This Chinese character ran again. It's like this means humanity and benevolence, but this humanity is realized by renouncing what is essential one of the essential things of being a human, which is to renounce, well, distinctions. Or it's like, in one sense, it's the person who renounces dualities. So you have the person and then you have the character for the character for two, so what is essential to be a human is to be involved in judging dualities.

[01:08]

There's more to being human than that, but without doing that, you're not really one of the humans. But humanity is realized judging dualities. What? Is it on? Yes, it is on. But you can't hear? You can't hear very well? So is that better at all? Can you hear over there easily? I'll turn it that way. So this character is benevolence or humanity. But again, it means this benevolence is realized by not coming from your subjective feelings of benevolence.

[02:19]

Hmm? Benevolence means your intention to be a benefit to beings, wanting to be kind, bene, volent, your will to be kind and beneficial. Actual benevolence comes from giving up your subjective feelings of benevolence, not grasping your feelings of benevolence and acting upon them. Grasping feelings of benevolence interferes with the realization of benevolence. So these are subjective feelings of kindness which are judged and discriminated from feelings of unkindness. And to be involved in these judgments of kindness, to be grasping those and seeking among them

[03:24]

is upsetting and harms the person. Similarly, to act from objective actions, like practicing monastic regulations, not eating between meals, Being on time, having good speaking the truth, these objective practices of virtue to come from them also is grasping . It's also the person. being involved in distinctions.

[04:28]

So this character is seen as pointing to the person of relationship. rather than the person of duality. Training in this ren, or also which is the same as training in no-mind, facilitates, in a sense, a shift. Well, I'll just say a shift and take it back. selfish practice, and there is, you know, there can be a practice that's selfish, selfish practice shifting from selfish practice to selfless practice.

[05:34]

Doesn't mean selfish practice is all wrong, it's just that it's, it's just that it reinforces the self, which is a source of all our problems. So it's kind of all wrong, but not completely all wrong. There's something really good about it. So this practice of ran or no mind, it facilitates the shift from selfish practice to selfless practice. Shifting from a practice which you can grasp to a practice you can't grasp. Shifting from a practice that, you know, subjective experience or objective criteria, shifting from that kind of practice to a practice which lets go of objective experience and objective activity.

[06:41]

Another way to put it is you shift, there's a shift here from a practice which is I care for all things, I care for all practices, to all things care for themselves. So usually the person sits on like one of those two horizontal lines, usually the person sits... on one line or the other. It sits on one side or the other. And then from one side or the other, like from this side, I sit. I sit on my side or your side. So I take a side. I take a line. And then I care for all things or some things. I care for all things. Sounds good, but it's still, it's selfish.

[07:49]

Because I'm separating myself from those things. And I'm helping them. So I sit there. on my side, and I let go of my side, I let go of grasping and seeking, and then I leap into the world where I don't care for things, but where everything cares for itself. So one approach is delusion, the other is enlightenment. But enlightenment is not better than delusion, it's just that one's enlightenment and one's delusion. So it's a shift from enlightenment to delusion, and then you can shift back from enlightenment to delusion. That's a good thing to do, so you don't get stuck in enlightenment. And I think... So again... the last time we had class, I was talking with Jerome.

[09:00]

Some people came and talked to me about those conversations. I guess you followed them and they were interesting to you. So Jerome brought up the side of, you know, you're in the kitchen or something and you have this approach of the kitchen, I'm caring for lunch. And if I would give up this perspective of I'm caring for lunch, would really the lunch come forward and take care of itself? Would all things come forward and take care of themselves? Would my hands and my eyes and my co-workers and all the food come forward and take care of itself? And it's kind of a leap there into another world and it seems like And Max kind of said he kind of understood it, but he didn't know if he trusted it. For a second there, it's like you don't care about lunch.

[10:03]

So it almost seems the usual way of caring about lunch, you give it up. So me caring about lunch, I let go of, and let lunch and everything in the universe care for itself. rather than humanness, which is, I'm going to control this lunch into happening. I'm going to do the practice of being a cook. So people think, is this really caring? It sounds like not caring, but it's leaping from one-sided caring or personal caring into carrying together. It's leaping from practicing to leap into the river between these dualities where we're being led along together by Buddha.

