Sometimes they just imitate. Isn't that part of taking on a form or imitating a parental form? They sometimes do imitate it, but I never heard of a kid who actually learned to brush their teeth by imitation so far. And I never heard of a kid who learned to use the toilet by imitation so far. I never heard of such a thing. Now, maybe it's just because the parents aren't hurt. And if you left the diapers on your kid for many years, maybe they would eventually start imitating you, like not pooping in their pants. At some age, they might do it, like 17 years old or something. But you say, I'm going to start holding it. But we don't wait. I think there's so much trouble to come up with. We're in a hurry to get into that phase. So maybe they would do it by any chance. But I never heard of it. I wasn't specifically thinking of toilet training. Part of the value of toilet training is that we use the word training.

[01:04]

And watch the way kids do it. At a certain phase, And at certain days, what do you do? You say to them, do you have to go to the toilet? They're still wearing diapers. They're still wearing diapers. And you say, do you need to go to the toilet? And they say, no. And you say, why don't you just go to the toilet? And they go, and nothing happens. And they say, see? And then you ask them again, do you have to go? And you say, no. You take him to the toilet. You put him down. Say, try. And you try, and something comes. Or what they also do with kids, it might do a lot when you have like a daycare. All the kids just go sit on the toilet. You ask the group, does anybody have to go to the toilet? They all say, no. And go sit down. And 30% go. But they all sit there together. How are you doing? Fine. Anything coming out there?

[02:05]

No. How about you? Yeah, I'm good. Some stuff's coming out. And they just get this thing of, like, they go there, they sit down and they feel something, and then they notice something happens. They go there, they sit down, they don't feel something, and something doesn't happen. They go there, they sit down, they feel something, and something happens. They associate these tactile sensations with, like, They learn that, but we have to take them over there for them to learn the association, usually. Otherwise, the connection between sphincter muscles and bladder and colon information, they seem to need help. And they don't want to do it, usually. I don't want to go please, just go sit there. I don't want to. Please go sit there. Okay, and sit there. You know? And then they go, that kind of, they kind of, yeah, that kind of looks good now.

[03:07]

And then, of course, the parents go, it's working. So they get trained to do that, and it's intimate. And then, a little bit later, they tell you You don't say, you have to go. They say, I have to go. I have to go. And now they want to go there. They've gotten into how convenient that is because they don't like to wear diapers. They don't like it either. Once they start wearing them, they don't want to put them back on because they're a hassle. They cry when you put them on, right? A lot of them. They like to get over that. They like to be big boys and girls and not wear that stuff. So they say, I have to go. And then sometimes they say, will you come with me? Even after they can do that, they still need help with the wiping. So that's kind of a manual activity to clean in a way that really works. It gets most of it off. So they come and they ask you, they say, would you come with me and would you wipe?

[04:08]

They ask you to do it. It's very intimate, and it's lots of communication. Do you want to go? No. So I'm just saying they might be able to learn without that. But the point, in some ways, most parents do not feel that they're doing this as an act of intimacy. They're mostly doing it to get over cleaning their diapers. If the kids watched the diapers, parents probably would be fine with it. Not if they have prints on them. Not if they have prints on them. But anyway. Whether they like it or not, it is a big intimacy thing. And brushing teeth is, and bathing, all these hygienic practices they learn. My experience is that my wife grew up in a family where she got a lot of hygienic training.

[05:09]

Heidi trained that way. And she trained our daughter. And our daughter is very diligent and rigorous about hygiene. And now she's training her little boy. Some other people I know were not trained. They did not have parents who had them. They did not get the training. And they are not diligent about it. And they are not very identical. And they don't teach their kids, because they didn't get trained. And it's not such a bad thing that they're not so hygienic. But my experience is that most of the people I know who are non-obsessively hygienic, actually, are people who just got trained. But the point for me is not so much that some people are more hygienic than others. The point for me is we need forms to be hygienic.

[06:15]

And you could, all by yourself, learn how to be hygienic. You could watch a movie and see it in a movie and say, that looked really cool. My mom didn't do that, but that's pretty neat. My mother didn't teach me how to use utensils. She didn't teach me how to set the table. My aunt did. I went to see my aunt one time, and she noticed I didn't know actually where to put the fork and the spoon and knife. I didn't know how to use a spoon and fork, but the way I used it was just somewhat barbaric. She taught me a special way to hold it. My mother didn't, even though she was her sister. And so I learned that. It's not so much, again, that one way is better than the other, from my point of view, but just that the forms offer an opportunity to be intimate with the person who's training you. Or if you're peers, with your peers. That's the point I'm making. And to make everything that way is grandmother-mother.

[07:17]

And it's not just that you have forms to do things a certain way, but you have forms to be intimate with people. And that there's nothing more to Buddhism than that, actually. There's not something in addition to doing these forms together. But again, these forms are every single thing you do. In other words, there's nothing more to Buddhism than your life. There's not an additional Buddhism to everything you do. Buddhism is the activity. of the Buddhas. And the Buddhas are like being Buddhists, being Buddha, being Buddha, breathing Buddha, smiling Buddha, crying Buddha, yelling Buddha, sleeping Buddha, walking Buddha, sitting Buddha, talking Buddha. In other words, the Buddha doing everything that a human does, but everything is a Buddha doing. And we are learning to be Buddhas, so we make everything in order to manifest Buddha.

