There's a number of ideas or topics I'd like to discuss. I'd like you to help me remember this. One is to review the basics. Another is to talk about Jackie. Another one is to talk about Sudhir Joshi and the name he gave me. and the other is intimacy. The basic concept of this retreat is that being authentic is enlightenment, enlightenment is being authentic. In that sense, a rock, authenticity of a rock is enlightenment.

[01:03]

But we're particularly concerned here, being humans, about being authentic humans. And it's harder for us humans than to be authentic and nothing more wonderful. Again, you could say the basic idea is that being wise and compassionate, fully wise and compassionate, is being authentic. If you're not wise and compassionate. So this idea of, well, that's just the way I am, you know, deal with it. Unless that's a compassionate and wise expression, It's not really, you're not really, really. For example, somebody says, well, that's just the way I am, deal with it, that's just me.

[02:06]

Is that really honest? Is that really who you are? If it is, then okay. But if it's really not honest, then you're not really, you haven't realized it. And also, for the people who weren't here yesterday, a new person. Would you tell us your name? Raphael. Raphael. Welcome. Any other new people that came in? OK. This is a Chinese characters from a scripture. And this is part of the scriptural basis for this teaching. So what is the nature of a living being? For example, the nature of a human being, a living human being, is what we call enlightenment.

[03:15]

The actual nature of a living being, or another way to put it is, for a living being to be a living being, Here's what we call him. And so on this calligraphy that I offered you yesterday, you people can have copies too. And over here is half of the name. I said half of mine, but it's really half of the name, not really mine. Half of the name this integration gave me to you. And I wrote that right here. And that half is pronounced Zenki. And it can be translated many ways, but I'll talk about that later. I'm going to talk about the name. So this is the name he gave me and the seal. And this circle here, this red circle,

[04:20]

on the characters, that circle, it says, Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, Jewel. It's a triple jewel seal. So, will you people please receive one of these? So in some sense, the practice of the Buddha way is, oh, another person. What is your name? Ken. Ken? Jim. In some sense, the practice of the Buddha way, not in some sense, the practice of the Buddha way is to be yourself. Completely. Something else that comes up almost every time I sit is to fully engage the body.

[05:45]

So part of being authentic is to fully engage body. And starting with the body. Like if you're in a sitting posture, how do you fully engage the body? Being authentic is or includes engaging your body. You got a body? So for a body to be a body is enlightenment. Now, the body is the body, but the mind is not the mind. Not enough. You've got to have the body be the body and the mind be the mind. But you have to exercise that because part of a body is that it can be exercised. It is exercised, and it's exercised partially or fully. So Suzuki Roshi said when he was, I think, maybe around 60, he said, now I'm old or getting old, so I can't sit up straight anymore, but I can try.

[07:13]

Whatever body you've got, you can try to fully engage it or not. You can say, I'm getting old. I'm getting too old to fully engage my body. It's too hard for me to fully engage my body. Well, then, I would say, please reconsider. So when I'm sitting, I can sit, for example, I can sit like this. You see how I'm sitting? Or I can sit like this. Watch. See the little bit of difference? I'm engaging. It takes a little bit more effort to sit like this than to sit like this. This is okay, but there's more engagement when I go like this.

[08:23]

There's a little bit of a slouch around, actually, my heart when I sit like this. And there's a little bit more effort both around my heart, across the horizontal line across my heart. There's a little bit more effort in that area when I sit like this. And also to sit like this, I have to make a little bit more effort in my lower back. I mean, I sort of have to, yeah. And when I do, when I do, when I move around my heart a little bit and express this part of my chest a little bit more, then I also express a little bit of my lower back more. I feel more, and I am more, I was saying more, fully engaged in my body. So I said yesterday, talked about hearing sounds and seeing sights, fully engaging body and mind.

[09:31]

So when we're sitting, we do often hear sounds and see sights, but are we fully engaging our body when we're seeing? And so we don't usually give instruction in meditation, sit down and listen to the birds. People, that they usually do. We mostly emphasize actually, but hearing sounds is a bodily event. But we most put emphasis on the yogic posture. to work on the posture as a way to engage the body. And that also encourages fully engaging listening. When you're working on your posture, you hear better. You hear more deeply. You see more deeply, more vividly.

[10:34]

Most of us don't know how to work on seeing aesthetically. or hearing more energetically. There may be instructions for that, but in Zen meditation, and I think most yogic practices, the emphasis is on the posture. So whether you're sitting on the floor or in a chair, if you wish to realize enlightenment, it is necessary that you make effort to exert your body, engage your body, and also that energy, patience, and gentleness in order to actually blossom, come to full fruit. So I'm not mean to myself about this effort. I just

[11:37]

...over and over to do this lifting a little bit, because my thing is I noticed a little bit of laziness around my heart. And the effort here also makes me, I think, when I make the effort to lift here, it makes me feel more open and non-speakable. It may be difficult for you. It may not be difficult for you. Either way, you can make an effort. Suzuki Roshi, when he was older, had a harder time than he did when he was younger. He, generally speaking, had very nice posture, very upright posture, but he himself felt more difficult when he got, I should say, when he got close to death because he died It also comes to mind is that I read this book many years ago, one of you may have read.

[13:01]

It's called something of a Yaqui Indian. Tales of Yaqui Indians or something like that. Huh? Teachings of a Yaqui Indian. And this Yaqui Indian was called Don Juan. And one of... I think he talks about maybe the enemies or opponents to the path. One of them was old age. Remember that? And by old age, he meant not just being old, but when you're old and you think, the practice is too hard for me now. That's one of the kind of like demons or enemies of the practice when we think that. I'm too old to practice. Young people don't have that problem usually. They say, or I am pleased to do.

