I often think of a description of Zen practice as having two sides. One side is called just sitting, wholehearted sitting. And the other one, going to meet a teacher and listening to or asking about the Dharma. So one's called, like, sometimes it's called shikantaza, just sitting, and the other one, in Japanese, sanji mompo. Mom, mon, means to listen, and also means to ask. And then the next character, dharma. So going to meet the teacher and listen to or ask about the dharma. In Japanese?

[01:03]

meet san, the teacher, and listen to or ask about the dharma. The character for dharma is usually pronounced ho, but it sounds funny to say mon ho, so you say mon po. But anyways, ask or listen to the dharma. And the other is shikantaza. So these ten Oxfordian pictures, in each Oxfordian picture, it would be good if there's just sitting. You're just sitting in whatever picture you're in. And in each picture, there's a meeting with the teacher, face to face.

[02:24]

and there's a listening to the Dharma in that meeting, and also could be asking about the Dharma, or being asked about the Dharma. That's another way to look at these pictures. In each one, there's just sitting in a particular condition, And there is a meeting. There is an exploration of a face-to-face meeting with something that's totally other. And there is an evolution in this just sitting and meeting face-to-face. In short, the evolution is from just sitting at the beginning and meeting face to face with the other but not yet ready for the other to be

[04:08]

totally other. And if we can just sit in, for example, the early stages of development where we can only allow the other to be a little bit other, if we can tolerate that situation, we move forward into allowing the other to be more and more other. Until, I would say, up until the ninth stage, or the ninth picture, or maybe even the eighth picture, where we let the other be completely other, maybe in the eighth picture.

[05:12]

We really let the other be totally other, and we also let ourself be totally other. And letting ourself, letting the other be totally other, which it is, because that's the way everything is, everything is, each event, each person, each thing is actually totally other. And totally other means that's the way it actually is. That's the way, that's how it is as such. And so we want to meet the way things really are. And so I also suggest to you that this process is a process where we have been called to go through this process.

[06:22]

We've been called to be in the current situation. We're being called by an other And at the beginning of the call, when we first start hearing, not the first, as we hear the call more and more, we are more and more willing to let what's calling us be more and more other. Which means we'll let what's calling us be more and more itself. And what it is, is others. So we're called to go and meet the other, and we ritualize that in Zen by going to meet the teacher. And the teacher ritualizes it by meeting with the student. Yeah.

[07:30]

So I've heard it taught before also that this idea of being separate is the basic delusion that we're stuck in. Like that you and I, self and other, are isolated in some deep way with being this fundamental delusion. So I'm curious about hearing you speak tonight is in what sense it sounds like the sort of path to Realizing the delusiveness of this basic belief in being separate from you seems to... Another way of saying that is to also realizing with some increasing depth that you're other than me. Well, first, that you're other than yourself. Yeah. And that I'm other than anything you can think about me. Yeah. I am other.

[08:34]

I am actually something of which you have no idea. And when you first go to meet somebody, you're not ready to go meet somebody of whom or of which you have no idea. The more you can do that, the more you realize that the other you're meeting is your own nature. So one understanding of the ox, which is totally, is that it is totally other, and everything's totally other, and we're gradually getting used to being with the way everything is totally other. In other words, everything is completely, you more and more let things be. And things let you be too. So it may sound funny that when we first go meet the teacher in order to meet the other, we are not yet ready for the teacher to really let the teacher be totally other than our idea of the teacher.

[09:48]

It's hard for us to go meet somebody of whom we have no idea. But we can evolve to that. If we can work with our present level of meeting somebody we do have an idea about, we can gradually, that's the gradual part, we can gradually be willing to let them be what they are. And what they are is suchness. And suchness is that everything's other. Everything's nothing. but other. Everything is nothing but the total of what it isn't. Including myself. Including my experience of myself. Your experience of yourself is of something, and the way it actually is, is that it's other than that.

[10:58]

The way you are is other than your idea of yourself. And someone asked, why is the seventh picture forgetting the ox and in the eighth picture, forgetting both. Why wouldn't they happen in the same time? And, yeah, I thought that was kind of a difficult and good question. So I guess we can talk about that. Maybe it's harder for me to let myself be other completely than to let you be other completely. It's hard enough to let you be other. But maybe I can let you be other completely And then I can let maybe other. So maybe it does happen in two phases. And I think of these two levels of selflessness, which kind of contradict what I just said.

