as you are perhaps familiar with, it is said that bodhisattva's vow to save all living beings, and I am suggesting that's similar to saying bodhisattva's vow to realize intimacy with all beings. So I'm saying that intimacy is what actually saves sentient beings. The realization of intimacy saves living beings. in the scripture about understanding and elucidating the deep intimacy.

[01:23]

Avalokiteshvara asked the Buddha in the chapter of Avalokiteshvara's questions, among the basic bodhisattva precepts, which are giving, ethical discipline, patience, heroic effort, concentration and wisdom, which are for benefiting beings, suffering beings, and which are for removing affliction. And the Buddha says, The first three are for benefiting beings and the last three are for removing affliction. So when, in relationship to our own

[02:34]

sentient suffering the suggestion there is that being gracious being very very careful and up and vigilant and mindful and being patient this is the ways we care for the suffering that's actually going on and then by heroic effort, concentration and wisdom, we actually remove the afflictions which are the causes of suffering. They actually can be removed by the last three practices. So we can benefit beings who are not yet ready to be intimate, who are not yet ready to practice the perfection of wisdom. We can benefit them and we must practice benefiting them because the practices of benefiting beings are prerequisites for practicing the removal of afflictions.

[03:50]

We can't practice you know, full-scale heroic effort without patience and ethical carefulness and real generosity. But it's actually the wisdom that, well, it's actually the wisdom that not only relieves the afflictions, but it relieves the tendencies towards affliction. Concentration actually can relieve or cure affliction, but it doesn't by itself do the job of also removing the roots or the tendency towards affliction. And effort is involved in the first three bodhisattva practices. There's some effort there.

[04:53]

But it's not really what we call heroic effort until it's based on the first three. And in a sense, heroic effort because it will just continue until the aspiration of liberating all beings is accomplished, it actually also is said to be part of the practice that overcomes affliction. As you know in the Heart Sutra it says, realizing the emptiness of all the different dimensions of existence, that relieves all suffering. That wisdom which understands emptiness, relieves suffering. It doesn't just benefit beings, it relieves them.

[05:54]

I think that wherever I go, I meet people who are vulnerable. but I don't notice so much. I'm not in a situation everywhere where people let me know that they are actually aware that they're vulnerable. Everybody's vulnerable. Vulnerable means able to be hurt. Everybody can be hurt. But not everybody knows it. And some of the people who know it, I shouldn't say know it exactly, but some of the people who are aware of it, somewhat or a lot, would rather not know it. They'd rather be unaware of it.

[07:06]

They'd rather be unaware of it. And so what a lot of people do is say, They drink something and then they feel less vulnerable. I heard this country western song, when I drink a six pack of beer I feel like I'm ten feet tall and bulletproof. Which feels pretty good if you ever felt that way. No more afraid of daddy now. But particularly at Tassajara in this practice period, I'm hearing from a lot of people that they're feeling vulnerable. And I said earlier no vulnerability, but really most of us don't know vulnerability. We just feel it a little bit. Only the Buddhas and great bodhisattvas know it. It takes a great bodhisattva or Buddha to actually know.

[08:13]

And the Buddha is like totally vulnerable. And that's part of what's kind of inconceivable that we could be totally vulnerable. But the Buddha is like totally vulnerable. And so Avalokiteshvara is supposed to be totally vulnerable. Avalokiteshvara can be hurt by anybody. Hurt doesn't mean, in that case, damaged. It just means feel pain whenever you see pain in another being. So great beings can stand that. They kind of know what vulnerability really is. We all have that, actually. But... It's hard to feel it in, I don't know what, get into a boxing ring, or go into court, or get married, or ask somebody on a date, or ask somebody for a dance, or accept an offer to dance. If you're really aware of vulnerability, it's kind of like, it's quite a bit to do anything.

[09:24]

Except sit. And even that's pretty much. That's why I ask people, let me know if you don't want me to touch you when you're sitting because I come up from behind you and touch you like a lot of people are like, for whatever reason. When I touch their back, it's kind of like, I don't know, it's like they really feel touched and they go, it's like something new. if you're all squashed together with people and bumping on people, you know, packed together in a, you know, real tight space, pushing on everybody, then if somebody touches you, it doesn't make much difference. But if you think you're sitting and you don't feel sort of anybody around you too much and then somebody touches you, it's a big shock. So I ask, is it okay if I touch you? So anyway, again, I tell you that many of you have come to me and telling me that you feel vulnerable, that some other people say, I feel raw, I feel stripped, I feel very sensitive to the people here, I feel irritated by the people here.

[10:54]

And then there's people who, even though they may feel vulnerable, they still feel friendly, even though they feel vulnerable, and they often offer to touch people or to talk to people here in this practice period. So they go and they say, can I touch you? Can I sit with you? Can I talk with you? And the people they're talking to, they ask, maybe. They don't just sit down and touch the person. Maybe they ask. But the person they're talking to is so vulnerable that they kind of don't want to be touched by this person. They don't feel up for being touched. And And when that request is made, they may feel that if they say, no, I don't want you to touch me, or no, I don't want to talk to you, they may feel like they'll hurt the person's feelings if they say that.

[12:19]

So this is like, again, on both sides. Like I told you, in tango, the leader is doing the invite biting usually, traditionally. So the leader looks around and sees somebody. Maybe he wishes to invite that person to dance, and he looks at the person, and the person doesn't look at him. or the person looks away and talks to her friends, well, then that means she doesn't want to dance. It doesn't necessarily mean she doesn't want to dance, but that's not an acceptance of the invitation. If she looks back at you and you keep looking at her, then you can start walking towards her and see if she keeps looking at you. And if she keeps looking at you, then you come to a certain place and maybe you put your hand out and she comes towards you. So that usually means she doesn't feel forced into dancing with you.

