say a little bit more about sex, or sexuality, or how to practice with sexuality, the bodhisattva precept of no sexual greed and so on. And I think I actually in a group, and I think I said to the group of people, let me know if you think I should talk about that before Sashin. Did I say something like that to some of you? And somebody else came up to me and said that she thought she'd been at Tassajara, she never felt like there was really a... I don't know if she said full, because it'd be hard to have a full discussion, but a fairly developed discussion of sexuality.

[01:12]

She never really heard at Tassajara during the time she's been here. So she said, would you please? Hmm? I know, I'm sorry. This is a brand new sound system. Do you like it? This is a brand new sound system, so maybe we can learn how to use it gradually. Can't hear? You're going to really have a hard time, Carrie. Maybe I'll just call it a day then, or a morning, since you can't hear me, right?

[02:13]

You can't hear me? What brought this, what seemed to one of the conditions that seemed to bring up this discussion I was comparing the Vinaya precepts with the Bodhisattva precepts, and I mentioned that the first Vinaya precept is basically prohibition against sexual intercourse. But the first Bodhisattva precept is prohibition against killing life. So the... In one case, in a sense, it looks like controlling personal conduct, personal behavior. In the other case, concern for not hurting other beings. But I also thought later... Anyway, that brought up the issue of sex.

[03:19]

And I thought later that in the 16 Bodhisattva precepts of the Soto Zen, in Japan and now in America, the first precept is taking refuge in Buddha. So, in a sense, the highest priority is Buddha for our precepts. Now, of course, you could say, well, that's true for all Buddhists. highest priority is taking refuge in Buddha. And then after they take refuge in Buddha, then they receive Vinaya precepts or Bodhisattva precepts. Does that make sense? But the interesting way that we, not the interesting way, an interesting fact, facet of our, we're working with them, is that we consider taking refuge as the first precept.

[04:25]

But to me, I think to me, that this highest priority of refuge in Buddha includes the precept of no sexual greed or appropriate sexual behavior. And I even would Almost the other way around, too. I'm cautious to do so, but I'm still going to do it, to say that taking refuge in Buddha is included in appropriate sexual relationships. when we have appropriate sexual relationships, taking refuge in Buddha is there, completely.

[05:32]

And that brings... and the next thing that comes to my mind, or at least came to my notepad, was that I think most of us have some sense of some limit on what we think sexuality consists of. And I think we also have some limits often to what we think is relevant to practice. And I guess I would encourage renouncing the limits to what you think sexuality consists of, and also renounce the limits of what you think practice consists of.

[06:48]

I'm not, and I'm including, I wouldn't say that there is no limits to practice of sexuality. I wouldn't say that. If there are, I would say, let them go. Actually, I don't think there are, but if there were, let them go. I would recommend. I would actually, for myself too, recommend that I let go of any limit to what I think I should practice. I think that's my faith. I don't think I should say anything is not relevant to Buddha's practice in the whole universe. and I don't see why I should set any limit on what might be sexuality or how sexuality might be appropriate to this. And the same with everything.

[07:51]

Recently I've become rather interested in a story about Dongshan. You know Dongshan? Tozan Ryokai Daisho. He's supposedly the founder of our lineage in China. And there's some wonderful... Some of my favorite stories about him are stories about him and his... an older brother in Dharma. His teacher had some disciples, and one of his teacher's older disciples was named Tsungmi Shanshan. And he often called Uncle Mi, or Uncle. So there's a number of stories about them walking around various places and having little talks.

[09:12]

So I've recently become interested in one of these stories. And I thought, now, how did you come up with this particular story? And I thought, oh, I remember. It was because there's a fascicle on the Shobo Genzo by our ancestor Dogen where the fascicle's named after one of their conversations, one of the conversations between Dung Shan and Uncle Ming. And the reason why I was looking in that fascicle is because in that fascicle there was also a discussion, a Bodhidharma's discussion, conversation, the second ancestor, Thaiso Eka. where he's giving, in that conversation where the Bodhidharma is giving Thaisa Oeka the instruction about how to find this mind like a wall.

[10:19]

That's what I was looking for, to see how Dogen Zenji thought that Bodhidharma and Oeka worked on this teaching. But then I just sort of happened to think a little bit earlier in the fascicle, to the main story of Uncle Mi and Dongshan. I think I probably will talk about this story. But the point I would like to make, what I'd like to say to you first of all, is that I thought, ask me to talk about sexuality or how to practice with it. I thought of this story of Uncle Mi and Deng Xia. And part of the reason why I thought of this story was because some people might think, well, what is he talking about this story about these two Zen guys when he's supposed to be talking about sexuality?