[12:02]

The first level of selflessness is like seeing the selflessness of the person. And the next level of selflessness is seeing the selflessness of the elements that make up the person. And the second one is a more profound selflessness, which may sound, as I say it, like the second one would be more like forgetting the other. But And the first one would be like forgetting the self, which comes in the eighth picture rather than the seventh. So there's something to work with there. It'll probably all work out. Yes? I was thinking this week of a story you told some time ago about Suzuki Roshi.

[13:08]

I think you were on a airplane traveling, and you were asking him questions, and then he asked you to count in Japanese, in people Japanese, from one to ten. Yeah. Story, I can't really remember. Good for you! You remembered one and two. Sorry. Thank you. So, keep going, until ten, repeatedly. And then I was thinking about that in the pictures, and as you were repeating that, did you go from one to ten and back to one? Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I wasn't asking him questions. As I remember now, I wasn't asking him questions. I was just sitting next to him, and he somehow... I shouldn't say he. I would say, our relationship...

[14:09]

gave rise to a set of precepts for me to learn. Actually, like some structures or some words about how to count people in Japanese, that came up out of our relationship. of me being like me and him being like him, that this offering arose and he gave this to me to work on. And when he first gave it to me, my aspiration to practice it was not very strong. So he gave it to me and told me to practice it, and I did. But then when he went to sleep I stopped. And then he woke up and told me to continue.

[15:15]

And then again he fell asleep and I stopped. And then he woke up and told me to continue. So by offering it to me three times, then my aspiration to practice it, at least all the way to Portland, was established. And that's similar to other precepts we receive. We receive them, and then we aspire to practice them somewhat, and then we quit, and then they're given to us again, and we receive them again, and we aspire to practice them again. and then we quit, or forget, or whatever, and then they're given to us again, and we aspire to practice them again, and then we do, and then we quit, and then they're given to us again, and also when we quit we feel some... we might feel some discomfort when we quit,

[16:22]

And, you know, I didn't feel terribly, you know, I wasn't like trembling with guilt and shame when he fell asleep and I stopped. I mean, after all, he fell asleep. He wasn't on the job. He didn't care that much, so why should I? Right? If he gave me the precepts and he doesn't keep an eye on me, maybe he doesn't care that much. But he did keep an eye on me. In his sleep he woke. Maybe he wasn't really asleep. I don't know. Anyway, he cared enough to start me again. And then start me again. So maybe I... After a while I thought, well, he gave me the precepts and actually he cares about me practicing it. That came up in his relationship with me and my relationship with him. That came up. And then I had a little aspiration to practice it because he gave it to me And also I told you before, he gave it to me, but part of me was thinking, why doesn't he give me something a little bit more traditional, Zen practice kind of thing?

[17:37]

Why doesn't he give me a koan or a section of a great profound sutra? Why does he give me like counting people? But those are the precepts he gave me. Those are the forms he offered to me. He gave me those forms to practice with. And what did I do? I practiced them a while. And then I stopped. Because I thought he didn't care that much about the precepts he gave me. But then he showed me he did. But still I wasn't really sure he did, so I stopped again. But after one, two, three times, I thought, oh, he actually wants me to keep doing it. And I did not think he wanted me to keep doing it for 45 years. But in fact, I have been doing it for 45 years. I've been practicing those precepts which he gave me. But again, I'd like to emphasize that those precepts were not sitting out there outside of us when we got on the airplane.

[18:45]

you know, the name of the airplane was not, you know, Bodhisattva counting Japanese people, or people in Japanese. It's just that we got on the airplane that this came up between us. And I'd like to emphasize that as part of this process here, is that as we meet, as we sit in our position, we're all in a position, we're all at a particular place, condition or position, and if we sit there, we will move forward. But also, part of this process is that we're meeting, we're exploring a face-to-face relationship with the other, and at the beginning of the process, as I'll say again, our wish to meet the other is not as pure as it will be eventually. I also told you this story many times.