[11:14]

We're flowing together Working together, nobody's in control. But that's not our usual idea of caring. The training in no mind is... is training... in giving up distinctions and not grasping or seeking, which means not grasping or rejecting. Whatever comes, whatever comes, we welcome.

[12:17]

Like Where is it? Gati-gati-para-gati-parasam-gati-bodhi-svaha. Gone. Gone. Gone beyond. Gone entirely beyond. Welcome. Whatever. Welcome. Yes? You say it's letting go of the anxiety, but I thought it's letting go of the arrogance of, if I'm not here, it won't happen.

[13:35]

Arrogance goes with anxiety. Isn't that funny? Can you tell the story you're thinking of? Sure. Why don't you stand up and say it so somebody can hear it? So my first work of strength And each day, it was never the same people. And there were all these ingredients of all these people and there was utter chaos.

[14:41]

And I didn't know what was going on myself. There was nothing for me to do except to just kind of do what I was told to do and not worry about it. I didn't have any responsibility, so I didn't have to worry. No, that's good. what we've added in the center. In the center, we would go nasty. So the introduction, to me, was more practice, where we should just never share.

[15:51]

Lately, in Doksan, I've been kind of visualizing, not quite visualizing, kind of feeling this character, Ren. So I'm sitting, and then someone comes and sits and faces me, and I feel like I'm sitting on one bank of the river and the other person sits on the other bank of the river. And this relationship, you know, is flowing between us and all around us. Or maybe we're like sitting in two islands on the river. And so there's my experience and then there's other person's experience of the relationship, but the relationship is flowing all around us. And I feel over here on my little island, there's some feeling like, maybe I should say something.

[17:19]

Maybe I should ask a question or say something. Maybe I should do something. There's that feeling over here on this island like, you know, I should practice something. And I guessed it over on the other side of the river. The other person's feeling like, well, maybe I should. Actually, they sometimes do say to me, you know, I feel like I should do something or say something or I wish you'd say something so I could do something. But I've been spending more time just sitting quietly by or in the river and waiting to see just waiting to see what action will come out of the river rather than out of me. It might be me talking or me clapping or something. But I actually can feel sometimes that my activity or my voice or my body moving or the other person's voice or body moving is coming out of the middle

[18:27]

rather than out of one side. However, there are these periods of just what's coming out of the river is silence and stillness. And I think part of us, strangely, kind of surprisingly, because we're Zen students, doesn't really feel like sitting and not saying anything and not moving is really much of a contribution. But actually sometimes that's what the relationship is producing, is silence. And we sometimes forget that the name of our founder is Shakyamuni. which is the silent one of the Shakya clan. Muni Muni Maha Muni, he's called. Silent, silent one, great silent one. So, you know, if we sit here in the relationship, you know, I don't do, you know, I'm not doing much.

[19:41]

I'm not being a very good whatever. Maybe I think that because, well, geez, you know, this isn't that interesting. But then, sometimes, something, a fish jumps out of the water. And it does seem like it really wasn't mine or yours. But, and not even ours. More like it's. Because the relationship isn't exactly us. There's me and you, and then there's the relationship. Us is a little bit easier to grasp in a way than this inconceivable, unhindered, unlimited, ungraspable, unprecedented, fresh, unpossessable relationship.

[20:48]

And the relationship which is everything taking care of itself. Did I make a distinction? Well, if I did make a distinction, then my practice is to just let it go. Just let go of the distinction. But there is anyway a feeling of me sitting there and you sitting there and this river flowing between us. And then there's a feeling maybe of that I'm talking, but the talking maybe isn't coming from this side. And this talking isn't coming from that side, but this talking is coming from the middle. Mm-hmm. yeah yeah you could just add like there's talking and then you can add it's me talking it's me talking yeah just add that to the talking and then but sometimes you already are thinking me sitting here quietly you know me not talking so then when you think of talking you think well now me not who's not talking will now start talking so then kind of like well forget that