[08:18]

And the more forms, the more ways that we can remember to do that, the more we turn our activities into forms. And again, to do it with other people means that you tell people, and then the people remember with you that you agreed to make these forms. And the people also say, I'd like to do this form with you. And you agree. And then that becomes another form that you agreed upon. So then you can help each other remember So you're not just dreaming, oh yeah, I'm making everything good. You agree on certain points, and if you don't do them that way, people say, wait a second, didn't we, didn't we, you didn't talk to me about that. Oh. So you forgot. Well, that's okay. Confess and repent. You forgot. It's okay. Yeah? I was wondering, what's the... the resistance to the child lying to be toilet trained. Or I'm thinking even the first time someone showed me how to do prostration, that initial resistance.

[09:22]

It's just embarrassment? There's a problem with the child. I think children do not necessarily associate pooping in their pants with toilet brush, with bed brush. They would just as soon just let it go. It's much easier that way. They don't want to hold it and get into learning about their sphincter muscles and all that. They're not that interested in that. They're interested in food, running around. You know, sucking on mama, getting mama's attention, playing with the other kids. They're not interested necessarily, very often, in going to the bathroom. So when you bring this up, it's not their agenda. They don't want to get into that. And also, they don't like you to take off the diaper or put the diaper on. They probably like it off better than on. But they don't want to go through this process, because they also know then you're going to put another diaper on. If you go to the toilet and take the diaper off, empty into that thing forever.

[10:25]

It's much more convenient for them. So I think it's just not on their agenda. Sometimes, once in a while, they might like it. But not very often do kids say, would you change my diaper? I never heard of that. And then they lie down and say, oh, this is so nice. Oh, now they're taking off their wiping my butt to clean it. They don't seem to like it that much. And some kids really hate it. My little brother just tore my legs. The legs were going all over the place. It was horrible. And then some people, and also they're more or less upset with different people. Some people are more skillful, quicker. Some people are more intimate. Huh? More intimate. Yeah, some people are more intimate. It's easier. But a stranger doing it, anyway, I think they don't like it because it just doesn't fit in with their impulses, with their animal agendas. That's the thing about children. So you have to... Be gentle and loving to get them to go along with this, and that's part of it too. When it comes to frustrations, if you have resistance to them, I would suggest to you, basically, when it comes to these things that you resist, I would suggest to you that you just express the resistance and maybe don't do them.

[11:41]

You don't have to do... I'm talking about stuff that you kind of like get to be bilateral about. So I would encourage you, and I would encourage you to stay with children if you try to dip them in on it a little bit. That's what I'm doing with my grandson. I'm trying to set up forms with him. But I'm going to set up forms bilaterally with him. I don't need him to stop kicking me and biting me. I can get away from him still. I can defend myself against a little guy. Actually, if I had my choice of whether to see him and have him kicking me or not see him at all, I would choose seeing him and kicking me. Just to have any contact with him is better than none, generally. But still, when he's with me, for his sake and for our relationship and for intimacy, I would like to work on this with him. But I want to not just try to control him and stop hitting me, which I really don't need. I would like him to be in on this thing together.

[12:43]

So we do this together. We learn this thing together. And just that conversation I told you about, it's changed some things. Even though we didn't really come to a conclusion about what would happen if after I told him to not hit me and he kept doing it, what I would do. He did have that conversation. He's been a little bit less violent with me. But it's not, again, my point is not to get him to stop doing that. My point is I didn't know anything. So if I was practicing with you, and you had resistance to bowing, I would like you to tell me. And I would say to your brother, don't tell me. Don't do it. You don't have to bow. But I might say, is there anything you would like to do? And you might tell me. I'd say, OK, do you want to do that? He'd say, yes. Do you want to commit to do it? I'd say, yeah. And then when you resist, then I'd say, well, what's going on?

[13:45]

Because you said you wanted to do it. But if you really don't want to do something, the way I'm practicing anyway, I'm not up for getting people to do forms that they don't want to do. So when we have training sessions like the Tatsuhara we have, or Green Gulf, we have practice periods that are pretty long. One month, two months, three months. I ask people before they come in, do you see the schedule here? Do you see this program? Do you have some idea what that would be like? And they say, do you want to do this? And sometimes they say, I'm willing to. And I say, do you want to? And they say, well, no, but I'm willing to. I say, well, come back when you want to. I don't want them to be doing me a favor of doing this thing. They're doing it because I asked them to. And then it gets into, it's mandatory. But once you sign up to the thing that you want to do, then resistance comes up. But then you know what it's about. It's about you don't want to do something you want to do.

[14:49]

So when I travel around like here, I hear from a lot of people about that they want to practice meditation, but they don't. How can I? I want to practice meditation, but I notice I don't. So how can we structure the situation so that you can do the thing you want to do, but that you resist because of various factors in your life, which we could call, I don't know, what? Karmic obstructions? Karmic obstructions to what? Karmic obstructions to what? Intimacy. Intimacy. Even when we're in a training session like this, The bell rings for the event, and we're reading something, or cutting our toenails, or taking a nap. And we just don't want to meet that bell. Because of karmic hindrances, we don't just go .