[19:49]

One of my early experiences of him giving a Dharma talk, he mentioned that, this is before we had the San Francisco, before we had our center on Page Street, when we were still over Bush Street, he said in a talk at the old center, he said that he wasn't enlightened. So this was not in accord with my ideas of the way a Zen master would talk. They wouldn't say they weren't enlightened and they also wouldn't be not enlightened. So I had some idea of a Zen master and he was just kind of like saying, well, maybe not. Maybe I'm not the way you think a Zen master should be, or maybe not the way you think I should be. But I, you know, I adjusted. I kind of let him be the guy who said that. And I think that purified my wish to meet... I came to meet him, and I got to meet him, and then he says, I'm not enlightened.

[21:01]

So that kind of pushed me to, like, well, you want to keep meeting with him even though he's not going along with your idea of what he should be? And I kind of said, I think what I said at that time was, well, that's too bad, but still, according to my idea of him, even though he wasn't enlightened, still, according to my idea of him, he was still pretty good. In fact, better than... He's the best candidate for a Zen master I could see. And then shortly after, a couple weeks later, he said, I am Buddha, and I actually thought that was, now he's lining up, he's lining up now with my idea again. But in a way that's kind of a step backwards to like him being my idea of him. In other words, him being not so other, him being more like my little pet Zen master. Good boy, good boy. I was a little bit treating him like my granddaughter treats me.

[22:08]

No, granddaddy, not like that. She's not up for me being other very much. She seemed to be up for me being a possession of hers. Her horse. And she tells her horse what to do. No, not that way, this way. And then people in the sidelines are saying, say please to the horse. So again, the precepts are coming up on every stage. They're being given to us in every stage, given to us, given to us. And the precepts might seem the same precepts, but as we accept the way they seem, we move forward into letting them be more and more,

[23:19]

on not our idea of what they are. And the relationship where they come up, it also not being that way. And so like a very mature teacher already is willing for the students to be other than her idea of what the students are. But some other teachers are not so mature and they still maybe want to meet the student, but their wanting is a little bit impure. They still have some unwillingness to let the student be like totally other. But then the student maybe can help them move forward from that. Timon? Yes. I'm trying still to find my way to the ox here.

[24:23]

Or to a definition of ox being other. You're trying to find your way to meet the ox? I think I'm just trying at the moment to get some intellectual growth on the ox. Okay. Thank you for letting us know that. You know, one definition is like the ox is other, and of course we have lots of ideas of other, but that is not regarding the ox. The ox is the other which we do not have idea at all. Or you called it at one point suchness. Did I hear that correctly? So would you say the ox is suchness? Would I? Yes. The ox is the suchness of ourself. The suchness of ourself is the ox. And ourself needs to meet the other to realize that it's other.

[25:47]

I'm other too. Other than who you think you are? Other than who you think you are? Definitely other than who I think I am. And who I think I am is actually other than who I think I am. Everything is other. Everything is totally other. That's another way of saying everything does not exist by itself. It exists because it includes everything that's not itself. Everything is totally other. That's the way it is. That's the way everything is and that's why everything is empty. What might it mean to be at home with the other? What might it mean to be at home with the other? How can we be, how can we, insofar as the other is just not what we think it is, how can that other be in a place of what is familiar, like at home?

[27:05]

Well, yes, and it might be the case that the being at home is not something that you have an idea about. You just happen to be at home with letting the other be the other. That's kind of like... Hey, we're getting there. That's kind of like picture number what? Seven. Before somebody said seven, there were ten possible guesses. Now there's one. It's seven. Seven, you're at home with the other. Which means you're at home with the ox being forgotten. But you're not yet at home with yourself being forgotten. But you are at home and you're not even noticing that you're at home, you just are.

[28:17]

And you got home by riding the other home. You stop resisting the other Even before you let the other be completely other, even when you still were having the other be a little bit, but Timo still wants me to say what the other is, okay, now you can ride that home. And then when you get home, then you forget what I agreed to say the other was. And you're okay with that. I don't know if Timo's at five or six. Maybe now he's getting ready to set for seven. But it sounded like he wanted a little bit, a little bit wanted to know who this ox was before he forgets the ox. And so I said, okay. Yes, it is suchness. Now ride that home. And when you get there and you're at home, then we can talk about... Can I take back what I said?

