Sometimes meditation is talked about having two wings, two aspects, two gestures. One gesture is the cognitive gesture of tranquility, of flexible, open, bright, buoyant state of mind. And so one word for that is shamatha. That stays. Another word for it is samadhi. In English, we can translate as calm, those words I just used, concentration. So samadhi doesn't just mean to be And the basic function, I'm proposing the basic function, which gives rise to a state of concentration is thinking, to give up discursive thought, to train the attention towards giving up discursive thought.

[01:31]

as you do that consistently, it can eventually of tranquility. And in one of the scriptures, It says, if someone is training their attention towards giving up discursive thought consistently, but their mind is not yet flexible and buoyant, is that what we mean by tranquility? And the sutra says, no. But it's not the tranquility itself. So there's training in concentration or training in focusing and brightening the mind through tranquility.

[02:39]

state of realization. One of the characteristics of the state of concentration, of the state of calm, is what's called, in Sanskrit, prashrabdhi, which means to be soft and flexible and open. Concentrated, undistracted, the mind can be turned on to any topic, like balancing, or threading a needle, or sewing in stitch after stitch after stitch, and be undistracted. And just go . And just not be involved in past and future, just going . totally concentrated on some physical hand totally focused, undistracted.

[03:44]

But if it's the kind of concentration we're talking about, you're also flexible. And if someone comes to you and talks to you, and you listen to them, And if it's appropriate, you can just stop sewing and do something different. And when you do that, same thing. You're focused, flexible, open, and so on. Somebody, and some of you know who this person is, so I'll just say his name. Elijah said last Friday, he said something like this. Any technique I'm using to get concentrated, any technique I'm using to...

[04:52]

Let go of thinking is another kind of thinking. Did you say something like that? So at this point in history, one of the well-known techniques for giving up discursive thinking is a type of called counting the breath. To watch the breath, for the mind to watch the breath go out and in, the awareness of the breath going out and in is a kind of thinking. Does that make sense? You're thinking, breath going out, breath going in. And also then to count the breath, to count one, two, three, and so on, is a kind of discovery. Any questions about that?

[05:58]

However, that type of discursive thinking, which many of you know, to be thinking, exhale, inhale, one, two, three, That's discursive thinking. But compared to what is going on in many people's minds, that's almost no discursive thinking. Does that make sense? That's a significant reduction in discursive thinking to be thinking, exhale. That whole time, that's not much. Exhale. That's not a lot of thinking. They go, exhale.

[07:02]

I'm not a very good meditator. I'm probably not going to be able to pay attention to the end of this exhale. And actually, I've already lost it. And so on. Right? You've heard about people like that. But sometimes, you can actually be .. If someone was doing a survey and they said, what are you doing? You say, exhale. Don't you have anything more to say? Inhale. Are you okay with having such a simple-minded life? exhale. It can be like that. But of course, it can be much messier. And we're not trying to get rid of the messiness. We're just saying that if you give up discursive thought, if you give up, and messiness means messy discursive

[08:09]

very complex possibilities of our imagination. Just give it up. And you do it over and over. The mind becomes soft and bright and buoyant and undistracted and so on. for studying the teachings of the Buddha. And the teachings of the Buddha are teachings about reality. So it's a very good state of mind to study the teachings of reality. The teachings of reality, they receive them with a discursive mind. When we first hear about them, we receive them with our thinking. And so some people, when they first start practicing, they hear tranquility instruction.