[15:52]

Do it. No. It's kind of like, I'm going to keep doing this a little longer. So again, when you make an agreement with somebody to do something and it's time to do it, you don't want to actually face that fact. It's time to do it, and you agreed to do it. You don't want to deal with that. But it isn't really that you don't want to do it. It's just that you're a little bit stuck in place in a distraction. If you were totally present, If you're totally present and totally intimate with what you're doing, you're totally intimate writing your letter and the bell rings and you're totally intimate, you stop, I bet, halfway through the letter. That bell, you know, boom, the bell rang. Wow. But if you're writing as a distraction from being with yourself, you know, it's your break time or something,

[16:56]

and you're doing something to distract yourself from being alone and having nothing to do, and you're not getting paid for it, and you're not getting stronger, smarter, more beautiful. You're just there. And you're not distracting yourself. When the bell rings, you probably think, oh good, now I can do something. I can get away from here. When you're intimate, you respond fast, with no resistance. But that's a training experience that a lot of times we do resist. So in the middle of bowing, you could have nine bows, and four you can resist, and five you do not resist. Four you can kind of go, OK, I'm ready right here. And the other five, what time is it? They have a lot of bows around here. Can we go to nine? That's why you need to, at a bilateral, you need to sign up for this stuff.

[18:01]

Not do it because somebody tells you to, or because somebody's a teacher and they say, we're doing this. You should sign up for it. Then your resistance is illuminated. Then you know. It's not just because you don't want to do it. It's because you don't want to do it. And when you do it, you can also tell that even when you do it, you can tell that the resistance, even while you're doing it, that resistance is you don't want to be there. You want to accomplish something in this life. You want to get something out of this life. You want to get something out of these bowels. If you do these bowels over and over, you don't get that much out of them. You're just like, yeah, bow, yeah, bow. You say, so I'll be OK. That's it. Didn't get any out of that period. You're not supposed to be getting something out of this. You're supposed to be giving up trying to get something out of it. And just be intimate with yourself and intimate with others without trying to get something from others, or get something from yourself, or get something from .

[19:04]

So the first thing, oh, yeah, I do get a lot from bowing. Bowing is totally more relaxing. My back is more flexible. It's actually kind of a nice exercise, actually. But sometimes it's like, I don't feel that much better after those bows. I'm not looking to do more. It's just about pure mightiness, pure presence. pure, unadulterated Buddha. Not trying to get anything out of this life, but just enjoying life. And you're not any kind of like, can I get something extra out of this moment? That's not the way Buddha is. You know that. I know that. But we're not Buddhists, and I want to get something. So you put yourself in situations where basically you're not going to get anything from the Taoist. These plows, these sitting, you're not going to get anything from them.

[20:07]

The meals are a little different. You seem to be getting something. But even there, because they're formal, you can notice that you resist parts of the meal where you don't get anything. Like the chanting. Why isn't this chanting beforehand? What if the washer dishes right at them? These forms show you when you're resisting intimacy and also support you finding them. But you need to sign up for them. You need to be in a bilateral process of signing up for them. Then you start to notice, hey, I don't want to be here. I don't want to just be in my life. I want to get something out of life. I'm greedy. And that's because I think my life is not mine. I think I'm separate from other people. That's why I want to give something. I want to see people once I get something from them. They're not going to give me something I don't want to see. OK, good. You notice that, and confess that, and repent that.

[21:08]

You don't like that. So anyway, . Get the picture? I have a question about that. So if you're in the Zendo, and let's say you really like almost all of what's going on, but you don't like the vow part, so what you should do is just be mindful and just experience and don't worry about whether you like it or not. Because you're not going to not do it if everyone else is doing it. Then you're kind of rude. Well, actually, I just want to tell you a story about me. When I first went to Zen Center, I went to Zen Center to sit. And they had sitting. And then after the sitting, when I went to Zen Center, they had two periods of sitting in the morning, and I went to the two periods of sitting. They all said walking meditation. I didn't go to Zen Center to do walking meditation. I didn't hear about monks doing walking meditation, but they had walking meditation. And I didn't like that part either, but I did.

[22:12]

Then service came. And I left. I left during service and I went across the street because I lived across from Zen. This is like when Zen Center used to be over in Japantown. I lived in an apartment across from Zen Center and I used to just leave Zen Center at service time and go read Zen books. And then I went to work. I didn't go to service and I wasn't forced to go to service. But then when we have sashins, it's less convenient to leave because you have to go out of the service and then come back for meals. kind of inconvenience. So I stayed for service. But I didn't really want to be there. I did it, but I didn't really want to be there. But I think in some ways, I tell people, you don't have to go to service, but sometimes it really is inconvenient to leave. But again, part of the bi-level thing would be is if you knew that a retreat was coming and you really didn't feel like you wanted to do the bows, you could talk to the teacher and say, I don't want to do that part. And they might let you not do it for a while.

[23:14]

But then if you came back the next retreat and you still didn't want to do it, they might say, well, why don't you just don't come to the retreats anymore if you don't like it. You did enough retreats doing . Why don't you wait until you want to do the whole thing? And you can do sitting, just do sitting, because some people Some people who are Jewish or Italian or Catholic or Protestant, they might not want to do Baals, right? Or Muslim. They might not want to do Baals. But they like sitting. So they can go to Zen Center and just do the sitting part and then leave. But if you wanted to do the service and the service had Baals, then you'd have a little bit of a problem there. But I would be gentle about it, like I was with myself. I didn't force myself to go to service. And I didn't. And then it was so inconvenient to leave, I stayed. And then here I am, Mr. Ritual.