[11:27]

Just like people might say, well, what's he talking about sexuality when he's supposed to be talking about Zen guys? This is a Zen monster. He should be talking about Zen. Or if he's going to talk about sex, he shouldn't talk about Zen, or especially Chinese Zen. So I thought, yeah, it just seemed like this is a perfect story to talk about because you wouldn't expect me to talk about this story. I mean, I would think you wouldn't expect me to talk about this story when you asked me to talk about sex. And yet, the sexiest place in China that we visited was Dongshan. What do I mean sexy? Well, yeah, that will become clear to you.

[12:34]

And I'll say, when I think about Dongshan, Dongshan was the place that most of us felt was most and Tassajara is a very sexy place. So I wrote a little note here and said, Uncle Me and Dung Shan, could these stories be about sex? Stories of these guys, could these be about sex?

[13:38]

I wrote that question. So here's the story. in this fascicle. And this fascicle is called, I'll say it in Japanese before I translate it, it's called Sesshin Sessho. Once, when Dung Shan was walking with Uncle Mi, he pointed Dongshan pointed to a roadside shrine and said, there's a person in there teaching. There's a person in there, and the way they usually translate it is, there's a person in there teaching mind and teaching about nature.

[14:44]

Uncle Mi asked, who is it? Dung Shan said, if you can ask an appropriate question, uncle, death will be completely cut off. Uncle Mi said, who teaches about mind and nature? Dung Shan said, while dead is living. And this is part of the sexiness of the story. Another way to read it is that what each of them says is two parts of one thing. So Uncle Me says, the who that teaches the mind and mind, and Dung Shan says, while living, he is dead.

[16:04]

So it's one sentence. What the two of them say together is one sentence. Uncle Mi does the incomplete sentence and Dongshan finishes it. So rather than who teaches about mind and nature and Dongshan while dead is living, you could read it, you could understand this. The who that teaches about mind and objects while dead is living. the who that teaches about mind and objects while... So together they make one sentence. Kind of like people make poems together. Like one person says a few lines and the other person completes it. So that's one that's... And I wrote, is this sex... I hope you're not left out.

[17:06]

Now, part of what I wanted to mention to you, which I discovered, actually, for the first time, was I was looking at, you know, what's this business about expounding mind and expounding nature? Now, I guessed the character nature, what it was, and I was right. So then after I found out that that was the character, I looked it up. See if I could find a little bit more about this character, which means nature. Well, it does mean nature. It also means essence. And it also means human nature. But it also means sex, gender. I just opened this up to myself, actually saying, there's someone inside there teaching about mind and sex.

[18:27]

Character for nature is made of two parts. One part is a radical for mind, and the other part is a radical for birth. Mind and birth, or mind and life. Character means life and birth. Put them together, mind and birth. It's human nature. How mind is born and how mind makes birth is human nature. There's no birth in this universe outside minds that make it. And there's no death in this universe outside minds that make it.

[19:32]

Human nature is mind-birth, or birthing mind, or mind-sponsored birth. But that also is sex. The word for sexual intercourse, Chinese word, is this character for nature. combined with another character. And this other one of those really neat characters, it is a character of the human body with the legs crossed. So the top part of it's a head, and there's a shoulder, arms, and the legs crossed.

[20:35]

That's a character which means to barter, to bargain, to communicate. to have intercourse, intimacy, friendship, to join, to intertwine, to interlace, to deliver, to hand over. It has all those meanings. And that character, this other character, means sexual intercourse. This is the character which someone might say, yeah, but it also means nature. And when they were saying mind and nature, they were like leaning more over sex size. So? Yeah, maybe so. What does the English word nature come from? Where does that come from? What does that mean? Do you know what it means? What the root of it is? Huh? Birth. The word nature comes from to be born.

[21:39]

Natural things are things that are born and of course die. So we're talking here in this story about in that shrine there was somebody who is expounding mind and expounding nature, expounding about what is born. expounding about human nature. This story I offer you now, and I'll come back to it, I think, and go deeper with it.

