This is a five-week class for two more weeks after this. So I received some feedback about how the class is going. So one piece of feedback was something like, the topic is inspiring and challenging and elusive. elusive. And when I heard about that, I thought, that reminds me of the perfection of wisdom. Perfect wisdom is often called deep, deep wisdom, but deep also means difficult to understand and also elusive, you can't get a hold of it. It It serves a great function, namely it liberates beings and brings peace, but it's difficult to understand.

[01:09]

So this is a difficult teaching for difficult times. There may be easy teachings for difficult times too, but I understand this is difficult. A lot of the things I bring up are sometimes called most difficult, one of the things that's most difficult is to understand how your own inner practice and your own inner work is the same as the work of other people. So someone said, maybe some stories. So here's a story about the Buddha. One of the stories of the Buddha is that he woke up sitting under the bow tree, and then when he first started teaching, his first teaching to five of his old friends, which is called setting the wheel of the teaching rolling, he starts off by saying, monks, his friends were monks, I have found a middle way.

[02:24]

which avoids extremes of addiction to sense pleasure and self-mortification. And it is peace, and it is bliss, and I might add, and it is justice. And then he went on to give the rest of that talk. In the Zen tradition, we have another story about the Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree, also seeing the morning star and waking up. And when he woke up, he said, I, this inner being, together with the great earth and all living beings, attain the Buddha way. he woke up to that reality.

[03:32]

He woke up to see that he had attained the way, yes, together with everybody. Of course, at that time, the millions of people in India and around the world, they did not all wake up and see what he saw. he saw reality, he saw the middle way, and he saw that his realization was with everybody, even though he understood they did not see it, and therefore he had to teach. So again, the Zen version of it is the Buddha saw the morning star, woke up, and then he talked. And he said, I together with the whole earth and all living beings attained the Buddha way. I would add, he said, I together face to face with all living beings attained the Buddha way.

[04:44]

Most of the people in the world at that time did not see the Buddha face to face but he saw that he was face to face with everybody The Buddha way is attaining the way with everyone. This is the Zen version of the story, or a Zen version. That's the first generation. His Buddha wakes up with everybody and he's sitting alone under the Bodhi tree and he sees that he's practicing with everybody. The next story in the Zen history of this tradition is that the Buddha was with an assembly of — this is later in the Buddha's career — he's with an assembly of students and he picks up a flower and twirls it. And one of the people in the audience

[05:51]

broke into a smile. And the Buddha said, I now entrust the treasury of the eyes of truth to Mahakashipa, the one who smiled. I entrust and transmit the mind of nirvana. Buddha had already awakened with everyone and now in face-to-face meeting somebody else woke up to attaining the way with the Buddha and all beings. So earlier tonight I talked about inner work. which is to remember stillness. That's something you can inwardly yourself remember.

[06:58]

I used to years ago say, be still. I don't say that anymore because you already are still. That's the reality of your being is that you're silent and still. You don't have to make yourself silent and still. As a matter of fact, if I move to make myself still, I move. If I try to make myself still, I in some sense deny the stillness which is already present. So I remember stillness. I want to. And this stillness is all around me, all around all of us. This is where we really are living together. So I can receive it because it's being offered by my nature to me and to you. And I can take care of it.

[08:01]

And I can transmit it by taking care of it. And my taking care of it is the same as you taking care of it. And this is difficult to understand. Another piece of feedback I got, I hope it's okay to say, someone last week asked, talked about, I don't know if you heard him say, he's talking about, he's working with some people, like, and he's feeling like they're not accepting as much responsibility for the work as he is. So he's got some work to do, and he's like, I am, he feels like totally responsible for it. And he's working with people who don't seem to share that full responsibility. And he said to me, like, he has trouble, like, me saying that, you know, someday they will.

[09:07]

You know. But I'm not so much saying that someday they will. Although someday they will. I'm saying that if I and fully responsible for my work, if you are fully responsible for your work, you will wake up and see that everybody else is on the same practice of being fully responsible. Even though they may say, You're the boss, you know, it's your business, you're fully responsible, but I don't want to accept that full responsibility. When you wake up, you see that's the way that they're fully responsible. By saying they don't want to be. And when you wake up, it will be perfectly clear that a child is fully responsible like a child.