[24:15]

Now I've done gazillion bows since that time. But I really never did get anything out of them. I just wore my knees out. But I learned a lot. from wanting to get something out of them, and feeling bad about not getting anything out of them, and learning what a greedy, deluded person I am, while doing bhāvas. And I could see that the slight difference between the greedy, deluded person and the Buddha was not that big a difference. It's not that big a difference. It's just the difference between, just do the bhāvas, and do the bhāvas to get something out of it, or do the bhāvas to basically get something out of it. But you should sign up for that. And if you don't want to do it, wait until you do. But it is true that in this situation, it's kind of difficult not to. So you have a little bit of a problem there. But part of what helps is to surface your problem with it so I can talk to you and tell you that it's not really about getting anything out of your life.

[25:23]

And here's a good example. So you like the sitting, so then you kind of get something out of it. So I like the part where I get something out of it, but the bowing, I don't get anything, so I don't like that. Maybe the bowing is the most important part for you to do, but still, I wouldn't push you to do it. I'd like you to come to a place where, you know, I'd really like to go and do that thing which I don't get anything out of and face how I feel when I'm doing something where I don't get anything. And notice, see how it feels. And in some ways, you know, I feel more intimate when I'm doing things I don't get anything out of. when I'm doing something, I do get something out of it, because when I get something out of it, I kind of get distracted from what's happening by getting off on what I got out of it. But when you have doubts about things, bring them up like you just did, and then see how you feel afterwards. And then you wind up to be someone who still doesn't like to be bowed, but you're like, you lead people in bowing because... they watch somebody who does something, not trying to get something out of it, rather than watch somebody, which is also OK, watch somebody who loves to bow because they get so happy when they bow.

[26:33]

So it's OK to get happy, but to bow to get happy, then you're not such a good example. But to bow and get nothing out of it, this is really like showing the Buddha way. That guy gets up every morning, that woman gets up every morning and sits and bows and does this practice And she doesn't get anything out of it. And it's so inspiring, because I don't like to do it either. So I go and practice with her. But most people over there just think it's so groovy, and they're just lapping it up. I don't like them so much, because they're really greedy. So different people like different parts of the practice. And the people who like certain parts of the practice, in some ways, are more in danger of being greedy. Does that make some sense? Yes. I'm trying to understand where the role of discipline plays in any of this.

[27:36]

In other words, you create forms. You do it by agreement. Yes. A child, I think one of the reasons a child doesn't like to engage in the form of learning how to use the toilet is because it's a disciplinary action. I don't mean disciplinary in the sense of punishment. I mean it's a discipline and it's a sort of a formality. It's a practice they have to learn how to do. And I think children are often... resistant to any form of... Can I say something? Yeah. You said a number of things I'd like to point out. One is you said it's a... I think you said it's a form they need to learn how to do. Did you hear yourself say that? Yeah. Something like that? Something like that. The word discipline, the root of the word discipline is dociere. Dociere means to learn. A docenture. Docents are teachers. Mm-hmm. Discipline is that which is conducive to learning, dosieri.

[28:41]

Disciple is also related to dosieri, and docile is related to dosieri. Docile, disciple, discipline are all about learning. So discipline, the healthy discipline, is a discipline to promote learning. So these forms are to promote learning. And to some extent, it's to learn to brush your teeth and go to the toilet. But in this case, these forms are to help you to learn intimacy. We're not the primarily interested people learning how to bow. But if you learn how to bow the form and get it fairly precise, then you can use that form to learn what's really important, namely who you are. So that's the point of Buddhist discipline, is to help people learn what Buddha is. But one of the things that can be confusing is why a particular form? In other words, why bowing?

[29:44]

Why not going up and rubbing Buddha's head or something? Well, people do ask that question. And so you could say, when someone asks why, you could be like me and say, I don't answer why questions. I don't. But that's why I say to someone, do you want to sit? I don't say sit and then I say why, because I told you to or try to explain it to them. I say, do you want to? Now, if you practice it for a long time, you will see what there is about this posture that helps you be intimate. In my case, in my case, I saw a picture in a 1954 Life Magazine article on world religions. I saw a picture of a person sitting in Zazen. And I looked at the picture, and I thought, it just looked beautiful.

[30:46]

It was kind of like a picture with the... The picture was taken from his back, and he was looking up over a garden. And just his sort of... triangular shape of his body, and I just thought, what a beautiful thing to see somebody sitting like that. And underneath it said, in deepest thought. And I thought, yeah, when you're in deep thought, your body should look beautiful, I thought. And I was attracted to that. I was also attracted to yoga myself, crossing my legs and stuff like that. So I just naturally was interested in yogic postures when I was a teenager. And then I, in the sitting posture in particular, I thought it was kind of neat. And then I thought it was kind of beautiful. And then I started to do it when I heard about Zen training. And then I found that it was very challenging, more challenging than almost anything I ever did before. Why should it be challenging to just sit still? And so anyway, over the years, I found lots of virtues of the sitting posture.

