The symbol of the Dharma flag. Also a symbol of surrender. Surrender to the Buddha way. I surrender to the Buddha way. I was thinking, you know, sometimes you might say, I surrender myself to the Buddha way, but my is kind of redundant. So just, I surrender self to the Buddha way and raise the flag of the Buddha Dharma. So I propose to you that enlightenment is the silent bond among all beings.

[01:07]

And that's it. Another way to say it, which I feel okay about, is enlightenment is being silently bonded with all beings. So I propose that Enlightenment is already the case.

[02:19]

It is already the situation. It is at this moment. It is the silent bond among all beings. If there is a silent bond in some way among all beings, that's what I would call That's what I mean by enlightenment. If there isn't, then I would say the kind of enlightenment I'm interested in doesn't exist. I'm going tomorrow night to the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment. So I thought I might talk to the people at the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment about what enlightenment is, they might be interested, since they've made a center for it. So I looked it up in the dictionary, which I never did before.

[03:21]

English dictionary. I looked it up in Chinese dictionaries. In the English dictionary, under enlightenment is a noun. And under there you find, number one, it's the act or means of enlightening. And also under number one, it's the state of being enlightened. Jumping to enlightened, enlightened is the past participle of enlightened. Buddha is the past participle of bodhi. Bodhi is enlightened or enlightening, and Buddha is the past participle of bodhi. The root of Buddha is bud, which means awaken.

[04:26]

So Buddha, to choose the word in the enlightened one, for Buddha is really kind of concordant with Sanskrit. Enlightened, past participle of enlightened. Buddha, past participle of bodhi. It means to be freed. In English, it means to be freed from ignorance and misinformation. Or I might say misconception. All the dictionary says, freed from ignorance and misconception. And then wonderfully it says, often based on a full comprehension of the problems involved. The problems involved in what? Well, in ignorance and misinformation. says often.

[05:30]

In other words, there's a possibility that without fully comprehending the problems involved with ignorance, it might be possible to become free from ignorance. That definition seems to open the possibility that, you know, you just might be strolling down the street, still not free completely, of delusion, of ignorance and misinformation. And you might run into somebody and have a meeting, and in the meeting you might become free of ignorance and realize enlightenment, and be enlightened. However, usually there's some work with the problems of ignorance as a warm-up to being enlightened, to entering the state of being enlightened, the state of enlightenment.

[06:42]

The state of enlightenment, again, I propose just for fun, is already what's going on in the realm of enlightenment. There is a realm of enlightenment, and the realm of enlightenment is the way we're bonded with all beings, and all beings are bonded with us. All beings means living and non-living, enlightened and not enlightened. We're bonded with all unenlightened beings. We're bonded with all enlightened beings, with all past participles of enlightened. We're bonded with all inanimate objects, too. We live supporting each other. Also in the dictionary it says that enlightenment is the ultimate goal of the Taoist and the Buddhist religious life.

[08:18]

And then for Taoism it says that enlightenment is a state of harmony with the laws of the universe. And for Buddhism it says it's the realization of the ultimate universal truth. I think that Zen seems to me to be actually, you know, I've heard and it seems reasonable that there's some Taoist influence on Buddhism creating this phenomena called Zen. Because in Zen I think part of what we mean by enlightenment, what I just said was a state of harmony with the laws of the universe. That seems that applies here too, not just with the truth of the universe, but harmony with the laws of the universe. So this class is said to offer teachings on the self-fulfillment samadhi,

[09:29]

or the self-fulfilling samadhi. And samadhi means, it can be translated as, it's a Sanskrit word, it can be translated as a kind of one-pointed, meditative one-pointedness or meditative concentration. So in a sense, what the self-fulfilling samadhi is, is that it's an absorption in, or it's a mindful awareness to the point of being one-pointed about enlightenment. It's a meditation of being absorbed in enlightenment, or absorbed in light, or absorbed in this silent bond, to be mindful and absorbed in the silent bond among all beings.

