Do you understand what I mean when I say an intention is a story or a story is an intention? You say the intention or attention? Intention. That a story is an intention is a story. Sometimes a short one, but it's kind of, it's a story. I think so, but if you could say a few more sentences about it. I have an example. Well, um, when you have a story that you're somebody's, uh, parent, and, um, and, and that, um, that somebody is needing some help, some nurturing and some guidance, and you think it's appropriate, it seems appropriate for you to give the guidance, and you're, you know,

[01:20]

Now, if I say, and you want to, then it really gets clear that there's an intention in that story to give them the guidance. But maybe even before I say you want to, which makes it even clearer, you can see there is some kind of tendency in the story towards you giving this guidance. I might say, you have no resistance to this. You're not opposed to it. You think it would be good if you did it. So that kind of story about your relationship with this person may be adding in a little bit like you have nothing else that occupies you right now. You're free to help them. So if that's the story, then you can see there's kind of a tendency or an intention there to give the help. If you have another story, like you have something to offer, somebody needs it and wants it, but there's something else which seems to be more important, then the intention in that story is not so clear that you would want to do this for them.

[02:33]

So intentions are not always real clear in the story. But every time you picture yourself in a relationship, every time a picture of a relationship with the world arises, that's actually an action and it has consequences. Every time you think, I'm related to this person and I want to help them, But that story, that intention, has consequence. Every time you think, I'm not related to this person and I don't want to help them, that has consequence. So that's why I think it's difficult, you know. I think when somebody says intentions and actions, they mean mental intention and cognitive action. So cognitive action are actions that are cognitively based.

[03:38]

So salivation, for example, is an activity that's not really cognitively based for a lot of people. Our knee reflex is not... the reflex is not cognitively based. You don't intend to do it. If you intend to do it, the doctor can tell it's not the reflex. the way the leg moves when it's doing unintentionally, in other words, non-cognitively, looks different than when it happens cognitively. So vocal and physical action can be cognitive. It's expressing a cognition. And physical action can be non-cognitive. But the non-cognitive has no... moral evolutionary effect. It's a factor. The mountains are factors in moral evolution, but they're not the main place to pay attention.

[04:45]

The place to pay attention is in the intention. in the activity of intention. So there's basically two kinds of activity, non-cognitive and cognitive, and the cognitive activity is intentional activity and that's That's the keystone, in some sense, of Dharma practice, is to pay attention to the evolutionary core of the moment, which is... it's not... it's actually the evolutionary core, but it's actually the overall activity. Actually, it's the evolutionary core along with the consciousness itself. So to be aware of the type of consciousness is also important. Yes? Well, you could finish.

[05:45]

I'd like to have another... Oh, okay. Welcome back. I feel like we're on a talk show here. It's a red... If you all look under your chairs, you're enlightened. Never mind. I have the wrong chair. Oh, sorry. There's a story. that sort of came up in my sitting that I've been thinking about in terms of stories, as we've been discussing them this week. And I'm interested in your comments on this particular story. It's an old Zen story. It's one of my favorites. And you can correct me if I get off track, but I think I remember it correctly. It's about a priest, maybe a monk. We'll say it's a priest. Lives outside of a small fishing village. There's a young girl in this village who becomes pregnant by her boyfriend and doesn't want to admit it to her family. But when it's discovered that she's pregnant, she blames this priest, says, the priest did this to me.

[06:50]

And when the child is born, the family madly marches out to the priest's place and says, here, this is your problem. This is your child. And he just says three words. Is that so? And he takes the child and he raises it for several years as his own. And many years later, the girl repents and realizes that she made a big mistake and confesses what she'd done. And the family comes hurrying back up to the priest's place and apologizes and tells him what happened and takes the child back. And again, he says three words, is that so? And so I thought of this in terms of stories where He's off minding his own business and this family comes to him with a story. This is a child. This is your child. And he says, okay. At first I couldn't quite grasp the example he had of taking a story that isn't true. The idea of a story of not beholding to absolute truth, but being able to play with stories just as stories.

[07:51]

And so he takes that story, which he knows isn't true, but accepts it and says, okay, I'll take that story. And then later on when they come with a different story, he says... Yes, that's another story. Am I sort of interpreting that right in terms of what we've been discussing this week, or is there more you'd want to add to? I think that's a good interpretation, and to say more about it would be that is that their story their their story also led them to speak very harshly towards him so because they had this story that story went with them wanting to say some some real harsh things and critical things of him which they did So that story led to this vocal thing.

[08:53]

And the second time, they were speaking very respectfully and venerating him as a great priest. That came from the other story. And they might not have had the story that they were being cruel to him or harsh to him. I don't know what they would have thought. But he probably has a story. He might have had a story. These people are being very harsh with me. So he had his own story, too. In one case, probably these people are spitting on me, and now these people are worshipping me. So he had two stories, too, probably, plus lots of stories in between when he took care of the child. But in those two extreme ends of the story, in both cases, he said, you know, is that so? In other words, well, that could mean anything. That could mean, when you tell me I'm a bad priest, is that so?

[09:56]

When you tell me I'm a good priest, is that so? Another meaning of it is, is this happening? Is this happening to me? You know? Is that so? Is this my life? In Japanese, you know, when you say things to people, actually, people, you know, tell you that various things, and you say, is that so, to a lot of different stuff, it's not really a judgment. It's more like, oh, you know, It's actually ah, so, deska. Ah, like ah, so, is it so? And then deska, is it so? Ah, is it so? Oh, is that so? And you could say it if someone said, I hate you. You could say, oh, is that so? Good. that wouldn't necessarily make them more upset. If someone tells you that some bad thing happened, you also could say, oh, I sold this guy.

[11:01]

Maybe with a little bit more. Is that so? So it could be used in a wide variety of situations. And also you can use it if you don't understand what they're saying, it works pretty well too. If you don't speak Japanese very well and you don't quite know what it means, it works. I mean, it works if they're insulting you, you could say that. And if they're complimenting, if they're asking you to go to the train station, you could say, ah, is that so? But later, when I first heard it, I thought, the main thing that struck me was that he dealt with both stories, their stories and his stories, he dealt with them the same. He didn't say, no, thank you, in one case, and thank you in the other. In both cases, he was kind of like, oh, I hear you. This seems to be happening. This seems to be happening. This seems to be happening. It's a little bit like, what is it that thus comes? What is this?

[12:03]

How is this the Buddhist teaching now that's coming to me? How is this dharma? And it looks like insult, but what's the dharma message here? It looks like praise, which is, you know, praise is nice, but what's really important is not so much whether I'm getting praised. That's not the main thing. The main thing is how is this dharma? How is this so? Is this so? Is this true? Is it truth here? So he seemed to be dealing with all situations like, at one level, oh, so this is happening, or oh, that's what you say, I hear you. And the other is, later I thought, is this true? And what is the truth? Is this true? But really, he probably didn't think it was true in either case. First one he didn't think was true, but he was maybe wondering, what is the truth?

[13:07]

So all that's going on, I think, potentially in the story. And all of the things that I just said, if it's only one of them, it's still a good story. He's still, to me, he's an inspiration, even if it was only happening on one level. If you add all three levels, then... then he's still basically equally inspirational, but just a little bit deeper, a deeper experience for him where he's experiencing on the level of, oh, this is what their story is. Ah, this is what seems to be happening to me. And ah, what is the truth? And that he's doing it in both situations would impress me. He doesn't just do it when people are praising him. He doesn't just do it when they're blaming him. He does it in both situations. And maybe in between, to remember every day when he saw that little girl or little boy, whatever it was, maybe he said, also this guy.

