Stop. Stop meditating. Yeah, right now. And don't start again until you really want to. Until you really want to. Until you, like, just feel great about starting again. You will eventually... Really want to. Just take a break. Fast. Take a meditation fast. Faster meditating until you really want to go sit. Get back to that place where you started. When you first started meditating, you wanted to, right? Yeah, well, just stop then. Just stop meditating. Yeah, and if you want to know when to start, call me up.

[01:09]

I'll tell you. If you want to start again, let me know. And I'll require you to feel joy about it. So don't start until you feel joy at the prospect of meditating. Don't do it. Okay? That's my suggestion. You know, I'm not in control of you, but that's my suggestion. Just sit with your lack of joy. Huh? Oh, she's been doing that for a long time. Equanimity should be joyful. All this stuff should be joyful. So you've tried it. You haven't had joy. Just quit. And when you feel joy at the prospect of meditating, come back. If you don't, you're not going to be meditating right anyway, so forget it. Got a problem? Got a problem?

[02:15]

What's the problem? That goes for all of you, by the way. Just stop. Just forget it until you have joy, equanimity, love, and compassion. That's the situation in which you should be practicing. If you don't have that, you can't practice, so don't pretend that you're practicing. But if you want to practice, well, just have a little joy here. If you don't want to give joy, okay, well, don't kid yourself. You're holding back. Why go spend your time holding back? Why have a special session to waste your time? Why just waste your time in the rest of your life? Like, waste your time working, waste your time talking to your husband, waste your time with your kids, waste your time driving cars. Why make a special session called meditation to waste your time? Meditation should be the time when you're not going to waste your time. And then you get the feeling you're not wasting your time, and then you don't waste your time in the rest of your life.

[03:17]

If you see how you're wasting your time, okay, that's good. All right? But if you don't have joy at seeing how you're wasting your time, that's just depression. To me, it's a joy to see how I'm wasting my time. When I see how I'm wasting my time, that's not a waste of time. That's wisdom. That's calling a spade a spade. I'm happy to call spades spades. Aren't you? If you're not happy calling spades, spades, well then don't be happy calling spades, spades, but don't call that meditation. It's not. It's depression. It's not enjoying calling spades, spades, or miras, miras. I love calling mira, mira. That's meditation. If you don't enjoy calling reb, reb, don't call it meditation. Call it being bored. Call it being depressed. Call it lack of joy. Call it missing the boat.

[04:25]

Call it wasting your time. That's what it is. Why waste your time not being joyful? There's no point to it. Why elevate it to call it meditation? Why just say, I'm wasting my time. I wasted the last ten minutes. I've wasted the last five years. I've wasted my life. I'm not practicing joyfully. I'm wasting my time. If you face that, maybe you will decide to stop doing that and to start practicing joyfully. But why don't you just sort of be real strong and just say, okay, I haven't been practicing because it hasn't been joyful. I have been wasting my time. I admit it. I confess. I've been wasting my time. And now I'm just going to face that, and I'm not going to call practice, practice until I'm practicing, until really I feel joy. And then when I feel joy, I'm going to say, now I'm practicing joyfully. Before that, I'm not going to call it practice. I'm going to call it not practicing yet.

[05:26]

Why not? You've been doing this other thing all this time. Just chalk it up. Bye-bye. And when you're ready to start over, start over. Got a problem with that? Sounds like you look, people look worried. I don't see the point myself of holding back your joy. It's right there. Why don't you give it to practice? How many... Do you want to see a little survey? How many people feel joy practicing? Okay. How many people have ever felt joy practicing? Well, that was practice. That was practice.

[06:33]

Pardon? What? How many people do not feel joy practicing? How many people do not feel joy practicing ever? You can ask whatever questions you want. I just asked. Do you get, well, do you get 45 seconds of joy? Well, that's great. 45 seconds of joy? That's terrific. Yeah. Well, just, you know, what is it, the 15 minutes before and the 15 minutes after, okay? Okay, that's not practice. That's just like the time you set aside for the, what do you call it?