[09:19]

They hear other instructions, like all compounded phenomena are impermanent. And the Four Noble Truths, they hear teachings like this. They hear teachings about ethics. And when you hear those teachings, that's discursive. Those teachings, as they appear, is a kind of thinking. And by receiving these teachings into your thinking, you can learn them, and you can talk with your teacher and your other friends, and get the teachings clear, and have a fairly good understanding of them. That's discursive thought. And then, you can give up discursive thought, you can train in this tranquility, the shamatha, and the mind can calm down. And then, when the mind is calm, then you can consider these teachings again, but now they're considered

[10:24]

in this new realm of tranquility, and you can see much more clearly the things that you learned before when your mind was perhaps less concentrated. Now you're more open to the teachings, being more than you understood before. You're undistracted from them when you're looking at them. You're flexible about the ways to think about them, and so on. thought and giving up discursive thought, calming down and then picking up discursive thought again and thinking in a new context. One Chinese meditation text teaches six dharmagate. The first dharmagate is counting the breath. The second dharmagate is following the breath.

[11:28]

The third diamond gate is stopping. Again, I'm suggesting counting the breath is a type of discursive thought which for most people reduces discursive thought. And as the discursive thought is reduced and you calm down, Then you're ready for the next step, which is to give up the discursive thought of counting. So you let go of the counting, and you just follow the breath, which is another kind of discursive thought, but it's actually a subdued version of discursive thought compared to thinking. So then you again use a form of discursive thought, which is even more radically letting go of discursive thought.

[12:31]

And the next stage is you completely give up discursive thought. So it's called stopping. The text says the breath stops. Well, I don't think the breath really stops. I think that the thought, you know, inhale and exhale has been completely given up. The breath now is is living away, but you're not thinking about it anymore. And you've come to a place where you're not thinking about anything. But that doesn't mean there's no thinking. It just means you're letting it go. And so you've attained the state of tranquility. those methods which I just mentioned are like techniques. So again, you're using discursive thought to give up discursive thought.

[13:33]

And people are successful using discursive thought to give up discursive thought. But as Elijah said, there's a little bit of a problem of using the thing that you're giving up. using the thing that you're trying to give up to give up the thing you're trying to give up. So there's another method of practicing tranquility, which is don't use any technique. Don't even use the technique of tranquility to be tranquil. give up discursive thought without even thinking of giving up discursive thought. So this is actually a kind of tranquility, which is by our good friend from India, who made a big effort to come

[14:48]

Calm the mind with no contrivance. That was his teaching. Now this teaching actually may not have been his teaching. This is just a story about his teaching. And he actually is also a story. But that is one of the stories about him. And I imagine that he knew about all these meditation techniques to become calm. and that those meditation techniques had already been transmitted from India to China.

[16:10]

And even before they were transmitted, the Chinese people already knew lots of tranquility practices. The Daoists already knew tranquility practices. He came and said, OK, pacify the mind without using any device. So that way of teaching tranquility, which they said Bodhidharma taught, became one of the characteristics of the school which sees him as the founder. And also at that tea, Elijah pointed out or cited a story from a book called Zen and the Art of Archery.

[17:11]

And the archery teacher taught a very similar method. He said, pull the bowstring back, and hold it until it is released. But don't use your fingers to release it. Just hold it until the release comes. And he said it would be like the string goes through your fingers. Pull the bowstring and hold it. and do not use any contrivance to release it. Our mind is like that. It's pulled. Every moment our mind is like a bowstring that's pulled back.

[18:14]

And we can realize tranquility without using a technique. And in the story, the person who's writing the book, a westerner, he used a contrivance to release the string. And he was expelled from school because he tried to use a contrivance to attain tranquility. When you attain tranquility, the bowstring is released, but not by anybody. It just goes through your fingers. It's like it goes through your fingers. The tranquility will release it. The openness and flexibility of the mind will release the mind. So, in the Zen school, this style is used, the style of using no contrivance, but also, in the Zen school, using contrivance is also used.

[19:29]

So it is all right to use your discursive thought and count your breath or follow your breath or other forms of using things to concentrate. But sometimes the teachers say, let's do it with no contrivance. Because what we're trying to realize is actually your natural state. One style is called the granting way. The other is called the grasping way or holding way. And both styles are used. And the teachers and disciples together have to work out which way is best. We do practice tranquility, and one way to do it is to do something to be tranquil, and the other way is to give up doing something to be tranquil.