[22:51]

But before doing that, I wanted to talk about some other things. Again, the word sex, the first meaning of the word sex is a property or quality. by which organisms are classified according to their reproductive function. So sex has something to do with organisms, and then it has something to do with classifying organisms. So sex has something to do with mind. Mind, when it comes to organisms, it is concerned with what is the reproductive function of this organism. Sex has something to do with classifying life according to how it functions in the reproductive process, of noticing and classifying that.

[24:07]

And the second aspect of that definition is either of the two divisions of this classification. So it's a twofold division. Not used for the male function, the female function, and bystanders. There isn't three. Why don't they have bystanders, people who are not involved? Kind of a streamlined classification. Just those two parties are the ones that are concerned here, the male and female function of the sexual activity, the sexual reproductive function. And then there's another definition. And then there's the condition of being one of these. Sex is also the condition of being one of these types of organisms.

[25:32]

And then another meaning of, fourth meaning in this dictionary of sex is sexual urge or instinct in behavior. And then the fifth one is sexual intercourse. And I think a lot of times when people talk about sex, they're thinking of sexual intercourse. Or maybe also the fourth one, which is the sexual urge or sexual energy as a manifesting behavior. So again, looking at sexuality or sex, You know, where does it start, where does it stop? Is there any place where it isn't reaching? Is there any place where this aspect of us doesn't reach? And I, myself, feel like it's healthy, for me, anyway.

[26:39]

So, for example, if two animals If two females are fighting over a reproductive opportunity, is that sexual behavior? If two males are fighting over sexual opportunity, is that sexual behavior? If a male and a female are fighting over sexual opportunity, is that sexual behavior? To me, it seems like it is. Many of the things that we do to avoid sexual behavior, sexual behavior is sexual behavior, I feel. So to be celibate, I think, is a kind of sexual behavior.

[27:49]

I mean, it's a behavior, to me it seems quite focused on sexual behavior in a prohibitive way or a negative way, but it is very much oriented around sex. So, I feel like if I look at behaviors and then I sort of say, well, There's no sex there. I feel funny saying that. Like breastfeeding, is that sexual activity? Of course, it's quite closely related to sexual activity because by sexual activity now there's babies available for nursing. But I think a lot of people say, no, no, that's breastfeeding of a normal mother with a baby is not sexual activity.

[29:08]

And if a mother felt anything sexual, what you might call sexual while nursing, some mothers might feel guilty, might feel uncomfortable because they don't think they're supposed to have sexual feelings while nursing babies. Does that make sense at all? Or like, if a mother was, not necessarily a mother, but anyway, if a person was nursing babies, and then some adult male or female also wanted to nurse, they might say okay, if the person, you know, wanted to or was hungry or whatever. But then someone might say, well, in that case it's more sexual, you know, for an adult male to come over and start suckling. Someone might say, well, it's not just for the food that he's doing that.

[30:15]

I think he's getting some sexual thing out of this. We can do tests on them to find out that there's things going on in them which don't go on when they're just like eating an ice cream cone. Now somebody else might say, yeah, but some people, when they eat ice cream cones, if you did tests on them, you'd find out what's happening with them while they're eating ice cream cones. They aren't just getting nutrition, they're also, some other parts of their bodies are getting stimulated. And it's partly because they have this habit of nursing into their adulthood. make any sense that people have to draw these lines like you know you can nurse kids up to a certain age and then and then you stop for a while and then that's it pretty much and you adults don't do that because it's might be sexual and you shouldn't mix the two

[31:22]

But they do mix. Mothers do feel sometimes what we call for their babies. They do. Sometimes mothers have a wide range of sexual relationships with their babies. To the point that some people might feel like this mother Mother's sexual relationship, or this mother's physical relationship with this baby is not appropriate. However, it happens a lot less between babies than between fathers and babies. This kind of sexual behavior between the adult and the baby or the adult and the baby, which people feel like that's not appropriate.

[32:35]

It happens less between the mother and the baby than between the father and the baby, and a lot less between the mother and the baby and the stepfather and the baby. Do you know what I'm talking about? Does that make sense to everybody? Yes? One of the key factors there, I feel, is that when you're in a relationship with someone, it helps you find the appropriate sexual relationship. So mothers... Not too often do we find examples of mothers, especially mothers who, you know, are with the baby from early age, we don't find too many examples of them getting sexually involved with their child in such a way that people feel it was abusive or greedy or inappropriate.

