Do you have a response that you would care to give me to my question? Do you wish to have body and mind fully engaged? Yes, I do. You do? Great. Yes. I want to be able to follow up. Thank you. I'll come back to that. Yes. Not necessarily. Not necessarily? Tell me about that. When I'm sitting in meditation, I hear the airplane. Yes. I can let my mind spin to where it's going, or I can come back to my breathing.

[01:03]

Yes. I have choice. Yes. In that sound that I hear. Not necessarily do I want to have my body and mind going on that airplane. Okay. I'll come back to your thing about control. So when you hear, I propose to you that when you hear the sound of the airplane, and if you do not fully engage that sound, which you are hearing, that when you are experiencing your breathing, it will be more difficult for you to fully engage the breathing. if you don't fully engage the sound of the car, of the airplane. Engage the sound of the airplane, then that will promote you fully engaging the sound of the car, the feeling of your breath, the pleasure in your knee or the pain in your knee,

[02:16]

So I think partly what you're saying is you don't know if you would like to be paying attention to sounds of airplanes. Yeah. I'm not saying, I'm not asking would you like to be hearing airplanes. I'm saying when you hear an airplane, the sound of an airplane, do you wish to be fully engaged? And you're saying you're not clear yet about that. I'm proposing to you that you can be enlightened hearing the sound of an airplane or the feeling of breathing. There's Zen stories about people waking up. Well, there's a story about the Buddha waking up when he saw the morning star, Venus. The Buddha woke up when he saw the planet of love. The sight of him seeing Venus. He fully engaged that sight. I'm fully engaged to the sight of Venus, but I don't want to fully engage the sound of a motorcycle.

[03:25]

You might say, but I'm saying to you, if you do fully engage the sound of the motorcycle, or the sound of the airplane, or the feeling of your spine, the feeling when you exhale, I'm saying when you fully engage it, you are authentically listening, you're authentically smelling, whatever. Now I welcome your response to that. I'm just, I guess, about what we would ultimately engage. I'm saying, I'm saying. Paying attention, experiencing it in your body. Well, you are paying, when you, yeah, when you hear it, you are paying attention to it. And if you're aware of it, you're actually, yeah, you're aware of it, you're paying attention to it. There's other things going on that you could be paying attention to. Someone else could be sitting right next to you, and they don't hear the airplane, they hear a motorcycle.

[04:29]

And you're in the same room, the sound of the mechanical wave from the motorcycles coming into the room and the airplane. Somebody else could be Right now, somebody could be not hearing me talk and hear the signs up there. I often, I used to, I still go to Berkeley, but I used to go to this place called Yoga Room, and I still go there, but we used to be in a location where at the beginning of class, almost every beginning class, in that same location, there's two, oftentimes two ballet classes going on with two pianos. And then outside there's street noise and dogs barking and airplanes going over and street noise. And I would sit there and I would hear those sounds. And I almost never could figure out when, but by the time the period was over, I wasn't hearing any of the sounds anymore. And I never really found out if the piano stopped. And I didn't exactly withdraw from hearing the piano.

[05:34]

I'm more like relaxed with hearing the piano. It's actually kind of like coming to this meditation class and it's in the middle of all this noise in Berkeley. Like wouldn't it be better to go, like Green Gulch is very quiet. Wouldn't it be better to go there? Well anyway, they could come to Green Gulch but they also like to go to Berkeley because they don't have to drive. So you have this class but by the end of the period it's almost always quiet. How come it's quiet? They've been quiet the whole day. I mean, they haven't been bothering me, but I had the last meditation I was noticing. Yeah. But they've been coming. They've been coming and going all day. Part of the day they could have been bothering us. And actually, I did close that door there because I thought, you know, it would look quieter. But I mostly wanted it closed so I wouldn't be competing with the street noise so you could hear me better.

[06:37]

But I think people are sitting with the street noise and they're not bothered by it. But are you actually withdrawing your attention from it? So some people would say you're withdrawing your attention, but I would say actually... that a better way is to engage the sound by relaxing with it. Part of engagement, fully engaging with the sound, is to be welcoming of it. If you resist it, you're less fully engaging it. But, yeah, so I guess I'm saying that When we fully engage with things, we're not bothered by them, even if the thing is pain. That's the theory. The theory is if you fully engage with disease, you will find peace. And airplane sounds could be like a .