[10:48]

to be mindful and one-pointedly absorbed. And one-pointedly is kind of a synonym for absorbed. You know, like you're absorbed like you just like there's not you in it, kind of. So that would apply to this because It would be mindful absorption to the point of where you would not be separate from the bond, which you're of course not separate from. You would enter into this way that you are bonded quietly with all beings and they are bonded with you. You would bond into this intimacy with all living and non-living, enlightened and unenlightened beings. And you would be mindful of that. you would develop a steady, continuous intimacy with intimacy.

[12:08]

So this is teaching about this samadhi. And in the tradition that is being offered here tonight, going back through a lineage in Japan and a lineage to China, which is sometimes called Soto Zen or whatever. In that lineage, this is the central meditation practice. this meditation, this self-fulfilling meditation or this meditation on self-fulfillment about how you're fulfilled and part of the way you are fulfilled and part of the way I'm fulfilled is that you fulfill me and I fulfill you.

[13:17]

And not just you, but all beings fulfill me and I fulfill all beings. The whole universe is based on me and the whole universe is based on you and you are based on the whole universe. Meditating on this is meditating on enlightenment. Not meditating on this I don't know what to say. You'd have to tell me what kind of meditation you would be doing that wasn't on this. Maybe somebody's not meditating on this right now in this very room. And, yeah, so I have meetings with people and they come and they tell me things like, one person said to me a while ago, I don't have any close friends.

[14:43]

I mean, I have friends who like to go to the opera with me, but They're not really close friends. I don't have any close friends. And I don't know if I asked her if she wanted any feedback on that, but whether I asked her or not, I gave her some feedback. I said, yes, you do. I was actually thinking of me. But then I realized that there was more than just me. So I said, yes, you do. Everybody's your close friend. but you don't see it." And she didn't argue with me that she didn't see it. She didn't see it. She didn't think anybody was her close friend, not to mention everybody. And then quite recently somebody came to see me and she said, I don't remember exactly what she said, but maybe she said something like, I'm really nurturing and devoted to many people who live around here.

[16:18]

but I don't think they're really nurturing to me. And I said, you know, I think most people would agree that you're nurturing. Most people who know you would agree that you're nurturing. I think probably most people would, actually, in your case. And I agree. I'm one of them. I would agree. You are nurturing. But these other people are also nurturing, but you can't see it. That's your job. Sometimes you can, but sometimes you can't. And then even more recently, somebody came to see me just this morning, and she said that things were going better this morning. this morning things were going better with her, and recently also things were going better.

[17:26]

In other words, she wasn't feeling so isolated and withdrawn from people. And the reason why she felt isolated and withdrawn was because it's so painful for her to see people and not feel like they're supporting her. It's so painful for her to see that, to see things that way, to see a world where people are not supporting her, that she withdraws and isolates herself to try to protect herself from the pain of that vision, which she realizes is not a good idea because it sort of institutionalizes it. And what I said to her was, when you withdraw and isolate yourself, you're actually supporting people by that.

[18:38]

When you don't feel, when you don't see that somebody is supporting you, and when you don't see that you're supporting them, you actually are supporting them. And they may see that very clearly. They may see that you don't think that they're supporting you. You can see somebody who you can see that they don't think that they're supporting you. Maybe they even tell you, you're not supporting me. So you can see it and hear it. And you can see that they're actually supporting you by telling you that. And the eyes or the heart of the enlightened see, it's clear to them, that everybody, including those who do not think they're supporting anybody and nobody's supporting them, those people are also supporting everybody and helping everybody.

[19:54]

They see that. they become free of the ignorance of that. And most people are not free of that. What they've got is ignorance of that. They can see that somebody's not supporting them, and they can see that they don't support somebody. And not only do they see that, but they're situated in that vision. They're not free of it. They don't just see it that way, but they're not free of it. So this meditation is about becoming free of the ignorance of enlightenment. The ignorance, not so much of being some other way than you are, but the ignorance of the way you are now. and the way everybody else is now.