[14:03]

to accomplish in my life than going around being authentic. Like I want to be anti-authentic to see if I can find a teacher. But old people have maybe found a teacher. You know, they found a teacher, and the teacher told them to be authentic, and they've been trying, and then at a certain point, this thought occurs to them, well, I've been doing this for a long time, and it's been good, but I'm too old now, so I'm going to up here and give up. But actually, giving up is hard, too. I'm not going to do that. I'm actually going to start holding on tenaciously to everything I've got. I'm not going to, I'm going to be stingy and mean. That's easy to do when you're old. It's very painful and frightening. So an authentic posture, there's a Chinese character that's used for authentic or genuine, and it's also used for correct or right.

[15:34]

And the character here. Before I finish this character, I just want to point out that this character means stop. This is the character they have on stop signs in Japan and China. Stop. You put a little pop on it. It means correct, authentic, genuine, true. The text by the great ancestor Dogen called Shōbō Genzo. The Shō is this character, and he's still always translated as true. Shōbō is true dharma, authentic dharma, genuine dharma, genuine truth, this character.

[16:39]

And this character, to me it looks like somebody's sitting upright. So authentic, as I said, the etymology of the word authentic has the meaning of, you could say, beginning, origin, creation, or beginner, originator, creator. The word author has the root for creator or creation. Part of being authentic is to settle into the beginning

[17:48]

the origin. And again, how do you do that? Well, the basic method is be still. Be still. Be still. Be still. And then when you're still You're right there at the origin of the moment, at the beginning of the moment, at the beginning of experience. So again, part of being authentic moment by moment is to make the physical and mental effort to be still and be ready for the genuine, the authentic, the beginning of what's happening.

[19:02]

So when things happen, actually, they seem to have a beginning, they seem to have a middle, and they seem to have an end. But today, it seemed to have a beginning for us. But each moment, in a sense, for humans who have this sense of time, has a beginning, middle, and end. We often find, usually during most experiences, and during some experiences, during a lot of experiences, we notice part of it, middle or the end. We have a pleasurable feeling we often notice when it ends. We might notice a little bit before it ends, just enough to say, oh, it's gone. Or, oh, there it is, I want to hold on to it. Or a painful feeling, oh, and it went away. We notice, we know it. And to try to be as much in touch with the beginning of it as possible is part of what is involved in being authentic, of being genuine.

[20:16]

And I also mentioned yesterday that, not etymology, but actually definition, one of the definitions of authentic is undisputed origin, undisputable origins, genuine. This is an authentic idea. So the practice of enlightenment is to be in touch with the undisputed, authentic, genuineness of each experience of living. Effort, effort, [...] effort. Moment by moment. And basically understanding that it's really good continuity.

[21:21]

And that the longer you practice, generally speaking, it seems to be that people who practice a really long time get to a point where they actually become able to be continuous in it. And some of the greatest teachers and practitioners have said that they were not continuous until they practiced a really long time. So another part of the practice is to be patient with ourselves when we're not continuous, when we forget, when we're not making an effort. So I really am not that hard on myself. Maybe when I was younger, I used to be kind of hard on myself when I didn't make the effort to sit up, really sit up right. Now I just gently encourage myself to make the effort again and again. And when it's happening, I'm very happy and I'm ready to be of service because I'm working.

[22:30]

I'm working. I'm ready and I'm ready to do more and I'm happy to do more. If you're not engaging your body in some opportunity coming, you may feel like, oh, that's hard. I can't do that, too. No, I'm fully engaged. Yeah. So, Jackie Gleason. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. Do you know who Jackie Gleason is? No. Do you know who Jackie Gleason is, Mike? Do you know who Jackie Gleason is? How old are you, Justin? 33? Yeah, how old are you, Justin? Yeah, so younger people don't know who Jackie Gleason is.

[23:33]

Traveling music. Yeah, traveling music, yeah. So Jackie Gleason was a performer, an entertainer. He had a TV show which is very popular at a certain point called The Honeymooners. You can see it on YouTube. Wait, wait, wait. Jack Gillespie's probably on Facebook, too, if you're all right. Somebody told me she's on Facebook. You don't have to be alive to be on Facebook. So anyway, one of his characters that he performed was called something soul. Does anybody remember? Poor Soul. Poor Soul, yeah. He was a character called Poor Soul. He had other characters like Reggie Van Gleeson, kind of a playboy.

[24:39]

So his most famous character is Ralph Cramden, a bus driver in New York City. Originally that was just one of his characters, but then that became the big one. on a par with Lucy Ricardo. So this is from 50 years ago. But one of his characters which really touched me was The Poor Soul, which was a guy who, I don't know, he came on with a suit and maybe a bow tie, and he walked like this. I think little steps. He kind of looked... Yeah, and he's frighteningly quiet. In particular, I remember he would maybe go someplace and make some purchase. You know, like go to a movie and pay for the movie, or go to a restaurant and open the menu very carefully and very gingerly. The part that really stuck with me is when he would pay for things.