[14:10]

Ah, here's this baby in my life again. I seem to have the story of a baby in my life. What is the dharma here? What is the dharma? And I'm glad I have a wet nurse. Why are you shaking your head? It was a chuckle, a silent chuckle. He did have a wet nurse. He didn't do it all by himself. Ah, there we go. He had help, which is good, because Zen monks usually have milk in the temple. You know, they have miso and green tea, but no milk. So all that's going on, I would say, so it's really a good example of whatever comes, you know, and what comes basically is a story or the result of a story that you look now, okay, this is a story now.

[15:18]

How can I take care of this? And basically you take care of them all the same. You're gentle with stories of praise and you're gentle with stories of blame. And then both stories can reveal the truth. And then people see you being that way, particularly if you see that in a variety of situations, and that inspires them to want to learn how to do that with a variety of situations, which it did with all of us. Thank you. Yes? I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about that sort of tension in Zen between forms and ceremonies. And, you know, chaos. For example, one of the precepts that we take is embracing sustained forms and ceremonies.

[16:20]

There are rules and regulations and lists, and here we're practicing some of these to get the experience of doing them. And there was a great story, I heard you tell it at one of these retreats, and I wonder if you'd tell it again, about the General's Cup? The General's Cup? And that whole tangent, how that... Because I think in my own life, I'm trying to set up a practice and have some official time when I do it. And the reason I'm doing that, and also that all of a sudden, like this morning, the sun will break through the clouds and they'll be like, oh, wow, it's a wonderful moment. But there's like the forms... the forms in ceremony, which seem rigid to Westerners in a lot of cases, have a purpose, it seems, and are part of the path, but then there's this, when they break, then there's also a chance for enlightenment to slip through. You see what I mean? Thank you.

[17:29]

Well, I think that other spiritual exercise programs have forms that use them in a similar way, besides the Buddha Dharma. But a basic principle is... I wasn't attracted to Zen because I heard that it had strict forms. So in the story we just saw, there was a form implied, namely he was a monk, so he shouldn't be going around having sex with young girls he's not married to. So that's a form, which he seemed to have, from certain people's point of view, by the girl who reported him, he broke a form. I think even if he wasn't a a Buddhist monk still to have sex with a girl that he wasn't married to.

[18:31]

Japanese people don't usually like that. But it was maybe all the worse that he was supposed to be a leader in the community. So there was a form there about sexual misconduct and not living up to his his responsibility as a spiritual teacher and all that, so there's a form which he seemed to have broken, and then people got upset with that, which is, you know, usual around ethical forms that when people who are committed to them publicly don't follow them, that people get upset. So that's... usually they get upset, and sometimes that's often very helpful to the person who they're upset at. And so then he got to look at the form and maybe he, again, maybe he thought, well, I agree with that form and I am committed to it.

[19:35]

And in this case, they are saying that I violated it. And I think that someone might think, I did not violate that form. I didn't have sexual intercourse with this girl, and therefore I did not violate this form." Someone could have that response. So that would show a rigidity. Or I should say, I have the story that I didn't violate this form, and it's true. And, of course, then he could have got really upset with them and defensive because he had the story that he, probably he did have the story, no, I didn't have sexual intercourse with this girl. Probably did have that story. However, he might not have been very rigid about that.

[20:38]

He might not have believed it. And also the story that I did have sexual intercourse with her, he probably wouldn't believe that one either. He probably didn't have that one, but he probably wouldn't have believed that. So I think in this story, what might have happened is that he had the story, I didn't have anything to do with this girl. I maybe never even met her before. So she's telling her parents I did this, but I didn't. He probably did have that story, but maybe he didn't lean into that story. And he said, I got this story, but maybe I didn't have sexual intercourse with this girl, but maybe I had sexual intercourse with somebody else. A long time ago. And now I didn't get in any trouble for that, but now I'm getting in trouble for this. He might have thought that, which there's quite a few stories about that.

[21:44]

Yeah, I don't think I did this, but I probably did something just like it before, and so now this is coming as a result of that. I couldn't think that. But this isn't chaos, exactly. This is still a form, which there's some question about violation of it, and then we're flexible with it. Now, you might think also that... What is it? Yeah, so I think that teaching up karma, you don't so much think that this is chaos when something comes that you don't understand. You kind of think, I don't know why this is coming, but I think it's probably coming because of some lawful process. So I don't really feel that this is chaotic. But the fact that you can't see why it's coming to you, you might jump to conclusion then that it really is coming to you in a disordered way.

[22:52]

You might have that idea. So then your view of the situation is that it's chaos. But if you have deep faith in cause and effect, although you don't see how it's working, you don't think this is, you know, you don't think God's got the wrong guy. You don't think the universe has got the wrong guy. You don't see why they're coming... You don't see why the girl chose you to name. You don't see the reason for that. You don't see the reason for the parents believing it then, maybe. Maybe you do see the reason, but you don't see the whole picture, maybe. If you do see the whole picture, then it's not chaos. If you can see it, then it's not chaos. You can see, oh, that... Like the Buddha can say, oh... yeah yeah she told her parents because in a past life she was my my assistant and she brought me something and i said i didn't say thank you you know so now she's doing this the buddha can see stuff like that but most people cannot see that so but the disciples of buddha say i can't see it but

[24:09]

I have faith that this is not coming randomly. This is not coming without cause. There's a reason for this, and the reason is something to do with my karma. Although my karma is not the only thing that's making it happen, this is the unfoldment of the Dharma. There's a Dharma message here. So then there's no... Then I wouldn't feel like it was chaos, even though I couldn't see exactly how it worked. I guess it's that story of the general in the cup, the general's cup, that I think of that moment Maybe I'm not reminding you of the same story. I heard you tell it here. Well, that's a different mechanism. That's the mechanism where one of the practitioners accepts a form and is taking care of it and kind of holding onto it rigidly. And some other practitioner just feels motivated to take the form away, to see what the person would do with it, to show them what it's like to hold on to a form.

[25:17]

So in that case, this Zen teacher went to give a talk at a samurai's house. Not just a samurai, but a daimyo, I think. The lord of Sendai, I believe. And they brought him one of the family heirloom teacups, and he broke it with his staff. And does anybody have Being Upright nearby? The general said something after it was broken. Somehow I seem to remember it. Well, I think... Yeah, maybe there was two priests in both. But anyway, one of the things that happened in the end was the broken thing was patched back together as now it was even more of a family heirloom because now it was the, you know, the... I don't remember exactly.

[26:24]

We can find it later. But now it was the teabowl which, you know, which was demonstrating the dharma. Teabowl. It was that shock of breaking this, you know, I remember the story, and I might be remembering it wrong, was that this general had given to this priest this very beautiful antique thousand-year-old tea bowl and He was being served tea by the Zen master, and Zen master made the mistake of inviting one of his friends over. And when he served the tea to the general in this beautiful, beautiful bowl, his friend took his staff and broke the beautiful bowl. And then the general said something that fixed the situation. because he, just what you said. Yeah, he said, we'll have it patched together and we'll name it the tea bowl that blah, blah. Most, the tea bowl that roared or whatever. There was a shock there, you know. Well, the shock was, you invite a Zen master over to your house and he destroys your family.

[27:28]

You know, what's he doing? He's not just coming to wreck your stuff. He's coming to wreck what you most value. Because what you most value is what you should let go of. So the Zen precepts, the Zen forms, are what Zen priests, I shouldn't say most value, but they value it a lot, they put a lot of energy into the forms, and then some people get the opportunity to crush the forms and see what they do with that. And if they tense up, they find out that. If they don't tense up, they go, wow. I didn't freak out when they took my forms away, which I've been dearly taking care of all these years, but I didn't freak out. There's both possibilities there. In both cases, dharma can shine through at those moments.