[20:58]

The ignoring of that or the misconceptions or misinformation about that. And one other thing I just popped up this afternoon before I got my first ticket coming to yoga room classes. I've been coming here for a long time, haven't I? How many years? 20? Let's say 20. I've been coming here 20 years. I never got one of those tickets from those two-hour parking things here. But I got one tonight. Congratulations. Thanks. And I am supporting Berkeley. I supported you.

[22:02]

Berkeley supported me. I support Berkeley. Yes, I'm so happy. But before I was doing this practice, I wasn't so happy when I got tickets. While I was getting the ticket, I was over happily reading the New York Review of Books in the Shattuck branch of the Berkeley Library. And I was captivated, happily captivated by the lead article about Pedro Moldavar. I like him. He's a guy who has come to teach us about unusual people supporting us. Unusual people we don't necessarily think are supporting each other are supporting each other, too. And so anyway, the reviewer said that, talking about one particular movie, one particular film, he said, Marcius is caught

[23:15]

as Moldavar's characters are so often caught between exhausting emotional demands imposed by a complicated life and equally exhausting demands imposed by what you might as well call art. So a lot of his characters are caught, according to this reviewer, between these two kinds of emotional demands. Did you get that? Was that clear? And I thought, hmm, how does that relate to the Buddha way? And how does it relate to the people coming to this class? I thought, oh, I see.

[24:19]

It's like, bring them together. Don't get caught between. Actually, don't even be caught. Just dive in to the exhausting emotional demands of a complicated life. Dive in to the exhausting demands of what you might as well call art or the self-fulfilling samadhi. As maybe you can see, it would make sense that you would practice this samadhi if you were being given an exhausting emotional demand. You would practice it with that. You are in a silent bond with this complicated situation.

[25:25]

And I also thought exhausting, one meaning of exhausting is it wipes you out. Another meaning of exhausting would be you give your all to it. It's demanding that you exhaust your effort, that you're absorbed in it. You're exhausted in it. However, being caught in the duality between those two makes better films than ones about where they're united. They try to, like, what they do is they find people who are actually practicing, who practiced, but then they split the practice into parts so they can make a movie out of it. Like, you know, if you can make a movie about the Buddha, you split it into parts. So you got the Buddha, like, caught by emotional demands on one side and on the other side, the Buddha trying to attain enlightenment or trying to be on this exhausting meditative course until finally they come together.

[26:43]

they become one point. The problems of daily life become one-pointed with enlightenment. And the problems involved in daily life aren't the problems involved in ignorance. And by studying ignorance, we become free of it. And not just studying ignorance, but studying the problems involved. Like, okay, I'll study ignorance, but how about studying the problems of ignorance? The actual way it's manifesting in a demanding way, in a way that's asking 100% and not 101%. It's too much. You know how to take it back one? We don't want 110% from you. Just 100%. Just 100.

[27:55]

Anyway, often 100. Maybe sometimes you can get by with 92%. I don't know. Maybe sometimes Buddha says, that's close enough. Fine. And towards the end of the article, this is kind of reviewing this new movie of his. It's called Bober. But he also mentioned that in Spanish... Bolbere usually means, bolbere is like return, right? Anybody speak Spanish here? Bolbere, bolbere más tardes. I'll call return later, right? Anybody speak Spanish? Is that right? Bolbere más tardes? I'll call later. Huh? Yeah. I'll return later. Yeah, right. So it kind of means to return, but the reviewer also says that bolberese means in Spanish could mean to change one's ideas. Volverse.

[28:58]

V-O-L-V-E-R-S-E. He said it could mean, it can mean to change your ideas about something. So, changing our ideas, so entering in the samadhi may involve changing our ideas about something, potentially changing our idea about all somethings. So in other words, changing our idea about all somethings so that everything you meet is an opportunity to enter into how what you're meeting and you are mutually supporting each other. and how everybody is helping you in this meeting with this one person. And your meeting with this one person is helping everybody to enter into that change of mind.