[33:44]

It's not so common. Whereas between fathers and sons and daughters, it's much more common. And between stepfathers, even more so. Because stepfathers, I think, usually come later. From the moment of birth, when you meet the baby, and the farther you are from the moment of being with that, that moment of birth, and the nurturing that can come at that time, the farther you are from the nurturing, the more likely you lose touch with the appropriate way of dealing with the sexuality which is there. It isn't that the sexuality isn't there, and it is there for the father. It's that the mother tends to be more deeply involved in caring for and protecting this life.

[35:02]

And that orientation helps find the way of working with the sexuality which is there. that most people would look at him and say, this is not selfish, this is not abusive, this is not greedy. I personally agree with some people who feel like the only ways we can protect children from sexual abuse is to get the males to get more involved in nurturing early on. Tests have been done and very clear results which make perfect sense to me. Males that are closely involved with the babies early on do not very often sexually abuse them.

[36:11]

But stepfathers and uncles of both male and female are much more likely to get involved because they don't have that, get involved in abuse because they don't have that nurturing there. The nurturing, it isn't exactly that it cuts the sexuality. It's just that the sexuality doesn't take this greedy form, which is basically that it's almost never appropriate to have sex with babies. Greed, get involved in that. Because babies are extremely sweet. I mean they are extremely attractive. You naturally want to kiss them.

[37:18]

You want to hold them. You want to touch their bodies. It's just, you know, you may not be planning on it, but when you see them, your body wants to do this. And it wants to do it up to a certain point, and beyond that, it's not. And if you are primarily concerned above all else, the welfare of this being, the life of this being, your own indulgence in that, and abuse can be avoided. Mothers, whether they're the biological mother or an adoptive mother,

[38:26]

and they have those babies from an early age, again, it's not that it never happens, because mothers do find their babies very attractive. It's not that that's what most people consider a questionable or abusive relationship between mothers and child. It's not that they never happen, but they happen less often. There's something about that that works really well to find a true sexual relationship. So not exactly a big leap, but a little leap, maybe.

[39:38]

Or anyway, a step. I wrote in Chinese. Where did I write it? Anyway, I wrote that character for the character you wrote, Ren, for benevolence. with that character for nature. And so you could read, there it is, hi, Ren Xing in Chinese, that character for benevolence I put together with nature. So you could read it as benevolent nature. Something like that. Another way to read it is benevolent The benevolent sexuality is that precept, that bodhisattva precept of

[40:56]

Again, just saying this, when the mind, when the mind, mind and birth, this is human nature. Awareness of birth is human nature. And it also, this character means sex. Sex is human nature. to bring benevolence to this sexual situation is part of the bodhisattva's life. And although it's number three in our list, in some ways, for most practitioners, for some way, for many practitioners, it's a very central to consider.

[42:41]

Because in practicing these precepts, we want to practice benevolently with all beings. But when the issue of sexuality comes up, we really feel challenged to find out what that means. Not to say when the issue comes up, we don't feel challenged. But anyway, this one, somehow around killing, I don't know, it doesn't seem to so vividly bring up non-attachment, non-clinging, non-seeking. We want to practice non-grasping, non-seeking. So, sexuality is a real test to that practice. In our relationships with beings, is there enough benevolence there to

[43:57]

deal with is sexuality. What is benevolence with this being? What is kindness with this being? What is benevolence with every being we meet? This seems to me a good or a focus in trying to understand sexual relationships and this precept of no sexual greed. If we practice celibacy, Then when we meet beings, while practicing celibacy, can we meet beings in a benevolent way?

[45:18]

Is it possible to meet beings in a benevolent way if I'm practicing celibacy? And I would say, I guess I'll just say it, celibacy, but I'm holding to that, then I think I am not meeting the person I'm meeting in benevolence. On the other hand, if I'm not practicing celibacy and behaving as though I were celibate, If I grasp that, I'm also not practicing benevolence. Another way to put it, how is it possible to, when sexuality comes, which, by the way, is every moment, because, again, sexuality means mind and birth.

[46:36]

Every moment something happens, there's sexuality. So whenever anything comes, there's sexuality. It manifests in many ways, but it's always coming. When sexuality comes, what does it mean to practice, to meet it with complete relaxation? Can there be sexuality with no attachment, with no seeking, with no grasping, with no preference, with no controlling? Can there be sexuality with complete relaxation? So maybe that's enough to start with.