[13:27]

She has the right to just look away. And actually, as you get closer, at the last minute she might look away. She might feel differently as you get closer. And she has the right in that practice, she has the right to refuse service to anyone. Because she's potentially going to get really close to this person. I mean, this person, she's maybe a stranger. And this dance is going to put her like really, like actually touching this person closely, potentially. So she should have the right to say no, hopefully in a friendly way, but she has that right. And it can hurt the person's feelings who's asking. It can hurt the person's feelings who's asking.

[14:36]

And that person actually can get his feelings hurt over and over as he looks around the room. And maybe nobody wants to dance with him. This is quite painful. And this is very much part of intimacy, is the pain of daring to make an offer and having someone say, even in a friendly way, no thank you, no thank you, no thank you. So... The person who's being invited doesn't want to hurt the person's feelings, but to say no, the point is not to hurt the person's feeling. The point is just to be honest that you don't want to dance. You're not ready to be intimate in the form suggested. No. If someone says to you, I don't know what, may I talk to you? And you say yes, they say, Would it be all right if I was in the zendo at the same time as you?

[15:39]

Most people here would say, mm-hmm. It gets to a point here sometimes where some people actually don't want certain people in the zendo. But generally speaking, most of us are willing to be... It seems I haven't heard anybody complaining, not since they complained, nobody expressing distress over being in the zendo with the people in this practice period. But other kinds of situations where people are offering contact, people are afraid to say no. Thank you. Because they're afraid to hurt the person. Or they even think that it's just, I don't know, that you don't have that right. But I think it's not so much you have the right, but that intimacy requires you being honest about who you are. Part of the bodhisattva practice of ethical discipline is to be honest. For someone to touch you and you say, okay, but it's not really okay, it's not really honest.

[16:43]

So they're touching you, but they don't know that you're actually inside saying, don't do this. Most people here wouldn't want to do that if they knew you didn't want to. So to tell them the truth is really more intimate, even though it's not so pleasant. So in some situations I ask about this touching and some people send word back to me, no, don't touch me. And when they tell me that, it isn't like I'm not happy to hear that necessarily. I am happy, however, that they can tell me the truth. I'm not happy that they don't want me to touch them. I'm not happy that they're not ready for me to do that or whatever. But I am happy that they are telling me the truth and that they're able to be honest with me, at least in that way, and, yeah, that they're able to do it, that it's allowed, and that I can accept that and work with that and remember that. I may get to a point where I need an attendant to remind me of who not to touch.

[17:50]

Don't touch that person. They don't want you to. How about this one? Okay. The origin of the English word nomenclature is nomenclator from Latin. It means the person who tells you the name, nomenclator. So upper class Romans, when they were in social situations, they had an attendant who would tell them the names of people, you know, and you know, what company they work for, and stuff like that. That's so-and-so, be nice to them. So everybody should have something like that.

[18:56]

The nomenclature says, I don't know the person's name, but be nice to him. But be nice to him means not so much be nice to him, actually, but Be as intimate as you can be. And part of intimacy is to say, I don't want to do that. No, thank you. I don't want to do that. Or not now, maybe later. This is not a good time for me. And then another aspect of this is, what if I say to this person, what if this person invites me to dance, and I say, no, thank you. And then that person invites me to say dance, and I say, okay, and this person sees that. Won't that hurt them again?

[19:56]

It's possible. And they might have come in and said, well, how come you said it wasn't a good time for you? when I asked you, but when that person asked you, you said yes. And you might say, well, I don't want to talk about it right now. In my opinion, you can do that at Tassajara. You can say, I don't want to talk about that. And people may say, but I want to talk to you about it. And you say, I hear you. Now we're talking about something else. And the person says, well, can I continue to talk? You say, I'd rather not. Please excuse me. And this conversation might be quite painful, such a conversation.

[21:03]

And so you have to take care of yourself. You have to be patient with how uncomfortable that is so you don't get angry at this person who, so far, even you might say, they're not being rude, they're not being aggressive. I mean, they're being a little aggressive, but it's not that bad. They're mostly being friendly, but I don't want to get closer to them right now. And I don't want to hurt them. And this is a painful situation and I'm at the limits of my patience with this pain. And I may have to now be quite intimate with them and tell them something about myself. Namely, I'm feeling really anxious now and I would like some space. Please give me some space. This can happen here at Tassajara. It does happen, but sometimes it needs to happen and it doesn't, and then people can get really quite frightened.

[22:06]

And some people just really are surprised to hear that someone would get that anxious around them, or that somebody's that raw. And when you're not feeling very vulnerable, you might feel like, and people do say that at Zen Center now and then, they say, you're too sensitive, they say to people. And then those people who are sensitive, people sometimes come to me and say, people tell me I'm too sensitive. And I say, you are very sensitive. It's amazing how sensitive you are, but you're not too sensitive. You're just really, really sensitive. And there's great virtue in that, but it's also, it really challenges people to be careful of you because it's a big effort to be really careful of people. And you kind of sometimes feel like, I don't want to make the effort to be, I don't want to be, I want to be so careful with this person. It's so much work. Well, that's part of how you benefit people, by being really careful.