[29:18]

So in seven you're at home with the forgotten suchness. But you're not ready for the suchness of yourself. You're not ready for the otherness of yourself. In other words, you're not ready to leave yourself alone and just let it be utterly other. Not yet. Another thing which I... Did I mention to you? You can try this on. This is another level. Another little parallel. Number seven... Actually, number six is gate-gate. Number six is gone-gone. Riding the ox home, you're ready for gone, gone.

[30:31]

Gone, gone means you're ready to ride the ox home. Number seven, gone beyond. Gone beyond what, world? Gone beyond what you rode home, what you got there. And maybe gone beyond your home, too. Then you're at home and at ease. And then, number eight, gone completely beyond. Gone, gone, six. Gone beyond, seven. Gone entirely, parasamgate, entirely beyond, eight. And number nine, bodhi, welcome bodhi, bodhisvaha. which is going beyond, which they don't say beyond anymore, but it's actually going beyond, going completely, it's going beyond, going completely beyond, which means you're back at the place of the relationship where all the precepts come up.

[31:42]

Now you, you, now you, now you, now you completely let the other be other, and the other is letting you be other. Your self's willing to let yourself be other and let the other be other. Everybody's other, everybody's suchness. Nobody knows who the bull is or who the person is. And here comes the precepts. The blooming red blood vein of the Buddhas squirting red flowers all over everything. And now we're ready to be totally ordinary in number ten. Nice to see your forehead without your hat.

[33:02]

Did you forget your hat? You got natural shading? Yes? I'm pretending to be a tutelary deity of Soto Zen. Speaking of the ordinary, it's less dramatic than Go Luz Vaha, but I was thinking, and I can't pronounce it in French, and it's nice in French, but there's a phrase which is to forget oneself, no, sorry, to lose oneself without getting lost. There's also a phrase in French called being at home with yourself. And now there's a phrase like that in English, too.

[34:13]

Being at home with yourself, but not yet having forgotten yourself. Not yet having forgotten yourself. not yet letting yourself, you know, I don't know, right now it just seems so easy to say, well, you've got a self, why don't you just try on letting it be other than yourself? Why don't you let yourself be other than yourself? Because it is. Just try it on and do it right now. And if you by any chance find any resistance to that, that would be kind of not that big a surprise, but actually you could just try it on right now. Yeah, go ahead, because it's really who you are. You actually are other. So go ahead. Be other. And if you can accept that, and you also still have a desire to meet the other.

[35:16]

So that's the thing about the precept comes up, even if you've gotten to stage seven. Stage seven is pretty far. Forgot the self and the ox. You're letting the ox, you're letting the other really be other. You're letting the teacher really be not your idea of the teacher, and not anybody else's idea of the teacher. And not the teacher's. You're really letting the teacher be other, and yourself be other, and you still want to meet the other. You're still trying to, you're still exploring this, you're still exploring this face-to-face meeting with the other. Face-to-face meeting with every person other than what you think they are. You want that, and that's just a very pure desire. It takes a while to get there. And then, and then, that's not the end, because then, in that relationship, these Buddha precepts come up.

[36:30]

But they're not coming from outside, they're coming from that relationship, from that meeting of two others, two suchnesses that can meet. Can you talk about how often do you get instruction to count to ten? How is that a precept? How is it a precept? Well, he taught me how to say it, like he could have said, okay, I'm going to now teach you ten major bodhisattva precepts. Now, if he said that, then I probably thought, hey, this is like... I did a ceremony a while ago with you, and I got these precepts, but it was in Japanese, and now you're going to give them to me in Japanese again, or is it going to be in English? He might say, I'm going to teach you the Bodhisattva precepts in Japanese, which would be a little harder than just saying, for example, shtori.

[37:34]

So to learn how to say not killing is a little bit more complicated. It's two characters. Not killing. But he could also say it in English. But if he told me, okay, I'm going to teach you ten major bodhisattva precepts, you might not have been, and he said, not killing, not stealing, then you might not be surprised to hear that he gave me, that the precepts came up. Right? Yeah. But he didn't give me those. He gave me some other ones. The teacher gave me sthoti. He gave it to me. He said, here, practice it. Say it. Say it. Use your mouth to say that word. And that's what he gave. Precept means to take beforehand. This is what he gave me before we took off. This is the assignment he gave me before the flight. Right? He gave me these ten precepts. These things to work on.