[25:44]

He would reach into his suit, and he would pull out his coin purse, And he would reach in, and he would open his coin purse. And he would reach in and take the money out. In some sense, almost like he's afraid, but very carefully paid for each one. And he would take the money back, and he would close it. And if you've ever done that, supermarket you know where you you pay and you don't just take the change and put it in the purse but you maybe reach in and take your coins out and pay or you take the change and you take the change up and you put it into your after zipping something open putting it in and zipping it shut and it's not that easy to do that because people are you know coming down the line

[26:50]

It's a busy scene. You don't want to hold people up. But to actually answer, reach in, what's in there, pull it up and give it to the person or receive the change and then take it. Before you take it, maybe, what do you do? Unzip and then put it in and then zip it? To get into that. It always struck me that he did that. And... And I also think, you know, that's something you might think, well, when little old ladies, you know, go to the bank or whatever, they do that. Okay? And today, on the way over here, I got some gas. I want this coin purse to change. When I was closing it, a thought occurred to me.

[27:56]

How do you think a samurai deals with this situation? Do you think the samurai just takes the money and throws it at the person and walks off? I think some samurai. But I think a really good samurai, a really concentrated one, takes care of little details like that with the same concentration that they take care of their sword. And the people who make those swords It's inconceivable how careful they are when they make those swords, the care they go through, when they make the hilt and the handle and the scabbard. These swords are national treasures because they are on the level of the highest art of the culture, on the level of the best painting and calligraphy and poetry and architecture.

[29:09]

The people who make them are into the little tiny details. And it isn't like, well, now I'm paying for, I don't know, a bottle of sake or my lunch. So now I'm on vacation. I don't have to pay attention to this exchange in the money. It isn't like that because they could be attacked while they're paying for lunch. They never know when death's going to come. They never know when an attack's going to come. And when they're actually in combat, they never know when the other person's going to move. And as you may know, in a lot of samurai, they go on for a long time with both parties not moving. They just stand there, unmoving, facing each other. And they just wait for the other guy to get distracted.

[30:14]

Just one moment of distraction and it's over. Two really highly developed ones. They're not moving. And they never know when the other guy is going to either attack because they've lost their concentration. When it's happened to you, because you lost yours. So this is like an important issue of life and death for them. So they pay attention all the time. It isn't like, so in the Buddhist, when you're doing eye surgery, you concentrate, but when you're paying for your gas, you don't concentrate. Because if you don't concentrate when you're paying for your gas or receiving your change, that lack of concentration spreads to eye surgery, spreads to tango dancing, spreads to cooking, spreads to sitting up, spreads to exerting your body.

[31:26]

When I have that purse, you know, this is a women's purse. My beautiful wallet being stolen a while ago, which was given to me by my dear wife. And afterwards she said, you can have this one. Yeah. And my daughter says, fashion police. Yeah. Not use that purse. That's a woman's wallet. You can't use it. And my wife is also a fashion police. She says, you can't use it. So, you know, here's a little something Shetland bought me. But I also feel that it's a really good mindfulness practice for me. I don't want to cause trouble to the cashiers, but there's a great opportunity for me to work with them more.

[32:41]

I'm with you. I'm with you. You know, I'm okay. Rather than just, you know, I'm just coming through here. This is not something I pay attention to. This morning I looked at that woman and I said, and she said, thank you, and she said, thank you, and she said, have a good day. And I looked at her and I said, you too. And then she smiled. Because I was, I was, I was practicing with her. It isn't like I practiced with you. I went back with you and not with that woman. I want to practice with you. And Andrew, I want her to know she is somebody who I recognize in my life. And I'm somebody who... Nobody else was there, so I wasn't holding things up. I'm somebody who is saying, can I give you seven cents?

[33:43]

And again, when I went back to the car and put the wallet in, I thought, would a samurai... have taken care of that like that. Buying gas is a matter of life and death. And dealing with the cashier is a matter of life and death. It's not like life and death happens in part of our life and death. It's happening all the time, every moment. An equal opportunity for enlightenment. And if we forget that, then we are kind to ourselves and we confess it. And if we feel sorry that we forgot to pay attention, that sorrow is part of to work harder. Again, there's this one, there's a story about Suzuki Roshi. Does anybody here not know Suzuki Roshi?

[34:52]

The name? Do you know the name? Suzuki Roshi? Yeah. So Suzuki Roshi is San Francisco Zen Center. And again, he gave me a name, which I'll tell you about in a little while. Anyway, one day, he was giving a talk. And he told a story. Have you heard of Tassajara? So he's also the founder of Tassajara. Have you been to Tassajara? There's a creek at Tassajara, which is called Tassajara Creek. And there's a certain place in the creek which is called the Narrows, because the canyon gets very narrow on both sides of the creek. And it has a little waterfall with a deep pool at the bottom. I think there was a big granite slab across the river. So the water can't erode that part.

[35:58]

So it can't cut it down. So the water runs over the granite and falls down on the other side of it and has dug a big hole, which has made a beautiful deep pool, which is there almost all year. Even when this creek is almost dry, there's still this pool. So this Zen master at the pool with his students and the students were swimming in the pool, and he jumped in. But he didn't know how to swim. The Zen master got a little excited. It looked like so much joy in his students that he joined them. And then he went down under the water. Now the students, thought after a while they noticed he hadn't come up and thought, well, he's a Zen master. He can stay down there forever. And then some of the other ones thought, it is getting a bit long.

[36:59]

said, he's down there thinking and looking at all the ladies' legs, he said. And so the students went down and pulled him up. And he was embarrassed that he jumped in. without knowing how to swim. He was embarrassed that he kind of distracted from paying attention. So again, even a highly developed person sometimes misses something. So then he said, after that I really started to practice hard. Now, this is after he's, you know, found his Zen mom. And then he said that in the talk, and then at dinner, one of us said to him, Roshi, you said that after that you really started to practice hard, but weren't you practicing hard before that? And he said, he did. So even when he was near his death, he was still trying to sit up straight and still trying to really wholeheartedly practice.