[28:32]

So the point of these forms is to reveal the dharma. But if you have forms and you don't put energy into them, then if they get broken, nothing happens. If you make a mistake and you don't care, then the mistake isn't such a door. But if you really care to do something properly and then you do it wrong, then it can really be a door. Just real quick, I noticed something when I was walking. You said Dharma doors are everywhere. There's a sign outside that says, Assisted Living Facility. I said, that's right. You keep saying these little things to me are just completely earth-shattering, life-changing, and we just kind of move on past them. I have 18 pages of notes.

[29:34]

You said that because he had a deep faith in cause and effect, in my mind jumped to God being cause and effect, and also my atheist friends may be right in the fact that they think that Everything can be explained by science. Now, science is a very small piece of it all, but it's almost like you're saying that if you knew all of the infinite causes and conditions, then you could explain anything that happens, even being unjustly accused, because things are operating with those laws. But maybe we need to, because of our small minds, need to put a word on it like God. But it seems to me that Zen transcends that need for having the word God and having the faith in cause and effect. We transcend the need for the word God and we transfer that to the need for cause and effect. Not necessarily cause and effect, where somebody else might be as God. For us, there's not one person that creates the world. All the causes and conditions work together to make things happen.

[30:39]

But we still have to have this teaching of cause and effect to help people wake up and to show them where to pay attention. Like the Lord works in mysterious ways is the other thing I thought when you said that. Yeah, cause and effect works in mysterious ways. But by studying cause and effect, by not being blind to it, and studying it in the proper way, we see, someday we will see how it works. But the first thing we see is we see how cause and effect is ungraspable. We see emptiness of cause and effect. It's not the first thing we see, but the first big breakthrough is when you realize that cause and effect, because it's cause and effect, is ungraspable. Because of the way it works, you can't get a hold of it, and you can't separate yourself from it, from you. That's the first thing you see. Once you see that, then you start to really see how it works. But usually we can't see how it works because we expect it to work in a way we can grasp. So since we're trying to grasp it, we can't see it.

[31:41]

But when we see that it can't be grasped, then we stop trying to grasp it, and then we can see it. And then through many, many, long, long time after that of continuing to practice with cause and effect without trying to grasp it, then revelation after revelation of how it works, we develop this thing called omniscience. And then we actually can see how it works and explain it to people if they want to know. And we can actually tell them in a way that they can understand. But before that, So understanding ultimate truth is way, way ahead of understanding the cosmic effect. The cosmic effect is only understood by omniscient being. And enlightenment or understanding ultimate truth is way ahead of omniscience. So you have to bring that understanding of ultimate truth in contact with gazillions of stories, which means gazillions of beings, and that develops the Buddha vision, omniscience, where you actually can see how it works.

[32:49]

Before that, we trust it. We trust that cause and effect is really, we deeply attend to cause and effect, even though we can't see it yet. You can see a little bit. And would those be people with cosmic consciousness, that handful of people that have ever existed? Yeah. Well, it's not a handful. There's infinite. They're infinite. And they're in all little pores of your body. There's infinite ones. There's infinite ones. It's just that in this particular little world we're living in, they're just one, about 2,500 years ago. Just one. So in this world, there aren't very many. But all the things in this world are jam-packed full of these omniscient beings who are teaching innumerable bodhisattvas. That's the message of it. I'll probably regret saying this, but every time you say that part about, I remember that scene in Animal House when he said, we could be the universe inside the thumbnail of a giant being.

[34:01]

And right after that he looked at me and said, can I buy some pot from you? That's some good stuff. I'm not here to buy pasta. That's the other chair. The sisters won't be happy. I'm noticing over the last three days of watching my story that, um... I think my heirloom cup is my identity. And I tell lots of stories to generate that. And a lot of it is a sense of rehearsing who I should be with others.

[35:07]

especially here because there's a context of possibly coming up here and presenting in front of other people. And I didn't rehearse this one. So I wanted to find one that wasn't rehearsed when it came up in talking here. So I don't know where I'm going. And I'm very uncomfortable with that. I like if I have something to say to work it out, know what the message is, and have the button at the end of what I'm coming up to do. But now I'm moving into something that I haven't heard. The idea of the thus comes, the sense of authenticity and presenting directly in the world without this six second lag. So I can edit myself in the process is something I would find useful. And I was wondering if you could say something about how to shorten that lag time in checking my identity before I present it to others.

[36:09]

Sure, and I like that. Between what and what? Between deciding what to do. Should I do it? Would this be perceived all right? Okay, then I will say this. That sort of chatter between an impulse and acting world. With my body and mouth as opposed to just my mind. And I know I'm... I didn't mean to say intentions weren't also actions. I made a mistake. So that mistake, it didn't have much lag time, right? No. And you didn't figure out how to not have any lag time, did you? At that time? Yeah. No. No. So that's how it was. That's how it goes. And you could have also been watching at that time and gone through the same process of expressing yourself, in a sense making a mistake, noticing it, telling us about it, and that whole thing.

[37:26]

And that whole process is very little interjection of what we're thinking about you. Whether you would gain or lose anything around that little part there. How did it happen? Well, it partly happened because you came up here. And you sat here and started expressing yourself. As you start expressing yourself, especially as it gets more full, you're expressing yourself pretty energetically and so on. You were talking about how you have a tendency to check before you do things, but you weren't doing it then. And you were asking how to do what you were doing, by coincidence. So actually, that's the way we really are. is we actually are acting without checking. And when we check, we're checking without checking before we check, usually.

[38:29]

Now, some people are so, what do you call it? Some people are clinically obsessive-compulsive, so they check before they check. Okay? But the first check, they didn't check. But they don't notice that. I don't know if you follow that. Those of us who are clinically compulsive understand that very well. So anyway, she was actually asking about how can you act without checking to see if it's going to be good for your reputation before you do, for example. She was asking that, but she wasn't checking too much when she was doing that. She was asking how to do it, but she was doing it even though she was asking how to do it. She still actually knew how to do it. But she knew how to do it means she wasn't in charge of it happening. It happened partly because she came up here and sat down next to me.

[39:30]

I think also when she came up here, she wasn't exactly calculating whether she would get more or less famous by coming up here. Is that right? That's right. So she came up here, and as far as I know, there wasn't particularly anything unwholesome about her coming up here. I didn't see her violate any precepts in coming up here. Did you? Maybe she did, but I didn't notice any. She didn't notice any that she has to confess. So she came up here, sat down and started wondering out loud about how she can act without checking to make sure that she's going to gain something by what she does and make sure she's not going to lose something by what she does. She was asking that, but she wasn't doing it. And also, she wasn't editing herself from wondering about how to do what she does without knowing how to do it. She wasn't doing that either. What I'm saying to you, though, is that when you check, actually when you check to see if you're going to gain something or lose something before you do it, actually when the check comes up, you don't check before it comes up.

[40:41]

It just pops up there. By the power of your past karma, checking all the time. So the first impulse to make sure that what you're doing is not going to get you in trouble, that one, you didn't actually check that before it came up. It got up there before you could check. Now, did you follow that? Did you check before you went? I guess not. I guess not, too. But now somebody probably checked, you know, your collective unconscious probably checked to see if it was all right for you to go, mm-mm, that would be okay to do here. And it said, okay, go ahead. But consciously you didn't check. I didn't see you anyway. And it seemed to come so quick that I'd be surprised if you checked that quickly to see if, you know, what do you think I'm, you know.