[23:10]

That's the second bodhisattva practice of ethics, is to be really careful with people, to realize that whether they know it or not, everybody's having kind of a hard time or a really hard time. And so it's appropriate to be really gentle and careful with people. Even if they don't seem to be themselves vulnerable and they seem to have a lot of energy, they're still vulnerable and you can still hurt them by saying, would you give me some space? The way you're talking to me right now is like, it's really hard for me. It's like, because I'm feeling vulnerable and you're just, you're presenting me with so much life force that it's really hard on me. So, she's so disclosed in her talk that she feels quite vulnerable.

[24:18]

She feels quite vulnerable to other people's suffering and her own. And so she set that information before us. And she didn't say, please be very tender with me. I didn't hear her say, please be very tender with me. But she did say that she kind of feels... This is a public statement she made, so may I repeat what she said in public? Yeah, well, it's like one of the things she said was, I kind of lost something. I kind of lost something about being a girl. So that's past. She lost that. But I still would like her to find something about this being a girl thing again. in a new way as a mature woman to find out. And I think part of being a girl is learning how to work with being vulnerable and how to tell people that you're vulnerable and how to sort of ask for what you need in that regard is part of being a girl.

[25:38]

And I think for the boys, it would be nice if we learned how to be girls too, although not too many of you have told me that you want to learn it. I think it would be good for us to learn it. And she says, she's so, so she's kind of in a central position, a lot of energy coming to her. So part of supporting her is to be aware that this person is telling her, I'm vulnerable. So when you say things to me, please, she didn't say please. She didn't ask for you to be gentle with her. But I think since she told you she's vulnerable, why don't you take that into account and always be very gentle with her. Actually, she wants that. That will support her to do this work, to be really gentle with her. Now what about the other people? Well, there's a bunch of other people here, too, are telling me they're vulnerable, too. So why don't you, generally speaking, be really gentle with everybody here? Because you never know which ones are going to be really feeling vulnerable and really feeling sensitive.

[26:43]

The main problem of doing this practice is that it requires lots of mindfulness. You have to remember when you're relating to people, you have to be mindful of being gentle with yourself and the person involved. And that's not the whole story, that's an important part, but then also part of this work is to be honest. And honesty sometimes takes courage to be expressed. First of all, honest with yourself even takes courage. And then sometimes it's necessary to tell others what's going on with you because if you don't say something, they're going to think perhaps they're going to misunderstand your silence. So that's part of the intimacy of practicing together is to tell people where you're at when they seem to be offering you actually a gift of a touch.

[28:07]

of a verbal touch or their physical presence, their body near you or their body actually touching you. This is part of our practice sometimes to touch each other. And again, you know, I just think of Japan where people are much more packed tightly together because they bump into each other a lot. They have lots of training about how to handle those bumps and those touches. Whereas particularly in America, some parts of America, people are so seldom touched by anybody that they're not very well trained how to handle it. But now we're kind of living fairly close together. Still we have quite a bit of space, but this is a great opportunity for us to develop skill, skills of benefiting ourselves to set the stage and benefiting others to set the stage for intimacy, for wisdom.

[29:18]

And then once the stage is set, then we practice wisdom, but then we continue from that stage to practice the practices of benefiting sentient beings. I was talking to someone about the Zendo and Manjushri. And in the conversation I was talking about how our Zendo is two rooms in one. So it actually would in some ways perhaps make things clearer if we had a Dharma Hall separate from the Zendo.

[30:26]

I think would help us understand certain things about the practice of a bodhisattva if the zendo just had manjushri in it as the main focus. So the meditation hall, the zendo, as I mentioned before, has manjushri, and part of the message there is that we're meditating, but our meditation is like the meditation of this bodhisattva which is a meditation of a wisdom body. So our meditation is a meditation that includes or is totally intimate with, it's totally intimate. Yeah, it's a meditation which is intimate. It's not a meditation, we don't have like just a yogi sitting on the altar. Who we understand is sitting in deep concentration.

[31:30]

We don't have that. We have a bodhisattva who's sitting in meditation, a bodhisattva of wisdom who's sitting in meditation to remind us that our practice is not just concentration. It's called a concentration hall in a sense, zen hall, zen do. But it's also a wisdom hall. a prajna hall, a prajna palace. But it's also a concentration place, so it's actually both together. Now, it might be nice to have another building or two where we focus on the other practices. Like we have a practice with Avalokiteshvara in it. So you say, oh, this is a practice, this is a place for compassion. This is a place for doing things to benefit beings. For example, to chant, to go and chant a chant honoring great compassion.

[32:36]

You know, go and chant the Daishin Dharani, the Dharani of great compassion. Chant loving kindness. Chant... the teachings and not only do chantings which are related to compassion, but also do chants which are related to wisdom. And in doing these chants for our education, but also we're doing it as an offering to the Buddhas, so we're doing this activity, this wholesome activity of making offerings to the Buddhas by chanting scriptures which they enjoy. And then the merit of this, we then actually do the practice of generating merit and then giving it away. So we're actually a merit, we have certain halls where we're generating merit and giving it away. It's like that's our charity work, in a sense, in the monastery, is to generate merit and give it away.

[33:37]

Generate merit and give it away. Not just generate merit and keep it here for ourself, but do it for the welfare of others. So in some ways it's nice to have, and in that way we're emphasizing activity and chanting and so on. In the Zendo we're emphasizing stillness. We're emphasizing intimacy. We're emphasizing actually liberating beings on the spot. But in some other halls or some other ceremonies, we're more trying to help people who are all people, people who aren't yet ready for wisdom teachings. So sometimes it's nice to have the room separated so we can see. Because otherwise, sometimes people feel like, why do we have that stuff? Why are we doing those chants? In some ways, they're distracting me from my Zen practice.