[38:12]

This is the example which he wanted to tell us about. He told us, I slip sometimes, I forget sometimes, but still, I still want to practice wholeheartedly. And I really want you to, and when I die, I want you to carry this on. Please. And again, every moment is an opportunity to be wholehearted. Sitting in meditation hall, doing traditional Buddhist practice, being in a church, working in a gas station, All these are opportunities for enlightenment. How wonderful to transmit both ways, me to the woman, to the cashier, and her to me. Her wishing me a good day, me wishing her a good day.

[39:18]

Both of us being authentic. Maybe with a little wink. Like, have a good day. Thank you. be enlightened, right? No, I didn't say that. But she saw my outfit. She might have thought, I wonder if this guy is a martial artist. And he's a martial artist, but he's really friendly, too. He's a martial artist. And he looks at me like I'm a martial artist. Like he thinks I'm going to attack him at any minute. Or he might attack me. He's like really engaging me. He's not writing me off. In this gas station, this isn't a martial artist. He knows I might be. When I first went to Zen Center, it wasn't in the current location.

[40:19]

We were in Japantown. And it was in a Japanese temple. So first of all, it was a Japanese temple. And then, what do you call it? It was a Japanese temple, a Japanese-American temple, I should say. And so European-Americans started a Japanese-American temple because they wanted to study with the Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshan. And then on Saturday nights at this temple, they showed Japanese movies, sometimes samurai movies. And one of the samurai movies they showed were samurai movies about Zato Ichi, the blind swordsman. This is an example of blind people in the Tokugawa era were often masseuses or, well, masseuses or masseurs, usually masseurs. But blind women were masseuses, right?

[41:21]

There was even a sect of Buddhist nuns who were all blind, and they traveled around together with, you know, touching each other. through down the roads in one of the ways they served the community, the masseuses. Anyway, Zato Michi was a blind masseur, but also a highly skilled swordsman. But people didn't know that. They just said, here's a blind man. But he had this great skill that he was very good at. He fully engaged body and mind. Even being blind, his skin sense and his ear hearing were highly attuned so that he knew where people were and what they were doing. Also, his smell sense probably, too. You never know when you meet someone if this is a samurai or not.

[42:25]

Not everybody has a sign, I'm a martial artist. I have one on, but most people don't. You don't know if somebody is. You don't, huh? What? Enlightened, right. The person in the gas station might be enlightened, might be a great bodhisattva. So you go in the gas station, you think, well, fairly unlikely, Great Bodhisattvas are not that common. But it might be. You don't know. I don't know. And in one scripture, one of Buddha's disciples Buddha heard the Buddha say, only Buddhas know who the Bodhisattvas are. By Bodhisattvas means the highly evolved ones, the ones who have gotten to a place of continuity and are always making wholehearted effort.

[43:36]

Only the Buddha can see who those people are. And so one of the great disciples said, well, in that case, Master, we should probably treat everybody as though they might be a great bodhisattva. And the Buddha said, that's right. But that's a lot of work. To give them the kind of presence and respect that you would give a great bodhisattva if you had the opportunity to meet one. He said, would you like to meet a great bodhisattva? Yes. Well, actually, I don't know, that'd be kind of scary. I don't know if I'd be up for it. Well, let me know when you want to. And he said, now I'm ready. I'm ready to meet a great compassionate being, a wise being.

[44:37]

I'm ready. Meet them. Now, imagine being that way with Wouldn't that be intense? I think, yeah, really intense. In order to be able to do that, you have to be very relaxed and gentle. In order to be that way, you have to be very still. Of course, you don't want to be jumping around, you know, You don't want to be jumping around for this meeting. You want to be there for it, right? You don't have to say much. You might say, thank you very much for meeting with me. You might say, I really appreciate meeting you.

[45:45]

You might say, is there anything I can do to help you? Is there anything you'd like to tell me? But you might not say anything. Would it be good to treat everyone like that? Would it be good to learn to treat everybody like that? But I find it difficult to remember every moment. Even if at the beginning of the meeting I realized, okay, this might be a great bodhisattva, then moment after moment to stay in that state of reverence is not that easy. And also without being tight about it, like, stay reverent, stay reverent. And I was like, reverent? in a relaxed reverential mode.

[46:52]

But I think I would like to do it a little bit. That's good. And I'd like to do it more. Another point, I don't know if I asked you to remind me of this other point, but the other point is relating to bodhisattva precepts. Would you remind me about that? So I've remembered a number of things I've asked you to remember about. Here's another one that I remember. And that is the name that Suzuki Reishi gave me, and I apologize. focusing on the name he gave me. But the name he gave me, the name he gave me was a great teaching to me and to the world. It's not really about me. It's about everybody. The Chinese characters are like this.

[48:02]

So it's pronounced and this Zanke part is on the clip. So when he, the day he gave it a name, he said, he called me with If you look at the characters and literally look them up, first character is heaven or celestial. Could all often mean divinity. The next character is truth. Yeah, truth mostly. So literally, it'd be heavenly truth or celestial truth. If you look it up in a Buddhist dictionary,

[49:23]

Celestial truth, the meaning of it is ultimate truth, ultimate reality. True reality, or just truth. Celestial truth, highest truth. But if you look it up in an ordinary Chinese dictionary, the colloquial meaning of tension is to be kind of Genuinely or sincerely naive. Like a child, to be childlike. Not to be childish. To be childlike. Like you say to a child, what's this? They say, hand. What's this? Nose. What's this? Ear. In a sense, it's kind of naive. There's more to it than that. But it's childlike in a warm and with a warm sense of appreciation for being childlike or the way children are.