[07:39]

Now there's a certain point which is going to actually hurt your eardrums if you get too close. So it's possible that in some situations we might wear earphones to protect our ears from damage, but we still would be able to hear it. So, yeah, so I appreciate your questioning. I think what I was more addressing was the kind of spin that you might give the airplane and the, you know, when your trip last week and, you know, pretty soon you're doing this story. The spin, yeah. Yeah. Or the trail of stories around the airplane. Yes. moderation, or I'm pretty neutral, but there's, I'll catch myself going out to Pennsylvania where I was last week. Exactly. So, if you fully engage the sound, then that's it. We're just fully engaging the sound. Now, if a thought of Pennsylvania comes up, it's a thought of Pennsylvania, and the same will happen with that.

[08:43]

that you'll just be engaging the thought of Pennsylvania, and you'll realize peace with the sound of the airplane, you'll realize peace with the thought of Pennsylvania. But if you partially engage with the sound of the airplane, then you partially engage with the story about Pennsylvania, and then everything seems stuck together. It's like you're on this treadmill of airplane, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, tomorrow, yesterday. It's like everything gets all gooey and stuck together. If you fully engage things, fully engaging is like authentic enlightenment, enlightenment, enlightenment, complete, fresh, impermanent, fleeting, authentic peace. for a moment, then another one. It isn't like for a little while. Now, nice in a way, but that's not the way it is.

[09:48]

It isn't like authentic listening and you get to hold it for a while. It's just for the moment, a fleeting moment of human life. It's over, and now another one. This is the opportunity. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, Annie? Anna? Annie? Annie? You said you're fully engaged with mind and body. And I get fully engaged in sound and sight and body. But somehow you're almost... No. That's what happens when you don't fully engage your mind. Well, like in her example, you're hearing the airplane and you're fully engaged.

[10:53]

Well, you might be hearing the airplane and not even say airplane. If you fully engage the sound of the airplane, say airplane. What? It sounds like a mind out of you, not running and not performing and not doing the things that the mind does, which is think. So it's kind of like you disengage here at the mind. Yeah, so with that example, it would be more like, You put the mind in gear and you fully engage that gear that nothing happens. There's no more turning because you're fully engaged. Yet you can't go anywhere else. There's no other possibility than being right where you are. So there's no turning into the next thing. It's totally engaged. And that's it. And then things change, but it's not like the machine turns you into the next thing.

[11:56]

You're free. Usually, we're thinking of the next turn of the wheel, of the last one. So we're in this, like, karmic treadmill, because we're not fully there. So part of the way to become free of karma is by being totally present with karma, that it stops working for the moment, you know, just in the moment. as consequence, but if you're completely present, you become free of it. Any other people? Yes. Everything's kind of in process of translation of concepts or understanding. Right, everybody's translating. Everybody's translating what I'm saying into your thinking. That's going on all the time. I say something, and you make up a story about what I just said. But that's normal. My translation was that stimuli happens, events happen.

[13:06]

You watch the event unfold, flower. You vibrate with the vibration of the event. You shake it through, and then you move on. Be with that rather than be partially involved in that. and then you're lingering in the last one and worried about the future one. So then when you move into the next one, you're not ready for that. So when you're fully engaged, you let go of this, it changes, and you're ready for the next one. And if we don't fully engage with what's happening, then when things change, we kind of are holding on to what's happening. We're not ready sometimes to let go of what has just gone away because we didn't fully engage it.

[14:10]

We haven't had enough of it because we didn't have all of it. So then we kind of like, part of us kind of like, well, can I? But it's gone. You missed your chance. But you don't accept that So then your vitality gives you this thing called sadness or grieving. What are you grieving? You're grieving on that you haven't let go of. You've let, yeah, so then if you completely embrace the sadness, opening to the sadness, then you let go of what you should have let go of before. Namely, what is gone. You would have been able to let go of what's gone if you fully tasted it, fully smelled it, fully touched it. But when we touch something, but not fully, part of us wants to try again. Because we want to fully experience this moment.

[15:15]

So then it goes away, and we want to try it again. I didn't have that, you know, what is it, October 9th. I didn't have it. I spaced out a few times. I want some more October 9th. Well, October 10th comes and I'm like, come on, do this now. I don't want to. I want to finish. I haven't finished October 9th. And also October 11th I'm interested in also. But October 11th isn't dealt with by sadness. One that's gone that you want to have more of that sadness help you with. So then you've got to do on October 10th, you've got to say, fully engage the sadness. And when you're completely open to the sadness, you let go of the past.

[16:19]

And you're ready for the present. And you're ready for the future. This is another aspect of being authentic, of being yourself so completely that you don't hold on to yourself and therefore when you change, you actually let go of what you were. And for all the ways you were in the past that you haven't let go, if you sit still, and fully engage yourself, the past, you know, the homework you didn't do will be given to you. So a lot of us do have, when we sit still, we find out we have a lot of grieving to do. You have to grieve all the moments that we did in order to be fully ready for the present.