[07:38]

For the second of joy. Okay. Not keep practicing, you should practice. Not keep practicing, you should practice the way that's joyful, that's the way you should practice. And you should expand that to encompass your entire life. That's all. But it might help you to approach your meditation with a sense that, you know, when is the practice really, when are you really doing the practice? When do you really think you're doing the practice? When do you think you're doing the practice? And when do you think you're wasting time? And if you're wasting time, you say, okay, this is the wasting time part. And this is the practice part. And this is the wasting time part. And it's good to notice when you're wasting time. But then you don't call that practice, you call it wasting time. And noticing that it's wasting time, that's practice. But if you are wasting time for 15 minutes, and every moment of the wasting time, you know you're wasting time.

[08:47]

That's not wasting time. And you won't keep it up for 15 minutes. You can't really, not can't, but it's very hard to waste time moment after moment and catch yourself at it. Because it gets to be the noticing it keeps undermining the wasting time, because the noticing it isn't wasting time. So you got wasting time, which totally interferes by awareness. So then you don't feel like that's wasting time, you start feeling good. But if you sit for 15 minutes and you're not even noticing that you're not there, it doesn't count. It's a waste of time. Don't you think? You say, well, the fact that it sets up the few minutes of being present and really enjoying my life, it's worth it to me. So I say, fine. Like Suzuki Roshi said one time, we have seven-day sittings and maybe in the middle of some time during that seven-day sitting, sometime during the seven-day sitting, maybe for one period you'll be there.

[09:47]

In the 168 hours, he didn't say that, I calculated, 168 hours of this session, maybe 40 minutes you're there. He said, that's pretty good. Huh? So after the session I said, so Roshi, is it okay if you just have one period of meditation in a week? Is that okay? He said, no, it's not good enough for you. It's very good, the time is very good, but if you ask is it good enough, no, you should expand it to the whole week. No, loving kindness is too. If you're not practicing loving kindness when you're sitting, y'all should stop. If you're not practicing compassion, you should stop. If you're not practicing equanimity, stop. Stop and practice that way.

[10:50]

Practice loving kindness. A lot of Zen students sit, and that's part of why I offer this retreat, is because a lot of Zen students sit without loving kindness. And then they hurt their practice because they're not loving themselves while they're doing this kind of hard practice. It's hard to really sit up straight hour after hour, day after day, year after year. You need to support it with love and equanimity and joy and compassion. We need that. We need that. And if you don't do that, don't hurt yourself. Stop. until you're willing to give yourself this kind of support. And if you're willing to give yourself this kind of support, go ahead. Otherwise, you're endangering this very precious thing called your Buddha heart by starving it, by not giving it the love it needs. You have a precious thing here to take care of. Take care of it.

[11:52]

And if you're not taking care of it, don't call it practice. Practice is taking care of it. Don't you think? Yeah, sure you do. That's why I asked the question. Last time you asked a question. Richard? Is the loan claim recommended as a practice for insight or is it a practice that is recommended as a means for seeking enlightenment or... Well, like at the beginning of this retreat I said, I used to hear that loving-kindness was like a preliminary practice or a means, like it pushes away, it clears away anger, and also it's an antidote for fear. So that's what I heard it was, and also as a concentration practice. But I heard it's not about like the deep level of insight. Well, in a sense that's right, but it's like the womb in which the baby Buddha grows up.

[12:59]

So it's essential, even though the womb isn't enough. You've got to have wisdom in the middle of the womb. So loving-kindness is the context in which we do the deep work of understanding the source of our anxiety, the source of our fear, the source of our anger. And doing that deep work, we see the source of it is we don't understand ourself. And seeing that we don't understand ourself, we understand ourself. Seeing that we understand ourself as separate, we see that that causes anxiety. If we understand ourselves as interdependent, the anxiety drops away. So loving kindness is, you can say, a preliminary, but it's an essential preliminary that you keep needing all the way along the way. It's the context in which, it's a loving context in which you do this deep and difficult work. So it's inseparable. And also loving, the reason why it's inseparable is because it's there from the beginning to the end of the practice.