[30:02]

Change your mind into that way. I'm curious, is it volvense or is it volverese? V-O-L-V-E-R-S-A. Volverse. It means to become. Yeah. To turn into. Okay. Cool. But he said it could also mean to change your mind about something. Oftentimes when we see things, we don't think they're us, right? But then we can change our mind about them and say, well, maybe they are. Like, maybe usually I think, Elena's not me, but I could change my mind about her and think, well, maybe she is me. Like, you're not me, Elena. Yes, I am. Yes, I am. Like that.

[31:04]

Can I ask a question in return? Can you ask a question about a term? Sure. Why not? Self-fulfilling. Is there a Sanskrit equivalent? What is meant by self-fulfilling? What's meant by it? Enlightenment. Enlightenment is what's meant by it. Uh, so, the self, is there a Sanskrit term? I mean... You know, I don't think there is. I think it's a Chinese term. You have a blackboard here? I think you do. Yeah, there's a blackboard in the closet if somebody wants to get it and some chalk. Welcome. I can write Chinese characters for you. It's a Chinese term. And, uh, But I don't know a real science.

[32:12]

That's right. This is it. And now for the chalk. Oh, wait a second. The eraser. There's some tissue over there. What does it say? Roderick, I thought you were going to offer your jacket, but no. You're just trying to warm up there. I'll do it. Thank you. Anyway, the term self-fulfilling is made of three characters. First character means to receive. Next character means to employ. Employ.

[33:14]

Or it could be implore. Receive and implore. Receive and implore. Receive and please more. Give me another life. That was a good one. And the third character means self. So you can translate it as self-receiving and employing or self-receiving and enacting. The self is the object of vipassana and it seems to be some difficulty to enlighten it. the self is a difficulty to enlightenment? She said the self, she thought the self was a difficulty for enlightenment. Well, there's two kinds of self. One kind of self is a self like, you know, what do you call it? like it's the self of you looking and being different from Deirdre, and Deirdre being different from you, and Deirdre being different from Jerry, and us being different from mountains, and mountains being different from the ocean.

[34:24]

So there's something that makes a mountain the way it is, and that's kind of like the self of a mountain. Mountains are like tall, right? They go up in the sky and down to the earth. Oceans are big and watery. Ah, thank you. So that kind of self we do have. And that self, did you see a problem? Yeah, that kind of self could be a problem too. If you had misinformation or ignorance about that self, then you could have a problem with that self. But there's another kind of self which doesn't exist, and that is a Deirdre that's independent of Lynn. There isn't a self like that. That self is also a problem. But that self is like, that self is a form of ignorance of the actual way Deirdre is.

[35:26]

The first one was when we were independent. I was not the same as she, so... I said she's not the same of you, but I wouldn't have been able to say that if you were independent. It wouldn't have made any sense if you were independent. Did you get that? Not quite? It's on tape. Oh, it's only recorded. Things being different equals they're related. Can't be different from something if you're not related to it. There's no way to establish difference except through relationship. Is there? No. Different things are interdependent. To say that something, anything, is independent of things, there's no such thing as something that's independent of things. No such things exist. However, we ignore that

[36:27]

And actually not only is there nothing which exists independent of anything, but there's nothing which exists independent of everything. So we ignore, anyway, we ignore little slivers of our interdependence with all beings, like people sometimes feel independent of their mother or their sister. They feel independently. or they feel independent of somebody anyway. So that ignorance, there's problems involved in that ignorance. When you feel independent of somebody, there's going to be problems involved with that. Fully comprehending the problems involved in thinking that you're independent of somebody will lead you to realize the fulfillment of self.

[37:32]

Another translation of this was just to use the characters. I'll be right back. Self-receiving and employing. Self-receiving and employing. This can be translated as self-fulfillment or also self-enjoyment. The self which you've already got is not an enjoyable self.