[38:36]

These things to concentrate on. These things to remember and to say. Those were the precepts he gave me. And again, people might think, yeah, those are strange precepts. But he did give me, he also gave me, he taught me when I was, he wanted me to learn Japanese. So he hired a tutor to teach me Japanese. And if I would say, gomashio, gomashio, hokudasai, he would say, gomashio, hokudasai masenka. So he gave me the precept of saying kudasai masenka instead of kudasai. Kudasai masenka is more polite. So he gave me that precept of how to speak Japanese in that way. The Japanese teacher gave me precepts also of the Japanese language precepts. And then he gave me more precepts.

[39:39]

Again, we have some idea of what precepts the teacher's going to give us. We say, oh, okay, Komon, this is a Zen precept. Counting Japanese, counting people in Japanese, I don't know about that. But in a way, you could say, see how great Suzuki Roshi was? He gave me precepts to get me to go beyond my idea of what precepts are. The precepts are other than my idea of the precepts. If he says, not killing, not stealing, then he's going along with... Then the precepts are not other. They're like my idea of the precepts. But then as I studied more I found out that in Soto Zen we have these ten precepts, these ten prohibitory precepts, and they're prohibitory but they're not telling us not to do those things.

[40:50]

They're not saying don't kill, they're saying not killing. So they're not telling us to avoid doing something and stop doing something, they're telling us that how things are other than what we think. Like we think there is killing. We think there's killing. Now, the precept is not killing. The precept is other than your idea of killing. In other words, Buddha nature is what that precept is. And it's not your idea of that precept. But I also thought kind of like, in a way, I didn't use these words, but I also thought, this doesn't seem like bodhisattva precepts that he's giving me. Counting people Japanese doesn't seem like it, but if your bodhisattva teacher gives you an assignment, then what does a bodhisattva give other than bodhisattva precepts?

[41:57]

It's all that they can give. They're always giving bodhisattva precepts. If they say, excuse me, that's a bodhisattva precept, they say, would you help me, that's a bodhisattva precept. That's something that comes up in the relationship for you to receive, and then are you going to aspire to it or not? And you might say, if somebody says, excuse me, I don't see that as a bodhisattva precept. And then the next time I see them, they say, excuse me. And I go, why are you saying that again? And then they say, oh, excuse me. And then they say, excuse me. And I gradually realized, oh, I think they want me to practice. So then I walk around saying, excuse me to everybody. in my relationship with them, they say, and why does the reb go say, say excuse me to everybody?

[43:02]

Well, because his teacher gave him that precept. So he gives it to people too. Why did the Satsikarashi give these precepts? Because his teacher gave him those precepts. And somebody also taught him how to call people in Japanese. And when he stopped, they said it to him again. So he learned those precepts. Everything in his life he gave us in our relationship. And in our relationship, everything that's given to us is the precepts of our relationship. And when our relationship is this kind of relationship, of face-to-face, where we're exploring the nature of the relationship, then everything that comes up is things for us to study. Including that we think, I don't think he wants us to study that. He wants me to study zazen, he wants me to study kinin, he wants me to study the lotus soup soup, but he doesn't really want me to study

[44:11]

Stori, Tari, Sanin, Yoni, Konin. He doesn't want me to study that. Those aren't something you'd study like the Dharma. Well, that's like not seeing them as other. That's not letting them be. It's so funny. And you know, in 1975, In 1970, in January, Suzuki Roshi said to the community in San Francisco, let's all of us count our breath. One to ten. And I imagine that he said that because there was this this kind of like debate going on, a little bit like Zen Olympics going on, like counting with the lowest level of practice, following was a little higher, and just sitting was higher.