[20:38]

And if you give up doing something to be tranquil, and you give up doing something to be untranquil, if you give up doing, you will realize tranquility. not instantly necessarily although some people do like very quickly but it will be realized so all day long there may be opportunities to give up your thinking but again we don't get rid of the thinking we don't destroy it reject it and let go of it. And we don't always let go of it. Sometimes we actively engage it. And we actively perhaps like right now when you listen to these words.

[21:45]

You might be actively engaging these words to learn this principle of calming the mind with a technique, which is the granting way, and calming the mind with no technique. And again, some teachers specialize in one way or the other, and some teachers use both. A couple of days ago I saw someone who was very sick a while ago, but now ...exercising. And I said, we've been praying for you at Green Gulch. And he said, you have? Oh, how wonderful. He said, I was just thinking about Suzuki Roshi who said, some people ask Suzuki Roshi, what is Zazen for? And he wouldn't answer. And the person kept asking, what is Zazen for?

[22:47]

And he wouldn't answer. So, you know, people want to know what zazen is for. The teacher sometimes does not want to get into that. This is the no-contribance zazen way. And finally the person forced him into the corner. And Siddhigrasha said, it's to help you enjoy old age. This is Bodhidharma. Can you see his face? This is Bodhidharma's face. People thought he was the Bodhisattva of infinite compassion. See, this is one form of Avalokiteshvara.

[23:58]

That's pretty good, isn't it? There's another form on the back of the altar. Avalokiteshvara can take many forms. Some of you might be a form of other education, right? Isn't that possible? You might be. Here we go. Now you take care of yourself. So that's part of our practice, is to develop stopping discursive thought.

[25:32]

Which, again, doesn't mean that there's no discursive thought. It means you stop being involved with it. You just let it go. And you don't push it away. You don't pull it towards you. You don't stand on it. You don't sneak around it. You just sit upright with it. Over and over and over until you develop more and more peaceful relationship with it. With what? With discursive thought. And then when you're calm, at some point it would be good now to look at the teachings And there's many teachings. So one teaching, one form of teaching which is very popular in our Zen tradition is stories.

[26:34]

So we have a class now on stories. These stories could be seen as teachings. They're discursive presentations. They're examples of the mind running around telling stories about people. And these are stories about people practicing Buddha's friendship and Buddha's wisdom. That's the kind of stories they are. And the more calm we are, the more flexible and open we are, the more the stories can open up and the more we can open up to them. And then the stories let go of us, and then we engage them again, and in this way we become intimate with them and realize wisdom. We become free of the stories by learning how to study them and discuss them without abiding in them.

[27:37]

So giving up discursive thought and calming down helps us then be with discursive thought and actually engage with it. So when you're learning to give it up, oftentimes it helps to be quiet. Does that make sense? Like we do here. You're quiet and you can watch the discursive thought come up while you're sitting. and you have a chance to let it go. It's more difficult to watch it come and go when you're talking. So I'm having a more difficult time than you are, maybe. But maybe not. Maybe you're having a hard time letting go of the thinking that's going on while you listen to me. But I'm trying to not abide in the thinking that's this talk. And I think that that would be great if there was no abiding in the thoughts that are giving rise to these words, and also no abiding in these words.

[28:57]

I think that would be wonderful. And I also wish to not abide in that thought either. So if anybody asked me to abide in my thinking, I might say, okay, I'll abide. I kind of miss it, you know, sometimes. Just being there in the land of non-abiding, in the land of lofty pines. So, there's a story about a monk named Deshan, and he went to visit another monk named Guishan. And when he got to Guishan's temple, he went into the main hall.