[38:37]

The self which you're receiving and employing is an enjoyable self, is a fulfilling self, is a fulfilled self. You see how you're fulfilled and how you fulfill. That, being aware of that, is enjoying having a self, is enjoying having a self, seeing how the mountains make you and you make the mountains. That's enjoyment of the self or fulfillment of the self. So that's the term. So fulfillment is not just that you get something and you keep it. It's definitely not that you get to keep it. You don't get to keep it. You are it, and you don't get to keep yourself. But you do get to be yourself. You do get to be, you can be a fulfilled self, but you don't get to keep yourself. The self you get to keep is an unfulfilled self. That's the one most people seem to be very successful at. They've got a self which they keep and they feel unfulfilled and more or less isolated and withdrawn from the other people who are not fulfilling them and who they're not fulfilling.

[39:48]

But you get the advantage of this miserable thing is you get to keep yourself. And also, the selfridge you get to keep is the locus of the misery. All the misery comes dumping in in that place. So it's kind of a fair deal. Look at all this tissue, my God. You're so generous, Jerry. Does anybody want to blow their nose? Want to hear a sad story? I bet you had a lot to erase. No, actually not that much. What did you say? Give it for next week. Hey, good. Yes? There's also a meaning of self like self-starting or self-cleaning. Yeah. In the sense that, and I'm wondering if that character means that. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. There's no such thing as that also. There is the idea of that.

[40:50]

But nothing starts itself. However, everything starts other things. So, I mean, that's what I say anyway. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying, you don't start yourself. That's the one thing you don't start. But you start everything else. And everything else starts you. And meditating on being mindful of that and getting more and more concentrated on that is this samadhi. This is the meditation of the Buddha, is to be mindful of this and be aware of this until you're, like, absorbed into it, until you're volverse. Volverse. Filling me again, huh? Until you turn into it.

[41:56]

Until you turn into what you're meditating on. What are you meditating on? You're meditating on enlightenment. And you meditate on it until you turn into it. However, fortunately for this class, because we have several more meetings, there's problems involved. Because really, I said all I need to say. You already have it. You can go do it. But you have problems. So you come back next week with your problems. I hope those of you who have problems, and some of you will, maybe even Lynn, will have some problems with ignoring what I just told you about. You will probably, some of you, sometime during the week, you will ignore this. You will forget about this. You will not be mindful of this. You will actually be mindful of something else. And then by studying the problems with this practice and the problems with ignorance, it's kind of the same, you will come to comprehend the problems involved.

[42:59]

And through that practice, you will become more and more absorbed, and then you will more and more realize this samadhi. How do you suggest we practice with this? How? In that we look at what we're experiencing and... Well, one way you can do it would be to notice when you're ignoring it. That's one of the easy ways, because there's lots of opportunities to notice when you are ignoring it. Does that make sense? Well, if we don't see it... If you don't see what? That everybody's helping us. We're helping everybody. Yeah, if you don't see it. If we don't have that vision, then each time we come to a situation, we're practicing with it. Then we can't just say, well, I'm ignorant. Because we're trying to find it. Well, you could just say that.

[44:02]

That would be a perfectly good practice to constantly say, I'm ignorant. That'd be fine. Where does it go? Back on itself. Well, it goes towards enlightenment. Saying you're ignorant goes towards enlightenment because, in fact, you're telling the truth. Oh, well, that's good. Yeah. But that's not, you know, there's other ways to do it because ignorance is, ignorance and the problems involved in ignorance are quite varied. So you might not just, you might, you could just do it on a simple practice site. Hello. And you can say it out louder to yourself, but just when you meet somebody, just remember somebody nearby is ignorant. And it's me. In my case. In your case, it's you. That's a perfectly good practice. Hi, Bernard. Sorry, I'm ignorant. But then there's other ways to do it, like, sorry, I feel isolated from you. Sorry, I don't think you're being helpful today.