[10:14]

And they say, I don't want to take care of everybody in the world. I don't even want to take care of my brothers and sisters. I just want to be in control of my mom and have her do what I say. That's all I care about. And anybody else who supports that program is fine. But to help all beings, I'm not up for that. the Buddha sees that that person, that's the way that person, which was immature, is attaining the Buddha way with the Buddha at that time. And the Buddha will keep looking at them and seeing them as being fully responsible until they also open their eyes and see everybody else's So there is inner work and we are responsible for our inner work.

[11:24]

Like today, I talked to some people and I talked to them about how to do their inner work. They told me about their consciousness. They told me about a place where I, you know, they say, this is where I am. And they talked to me about how they struggle with the place where I am, which is consciousness. So we have conscious minds, and our conscious minds are part of our responsibility. It is our responsibility to take care of the mind where I am. It's my responsibility to take care of that. And the people I talked to today, I didn't say it to them, but they seem to be accepting that it was their responsibility to take care of their consciousness where they were. And in the consciousness where I am, the I, as it relates to things, often gets stuck in relationship. That's quite normal.

[12:27]

But if we're fully responsible to the I getting stuck with its activities, there can be liberation in that inner work. The I can be there, the activities can be there, with no sticking. But we have to be fully responsible to the I, the activities, and be fully kind to the I, the activities, and the sticking. When we're fully responsible, we realize that there is no sticking. And this is our inner work. And these people were talking to me and I was talking to them because we cannot do this inner work by ourself. We do this inner work in conversation. We talk about how we're doing our inner work with another.

[13:30]

And in the conversation, the way we're working gets called into question. And the way the other is working gets called into question. And in this way we become more and more responsible. The responsibility becomes more and more full. And in the fullness of responsibility, of meeting face to face, that is the realm where the world, that is the realm where inwardly there is a transformation of this self and other and the sticking into peace and freedom. So the Buddha's awareness was transformed into a self that was sticking to its activities and a self and an awareness of how the self was sticking to the activities and how that is suffering. and that the core and the source of the suffering is the self stuck to the activities and then the path of freedom and there's freedom from this self stuck to the activities and then there's a path to become free which is to pay attention to the activities and how the self works with them and so on, the Eightfold Path.

[14:57]

And he didn't mention in the early teachings, but he demonstrated it, that the way people learned how to work with their consciousness was by having conversations with him. And he would instruct them how to be responsible, how to notice the places where they weren't being responsible, where they weren't noticing what they were doing, where they weren't noticing where they were sticking, And in that conversation they matured and became more and more responsible. And they woke up too. So working with our ordinary consciousness, which is sometimes called provisional reality or provisional truth, by working with that thoroughly, and thoroughly means in conversation, we awaken to the ultimate that's going on right there at the same time.

[16:02]

And this work is also transforming others, which is really hard to understand. and part of the reason why I'm emphasizing this is because so many people now, especially people who are meditating, are wondering, how does our meditation practice relate to this world in crisis? This is my proposal. You want to help the world? Work on yourself. We are, our nature, our fundamental nature, The way I am right now is what we call other-dependent or other-powered. The way I'm existing right now is dependent on others. It's not dependent on me. The way I am depends on you.

[17:08]

And no idea... I'll just stop there. This is my... other dependent nature. That's the reality of me, is that I don't make myself, all of you make me. And all of you, when I say all of you, I'm also talking to my history, and my body, and my thoughts. My thoughts are other than me, and yet I'm nothing but what's other than me. What I am basically is otherwise. That's what I am. And I want to meet that other. And in meeting the other, that's where we realize peace and justice. There's further characteristics of what we are that go with this other-dependent or other-powered nature, which is that we have dreams about the way we are.

[18:21]

We fantasize. We imagine how we are. And we also imagine how other people are. That's also part of our life. is I imagine myself, I have various images of me, which I say, yeah, so I actually can't, like these are my hands, right? I have that idea. But my idea of these hands and my ideas that they're my hands are totally absent in the way I actually am. And that's my third characteristic, is that any stories about me and any stories about you are absent in me and absent in you. So it's by my nature that my work is the same as your work.