[14:00]

It is the nature of Buddha. This loving kindness is the nature of Buddha. This joy is the nature of Buddha. This equanimity is the nature of Buddha. But still, also in the nature of the Buddha is this deep wisdom, which isn't mentioned in these practices. But these practices are both the context for realizing Buddha's wisdom, and they are the natural outflow of Buddha's wisdom, so that they're before and after the realization of wisdom. Okay? So it's not exactly a means. Like, would you say that the petals... and the petals and the leaves and the stem are a means to the flower? Well, you could, I guess, but really, they're the flower. There's more to the practice. There's more to the practice. Loving kindness goes with Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path.

[15:04]

Loving kindness goes with deep wisdom. But without loving kindness, I think you cannot have deep wisdom. You can go a certain level without loving kindness, but then you start needing it. And some people can't go very far without loving kindness because they try to, especially practicing Zen, which tends to be a little tough physically, without loving kindness, they beat themselves up with the practice. And then the terrible thing happens is they quit. because they think, well, Zen's too hard. Well, it's not that Zen's too hard, it's that you were too hard on yourself practicing Zen. Zen's not hard or easy. Zen is an opportunity for you to practice Buddha's way. And if you don't practice it right, that's not Zen, that's just you're practicing inappropriately. Yes? Would you say that again, please?

[16:13]

Is loving kindness... To put it down? No, first of all, It is, you have your identity, and the loving-kindness is the place you send, the identity is the place you send your loving-kindness to. Your identity is like the recipient area, or the receiving area for the loving-kindness. So first of all, you take your identity and put it someplace where you can find it, and send the loving-kindness there. then when you send a loving kindness to your identity then it feels good around your identity and then there can be the study of the identity then you can let go of your identity it's not that your identity isn't who you are it's that who you are is not separate from your identity or anything else what you really are is an interdependent radiant

[17:22]

appearance. Okay? But there's an identity as part of it. So identity is a place you can look to see what you think of yourself. If you look carefully at what you think of yourself, you'll notice if there's any misunderstanding of what you think you are. And if there is, then you'll notice that that's painful. And as you notice the combination of the misunderstanding and the pain, you start to understand in a different way which is not a misunderstanding and which is not painful. In other words, you understand correctly. Okay? Does that make sense? Bye-bye. No, identity doesn't limit you. You're not limited by anything.

[18:26]

Nothing limits you. But you think that things limit you. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Not knowing who you are limits you. But I think you... I get this feeling like you want to eliminate something before you check it out. Okay? So... You don't want to get a... Yeah. If you check it out in a loving way... you realize that you can't get a hold of it, and therefore you don't have to get rid of it. Okay. Is there anything else you want to bring up? Yes? Yes. Okay. Okay.

[19:30]

Okay. Okay. Uh-huh. Well, You kind of waffled there a little bit in your description. I'm not waffled exactly, but you told me several different situations. So if I could like simplify your presentation, if you're feeling depressed and you want to sit as an act of pushing the depression, getting rid of it, then you probably get more depressed.

[20:41]

And it's probably better to do walking meditation or something like that or go swimming if you want to get rid of your depression. Not if you want to get rid of it, but if you have that impulse. It won't get rid of it necessarily, but you won't probably go deeper into it. But if you're feeling depressed and you sit down trying to get rid of it, that's not so good. If you are feeling depressed and you feel like sitting down will make you, that will comfort you, you also said that. So sitting down, feeling that it will comfort you, is not necessarily saying that sitting down trying to get rid of it. Sitting down getting rid of it I think may make it deeper, deeper depression. Sitting down with a comforting attitude of something loving to do for yourself, something you think would be healthy, that probably would be a good idea. And sitting down in that way would go with sitting down and practicing loving kindness. to sit down and start giving yourself, wishing yourself well.