[45:02]

Sorry, I don't think you're being nurturing to me today. Sorry, I feel a lot of pain about thinking that you're not nurturing. Sorry, I don't feel like you're supporting me. Or not even sorry, I don't think you're supporting me. Why don't you start supporting me? Or I don't think you're supporting me and I don't want to support you if you're not supporting me. I'm in a kind of like petty little trap here, a trap of pettiness. You might notice situations like that. Or if you don't notice, Maybe you know somebody who does notice that about themselves or you. Are you saying that then if you have this, the other thing will just kick in because... Wait a second. If you have what? If you realize your ignorance, it all seems so absurd because the other one will just suddenly flash in. If you realize your ignorance, then what you're ignoring will flash in? No, no. The true vision.

[46:04]

Are you saying that if you know what you don't know, then what you... Well, if you know what you don't... If you know what you don't know, then you would be seeing what you don't know. Yes. If you know what you don't know, then you would see what you don't know. I'll start there. No, don't start there. Start with what you don't know. You said if you know what you don't know. It's different from being aware that you don't know. To go from zero to know what you don't know, that's a big step. Why don't you start with, there's some things I don't know, like I don't know that everybody's totally supporting me and I'm supporting everybody. I don't know that. I'm ignorant of that. I have misconceptions. My conceptions about the way things are, which I think are right, from what Reb's saying, misconceptions. And I have a lot of misconceptions according to him.

[47:06]

Like I think a lot of people are not supporting me. So notice those situations and get them out in the open and see the problems involved in them and that will help you become free of them. Learn about those things and those things are quite available. your misconceptions are easy to see, because those are the things you think are true. Any other, any problems? Is your name Renata? Renata? The steps between what? That you believe you're not supported.

[48:09]

Okay, say just a second again. Would you come up here, please? Would you come up here, please? Thank you. Please come up. Are you afraid? I'm afraid I'll start coughing. Just a second. Give it to tissues. And if you start crying, if you start crying, I ask you to come up here for a number of reasons, but I'll tell you them later. You can ask your question now. My question is just if you could speak more about the steps between where you see that you're not supported or you believe that you're not being supported, which you definitely see that, how does one, even if you know in your mind that, okay, that's not really what's going on, how do you kind of get to that other place of knowing that in your heart, of being there, I guess?

[49:26]

Good question. So now we're in this place called, I see it looks like I'm not being supported. That's where I am now, right? Okay. Right? And then, to make a long story short, if you face the situation of, it looks like I'm not being supported, and you honor that and admit that and don't resist that, you will realize you're in the place where you are supported. The place you are supported is not some other place from where you are. You're supported to be right here. That's where you're supported to be. Where you are now is the place you're supported to be. However, and you're also supported to be in this place thinking that you're not supported. We support you to think We don't wish you think that. I don't wish that you think that.

[50:31]

I don't want you to think that. But while you're thinking that you're not supported, if you were thinking that, I still totally support you sitting there thinking that I'm not supporting you. I do. I mean, I do. And even if I didn't think I did, I would. Well, see, I would believe that of you, but there are certain people I might not. Fine. And they have a hard time with it. Fine. And when you have a hard time with that, that's who you are. And you're exactly that way at that time as you think that way. That's your thinking at that time. That's your thinking. That's your karma at that moment, is that you think that way. And if you can... And so that's the place you work, is to admit... He's supporting me, but somebody isn't. This person isn't. If you fully... And there's some problems with that, too, that you might observe.

[51:35]

You might be aware there's some problems of thinking that somebody doesn't support you. By learning about and facing those problems, you will realize you're already in this place of supporting everybody and being supported by everybody. So you actually have something to work on right now is where you are and how you are, including, definitely including that you don't see this yet. So again, I'm not trying to get you to try to change the way you, was it, the way you see things, the way you, what was it, the way you change your ideas. I'm not trying to get you to change them. However, if you practice this way, your ideas will change. But if I try to change my ideas, basically I won't realize that they're changing because they don't change by me.