[34:40]

Well, they're not really distractions, but they are a little bit different. And then the servers, bringing the food to the zendo. They're kind of like, they're emphasizing, I think, compassion, service, giving, and patience and so on. They're not necessarily practicing the same way that people are sitting in the zendo. They're emphasizing maybe different bodhisattva practices. And the people in the kitchen, too. maybe emphasizing different bodhisattva practices than the ones who are trying to be still in the zendo. But the all-pervasive practice of intimacy unites the whole temple. So in a sense, intimacy is at the center, wisdom is at the center, and surrounded by compassion. but really they're not separate, but sometimes it helps to put them in some spatial relation or time relation for us to understand that they're interdependent aspects of the Buddha mind.

[35:49]

So I've made some suggestions about what I feel you have the right. Also, when people come to see me, I don't always tell them, but I do sometimes mention, you know, if I'm talking, you can stop me any time. In this situation, it's the same. You can stop me any time. at least temporarily. And you can do it by doing the timeout sign. It's fine. But in the dog sign, too, you can stop me. You can give me the timeout sign. I'll stop, probably. And if somebody does that, generally speaking, it doesn't hurt me because I already have granted this invitation that you can stop me.

[37:06]

But also, I want to understand that I'm allowed to stop you. I'm allowed to say, excuse me, may I say something? And you are too. Excuse me, may I speak? Yes. May I speak? Yes. And you can leave Dzogchen. When you wish to leave, you can leave. I think it's good to leave in the way you came, by formal gestures of respect, entering and leaving, but you can do that anytime you want. In the middle of a sentence of when I'm talking, you can just do bows and leave. It's fine with me. And I can do that too. I can maybe, I'll say, I'd like to leave. Or if not leave, I'd like to conclude this conversation now.

[38:10]

And I would like to do that in a way that's not painful, but it might be painful. It's possible. I might try to be gentle and say, I'd like to stop talking now. I was talking to someone this morning and I was talking to someone last night And the signal for the beginning of, you know, the end of Zazen occurred, and that person would say, oh, just in time for the refuges. That person was ready for it. This morning I was talking to someone, and it was time for breakfast. I said, shall we go to breakfast? In both those cases, I did want to go to those events. In both those cases, the person could have been offended. It's possible. But in both cases, I sort of thought, well, can we go now? And it seemed to be all right. But this is part of the intimacy. I really feel you and I have not exactly equal rights.

[39:20]

We both have rights. We have slightly different rights. But the rights we have, I think, should be out in the open about how we get them. And if you have any questions about any rights that I have, and how I came to have them, you're welcome to ask me. So for example, I went in to breakfast after almost all of you who were sitting there had gotten on your seats. And I did that because I assumed that most of the people there would rather have me eat in a zendo than eat not in a zendo. So I assumed that. Is that right? If anybody doesn't, let me know, and I won't tattle on you." You know what tattle means? Everybody know what tattle means? Tattle means, I won't say, uh, , doesn't want me to come to the zendo.

[40:26]

I won't say that. I won't tell everybody. But so I figured that because of that role I have, you like that person to be in the zendo for the meals if they're not too late. But I don't know if everybody is allowed to come in, according to Tassajara forms, I don't know if everybody's allowed to come in at the time I came in. They are allowed? I think it's basically you want to be in Do you mean gamashiyo? Gamashiyo. Yeah, yeah. So ideally before that. Before that. I mean, it's good if people are there from the start. So it's a little bit, it's kind of debatable after the gamashiyo. After the gamashiyo has gone in, the tantra says no. It's not debatable? You mean it's absolute? Is that what you're saying?

[41:27]

So you're saying you don't want people to come in after Gomashio is served or being served. Sometimes the servers will wait if they, you know, if you're kind of like, you know, sometimes the Gomashio servers might wait and they see a person coming to them and have a chat. It's not, you know, it's just short. Okay. So that's an example of where I thought, well, I think maybe it's okay if I do that." But when I did it, I thought, I'll ask them later about it as an example of intimacy, to ask you how you feel about it. It's an example where I talk to you about what I'm doing and you invite your feedback. Another example of intimacy is to explore whether or not it's okay for me to make some adjustment to your speech in public. Kathy has asked me many times to give her feedback.

[42:37]

She has not specifically said, and it's okay if you do it in public. I don't remember you saying that. I don't remember saying that either. But is it okay if I try it? Yeah, well, I just did earlier. Did you see me do it? Did you see me do it earlier? I made an adjustment. Yeah. Yeah. So with some people, I would think, well, that would be too much. That would be more intimate than they're ready for. So I thought, you know, when she says gomasio, which is a longstanding Tassajara tendency, It comes from Joe DiMaggio, you know him? A local hero. He's influenced our tradition, our precious DiMaggio tradition.

[43:41]

Anyway, so I was just reminding Kathy of the usual way of saying salt is shio, and I thought maybe I could do it, and she received it and was knocked off balance by it. She was not knocked off balance by it. She could handle it. So some people say never correct people in public, but in some cases, if you have enough intimacy with somebody, you can correct them in public and people can see that it is possible to receive it and the dance goes on. It's possible. That if it's offered with a certain background and if you don't think you have the background, Then you maybe ask, and if you don't think somebody else has the background with you, you can tell them afterwards or even at the time, you know, I don't want you to talk to me about what I'm doing in front of a bunch of other people. I don't want you to do that. You did it today. I don't want you to do it in the future without checking with me.