[22:18]

Just sit here quietly, forget this thing about me being quiet and me talking, and just let go of me doing something cool or smart or dumb. Just let go of all that and leap into the river. And then, now I'm in the, now I'm, but not an island maybe. And now, since I'm not an island in the river, but I'm just in the river with you, now my talking is not coming from over on this side anymore. But originally it seems like I'm on this side, you're on that side, and there's a space between us. But if I let go of that distinction, of the distinction of you and me, and my job and your job, then somehow the body leaps into the river and the body starts talking from the river. rather than from the bank, rather than from my position. There is speaking from the river.

[23:21]

And so that's what I've been working on with you in Doksan. And I've noticed that people are a little bit more expressive of feeling like, I feel like I'm over here and I should do something. and I have various ideas of things I could do, but you know, they don't really seem apropos of what is happening here. Sometimes people say, well, they don't seem that interesting, but another way to put it is they're interesting, but they're just really coming from the middle. And also, when it's coming from the middle, you don't you don't know when it's going to come from the middle. Say it louder, please. Is it called self-concern?

[24:25]

Well, I think when you get in, when we take the perspective, when we add my talking to the talking, then we take the view of self doing things, then there becomes self-concern. If I'm talking, then I'm concerned that I'm talking well, or that I'm concerned that I'm talking in a way that you'll appreciate. So self-concern comes out of the self-view, and self-view comes out of grasping distinctions. So when we sit down and meet each other, there probably is some distinction. We don't reject the distinction. We say, welcome distinction. Welcome distinction. But welcome distinction, relax with distinction, let go of distinction. But for now anyway, can't stop distinction.

[25:34]

Distinction coming, welcome distinction. Welcome, let go of distinction. And then I see the body leap into the river, and then I watch the body swim and sing in the water together with the other person who may not experience that they've leaped, but in fact their body already is in the water. Swimming together already. So this is kind of a long story here, but anyway. It's one of my favorites from Zhuangzi, which is called the Taoist text. The name of this chapter is The Secret of Care.

[26:40]

And it's kind of a, because a lot of us are vegetarians here and so on, it's a little gory in a sense, because it's about a cook-butcher. His name is Cook Ding. Cook Ding. I don't know what the character ding is. I don't know if it's the same as the ding of, you know, samadhi. But maybe it is. So Cook Ding was cutting up an ox for Lord One of Hue, or Lord Hue of One. At every touch of his hand, every heave of his shoulder, every move of his feet, every thrust of his knee, zip, zop. He slithered with a zing and a zap and a zong and a zop.

[27:45]

And all was in perfect rhythm. It was as though he were performing a dance to the Mulberry Grove song. or keep with a chingsu music. How marvelous, said Lord Wen. Imagine the skill of reaching such heights. Cook Ding laid down his knife and replied, what I care about is the way. which goes beyond skill. When I first began cutting up oxen, I could see the ox itself. I no longer saw the whole ox. And now I go at it with energy and don't look with my eyes.

[28:56]

Perception and understanding have come to a stop, and energy moves where it wants. I go along with the natural makeup, strike in the big hollows, guide the knife through the big openings, and follow where they are. So I never touch the smallest ligament or tendon, much less a main joint. Is that clear? He cuts into the hollows and the spaces. He doesn't touch a tendon or a joint or a ligament. He doesn't actually cut anything. He goes to the places, he goes to the spaces, and then everything falls apart. He doesn't actually break anything. A good cook changes his knife once a year because he cuts.

[30:08]

A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month because he hacks. I've had this knife for 18 years, and I've cut thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as sharp as though it had just come off the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there's plenty of room, more than enough for the blade to play about. That's why after 19 years, The blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone. However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I'm doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety until flop.

[31:28]

The whole thing comes apart like a clot of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there, holding the knife, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on. And then I wipe off my knife and put it away. Excellent, said Lord, one way. I have heard the words of Cook and learned how to care for life. So, in our relationships, I could say the mind has no thickness. Anyway, we use the mind to find the space, go to the space.