[19:30]

Because it's my nature that I'm nothing but including all you. I'm nothing in addition to including all you. I am the center of all you. And you are the center of all us. So it's your nature that everything you do includes everybody. Everybody else, you exist in dependence on everybody else. You include them. And also, you're included in everybody. You're all pervaded and all pervading. That's your nature. You don't have to work at that. You just have to work on yourself. And that will include everybody. And also that will pervade everybody. And back to this example of somebody who's working with some people, you know, like you could call them less mature people, children.

[20:37]

The adults are responsible. The children don't want to be. Some of the children. And the adult would like the children to be responsible, would like some workmates that share the responsibility. And sometimes the adults don't want to wait for a really, really long time in order for some people to start acting what looks like fully responsible. And again I say to that person, you don't have to wait a really long time to see that they are fully responsible. You could wake up right now and see that they're fully responsible. And if you see that they're fully responsible, then you can transmit that to them and that will help them realize that they are. That may take a long time for them to also wake up and see that they have been fully responsible all along.

[21:38]

But you don't have to wait to see that everybody is fully responsible. I mean, you don't have to wait one minute, one second after you're fully responsible. But you may have to wait until you're fully responsible because that's a huge, challenging job. But once you're fully responsible, you don't have to wait anymore. You'll be awake. And you'll see how wonderful the world is to be full of people who are practicing with you in their way. And again, their way may be, I don't want to be responsible for this big project. And you see, that's so beautiful the way you're doing that, little baby. Yes? Did you want to say something? Yes. Yes. You'd like to get something done. not doing the work, not holding up their amulet, getting fully responsible.

[22:56]

Since you're talking about bottom line is you still have to deal with the bad and you've got to get the work done. Yes, and part of your responsibility, part of you being fully responsible, very likely will be to have a conversation with this person. And when you, if you really are fully responsible in this conversation with this person, which might involve saying something like, I want you to work more, or I want you to work differently, or I request you to like, you know, not work here anymore. Who knows what you might say in that fullness of that. But if you're fully responsible, I don't know what that person is going to do, but you will have the vision. And then with that vision, you will be more effective in in transmitting this, I don't know if you're going to get more work done or less, but you will be at peace. And you will realize justice in your relationship while you're talking to this person and telling them that you feel a need to ask them to do things differently.

[24:05]

But you say that as part of your full responsibility, not taking away their responsibility. And again, some people are going to resist your transmission of full responsibility just to make sure that you really are authentically appreciating what they're doing now. And when you wake up, you will. You'll see how everybody's helping you be awake and how you're helping them be awake and how you're doing that perfectly and they're still saying, I don't want to accept equal responsibility for this conversation with you. And you can maybe say, well, I need you to. So another principle, which is pretty far out, is that everything, for example, me, is simultaneously

[25:14]

Everything is speaking and everything's listening. How's the air in here? Do you have enough air? Is it okay? Are you getting too cold? Okay, can we close it a little bit for starters and then gradually seal it completely and fall asleep? Thank you for tolerating this coolness Where were we? Yeah. I'm suggesting every moment and every being and everything is speaking and listening and they're doing it simultaneously and the speaking and the listening are the same. I am calling to you and I'm listening at the same time.

[26:17]

As we say at one of our chants, inquiring and responding come up together. But I'm going in addition to saying they are the same. So when you, if you feel a need to tell somebody you want them to work more, that you calling out to them and also that you listening. At the same time, you're listening to yourself, you're listening to them. This is the realm of working together. This is the realm of justice and peace. Yes? Is it possible that what you're saying is that at a certain level, primal level, we're all one.

[27:22]

And this work of talking with seeming others is the practice of realizing in the end whatever our oneness Well, you could say that. I mean, obviously the universe is one. It's not one of two universes. And each of us is the center of the universe. So we're many centers of one universe. However, the universe is also functioning. So we're also part of a function of this one thing. And part of the function of one thing is to make many things. So we're all these different beings in this one universe. And each one of us is the center of the universe. The whole universe makes each one of us exactly the way we are.

[28:29]

And we, together with everybody else, make each other being in this universe. Our job is to fully exert our position. That's our personal job. And when you do your job, fully take your position, the whole universe takes its position. Everybody does the same thing at that same moment. When you express this fully responsible conversation with yourself or, you know, your interstates or with another person, that full meeting, the whole universe joins that. So the Buddha said, now I wake up to I attain the way, of being in my position, which includes everybody, and which I'm included in everybody, so I attain this with everybody.

