my mind when you were saying that was, Suzuki Roshi said that Zazen, I don't know if he said great, but he might have. But anyway, he says Zazen is a tenderizer. Tenderizes us. I think when you become more tender, you kind of more see the precepts. You just see them. You see the little moments that you miss. You go, oh, I'm going to pay more attention to that. That's what makes us insensitive. As we sit day after day, people become more sensitive and soft. What does the BS in the circle mean?

[69:10]

BS? BS Bodhisattva. The other precepts are also BS. I mean, we're meeting, we say that a verse and one of the lines, I think I think it's not enough for a measurable mind. It is. I practice equal love for all beings. Yes. And when I say that, I'm sort of saying to myself, well, I'd like to, but I don't really. Yes. And it's easy to practice being in the abstract, but faced with somebody who's not being nice to me. Yes.

[70:10]

But something that you said this week made me look at it a little bit differently, and I just wanted to check and see if I... Do you think that the question's being picked up? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, that's fine. I also would answer my question. Oh, sure. I don't know. Here he was trying to do very quick notes, very politely. Well, that was supposed to do really good. I was wondering if what you said about things being, like if a person wants to feel loved and they want somebody to like them, they are loved.

[71:41]

They're loved. They're loved. He's good that I don't love him. I think it's good that I don't like that. But I love him. If I loved him less, I just wouldn't throw rocks at the house. Even though it's the house I live in. I mean, I do. I think about some stranger kids in the box. Because my love for them is so clear, I feel like, oh, I'm getting a gift or something. I don't like that. Now, I might do it to leave a gift, but I hope I do it not just to check my house, but a gift. And I wouldn't like a neighbor kid that's a lot.

[72:43]

So I won't like my grandson all the time. But I love him all the time. He doesn't like me all the time. So we like each other and dislike each other. We always love each other. Love us. It's totally appropriate and important. Wanting to love people is also totally important. I don't want people to like me and be cruel. I want you to be uncomfortable. Irritated. Painful. I don't want you to love me and be cruel. If you love me and I'm cruel, then you'll come over to me. I love you, but I want you to stop.

[73:45]

Even if you're very good at it, say thank you. You love me enough to go ahead and stop. You're damaging yourself. You're telling me so much. You're telling me you're not like me. I'm always torn between wanting to hear what you say and wanting to say, stop interrupting me. But I was wondering if I could, when I say that, so if I say I practice equal love for all beings, I feel like a hypocrite because I don't. You practice equal love for all beings. In other words, you're learning to love all beings equally. You want to learn it. You're not saying you have learned it. You're in a learning phase. You're a student of this practice. You want to learn it.

[74:50]

But you haven't quite accomplished that amazing practice yet. But you still want to. It's like this precept. I didn't ask Lynn if she was going to actually accomplish practicing them, and you say you're going to keep observing them, trying to learn them, you say yes. If I said to her, you promised never to break them, are you never going to break them? She might have said, well, I should. I want to. So I want to love all beings equally. I want to learn how to be around them. I haven't yet, but I'm going to continue trying to learn them. I aspire to this amazing accomplishment, and I don't, excuse me, I'm arrogant even to aspire to it, but something about me wants to be that way, and something about me doesn't want to be that way, and so I have to come.

[76:08]

loving all the people that I have seen as a mission. I'm working and trying to learn. I do have some good news, though, and that, well, actually, that might have been a good news, too, but the good news is that I don't know if you may have heard the good news, maybe better news, but it's less good than it used to be. I'm a little bit better. I'm a little bit more mindful. A little. A little bit. But I was wondering if... A couple of years. I don't know. It's probably always been in my mind to some extent, but not in the front of my mind. But I was wondering also if it's my delusion of being separate from everyone else that I'm not loving everyone equally, that actually the reality is that everyone is being loved equally.

