We have some guest students here who came earlier, came on Sunday maybe. Did you come on Sunday? Welcome. So you come into a situation where we have a practice period, and the practice period has a kind of theme teaching. The theme of the practice period teaching is what? Buddha activity. That's the theme of the... That's the theme of the Pact of Tradition. This poem by Sodo Yokoyama is in accord with Buddha activity. The sunset is unaware that it is a sunset. It's still a sunset. Is this an eraser for this thing?

[01:03]

Yes. It looked much bigger when I ordered it online. But it works pretty well. It worked quite nicely, yeah. The last time we had a... Darman, if I'm here, I used the wrong kind of marker. Is this the right kind of marker? It's also new. It's as big as I thought it would be. And tomorrow is Friday morning. Do we chant the Fukanzazengi on Friday? Today? So you guys heard the Fukanzazengi today, right? I don't know if you noticed it, but you chanted it. And in what you chanted, so that's a teaching about

[02:06]

Zazen. Fukan zazen. And then the gi means ceremony. So it's... What? Thank you for the explanation. Pardon? Thank you for the explanation. So fukan means general instruction or general admonition. General warning, actually. That's it. It's a warning about what zazen actually is. So some of the things that were in that chant that you did this morning were like this. It is deportment. Zazen is a deportment beyond hearing and seeing. The zazen is not just concentration practice.

[03:24]

Like it says, the zazen I speak of is not learning meditation. I think I understand it to mean the zazen that the ancestor Ehe Dogen is teaching us is not just concentration. and I talked about this last week, the Zazen that I'm speaking of, following from the ancestor, is totally culminated enlightenment. Traps and snares can never reach you. You can't enclose it. You can't get it. And you can't stop. It gets you, but you can't get it. It is also called The ancestor samadhi, the zazen is Buddha's samadhi. Samadhi means a collected, concentrated, relaxed, calm, open, flexible body and mind.

[04:36]

And the ancestor's mind went that way. It's called zazen. That samadhi, that concentration practice, includes generosity, the practice of generosity, the reality of generosity. It includes ethical discipline. It includes patience practice and patience reality. It includes heroic, enthusiastic effort. It includes a collected, calm mind. And it includes wisdom. That's the ancestors' samadhi. That's the ancestors' meditation. Parenthetically, I wanted to tell you that tonight, earlier, like yesterday, I was thinking of actually going through the chat we just did.

[05:44]

and talking to you about it. But then some people came and talked to me, and I felt like I had this thing going on about, you know what? Zazen. Yeah. Dash zazen. The zazen we're talking about is not the zazen that some people think they're doing or not doing. It's not the zazen they think some other people are doing or not doing. It is the Buddha activity. And there's another text that kind of goes with the Fukan Zazengi. and it's called Zazen Shin. And there are several Zazen Shins.

[06:48]

There are some written in China and there are some written in Japan. Well, there's particularly one written in Japan, Zazen Shin. Shin can be translated as acupuncture needle or point or needle. And this text, again, there's Chinese ones that Eihei Dogen thought were not really adequate for the job of teaching Zazen. But there was one that he liked, one Chinese poem about Zazen, called Zazen Shippen. He liked that one. And he wrote a fascicle. kind of inspired by that one and some other things, which he calls Zazen-shin. And then he also wrote a poem in that fascicle. And the beginning of the poem he liked, written by a Chinese master, in the beginning of the poem he wrote, the beginning is, The Pivotal Activity of All Buddhas.

[08:03]

I'm going to write the Chinese character here. This character means essence. It means necessity, or essential, or necessary. It also means pivot. Pivot's my favorite. Oops. pivot, or piv-vat-tal. And the next character is activity.

[09:06]

Zazen is the pivotal activity of all Buddhas. But it's also the essential activity of all Buddhas. The essential activity of all Buddhas is a pivotal activity. And it's also the necessary activity of Buddhas. In other words, Buddhas have to do this practice activity. They have to do this asana. And what is the pivotal activity that they're involved with? It is the way they are practicing together with each living being. And pivot is the way each living being is practicing together with all Buddhas. All Buddhas are practicing together with all of us and each of us.