[45:23]

And then some people were saying, well, I'm just sitting. And then some other people were going, oh, I'm just counting. And some other people were going, I'm just counting. Oh, you think you're so good you're just sitting? And then somebody else is like, well, I'm kind of in between. I'm following. But actually I'm better than either one of you because I'm in the middle. I'm not trying to get anywhere. I just happen to be more advanced than you. Anyway, this kind of stuff was going on, it seemed like, in the San Francisco Zen Center in the early 1970s, before the master passed away. So then he said, okay, let's all do the beginning practice. And he said that in January. And then some of us went off to Tassajara, and some of us didn't.

[46:26]

And then in the summer of 1970, one of my Dharma brothers said, Suzuki Roshi didn't tell us to stop counting our breath. He didn't say, he told us to start, but he didn't tell us anybody to stop. So he died without actually telling us the sound of his song. But my friend said, he didn't tell us the spell, but I think he wants us to. So I'm going to. And I'm going to go to a more advanced practice. And also some people say that another gradation you can put in there is counting, following koan practice, just sitting. So you see that sitting gets lifted even higher. It's like after koan practice you practice just sitting.

[47:28]

And before you have to do the basic kind of work of settling down into counting your breath. But anyway, people were messing with Sasaki Roshi way back then, trying to figure out who he was and what he was, you know. I think he wants us to stop. But he actually didn't tell us to stop. And he didn't tell me to stop counting people in Japanese. He never said, by the way, that's enough, we're in Portland, now stop it. He never told me to stop. Can you stop? You start counting your breaths, or counting people in Japanese or whatever, aren't you always really doing it even kind of underneath somewhere? I say that because I count my breath and then I find myself counting my breath when I don't intend to.

[48:31]

Yeah, I'm doing it underneath, like right underneath me now, down there, is Japan. And in Japan people are counting people in Japanese, right now. And up here, up on top of the Japanese people, I'm speaking to you in English. But the way I'm speaking to you in English is totally other. And you get a chance to meet the totally other way that I'm talking. A few weeks ago you mentioned a couple of terms, one of which was conscious cognition and unconscious cognition. Yes. Can you say a little more about unconscious cognition? I don't know what you mean by that. Well, for example, I just moved. And the way I moved was orchestrated by unconscious cognitive activity.

[49:34]

My body temperature is somewhat regulated by cognitive processes. My various bodily functions are initiated and controlled, or not controlled, but initiated and influenced by unconscious processes. When I go downstairs, the maneuvering of the foot onto the... I cannot consciously figure out how to put my feet down. It's too complex. And too many calculations necessary to go up and down stairs. Speaking English, moving my lips and tongue right now, and the way my fingers are moving, All that stuff is happening by cognitive instructions to my body, which are much more complex than I can consciously track, orchestrate, or whatever.

[50:39]

I cannot consciously figure out how to move my lips and tongue and teeth and breath to speak English. And when I was a little guy, I couldn't do it either, and my unconscious processes didn't know how to do it. But by consciously talking to people in various ways, my unconscious cognitive processes evolve to a point where now I can speak English. And I can hear myself speak it in English, in consciousness, but I'm not consciously figuring out how to say these words. It's much too complex for consciousness. So if you bring your attention to your feet as you're walking down the stairs, then both are going on? Your conscious cognition and unconscious cognition? Yeah. You can be mindful. Like I just moved my feet and I just observed it. But the way I moved them, I did not consciously move them the way I did. The way I put the outside of my right foot down, but not the inside of my right foot down, I did not consciously intend that.

[51:49]

But that didn't happen by the body, the mind did it, the unconscious processes. And also my left foot wound up sort of up in the ball of my foot with the outside of my calf against the support of the chair. All that was done by cognitive instructions to the body. And I can observe it, but I couldn't exercise it. And people say, well, now you can intentionally raise your hand And if you look carefully, if you pay close attention mindfully to the raising... If I paid... I just saw my hand move it, okay? I did not consciously do that. And the way I did it, I did not consciously do it that way. And if I tried to do it that way, I just pointed to it, unconsciously. If I tried to do it that way, I would notice that the way it actually happened was not the way I consciously intended it. If you look carefully at any body movement, you can see that it's not exactly what you consciously intend.