[29:58]

It doesn't say anything about Guishan, but maybe he was in the hall. And he went in with his travel clothes on, and he walked from east to west and west to east, and then he said, He said, nothing, no one. Bodhidharma said, empty thing. He said, nothing, no one. And then he walked out. When he got to the temple gate, he stopped and he thought, maybe that was not quite right. Maybe that was a little... Perhaps I should go back. and try again. So he went back and put on his formal robes, put down his traveling pack, and did the usual formal way of paying respects, which involves putting the bowing cloth down.

[31:05]

And then when he finished, he picked up the bowing cloth and held it up and said, Teacher! And then he shouted at him, sleeves, and left. And then later that night, Guishan asked the shusou, the head monk of the temple, if that newcomer was still around. Now, after he had that encounter with you, he left the temple. In the encounter, did Guishan reach for his whisk? Oh, yeah, right. He came in, and he held up his buying cloth and said, teacher. Then Guishan was going to reach for his whisk, and then he shouted at him and left. Thank you.

[32:08]

So then Guishan said, what happened to the guy? Is he still around? He said, no, he left. And Guishan said, that young fellow someday will ascend a solitary peak. That's a standard statement that teachers make to predict that somebody will become a teacher. He will ascend a solitary peak. And on that peak, he will revile the Buddhas and insult the ancestors. So we practice in good friendship with our friends, but then sometimes We leave our friends and we go to a solitary peak and we sit there until some friends come to join us.

[33:18]

And there we teach friendship in a new way. Guishan said that Deshan would teach by reviling the Buddhas and insulting the ancestors. He did. That's the way he taught. That was his friendship. And it was such a wholehearted friendship that his students became very wholehearted friends too. And then they had students who really appreciated that. And there came this great school from this good friend, from this good friendship between Deshan and Guishan, and his former teacher.

[34:23]

So I said I would tell you background a little bit of this meeting between, of this friendly meeting between Deshan and Gueshan. But before I tell you the background, I just want to note that according to some ideas of friendship, that meeting might not have appeared friendly. But this is being, I think, upheld for us to... It's not being upheld like this. I don't hold it that way. I'm saying this class is about stories of friendship and stories of wisdom, but I'm not saying this is friendship and this is wisdom. See the difference? This is a story of friendship and this is a story of wisdom. It's for us to contemplate these stories and see what we can discover.

[35:29]

It's for us to be friendly to these stories. We had this opportunity. And as I think, this story doesn't sound very friendly. And even, according to some points of view, and even Dushan thought, That was kind of unfriendly. That was kind of crude, the way I met Guishan. Walking right and saying, nothing, no. That was kind of crude. He actually said, maybe that was crude, or I shouldn't be crude. He didn't say I was crude, so I shouldn't be crude. Yeah, that's what he said. And he went back and tried again. And the teacher seemed of friendship would be.

[36:30]

This is the fourth case in Book of Serenity. And the first case for Bodhidharma. Yeah, this is the fourth case. And in the first case of the book, it's about Bodhidharma meeting the emperor. And Bodhidharma meeting the emperor also may not be some people's idea of being friendly. Emperor said to him, you know, what's the highest meaning Bodhidharma said? No holy, vast emptiness. And the emperor said, well, who is it that stands before me? And Bodhidharma said, don't know. It looks like Bodhidharma was doing the grasping way with the emperor. And the emperor accepted it, but didn't understand it. In other words, he didn't punish Bodhidharma for not granting him an explanation of what the highest meaning of the holy truth was.

[37:34]

But he said, what's the highest meaning? And Bodhidharma said, give up discursive thought. There's no approach to this highest meaning. And then he left. And again, when the emperor found out that that was Avalokiteshvara, he wanted to have another chance, but it was too late. He did not go and practice with Bodhidharma. He stayed in his palace. And if he had gone to see Bodhidharma, Bodhidharma again might have done the withholding method. And we don't know what the emperor would have done then. So, the monk named Diamond was devoted to the Diamond scripture of perfect wisdom.