[29:37]

And he had to work for a long time to be able to fully be in his position under the Bodhi tree and really be fully responsible. And I would say, wake up to that he was doing that, he woke up that he was doing that together with everybody. And that's, in reality, we are fully responsible. We are in our position. We are wholeheartedly who we are. And yet, part of the irony of human existence is that we have to work at being the person we are. it actually could be seen as kind of funny. We have to work at being the person we are. Yeah. So we are who we are, and yet we have to work at it because what we are is we're workers. Our function is we work at being ourself, and actually what is working at being ourself is the whole universe.

[30:50]

The whole universe is working on us, and that's what we are. We're the whole universe working on us. So we're one, but we're also... Like my name, you know, is... The second part of my name is Zenki, which can be translated the whole works, which is a nice translation into English because it has a colloquial meaning and a standard English meaning. So the colloquial meaning is everything. The standard meaning is a sentence which is saying the whole works. And how does the whole work? Like this. I am the whole working like this. That's the first part of my name is like me being me. That's the first part of my name. The first part of my name is you being you. you're naturally who you are and yet it's a big deal because you are the whole universe as you and you are the whole universe working as you.

[31:57]

It's a huge, inconceivably huge job you have which is receiving that you are the inconceivable job of the universe. Each of us And we find this by being here in stillness and silence. This is how we find ourselves with all of our self and other problems. We work right here. Yeah? I was just going to ask you about that. I've never heard this thing about everything is talking all the time and everything is listening all the time. And when you said it, it sounded... Frantic frantic. Oh my god, like and so I see you. Where is stillness? Everything's popping. Well, I would say the listening the listening So it's frantic people are like running around Babies are crying old people are croaking There's a lot of stuff going on and at the same time there's a lot of stuff going on There's listening the same moment

[33:16]

And the listening is still. We're going through all these changes and part of our changes are calling for help. We're asking for company. So you're usually speaking, not being. Pardon? I could have understood if you said everything is being simultaneously. But when you say speaking, then... Yeah, or calling out. Everybody's calling out. Just by being? It comes with being. If you have being, you have a call. Beings call. They call out. And as they call out, they're responded to at the same moment. What do you mean by call out? Like help. Just a raccoon crossing the street, is that saying help? Yeah.

[34:17]

And cars are saying help too. And when they say help, when the horn honks, there's listening. And the listening to the horn and the sound of the horn, the listening to the sound of the horn, they're simultaneous and they're the same thing. And that's going on in stillness. The dream that you're living and not calling off for companionship, that dream is not going on in stillness. That dream is only going on in fantasy. But in stillness you're always relating. In truth you're always relating. You're either listening or calling. And actually you're doing both at the same time. Inquiry and response come up together. So the Buddha inquires about us, we respond to the Buddha.

[35:26]

We ask Buddha, Buddha responds to us. We ask for help, Buddha listens. Like I was talking to somebody today about she wanted to talk about somebody. And she can talk about somebody by herself, theoretically, but I think it's really important to talk about somebody and have somebody listen. It's a different world to move and have somebody watch you. It's a difference between the world of delusion, where you can do something by yourself and nobody's watching, where you can talk and nobody's listening. That's delusion. In reality, everything you say is being listened to. Everything you do is being observed. And when you observe somebody that's the response to their call for you to observe them. Everybody's asking you to observe them in various ways.

[36:29]

Infinite ways. People are calling us to observe, to listen to them. And this is hard to understand. by watching suffering beings and listening to suffering beings, that doesn't necessarily fix their suffering. Like watching somebody who's sick with a disease that they're gonna have for the rest of their life, that doesn't necessarily mean the disease goes away. What it means is that a blessing is created by the listening. which will go to them and help them in their present situation. Not later, when they get over the illness, but right now. Again, this is inconceivable how that works. But that's what the Buddhas do. They fully listen to themselves, and they realize that that's listening to others, and then they continue to listen to others and themselves, and they transmit that.

[37:40]

So, I can't skip over listening to myself, all the various little inspirations and discouragements of my daily life. I'm not suggesting I skip over those things. And I have various little challenges these days. What did you mean by, I transmit that? You said, I transmit that. Well, I mean, what I really mean is, taking care of that is the way to transmit it. Taking care of watching myself and being myself, being kind to myself, being still with myself and realizing that's not something I'm doing but something that's been given to me.