[41:50]

Somebody could have, though. Somebody could have, like, I wonder if you like me more if I go. So we're pretty smart people. We can kind of tell when somebody's checking before they go, mm-mm, about whether we're going to like them more. There's a little bit more feeling. But there is some checking going on. just, you know, before you do everything. But you're talking about the conscious checking. I thought. And I didn't see any conscious checking. But what I'm saying is that even when you do check and you consciously see it, When the first impulse to check, the impulse to think of the thing you're going to do, and then the impulse to check it, the first thing you didn't think before you thought of this thing to do, that coming from what we call your subliminal consciousness, your collective, not your collective, your cognitive unconscious is producing some possible action. And your cognitive unconscious can also produce a conscious checking of that.

[42:55]

but it doesn't always do it. But when it does, there's no conscious check on that because it doesn't come from the conscious. But once you're up in the checking area, then that checking can have an effect on cognitive unconscious and there can be more checking and you can get all bottled up. But in this case it didn't happen. The key is to watch and see how it goes. And the more you watch, you're moving towards understanding how this all works. But before you understand how all this works, you first of all have to watch how it seems to be working. And how it seems to be working is related to how it's working, but it's basically a story about how it seems to be working. If you learn how to not only watch but watch in a certain way, in a gracious way, you will see that this whole thing is ungraspable. And then you'll start watching it even better because you'll stop interfering with it by trying to get it into a package which it doesn't really fit.

[44:00]

And then you'll start to see how it all works. But the graciousness with your stories is that graciousness can be with the stories of you checking. And the graciousness can be with the action and the checking. And you can notice, so here's an action, and now there's another action. which is wondering how this is going to affect my reputation. There's another action which is wondering if this is going to be beneficial. And you can see the difference between these different things. And all of them you're taking care of the same. You want to develop basically the same way of taking care of all of them. Because the door could open on any of these at any time. You never know when. You want to bring it up right now? See, you didn't check, did you? Thank you.

[45:04]

So I was talking pretty fast there, so maybe you didn't get it. But you want to come up? You want to come up? And I've made a bunch of vows and I'm counting on all of you to help me with them whether or not you mean to or know it. Thank you, Nancy, for your great effort. I'd like to say that I sat in this chair not because I need the pot, but I have natural chemistry that will put me there. When you were telling the story about... The monk and the girl accusing him and all of that.

[46:14]

I got hung up on who's taking care of the baby. And, okay, then the monk was taking care of the baby. With the wet nurse. With the wet nurse. And then the family came back and took the baby away. And I thought, they took the baby away from the monk. How could they do that? Well, I guess because they thought that the mother should take care of it. Even though the mother lied, I guess they thought The mother still should have her baby, and the punishment should not be that she doesn't get her baby for the fly. And I don't think the monk thought, you know, I want to take care of this girl's baby for the rest of my life. It's not my baby. I just had the responsibility to take care of it for a while. But I guess he also thought, I guess he also thought, well, even though she lied, now she told the truth. So if she wants to take care of the baby and the grandparents want to take care of the baby, I guess that's probably a better deal because I'm actually, you know, got this monastery to run.

[47:24]

He was a busy guy, actually. So I think it was, you know, he was just subbing. And I guess he did an okay job, apparently, but I don't think he thought, well, you know, this is mine now, just because I took care of it. So, yeah, it really is your baby, and I'm not the father. If he was the father, he might have felt differently, but he wasn't. I should take care of him with you or something, at least, because I'm the father, but he wasn't the father. He was more the Zen teacher in the family. He taught the family this thing, and he taught the girl all this. That probably helped her tell the truth. If he hadn't taken care of her, it might have been even more difficult for her to tell the truth. I thought he was fine receiving and he was fine giving.

[48:25]

I thought that was fine with him. Okay. And I, of course, it's hard for the baby to go and not live with another mother than the one she had had for those two years or whatever it was. That's hard. But the wet nurse usually also is willing to give the baby back. So I think the wet nurse and Hawk went probably, might have felt okay about the people because they, you know, they were in touch with, they were also in touch with reality in the end. So maybe they were, maybe they looked up pretty well for the baby. I don't know. It seemed like it might have. Anyway, she had pretty good care for those two years and probably they might have taken good care of her after that. But we don't know about the girl. That's your story. My story is I don't know. To the girl. To the baby. My story is that the baby has an attachment disorder.

[49:29]

Pardon? My story is that the baby has an attachment disorder. It's possible. We don't know if it's a true story. All we know is it's a story. That's all we know. Didn't you sort of change your story a little too? What? Change it? Because your first... version was whatever comes is that so so you might have had a story when the baby this is totally unfair I don't want this but then I'm gonna just say is that so but he could have also said this is ridiculous how can they take this baby away this is the worst thing that's ever happened isn't he also just saying that's just a story too. But that part of the story is not in the story. They don't say what he said when they took the baby back. They just say what he said when they were praising him. But then when they took the baby back, what you're saying might have happened. We just don't have... That's not recorded, what he said.

[50:34]

As I remember, you hear what he said when he's being spoken to and harangued and praised. You don't hear what happened when they went back. But there is, what do you call it? There's this wonderful story of Amor and Psyche. You know the story of Eros, the god of love, and the soul of the mind. They have this affair. And Psyche's sisters play a role in it. I think it was C.S. Lewis that wrote a book called Until We Have Faces, which is about that myth from the point of view of the sisters. that got Psyche to violate her love relationship. So if somebody could write a story now about what happened to the girl, that would be welcome.

[51:40]

That would be a welcome flowering of Zen literature, for somebody to rewrite the story from the point of view of the girl Or, huh? The baby. That's what I mean, the baby. I think some will think of it as a baby girl, but from the point of view of the baby, or from the point of view, and or the point of view of the girl, to see what that looks like from the window. A lot of possibilities. So infinite possibilities and stories, they just keep coming. And the question is how to take care of them such that the truth shines through. That's main thing that we don't usually do. We do however keep telling stories. That part's going to keep going on. That's going to keep making worlds. And if we take care of this process properly, the truth will start shining into the world through the stories that we care for properly. That's what it's supposed to look like.

[52:43]

The worlds will continue to be formed until everybody is completely enlightened. And so that's what will just keep going on is until worlds are nothing but light. So it's going to be a while probably. To me it's pretty clear what the job is. How about you? I think my story was I'm irritated that I can't figure out who's taking care of the baby. You have a story. A story you can't figure out who's taking care of the baby, and you find that irritating. Yeah. That's reasonable. It's kind of an irritating story. It's not a comfortable story for most of us. Yeah. But if you take care of that story properly, things will evolve well, you will see the truth, and you will be able to take care of that baby better, wherever she is now.

[54:00]

She might be you, actually. Or he might be you. We don't know where that baby is. But the willingness to be devoted to that baby is enhanced and supported by seeing the truth. Bodhisattvas who are trying to help people, their meditation practice, they're devoted to beings, but they're all the time meditating on the middle way. That helps them continue to be devoted. So they use their vows to support their meditation, and they use their meditation to aid their vows, to facilitate their vows. So if you have an irritating story about this baby, take care of it. That's good. Can I confess to be irritated? Can you confess to be irritated? Yeah. You can confess to be irritated, but that's not usually such an irritated and angry, or just irritated?

[55:07]

I'm irritated. The anger is usually more a thing to confess. Irritated, I mean, if something bites you, it's kind of irritation. But that's not really something to confess. It would be angry at biting you. That's more something to confess, because you're not gently caring for this bite, the story and experience of this bite. So that's not confessing anger over the pain. I don't really confess. I don't usually confess the pain. Well, actually, I confess the pain, but I don't repent the pain. When I'm in pain, I don't feel bad about having pain, necessarily. mystified. Are you? Eyes are glazing over. Huh? Eyes are glazing over. So, pain isn't a karmic act. Pain is not a karmic act. Pain is the fruition of various things, one of them being karma.