[21:46]

Wishing yourself well, wishing yourself to be free of depression and sorrow, that's compassion. Wishing yourself to be happy, that's loving kindness. To do that would go with being depressed, if you can actually do it. If you can actually say those words to yourself, that would be okay to do when you're depressed. But if you're feeling depressed and you want to sit down and try to get rid of it, My experience is people go deeper into it then. It's not good for depressed people to sit down still unless they've got enough energy to give themselves some kindness at the same time. It's okay to think this is going to be helpful. That's all right. It's all right. Basically, you should do things that are going to be helpful. That's okay. But if you sit down and think, if you're depressed, it would be good if you had some kind of sense that you're going to be good to yourself while you're sitting.

[22:49]

You're not going to just be sinking down into depression. That's not necessarily good. But if you're going to sit down and practice loving kindness and you think that would be good for yourself, fine. That's different from trying to get rid of the depression. Yeah, sinking into wallowing is not good. Better to walk around or go work in the kitchen or something. Do something symmetrical with both arms and legs. Do cross training. Yeah, you don't want to sink into it. But loving kindness moves it. If you're really practicing loving kindness to yourself, that moves the depression. It touches it, massages it. That's good. If you don't have enough energy to do that, then you probably shouldn't sit down with depression. That's what I would say. Go play tennis with both hands. With somebody else who's playing with both hands. Let's see, I don't know who was next. So maybe it was Chris and Betty.

[23:51]

In her situation, the joy would begin when the joy goes with the loving-kindness meditation. I think joy is an uplifting feeling, yes, definitely. And if you're depressed and you practice loving-kindness in your depression, joy will be there. Joy will come with the loving-kindness meditation. That is the loving-kindness meditation. I shouldn't say that. The meditation on love, which has these four dimensions, when you're really doing the first one, you're doing the third one. When you're really doing the third one, you're doing the first one. So if you're depressed and you can do this meditation and you're doing loving kindness but the joy isn't there, you know you haven't really got the loving kindness going yet. So you keep working on loving kindness, you know it's not complete, it hasn't done its job until there's joy there too, plus unless there's equanimity.

[25:04]

and so on. But it's okay to start on one of them, because you can start on one before you even can do the one. You can start wishing yourself well before you even feel the effects of it. But most people feel it pretty quickly, but that doesn't mean they feel joy right away. But if you don't feel joy yet, then you know that you haven't reached the extent of the first practice. The third one isn't happening. So then maybe you want to even shift over to joy a little bit and see what's the matter over there. What are you doing? You find constriction. So then maybe you should just... See, loving kindness, you don't do it towards somebody... You don't start loving kindness towards a person you like a lot. So maybe you should go over to joy and find somebody you like a lot to get a little joy to mix in with your loving kindness. Yes. Yes. My question is related to what Cliff said, and the difference from what Patricia was saying about the comfort of sitting when there's stuff going on, and the comfort of sitting sometimes.

[26:24]

And then how that differs from what Myra was saying, because I really identify with Myra I don't feel a lot of joy. I don't feel a lot of joy when I'm disintegrating and feeling the self-hatred and becoming intimate with the anger and affliction and the grief. There's not a lot of... That's a hard place to feel the joy. Yet there is kind of like a comfort. So I'm kind of torn between identifying very strongly with what Myra was saying and when he told her to stop, I'm thinking, ah, that's very scary. Uh-huh. Yeah. And I also then thought, oh, but it's okay. Do you see where I'm torn between that? Well, the comfort... the comfort of the sitting, okay, that's part of the loving kindness which goes with the sitting. Okay?

[27:27]

If you're going to become intimate, try to become intimate with your anxiety and so on. I'm saying you're not going to be able to get intimate with your anxiety and your anger unless you bring some comfort to it. You're just going to go in there and, you know, MESS THINGS UP MORE. SO YOU WANT TO GO IN WITH SOME COMFORT TO DO UNCOMFORTABLE WORK. THAT COMFORT I DON'T THINK OF AS JOY, BECAUSE COMFORT... I'M SUGGESTING TO YOU, I'M ACTUALLY SAYING THIS TO YOU. THIS IS NOT, YOU KNOW, BUDDHA TALKING, IT'S JUST ME. I'M ACTUALLY SAYING TO YOU, IF YOU WANT TO DO THIS WORK, YOU NEED NOT JUST COMFORT, BUT JOY TOO. IT'S HARD WORK. IF YOU'RE NOT JOYFUL, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO DO THE WORK. you're going to get in there and you're going to say, this is too hard. You're just going to give up. You need not just comfort, not just ease, you need joy and you need equanimity.