[77:29]

That's right. Actually, you are loving everyone equally. But because of some delusion of separation, seeing that separation obscures your vision. doing these amazing and great things you want to realize. You're actually already doing it if you want to realize it. You're actually doing this already if you want to realize it. good circulation the object of my affection can change my complexion from the red boopity boop

[78:42]

Dave? It's kind of like the corner over there. It's all these other things that are straight from enlightenment. So I'm wondering, How do I attain enlightenment? It seems like it's all like, as you mentioned, and some people are saying, no way, this seems kind of backward. Because, you know, well, like, how can I do these things? I mean, you know, I've got to do these other things to attain enlightenment. In other words, I've got to start somewhere. Where do I start? So the place you actually start, the place you first attain enlightenment is when you meet a master.

[80:11]

That's when you attain enlightenment, when you meet a master. However, in order to be a master, most people have to warm up quite a bit. So these people who met the Buddha in those stories, in all those stories, the Buddha warmed up. So they actually could meet the Buddha. And when he talked to them, they could hear. So when they talked to him, in a short period of time, they woke up. They did all this wonderful practice. But part of this tradition is to say that you actually, you first wake up in an interpersonal meeting with the Buddha. So with them, it was just, it was shocking because they were so ready. Exactly. He's, But there's other people who the Buddha knew for a long time who never kind of got the... could never hear. I mean, could never hear him. I mean, they were listening to him talk, but they didn't hear the meaning of what he was saying.

[81:17]

And they, like, severely didn't get it. Even his closest disciple did not understand after spending, I think, Twenty-five years as his attendant nanda. It's great to sight-watch. And right by the Buddha all the time, and actually had this amazing mind, he could remember everything the Buddha told him. He didn't have tape recorders, no problem. He looked at the Buddha all the time, he was Buddha's cousin. He was with him for 25 years, and before that he was with the Buddha quite a bit too. When the Buddha died, he still had not heard the Dharma. He still, even though he met the Buddha daily, the meeting was not the kind of meeting where he could hear the Dharma. Another disciple, some of them met the Buddha,

[82:21]

we're able to hear it, and some of it we see very rapidly. Nanda eventually did hear the Dhamma, but he heard from a true and interactive face-to-face meeting with one of Buddha's invited disciples. So he did eventually have a way. And so that's... I put it on the corner, but actually... It's over here. It's right in the middle of that self-propelling samadhi is when we enter it. Realize in a face-to-face meeting how to enter it. I'm here talking away. I want to enter that. At what point does that inner action precipitate entry into that samadhi, into that light? upset by Buddha, and yet somehow, if you don't have Shakyamuni Buddha around, somehow you can meet the Buddha anyway.

[83:30]

So when you realize you need Buddha, that's the kind of situation in which you can meet Buddha. And one of the stories I told you, the guy was talking to something, a two-man talking, and suddenly the guy realizes it's Buddha. He didn't get it before. He was Buddha, but he didn't get it. Now we have to be talking to somebody and realize, not that person's talking, but that Buddha's in the room with us. When you wake up, you realize Buddha's in the room. It's not exactly the person you're talking to, but it's also not that person, because Buddha's in the room with all of us. When we see that, we've ended, we've ended that. And we, we have to be warm, we haven't put opening warm. So in Buddhist tradition, right here, people don't think right here, just by themselves, again, to meeting with the Buddha.

[84:52]

And the Buddha got right here to meeting with the Buddha. The Buddha right here before the past lives. He got to meeting with the Buddha's pensions. Yes. This never brings into a question that I'm thinking about. How important or necessary do you think it is to, you know, a student of spirituality to have a personal relationship with a teacher? How important? Yeah. It's important. I mean, it's hard to be. It's hard. It's like, If you're studying, you need to have a relationship with yourself. You need to pay attention to what you're doing. So you need, as someone said to me this morning, you need intrapsychic study. You need interpersonal study.