[44:46]

So if I said something to you in public that you feel uncomfortable about and you don't want me to do, I would like you to tell me either then. Actually, then's fine for me because then you'd be adjusting me in public. I'm up for you adjusting me in public, all of you. But not all of you are up for me adjusting you in public, I don't think. If you are, great, but I don't assume you all are. Does that make sense? I think the, yeah. But some of you I think are, so I might try. I might take the risk. I took a risk the other day with an occasion of a refrigerator repair. Refrigerator was non-functioning and we called somebody and he said, it's probably, it's very likely one of two problems. One problem will cost $160 to repair.

[45:53]

The other will cost $800 to repair. So you might as well buy a new refrigerator if it's that one. However, to find out which one it is, I have to come out and that will cost $120. So if I come out and it's the first problem, it'll only be $40 more to fix it. If it's a second problem, you'll lose your $120. Or you'll either buy a new refrigerator or you have to do the $800 thing, but probably might as well buy a new one. So I took the risk. I said, okay, let's take the risk. Have him come. So he came, and it was the first problem. So it was repaired for $160. So risks are sometimes good. And generally speaking, everything we do is a risk.

[46:55]

Every step you take, there's a risk. There's a bet you're making that the Earth will support you if you take this step. And it's good to be conscious of that. Here we go again, another step. Okay, it's supported. Support, support, support here again. I think it will support. Oh, support. So that's walking meditation. To walk without presuming that the earth is going to support you. More like, may I step on you? Will you support me? Shall we do this dance? Okay. It's very intimate, requires mindfulness, and the same with each other. So with our own body and with our relationships. So any feedback on this you care to offer, I welcome at this time. And if you wish to offer it, you can come up here and stand with me or come up here and sit down and talk to me.

[47:58]

Please come. Please. Let me ask the tantra. I'll go ask the tantra for you. May Brendan ask you a question? Yes. Would you please stand up? Yeah, sure. So I'm wondering about the form that you just mentioned about entering the Zenda before and why it's not possible or why before and not after ? Well, I think it's kind of arbitrary. We just wanted to have a recognizable point beyond which it's kind of considered, perhaps, to hold up the whole ceremony. So we just said, well, the master's gone out.

[49:03]

Then just go to the kitchen, you know, if you have to. It was OK. That's the way I understand it. Okay. And then? I'm just curious that if it would hold that the ceremony entered after the gamashio, gamashio is served before the purgatory is offered. Well... If somebody found themselves in that circumstance, for instance, would it be okay to still join the community? Would people find it new? I don't know if we need to take it. We could pull it. It seems that you, but I'm not sure everybody else can. Uh, you know, uh, I think that the question of, uh, people have already had their seats at that point, and the kind of things that are underway, you know, once the gamacho is being served, you know, who's getting gamacho? So if another person comes in, and then they sit down, so, oh, now there's three people where there were, or there's four people where there were three, so we better run back out and give them another gamacho, uh,

[50:15]

Or I can suggest from experience that the person who enters in after the gamashio serves puts their hands on gassho so that everybody can be served gamashio at that time, you know, after the meal is served. No, I'm not following. Well, I'm just saying I think it's possible for the person who comes in after the gamashya is served to be offered gamashya. Definitely possible. And it's also possible for that person to just go without gamashya for the... Both are possible. Yes. It's also possible for someone to come here midway through the meal. That's possible. It would you know, I think increasingly awkward as the time went on. So to experience kind of less the time.

[51:25]

So this is another form the kitchen leaves at this time So we understand that form. We maybe pause to let them go. It was suggested maybe that the rest of the talk could be piped into the kitchen, but we haven't done that yet. Another subtlety in this conversation that just happened is whether, you know, whether it's rude or whether it's just not, whether it's rude or whether it's, it's just not literally following the form, which the form is, don't come in after the gamassio, and then if you don't follow that form, it could be called rude, but it certainly is not literally following the rule.

[52:33]

And I think I mentioned to you before these forms that the thorough practice of these forms, the thorough understanding of these forms comes from practicing them literally, practicing them non-literally, and practicing them both literally and non-literally. The deepest is to do both literal and non-literal. That's when it really becomes your body. When it really becomes your body, it's not really literal anymore, and it's also not literal, because you are literally the form. And yet, you being the form, of course, is not literally the form, because you're not the form. So first of all, though, you need to work with it literally. And that level, you can have real wisdom about the form. You can understand... what the form's for by literally practicing it.

[53:34]

When you first practice these forms, for example, not coming into the zendo after the gomasio, you could have real wisdom from that level of practice. But then you can go deeper and understand to do the practice of not coming in after the gomasio at a non-literal way. There's many ways you can do that. One would be come in later. Or, you know, one would be come in two days early. There's a lot of possibilities that are not literal, that have nothing to do literally with the gomasio. In other words, you understand that form becomes an opportunity for insight when you're not doing anything related to it at all. It's not lunchtime. You're working in the garden and you understand that precept or that form.

[54:36]

You understand it while you're digging in the earth. You understand it. That interaction of your shovel with the dirt takes you deeper into that precept. That's non-literal. When you're literally doing it, you're also non-literally doing it. You're literally coming in before it in the zendo, following that form, or you're literally coming in late. Coming in late is still working with the form, it's just you're literally not following it, but you are practicing with it because you notice, I'm late. And then you say, or you could be noticed, I'm on time. Either way, you're practicing with the form. And you're practicing with it wholeheartedly, and you're doing it literally, and also you understand a whole bunch of things that are not literally mentioned in the practice, namely saving all sentient beings by this practice.