[31:49]

But we don't want to get into, like, other things aren't good because of that. So we can get into all the benefits of the sitting posture. For example, when you sit, you're very stable. And also when you sit upright like this, your breathing is both stable and your breathing can be quite full. If you lie down, you're stable also, but your breathing isn't so easy because your organs are falling on each other. So you can get into the reasons about... the virtues of the posture. But actually, another point you made was important, is that the practice could be just going and patting Buddha's head. That could be the practice. And that is a practice. People do basically practice walking around Buddha statues in a lot of the Buddhist world. It's a very helpful practice. There's a lot of wisdom in walking around something. So that is a practice. And the practice could also be patting the head. We could all have our own Buddhas, and everybody sits and pats the Buddha head.

[32:54]

Perfectly good practice that we could do together. And then all of us sitting there patting our little Buddha statue on the head, or patting a real Buddha on the head. But it's hard to have several of those in one room. But if we had like, you know, it would be okay. Some Zen teachers teach, the monks come to them, you know. You hear stories of them coming to them. The monk grew up in a Buddhist country. They know about Buddhist statues, they know about meditation halls, they know about bowing, they know about chanting, they know about rituals, they know about scriptures. They go to see the Zen master and they say, would you teach me Zen? And the guy says, yeah. And he says, okay. So teach me. And this guy says, go get me some water. And then the monk goes and gets the water and brings it back. And then the teacher starts making dinner, you know, lunch. Give me some vegetables to make some soup, you know. And they may have done, and the monk says, the new student says, well, when are you going to teach me Zen?

[33:55]

And then various things happen at that point. Like the teacher puts the soup lid in his face, and he wakes up. That's one story. Another one is he says, here, drink this. Drink this. He doesn't even say it. That's Zen. But when a Zen teacher gives you a cup of water, what do you think that is? We think there's some other Zen. That's the point, right? We think, here's a Zen teacher. This person's a Zen teacher, right? They may go like this. Here. You say, well, where's the Zen? We think there's some other Zen besides the Zen teacher, like giving us a glass of water. Or a Zen teacher goes, This boy. This boy. Oh, you're a cutie pie. Where's the zen? Then we go, whack! He said, oh, that's zen, yeah. I heard about that. Boom! Oh, that's zen, right.

[35:01]

Some people say, no, that's not zen. And the teacher says, oh, isn't it? Oh, I'm sorry. What is zen? You tell me. I'll do it. Tell me what Zen is and I'll do it. Because I'm a Zen teacher. I want to do it, so tell me. Well, Zen teacher, you're supposed to say this to me. Okay. What's Buddha? Now that's Zen. You got it. Now you're not even the right child teacher. You know? Right? One time. No, don't go. Okay, a little bit longer. I want to tell you this story. There was a great Zen master named Nanchuan. This is the great Zen master. He's out cutting grass. And a monk comes by and says, where's Nanchuan? And the question could mean, where's the temple, Nanchuan? Because Nanchuan's named after his temple, and the temple's named after Nanchuan. Actually, Nanchuan is named after his temple, which means South Mountain or South Springs.

[36:01]

So here's the Zen master, Nanchuan, cutting grass. And the monk comes and says, where's Nanchuan? And in a sense, he means, where's the master, Nanchuan? Really. And Nanchuan holds up his sickle and says, this cost $30. And the monk said, I didn't ask how much your sickle cost. I asked, where's Nanchuan? And then Nanchuan says, it cost, he said, it's really sharp. Look. So he wants to meet Nanchuan. Nanchuan's there saying, well, here I am. Look at the new thing I just bought. He's showing him. But the monk thinks, well, then where's the Nanchuan? I want to see Nanchuan. Nanchuan's showing him Nanchuan. And another time, one time Suzuki Roshi gave us new old cases, new robes. But they were worn differently. So after the ceremony, we asked the Sukharshi, how do you put on the new robe?

[37:06]

And he walked off. And then we asked Kadagiri Roshi, how do you put on the robe? And he started to explain. But sometimes his English was not so good. I mean, he was kind of confused. He was struggling trying to explain to us how to put the robe on. And then someone said, oh, look. The Sukharshi was putting the robe on. So. These forms could be anything. In Zen, particularly. It could be patting the Buddha. It could be sitting. It could be cooking lunch. It could be drinking water together. It could be taking a walk. It could be cutting grass. It could be anything when there's intimacy. Anything. Totally. Why the sitting? The one thing that they almost all do Some of the monks cook lunch. Some of the monks bow. Some of the monks cut grass. Some of the monks chant.

[38:08]

Some of the monks study. Some of the monks ring bells. Some of the monks take walks. Some of the monks do fundraising. Almost anything as a monk might do. But there's one thing they all do. Their main yoga practice is sitting. And if you look in yoga traditions, what is the king of all postures? Sitting. What is the meditation posture among all the yoga postures? What's the meditation posture? Cross-legged, upright sitting with the hands like this. So in the whole yoga tradition, the central posture is the Buddha posture, by coincidence. Or the Buddha posture is the central yoga posture. So when I heard about these Zen stories, I did not get attracted to Buddhism hearing about people sitting cross-legged. That didn't attract me. I saw pictures of Buddha, I didn't think, oh, cool. I liked to sit cross-legged, but I wasn't attracted to Buddhism. What attracted me was the way these people acted in daily life.