[10:13]

And we, in turn, pivoting, we are practicing with all Buddhas. The practice of Buddhas includes us all day long. And the pivotal activity of Buddhas, the zazen of the Buddhas, is something that We are included in it. It is included in us. That's the practice of the Buddhas. Now this, the way that you all include all Buddhas, is beyond hearing and seeing. You can't see that. And by the way, I can't either. I can see it and you can't. It's beyond hearing and seeing. It's deportment beyond hearing and saying.

[11:16]

No traps can get a hold of the way. You are practicing with all Buddhas, and all Buddhas are practicing with you. And also, if you're practicing together with all Buddhas, and all Buddhas are practicing together with everybody, that means you, since you're practicing with Buddha, and you include Buddha's practice, you're practicing together with everybody too. And you can't see that. Like you can see it, but what you see is not it. Some people occasionally say, I see it, I saw how I was practicing with everybody. Well, great! But what you saw was a very small version of that truth. And it might have been quite encouraging, which is fine. Now, In order to wake up to Buddha activity, we have to take care of sentient being activity, the activity that we can see.

[12:29]

Like, I can see the activity of this hand moving with this approved marker, this marker which can be erased by this special erasure. I can see it. I can see the hand over here, too. I can see you. This is what the sentient being can see. By taking care of the sentient being, the sentient being opens to the Buddhas. And the Buddhas are always already here, But if we don't take care of here, which we can see, and there, which we can see, then we close to the Buddha's omnipresence. And by the way, if we close to the omnipresence of other sentient beings,

[13:36]

and their suffering, that closing closes us to the omnipresence of Buddhas. So Buddhas are open to the omnipresence of the suffering of all beings, and they practice with them. If we open to it, we open to the way Buddhas are. And of course it's very difficult to open to all the suffering, especially in an omni-way, like moment after moment. So that's what we're training at, is to be able to open to all these beings. Like a Buddha opens. But the Buddhas have sent messages to us and told us that they had to train a long time before they could open to it all. But now they are. So now they see Buddha activity and they are Buddha activity. And part of why I'm talking about this tonight is not just because it's a theme of the practice period, but because some people came to talk to me, and one person said, before I heard you talk about Buddha activity, I thought meditation practice was X.

[14:49]

Smart people still think meditation practice is X. I guess I need to talk about Buddha activity some more, so here I am doing it. A person said, I thought meditation practice was cultivating wholesome states. And I said, it is. I said, for example, Buddha activity includes cultivating wholesome activities. And wholesome is usually a word that's used for karma, wholesome karma, unwholesome karma, neutral karma. So part of Buddha activity is the cultivation of wholesome action, of body, speech, and mind. That's the ethical part of Buddha activity. And what I meant was more like a wholesome state of mind, like simile or concentration. We didn't include that, too. I already said that. Bodhi activity includes all the bodhisattva virtues, ethical discipline, generosity, concentration.

[16:03]

But what I think the person meant was he thought the meditation practice applied just to that fifth one. And many Zen students come to Zen centers thinking that Zen meditation is concentration practice, which it is, but not just concentration practice. So this teaching is to help us to encourage us to take good care of our concentration practice, but also remember that concentration practice includes all sentient beings. And if you think you can do it by yourself, you who think you can do it by yourself are included in the practice. But your idea that you can practice anything by yourself is a delusion. all deluded people are included in the pivotal activity. So part of the pivot is pivoting between Buddhas and sentient beings, or enlightened beings and deluded beings.

[17:10]

They're pivoting on each other. Zazen is not the enlightened beings by themselves. which, of course, enlightened beings by themselves sounds pretty good, except there's no such... The kind of enlightenment of Buddhists is not by itself. It's always with deluded beings. And as some of you may have noticed, there's plenty of deluded beings. You don't have to go far to find one. In fact, the hard part is not going someplace to find one, and just dealing with the one you've got. You don't have to move in the slightest bit to have that one. So being intimate with the deluded beings that you have is what the Buddha is. The Buddha is intimate with all the deluded beings. That's the pivotal activity. The great awakening is with the great delusion, and also minor delusion.