[56:14]

Pain is a neutral, it's not karma. It's the fruit of karma and other factors. It's not karmically active. But the response to pain is often active karma. Some responses to pain aren't. Like an involuntary twitch to pain is not an intentional thing. It's not ethical. It's not morally turned on. Does that make sense? Most of the responses that we're conscious of are a lot of them anyway, are common. So getting angry at pain means you have a story that this pain is such and such so that you're angry. You could have another story that this pain is such and such and not be angry. If somebody told you the next pain you feel you're going to get a million dollars and the pain comes, you're going to be outraged.

[57:21]

You don't get angry because of the story, you know. But usually, I mean, it's very common that when pain comes, we have a story that says, you know, we should get rid of it. Don't be gentle. Don't be upright. Get rid of it. When a mosquito bites you, don't be gentle and upright. Get rid of it. Maybe even kill it. So then you confess and you kill it, and then if you feel bad about it, then it's repentance. But if you don't kill it and you confess it, then you don't have to feel bad about it, so that's not repentance. That's just like, I didn't kill the mosquito. Wow. It was irritating, but I didn't kill it. That's my story. And when it was biting me, I had to story that I'm not killing it. That was my action that arose in my mind.

[58:24]

And then I didn't kill it. However, I'm not just saying that, but also watch that. See that. And then you'll have more nonviolent interactions with mosquitoes. Did he call that a confession? It sounded like he called that a confession as well. Yeah, you can confess wholesome actions, but they wouldn't be followed by repentance usually. Repenting a wholesome action would be an unwholesome action. Being bad about a wholesome action would be another unwholesome action. Feeling okay about a wholesome action is not really an action, it's just the way you feel. And that's fine. But feeling pain about not wholesome action and then wishing to change in relationship, that's repentance.

[59:29]

But we're not so much encouraged to go around confessing our wholesome actions Because we don't have to reform those so much. Just being aware of them is enough. Does that make sense? Oh, as soon as you said we're not encouraged to confess our wholesome actions, I thought we're encouraged to brag about them. When I say we are not encouraged, I mean we are not encouraged by our teachers in the Dharma tradition. They don't encourage people to brag or talk a lot about their own virtues. We don't need, generally speaking, that. But maybe some people do need some encouragement. So there might be some stories about that, but I see very little of that. I see more of the encouragement to speak of other people's wholesome actions. That we're encouraged to do. And so we're encouraged to confess our shortcomings and rejoice over other people's longcomings.

[60:39]

That's the general main encouragement, and that's not so common. What's much more common is noticing our own and bragging. and noticing other people's shortcomings and not our own, and then bragging about how bad they are, called criticizing them in an unkind way. This is very common. Right? Doesn't seem to need any encouragement. Seems to be flourishing. What needs to be encouraged, I think, is to be gentle. with people and ourselves when we're talking about other people's shortcomings. Be kind to ourselves when we're doing that evil deed of talking about other people's shortcomings. And again, it isn't a big bad thing to talk about your own virtues. It's okay. It's just you've got to be careful not to talk about them in isolation of other people.

[61:45]

Otherwise you put yourself up and put somebody else down. So there is a precept against praising yourself without footnotes and acknowledgments. And it's so much work for you to do the acknowledgments, it's probably not something I just want to say. Where are you going to stop about talking about all the people that helped you? And if you do something good and you see it, just tell somebody about it without telling the other people that helped you. You're kind of putting it down. Yeah, I did this good thing and all they helped but not that much. I mean, compared to what I did, what they did, it's not worth mentioning. I mean, yeah, sure, sure. But no, no, no. That's not the Buddhist way. The Buddhist way is Wow, those people helped me. Tell everybody about that. It's so great that they helped me do this thing. They were so skillful.

[62:47]

They helped me get into the car. They helped me learn how to brush my teeth. My parents taught me how to use the toilet. I did this great. Overlooking all the work my mom put into doing toilet training me. But those kids do that. They think, hey, that was really great what I did. And not noticing that gazillions of times their mother helped them. So it's kind of a put-down of their mother. So bodhisattvas are encouraged not to do that. And since it's so difficult to say thank you enough for anything good you do, it's more convenient just not to mention anything good you do. Because you probably won't be able to say enough praise of the other person to come up to them. Really, you know what I mean? It's pretty hard, you know what I mean? So as a result, there's very little data among the bodhisattva records of them talking about the good things they did.

[63:54]

But if there ever was one, then there would be this huge thing of thanking all these people that helped them, which would never end. And people wouldn't read it. So all those texts would end up . It would be worse than the Mahayana . Huh? It would be worse than the Mahayana . Yeah. That's why we don't have the Mahayana award ceremonies, right? So there's one bodhisattva who hasn't finished yet. You know, they're still running down whatever she said. Oh. Yes? I confess that I'm angry. Thank you. And how do you feel about that? Okay. Okay? Well, what does okay mean? I'm not sure. You're sure, okay. Well, let us know later if you figure out what okay means. Come up. Come up, anybody.

[64:56]

Come up, come up. He's rushing the stage. Are you supposed to go? Go. Cooking. Cooking, yeah, right. I thought Andy was telling Donna to go, but no, huh? OK, Donna. Yes. Ben's going. Yes. Do you want to say something? Oh, yes. Is that your name? Yes. Yes? I have to leave. Okay. You do? Can I thank you for a break? I feel better. Where are you going? I have to cook. Oh. Oh. Okay, now, Donna, yes? Um, I'm stuck on the Bodhisattvas. Stuck on the Bodhisattvas. Congratulations. That's what you say now.

[66:04]

A lot of things come up for me when I think about them. And where to begin? I was so tired this morning after we sat. And I thought, there's no way I'm going to be able to come back after lunch and sit again. I mean, after breakfast, I helped getting lunch ready, so I didn't sit after breakfast. And I thought that would be enough of a break, but it seemed like I was even more tired after helping make breakfast, which surprised me. So I thought, well, maybe I'm really more physically tired than I realized. I thought, well, I'll come in and give it a shot and maybe just tell Lisa not to worry if I don't come for the second session. But when I came into the room and I saw Carol and Dawn sitting there, and they both looked at me and smiled at me, and I thought, OK, I'm going to sit for Carol and Dawn.

[67:15]

And I really had a very good session. So my two problems with bodhisattvas, one is that they don't seem concrete to me. And Carol and Don are very concrete. Buddha, as a historical figure, is very concrete. If I think of Jesus as a bodhisattva or Saint Francis That seems very concrete, and I can imagine asking for their help. But bodhisattvas, as presented in Buddhism, create a couple of problems. from my Christian background of my word, thou shalt have no strange gods before me.

[68:19]

Now, I know we don't treat them as gods or worship them, but they're strange. But they don't seem to have a historical dimension, and so they feel sort of like spirit beings or something that I, I guess because of my Christian background, there's either God, which is the spirit being, or the rest of us. And that sort of brings up the other problem I'm having with the bodhisattvas. We said, ask them to come and invite them. to sit with you or hear you. And that brings up the problem of them being separate from me. And so I'm having that problem of trying to figure out how it's not me and the rest of the universe or that other teaching that you were giving.

[69:29]

be being part of everything. Well, that's just a whole other problem. But it seems like asking the bodhisattvas to come and sit with me reinforces the idea that there is the universe and something extra. It seems like that. It seems like, and that's the story I'm telling myself. I'm trying to figure out how to understand that the way that you meant it. If there isn't any feeling that they're separate, if there was no feeling that they were separate, then inviting them to come wouldn't make them feel separate. Right? I don't know.