[32:33]

And there's another good story here, but I don't feel like reading it right now. He sizes up the difficulties. Moves slowly. And he tells himself to watch out and be careful. Keep his eye on what he's doing. Moves the ability. Yeah, it does, doesn't it? And it also sounds like Doksan. Like You come to it complicated.

[33:59]

Be gentle and relaxed. Don't push too hard. But maybe there's some movement being called for, some gesture being called for. So enter this space here a little bit. Watch what you're doing and be careful because it's sometimes hard to see the space to move through. Difficulty here, but this is a tricky spot. Yes. She says, and Doug sounds something like, what is the knife?

[35:10]

What is the ox? Who is the cook? Anything else? She said, what is the knife? What is the ox? What is the knife? Who is the cook? So she said who, but that's fine too. But she could have said, what is the knife? What is the cook? What is the ox? And I think that the knife is what? The ox is what? The cook is what? Or you could say, the knife is who? The cook is who? The ox is who? You find you through non-grasping, through questioning. What is the knife in this talk? What is the ox? Who is the ox? Who is the cook? What is the cook?

[36:11]

What is the cook? What is the knife? Who is the ox? Who is the knife? What is the cook? Who is the hook? What is doksan? Who is doksan? Who is doksan? I mean, am I Doksan? Am I like Mr. Doksan? Are you Miss Doksan? I mean, who's in charge here of this Doksan? Am I in charge? You in charge? Or is our relationship in charge? If I take charge, maybe our relationship goes, oh, you forgot me. Couldn't I be in charge here for a little while? Only if we both surrender to our relationship will I be charged. But do we surrender to our relationship? Or would we rather sort of like... I don't know what... It's scary to surrender to our relationship.

[37:14]

What will it do if we surrender to it? It may... Who knows? It may take over and not serve lunch. And then it's fine, but I get blamed for it. And again, I would just like to say one note to Rin's story. She called the situation chaos. But I think that means to her it looked like chaos. Really, it was inconceivable, and she nicknamed it chaos. It wasn't chaos because if it was chaos, lunch wouldn't have happened. But it looked like chaos from the point of view of you couldn't grasp it. So you gave it this nickname, chaos. Really kind of a term of endearment, I imagine. Pardon?

[38:15]

Maybe they felt like it was chaos. Maybe they felt like this is totally inconceivable. Wow! This is like inconceivable liberation right here at Finhorn. And this isn't going to last. Yes. Yes. And I've also been thinking, in the ritual movements of monastic life, In some ways, the more precise we are about these ritual forms, the better the to see if there's any grasping.

[39:43]

And grasping means the more precise we are, the better opportunity to see if there is the perspective of I'm doing this form or you're doing this form. Because again, sometimes we may think, OK, I'll just relax around these forms. But sometimes you get the best sense of relaxation when the form is being done the most precisely. The form is being done loosely, and you think that that's relaxation. Yes. Yeah, there could be, yeah. Yeah, there could be, I'm doing this, but that can be something that's not grasped.

[40:54]

And in not grasping it, there's talk. And that itself is another monastic form, a monastic form called, I'm doing this. It's one of the practices around here. So clear subjective experiences, clear subjective clear objective actions. So subjective are things you know, which the subject knows about. They're sort of internal. And objects are things other people could watch. So we do some objective things, which other people can have subjective impressions of, which we and others can have subjective experiences of.

[42:08]

We don't know everybody's subjective experience of every objective thing, of all our objective actions. But anyway, to have nice, clear subjective impressions and nice, clear objective actions, these give us nice, clear opportunities to not grasp and also to not seek anything other than this nice, clear subjective sense of pain, this nice, clear subjective judgment, this nice, clear distinction, or this nice, clear subjective physical movement or vocal expression. So the more clear these are in some ways, the better. All the better to not grasp. Okay, what is it that... What? Yeah, right. The Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood.