[55:41]

You understand. So part of intimacy is setting boundaries. But these boundaries are not, in my opinion, the most skillful way to set these boundaries is as gifts, as opportunities for intimacy, not for controlling the monks. And part of intimacy is to have a beautiful meal, which we often do have beautiful meals. Particularly if I visit a sashin, I'm not saying the whole sashin, and I drop by for a meal and just go to one meal or something and I haven't been sitting all day, I'm always struck by what a beautiful restaurant it is. It's such a beautiful restaurant. You know, they have these ads for restaurants now in the San Francisco paper, and they have these bells. They have the stars for the food, and they have the bells for the sound levels.

[56:44]

Then they have one... Yeah, noise level. So, you know, like four is really noisy, and then they also have one more symbol, which is a bomb going off. And those are often the most popular restaurants. So our restaurants are so quiet, you can hear people chewing. And if you do want to talk to people, they would have an easy time hearing you, at least your neighbor. So anyway, I just think our restaurants are so beautiful, so lovely. Yeah, so we're trying to make a beautiful meal practice, yes, but not by controlling each other. and not by controlling ourselves, but by being mindful and careful and doing something beautiful with our food. We're trying to do that, and we have these forms to work with, but we're not trying to control people in the bodhisattva practice. So the thing about not coming in late is not to control you, keep you out, but just to give you something to work with.

[57:50]

It's for you to just work with that as best you can. And so now you know that, so now you can work with that. And you can ask questions. Part of it is ask questions about any of these forms. Because it's possible we could change it to after the Buddha tray. It's possible. But then that would be a new form. And if it's a new form, we have to have a practice committee meeting. And then we have to have, and then if we want it to stay at Tufts, we have to go to the Abbott's group. So we can experiment with these things, but it's a lot of work to experiment with them because everybody then works with them. And these are our really great opportunities for realizing enlightenment with these forms. Please come, Will, if you want to talk to me. Do you want to sit down or stand up?

[58:54]

I'll sit down. Okay. A little vulnerable being up here. Yes, me too. Maybe I could ask the whole room to support me in talking, even though I feel vulnerable. Do you support him? Yes. I was thinking... You're talking about the forms and vulnerability in the circle. You go inside and asking before you come inside someone's circle. And I was thinking when I got here and I was kind of new, I was trying to learn the forms about leaving the zendo. I was trying to be very careful about it. And this student here, Noah Jennings, would step on my heels as I was walking out. And I felt very close to him. when he did that, because it felt like he was playing with me and sort of invading my circle, but it was okay with me.

[60:02]

I felt close to him that we were breaking the forms together. And I effectively, and I remember the times when I've, there's been many of those times, people where I've come close to people because of the way we've broken forms or pushed past each other's circle of comfort without asking. And I'm wondering about what is the place of entering some circles without asking in this practice of closeness? I guess everybody could hear that? Yeah. Well, in the example I just gave, you know, I didn't ask Kathy beforehand. I took a risk. Even if you ask somebody, there's a risk. But it's a little riskier if you don't ask. And sometimes you don't ask, and it's okay. But sometimes it's not. And sometimes it can hurt the other person.

[61:04]

And then they can feel, well, the worst is that they feel like they can't tell you that you've just taken what's not given. They can't tell you that. And then oftentimes they hate themselves. They blame themselves for not asserting their space. And it can really hurt them. And then you find out that you really abused them when you thought that you were pals and you could do that. And sometimes they can say, that's too much. I didn't give you permission to do that. And that's pretty good. There's intimacy there being worked on. But if you overwhelm them too much, they can't even say something. And then sometimes in their silence, because you overwhelm them, you think that's an invitation to go further. And then you take another step, and then they even get more traumatized and more paralyzed and more harmed.

[62:10]

And so there is this danger. I have this poem, it's called The Mermaid. The mermaid found a sailor lad and took him, no, and picked him for her own. She pressed her body to his body, laughed, and in cruel happiness plunged or plunged in cruel happiness. She forgot that even lovers can drown." So if you grab somebody and take them into your realm of happiness, it might work, but it might not. You kind of need a lot of background to know if you can pull that off.

[63:13]

A lot of these Zen stories where the teacher hits the student, usually that does not work. But these are stories where because the teacher understood the student so well, they knew that that hit would move them into a level of intimacy, unprecedented intimacy, And they took the risk and it worked. And so it's venerated as a possibility that we can be that intimate. But generally, it doesn't really, it maybe postpones that tremendous breakthrough a little bit. But generally speaking, it promotes the intimacy to say, may I? Now you may say, well, that would even be more risky to say, may I step on your heels as you're leaving this endo? That might even be more of a risk. So I'm glad it worked out. I'm glad you're friends with this person still.

[64:14]

And I hope you have future opportunities to work on intimacy. But there are some people here who have trouble telling you when you take that risk and they weren't really ready for it. So until you're clear about what the person's up for, I would say practice the precepts of being very careful and not taking the permission to do certain things without checking with them. In that example, if you had asked me, can I step on your heels, Mizendo, I might have said yes, but something... would have been lost, I think, if he had asked. Yeah. Yeah. So there's something wonderful about the occasions where you feel you've done the groundwork so you don't have to do the warm-ups anymore, or you're already warm enough.