[52:36]

But if I admit that, for example, if I do try to change them and I accept, oh, I'm trying to change them because I don't really feel like everybody's changing my ideas, If I admit that, they will change. I mean, you will realize that they're changed. You will be able to enjoy that they're changing. I get it for a moment and it slips away. It slips away. It slips away. That's why it's a samadhi. You have to cultivate, you have to learn to do this a gazillion times. It's a training. And even the Buddhists keep doing it. It slips away from the enlightened ones, too. But they know that that's the way it is. That's the way it would be. It would be that way. If you depend on everybody, you can't hold anything still. And if everybody depends on you, they can't hold anything still. So because of this, the logic of this enlightenment is that we can't get a hold of anything.

[53:42]

You can't have this. you can't have what you are, but you get to be what you are. And part of the reason for that is you're constantly changing, nothing to grasp, except the idea. There's only the idea that you can grasp something. But that idea can change. If you keep admitting you've got that idea and look at the problems involved in that idea, that idea comes from ignoring something, Or you could have that idea. If you don't ignore what's going on, you will have the idea, but you'll realize it's just an idea. You're not caught by it anymore. Thank you. You're welcome. Would you come up here? Would you come up here? Thank you. Well, you come up here, I'll tell you.

[54:45]

Stephen, here you are. I'm thinking of the example of an infant who is supported by all beings to be an infant. And yet, if someone doesn't support that infant in ways that are more conventional, and that even I, in my ignorance, would recognize as support and nurturance, like food and touch and talk, that infant won't do very well, even though it's supported by all meaning. Well, you mean, by not do very well, you mean the infant probably would die. But they probably would like, die means they would just kind of like give up on this life. I think that often is the case, that's right.

[55:46]

However, I'm suggesting to you that that infant would be supported every moment of its life by all beings and it would support all beings every moment of its life. And when I, a little bit later, when I, I will get supported to do the same thing that an infant would do if it was supported in the scenario you're talking about. Even if people keep bringing me food, I will be supported to do what you say the infant would do if it doesn't get food or if it doesn't get attention. Even infants, if you keep giving them food but you don't touch them, a lot of them will just stop eating. They just won't be willing to go on they don't thrive if you don't touch them. So you can't just give them food, like hand them a bottle. You've got to touch them, otherwise they just don't. Food isn't enough.

[56:48]

The room being warm isn't enough. Even somebody like throwing blankets on them isn't enough. You have to touch them. You have to love them. And if you don't, Life's a little bit too hard to keep trying. So they'll give up. But that same thing will happen to all of us. And I'm talking about a practice that you can do as the conditions supporting your life change in this way that you decide to trade in your body. And you can be in that dimension self-fulfilling dimension as you die. Babies, it's unfortunate, almost no babies can realize that practice under any circumstance. As far as I know, almost none of them are trained in such a way that they would be able to, at that age, be able to enter this and realize this samadhi.

[57:57]

But part of what I'm talking to you about is a practice that you can do in the midst of exhausting demands of a complicated life. And part of complicated life is to have disease and dying. Part of a complicated life is that your nervous system changes and you develop conditions which are called Alzheimer's. This happens to people. It happens to geniuses. What was that lady's name? Margaret Drabble's sister? A.S. Bias. Oh, A.S. Bias is Margaret Drabble's. What was the name of the movie made about her? Iris Murdoch. Genius gets Alzheimer's. Geniuses can get Alzheimer's. I'm talking about a practice that you can do when you have Alzheimer's. Not that you can do it, but that you're immersed in when you have Alzheimer's.

[59:02]

A practice where you realize that you're supported by all beings when you have Alzheimer's and that you support all beings when you have Alzheimer's. And I want babies to learn this as soon as possible. And I think, of course, if we can support babies to hang in there and be willing to go through the trouble of being a baby for a few more years, they could receive this teaching and enter the samadhi. But if we're not loving to them, almost none of them will make it very far and will not be able to learn language and hear this teaching and be encouraged to practice it. But in fact, everybody is included in this. It's a question of how To meditate on this in such a way as to realize it, to see it, that's the challenge. So it seems to me that middle-aged Zen students need to be touched and loved as well, and can't thrive without it.