[43:11]

She said, Grandma, what... What big eyes you have, all the better to see you with. What big ears you have, all the better to hear you with. All the better to eat you with. So all these distinctions are the bigger the better to let go of. the more complete the letting go can be. If they're real little, sometimes we don't really notice whether we let go or not, because it doesn't make much difference. But those big ones, when you let go, really nice opportunities to catch the body leaping into the river of relationship. Yes? Her question is, the doksan I'm describing, can we walk around and have doksan like this with everything?

[44:27]

And that's the point of doksan, is that you would finally enter into your true relationship with everything. So the formal doksan, or you feel like, you know, you can safely dispense You can experiment anyway with dispensing with your sense of control. Like, you know, the world will not... The world will little or no longer remember whether I say anything here or not. That's from the Gettysburg Address for the people who didn't grow up in America. But actually, a lot of people come... Actually, what they think is the world will intentionally note and long remember anything I say here. At least that guy will, and he might tell somebody.

[45:30]

Or, you know, he might tell everybody the Sangha, but he might tell Buddha. And I'll be like on permanent Buddhist records for what I say here. So, like... Really big deal, so I got to be really careful. Yeah, careful, that's okay. But how about Letting go of worrying about what you're going to say. How about letting go of what you're going to say? And then see if something comes. And maybe nothing will. And maybe you'll be requested to say something, and nothing will come. But maybe you'll be requested to say something, and something will come, but it won't necessarily come from you, although it'll go through you. It'll use your mouth. So our relationship But it won't necessarily come from you, although it'll go through you.

[46:59]

Use your mouth. So our relationship, if there's two of us, has two mouths and usually four eyes and four hands and so on. It uses our bodies. Uh-huh. Right. And what sometimes can be the beginning of a conversation like that, where there's no conversation, in a sense, sitting in silence, at the beginning, you might think that you're doing the silence.

[48:10]

And then you might say, well, so is she. She's also doing the silence. We're sitting in silence. She's doing it as much as me. But anyway, I'm doing the silence. Gradually you might feel, that's the nice thing about silence, is gradually you might notice that you're not exactly doing the silence. It's not something you're doing. Actually, it's kind of just there. And our relationship is actually usually kind of quiet. It uses us to make noise. We're the noisemakers of our relationship. But our relationship actually is, it's changing, but it's quiet. And so at first, you're coming in from the perspective of not only being worried about or concerned to do, but also you have the perspective of me doing things. So in some cases, you might feel like this person really loves me, and there's really no problem about what I do.

[49:12]

I can do anything, and they'll think it's cute. So I can't lose with this person. But you still have the perspective of, well, I'm going to do this cute thing. So I'm saying that even if you feel comfortable to express yourself, you might also just experiment with giving up even expressing yourself. And just letting that go, this thing of you're going to do something cute, just let it go. Let go of that perspective. And then watch that something comes, that expression called, quote, yours comes. But that just took care of itself. Given that you have this kind of Yes. Is it beneficial to try to do what? To try and let go of expressing myself or let go of being anxious about the conversation.

[50:22]

Well, there's an argument. Right, because you could then sit down. Well, just waiting and not doing anything could also, you could also say that's another self technique, you know, that's another self-centered technique. So we're going to have to be indirect about this. So that's what we do is we just sit there actually. And I'm going to like, it's like that, again, that story that I told many times about the, you know, the archery, right? In the archery thing, you pull the bow back, and the archery teacher says, you hold the string until the string just goes through your fingers. And the guy does that for a long time, and he finally figures out to have it go through his fingers, where he doesn't really let it go, and it lets go. But it's a self-generated technique for getting rid of the self. So yeah, the self will come in there and try to figure out how to let go of the self, and that won't be it. But that, you know, you might be able to spot that too, that same thing. That wasn't really the totally unprecedented surprise of an action that arose.

[51:27]

And it wasn't that I was inattentive. I was actually paying attention. And yet everything just fell apart and things happened in a new way. And they took care of themselves very nicely. You have seen times like that when actually it wasn't just because you weren't paying attention that it looked like that, but actually, you know, I don't even say you've seen things like that, but things have been that way occasionally. I mean, you've realized and understood that things are that way occasionally. Actually, things are that way all the time. So, so we're, you know, Here we are. And the funny thing is that it's kind of funny. It's also kind of like . But anyway, the funny thing is that although in one sense we feel like there's not much left of the practice period, many of us are sort of geared up to waste the rest of it thinking about when it's over.