[47:46]

Yes. Do we have a microphone for her? Oh, this is it. So I can't give this away? OK. Well, all right, Jane. What was funny about that? Yes, Jane? Our proclivity to grasp and seek. Are they the same thing? Yeah, I don't... So she's saying, is sexuality and the proclivity to grasp and seek almost the same thing?

[48:56]

Mm-hmm. I think grasping, seeking, controlling, preferring, that our highly elaborate equipment for grasping, seeking, and controlling, I think were developed in relationship to sexual behavior. So I think they're intimately related. Yes.

[50:03]

I think that although I think, I think, why not just say yes? But what I'm proposing is that there's a way to work with this strong association between sexuality and grasping, seeking, controlling and preference, all that stuff, there's a way to work with that, with benevolence, such that we realize appropriate sexual relationships. Yes? Well, I would say that appropriate means appropriate for a bodhisattva.

[51:11]

That's what I'm saying. It's in that context that I'm apropos to being a bodhisattva or apropos to being a bodhisattva. So what makes it appropriate is when it's to that point. So a sexual relationship that helps someone become more happy, more healthy, more awake, more compassionate, more patient, more kind. All these things that would help this person. These would be the kind of relationship that I would call appropriate. This would be benevolent sexual relationship. And then we can look, I think, in details of how that would look. But today I'm just bringing up complete relaxation. So that's just one. And all these other things, non-grasping, non-seeking, no preference, giving up control.

[52:16]

So when I say that, it brings up something. Yes? Yes? Yes? Well, it may sound like that, but I think that even two males or two females, when they relate sexually, What I'm referring to by is that they're relating to the, what do you call it, the energy of birth between them. It's not that they're necessarily going to have a baby together, although they might adopt one. or various other things can happen, right?

[53:21]

Like two women can get a man involved to have a baby and then they can co-parent it and all that stuff. All those things can happen. But in other words, there's something about the relationship between two women and there's something about the relationship with two men that is... even though two men do not come together and reproduce, their reproductive equipment is part of their relationship. And the issue, the fact that our nature is so closely related to birth is always involved in me, so when I meet a man, another male, it's involved with him too, and that's part of our relationship. It's a key ingredient in our relationship. It's really perfect for our relationship. That our relationship is pivoting on that all the time.

[54:28]

But it doesn't mean that we're going to have any particular form of sexual relationship, but we are going to have a sexual relationship. That's what I'm saying. So two men cannot avoid having a sexual relationship. If they touch each other, they have a sexual relationship. If they don't touch each other, they have a sexual relationship. If they have a warm relationship, they have a sexual relationship. If they have a cold relationship, they have a sexual relationship. I'm basically saying, I'm proposing that we understand that all of our relationships are sexual. Yeah, to me too. And that we realize it is going on and needs to be cared for. There's a birth every experience. And birthing is connected to mind. So understanding mind and understanding birth

[55:30]

So again, the conversation between those two monks was expounding mind and expounding mind with birth. Mind is born of sex. Sex is born of mind. We can't have mind without sex. You can't have Buddhas without sex. And you can't have sex without Buddhas. Not anymore. There maybe was a time ...or any Buddhas if there was. But now Buddhas and bodhisattvas are totally involved in this sex thing. Especially bodhisattvas. And it has nothing to do with any limitation. I shouldn't say it has nothing to do, but it is not limited by any... ...going on. No, no, it's not just a desire to reproduce.

[56:39]

No. Yes. Yes. Yeah, so Max is saying that I ask priest trainees to not get involved in sexual relationships. And he says, from what I'm saying today, it seems... Right? But what I mean by sexual relationship... Actually, the way I'm using the term in that case is sort of different than the way I'm using the term today. So what I mean by sexual relationship in that case is kind of sexual relationship where you, the type, the special case of sexual relationship, which most people would agree is a sexual relationship.

[57:52]

which involves taking your clothes off, getting in bed, and using the reproductive equipment to touch the other person or letting the other person touch your reproductive equipment. This kind of sexual relationship, I ask them not to get involved with for some period of time, five years. But also, something related to that also, even if that wasn't happening, but that they were going to live with the person and be in the same bed, but not get into necessarily exactly what's going to happen, but that they would actually live in the same house. That too, I would suggest that they wait for a while. Or even if they were going to adopt a baby, if they're going to get together with somebody else and adopt a baby, or even if they're going to single-parentedly adopt a baby, I would suggest they wait.