[38:43]

The Buddha has given me this stillness so I can practice stillness with myself. When I do that, it gets transmitted. Or it is actually the same as everybody else joining that, because everybody is already included in my problems. And I'm already included in theirs. And again, if I don't take care of mine, then it's kind of like I'm transmitting not taking care of mine to them. But still, I'm being fully responsible. But I don't understand it. But Buddha does understand that I've been fully responsible, and I can be more fully responsible even though I'm already fully responsible. Just like I can be more me even though I'm already me. And the way I'm going to be more me is by face-to-face meetings with the other.

[39:50]

And there's two others. One is the other as I imagine the other, and the other is the other I open to when I feel my version of the other being called into question. So it's really meeting you who is beyond my idea of you that really realizes peace and justice. But I have to work with my idea of me and my idea of you to the limit of my responsibility at this time in order to let you help me realize that what I know about you is really questionable. It's egocentric. It's limited. And if I'm fully responsible, I welcome your questioning of my understanding of you.

[40:54]

I welcome your questioning of whether I'm doing justice to you. In that way, I can do justice to you by realizing you are other than what I think you are. And I relate to you in my idea of you, and I'm now open to how you're other than anything I think about you. Peter. Yes. So, stillness and silence. You know, it's one thing to understand one, and another thing to experience some kind of upset, with contraction, and again, in the outside, another person, whatever it is.

[42:01]

Can you hear yet? It results in a disappointment. and a movement with our emotional talent, yet there's not... It makes cycles more difficult to realize, and makes stillness much more difficult. And so these ideas of pulling the station when we're here, to enlighten the people in silence in the immediacy of some upset people's recovery. And it's fed by the agitation of the Kumar, who wanted to deal with the steroids of his insistence.

[43:03]

to, no matter what I actually know, and whether it be thoughts, whether it be things, it's still, it's in the system. It keeps them treating. Until it passes, it just seems like a very difficult spot. experience silence and stillness? Unfortunately, you couldn't hear him, right? You couldn't? You couldn't hear him, Karen? Anyway, he was saying some situations are very difficult to experience silence and stillness, right? What I'm saying is that these difficult situations, that the full experience of them is living in stillness.

[44:14]

I'm not saying that you should get still so that you can fully experience these things. So the fact that the full experience of whatever these difficulties are, the teaching that the full experience of these difficult states is living, is alive right now in stillness, it says to me, not that I'm going to make stillness, but that I'm not going to try to do something to have a full experience. I'm going to remember stillness to remind me the way to be with these difficult situations in which they're already fully experienced. And when they're fully experienced, they leap beyond themselves.

[45:20]

There is freedom and there is justice when they're fully experienced so that It's not so much that I'm trying, although I do sometimes try, to be still in the middle of frenzy, or did you say? It's not like I'm trying to be still in the middle of frenzy and frenetic activity and turbulence and so on and so forth. I just try to remember stillness, which tells me how to be with the frenzy. Which means be fully responsible to the frenzy. Which means I'm not trying to fix the frenzy. I'm trying to like be totally there with it. Which means frenzy is frenzy. Not frenzy is going to be made into stillness. And when I stop messing with the frenzy I'm remembering stillness. When I remember stillness I don't mess with the difficult situation.

[46:23]

But it's hard not to mess with difficult situations. Right? In other words, we're attempting to move when things are difficult or when they're wonderful. So we're remembering stillness. We're not trying to move over into stillness. If we're in chaos, we remember stillness. Namely, we don't have to do something with this chaos. We have to fully experience it. We have to be really kind to it. And we are totally offered this opportunity. It's calling to us, and we are talking to it, or it's talking to us, and we're listening to it. Yes? Well, making the link to, say, our current political situation. So, same kind of thing, right? I see myself sometimes

[47:26]

having all kinds of responses to what's happening. And then in my daily life, I remember stillness and in my own. So I just kind of tried that on for a minute, and it's sort of like, well, then if I'm fully responsible and I'm remembering stillness, they just are what they are. And they always were. They always were what they were. They always are what they are. But if you fight how they are for you, if you shrink back from it or try to... If you forget stillness, then you have a hard time being you who has these experiences. And again, someone may try this out and say, yeah, I work with that and I felt really good. I actually calmed down. You know, it's like someone who's talking to me today about, you know, that Walt Disney movie about the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