[18:12]

In order to wake up to this activity, this pivoting between great awakening and delusion, in order to wake up to it, we must not skip over delusion. Again, we have plenty of delusion. The hard part is not to skip over it and go try to find a slightly or considerably less deluded state, and then work with that. Buddha doesn't do that. If we want to open to Buddha, it's recommended we do what Buddha does. Buddha does not try to get a less deluded person to be intimate with. People who are slightly deluded, Buddha's intimate with them. People who are massively deluded, Buddha's are intimate with them. And again, the way to be intimate is to practice compassion with all delusion. It takes the form of Generosity, ethics, patience, diligence, concentration, and wisdom finishes off the intimacy, which is already there.

[19:28]

But if we don't do these practices, which are summarized as zazen, we miss it. It's already here, the Buddha activity is already here, the intimacy is already here. But we actually can tell a little bit that we're kind of shrieking back with intimacy with some obnoxious situations. And we have, again, we have deluded beings, but also we have obnoxious phenomena. And we're inclined, we're conditioned to shrink away from obnoxious phenomena. You know, again, we come by it honestly. It's built into our nervous system and our cells. Like at Green College, anybody here not know what a banana slug is? Raise your hand. Banana slug?

[20:30]

You know what a banana slug is? Are you afraid to raise your hand? Somebody doesn't know what it is. You don't know what it is. Okay. Is he the only one who doesn't know what a banana slug is? Do you know what a banana slug is? Picture him again. The gentleman there. Oh, Brian. Brian, do you know what a banana slug is? I think I saw one the other day. Oh, so Brian does know. Okay. So what does it look like? I mean, it was, like, this long. Like, almost as long as a banana. Almost above. Dark yellow. Dark yellow, yeah. A little bit yellow, kind of darker than a banana. So Brian did see a banana slug. A banana slug, when they're full grown, they're almost as long as a banana. And they're extremely slimy. A lot of things are slimy, but the slime of a banana slug, if you touch the slime, you become slime. Sun slime, you know, it washes off, it touches, it's slimy, it doesn't stick to you.

[21:35]

But that banana slug slime sticks to you forever. It's good for your complexion. It's good for your complexion. Some people say it's an ingredient in the highest, the supremely excellent quality of skin care. Come on. It will protect you from everything except slime. But a lot of people find banana slugs obnoxious. I have a friend who passed away, who used to be around Zen Center quite a bit, and he was an experimental kind of guy. So he had heard about and had some relationship with banana slugs for a long time. And I said, well, I probably should eat one. And he did. I don't know how much of it he ate.

[22:37]

I don't think he ate the whole banana slug. But he ate a significant amount. And it was a major thing in his life. But a lot of people find an aspect very obnoxious and they do not want to be intimate with them. You don't have to eat them to the end. But you do have to deal with your feeling of disgust and obnoxiousness in order to be intimate. And that's possible. We can do that. We have practices which can help us deal with obnoxious, repulsive, disgusting events. And if we do that, wholeheartedly, we open to Buddha activity. Next week, I think maybe I will talk about Ehe Koso Hotsugawan, which is closely related to what I'm talking about.

[23:48]

It's emphasizing the vows. to realize Buddha activity. And it's also dealing with when we shrink back from the commitment to realize Buddha activity, and how we practice with the shrinking back, and how we do that with the Buddhas, and the power of that practice. Maybe next week we could talk about that, and also I could give some background on that, It's a vow that Ehe Dogen, our ancestor, the person who wrote Gansazenki and who wrote Zazen Shin, he wrote that. He wrote that. It's his own personal vow. And you all are welcomed by me, at least by me, to write your own vow.

[24:51]

I would like to hear what your vows are. Because your vows... And I'd like to see if your vows are... What the basis of your vows are. Because that's the basis for your practice. The Zen meditation, zazen, the pivotal activity of Buddhists, is supported by vows, by certain kinds of vows. Yes. Is that second character that you wrote, what you're translating as activity, and is that character key? It's key, yeah. As in tension, zen key. Yeah, this is the key of zen key. It's that same character. And so it means... It means activity, it means energy, it means opportunity. So it's pivotal opportunity too. Zazen is the pivotal opportunity. It's like zazen is every situation of a licentiate being is an opportunity to pivot with Buddha.