[60:16]

Right. And they are being touched and loved, but if they don't realize it, there's problems, and they may not feel like they're thriving. but they are being touched and loved. And so how can we realize that? And not only are they being touched and loved, but they're touching and loving. Another word for this is love samadhi. This is love. Love is the way everybody's helping you and you're giving. Everybody's supporting you and you're supporting them. That's what I would call love. So my thought is that Zen students need to be touched and loved in conventional ways that even I would recognize in my adherence as being touched and loved, not in something that I would have to work to see. Say that again? That Zen students need to be touched and loved in ways that even in our ignorance, in my ignorance, I could see, oh, that's touching and loving.

[61:23]

I think that's sometimes true. that they need to be able to see that sometimes in order to encourage the meditation. Sometimes they need to be touched and loved in order to look and see that they don't feel touched and loved. In order to have the energy and joy to look at the situation where they do not feel touched and loved and where they do not want to touch and love somebody. Sometimes they act just like a baby. Sometimes they need to look a way that they can get in such a way that they're willing to look more deeply and realize it more deeply than the way that they already can see it. So if they need to see it a certain way in order to do the practice, then they need to see it that way and they should be given that way at whatever age.

[62:31]

But sometimes people don't get it. That's the way it works sometimes. And everybody supports it to be that way. that sometimes middle-aged and students do not get the support they need and therefore they are not able to do the practice which will help them realize that they're getting what they need, no matter what's happening, and which doesn't depend on your nervous system being this way or that way. It's whatever condition you are, the practice can be, the enlightenment's going on, And so we need to, especially as we get older, we need to get ready for a practice which doesn't depend on our current intelligence because we're not going to have it much longer. But this practice doesn't depend on your intelligence. This practice depends on everybody giving you the intelligence you've got, whatever it is.

[63:33]

And when your intelligence, when some of your brain cells are taken away, everybody supports that. And you support everybody by losing your intelligence quotient. You support people. You help people. Many, yeah. But before I get into that, is there anything else you want to bring up at this time? No, except why did you ask me to come up here? To be closer. And also to hear you better. One of the advantages of getting older is that you need people to come closer. Come closer. Stephen, come closer. Okay, right. As you get older, your eyes focus more and more on infinity. It's harder and harder to see things up close. Keep looking at everything far away. And also you need everybody, come closer, tell me again what was it, come closer. And also, not only do I need you to come closer, but then you get to be closer too.

[64:39]

Plus also, you get to feel what it's like when you come closer. Which is different, right? A little different. And also that way you get exercise during class, your legs don't get so stiff. Anything else tonight? Seems to me that there's a homework assignment. Did you get it? Huh? Very practical. Notice how you don't see this In other words, notice your ignorance, and notice how other people don't see it, and notice also how people who you can see are being supported don't see it. Sometimes you don't think you're supporting somebody. You don't think so, but sometimes they think so. Sometimes it was so supportive. Wow, that's great.

[65:43]

Or, I'm sorry, I didn't want to support you. Notice that kind of stuff. Notice children who you love so much, who you feel totally supportive of, who can't stand to see how supportive you are, who are trying to do everything they can to not notice how supportive you are, to be caught in the thrall of your love. Notice that. Notice how people can feel unsupported when you can clearly see that they are supported. And notice how even you feel that way sometimes. You can study this. Becoming clear about this is part of removing the obstacles to plunging into this awareness. Don't try to make yourself go anyplace to get there. You're already there. It's just some obstruction in our vision

[66:44]

It's just refusal to accept this, which is a very powerful karmic accumulation. Otherwise we're already where we want to be. And yet we need to understand this more. So there's plenty of opportunities to meditate on that. Does that make sense? Receiving support and receiving and giving is the support. That's the word you use for that. Receiving and giving support? Like a self receiving and employing. No. You're using the word support. Support, nurturance, being embraced, being created by. You receive a self. A self is given to you. You don't take yourself. It's given to you. You actually give away yourself. Every moment you give yourself away and then you're given another self or another self is given. Every moment. Anything else tonight?

[67:53]

Saying more about that. The self that you received and gave everyone.

[68:13]

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