[17:24]

And I'd like to now go to, what's your name? George. George. I'd like to go to George's comment. He didn't say, no, I do not want to fully engage body and mind in hearing sounds or whatever. By the way. It was good. And he didn't say he didn't want to. He just says he's kind of concerned about controlling. And that's very good because when you fully engage body and mind, you're trying to control the hearing or whatever, or the body and mind. Put it the other way, in order to fully engage body and mind with what's happening, you need to give up trying to control, which is, you didn't say this, but what will happen if we fully engage in whatever is happening? Part of us thinks we have to hold part of ourself aside

[18:30]

or quite a bit of ourself aside, to watch what's going on and try to control it while we somewhat dabble in what's happening. I'll feel a little bit of what's happening, but mostly I want to kind of supervise and make sure nothing goes wrong when I feel this whatever it is. So if actually you're wise to say that because part of you is saying, you're becoming aware that part of me would rather be in control than fully engaged. Part of me would rather be in control than be authentic. Because I'm afraid of what will happen if I'm not in control. Dash, I think I can be in control. Dash, I think there's me and the universe. And that I can control it. Do you want to be totally immersed in the universe? Well, what will happen to me? You'll start to realize that you're vulnerable.

[19:34]

We are vulnerable. Vulnerable means able to be hurt, able to be injured. We are able to be hurt. That's our condition. But not everybody can... open to that. So we need to train ourselves. That's why we need to be calm too. We need to learn to be calm even though we're aware that we're vulnerable. We are vulnerable. I think it's good to be calm with that. Then when it manifests, when we get harmed, we have a chance to be not totally surprised by that. I had a feeling I could be injured and here I'm injured. And somebody's like completely here and calm with that. So yeah, so that sense of, ooh, I'm losing control, it shows you're testing maybe. Losing control means you're testing maybe giving up control. We're not in control. We're not out of control.

[20:35]

That's just what people who are afraid want. They want to be in control. Then they won't, nothing will go wrong. But the more we try to control, the more scared we get. Like the United States' reaction to 9-11. The reaction, people got somewhat scared by 9-11, but they got much more scared by the reaction to 9-11. Mostly, in my experience, with 9-11, right away people kind of got quiet and and kind of sad and were grieving and were appreciating and wanting to take care of the people they loved. It was not good for restaurant business or movies. People were not so much into media distraction. They were more into, like, being together. And then the control stuff came up and the fear came up.

[21:37]

They have these things, you know, there's a terrorist thing, the color of the, what is it called, terrorist threat level. It's really fear level. I shouldn't say really fear. It's partially fear level. There are other things that make the level go up and down, like a threat. But it's also like chances of fire, chances of terrorist attack, and fear level. They're kind of related. So it's called War on Terror, but it was a war on fear. Actually, that's right. Shortly after 9-11, I heard actually some people in the defense department. I think I heard maybe Colin Powell say something about being patient. And then I heard the expression, War on Fear. War on Fear. I don't think we should make war on fear. I think fear. Making peace with fear promotes nonviolence.

[22:45]

If we're afraid, we're not necessarily violent when we're afraid. But when we're afraid, we're at risk of violence. If you approach them, they might attack you. It's because they're afraid. And they would never, maybe never do that or never want to do that if they weren't afraid. So you start, if you start playing with the control thing, you start playing with people's spirit. But rather than me play with your control thing, punish you play with your control thing. Just contemplate, consider the possibility of giving up trying to control in some situations. like you did today. You actually weren't in control of what happened here today, were you? You let me ring the bell at various times.

[23:48]

That's part of what Zen training is about, is you go someplace where you give up controlling how long the meditation periods are. You may have wishes, except somebody else Now, you might want to go someplace where they're committed to a certain schedule. At least then you can say, well, I'm not in control, but the schedule is going to have periods that long, so there's some control here. Well, that's okay. Even there you can give up kind of control because some of the periods, although you know how long they're going to be, still you can't control what happens during them. So you're kind of testing what it's like to give up. Again, I would say give up trying to control. I try in the position of bell ringer.

[24:49]

Somehow they put the bell by me. with this nice hammer. I tried to give up control of this day. I've tried to give up control of it. And I think I've been somewhat successful of giving up control of this day. I didn't feel like I had control of the day, or you, or me. And I feel really good about that. And that's the way I want to live. Give up. I want to give up trying to control people. And I want to concentrate on And I want to encourage other people to give up trying to control people, especially themselves. But I understand that it's frightening to consider giving up trying to control. And fully engaging body and mind to accomplish it, giving up trying to control. You won't be able to fully engage if you're spending part of your energy trying to control it. Not to mention thinking you're in control.