[39:15]

He studied it and taught it. He was the teacher of the perfect wisdom scriptures. He was a teacher of the scriptures which encourage us to give life to a mind which does not abide in anything. And he had a school in China. He lived in China, and he heard about the Zen school, which was, I think, south of where he lived. And when he heard about them teaching a way of pointing to the human heart, the human mind, and seeing its nature, and becoming a Buddha, he heard that teaching. that this is a teaching which is not in the scriptures, but is transmitted by good friendship.

[40:20]

And when he heard about that, he thought it was a heresy, endangering the Buddha Dharma, potentially defiling the Buddha's teaching. down to the Zen infested areas and refute these Zen teachings. So he set off with his scriptures and his commentaries. But before he left, as I was watching him leave, I thought, He doesn't seem like he's going down south with those Zen people. He doesn't seem like he feels like they invited him to come.

[41:32]

Like they said, hey, come and visit us. We want to be your friends. He doesn't look like that. And he didn't think, oh, I want to go help my friend down south to realize Buddha's good friendship. He didn't look like that. That's what I thought. But then I thought more deeply, and I thought, actually, they are calling him They are asking him to come to be friends with them. And he actually is going to go and respond to their invitation. And he wants to be their friend, but I don't think he knows he wants to be their friend. And I don't think he knows that they're inviting him.

[42:36]

do know they're inviting him and some of them don't know they're inviting him but in reality they are inviting him to come to be their friend That's what I thought when I was at Dachshund, that the Zen people were inviting him to come and be their friend, be friendly with them. And he received the request, and he came. But he didn't know, maybe consciously, that he was going to meet his friends. The way he talked doesn't sound like he consciously knew that his friends were calling him, his friends that he had never met before. So he headed off down south.

[43:46]

And as he got into the mountains, approaching where there's a lot of Zen people, he came into an area where a certain Zen master a number of his disciples into the mountains. And he instructed his disciples to open up tea shops, to sell tea cakes. And when people came to buy the tea cakes in ways of inviting them into the stories of wisdom. And so when Deshan came to one of these stands, the woman who was running the stands asked him what he was carrying on his back. And he said, I'm carrying commentaries on the Diamond Sutra.

[44:49]

And she said, oh, I have a question about the Diamond Sutra. And if you can answer it, I'll give you the TK. If you can't, you'll have to go somewhere else to get your nourishment, your refreshment." She was stationed there to catch friends. And so here came a friend, and she said, If you can answer this question, I'll give you some nourishment. And if you can't, you'll have to go someplace else. So she says, in the scripture it says, the past mind cannot be grasped. Future mind cannot be grasped. Present mind cannot be grasped. With what mind will you... And he couldn't say anything.

[45:59]

And his not saying anything was his friendship to her. But he didn't understand that. So he couldn't say it. He couldn't say it. As a matter of fact, I had some place for you to go. And the story doesn't say it. I have someplace else for you to go to get nourishment. I have someplace else for you to go to meet your friends. She just said, I recommend you go see Dragon Pond. Somebody she was friends with. And he did go to see Dragon Pond. He was starting a friendship. I see that. Do you see that? He accepted her invitation to ask him a question.

[47:15]

She asked him the question, and he knew he could not answer. He did not reject that. And so when she said, I recommend you go to this other place, he said, basically, with his feet, he said, okay. And he went to see Dragon Pond. The teacher who lived at a temple called Dragon Pond, who was called Dragon Pond. This is a story of wisdom. I proposed to you this is a story of growth in wisdom. This person was studying the Diamond Sutra and was teaching it. He wanted to realize perfect wisdom. He was devoted to it. But he didn't understand those Zen people were his friends. But he wanted to understand his friendship with all beings,

[48:23]

So he went to meet them. He thought he was going to refute them, but actually he was going to meet them. But he didn't know. But I read the whole story, so I know. That's what he was doing. He didn't know he was going to go meet his best friend, his great friend. But he did. And he kept going. He didn't give up when the woman asked him the question and go back home. He kept going. And then he went to Dragon Pond. Dragon Pond saw him coming. Dragon Pond saw the coming of his friend. Dragonpan knew this was a friend coming. So what did he do? He hid. And then Deshan came into the hall and looked around and said,