[65:27]

Once you're warm for dancing or sports or music, once you're warmed up, then you can improvise. But usually it takes quite a bit of warm-up before we can improvise. Doesn't it mean kind of like unforeseen, never seen before? You can do something nobody saw before. This is like a new practice that tells us we're stepping on people's heels as they're leaving the zendo. It's a real breakthrough. It's kind of creative of you guys to do that. But I think you warmed up. And even then there's a risk. Even if you ask someone if you can say something, there's still a risk that you'll hurt them, that you'll frighten them, that you'll discourage them, that you'll confuse them. There's still a risk. But you're saying, I want to be careful. But maybe with him you had been careful previously enough so you could take this particular type of risk where he didn't actually ask, can you do that?

[66:31]

So this is a big thing, I'll go into this in more detail later, but I propose this process of trust, relax, play, create, understand or realize, and liberate. So there's some people you can relax the precept of asking, before they do certain things. So like certain grandchildren I know, up till recently, they still like to put their hands into my mouth, and they like to pull my lips far away from my teeth. They like to do that. They like to take my lips and do various tie knots with my lips. But they ask. I tell them, you can do that, but I want you to ask beforehand.

[67:38]

And then after they ask, then they can try again without asking, maybe. But, you know, if we're warmed up, you know. But then if they want to start the next day, I might say, when you start a new session, ask at the beginning. And then I also say, you can do it, but I want you to wash your hands. So then they go wash their hands and they come back and I say, now I'm going to smell your hands. I say, it's not clean enough, try again. They go wash, come back, I say, okay, and they do it. So there's a warm-up thing. Even with somebody you have been intimate with in the past, if you've been separated, you have to warm up again, usually. I use the example here at Tassajara. My wife went to France for almost two months. And she left her daughter, who's my daughter, with me. And I took care of her for two months.

[68:41]

We were at Esalen for most of the time. But we came to Tassajara maybe for the no race or something. And my daughter was standing up here in front of the dorm, walking towards the kitchen. And her mother was sort of down by the walkway, except the walkway wasn't there yet, the covered walkway. And they saw each other. And I was standing like up by the wall in front of the zendo, looking down, seeing the two of them see each other. And I think it was like afternoon, which is conducive to seeing the gold sparkles in the air. But there was like this golden aura arching between them. I just saw them see each other. And this mother-daughter intimacy was there. And they ran towards each other.

[69:42]

Because these people are intimate, right? They ran towards each other and embraced each other, and it was glorious. And then they proceeded to fight for two weeks. To reestablish, you know, ask me before you do that. Will you ask me before you, you know. It takes two weeks to reestablish that intimacy. You know from the past, you had it before and you yearn for it again, but you have to build it again. It's impermanent. So it worked in this case, but doesn't mean it'll work the next time unless you unless you would tune. And, you know, when musicians get together, they spend a long time tuning to each other. Even though last night they were good, today they have to start all over. And they maybe don't ever reach that level of intimacy again that night. And sometimes they play all night before they find that place where they can go beyond the rules.

[70:45]

So these are all... I think really important practices of attuning. Like I said before, supreme attunement alternating with bewildering estrangement. They loved each other, but they didn't have the attunement except in their history. And they've met each other and they're just totally bewildered about how to relate for quite a while, struggling because they want to find that attunement again. But it looks like fighting sometimes. But of course, in this case, there's no question that they're committed to this process. But sometimes they need a break from each other. Thanks for your example. Can I say something else? Yes. I just realized it's my friend Noah's birthday, so I just want to say happy birthday, Noah. I'm listening.

[71:48]

OK. Thank you. Any other feedback this morning? Yes, please come. I want to ask you about something that happened yesterday. It was last night. And I was making a lot of mistakes yesterday as Doan, for those of you who may not have noticed. And the list for the evening service is different from the others. And I'm still, I definitely don't have it. in my body and it didn't say anything about incense offering. So I was following the list and you came in and I rang the bell as you bowed at the end of the mat and then I saw you walk up to make an incense offering.

[72:50]

I was like, oh no. It was like the other ones. I should have waited, starting to see the shape. So then I saw there were three bells or four bells, I don't know, a certain number. So I thought, okay, I won't bow when Reb comes back to the end of the map because then it will be... You mean you won't ring the bell? Yeah, yeah, because then it'll be the right number of bells, you know. And I knew I'd made a mistake, but I think there was probably something about trying to cover up that mistake, too. And you stood at the mat, and I knew that's when the bell was supposed to have been rung. And you stood there, and I waited there, and finally you pointed and rang the bell. And it's like, okay, I have to ring the bell. There's going to be more bells. What was that like for you? This is my job. This is my life, is to hear people ring bells and then go and perhaps do a bow and see what they do.

[74:02]

And if they don't ring the bell to celebrate my bow, I might just let it go or I might say, bell, please. Bell, Minnie. Mimi, Mimi, Mimi, bell. I might give up eventually if you wouldn't do it. I'm not going to give you a bell because then people will hear that there's four and they'll know. No, I, to me that's, it's also fun when people do it in the usual way. But these unusual interactions are deep in the intimacy. They can deepen them if we really appreciate each other. If I think, you know, below average, go on, get her out of here, that's not very kind of me. But if I just say, I really want you to ring the bell now, and if you don't, I may say, okay, if you won't do it, I'll just go sit then.

[75:12]

But you did, and I thought that was good. But basically I... I enjoy the standard performance and I enjoy the learner's performance. Both. Well, that's good to hear because I made a lot of mistakes yesterday and the day I did the service, and I wasn't sure if you were enjoying it or not. Yeah, I enjoy it. And I think, again, I just mentioned in this process of trust, relax, So I trust the practice here so I can relax. And then when things happen, I can be playful with them. I trust that in this situation, I don't have to be tense. And if I'm not tense, then I can play. So what I was doing with you was play. But still... not still. And sort of the hallmark of this process is, when you're relaxed, is that when it really starts working is when you're surprised.