[48:36]

You know, that story where the Sorcerer's Apprentice, I guess, does he do a trick and make one container of water into two? What does he do? What? What? Yeah, he learns his trick and he splinters the broom into two brooms or something, and then he tries to stop that and it splits into more brooms. So if we have chaos and we try to fix the chaos, it makes more chaos. Not because it's real, but because we're messing with reality. We don't trust dealing with being an apprentice. He's an apprentice and he wants to be a magician. If he were just being an apprentice, he would become a magician. But he didn't accept being an apprentice, so things get wilder and wilder, and he keeps fighting, he keeps trying to do magic, but basically he just keeps fighting reality and it gets worse and worse.

[49:43]

But what if you are accepting an apprentice? like you accept being an apprentice to Buddha. You're Buddha's apprentice. If you accept that, then even if the broom splits into two, you let it be two, and then it calms down. If you don't let it split into two, it splits into four. If you let it be that, then that's it. It's not going to split again if you leave it alone. So now you're starting to learn how to be a magician. Namely, be at the level that you're at. But then people say, well, that's fine for you. What about the rest of the world? So that's the hard part, is that you working on your apprenticeship to Buddha in your mind with your whatever... Resistance to what's happening there. Yeah, if you work with that in a way that's fully responsible, you're not blaming anybody,

[50:47]

you're not shrinking away from your responsibility, and you're also inviting other people into a conversation about whether you actually are being fully responsible. So when you're trying to be fully responsible, part of what that looks like is you ask people how you're doing. You go to a teacher and you say, what do you think, am I being fully responsible? And the teacher might say, yeah, you're like totally responsible. And you go, well, great, thanks. And they go, that was too easy. And so on. As you know, some of you have had conversations with certain people. It's a conversation. And if you think you can be fully responsible without a conversation, if you think you can be an apprentice without the master, that's not going to work. So you have to be an apprentice with a teacher, you have to call to the teacher to give comment on you, to help you be fully yourself. at your present being.

[51:50]

You're calling out for help. And every time you call, the response is right there. And every time you respond, that's because there was a call right there. That's part of you being full of yourself. And that does wonders for you. that will make you wake up and be at peace and so on. But what I'm saying here is that it's not just for you because you're including everybody and you want to. You don't want to just be calm and at ease and at peace for yourself. So in the monastery people do calm down. You know, we have these monasteries around. People do calm down and they say, but what about the rest of the world? So this is a response to them, to say, this is how you're going to help them. You can leave the monastery, but wherever you go, how you work on yourself is including how you work on transforming others. Is there still any question about that?

[52:53]

I still have a couple. One of them is, I don't think I wouldn't think that you would be saying, well, you can't take responsible action in the situation, but just don't be taking it with... I mean, just be taking every action remembering silence and stillness. It would be good to remember silence and stillness. In every action you... In every vocalization, in every thought, in every gesture, it would be good to remember stillness. In other words... When you say, still take action, but I just said, in every action. It's not like... You just moved there. So it's not like, in every action, then I'm going to take an action. Stillness is, I'm going to be here for this action. I'm here for this gesture and these words. Totally here. And also, this is what I'm saying here is, I cannot...

[53:56]

be fully here without your help. So I want to be totally here for my actions, yes, which means I want to remember stillness as I act. But I can't really be fully here and fully exert my actions unless I'm in a conversation and asking for your feedback. and being aware that I'm including you in my speech and my thoughts and my gestures. Already these gestures are including you. I want to remember that. That's remembering stillness. It's not making me still. I'm not making me be who I am. You are. And because you do, you're included in all my actions. And I want to be here and accept responsibility for that. And I'm calling you to tell me how I'm doing. So I'm committed to this class.

[55:01]

So I think about this class all week. I think about you all week. I think about you people all week. Because you're in this class. You're in my mind all week. And I don't have to work at it. All I got to do is come to the class and then I see you and then you're in my mind for the rest of the week. Until I come and see you again and then you're for another week. And after the class is over you're in my mind in a different way. Because I'm not going to see you for a while. It's different. But you're still in me. But it's very clear, you know, when I'm in this class that you're all in my mind. Your actual faces around this topic. and your questioning of me and your difficulty with the class are all included in me. And I'm included in all your difficulty because I'm the one who's saying this strange stuff. I understand. I'm sorry. Adam? know about them, that knowledge, that I just have an idea for them.