[49:36]

I have for a long time seen a dragon pond. But now that I've arrived at dragon pond, I don't see a dragon and I don't see a pond. And then dragon pond came out from behind the screen and said, therefore you have seen the dragon pond. Now the friendship starts to become more obvious. And Darshan wants to hang out with Dragon Pond. And Dragon Pond wants to hang out with Darshan. And they do. And there's an opportunity here to imagine what they did when they were hanging out together. Because the story doesn't say. Several hours go by and they are together. Maybe Darshan was having dinner.

[50:41]

Maybe he was writing letters. Maybe he was meditating. Quiet. He doesn't sing. But Darshan was next to him. Standing, attending to him. And then Dragon Pong said, It's getting late. You should go." I don't know how Dragon Pond felt about this person who had been standing there for several hours. I don't know if he liked him or disliked him. But I would say that, in a way, is their friendship.

[51:42]

Which isn't about like or dislike. It's about I called you and you came. You called me and I came. Here we are together. Dislikes arise and cease. But every moment there's an opportunity of friendship anyway. and we're together, and it's gotten late, and when it gets very late, you should leave my room." And so, Daishan got up and went to the door. Oh, it actually is dark around here.

[52:48]

Actual darkness. And then Dragan Pran said, oh, he got a lantern, a paper lantern, and lit it. and handed it to Deshan. And just as Deshan was receiving it, he blew it out. And Deshan woke up to the friendship. And then I don't know what he did exactly. Maybe he started crying. Maybe he started bowing. One of the two, or both. He didn't say that he started dancing and singing. He doesn't say that. There are stories like that, but not this one.

[53:49]

He did some more kind of monastic type of response. Dragon Pond said, well, what happened? What did you see? And he said, I will never again doubt the teachers under the sky. I would say, I never again will doubt good friendship under the heavens. And then the next morning, Dragon Pan went back to the main hall and gave a talk to the monks. And maybe Deshan was in the room someplace. But anyway, he said, there is a person among you who has tongue like a...

[54:58]

a forest of swords and a mouth like a bowl of blood. And I think it says, and he will go on to revile the Buddhas and insult the ancestors. And he will carry on what I teach here. And then he did. carried on this good friendship in his way. Lungtan was not so much into the reviling Buddhas and insulting ancestors, but he thought, if my good friend will, that will be his way of friendship. So we have this very unique, not very unique, we have this this unique form of friendship, a certain diamond, or a certain diamond, a diamond of perfect wisdom in this form.

[56:04]

Which was there before, it was there before Dejean met Dragon Pond. didn't understand it. Dragging Pond helped him understand it. And that friendship empowered his unique gift, which was, you know, not that easy to face. His form of friendship was The old lady, I think, had a little trouble with him. And when he came to see Deshaun, Deshaun had a little trouble with him. He hid behind the screen. He was a, huh? Long Tongue. Long Tongue. Long Tongue hid behind the screen. He had some difficulty. Friendship is not necessarily easy. He wasn't the easy kind of friend. Before he knew what friendship was, he was not an easy friend.

[57:15]

After he understood what it was, after he was awakened to it, he still was not an easy friend. But I'm proposing he was a great friend and he had great friends. And as a result, We have one of the great bodhisattva traditions of China from this friendship. I chose this story because it's number four of the book of Blue Cliffs. Previously, we did one, two, and three, so let's do four. And I thought, oh, look what it is. I didn't avoid that it was this story. I accepted that this story is the story of friendship. And I thought, this story is.