[70:32]

Can you imagine not feeling separate from someone? No. Oh, okay. Well, I'll just tell you that when I don't feel separate from someone, I can still invite them to come over here. And actually, it makes it easy for me to invite them to come over when I don't feel separate. So I'm just saying that's how I feel. When I don't feel separate from people, I'm not afraid to invite them to come closer. And I'm also not afraid to invite them to move farther away because they don't feel separate. I can do a lot of things with people I don't feel separate with. But anyway, if you already feel separate, Then you could imagine that if you bow to them, you might feel more separate. That's what you're saying, right? That's what I heard you say. Probably. I thought you said it reinforces. Yes. You said, if I invite them to come, it reinforces a sense of being separate.

[71:36]

Okay. Barbara is having problems. No, you're okay. So I heard Donna say or somebody could have said, I thought that he said that inviting them to come seems to reinforce the sense of them being separate. So does that mean that you have a sense of them being separate and inviting them to come reinforces it and speaking for yourself? I would say that I do have a problem feeling. Intellectually I can understand that everything's one, but feeling it or knowing it in my being is not there. You don't feel that things are not separate from you.

[72:44]

You kind of feel that they are. So when you hear about bodhisattvas, you feel that they're separate. And then you're saying, if you invite them to come, it seems to reinforce the feeling of separation. Because I wouldn't have to invite myself to come. No, no, no. Wait a second. You're getting ahead of yourself. Okay. You said you feel that they're separate and that if you invite them to come, it seems to reinforce the feeling of separate. And then you jumped into blah, blah. Don't go there yet. Okay. That's exactly the reason to invite them to come is to accentuate your feeling of them being separate. Accentuate it. rather than let it be this low-grade illness. Accentuate it. Get it to be more vividly there.

[73:47]

And then keep inviting, and keep inviting until that sense of separation drops away. That's the usual way of practicing meditation. Not, oh, I feel separate from something, like, for example, bodhisattvas. So don't invite them because then I'll feel more separate. Then you just keep feeling separate forever. Well, I don't mind inviting them. No, you don't mind inviting them. What you do mind, I think, is feeling separate from them. I do mind that. You mind that. I mind that. That's painful and scary. And you actually mind, and so do I, feeling separate from anything. Now I could say, invite everything you feel separate from to come visit you too. That would also be the case, but you have to be careful of that. Bodhisattvas are, in some sense, safer. So invite them to come. And also Buddhists, you've heard that you're not separate from Buddhists, but you feel like you are.

[74:51]

Your deep unconscious feeling is, I'm separate from them. That's a deep unconscious delusion. So if you make offerings to them and you pay homage to them, your sense of separation becomes more vivid. And the more vivid it gets, the closer you get for it dropping away. So you bow and bow and bow and bow to Buddhas. The point of the bowing is to cut through the sense of separation. Not that you wait to invite them before you, you know, until after you don't feel separate. However, after they're separate you keep inviting them. That's why I disagree with you. You still can invite them after you feel not separate. Buddha still invites people, bodhisattvas still invite people that they don't feel separate from. You can invite your own children to come and sit on your lap or to come to dinner when you do not feel separate.

[75:55]

You can want them to come so you can give them the food. not because you feel separate. But that's what some people do is they invite people to come because they feel separate. You know, that's the reason they do it, they're trying to, like, mask the separation by getting people to come. That's, you know, that's... I'm not going to bust that, but that's common. And that leads to all kinds of abusive relationships where you're pulling the person towards you to overcome your sense of separation rather than say, I feel separate, and would you come near to me? And the person said, wait a minute, that's not a good reason to come. So yeah, so these practices are to more and more wholeheartedly feel the separation, and the wholeheartedness of feeling the separation, the separation will drop away. Same with all the forms, all the Zen forms. Wholeheartedly practice them,

[76:59]

feeling that they're separate until the sense of separation drops away and they're just the forms. But be gentle about this, this approach. Approach this gently. Don't push yourself real hard to intensify the sense of separation in a rough way. That might be harmful. Do it gently and try to be consistent and try to find a way to do it. consistently rather than real hard for a while and then poop out, and then real hard again, poop out after a while. And I said, I'm not going to relate to these bodhisattvas. They're just too rough. But really, we're being too rough with the invitations. So how do you feel about that? Why is that? I saw a glimmer of light. Inviting people that you love.

[78:05]

Yeah, I could see that as far as, like, my sons live physically far from me, but I could see that I might be able to understand that we're not really separate and yet. You know, just because I don't feel that we're really separate in the larger sense doesn't mean I wouldn't want them to come and see me. And even when they're in your presence, you still might say, come here, I want to give you a kiss. But not because you feel separate, because you want to give them a gift. of the gifts. Like, come here, I want to tell you something. Come closer. I want to tell you something. You want to give them the gift. But it's not because you feel separate. It's because you actually don't feel separate, perhaps in this case. And you're giving the gift as an expression of that understanding.

[79:06]

Now, you can also give gifts when you do feel separate. But the ultimate gift-giving is when you're giving to someone who you don't feel separate from. And also, giving also helps cut through the sense of separation. When you give to people, it accentuates the sense of separation. If you keep practicing giving, the sense of separation drops away between you, the recipient, and the gift. That's what the giving practice leads to, apparently. Which is another example. You've got the story of separation. You practice giving. That warms it up. and you see the emptiness of the separation between you and the recipient, and vice versa. They give to you. This is a basic practice principle. bring the story out, take care of it, and it drops away. And one of the main stories is the story of separation. And that's a basic element in many, many stories.

[80:06]

Me, separate from the action. Me, separate from the story. Me, separate from my family. Me, separate from the Buddhas. That's in there. Taking care of that story, it drops away. I also... As we bow more and more, perhaps because I'm tired, I don't know, but there's a sort of sense of surrender. Would that be part of it, like a surrender of holding on to that identity so tightly that you feel more of the witness or... Again, I think surrender fits right in. Surrender could be tenderness and flexibility are part of surrender. Surrender is like if you're standing upright, go to the ground.

[81:10]

You just gave up standing upright. But you don't just stay there. You surrender being on the ground, you stand up. And surrender is also like being upright surrendered because it's like you surrender leaning. Surrender all the different biases, just give them away. And also give up being upright, which is being tender with upright. So all these practices of generosity and gentleness and balance, they go very well with the issue of surrendering. But it isn't just surrender this, it's surrender surrendering, too. Okay, please hold onto this tightly. Okay. I'll surrender being not holding on. Grip tighter. Okay. Hold me tighter, Mommy. Fine. I'm a Zen student. I'm not going to hold you. Yes. The big...

[82:12]

And surrender can be wholehearted or half-hearted. Again, you can think you're surrendering by your own power. I surrendered. I did this great surrender. With everybody's support, the surrender happened and I got to be there. But still, practicing surrender and noticing, oh, I think I'm doing the surrender practice. You know, you keep doing that, but after a while you say, wait a minute. Surrendering becomes so more wholehearted and you realize you're not doing it by yourself. Which is a nice thing about Islam, the huge groups of people surrendering together. So yeah, there's something good about that. And I haven't seen such big groups of Buddhists doing it, but sometimes you see real big groups of Buddhists bowing together, surrendering to Buddha. How do you feel?

[83:23]

Pretty good. Can you repeat what you said about when relationships become destructive? I don't remember what you said. You said abusive relationships if you feel separate and you try to... Oh, yeah. You know, like you're feeling separate from somebody and you're uncomfortable, so then you try to use getting them close to eliminate your discomfort. And that's often rather abusive, because you're using the person as a means to get rid of your discomfort. They themselves may not want to serve that purpose. They might, but if they knew what you were up to, they might say, Let's deal with this feeling rather than use touching me or pulling me close to get rid of this feeling. Don't use me to basically avoid things. Don't use your relationship with me to avoid your feelings. That's what some people do in those situations between physical human beings.