[39:09]

Patting Buddha, patting each other, patting their... Just the way they were intimately. But then I found out that that wasn't just by accident they got to be so cool. They all did this training program. And what was the one thing they all did? They all sat. They did zillions of other stuff, and there's very few Zen stories about a monk or a teacher having enlightenment experience while sitting. Very few. But usually that's where they have enlightenment experiences when they're sitting, but they don't mention it. They mentioned it once, and then they sort of got over it. They mentioned it, Buddha sat cross-legged under a tree. From then on, it's just assumed that we get enlightenment when we're sitting. The point is, what's interesting is they get enlightened in all of the situations. Cooking lunch, patting Buddha, skipping rocks on the pond and counting how many times, watching ducks fly over, twisting noses, washing feet. Anything could be performed.

[40:14]

Anything. But still, among all these things, what's the one thing that you can be sure all of these people did? Sittings. Just because it's a yogic fact that when human beings sit up cross-legged, it's a very helpful posture to bring. And if you can't sit cross-legged, sit up in a chair. The erect posture, there's something about human beings that erect posture is sort of one of our main things. We're the only animal that stands upright. There's something about us that's something really important about being upright. But still, it doesn't have to be that. Okay? So you can go cook lunch now. And we really appreciate it. So you told me why. Huh? You told me why. I know, but I didn't mean to. You tricked me, you clever man.

[41:19]

I didn't want to. Yes. One quick question about bilateral... Bilaterality. Bilaterality. With children. Bilaterality. Bilaterality. With children. With children. Yeah, with children. When I look back, 25 years ago, when my son ran in the street at age two and a half, I ran and got him. That's the age my daughter ran in the street, too. Oh, well, then maybe you'll be able to enlighten me about that. He ran in the street. I ran and got him and said, don't do that. Don't run in the street. You could get hit by a car.

[42:19]

Right. So then he ran in the street again. I ran and got him. The third time he ran into the street, I wasn't looking. And a car missed him by about two inches. So I went and got him. And he was still wearing diapers. The toilet turned him away. But I hit him on the leg. Because I thought, if I don't do something, he'll probably be killed. He'll be hit by a car. So that's what I did. So I see you, when you're talking about your grandson, and so my question is, how could I have done that differently? Not that I can do anything about it now, but... Yeah, it's a really good question. I had that problem myself. It's now two generations of that problem. Hopefully I'll have three generations of it. Exactly the same time my daughter was running the street, I yelled, No. And I won't duplicate the yell, because it might hurt your ears.

[43:20]

I yelled no, and she stopped in her tracks. I yelled no so loud that it was like getting hit by a truck. And she stopped, and I didn't have to say it again. My yell was like you swatting him. My yell was like just, you know, jarred her. But she got it. She was walking down the street, and then this huge late yell happened, and she went, And she associated, I think, going into the street with this intense auditory shock, which is a symbol for the shock of being hit by a truck. And I never had to tell her again about not walking into the street unless she was with her parents. And she, yeah, that worked. In your case, you did the slapping thing to associate the pain of the slap on the leg with the pain to associate the pain with going into the street without your parents. That's fine. I think it's fine.

[44:24]

Just associate those two. It's unilateral. It doesn't have to be unilateral. Don't just see it that way. In my case, my daughter goes towards the street, and then I yell. That's our bilateral relationship. I responded to her. was a condition for me doing that. I can see that as, you know, bilateral. Now the other one, which is more difficult, is my grandson. I was walking with him in Chinatown in San Francisco, and he keeps wanting to go to the street, and I'm trying not to use my superior, my greater strength to stop him. I'm trying to do it bilateral in his case. And that wasn't so easy that time. Just yelling at him, I didn't try that in his case. I tried something different. But I'm not saying that you were bilateral. I'm saying I was bilateral.

[45:26]

I think the main thing about the bilateral unilateral is, are you trying to control the person? Or can you try to protect somebody without trying to control them? I think that was protection. Yeah. So if somebody's about to fall and you catch them, you're not necessarily trying to control them. You're just trying to catch them. You're trying to do this thing with them called catching them. But your impulse might not be to try to control them, but to interact with them in a way that's protective and beneficial. But sometimes when we try to control people, they don't want us to. And when you're told that story, The first way I heard it was, your daughter, was it your son, was going into the street. You ran in and tried to stop him, and he said to you, don't go into the street. That's what I thought you said. That's what I said? No. No, no. You said, don't go into the street. Oh. But I thought what you were saying when you first told the story was, your son was going into the street.

[46:30]

You ran over and stopped him, and he said to you, don't go into the street, Mom. I thought that's what you were saying. Oh. Why did you think that? Well, because you said, I went in, my son was going in the street, I went over and stopped him and said, you know, don't go in the street. I thought you said, he said, don't go in the street. And I thought, how cool. He didn't want you to go in the street and get hit by the car. He must have been really involved. Yeah, I thought that was fantastic. Your son would say that to you. Maybe now I would. Yeah, now he'd say, Mom, don't go in the street without a hand. Let me help you across the street, Mom. No, Mom, don't go in the street. So it's very difficult to get in there and really not give up the kind of control and enter into the dance.

[47:34]

So with my grandson, I was trying to interact with him without overpowering him to keep him out of the street. And it was much more energetic and difficult than just overpowering him, and much more intimate and much more difficult and more stressful in a certain way. So to be relaxed and playful with him about this and still get the message across of don't go in the street. It's difficult. And one time, it was his mother after that. And he was at Whole Foods. And suddenly, he just ran out of Whole Foods into the parking lot. And she told him to stop, and he didn't. And then she caught up with him, and she just yelled at him, you have to listen to me. So anyway, I think it's harder for mothers than for grandfathers, in a way. Because mothers feel like they have to discipline the kids, control the kids. Grandparents feel a little bit more flexibility and a little bit more relaxed.