[25:59]

No matter what's happening to you, the zazen of the moment is that you are pivoting with Buddha. You're dancing with Buddha all day long. It's an opportunity to realize that. Yes? I'm curious to hear more about intimacy with something that repulses me. I mean, that's just, if I'm repulsed, it's like a physical aversion. Yes. And stuff like wanting nothing more than to be separate from... Yeah. I'm just curious to hear more about practice. The practice? In that specific, yeah. Yeah, so... In a case like that, the first thing you work on, I would say, is the feeling of repulsion. That's too much for you. So you have this thing that came up called repulsion.

[27:00]

But you might be able to actually respect the repulsion. So intimacy doesn't mean you override your repulsion. Does that make sense? Yes. So, if you feel repulsed by something, and you hear Bodhisattva Mahato speak intimate with everything, it doesn't mean you should get rid of that repulsion. You should honor the repulsion. Not like, repulsion is good, but I respect repulsion. I don't degrade repulsion. I honor, even honor, I honor you. I'm here for you. I'm your friend. So you may feel repulsed by X, but you might not feel repulsed by repulsion. You might actually say, okay, I could be here for this discuss.

[28:06]

I can't stop being disgusted by that. I can be warm and welcoming to disgust. That's the first practice of compassion, which is the first step towards intimacy, towards realizing intimacy. With what? With the disgust. That's the first one. Welcome disgust. Welcome repulsion. I can't say welcome to the thing yet. This repulsion came up, and not the welcoming of that away. I can welcome the repulsion, the disgust. That's step one. Any questions about that? Yeah. Is it harder to repulse? Yeah. But it's less hard than the thing you feel repulsed towards, usually. Next is ethical discipline.

[29:12]

Watch carefully what you think about that, about the repulsion, not to mention the thing the repulsion is towards. Watch what you say about it, and watch the gestures you make towards it. Like, don't go, this is not a respectful gesture, etc. There's lots of disrespectful gestures. Watch. And if you make any disrespectful gestures, or words, or thoughts, then respect those and confess those. That's what the EHE Kosso is about. It's about what to do when you don't practice ethics with some difficult, disgusting feeling, or feeling of disgust. So this feeling of disgust, and there's also disgusting feelings. So then practice ethics with them after generosity. Treat them with tenderness. Because although they're disgusting, they're also fragile.

[30:15]

Just like attractive things are fragile. So we treat them with tenderness and care. We're careful of them. Because not being careful of disgust, you can fall into a disgust cesspool. You know where a cesspool is? You fall into a pit if you're not careful of anything. Particularly like things that people think. Treat them with care, otherwise they'll trip you up. Or rather, they'll trip you up. You will be tripped up by your lack of care. So ethical discipline is the next step for realizing intimacy with things which are challenging. Then be patient with them, because they're uncomfortable. Disgust is uncomfortable. Repulsion is uncomfortable. And then consult your aspiration to realize intimacy and the peace and freedom that comes with intimacy.

[31:21]

Think about that until you feel energy to continue the practice and do it more. And also, energize yourself to get ready to calm down. Calming down is sometimes not that interesting, unless you think about how good it is a lot. Think about how calm and relaxed this disgust might be. Then you feel more enthusiasm for it. And then you can practice concentration. And then when you practice concentration with disgust, for example, you're able to relax. Or I should say, as part of concentration, you learn to relax with disgust, fear, repulsion. Okay? Is that enough? Difficult things to mention? No. No? Give me some more. I have a lot. Irritation. Irritation. Anger.