[76:21]

So you're relaxed and then surprised. So if I'm relaxed, then you get to surprise me with these bells at various places. And then the surprises are really the mutual healing. If you can see me being relaxed and surprised, then that's transmitted to you. If I'm tense and surprised, then I think that can hurt you. So I need to be relaxed when I'm performing these rituals so that if various people do unusual things, it's part of the play and surprise of creation for me. And if I'm not enjoying it, it's primarily I'm probably just not trusting that I can be relaxed. If I'm not enjoying it, I'm probably not playing. somehow I need to be into these forms.

[77:26]

I need them to be playful. I need that. Otherwise they lose their life. They still can be surprising, but when you're tense and things are surprised, you feel hurt. But when you're relaxed and playful and you're surprised, you're healed. And again, if you're doing it with someone, both people are. So that's how it was for me. That's how it often is. Thanks for letting me know that. You're welcome. Thanks for your coming forth and being intimate. Yes, please come. I came here because I've heard that you do this practice with students and it scared me to hear about it.

[78:30]

So I wanted to come up here and do it with you. And the question is around that. Can we experience our vulnerability without fear or with decreasing fear? Is that what the Buddhas experience when you said they're totally vulnerable? And can we cultivate that? Yes. And so one of the ways is by... Can we, first of all, can we be vulnerable and I think maybe, did you say fearless? Without... Vulnerable without fear or with decreasing fear.

[79:33]

Can we be vulnerable without fear or with decreasing fear? And I think yes. But first of all, we can be vulnerable with fear. We sure can. So... And again, some people, because they don't want to be afraid, they deny their vulnerability. Again, by drinking a six-pack, that'll... that'll sometimes decrease your awareness and vulnerability, so then you're not so afraid. But if you're sober and you're feeling vulnerable, then you often, especially if you haven't noticed it recently, you often feel afraid. So then we practice these bodhisattva practices of giving, ethics, and patience with the fear. And then we become more and more fearless But fearless doesn't mean no fear. There's two meanings of fearless.

[80:35]

One is no fear, and the other is being able to be gracious with fear, being able to be generous and patient with fear. Then you can be fearless, which means you can go into situations without, in a sober mind, you can go into dangerous situations even though there's fear. So you can go into a situation where you feel vulnerable, like dancing in public, speaking in public, singing in public, offering incense in public, ringing bells in public. You can do these things where you're aware of your vulnerability and you're aware of the fear, but you practice with it. Now, when we move on to the wisdom, when there's full perfect wisdom, then there's no fear. But there's still vulnerability. But you get to know fear on the path of fearlessness.

[81:38]

So at a certain point bodhisattvas are not really afraid anymore, but they've spent eons working with their fear. And one of the best ways to bring up your fear is just to become aware of yourself and you are a vulnerable being. I once did a workshop. The title was Fear and Anxiety, I think. And before the workshop I thought of doing some kind of experiential work to help people get in touch with their fear. So I thought, this is going to be at Green Gulch, so I thought, we could go down to the ocean in the dark. And so I told the office to tell people to bring bathing suits. And that already got them quite anxious. Was there going to be a beauty pageant? We were going to judge figures?

[82:43]

You know, whatever. But then when they got there, before I... I don't know if I ever did take him down to the beach. I think maybe I did. Took him partway and I realized, wait maybe a minute. Well, if they go in the water, I won't be able to see what's happening with them. So I think we called it off. But then I realized later in the workshop that you don't have to go into the cold water to help people get in touch with their fear. All you gotta do is ask them to come up in front of the group with me and show themselves. Just showing yourself and being yourself honestly is the most difficult and frightening thing. But it is the path of fearlessness to perfect wisdom where there is no fear. But even in perfect wisdom, if you've got a body, that body is vulnerable. So you're now showing, here's a body, here's a vulnerable body,

[83:44]

Here's a vulnerable body, and this is how I deal with having a vulnerable body. such a long time, but I've spent innumerable moments feeling fear about my body, and I practiced the bodhisattva practices with those fears for a long time. So now it's not exactly that I have less fear, but I have a more positive frame on practicing with the fear. And fear is one of the most wonderful opportunities for bodhisattva practice.

[84:54]

Because that's one of the main things that people don't want to practice with. But if you don't practice with fear, then you're, you know, you're really going to suffer. If you do want to practice with it, you can be playful, creative, and realize the truth and save sentient beings. It sounds like there's something under there that you're trusting deeply. The trust is the beginning, at the beginning. It's not so much that there is something I'm trusting. I'm trusting the teaching that relaxation is necessary. I'm touching the teaching that being playful is necessary. I'm touching the teaching that being creative and being in touch with the process of causation is necessary. So to be experientially in touch with the Buddha's teachings, you have to be relaxed.

[86:01]

Otherwise, it's just intellectual. So I'm trusting that. And I'm trusting that it will be okay to relax. But again, we sometimes have to warm up to that trust. So it's trusting that you can... Not so much that there's something underneath, but... The truth isn't exactly underneath. It's more like what it is about what's happening that will really be helpful to everybody. And I trust that in order to realize that, I have to relax. And in this particular situation, Tassajara or this moment, I feel like it'd be okay to relax. And then I have to keep checking, how about this one? And how about this one?

[87:02]

How about this one? As in the ongoing process of realizing intimacy. Yes, I recommend, if you're afraid, come up here. I recommend it too.

[87:18]

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