[48:34]

The parents feel more, again, biologically, they're more cued into life and death about it than the grandparents are. And the grandparents are a little bit more relaxed. I have a question about that. Sometimes they're more playful and more skillful. But sometimes the parents are more skillful. So there's a lot of possibilities here. But it's tough. It's tough to get in there. When you talk about hitting and biting, and if your grandson goes to school, and there are forms at school, and one of the forms is not hitting or biting. So if that isn't taken care of when he goes to school, he will be hindered. That's right. That's the reason why I don't want him to hit me and bite me. And I did that with his mother, too. She did things with me and I said, you know, I don't mind you doing these things. But if you do this with other kids, it's not going to be good. And if you do it with me, you're going to get in the habit of doing it. You can jump on me. It doesn't hurt me.

[49:36]

You can kick me. It doesn't hurt me. But if I let you do it, you're going to get in the habit and you're going to do it with your friends. And so you've got to stop hitting me. Because it's harmful behavior. Pardon? From a precepts point of view, it's harmful behavior. Well, it doesn't harm me. But if she did it to a kid, it would harm the kid. So if they get in the habit of doing something, it's harder for them to get that it can hurt other people. So that's what I'm doing with my grandson. But I'm also using it. I'm not just using it to help him not get in trouble at school by biting kids. If he does get in trouble at school, he does bite kids at school. He does? He has stopped, but for a while he was biting kids at school. And it's a big problem. There's a real big problem with that case because you have germs in your mouth that you're used to, but other people don't. There's like 80 kinds of germs in your mouth or something, 80 different varieties. And you're immune to them. But if you bite somebody in the hand and your germs get in the cut, they can really get an infection.

[50:42]

Actually, some people, you can die. A dog has less kinds of bacteria in the mouth than a human does. It's more dangerous to get sick than a human than a dog. Yes. So it really is a problem for kids to bite each other. And so he is having trouble with that at school. That's another reason why I'm training him not to bite me. But the main reason, actually, is to develop intimacy with him. That's my real interest. Because his mother's also working on this. And what she does, if he gets through a week without biting anybody, he gets a rescue hero. Instead of having these action figures, there are these similar big muscular men and women who save people. Instead of beating them up and shooting them, they have all this high-tech equipment to save them. They're rescue heroes. I saw this video of one of these rescue heroes and this guy's putting out this fire.

[51:44]

After he saved the people inside, Then he's putting the house up, and this woman standing next to him says, how do you do this? And he said, I made a vow to never leave anyone behind. And there's a flashback to when he was a kid, and he was in a burning house, and this fireman comes in and threw the fire, picks him up and takes him out of the fire. And then he made a vow to do that work. So that's what my daughter's trying to teach him. these strong rescue heroes rather than these, you know... They're toys? Like dolls? They're like toys, yeah. Except they're... Like D.I. Joe kind of thing? Yeah, except they're like superheroes. They're muscular and very athletic looking, both the males and the females. They're very athletic and there's videos on them and stuff like that. But it's the trying to teach non-violent way of using them. I don't think that's come here yet. I don't think we have them in Syria. They're certainly not being marketed here.

[52:47]

They're cartoons. They're cartoons, too. Yeah. It's like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The cartoons spawn. We don't have them this far. So anyway, he doesn't have these kind of like warrior people who are shooting people. So instead of having these big guns, they have like... harpoons to catch on to boats and climb up hills and stuff to save people who are trapped in the mountainsides or drowning. So they have the equipment, but it's all about saving people rather than hurting people. And so if he goes through a week at school without biting anybody, he gets a toy as a reward for not biting anybody for a week. So he's coming along. It's good. It's good. And here's another twist. The people he bites are generally people who really like him.

[53:49]

And what do they do when they like him? They come over to him and hug him and kiss him, but without asking. And he feels intruded upon. Even if I try to kiss him without asking, he sometimes says, no. It's hard for kids to get a lot of affection when all of a sudden it's scary. And he bites this one little boy who just loves him and always trying to hang on and kissing him and goes everywhere with him. That's the kid he bites. This kid, he just adores him. He's kind of like puppies, you know? Or simian. It's very simian. Yeah, he's kind of biting the kid, you know, keep away from me, give me some space. And he actually says, he actually says, I need some space to this kid. He's an only child, right? He's the only child, right? Yeah, that's the syndrome of the only kids, I think. He says, I need some space, and the kid doesn't give it to him, and he bites him. So he has to stop, right? And the kid doesn't deserve to be bitten. He's trying to defend himself from that intimacy which he's not ready for. It's amazing. But he is trying to stop.

[54:53]

Tim, you had your hand raised quite a while ago. Oh, yeah. I was going to ask a question about forms and The forms we're doing here, and I can see how when we all do these forms together, it does create intimacy. And I'm thinking as we get more used to the forms and are bowing together and chanting together, it's creating, allowing for intimacy. But my question is, if someone wants to change it, if the idea of changing it doesn't exist, Once everyone gets on the same page, it seems to me that there's an intimacy created. What is your sense of allowing it to be changed? Again, I think the most important thing is that you have a form.