[52:36]

Some of us are feeling like, geez, this is really great, and we just barely started, and we have very little time left. And it's just like, this is a precious opportunity, and it's really great, and it's also really difficult. But this is a great difficulty, and I'm just so grateful for it. But I notice that I'm probably present for the rest of the practice period. I'm going to totally be spaced out, thinking of after the practice period is over. And isn't that kind of amazing? But I'm here to say, you know, let's actually, you know, knock it off. And let's, like, not think of... I'm not even going to say the A word. I'm not going to say the A word, but I am going to say the M word. March. March. It's March. March. Just think March. Think March. Heroic March is, I'm going to do the heroic march of only thinking of March during this month.

[53:46]

And if the director comes to me and says, April, April, April, I'm going to say, you know, please excuse me, but I'm just, it's March. You know, it's March. You know, be a hero and stand up to the director. I said, what are you going to do in April, I said? Speak! It's March 11th today. Please let me have March 11th. Okay, okay. What are you going to do in April? If you let me have March 11th, I promise that if I am alive later, I will be devoted to you. I'll do anything I can to help you that's appropriate. But I'd like to now take care of today.

[54:50]

If you would please support me to have today, to have the whole day, the rest of it anyway, to really have a wonderful day. and not think about March 12th or April or May, you know? Just in this precious little time we have called March, let's just be here moment by moment. Understand that if we give up thinking about the future and the past, things will take care of themselves. This is not irresponsible. to just deal with this moment. And how you're going to cook and plan the summer while being present moment by moment is that when these issues of lunch and present and summer come up, you meet them, you say welcome, you let go.

[55:59]

In the present. and you let go of them in the present, and you're in the practice period, practicing training no mind and dedicating yourself to the possibility of everything coming forth and realizing itself. You want that to happen, but you have to let go of trying to control it to happen in order to realize it, in order for it to be realized fully through your practice or through that practice. This is really a big challenge now. Now when it most counts, in a way, because it counts now. Isn't it funny that it just happens to be really hard? That here we are, right on the edge of history, and it just happens to be that this is the hardest place to be.

[57:06]

And this is the place that most needs us to be here. So in our relationships, How can we be gentle and careful with each other not from the present and not to be distracted by others from the present? How can we enjoy and receive this opportunity moment by moment for the rest of March? I'd be willing to consider totally calling off the practice in April. So after the session is over, we can totally freak out and not be present. And you can think about April 7th, April 9th, July 14th, July 10th. For March, how about actually practice? I mean, actually let go of distinctions and catch the body leaping into the practice.

[58:14]

Yes, Sonia. Yes, Sonia. Hi, Sonia. What do you want? April 11th is part of March 11th. Oh, it's so true. right that's what somebody said to one boy you know they said you know if you stop seeking won't you cut off beings like if you just like sit here on march 11th and stop seeking march 12th march 13th whatever you just don't seek anything other than this won't that cut beings off will i care for beings

[59:19]

When you're not seeking, look at what's right in front of you. What's there? Look at that vast openness right in front of you when you're not seeking anything. Does that cut anybody off? It doesn't cut off March 11th, and it doesn't cut off April 11th. It's that you give up clinging to March 11th, you give up clinging to April 11th, and April 11th will be taken care of. So it's not cut off. April 11th and March 11th are not cut off from you or from each other. And we see that uncut off is cut off when we let go of seeking. But if we're seeking, then we're seeking because we think, something's going to get cut off. The guest season's going to get cut off. Lunch is going to get cut off. People are going to get cut off. My book is going to get cut off. So I've got to seek, seek, seek.

[60:24]

No, no. You don't have to. For the rest of the month. And I know it's hard, but That's what we're here for. That's what Tassajara is for, is so that it can happen. That's what the guest season is for. That's what the lunch is for, is so that the practice can happen. They are intention.

[61:12]

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