[58:21]

How much like Bodhidharma? How much like Avalokiteshvara? Nothing can stop Avalokiteshvara's compassion and friendship. Oh, why am I closing this up? Maybe I think I've talked enough. Is there anything you'd like to bring up? This band, this great assembly of bodhisattvas and good friends? Yes. different romanization systems. is Mao Tse Tung's Revenge.

[59:28]

So, this is two different ways of saying Guè. Guèchang. And then there's Dechang. Does that answer your question? Lungtang. Deshan went to visit the lady at the shop. Then he went to Lungthang. Then he went to Guishan. One way to write Guishan is with a G. The other way is with a K without a mark. If you make a mark, then it's Kishan. But it doesn't have a thing, so it's Guishan. And there's no other name for a woman.

[60:58]

Is it Dragonpon? Yeah. Dragonpon? This is Dragonpon? What was his role? Hm? What was Dragonpon? He was another teacher. Dragonpon was the friend that awoke Grishan didn't know that he was on a friendship admission. He didn't know that he was going to meet Rungtan, to meet a friend. He thought he was going to meet an enemy. So I'm proposing to you, every time you go to meet an enemy, have you ever done that? Every time you go to meet an enemy, you have an opportunity to realize you're going to meet a friend.

[62:02]

I'm not denying that the person's an enemy. I'm saying that there's an opportunity to realize you're going to meet a friend. And the friend is inviting you. And you're responding. And you want to realize that everybody I was thinking a couple of weeks ago, you told the story of going to the DMV. Yeah, I went to the DMV. Is this somewhat similar? It's very similar. It's very similar. I went to the DMV and I thought I was dying. to get a driver's license, which I don't deny. But that's what I thought. I didn't think, oh, wow. All being are supporting me to go to DMV to be with my friends. I was ignorant. I knew everybody was supporting me to go to DMV, but I thought they were supporting me to go get a driver's license and, you know, for the third time.

[63:27]

I thought they were supporting me to pay for my third driver's license. I thought they were supporting me to wait. And they were. But everybody was supporting me to go and be with those people. And then one of the people at DMV told me that that's why I was at DMV. She knew that's why. When she saw me, she thought, oh, great. Here he is. He came to see me. I wonder where he was. And so, you don't know that story, do you, Sarah? So I meet this woman at DMV after the third time to go get a driver. Three times. I went through this three times. And so I'm waiting in line for the third time. And I see this woman.

[64:33]

I'm in line and she yells to me from another part of the line, Rab! And she gives up her place in line. And she says, how are you? And I say... Fine, except I'm here. And she said, what do you mean? I said, I'm at the DMV. And she says, you're here for us. Yeah, right. I forgot that that's why I am where I am. And we all can forget that's why we are where we are. Right? We can forget that. Practicing not to forget that. So when you're calm and undistracted, you can focus on that. You can focus. I'm here. to give friendship to all beings and to receive friendship from all beings.

[65:36]

You can stay focused on that without being rigid about it. So I wasn't being rigid about it, but I got distracted. And so I was very happy when she reminded me of why I was at, you know, the purpose of being at DMV. So then, of course, it was hard to stay in line after that. And then everybody in the line starts, you know, doing nice things for us. And everybody in the line becomes friends, you know. And nobody's trying to butt in front of anybody anymore. It turns into this bodhisattva paradise. DMV. Department of the Maha Vehicle. Yes? Did that recognition help you not be as rigid, that you were there for the benefit

[66:38]

But then that was, I wasn't rigid about realizing what I was there for, but I had forgotten. I sort of got distracted. But I wasn't really what I was there for. I didn't say, no, I'm not. I'm here in this terrible place wasting my time. I didn't do that. That's what I meant by I was somewhat flexible. I could go, oh yeah, right, thanks. And then afterwards, I wasn't rigid about the fact that everything was very nice. If somebody would want to come in and say, this is really not such a nice place here, and you're not here for everybody else, I think I could have entertained that at that point. If you want to tell me, I'm not here to be your friend, I want to listen to But people almost never tell me that, that I'm not here to be their friend.