[32:22]

Frustration. Frustration. Okay. Is that enough right now? Enough? So now, there will be more today. Yes? Yes. I think the word that you used was watch. When you were responding to this question, you were saying, watch it. I don't know if I've said it, but watching is... Part of respecting things is to watch and listen to them. That is distinct from analogs. The analysis comes last. You can start earlier, but if you start analyzing before you've even left something in the door, if you've already pushed the thing away, your analysis is going to be not very good. It's going to be just fantasy analysis. After you've let it in the door. Yeah, after you've let it in the door, I recommend generosity, ethics, patience, diligence, concentration, and then

[33:27]

when you're relaxed and open, and that you can be playful. And analysis is most effective when it has flexibility and playfulness in it. Analysis works best when it's playful and creative. So when you relax with some difficulty or some pleasure, whatever, When you relax with it and you're calm with it and flexible with it, now you're ready for penetrating analysis. The last practice is the analysis, is compassionate analysis. But if you don't practice these other five first, your analysis is not supported properly. It won't penetrate in a wise way. it'll just freak out, basically, more or less.

[34:31]

But if you're calm and flexible and relaxed and playful, then you can turn to the creative process with the thing, and in the process of creation you wake up to what the thing is. What is the thing? It is Buddha activity. It is pivotal activity. It's pivoting all the time. This delusion is pivoting what the Buddha is. And then you're like what we call free, or whatever that is, and ready to move on to that thing which you couldn't even look at before. And do the same thing with that. That was quite a course. Yes? The question about analysis. I wonder, I guess for me, I feel like the practice of zazen or being open to things has freed me from overthinking things much of my life, and just analysing and judging and critiquing, and I would like to be freer of that.

[35:50]

You'd like to be free of overthinking. But I just hesitate to take in what you said about analysis, because I wonder where does that even... Is it a useful thing? It has a place. Analysis is part of wisdom. When you're playing with something, you may not notice it, but there's a kind of analysis going on when you're playing with something. When you're being creative, there's analysis there. You're looking out this way and then you turn and look at it that way. That's analysis. Psychoanalysis is not pulling things apart necessarily, it's looking at them from various angles and listening to feedback and questioning on what this thing is. Questioning is analytic. And the best kind of questioning isn't prying or manipulating.

[36:50]

It's just like saying, well, what is this? That's an analytic gesture. And that kind of questioning can be going on for the whole process, but it works best when you're relaxed and open. So again, if you're questioning to try to get answers, that's not the kind of questioning that's analytic. That's basically skipping over the first practice of generosity. If you're doing analysis to try to get answers, you don't have enough generosity in your analysis, in your question. Yes? Sorry, the last part was skipping about generosity and answers. I didn't understand. Could you just repeat that, please? If you're asking questions to get answers, your questioning is not generous. So the answers won't be useful. They might be useful, and they definitely... Definitely, if you ask questions to try to get something, there's consequences there.

[37:59]

There's consequences of trying to get rather than give. trying to get has consequences, and giving has consequences. But you can ask questions as gifts, and you can ask questions to try to get answers. And as you might not be surprised to hear, people sometimes ask me questions to get answers. Can you imagine? And you can also imagine. What would you be able to imagine when they ask questions to try to get something? What do you think happens? Both. They get the stick. What happens? You give them another question. Yeah. I don't want another question. Anyway, they try to get an answer, but they usually don't get it. So in trying to get an answer from me, they often find the situation frustrating, and they even think rather than, you know, situation's frustrating, I'm frustrated.

[39:04]

Because they ask a question to get an answer, and I didn't give it. We think I'm intentionally trying to be troublesome, and I got the answer, hand it over. I'm sorry. But you don't understand, I don't have any answers. What I have is questions. So for people who are trying to get answers out of me, I'm in a situation with them. If they're trying to get answers from me, we've got a situation and it's a frustration situation. But we can be compassionate to that situation and then move on to wisdom, where finally we'll learn how to ask questions as gifts. So the scriptures, especially the Great Vehicle scriptures, are full of these bodhisattvas who are asking questions and they're not trying to... What time is it? 8.15?

[40:14]

They're not just lying to get answers. They're asking questions to help people as gifts. They want to ask really good questions. There's a guy who lived around here for a while. His name is Gregory Bateson. How many people know the name Gregory Bateson? There's a guest house over there called Linda's Firehouse. He called the guest house Lindisfarne House. People who work in the guest program know it's called Lindisfarne House. And who is the building dedicated to? Gregory Bateson. Gregory Bateson. Gregory Bateson's ashes are here at Greenwich. On the hillside. Anyway, he was a really great guy. And I got to hang out with him during the last few years of his life, and particularly the last three months of his life, I was with him a lot.