[50:38]

It has both those meanings, to a Buddhist technical sense and a colloquial sense. But what Tsuji Hiroshi told me is, which includes both, Tenshin means grab his rib. So Tenshin also means Karen is Karen and Brent is Brent and Joel is Joel and Rachel is Rachel and so on. That's what it means. Or it means, and being authentic, it's kind of childlike. children are not always childlike sometimes they're kind of sophisticated and dishonest they're not really being childlike they're being you know manipulative but that's not really childlike that's adults do that too or adolescents do it too no but sometimes when children are really childlike I think you know yeah

[51:58]

They're authentic. So, reb is reb is is reb being authentically reb? And we, in our practice, and one time a Japanese person saw my name and he said, oh, that means just sitting. That means zazen. When you sit and fully engage your body and mind, your body is your body and your mind is your you. That's it. There's nothing more to it. There's no you in addition to the universe. There's no universe in addition to you. It's just you are completely just what you are. You're a sitting person. That's it. That's Tenshin, but it's also Zenki. And Zenki means, the first character means total or complete, the next character means energy or function.

[53:08]

When you're you, that's total energy, total function. You're involved in being who you are. I know that some people translate this Zenki as total dynamic functioning. But a translation that I usually use when I write my name in English is the. And I like that translation because it has a standard English and colloquial English meaning. The colloquial English of whole works means everything. The standard English is a sentence, which means that the whole works. And how does the whole work? It works in you being you.

[54:12]

The whole universe comes together and begins to teach you to be the way you are right now. You are the working of the whole there. You are the working of the whole there. You are the working of the whole there. Each of you is the working of the whole universe in this unique way. So when you are yourself, that's the whole works. And that's what the practice is. It's not just you to be you, it's you to be you to realize the working of the universe to realize in your authentic, sincere, childlike openness to what you are, and with no running away from that, to realize the total working of the universe right where you are. And then, let that go. Next moment.

[55:14]

And the first thing you need to do is to not move. because you don't have to move to be yourself. So for a living being to be enlightened requires the living being to be a living being, be the living being that they are. For you to make your, for me to make my greatest contribution is to be myself completely, and in order to be myself completely, I need to not move. And then if I don't move, I'm realizing being me. And now it doesn't exclude movement. It just means that when there's movement or stillness, I don't move. No matter what I'm doing, I'm concentrated on being myself. which completely includes being open to know.

[56:20]

When you're not moving, it's not a problem to be open to the person that you're meeting as a great body self. If you're in a rush, it might slow you down to stop and get the person you're with to your complete attention. If you're busy, you might think, I don't have time to give you my complete attention. The person might say, but I just happen to be a great bodhisattva. I think it would be a good idea for you not to rush past this meeting because you might not meet me again for a long time. Chakramuni Buddha. Would you like to meet Chakramuni Buddha? No, I'm too busy. I've got to go. Now, if you're moving fast and you're not willing to be still, you're going to miss the meeting that you've always wanted.

[57:24]

You always wanted to meet great compassion and great wisdom. You've always wanted to meet that and be close to that. And if you're moving, if you're not still, you're going to miss it. Now, once you're still, and you meet it, then you've got another problem. But the first problem is to be ready for the meeting every moment. The next problem is to continue to not move. If you're not still, you're going to miss the meeting, period. If you're still, you're going to open to it. You can open to it. But once you open to it, because it's so intense, it's so much what you want, you can barely stand it. You want to be with the Buddha.

[58:34]

You want to meet the Buddha. Now the Buddha comes and you're still and now you're with the Buddha. And then you say to the Buddha, I got to go. Or you say, I got to go. You don't say the truth, I want to go. I've always wanted to be with you and now I want to go away from you. I've traveled thousands of miles to be with you, now I'm with you. I want to get away from you. But you don't say that. You're not that honest. You say, I don't want to take any more of your time. And the Buddha says, you're not taking my time. I'm giving it to you. It's okay. No, no, I don't want to. I've got to go. You don't have to go. You can stay. And then maybe you do. That's That's enlightenment, not running away from where you are.

[59:38]

Even when where you are is where you always wanted to be, not to mention where you are is where you never wanted to be and where you usually try to get away from. So I went to San Francisco Zen Center to a Zen teacher. And then there was one there, and I arranged my life to be accessible to him if he ever wanted me to spend time with him. I sat with him, I worked with him, and so on. And then sometimes he gave me a chance to be with him and gave me full attention. And oftentimes when he did that, I wanted to get away. How ridiculous, and yet that's the way I felt. the person I most wanted to see me, I was most uncomfortable with him seeing me. When you're with someone who has great authority for you, when you're with someone who you, the first meaning of authority is worthy of trust, when you're with someone who you really think is worthy of trust,

[60:54]

That's the person you want to be with and also the person you're afraid to be with because you're concerned with them approving of you or liking you. You're afraid if they would see you truly, they might disprove of you. It's hard work. Intimacy is hard work. Intimacy is for the people who are working hard. But once again, working hard includes being gentle. Working hard and being gentle. And if you think of dancers and musicians and samurai, they work hard, but they're very relaxed and gentle, the good ones. I just recently ran into a quote which I thought was really nice, a little bit different language.

[62:14]

It's a quote, or I think it's a quote, to a French writer named Roland Barthes. And the quote is, true intimacy involves an alternation between supreme love attunement and bewildering estrangement. I tried to be attuned to when he was around. I very happily gave him myself, my attention. I was very available to him. I was the director of the city center, and I assigned myself the room next to his.