[28:31]

Otherwise, you get in there and try to do this work, you're just going to say, this is too hard, I'm getting out of here and go do something easier. You've got to be able to handle real dynamic situation of life, which is not a nice little package. It's all interdependent and intense and ungraspable and uncontrollable. That's your life. So to actually get down there and see what really is going on with yourself, you need a lot of backup. You need a lot of support. You need love, best wishes, compassion, joy, and equanimity. I'm saying that. I'm saying if you leave out part of that, you're going to get in there and halfway through your studies, you're going to collapse and just split. That's kind of like a happy story compared to what you could do. So if you don't have this material available to you, I'm saying, get it. Get these resources, and when you've got them, then you can do this deep work. And you seem to be aware that this deep work is really hard.

[29:36]

And I'm saying, get resources so you can do this hard work. Otherwise, you're just going to back off. Most people get close to it and then just back off and that's it. They don't finish the job. This basic practice of loving kindness can sustain you. This love and compassion and joy and equanimity can sustain you through the hard work of deep study. The deep study is hard. Your body and mind offer you great challenges to for understanding. We need a lot of support. And we need support from everybody, from all the Buddhas and all our friends all over the world. We need all that support. And you get that support by loving yourself and loving others. When you love others, you see they're helping you. You need all that support. Don't underestimate how much support you need. And don't underestimate how much you have to give to get to realize that support's coming.

[30:43]

Okay, so I appreciate your question. Your question helps me emphasize that this is about what we need in order to do Buddhist practice. We need this full range of love as the context for practice because Buddha is all about love. Okay, so then there's Judith and Edie. Yes, Judith. Because I'm sensing that what you're saying is that before I sit down to do practice, I must bring joy to my business, before I even begin. And yet, when you practice, that's what I'm feeling right now. But then I redistribute it so that the practice at one time If a wish creates an act of love, that through this practice we will realize these loving kinds of things will come to joy and compassion for me.

[31:48]

My hope is that I will sit down, love with God and with joy. But through this practice, through the application of practice in life of God, I wish for it to be that I would create. Yes. If you tell me that you've been practicing for many years and you don't have joy, I would say the same thing I said to her. Take a break. You know, take a break. Quit practicing for a while because you haven't been practicing. I'm just saying I would say that. And then if you want to come back to practice, then you should come back to practice and look for the joy.

[32:50]

There should be joy there. If it doesn't come right away, I'm not saying you should quit again. I'm saying take a break and come back and find that joy. And until you find the joy, realizing that there's something off. It's not that the practice is off, there's something off in the practice. I mean, the practice is supposed to have the joy, and you're not practicing in such a way to get the joy, so find the way to get the joy in the practice. Don't leave it out for a week or a year without checking it out and trying to find out what's off there. How can you bring the joy element into the practice? So you're still confused? About this? Hmm? Isn't practice more than just sitting?

[33:55]

Oh, yeah, it is. Um... You would look to chanting as a way to... Well, it's not so much the sitting or the chanting or the walking, okay? It's that whatever you're doing, whether it's reading the scripture or chanting, all these practices should be done with this loving feeling. It's just that if you're chanting, you might not be able to generate... If you haven't generated this feeling of love, then it would be good to do it, I would say, around your chanting.

[35:02]

But if you don't want to do that loving-kindness meditation, then just do the chanting. Maybe the chanting... will be a way for you to find this love again many Zen students sit they don't do loving-kindness meditation but they sit and the love comes to them just the way they sit the way they hold their body is very loving and very joyful and very equanimous and very compassionate so it's all there even though they don't say those words well fine no problem but some of them sit or chant or read scriptures But they're mean to themselves while they're doing these things. Right? Have you heard about this? They're mean to themselves. They're not being loving to themselves. They don't feel that they're loving to themselves. They're actually feeling bad thoughts about themselves and not thinking good thoughts about themselves. Not wishing themselves well. They're just feeling anxious and angry. And they're sitting there in their anxiousness and anger, but not in a loving way.