[41:18]

He played chess with me, and he played chess with his dad's chess set. His dad was a close friend of Charles Darwin. His dad's chess set said 1860 on it, and he played chess with his dad's chess set. And when I played chess with him, I wanted to play a good game of chess, but I wasn't trying to get anything. it seemed really inappropriate that a young man should try to beat a venerable old man. But it seemed totally appropriate that I should try to play a really interesting game, and regardless of who would win, to make interesting moves, but not stupid, because they're not as interesting as smart moves that aren't trying to win, but are just trying to be beautiful. So that's why I played with him. And, you know, I'd be like, if I just looked at him, He was dying. He died. I started hanging out with him a lot in April, and then he died on July 4th.

[42:27]

During that time, yeah, we had a very nice intimacy. Our intimacy was realized by giving rather than trying to give. We can learn that. And then we can learn intimacy. And when we learn intimacy, we learn pivotal activity. We learn zazen by these practices. And so you can practice concentration, like you can Be mindful of your posture, as I said over and over. When I sit, I'm mindful of my posture. Moment by moment, I'm mindful to sit up. To make a good posture.

[43:28]

You know, good for me. And good for you. I want to make a posture that you feel like encouraged by my effort. I'm doing that. I'm doing that for everybody. And I'm mindful to offer this effort of working on my posture, to offer this to the pivotal activity of all Buddhas, to offer this to the way Buddhas are practicing with me, and the way Buddhas are practicing with you, and the way I'm practicing with you. So when I sit, the sitting that I'm devoted to is the sitting which is for you, and the sitting which you support me to do for you. That's what I'm giving my sitting to. And I'm not really doing this for you and you for me. I'm not doing that. I'm devoted to that.

[44:30]

Because that's beyond my hearing and seeing. I can't do it. But I can be devoted to something that I can't do. Like, I can be devoted to all your lives. But I can't do your lives. But I can support your lives. And even if I'm not devoted to your life, I'm still supporting your life. But if I'm devoted to your life, I have a chance to wake up to that I am actually supporting you. And, by the way, you're supporting me. I can wake up to that, because it's already the case. But if I'm not devoted, to this relationship, because this zazen is a relationship. It's not what I'm doing, it's not what you're doing, it's our relationship. And I can say, I'm devoted to that. My sitting, my walking, my paying attention to my posture, my paying attention to my breathing, my paying attention to cutting vegetables, my paying attention to the floor and the zendo, everything I'm doing,

[45:39]

is devoted to this relationship. What I'm doing is not the relationship, but everything I'm doing is in relationship, and that relationship is the pivotal activity, is the samadhi of the ancestors. And so I say to you sometimes in sitting, I say, we are maintaining We are upholding the pivotal activity of our Buddhas. That's a statement of devotion. That's a statement of dedication. That's a statement of commitment. I'm also committed to pay attention to what I'm doing. My essential commitment, my pivotal commitment, is to this pivotal activity. And when you sit there in the Zendo, Like the sunrise, or the sunset, whichever it is, you, in fact, sitting there, you are actually maintaining the pivotal activity, even though you don't think you're paying, just like the sunset, even though you don't think you're the pivotal activity, you're still the pivotal activity.

[46:55]

Just like the sunset. So I say, you are. You are, that's what you're doing, really. And so we can wake up to that, and as part of the waking up, somebody says that to you a lot. Part of it is somebody has to say that to us, like somebody has to say to you, you're beautiful. And, you know, somebody has to say to you, that's a piano. You need to learn that. Over and over until, oh, I get it, okay. If you wish, when you're sitting, to pay attention to your posture, the Buddhists support you. If you wish to pay attention to your breathing, the Buddhists support you. If you wish to count your breathing, the Buddhists support you. They practice with you no matter what you're doing, including if you're practicing concentration.