[63:17]

So much so I could be near him, but so he could be near me. So if he needed me or wanted me to tell me anything, I was right there. And I kept my door open most of the day. So if he walked by, he could see what I was doing or make some comment. I kept my door open when I was in the room. When I left the room, I usually closed it. So I wanted to be available to him. But when he availed himself of my presence, I sometimes wanted to get away. Somebody said to me yesterday, enlightenment is intimacy. If that's the case, then enlightenment involves incarnation, or at least a dynamic interplay between supreme attunement, I like this definition, supreme attunement, and bewildering estrangement.

[64:34]

Enlightenment engages with bewildering estrangement. Enlightenment is, yeah. I think of the lotus flower. The roots of the lotus flower, which go down into the mud, the roots are in attunement with the mud. They wiggle and move in the mud to engage the mud fully. They're very attuned to the mud. And from that attunement with the mud, you have this great flower. But it's also attuned to the mud because the mud is where it gets its, not all of its nutrition, it also gets nutrition from the sun. But in the mud is where it receives its nutritional water.

[65:35]

The water that falls on the leaf just rolls off pretty much. Nice. But I don't think the lotus flower gets its nutritional water mostly from the rain on the leaves. It gets it mostly from the rain that goes into the mud. And so the roots are attuned to the nutrition of the mud, which has minerals, other kinds of things, and water. That's the attunement. But the mud, I think, is bewildering a stranger. The mud that enlightenment grows in, that enlightenment attunes to, is the bewilderment that comes from feeling that we're not intimately connected with everyone. From the bewilderment that comes from thinking that people aren't great bodhisattvas,

[66:36]

Or rather, it's okay to think that they're not great bodhisattvas if you're also open to that they might be. They're not acting like a great bodhisattva, apparently, but they still might be. It might be just a little trick they're pulling on me to see if I can be distracted in kind of testing my practice. So one of the themes of this practice period at Tassajara is a story The story is about intimacy, but I think actually later. And now I'd like to talk about that, and I'd like to talk about the Bodhisattva precepts in relationship to this later. And now, for a little while, I invite feedback.

[67:50]

Does anyone like offering feedback? Or, by the way, I think it's nice to use the definition of feedback, because people, I think... benefit from this definition. The basic definition in the dictionary I looked in, the first definition of feedback, is that part of the output of a process that becomes input to the process. Some processes have output that just go out. but also processes that goes back into the process. That's feedback. I think it comes from maybe acoustic theory or information theory originally. The second meaning of feedback is the one I think that's become quite popular, and that is a critical or evaluative comment, a work of art or some other process.

[69:03]

So if I say, do you have any feedback, you might think I want you to comment on what I've said, critique it one way or another. That's part of what I'm inviting. But I'm also inviting just something that's come up that you would like to feedback. Please come, Jessie. Please come. You don't want to come. Is that feedback? Yeah. All right. You don't have to. I like that thing that you said about being. Yeah, yeah. Could you hear what she said? So I just want to say for the recording, do you think that recorded, Paul? I think it can be heard. Yeah, okay. So being open to somebody who might be a great bodhisattva, but not believing that they are. And they all looked really present, except this one.

[70:11]

And at first I sort of thought, oh, gosh, what a terrible man he is. And then I started to feel compassion. So I opened my heart, and then all of a sudden I realized, you know, this guy is a teacher. I remembered once before judging the worst person I thought, and he turned out to be a teacher. Sure enough, he was the teacher. Yeah, he was the one that got you. He really was the teacher. He's the one that stimulated you, the arising of compassion in you. Well, first, inertia. First aversion, then compassion. First aversion, then compassion. And I thought your story is wonderful. Yeah, it's wonderful. But how does it work with the teacher yet? Like they are actually, they do have problems. I mean, I think the way things open works, because you're moving yourself and you're having a problem with this person, because you're having a problem with that aspect of yourself.

[71:18]

If they're not really the teacher, they really are stuff. That's why I'm wondering about that. Well, The teacher, like all things, is not a fixed entity. It's not an independently existing thing. So it's not like the teacher is something independent of you. If somebody is stuck and their stuckness helps you, then their stuckness is a teacher for you. But they are stuck. Them being stuck. Yeah, so it... In some senses, you judge the tree by the fruit. It's a rotten, ugly tree, but it has beautiful fruit. Well, maybe there's something good about it. Well, it's good for me if I handle it.

[72:21]

If I open to it. But then there's a step of just having... Maybe I'm good. Would you say it louder, please? Would you say it louder? How do you then reach out or do something beneficial for the other person? Which other person are you talking about? When you see, like for instance, my daughter said that she's really glad she's, well, she's not glad she's back. I was glad she's back because she's, doesn't have enough energy to do what she wants, but she doesn't have enough energy to kill herself. So she's stuck. I felt, I didn't feel encouraged to say anything, but I just felt, gosh, I'm so glad she's stuck. I believe she's stuck. But in that sense, what do you, is there any way to help? Is there any way to help your daughter? Yeah, there is a way. Guess what I'm going to say.

[73:24]

You can't guess? Go ahead, guess. Yes. I'm actually going to say it the best way. The essential thing to make your love for her beneficial is to be yourself. For you to be authentic is what will help her. Because that's what she needs to learn. No, it's tricky. If I was authentic, I would say, I'm glad you're stuck. And that would be exactly what you want me to do. You don't know, I don't know, and you don't know what you would say if you were authentic. You don't know. You might say, I'm glad you're stuck. You might say that. Or you might say, you're hurting yourself. I'm afraid if you have more energy, you'd hurt yourself. You might say that. You might say a lot of things.