[55:55]

It's an opportunity to relax with it, to play with it, to be creative with it, to be free of it. And so, but if you don't have a form fairly well established, it's kind of hard to be creative with it before you even know what it is. So for example, the other day, I suggested changing a form, and you didn't like it. You didn't want to change it. And I just let it stay the same. I didn't force it to be changed. Because I also know there's a value in not changing things all the time. Sometimes if you do things over and over, they develop a certain... What's the word? Resonance. Huh? What? Resonance. Resonance, or I thought it was a certain presence, too. So we have certain things that we say to them over and over, over the years, they develop some kind of, excuse the expression, a mantra power.

[56:57]

If you keep changing them, you lose the fact of what it feels like to say something that you've said 100,000 times with a group over years and years. So there is some value to doing things over and over again for centuries. But at the same time, you sometimes have to adapt to new cultures or whatever. So when you say, in the Japanese, kanji is It took them hundreds of years to come up with that in the first place. And then they did it for 1,000 years after they came up with that. And when you chant that, to some extent, you can feel you're tapping into hundreds of centuries of practice. So it has a lot of power. However, when you chant that way in America, most people don't know what it means. And even in Japan, people don't know what they're saying. So there's some advantage. And in these translations, people know that we're talking about ,, practicing perfection of wisdom.

[58:03]

So we have to change. So that's a constant dilemma in the practice, how to take care of a tradition and let it change. So it's a real dynamic where you have to be gentle about, flexible about, understanding that some people aren't ready for a change. And then sometimes we feel like we OK, now, are you ready now? And sometimes they'll say, now I'm ready to change. But it might be years later. And at Zen Center, we've tried to change things over the years. But at Zen Center, we have all these years of tradition of these things. So even changing things in English is difficult at Zen Center. And it's good in a way. The conservative element in the practice is good. And the liberal element is good. Keeping things the same as they have been for centuries is good. But adapting them and making them relevant is good. So the Catholic Church has a big problem with this. Being unmovable, they have the strength of being unmovable, but then they become irrelevant. And the same with Buddhism.

[59:03]

A combination between, in some sense, the vertical of the lineage and the horizontal of the current society. Relevance and continuity. Relevance and honoring of tradition. Those two are always working. in a dynamic relationship. So that's why we have to be intimate and flexible about the whole thing so that we don't harm anybody in the process. We don't disturb somebody by being too innovative or let the situation become old and dusty because it can't adapt to current situation. So that's the difficulty. Did you still have a question? I do. It's a bit of a shift. If you would speak about intimacy with adolescents and specifically around the use of dabbling in drugs and sort of addiction to computer in the home. I see a lot of parents with that.

[60:05]

Can we talk about that this afternoon? It's a big topic. Thank you. We're getting close to lunch. Mine was trivial, but potentially big. As you see, Buddhism is a religion that's jumped from continent to continent. And now it's jumping into the West. Right. We have an idea of how it's developing in the Midwest, probably in East Coast style, West Coast style. Is anyone keeping track of what's going on in Denmark, what's going on in Germany, what's going on in France? Do people ever get together and compare and say, this is what's going on in our, to try to sort of, maybe not standardize, but just to compare and contrast? There are national and international meetings, yes. And what occurs at those meetings? Sometimes, well, to some extent, I will just tell you that my impression generally is that European Zen is, generally speaking, what I would say is that this is kind of a big topic, too, my answer.

[61:13]

But I'll just say briefly. If you want to talk more this afternoon, we'll say it. But generally speaking, when you transmit When Indian Buddhism was transmitted to China, it was Indian Buddhism transmitted to China. And the Chinese, first of all, had to learn Indian Buddhism. And they had to learn Sanskrit and stuff like that. And then they could translate to Chinese. But still, it was Indian Buddhism in China for quite a while. And then Chinese Buddhism, particularly Zen, formed a new kind of Buddhism that had never been seen in India. And Zen is one of the examples. Zen style is not really very Indian. It's more Chinese. And then when it got transmitted to Japan, it changed again somewhat. And then when it got transmitted to America for quite a while, it was more Japanese. Japanese teachers, Japanese scriptures, Japanese robes. And even Americans started speaking kind of funny English that the teachers spoke.

[62:14]

But if you came to Zen Center when Suzuki actually was alive, some of the students talked in this funny English that he taught. Kind of fidget English. Copy the teacher, right? So there's a general characteristic which has been observed is that when the Asian religion comes first to America, or when a European religion comes first to Africa, It looks European in Africa, and it looks Asian in America. And then the next phase becomes more and more American or Western. The practice of Buddhism moved to Europe later than it moved to America. It's been in America for almost 100 years. It's been in Europe less. So Europeans, generally speaking, are more in the Japanese phase. So when we get together with the Europeans, we see that they're still more on the little Japanese or little Chinese or little Vietnamese stage. They're more like copying their teachers' faces. Whereas the Americans are more like second and third generation, so they're more, it's getting more Western here.

[63:21]

That's one of the main differences that I can see. And then, yeah, that's one of the main differences between Europe and America. I think Europe's more Japanese. Europe's more like we were 30 years ago, because they're about 30 years behind us. But I think it's time for service now. Can I put something up for the afternoon? You can put up for the afternoon, yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to raise something about the word woe that you mentioned at the beginning. The word what? The syllable woe, the . Yes. I just wanted to ask something like that. So we can bring up anything left in the process. Try to remember them and bring them back to me.

[64:02]

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