[48:02]

They don't start supporting you when you're practicing concentration and stop supporting when you stop practicing concentration. No matter what you're practicing, all the Buddhas are practicing with you. So go ahead and do whatever practice you want, and while you're doing it, you might just also remember that you've got some company all the time, even if you forget. Yes. I don't really understand at all. And I can't really see how it's helpful to know this. You don't understand at all? And you what? And I don't understand, like, why are you telling us this? Oh, I'm going to tell you? Yeah, I was at home. Well, I don't know. I don't know. However, I could tell you a story. But that wouldn't be why.

[49:04]

That would just be a story. Want to hear a story? You don't need to say no. I want to hear a story. Huh? Yes, I want to hear a story. Okay, the story is, I'm copying the ancestors. That's one story. One story is, I'm an ancestor. That's a story. You know, and there's a document for saying, this guy's an ancestor. Yeah. And you people are a potential next generation. I could be one of your ancestors, and I'd tell you what the ancestors told me. So my teacher told me all the stuff I'm telling you. Except not, because he wasn't a native speaker of English, so I taught differently than him. I'm just passing on to you ancestral samadhi. And in order to pass it on, I have to give you some instruction.

[50:06]

And I've been giving you instruction, and you still don't understand anything. However, part of what I'm telling you, whether you understand it or not, I'm telling you. And you're listening. And that relationship between you and me just works out. And you can say, I don't understand what you just said. But I said it. And people in the past also, some of the ancestors even, also said it like you. They said to their teacher, I don't understand what you're talking about. Why are you saying that? So you're reenacting an ancient story of students saying to a teacher, I don't know what you're saying, and I wonder why you're saying it, and the teacher says something like what I'm saying, or something more interesting, perhaps. But even though it might be more interesting, they don't understand it either. But some people hang in there with those teachers that they don't understand, and then they do.

[51:10]

Some people don't hang in there with the teacher, and then they don't. They get through whatever it is to not understand. So that's some stories. I could go on, but all the Zen stories are basically about that. They're all about why people talk like me. Yes? You can't see it or hear it. It seems to me like you can feel if you're in balance or on point. You can feel... There's meaning. It's not like you can get it, but you can kind of... There's like some juice, there's some energy, there's something that is exchanged with that. Yeah. If you feel like you're off, you're right. If you feel like you're on, you're wrong. Well, if you're on, if you're on in a moment, then you're off.

[52:17]

You're always on. And the way you're on, you can't feel. The way you're on is beyond your feelings. That's revelation. But if you feel like they're on or off, you're right, because your feelings are not on or off. In reality, your feelings aren't on or off. But we think they are. And if you think they are, and when you think you are, you say, well, unless you're off, you're right. And if you think you're on, you're wrong. What about if... It's just like... You know... So the attunement that you feel... You are in attunement already. If you think you're off, you're right. Because if you think you're off and you believe... No. No, it's not attunement, but you're correct, because you're not in attunement. If you're involved in feeling indiscrimination and you think that they are what's beyond feeling indiscrimination, and you notice that about yourself, you see, well, that's off.

[53:21]

You're right. That's off. But if you think this feeling... that I'm in attunement, is the attunement, that's a mistake. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't be compassionate to the feeling of attunement and believing it. Because if you're kind to the feeling that you are in attunement, like if you had to get up, like, I had a feeling that everybody was practicing with me, and I was practicing with them, right? And that's such an inspiring feeling. Now, And that should be respected, and you should be kind to that friend. But also the same if you feel like, I'm not practicing with everybody. I feel like I'm not practicing. That should get the same compassion as the feeling that you are practicing. But the one where you feel like you're not is just flat out wrong. And the one where you feel like you are, well, it's true that you are, but your feeling that you are is not the actual way or the truth. But if you notice that, oh, I had a feeling that I was in attunement, and that was just a feeling, and then you're kind to that feeling of being in attunement, you open up to the actual attunement, which is beyond your feeling of attunement or not attunement.

[54:39]

And also feeling of attunement can be very, very pleasant and wonderful and inspiring. And feeling out of attunement can feel really difficult and painful. But they both are calling for the same great compassion. And if you're compassionate to both of them, you open up to the attunement which is beyond feeling attunement and feeling not attunement, which is always present. And that's my case. Okay, I do not want to keep you past the bewitching hour, so I think we should stop.

[55:23]

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