[58:58]

Because my experience is that the energy it takes to take care of a relationship like that needs to be... I'd like to see how they would take care of a relationship like that and see what kind of life they have and not try to add that on to priest training, or to put it the other way around, if they haven't yet started that kind of thing, to start it, see how it goes, and does that relationship allow them to have the time and energy to practice and enter into priest training. So it's, in some sense, it's an economic thing. This is aside from the fact of whether the relationship is appropriate and all that. That's a separate issue, which wouldn't necessarily apply to priest training. But for priest training, it's just that when certain types of sexual relationships form, they take so much energy that I think I want the person to have the opportunity to take care of it and then see what they're available for in terms of priest training afterwards.

[60:15]

And I would usually suggest that if they want to do that, and then get that established and then see if pre-training is possible rather than, or if they really feel comfortable postponing it for five years, that's okay too. But I'd rather not have them start and then get involved. And when they do get involved, I ask them to stop training until their relationship is established and resume again when it seems that it's feasible. Does that make sense? But that's not the only type of sexual relationship the person has, according to the way I'm talking today. She's having a hard time seeing all human relationships as having an element of sexuality.

[61:38]

And then if we would say that sexuality was a subset of love, that would be easier because you could see love pervading all. Okay. Okay, so you're having trouble seeing that. I understand that. And I don't know if I should make it easier for you or not. that in my relationship with person X, okay, I'm not necessarily standing there saying, okay, okay, I'm not going to have sex with him now. I'm not necessarily saying that. But in fact, I am saying that because I'm not actually involved with this person. Sexually. And you may say, you know, so you may not see that. Okay. But anyways, so he got this. I have a man standing before me and I'm not saying, okay, I'm not going to have sex with this person.

[62:44]

So consciously I'm not saying that. But ladies and gentlemen, I think unconsciously I am saying that. I think what's going on in my body is that I'm casing the situation out seeing what I got here before me and I'm deciding I'm not going to get sexually involved with this person I propose to you that most of what your equipment is doing is figuring out whether you're going to get sexually involved with people most of the time it's unconscious of what's going on in your brain is unconscious and most of that stuff is about deciding whether you should or should not have sex with somebody Now, sometimes it becomes conscious. Sometimes it becomes conscious. I'm looking at this guy, or I'm looking at this girl, sometimes quite an old girl, and sometimes I think, I'm not going to have sex with this person now.

[63:52]

I'm actually like thinking, I'm not going to have sex with them. I'm not having sex with them. In other words, I'm not going to have sexual intercourse with this person. And sometimes, with people who I'm not thinking, I'm not going to have sexual intercourse with this person. I'm not thinking that consciously, but I'm very close to them. I spend a lot of time with them. I'm really devoted to them. And people think that I'm having sexual intercourse with them. Some people who I do not think consciously, oh, you know, I think I should have sexual intercourse with this person. I would like to have sexual intercourse with this person. I'm not consciously thinking that. What I'm consciously thinking is, this person is really important to me.

[64:55]

I want to spend a lot of time with this person. I'm devoted to this person. This person is devoted to me. We have a very important relationship. That's what I'm consciously thinking. But unconsciously, I propose that what I'm thinking is, I want to be intimate with this person, but I don't want to get intimate that way because that would screw the relationship up. Yes? Yes. Mm-hmm. Right. I'm saying the sexual one is... It's more like predominant. It's the one that's most complicated and most subtle. And the way we fight is not that different in a lot of ways. The way we physical fight is not that different from the way a lot of other animals fight. But the way we think about sexuality is inconceivably more complicated.

[66:00]

And it is so complex. Well, it's just wonderful. But what I'm actually trying to say, what I'm trying to unfold here is that if I have a close relationship with someone, I'm spending actually, the closer I get, the more time I spend with them, the more intimate I am with them, the more carefully I'm deciding about what kind of sexual relationship I'll have with them. In other words, perhaps the more careful I am about deciding that I'm not going to do this, this, this, and this because this, this, this, and this will upset these people over here who I care about and those people over there I care about. So I'm thinking, how close can I be with this person in such a way that it helps them, benefits them, and benefits everybody else? Now, if I stay away from everybody, involved with anybody that's also a decision about what kind of sexual relationship i'm going to have namely i'm going to have a very cold distant relationship but if i get close to somebody and try to find out what is the appropriate relationship at that time other people start thinking maybe i'm having an affair with the person

[67:23]

Because they know that if they got that close to a person, they might be having an affair. Because that's what happens when you get really close, is that, what? Grasping and seeking happens. If you stay far enough, it's not so difficult not to grasp and seek. But when you get close, it's tricky. Because getting close is actually, you're using the same equipment. your mind, which wants to be intimate with beings. So, yes, yes, yes? Birth of a new state of mind.