[84:27]

It's often called sexual abuse or physical abuse. Sexual abuse particularly is that way. And then sometimes you pull real hard because the person doesn't, they don't want to come closer right now, especially for this purpose. So then all kinds of violence and abuse can occur because you're basically trying to soothe yourself by using somebody else's body. Soothe yourself from a perfectly reasonable suffering that comes from feeling separate, which is now manifesting with this person. And you think, well, it's because I, you know, blah, blah, you know. Yes. You just struck an amazing nerve in me, and I just want to confess that you've really explained how I've spent the last 43 years of my life since I was given up for adoption. That sense of feeling separate and trying to not sexually abuse anyone to do that, but tend to try to soothe the feeling through sex.

[85:29]

relationships and having people close. Right. And so my question is, what do you do instead? Well, instead you could share with people what you just did now. You could tell us about that. You're not using, I don't feel like you're using me to soothe that feeling. I think you're using me to share that feeling with me. I don't feel abused at all that you tell me that you have this feeling and everybody I know has this feeling. But to tell me about it is different than to try to get me to get you a hug to distract yourself from it, which you're not trying to do right now. So if you do more of this with people, I think that's perfectly reasonable. But again, watch to make sure you're not telling me this to get rid of the feeling, but rather to bring it out in the open and see its cause. And seeing its cause... is a belief in something that doesn't exist, namely that we're separate, then the pain will drop away someday.

[86:31]

If you bring it out and share it with people, a lot of people would really appreciate that. Because they have the same problem. And then they could say, well, I have that same problem. And you say, oh, wow, thank you. Then you'll feel so separate. Then you'll feel so separate, right. He tricked me again. He didn't come up. He wasn't ready to come up. Something about that guy. He wanted me to stay separate. I might have asked for a hug. There's a little quibble with something that somebody said about wanting not to feel separate. I think there's another side of it, which is that thinking about not being separate is like, eek.

[87:35]

Like, Thinking about not being separated is scary, you mean? Scary, yeah. Like, oh my gosh, I'm going to disappear. Of course, I know that's a delusion, but I think that happens. Yeah, I agree. I have a special issue with separation. The contemplating the dropping away could seem like chaos. There will be no order in the universe anymore if there's no separation. So to keep the separation, that's kind of an ordered thing, here and there. So that would be another emotional challenge in the process. Okay. So I actually had another thought. This is a completely separate thought.

[88:39]

This is a story about something that happened in the past when I had the first broken bone of my life. I went to somebody, put his hands on my broken bone, and they felt warm and they got better. He never said he was going to do anything like that or that it was going to get better, but it happened. And what I was thinking about was how tired I am of this cloth. And I was wondering if you could put your head somewhere. Okay. We'll see. Everyone will know if it goes away. I want to express great gratitude towards my roommate. For your patience. Especially after hearing that you didn't sleep well.

[89:45]

It's his fault. I started to remember last year when I came to this retreat, I didn't sleep well either. I don't know what it is about. Lend to Catholics. I can't hurry that I don't beam all of our faults anymore. Everyone. Well, I guess I can let somebody else have the seat. Thank you. Oh, it's a tie. Please both come. I ain't sharing without drugs. Why not? I have a question. In that room? Say that again. It's hard for me to talk loud.

[91:01]

To sustain it for any length of time. All heartedness? Yes. All heartedness is a sentence. Just a spontaneous co-created. Event. Well, not even an event. It doesn't stop. It's perpetual. Well, it's not perpetual, because it changes all the time. But every event is wholehearted. But it doesn't last. It's always that way. Eternity doesn't last. But wholeheartedness is eternal. Like perhaps H2O, there's two H's and one O. But it's amazing that balance. If there were three, that would totally... Just... So I'm very dependent on that balance.

[92:09]

That balance. Very much so. Yes. And the whole heartedness. But it's not always the same two ages, either. No. I mean, that's... Very mysterious. It confounds me. I get very wrapped up in that and can be very... All those different H's and all those different O's, they work it out over and over. And sometimes some of those H's split from those other H's and those O's and go to some other H's and O's. And sometimes the H's go off into a balloon and the O goes over to carbon dioxide and starts hanging out with carbon. But still, CO2 is important for the treatment and stuff. Yeah, so it's all just amazing. And it's wholehearted. All those molecules are wholehearted. But we make up stories, and when we believe the stories are something of the stories, it seems to close down on our access to wholeheartedness.

[93:26]

So cognitive obstructions, there's a lot of reasons why storytelling is useful. So we keep telling stories. But the danger of them is that we get confused about them and take them for what they're not. And then they become congested, constricted, and painful. And block our access to an understanding of the wholeheartedness of water and so on. Or the transparency. Yeah, and the transparency. I mean, that's equivalent to wholeheartedness. Although this is maybe my mistake. In the seductive story. I mean, stories are very seductive. Extremely seductive. That's part of the reason why we tell them is to seduce other organisms. Come over here, and then they fall in the pit, you know. So storytelling is part of the way humans and other animals treat each other and eat each other and stuff like that.

[94:37]

It's part of the biological situation. But it tends to make things solid and constrictive. So we now have these antidotes of ways of studying the process that are supposedly helpful. And you can test it out. See if it is. I'm not quite sure. An example. Perhaps about a month ago, during the chanting of the Great Heart Sutra, I kind of tripped on this storyline. And with an internal voice, I chanted it like Elmer Fudd.

[95:39]

And it's, I mean, you know, it keeps me, that's what I do to keep perspective on things, to not get hung up on form. What do you do? I call it fuddism. You know, it's evolved to fuddism at this point. It's a way you help yourself keep up with the story? But then it has a tendency to get out of hand. Oh, so you're not upright with phytism? No. Phytism takes over. Phytism protects you from getting caught in phytism? Yes. Well, that happens sometimes. That's why being upright helps you not fall into the story, but then if you're not flexible with the upright, you can get tense from the upright and then... It's got to be a soft upright. So, Fuddism can protect you, but then if you're not gentle with that, you get stuck in Fuddism, which is another constriction.

[96:52]

Or an isn't. Or an isn't. Or an isn't. Like a Buddhism about how to deal with stories, or the Fuddism about how to deal with stories. Exactly. That's So that's why we have to be very tender about this and also be honest about what you are. You're saying, oops, I think the way I keep from falling in is now falling into that. So it is actually quite tricky to then love you or what I'm doing, not attempt to swallow the whole ocean. in uprightness or to get to be seduced with the upright story and to not try to tell myself another story or not even

[98:01]

Did you say to not try to tell yourself in our story? You don't have to try. Just abandon it. You will. You will tell yourself in our story. Trying, again, is kind of like hesitation. Just let it come up. You don't have to try. In our story, it will come because you don't make the stories... I don't make my own stories come. The whole universe supports me to be a storyteller. So in our story, it will come. So you don't have to try it. but it would be good if I was aware of the next one and the next one. I think I have that story that it would be good for me to be aware of my stories. Yeah, it's... What's the kind of desire that's often to be aware of? One. I wish the desire was always there. I'd like it to be always there.

[99:02]

I desired that the desire to be aware would come all the time. But sometimes I forget to look at my story. The desire is not functioning to conclusion all the time. All right, then. That was helpful. So were you. My question is about wholehearted practice as well.

[100:06]

Can we actually practice wholeheartedly or do we just try to practice wholeheartedly? I got stuck on a line in the New Time Sutra, I forgot which one, I don't know what the Sutra's called, but it just says if we practice, if we wholeheartedly sit zazen, that we drop away body and mind, which makes we drop away our stories, our consciousness. I just felt confused. Can we truly practice wholeheartedly? Yes, we can truly practice wholeheartedly, and we do practice wholeheartedly, but because we sometimes forget that everybody's helping us practice wholeheartedly, we think that we're doing it by ourselves, and when we think we're doing it by ourselves, we close to the wholeheartedness. But I say we're always practicing wholeheartedly. But because of our delusion, we don't see it. The way we're practicing is not done by us.