[52:55]

So mindfulness will actually teach you what kind of things are coming directly from unconscious processes and which aren't. and you'll find out that almost none of your activities are coming from consciousness. But consciousness is where you can observe these miraculous events and you can learn things in consciousness that you cannot learn in the unconscious. You can make discoveries in consciousness and you can speak English in consciousness but you can't speak English in the unconscious. But the unconscious orchestrates the body to move and breathe in such a way that English is spoken. And you can consciously watch the show. But you can't consciously do it. And everything you do in the consciousness where there's an I, transforms the unconscious process.

[53:59]

So when a child or an adult practices English, before they learn English, their attempts to speak it transform the unconscious process. And transform the unconscious process until the unconscious process produces what we call fluent English. And if you're an adult and you watch it, you see what a miracle it is that you can learn these languages in consciousness and you can't speak them, and then suddenly you find yourself speaking, and you can see sometimes you did not intend to be speaking this foreign language that you've been spending all this time learning. And yet now suddenly you find yourself speaking it. And I often use the example of, I was in Japan one time, and I was awake, and this phrase came to my mind, I didn't say it out loud, it came to my mind, nodo kawaita.

[55:01]

And I thought, I knew it was Japanese. I mean, I recognized it as Japanese, but I didn't know what it meant. But my study of Japanese made it so that I could have a thought like Nodokowaita come up in my head. But I did not consciously think, well, I'm going to say Nodokowaita. But, in fact, my mind did come up with this thought, Nodokowaita. And then my mind said, what is that? In English, I said, what's Nodokowaita? And I thought about it, and I thought about it, and I thought, hmm. And then I thought, oh, I'm thirsty. In English. And then I thought, oh, that's what Nodokowita means. So my unconscious produced a Japanese sentence for my condition, and I didn't even know... I didn't know my condition, and I didn't know what the Japanese was saying, but it was describing my situation.

[56:18]

Usually in English, if you say, I'm thirsty, then we go get something to drink. Maybe. But in this case, I didn't know what it was instructing me to do, and then I realized I was thirsty, and then I realized I was telling myself in Japanese. So the body stimulates the mind, which has learned the language, to tell the consciousness that it needs something. Because the unconscious doesn't exactly know how to explain to somebody how to go get water. But when you actually start walking over to the to the sink to get the water, the actual movements are unconsciously out-orchestrated, even though the consciousness said, let's go get some water, and then the unconscious said, okay, we'll get you there. And it gets us there very, very well. So that's something about conscious and unconscious. So the unconscious supports the conscious and the conscious transforms the unconscious.

[57:22]

So by consciously learning English or learning Dharma, we transform our unconscious process, which then makes our consciousness be different and so on. So we evolve. And so now this teaching comes, okay, let's Let's explore meeting the other. Let's work on that. Let's try that. And we do that, and every time we think of that, that transforms our unconscious and our unconscious supports us to remember that consciously. Oh yeah, we're into meeting face to face. And in this face-to-face meeting, that's where transcendence of the self-centered, karmic self-consciousness is going to occur, is in that meeting. That's where the Buddha's precepts are going to come up and guide us to freedom. Thank you. You're welcome.

[58:23]

Helen and Grace? Grace? Helen and Grace, in that order. Related to Jack's question, I guess I was wondering about if one could infer that familiarity and otherness are not in contradiction, or something can be familiar and other, and recognized as other. Familiar things. Familiar things. Things that you think are familiar? Everything is other, and some things are familiar, of those other things. Some things are familiar and they're other, and some things are unfamiliar and they're other. And the things which are familiar can be harder to recognize as other, to remember as other, sometimes. You can't recognize that they're other. Recognize that they're other is not other. It's true. And that's why it's a maybe.

[59:27]

Did you ask the question about why I can't do one before the other? Jack. Was it Jack that asked that? Yeah. Last week? Yeah. That's one story about why it's harder to see the self as other because we're so familiar with it. It's easier to see the other as other. The most familiar thing, we also have this expression, the ultimate familiarity is almost like enmity. When you really get close, it's really hard to see it as other. If it's a little farther, not separate, less familiar, in a way it's easier. So maybe that's why we can let the literal other be other first before we let the self be other. But both familiar and unfamiliar, everything, all phenomena are other.