[68:30]

And we have equipment, complex, incredibly complex equipment, which is constantly trying to figure out how close and how far away to be from every person we meet. Everybody we meet, we have a sense of, you know, I'm too far away. If you're standing too far away, you feel uncomfortable. Like, geez, I'm kind of far, I'm talking to him, I'm too far away. I'm just, if you're too close, you feel uncomfortable. We are very concerned of being the right distance from everybody we talk to. Everybody we look at, we're constantly figuring out how much we're smiling at them. Is this too much of a smile? Too little of a smile. How much should I show them I love them? How much should I show them I... This is something we're into heavily. And this equipment was built around figuring out who to get close to, how close, We're constantly trying to figure this out. We could, it is possible that any of us could come up with the conclusion very nicely that we should have a certain kind of intimate sexuality with anybody here quite soon.

[69:57]

It could happen that we could come up with that conclusion. But would that conclusion be really a benevolent realization? And I would say yes, it could be. But again, what are we talking about as benevolence? Benevolence is not one-sided. It isn't that I decide to be close to you or you decide to be close to me. That's why I'm saying that this issue of relaxation is important because relaxation doesn't mean just I relax and you don't. But in my relaxation, I can enter into a relationship and enter a relationship where we're quite active, but we're both let go, and find our true relationship, which means to find the benevolent way to take care of this, all this equipment, basically mental, mostly mental, how close and to whom

[71:02]

Yes. No, I'm not. I wasn't doing that. I was not focusing on that limited version. I was saying that the limited version doesn't include, for example, that I put my hand on Brian.

[72:20]

That isn't what most people would call sex. What I'm saying is, though, that whenever I meet anybody, I'm constantly, every moment I meet, I'm deciding to touch you or not. And that's touching you. You're touching your shoulder. People wouldn't ordinarily consider it to be sex. But whenever we meet, we decide whether to touch or not. And we're always concerned about these kind of things. And these are issues of intimacy and sexuality, is what I'm saying. All of our relationships. I'm not focusing on what people usually consider. I'm focusing on... Nothing. I'm saying everything can be that. Yes.

[73:26]

Yes. And sex, and birth, and death, all really come together, and synagogues come together physiologically, and I just thought this was opening, and creation, and so on. So I think that's more what I was hearing in the story about the... Feel that too, that it shifted back in that usual way? so I'm basically there's several things one is that I was basically going to just spend the rest of the practice period talking about

[74:40]

in this very big way. So we could easily go on all day, but this isn't going to be the last time I'm going to bring it up. But I do want to say, so I see other questions, but we're going to have other opportunities to discuss this. But I just want to say, I feel, as I said at the beginning, that there may be some, that Since sex is so pervasive, it touches on everything. Painful issues and some scary issues. So I can also understand that some people really don't want me to talk anymore about this and don't want to discuss this anymore. And I encourage you to express yourself if you feel like this is too much to talk about or too whatever. appropriate to get into this, I would think it would be good if you would express that somehow.

[75:47]

That will help, you know, find a benevolent response to talking about this. I don't want to keep doing this just like, you know, so, and there's some way to make it easier other than including not talk about it at all. Please let me know. I don't want to bring up something that's too painful, too difficult, scary, confusing, whatever. I'm bringing it up because I feel like I'm bringing it up because I think it was requested and I think it's possible that now is the time to talk about it. And I don't have the answer. what to do about this phenomena called being alive. I feel like it's pretty much synonymous with sexuality. I think we're born by sexuality and it's going to be here our whole life in one way or another.

[76:58]

And you respond to it That will be something I'd like to explore with you for the rest of the week and after. How we can have a healthy life and still be the sexual beings that we are. How we can move on to our sexuality in a way that promotes health and benefit for all beings. That's basically what I'd like to consider. But again, if this is too much in some way, please tell me and guide me about ways of bringing it up that are easier for you to join in with. Okay? This is another view of what the Green Dragon Cave might be.

[78:02]

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