[85:54]

Part of your interpersonal field, in the interpersonal field, Buddha's out there. And you need to get in touch with that. And one of the ways to get in touch with it, to warm up to it, is by having a relationship with a person. And while you practice opening to that person, almost as though you were opening to the Buddha. It's not really... There aren't any human Buddhas... I think it's not possible to have a human Buddha anymore. Because even enlightened people on the planet today are not Buddhas because we already had a Buddha. So, like, if the Dalai Lama is a person, he's still not the Buddha, he's a disciple of Buddha. Shakyamuni Buddha is the only Buddha, really, in the last 2,500 years. And until his teaching is totally, like, annihilated, it's in the world and everybody else is his disciple.

[86:57]

But to open our Buddhas right now, it's just that we can't see them. They're all over the universe. And we need to meet them. And they're all over the universe and they're right in our face right now, but we can't see them. So we need a person to experiment with opening to the person, a human. as though you were opening to the Buddha. Open your heart to somebody like you would if you were opening to the greatest teacher that there is. And if you try to open to a person, well, of course, that's complicated because people aren't as perfect as the Buddha. So you have to work with them, I think, in order to see if your heart's open, if your mind's open. Otherwise you might intra-psychically think, hey, I'm open to Buddha. I'm open to somebody to teach me the Dharma. So then you hear the Buddha's teachings.

[88:02]

Because the words there are not the Buddha's teaching. But when you're looking at the words that the Buddha said, as you concentrate on them, your mind could open that's coming to you from the Buddha. It's possible. But without a person there, you might really not open up that much. Because, you know, the book doesn't necessarily challenge you, or the book doesn't necessarily have shortcomings, although it could. So anyway, as far as I know, in this tradition, The Buddha said he had teachers. And I don't know of any of his disciples for this last 25 centuries who has said that they, his disciples, all have said that they had teachers.

[89:10]

Through which, or together with which, they opened to the Buddha's teaching. So at some point in the process, having a student-teacher relationship is something that all the ancestors had and went through. Now there is this thing called a pratyeka buddha. Pratyeka means, it is related to the word for, which means pratyaya, which means condition, which means they're enlightened by conditions, so they they live in the time, you know, they live after the Buddha, but they don't seem to have met and yet they seem to have come to understanding equal to the arhats. So there's that possibility that you wouldn't actually meet face to face with a teacher and yet... Because of certain conditions, and one of them being that you met a teacher in a previous life, somehow you hear the Dharma and you attain enlightenment.

[90:18]

So there's that kind of projection. It's the same as Shakyamuni Buddha, though, because Shakyamuni Buddha has already hogged the Buddha thing. So somebody couldn't necessarily... Well, like, if you look at this chart over here, you know, giving and precepts. In Buddhist countries, they teach children to give. They teach children precepts. And then sometimes the children start meditating, practicing concentration. So if you look at the... That goes on right now in Buddhist countries and also in America now. Children are taught to be generous. Children are taught precepts. And some children are taught how to do various kinds of practices.

[91:21]

So that's been going on. And you see the stories of the Buddha. People did those practices. And then when they met the Buddha, they could understand. So those practices are good warm-ups. It's just that they're not particularly Buddhist practices. They don't have to be Buddhist. But they are good things for human beings to do. To be generous is a way to access enlightenment. It's a warm-up for enlightenment. And really, as you warm up through practicing giving, actually enter into the reality of giving, that's enlightenment. So you can do spiritual practices or warm-ups like that. But in order to actually enter into right view, that we need to meet. Then we need a teacher. And we need a teacher to verify, to experience that we've never been doing all those practices which we were doing by ourselves.