[36:05]

And then after a while they say, well, this is... I don't like this. Well, that makes sense. You could be standing up and walking around and hating yourself and feeling bad about yourself. You could do that. You don't have to sit down to do that. Why don't you sit down to take care of yourself, to do something good for yourself? If you're going to make a special time for yourself, to like sit down and be with yourself. And if you sit down and notice that you're miserable, why don't you not take care of yourself and do something loving to yourself? Now, Patricia says she sits down and feels some comfort in sitting down. Well, if you already feel some comfort, well, fine. Or chanting or reading. Sometimes you read scriptures and you start reading scriptures and you immediately start feeling loved. You feel the love coming to you from reading the scriptures and you're reading the scriptures in a loving way. You know, just... Now, maybe you take the scripture and you throw it down, you know, disrespectfully and you open it and gradually the sutra starts loving you even though you didn't love it. Well, that's okay. I mean, it's okay that it loves you.

[37:08]

It's too bad that you threw it down. And after it starts loving you, you probably say, you know, I'm sorry I threw you down. And next time I'll bow to you before I set you down. As a matter of fact, I'll get you a nice little cover. I'm sorry. You know, you're sorry. Because you feel the love and you feel that you're disrespectful. Same with your chanting. You know. And then pretty soon you chant more and the sutra starts, you know, you start feeling love and say, I'm sorry I started out saying those first few words meanly. I'm sorry I hit the mokugyo really hard. I'll sutra soft. Well, it's the time now when the program is supposed to end. Was there any last burning questions? Huh?

[38:11]

A song. Yeah, I have a song. I have a song book here. So I have one song here that... You want to do the sutra? You can do the sutra too. But I have one song here that I like. I don't know if you people like this, but I can start with this one. It's written by the Gershwin brothers. It's very clear our love is here to stay. Not for a year, but ever and a day. The Rockies... Excuse me. Sorry, I got it wrong. Sorry, no, I got it wrong. The radio and the telephone and the movies that we know may just be passing fancies and in time will go.

[39:19]

But oh dear, our love is here to stay. It's very clear our love is here to stay, not for a year, but ever and a day. In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may crumble, they're only made of clay, but our love is here to stay. Does that mean that love is substance? Strictly speaking, this scripture can be interpreted on two levels.

[40:21]

One level is everything is impermanent, okay? But love is not impermanent. Love is the nature, is the nature of reality. Love is interdependence. That doesn't come or go. The things that manifest interdependently, they come and go. You know, I come and go, you come and go. But our love does not come and go. Because it's not substantial. All substantial things, like the Rockies, crumble. Gibraltar may tumble. They're only made of clay. I'm going to crumble. You're going to tumble. But our love will not. So this is about, you know, tune into the love. Because it's good now, it's good later, and it's good forever. But it's not substantial, and that's why we've got to get together with it. But we also have to get together with the Rockies and Gibraltar.

[41:27]

Because they come out, they're connected to love too. It's just that they're going to crumble. Well, I'll let you go. Thank you very much. Oh, excuse me. I have a poem. And this is going to be hard for me to read because I don't read very well. This is a poem by Robert Frost from... What's it called? Two Tramps in Mud Time. Two Tramps in Mud Time. This is an excerpt. But yield, who will, to their separation. My object is, my object in living is to unite. My avocation is my vocation. as my two eyes make one insight.

[42:31]

Only where love and need are one and the work is play for mortal stakes is the deed ever really done for heaven and the future's sake. But yield, who will, to their separation. My object in living is to unite. My avocation is my vocation as my two eyes make one insight. Only where love and need are one and the work is play for mortal stakes is the deed ever really done for heaven's and the future's sake. Is that enough? Thank you very much.

[43:29]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_84.47