[68:05]

They sometimes tell me that they're not my friend. Yes? Was the third time a charm? Pardon? Was the third time a charm? I don't know if it was the third time or the fourth time. But it was definitely magical. The shift, it went from I'm in the wrong place to I'm in the right place. With my friend, yeah. And not just her. A bunch of other people suddenly turned into friends. The whole situation was transformed. It's wonderful. It's wonderful, yeah. And it was just somebody reminding me of something I knew, but I got distracted. Sometimes when you go through security and they take your driver's license and don't give it back to you, sometimes you get distracted from how wonderful their friendship is.

[69:13]

And then when you apply for another one, and they don't send it to you, you might get distracted. You might come up and say you didn't get it, and they say, I'm sorry, I can't do anything for you, you have to go get another one. You can get distracted, right? It's repeated like, it's repeated barrier, you know. Pull the bolts, bring and hold, this repeated thing. Sometimes you think, well, actually, I've had enough of this. This is not friendship anymore. So you get distracted. But really, it was like, I never heard that before. Oh, yeah, thanks, right. She reminded me, this is not a new thing. This is our nature. which when we wake up, it's actually going for refuge. You're going back to Buddha. You're not making the Buddha.

[70:16]

You're going back from where you've kind of drifted away. Yes? So the security and writing for the license, they didn't go back? He didn't know he was being invited to this great friendship. He didn't get it. He got word. Word came to him. A message came to him from the south of China. He got the message and he didn't know what he was doing. And he didn't know that he was responding to an invitation. He thought he was responding to word of unfriendliness of people who were his enemies. He was a Buddhist. And he was the enemies of Buddhism. He was a student of the teaching of not abiding.

[71:20]

He was abiding. And by abiding, he lost track of the teaching that was most important to him, And then a friend called out to him and said, come and see us. We'll remind you of what's most important to you. What's most important to you is this mind of non-abiding bodhisattva. You've lost it. We're here to help you find it again. Come. But the way they said it was in a way that he thought they weren't inviting him to recover from his addiction to abiding. that got him to come though. So the combination of the ...at the airport, and the workings of the DMV to not send my driver's license after I sent him the money, and then to tell me I had to go to another one, and then this process... ...know that this was guiding me to friendship every step of the way.

[72:44]

I got distracted. Has that ever happened to you? That's why I thought this is a wonderful story, because the story does not. It looked like he didn't see it either. And then he did. And then he became a person who didn't look like he was everybody's good friend. And he woke up a lot of people to what a good friend he was, and what good friendship is. And the good friendship with the Buddha is perfect and all-pervading. But if we quibble with it a little bit, it seems like this isn't really a very good friendship. Or, anyway, it's below-average friendship or something. Or, enemy. So we've got to remember friendship.

[73:48]

No gap. And that's also wisdom. No gap. Well, that's probably enough, don't you think? Is there any burning comment? Is there any freezing comment? Why is it that great intimacy feels like great enmity? You know? It didn't actually say intimacy. It says ultimate closeness. Ultimate closeness is almost like enmity. Closeness is still a little tiny gap. It gets smaller and smaller. It gets more intense. If there's a huge distance between you and people, it doesn't seem like enmity.

[74:52]

But as it gets closer and closer, like in this story, when these people got really close. But when there's no gap, then it doesn't seem like anything anymore. But as you close the gap down, it's quite difficult. Which I think, you know, it's quite challenging. So the closeness is almost like enmity, but the actual no gap is this great peaceful friendship. Now, there's this activity of reorganizing this meeting space. And if we could reorganize it, then we could have a closing session.

[76:00]

So one way to do it is we close and then you have all this rearrangement. Another way is we do the rearrangement and then we have closing. How many people work for closing and then rearrangement? How many people work both for rearrangement and then closing? Okay, so let's rearrange the room, and then we'll have our closing.

[76:35]

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