[92:33]

But you can practice concentration by yourself and it's still somewhat good. You can practice being careful and think you're doing it by yourself. It's still wholesome. But you need to meet a person, I think, in order to really understand that you've never been doing any of those practices by yourself that you thought you were doing by yourself. You can't realize wisdom by yourself. You can't do anything by yourself. But if you're doing something and you think you're doing it by yourself, then you're deluded about what you're doing. And you can be deluded about what you're doing. That's okay. You've got drawbacks, but obviously people can be deluded. And the basic delusion is, I'm separate from you and I can do something by myself. But in order to get over that delusion, I think I need to meet somebody else. and realize, oh, I'm meeting this person, and I'm not meeting them by myself.

[93:39]

That person needs to be there maybe to say to me, you said that, but you still think that way. You don't really understand that yet. And open to that and face that. Even when you're meeting someone, you think you're doing it by yourself. Even when you're dancing with someone, you think you're doing it by yourself. The delusion is extremely powerful. No matter how close we get to people, we can still feel separate. As a matter of fact, the closer we get, sometimes the more we become aware that we're separate, which again is a reason to get close to somebody, especially somebody who wants you and wants him or her over this delusion. So we need this face-to-face meeting to get over our sense of separation, to get over our sense of individual self. Otherwise, we can just think, oh, I'm over it. I'm over it. And don't tell anybody that.

[94:44]

But if you tell somebody, they say, oh, really? Whew. And then you can let that go, or you can say, well, what did you mean by that? And they say, well, you wouldn't want to know. I think you're right, I don't want to know. Well, maybe I do want to know. What did you mean by that? And as you start to inquire in this way, you're starting to develop a relationship that's going to test your understanding that you are not caught by your delusions. And so who are you going to do that with? You do it with a teacher, or what are you going to do it with? But I'll do it with you. We can be friends, okay? And the person says, okay, fine, I don't want to be your teacher, but if you want to talk about whether you really have realized non-separation, whether you're really over your ideas of individual self, if you want to talk to me about that, I'll do that as a friend with you.

[95:58]

Fine, I'll talk to you. And you talk to them, you talk to them, and when you finally understand, you realize you're talking to the Buddha. Yeah. Oh, my God. Buddha was here the whole time. Wow, I'm sorry. Or you could think you got Buddha there in the first place. Like, when Buddha was there, people said, oh, yeah, it's the Buddha. Didn't really realize who the Buddha actually was until they talked to the Buddha for a long time. And suddenly they woke up to the actual Buddha. Oh, my God. Okay. Yes. No, you're scratching your head? Scratching your head. Yes. Yeah, that's a good example.

[96:59]

No, he was warmed up, actually. So, Agulimala, it turns out, and this is another interesting twist of how things work, he was actually quite well warmed up. You know, he had practiced giving, precepts, and concentration quite a bit. Definitely, I don't know, I'm not... I don't know the details of his concentration practice, but he definitely practiced generosity and precepts quite a bit. He was a very good student of some kind of teacher, I think spiritual teacher of some kind. Excellent student, and he had warmed up quite a bit. And then a certain old twist came into the situation, which was that this teacher's wife, Agulimala, and also because he was so warmed up, he was like a really lovely person, you know? A lot of positive energy.

[98:05]

And so the wife of this teacher If anybody knows the story, I'm getting it wrong. Let me know. The wife of this teacher saw this beautiful student of her husband and was attracted to him and kind of like tried to be close to him in a way that he felt wasn't appropriate, I guess. And she was really hurt by that. He wouldn't be close to her the way she wanted to be. And so she told her husband... I think something, I made a pass at me or this guy, your student, yeah, made a pass at me or raped me or something. And then this spiritual teacher who wasn't a Buddha put a little zaparoo on Agulimala and drove him nuts. Or he told him, your spiritual assignment is to kill a thousand people. And he just went crazy with that instruction, lost his mind in a sense, and went around killing people.

[99:15]

When the Buddha saw him, he not only wanted to protect but to kill. But he also saw, oh, the Buddha could see, this guy has some background, some warm up. Before he went cuckoo, he had a warm up thing. So I can snap him out of this. And he did. So he actually was warmed up with this terrible twist.

[99:39]

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