[60:30]

In other words, all phenomena are suchness. And we have trouble letting things be such. But We can learn to do it. Yes, Grace. Can we go back to unconscious and conscious cognition? Yeah. Because unconscious cognition comes from the body, but if the body changes, and does in some of us, then unconscious cognition also changes. Yeah, like older people having served speech. They don't consciously, except for some really good comedians, they don't consciously slur their speech. But their body changes and doesn't support crisp speech, especially crisp, high-speed speech. The people who can talk the fastest are the younger people.

[61:32]

That's why they have these girls between 18 and 22 doing all that computer shit-making. But they're used to it anyway. Yeah, because their bodies support certain kinds of vocalizations and performances. And then as they get older, their body will change and their unconscious cognitive processes will not be the same, because their body changes. And that's where the self becomes the other, really, truly. Yeah. Yeah. And so you get a special treat to watch yourself become other. And I say, couldn't I have it some other way? Does it have to be this? Do I have to go through this? Like a friend of mine, I think I told you, he's a yoga teacher and now he's getting older and he says, now everything I do, I do mindfully.

[62:41]

But I'm really kind of irritated because I have to be mindful. I mean, I am, but I'm being forced to by old age. Couldn't I just do it without being forced? Or couldn't I be forced by Buddha? Couldn't I have Buddha force me? Be mindful. Or, be mindful, darling. Be mindful. I'm here with you. Be mindful. Don't forget. I'm here with you. Be gentle. Be gentle. You're my prize student. You're a good Zen student. We all love you. We're rooting for you. Come on, get in there and be good. Wouldn't that be nice? Instead of like old age. You have to be careful at each step, otherwise it's going to be a total disaster. Okay, I get it. Like again, he even says, he's very nice to me, but still repeating it. Old age is like maybe one time, and you say, okay, I don't like it, but I'm going to be careful from now on.

[63:50]

And also, I'm going to walk bent over, so just in case I fall, I'll be close to the ground. What am I doing down so close to the ground? Oh yeah, I'm being mindful. And young people sometimes, isn't there some way to remember how to remember? Yeah, get old. Ah, it's so wonderful, this face-to-face transmission that's going on. Joe, did you say a different name tonight? No.

[64:53]

Just Joe? Just Joe. What is your name? What is your name? Sylvester. Sylvester. Sylvester. Yes. Just like that. Sylvester is related to Sylvia, and it's related to Sylvan, the forest. Sylvan historian. Thou canst... Hm? Thou canst describe? A flowery tale more sweetly than... Thou canst thus tell a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme. What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape of deities or mortals or of both in tempeh or in dales of arcady.

[66:02]

Sylvan historian. Sylvester the historian. Sylvester the linguist. So master the other. I pray that you have been inspired by this class to thoroughly and extensively explore face-to-face meeting with the totally other. to explore the full responsibility of relationship with the other that you are responding to, because it's calling to you.

[67:18]

Even though it's totally other, and totally beyond your idea of what it is, it's calling to you, and you're responding. And when you respond, it responds to you. And it called you in the first place because you called it. This, the full responsibility of this, is where the bodhisattva precepts are arising and living. So I pray that you take care of this, this face-to-face meeting with the totally other. in which the bodhisattva precepts arise, are practiced, are realized, and where the self is transcended and even the bodhisattva precepts are transcended. Gone, gone, gone beyond.

[68:21]

Gone entirely beyond bodhisattva. So there's a description of the process from the Heart Sutra. Here's the pictures of the relationship with the other. Ten pictures of your relationship with the other. And the encouragement to take care of your relationship with the other. To let the other be other. In other words, to let the other be such. To be suchness. And it's hard. And it's great. And it's great. Yes? If one could be the way you just described, it would eliminate anxiety, fear, disappointment. It would be absolutely indescribable.

[69:24]

Including what you said. including indescribable and those other things you said. There would not be any of those things. None of that. None of that. All those horrible things that we suffer from. That's beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Is that enough for a yes? It sounds like love. It sounds like love. Yes. It sounds like love. And love is other. But so is hate. But it doesn't sound like hate. It sounds like enmity.

[70:26]

It's almost like enmity. As you approach it, it's almost like enmity. Quiet. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. .

[70:59]

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