[56:09]

Do you have any advice about how to get closer to knowing other people? Or is this any change that you have just another idea for them? Yeah, for really as well. Again, I say we already are close to other people. The question is how to realize that. You don't have to get closer. Reality is you already include me. You can't get the slightest bit closer to me than including me. And also you're included in me. That's like close beyond close. We're trying to realize that, not make that. And the way you realize it is being responsible to your ideas of me. And even your ideas that you include me, and I include you. But being fully responsible to your ideas of me includes you having a conversation with me and having conversation with other people. And in your full responsibility with your ideas of me, you will leap out of your ideas of me. And when you leap out of your ideas of me, you do justice to me.

[57:12]

Because I am totally, absolutely other than what you think I am. And being totally other than how you think I am is how I quite conveniently am always included in you. But me who you have an idea of may or may not be included in you. Your ideas of me are included in you. But me who is your idea, I'm not that. But you can't skip over your ideas of me. You have to be responsible to them. And part of being responsible to them is to tell me about them and have me tell you, I don't know, I don't agree with that. But it's not like you're wrong, it's just an idea of me. When can you have your own idea of yourself of the idea you talk to? Once again? Can I have an idea of myself? It's not that it's wrong. It's not that your ideas of yourself are wrong.

[58:15]

It's just that your ideas of yourself are just ideas of yourself. You are absolutely other than your ideas of yourself. And I am absolutely other than your ideas of me. But we can't skip over you who have ideas in your egocentric consciousness, and me who have ideas in my egocentric consciousness. We can't skip over that. We have to fully exert. I need you to be fully responsible to being an egoistic consciousness, and you need me to be fully responsible to be an egoistic consciousness, and I need you to help me, and you need me to help you be fully responsible. I can say, okay, I'm going to be fully responsible to being egoistic consciousness. You don't have to talk to me anymore. I got that. No, you need my help. And quite naturally, you're calling me to help you and I'm responding by listening to you and watching you and telling you how I feel when you say certain things.

[59:21]

We need each other to help us be fully ourself. So, I need you to help me become free of my ideas of me and my ideas of you. When we're free, without getting rid of our ideas, we become free of them, we realize we meet the other. The other of the... You know, you're others, but there's an other of you others. There's a you who is... You are other than me. But besides the other that I can see, there's a other that's totally, completely other than my idea of you as an other. And I have to deal with my idea of that to open up to the other. And when I meet that other, that's what we call meeting Buddha face to face or meeting God face to face. But we can't skip over our ideas of people, like that they're nice people or not nice, we can't skip over those.

[60:24]

We can't be lazy with those, irresponsible with those. We have to be fully responsible for those and that opens us to leaping into the way people are other than what we think and meet them face to face in the otherness. And that's where we really meet That's where we wake up to that we're working together and realizing the way together, including that some people have not yet done their part in such a way that they are leaping beyond. But they're working on it. And we see, yeah, they're just not ready. Their situation is they're just holding back. They're not asking for help. Like some very bright people do not go and ask for help. And so people don't help them. Yes? Rev, are you present to your work of being yourself, to your work?

[61:35]

Are you present, naturally present, every moment of the day? I'm naturally present every moment of the day, and so are you. But if you don't practice that, you won't get it. And if I don't practice that, it's like I miss it. But in reality, you are present to be yourself. Again, my name, the first part of my name means naturally real. You are naturally real. But you have to worry about it. If you don't work at it, you're missing You're naturally working at being yourself. Are you aware of being naturally present every moment of the day? You can't really be aware of being naturally... Well, I'm aware in a sense, again, that in my wisdom I'm aware.

[62:36]

But my idea that I'm present or not is not my wisdom. That's my egoistic consciousness. For me to think I'm aware of what I'm doing, that's egoistic consciousness, which I don't try to get rid of that. As a matter of fact, I work that. I work. I am trying to be aware. I am trying to listen. I am trying to call. I am asking for help. I'm being asked for help. I work at that. There are different types of awareness. That kind of awareness is called egocentric consciousness. I'm aware that I'm making such and such an effort. And by being thoroughly responsible for that I open to another awareness which is not I'm aware, it's just understanding. It's an understanding that leaps beyond I'm aware. And it is being convinced that we're all together, not me ahead of anybody. Buddha is not ahead of anybody.