[101:08]

Looks like your son is sometimes wholehearted. But if he thinks he's doing this wonderful, wholehearted way he is by himself, he doesn't see it. If he doesn't see that you're helping him all the time, be the guy he is, then he doesn't see his wholeheartedness. But you're like, you see it. You're going, wow, this guy is wholehearted. But you don't think, you might not think he's doing this all by himself. You might have a sense of, I'm helping him be this guy. So I always say we are wholehearted, but because of our limited vision, we don't see it. So we have to practice actually to see our wholeheartedness. And in what we see it and realize it, then body and mind drop away. But they're already dropping away in our actual wholeheartedness. Our real life is actually... the life of dropping off body and mind moment by moment. That's a real exuberant existence.

[102:14]

But if we don't participate in that, we miss it. But really, that's the way we are. And including that, denying all of our support, both that we're giving and receiving, denying that, it blinds us to it and we accept it wholeheartedly because of that. Our problems are also part of the wholeheartedness of not realizing how this is all working. So it's always wholehearted, even when we don't see it. The thing is, we want to see it. So in order to see it, we have to practice it. So that's the big encouragement for practice, so that we can enjoy our wholeheartedness and our dropping off of body and mind. and help other people. Because if we can do that, we become less cruel, more patient, more courageous, less frightened.

[103:18]

And less frightened means less prone to violence. And all that good stuff comes with understanding our wholeheartedness. and not protecting our body and mind, but enjoying it dropping off and coming up and dropping off and coming up. And not protecting our stories, but watch them drop away and come up. And see how wonderful it is to let them go, or see how wonderful it is to join them dropping off. Join the whole heart. It's already going on. We have to join it. We have to practice joining it. And then somehow, without thinking that we're going to join it all by our own power, realize we have to open to all the assistance we're getting to be who we are. And all the assistance we are, we're getting to be wholehearted. Our wholeheartedness is actually the same practice and the same enlightenment as all beings. So are we practicing wholeheartedly even when we consciously don't?

[104:25]

We feel like we're practicing half-heartedly. We're still practicing wholeheartedly. Yeah, but we don't realize it, so we're practicing wholeheartedly being miserable. More or less miserable, because our practice isn't reaching it. Like that story at the end of Gendra Khan, the teacher is fanning himself and the monk says, the nature of wind is that it is permanent or eternal and all-pervasive. So why do you fan yourself? And he says, you understand that it's permanent, but you don't understand the meaning of reaching everywhere. What's the meaning of reaching everywhere? If you don't fan yourself, you don't realize that it's reaching the fanning. whatever you have to do this to realize oh yeah it there it is there is the wind it's always there but you gotta you gotta do this to realize that it's not only always there reaching your current activity you have to make your current activity the wholeheartedness but again if you i said i said you have to but i really i should say we have to we have to

[105:43]

You need to help me. I need to help you. I need to open to your helping me. You need to open to me helping you. All of this helping you. And you need to practice that and think of that. Because if you don't think of that, you're going to think that you're doing it by yourself. And if you think that, that's going to block you from the realization of doing things together. I have one more question. Were you going to say something? You know, I generate comments. Go ahead. It's a different subject, though. I was just trying to process how to work with taking responsibility for everything and all beings. Accepting. Accepting, okay. Well, I mean, just, you know, in my conventional life, I work in county mental health, so I hear all these, you know.

[106:45]

Excuse me. Can I say something? Yes. Did you hear what I said to Nancy earlier about that? Which part? She said she was having some trouble understanding how to accept responsibility for everything. Okay. Remember what I said? I said, first of all, notice, before you move on to try to figure out how to do that, notice right now that you do respond all the time to all these suffering beings. You do respond. You don't ever not respond. Okay. So accepting responsibility means accepting that you are responding to these people all the time. Okay. Like right now, you're responding to me nonstop, and I'm responding to you. Let's not miss this. To move on to see how we can accept responsibility for everything, what we're missing, how we're doing it, is missing a chance. So that's the first thing. Tune in to the fact that you are responding all the time.

[107:50]

Tune in and accept it. Accept it and tune in. Accept it and tune in. The next thing is, notice that when you do draw a line, like, this is one line too many. Now, when you draw that line, see that line. Don't respect it. I can't be responsible for this person or for all of this person. I can't do it. And just be gentle and respectful of that. And that's still accepting responsibility. That's accepting responsibility and also it's being responsive to the line, to the border being drawn. It doesn't seem like being open to unlimited responsibility because you're not at that point. I would say responsive feels much different to me than responsibility. Well, responsive does feel different, but I'm also emphasizing that you have the ability to be responsible. You have the ability to respond. Responsibility.

[108:50]

you have the ability to respond. That's part of responsibility. The other part is that your influence and what you're influenced by goes, there's no real way, there's no non-arbitrary way to draw a line. But we do draw a line, and if you are gentle with that line, it'll drop away. If you fight it or ignore it, you know, it'll just keep coming back. There's a reason why it's there. it's actually another response. It's not really a separation. And if you take care of it, you'll more and more be able to accept what's on the other side of it as something you're responding to. So those are the two basic ways. I think the way I was thinking about it is more leaning into it, and it feels very heavy and burdensome. Don't lean into it. Because you're already working with it right now. And then, again, if you're upright, you notice it.

[109:54]

Oh, yeah, wow. So you're accepting your ability to respond, and you're accepting you're setting limits on what you're responsible to. That's also part of accepting responsibility, is to accept limits to responsibility. And the people who accept the limits to responsibility are people who can accept unlimited responsibility. By accepting our limits, we can open to unlimitedness. If you don't accept your limits, then you're... If you don't open to your limits, you won't open to the unlimited. If you accept your limits, you can accept your unlimitedness. But it's not your unlimitedness, it's unlimitedness, which is touching us all the time from all directions. The whole universe is realized as us. But if you don't realize, if you don't accept that you're limited to being this little thing, if you close to that, you're closed to the universe.

[110:58]

If you open to your pettiness, you open to some other stuff, too. You open to your non-pettiness. But to open to non-pettiness, what you haven't yet opened to your pettiness, is not healthy. Did you get that? That can turn into nihilism and stuff like that. So start with your pettiness, open to that, that will be a warm-up to opening to non-pettiness, which isn't yours, but it's all around you. Non-pettiness is all around us. The big non-petty. So, again, somebody might say, well, I'd like to open to that. Well, I wouldn't advise it, actually. First of all, open to what you've got right now, your self-concern, and being responsive in that situation. Then you open to the unlimited. Okay, I'll try.

[112:01]

Try that here. Thank you. Oh, we went on for quite a while today, didn't we? To go on longer and longer and soon there will be no one left. Especially tomorrow. I've been feeling a response to an observation that Lisa left shortly after she was angry. And she left with some distress on her face. Well, thank you for pointing that out. And so maybe... Could you go check on her and see how she's doing, Mark? Ask her if she would like any assistance from me or anybody? Sure. Okay. Do you know where she lives? Does anybody know where she lives? She's in 202. 202. Does anybody have any zinc? Any zinc? In the kitchen.

[113:03]

They got us lozenges. They say it's zinc. Like actual zinc. Sorry, I... There's probably a gift shop at the hospital. No, it's all right. I'll do this one. We also have a pharmacist here on staff. Amy. Amy. Hello. Amy's a pharmacist. Don't keep me looking until I've got it. I'm in recovery. Don't have to go. I have some echinacea and some yin shao. Oh, I got Yanchao, too, but I can't take it, so welcome to it. Well, now that we're on zinc and so on, should we stop and sit for a little while before service?

[113:53]

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