[74:31]

But I'm saying the first thing that we need to do to help our children, the first thing we do to be fully best, most helpful is to be ourselves. You can help people without realizing your own authenticity. You can still help them a little bit by showing a bad example. My father helped me by showing me a bad example. Here was a gifted person, tall, handsome, intelligent, you know, really gifted, who did not use his gifts and abused himself and, you know, wasted his time. He showed me that.

[75:33]

And he showed me how that worked. And just before he died, he said, Rebbe, you never abused your body. Dash, I abused my body. And you never abused your body. And in parentheses, I'm thinking, you showed me to not abuse my body. He showed me how even a great body like yours, if it's not cared for, suffers and falls apart. My father helped me by showing me the wrong road to walk. He came, you know, to see me, and he saw Suzuki Roshi's picture on my altar, and he said, he's your real dad, isn't he? So I had two dads in a way. I had one dad who showed me the way to walk, but the other dad, who has this body as me in a way, showed me how I can destroy myself.

[76:45]

And he's better at showing me that because some people get in trouble, but I don't see that they've abused themselves because maybe they just don't have the gifts. But all of his diseases not taking care of himself. So he was my father, and they both were my teachers. One helped me by showing poor example, the other showed me example that I want to follow. But the first one helped me follow the second one. So they're both my father. And if you're authentic on some level that gets transmitted to your daughter, she may have to pretend like she's not hearing you, But if you're authentic, part of what that means is that you welcome her being the way she is. Welcome her suffering. Not like it, but you totally welcome it. You let her suffer.

[77:47]

She wants to know, will this person who I know loves me, does she love me enough to let me suffer? And not suffer, not let me suffer without looking at me, to look at me and feel what she feels when she sees my suffering. This is not pleasing her. Will she love me when I don't please her? If I'm happy, that pleases her. And so she'll be pleased and she'll probably love me. But would she love me if I didn't please her by suffering so much? And you say, I don't like that you're suffering. I'm afraid you're going to hurt yourself. And I am totally here for you, and I let you be this way, and I'll never abandon you unless it's helpful to you. That's who I am. You could also say, I totally hate that you're doing this to yourself. I totally hate it, and I totally welcome it.

[78:53]

That's how you can help her best. And then all kinds of other things can follow from that. all kinds of other comments and offerings. Like you say, please come for a hike with me, or please come to a retreat with me, or can I make you dinner, or get out of the house. Who knows what will come from your wisdom that will be there when you're completely yourself, you will become wise and you'll be able to see what is helpful. When you're wise, you're not concerned with knowing such things. Wise people are not like trying to figure out whether they're wise. They have other things to do. What? Oh, yes, definitely. And maybe some consultation with friends, too.

[79:55]

Like, so again, this famous example is my daughter. My youngest daughter comes back from college in the East Coast to live with us, to go to work and make money. We're willing to pay for her school, but we want her to get a job to help pay for her. So she comes home with the intention. She said, when I come back, I'm going to hit the ground running. So she comes back to get work, and she comes back and doesn't get work. She stays out late every night, comes home late, gets up at noon, and maybe goes someplace to look for work just before they're closing. And I imagine that when she went in to ask for work, she's kind of like saying, You probably don't want to hire me, do you? But anyway, she was very busy with her social life.

[80:59]

I went through the whole summer without getting a job. And then the autumn was coming, and I was going to leave and go to Tassajara for a practice period. And my wife said to me, please don't leave me alone with her. With this unemployed giant, you know, with all this energy and intelligence, unemployed, this is not, don't leave me alone with her. So I talked to her mother, and I said, I think it would be good to tell her that if she doesn't get a job in a week, we want her to move out. And my wife agreed with me, and we sat down and had a meeting with her, and I said, your mother and I have talked, and we would like you to move out if you don't have a job in a week. And my wife said, I changed my mind. And I said, your father would like you to move out in a week if you don't get a job.

[82:08]

But the thing is, when I told her that, I didn't flinch. And it's very hard for me to look into her eyes when I tell her something that I don't. But if you look away when you deliver that message, you can't see the response. And the response might be a wink, might be a smile, might be a wince. But she's going to give some response back, and that response might lead you to say, I changed my mind. I see it's not right. I don't feel that way anymore. But I looked at her, and I gave her this message, and she received it. And I thought, okay, the message has been delivered. She has received it. She's there. She got the message from her father. That's what her father feels, and now she can deal with it. She has actually received it. And I didn't look away, and I see her response. She's okay. And then she said, well,

[83:13]

If I move out, what am I going to do? And I said, you'll be able to take care of yourself. And you'll have to deal with that. And, you know, I understand that's a consequence of what I'm asking you to do. Now, telling her what I want her to do is not the same as to say she's going to move out. When the week was up, you know, we'd see what would happen. She'd say, well, I understood you wanted me to move out. Is that still true? Yes. I'm not going to. And then we'd have another thing to work on. But anyway, she said that, and then she left and went to her room, and she went into her room, and she closed the door, but the door... That door, the door jam, you know, from previous closings is barely there... But she closed it, you know, it wasn't like a sweet closing, just a closing the door.

[84:16]

She wasn't really angry. She was by something that her father told her about himself and his view of her life. She wanted to go to work too, you know. And here he's saying, I want you to get this job or move out. So she goes in there and then the next morning, this strange thing, back from meditation, My daughter was up. It was like 7.30 in the morning. She was up and kind of dressed. And she asked me something she almost never asked me. And then she asked me which sweater to wear. I don't know. First of all, she said to me, can I go to San Francisco with you? I was going to go to San Francisco with you. Can I go to San Francisco with you and look for a job? At 7.30 in the morning, she says that. And I say, sure. And then she asked me what sweater to wear, which she never asked me. And I suggested that one, and she wore the one I suggested.