[63:38]

Buddha looks at everybody at whatever stage they're at and says, I see that you're a beginner, and you're exactly me. But I see you're a beginner. And you're calling for help, and I'm responding to you. And I'm calling you to listen to me. And we're naturally that way. But if we don't think about it, talk about it, and make gestures about it, it's like we can miss it. And missing it is like just being sunk in egoistic consciousness. It's like being sunk in our egoistic consciousness. It's being trapped. And then when I'm trapped there, when I look at you, I see you from that point of view, which doesn't do justice to you. I treat you in arbitrary and prejudiced ways of my own consciousness, which I don't want to do.

[64:48]

But if I take care of my egoistic consciousness, if I'm willing to really be kind to it and responsible for it and also ask for help at being responsible for it, so this class helps me be responsible for my consciousness, We have to kind of reboot over time and keep refreshing. Yeah, we have to keep refreshing. The effort to be fully responsible to meeting everybody face to face. Every moment. And it's basically be responsible to the fact that we are naturally fully responsible. And that's the way we really do meet people, but we have to work at it. And one more thing I'll say this time, and I'll go in more detail next time, is there's a philosopher, I guess he's a philosopher, anyway, in, I think, around the middle 60s, a friend of mine gave me a book.

[65:58]

His name is Michael Polanyi. It's a book called The Tacit Dimension. And I read that book off and on for the last 50 years, right? And just recently I kind of got it, what this tacit knowing is, this tacit dimension. It's like figure ground, you know? Like I see Emerald, and she's kind of a coherent thing there, but there's this background this implicit background, this quiet background that I know tacitly. And because I know that, I can tell that this is Emerald. And I do know, if I didn't know that stuff, I wouldn't be able to see her.

[67:00]

So that example that you're all familiar with, of the gestalt of the young woman's face and the old lady's face, when you see the young woman's face, you don't see the old lady's face. You do not. What you see is something that's not an old lady's face. It's some other kind of implicit information is coming to you and you don't know it because you see the young lady. But you're getting a lot of information by which you can see the young lady. But it's not the old lady that you're seeing. It's a lot of other stuff that's not clear like an old lady. And then if you switch to seeing the old lady, again, it's not that you're somewhat aware of the young woman and that's how you know the old lady. It is much more information you're getting to make the old lady than just the young woman.

[68:07]

Whenever we look at somebody, we're seeing that person and we're seeing a more or less inconceivable background which we know, but it's not coherent. But if we didn't know it, we wouldn't be able to see it. It's background-foreground. We wouldn't be able to see this foreground thing if we didn't know the background, but we don't explicitly know the background. We implicitly know the background as we explicitly know the foreground. Yes? It seems like language is kind of like that. You can't really have a word, but... It's all those other words, like that word. Exactly. It's not like you have a word and there's a thing over here which makes the word mean something. It's an inconceivable background of other words. And you use this word to make meaning out of this thing. The thing doesn't give you meaning of the word. Because the thing, when you look at the thing, you say, like John, and I look at you, so you're a coherent thing, and I say John.

[69:16]

So John gives me some meaning, maybe, about John. But both you and the word John have this implicit background. So each of us is like that. We are a foreground and a background simultaneously. And you cannot see the background. You can just see foregrounds. I'll go into more detail about how this works in relationship to everybody including you and you including everybody, how you can see how you include everybody when you look at you, but you wouldn't be able to see you or anybody else if it weren't for the background. The background could be The background is everything.

[70:17]

The background of each of us is everything. We are everything in this way. You are everything as you. You are the whole universe as you. And we wouldn't be able to see you except for everything else that's not you, that's other than you. And we know that, but it's not explicit. And if we didn't know, we wouldn't be able to see anything. But we do know it, but not in the same way that we know limited, coherent things. And this is a way we know that we include the whole universe. But again, not in the usual way. So, I have this job of being me between now and next week, and it's a big responsibility, but I want to accept it, and you're all going to be helping me, and I'm calling for your help.

[71:23]

So please help me be me for the rest of the week. I'll call you. You will. Okay? I thank you very much for being here tonight. Was it good to have the door open, even though it's cold? Sorry for freezing over there. Thank you. Thank you for your feedback. I welcome your feedback on how things are going.

[71:59]

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