[85:19]

Then she asked her mother, but never me. But she asked me. She let me into her heart in a very deep way, because I told her what I wanted, and not just told her what I wanted, but I stayed with her when she got the message. Real intimacy. And we went to San Francisco, and I went swimming in the bay. And when I got out of the water and took my shower, I came out, and there she was, and she'd gotten a job. And she was very happy that she got the job. And my daughter has a lot of ability. She can get a job. If she wants a job, she can get a job. And she did want a job, and she got a job. And then she says to me, do you think I got the job because of what you said to me? And you know, I knew what she wanted to hear.

[86:21]

But the answer that she wanted to hear was actually how I felt. The answer is, I don't know. I don't know how this all works. I don't know. This is a spiritual thing. This is a matter of faith. I believe in intimacy. When we're completely enlightened, we know how it works. In the meantime, what do you trust? I trust being authentic. The father I was was not a father who was saying, oh, darling, it's so wonderful to have you staying at home and not be employed. Stay here forever. I was a father who had a daughter who wanted to work, who was not. and who had a wife who said, don't leave me alone with this person. This is what makes me into the father I am. And the father I was wanted her to move out if she didn't get a job. And also, I was a father who wanted her, was happy for her to live. That would be fine. I'm happy to support her if she's doing her part.

[87:25]

If she's not, I have some feelings to tell her about. That's authentically what I was. But still, when you're authentic, it also means that when you deliver your authenticity to somebody, you're present for it. How you feel, you don't just say, I have a problem with you, and look away. You say, I have a problem with you, and you stay with them. You hang in there and deal with the consequences. And when the consequences are there, you might have something quite different to say. I didn't mean to hurt you, but that's who I am. You could say to your daughter, I'm afraid you're going to hurt yourself. She could say, you're just making it harder for me by saying that. I'm sorry, I don't mean to make it hard, but I think you need to know who your mother is, because you've got one. I think you need to know who the real mother you've got is.

[88:27]

That's me. I'm the mother that you have. And I feel this way. You need to know this stuff about me, even though it makes your life more complicated. I think you need to attune to me. I'm your mother. I think you need to attune to me. And that's not easy. Matter of fact, part of the reason why you're having such a hard time is because you have me as a mother. It's hard to have me as a mother. It's hard to have me as a father. It's hard to have me as a husband. It's hard to have me as a teacher. It's hard to have me as a friend. I'm not that easy to be with. But I don't feel bad about that because I don't think anybody is. Everybody that's authentic is quite difficult. Authentic people are a challenge. Authenticity is a challenge, authentic people are a challenge. Authenticity is a challenge, authentic daughters are a challenge. Authenticity is a challenge, it stimulates us to grow in enlightenment, to extend our authenticity into more and more situations.

[89:37]

And if you're that way with your daughter, on some level that authenticity will be transmitted to her, and if she can be authentic, she will be enlightened. And when she's enlightened, she'll be able to deal skillfully with her suffering, and yours, and everybody else's. That's the main thing we can do to help people, is to be ourself. Because the main problem people have is themselves. That's the primary problem. That's the first problem. You have to take care of yourself. Then you can take care of others. My problems are also other people's problems. But I'm betting, I believe in and I'm betting on taking care of my problems first and then helping others. Based on that I'm taking care of my own. So one more story, not the last one, but one more story is a story called the acrobats.

[90:46]

The Buddha tells this story. Once there were acrobats, an acrobat and an acrobat apprentice, actually a father and a daughter called And the father says to the daughter, the daughter's name, by the way, is frying pan, if you translate her name in English. The father says to his daughter, his apprentice, They were called bamboo acrobats, and I think that either the father held the bamboo on his chin or on his head, the bamboo pole, and his daughter would climb up, maybe on the pole, and he would balance her up there. I think that's probably what the feet, something like that, bamboo acrobat. So he says to the daughter, you climb up on your shoulders, and you take care of me, and I'll take care of you. And the daughter says, Venerable teacher, you've got it wrong.

[91:50]

You take care of yourself, and I'll take care of me. And in that way we will be able to perform our practice safely. The Buddha tells that story, and the Buddha says, The apprentice, the daughter, is correct. First you should take care of yourself, then you take care of others. And how do you take care of yourself in this case? It's by practicing the four foundations of mindfulness. Mindfulness of your body, mindfulness of your feelings, mindfulness of your mental states, and mindfulness of the objects of awareness. These practices. Fully engage your body before you try to help somebody else. Like they say on the airplane, before you try to put somebody else's on. Fully engage, fully be who you are before you try to help somebody else. And as soon as you're fully who you are, you've already helped.

[92:55]

As soon as the father deserts his body and stands upright on the earth, he's already helped his daughter. He's given her a body to climb on that's aware of itself. That body will support her. He's concentrating on his own posture, feeling what it's like to have his daughter climbing on him. She can use him. He's helping her. But if he doesn't take care of himself and looks at her, he's not a good basis for her to work with. So you need to take care of yourself really well for your daughter. And she'll see that teaching from you. And she will learn someday to be a Buddha. But there's going to be some tough challenges in the meantime. Any more feedback for me?

[94:02]

We have a break. It's break time. And the break is starting right now. But this break time is break meditation. It's not really break from meditation. It is break meditation. Which is called walking meditation, toilet meditation, snack meditation. Okay? Don't during this time. Concentrate on what you're doing. Please. I'll ring a bell to call you back.

[94:49]

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