[25:50]

That really takes a lot of energy. That's major denial. I am in control. I guess I'm God. I mean, I'm God in the sense of I'm God the creator. I'm in control of the universe. This is like, this is what we call major delusion. I can get Rev. Anderson to ring this bell anytime I want. One of you maybe thought you made me do that. So anyway, that's part of the deal. That's part of why you might not be sure that you want to be authentic, because you have more important things to do than be authentic, namely. And it's, you know, it's... It has market appeal. One time I was leading a retreat, I think at Mount Madonna, and on the way down I heard on the radio an advertisement that comes on the radio and she says, at work, you know, somebody else is in charge of the temperature of the workspace and what's on the music system and

[27:12]

I forgot what other things, but various things at work that she wasn't in control of. She says, but when I come to such and such motel, I'm in control of the temperature, what kind of music it is, blah, blah, blah. So she goes to this motel where she can be in control. And that's a sales thing. People find that very attractive, to go someplace. We're your master of the universe. But this retreat has been a retreat to come and concentrate on really being yourself, primarily be completely yourself, dash be enlightened. The price of enlightenment is partially, not entirely, is partially to give up trying to control. That's part of it. It's a big part, actually. But then after you give up trying to control, then you have to do the work of actually being yourself.

[28:16]

When you're not distracting yourself by control, then you look to see, well, what is it there that I'm not under control? What are the feelings? What are the fears? What are the desires? Yeah. Wow. Amazing. Amazing, amazing, amazing. enlightenment, enlightenment, enlightenment, and hard to face. Hard to face all things going inside, hard to face all the faces outside, all the suffering inside, all the suffering outside, hard to face it, hard to engage it. And again, in order to fully engage it, I have to give up these minor things like being in control or trying to control. It's a big distraction. And again, enlightenment, what is enlightenment?

[29:24]

Enlightenment is unobstructed life for the welfare of all beings. It's the greatest happiness. It's the greatest benefit. That's what I mean by it. But it's a lot of work to be you. And it's a lot of work for me to be me. I wanted to calligraphy here for you, which some of you might want to carry away today. Yeah. I'll make a legend. Maybe you'll be a legend someday. These two characters, the first two characters mean, this means living, so the first two characters, the first two characters mean living being or sentient being.

[30:33]

The third character means nature. The fourth character means immediately. The second character means is. Immediately is or immediately are. It also means These two characters in connecting with the last one, which means therefore, kanpan means are what is called. So the nature of living beings is what is called. Bodhi. So these two characters mean Bodhi, pronounced Bodhi or Bodhi, Bodhi. So the nature of living beings is what we call enlightenment. This is from the Mahayana Sutra called the non-activity of all things. The non-activity of all things is how all things really don't move in reality.

[31:38]

Think how they're coming to be right now, and they don't move. They're just what they are, and then they change. They don't change into something else. Something else comes up, which also doesn't move. Who you are right now is not moving. There's an inactivity to you. And now things have changed in New York. There's a new person here, and that person is completely still being this person. And that person's gone now, and we have a new person. And that person is also still. That person's gone now, and we have a new person. Constantly fresh, new person, and nobody's moving. Everybody's changing. The consequence of that is if you tune in to this present person, that's enlightenment. But it takes some training to be here moment after moment and not to get distracted by our current consciousness. And when we are distracted, be here and then you're back home.

[32:42]

Okay? Living beings often... Is living beings all things? Strictly speaking, living beings are actually, what's meant by that is not completely enlightened. So, for example, a human being who's not completely enlightened is a sentient being. It's not mountains. Well, mountains, in a sense, would be sentient beings. They're not completely enlightened either. Bodhisattvas are sentient beings because they're not fully Buddhism. So an animal who's not a non-human animal, a whale or a cockroach, their is enlightened. When a cockroach is completely a cockroach, You know, I don't know when that is, but when a cockroach is completely cockroached, that's enlightenment in the cockroach.

[33:54]

The cockroach isn't distracted by its desire for... Totally present with that, not giving up, trying to control grease intake. Cockroach is enlightened. When you watch a cockroach and you see a cockroach completely being a cockroach, you're seeing enlightenment. We're just teaching you through the cockroach. When it is able to realize its full cockroach-edness, then it is able to transcend being a cockroach. Among other things, yes. The point is to help suffering beings. Suffering beings are the beings who do not fully realize being a suffering being. If you fully realize what being a suffering being is, you realize the enlightenment which benefits all other beings.

[34:58]

I have really enjoyed being with you today, and I'll come again tomorrow. I mean, somebody will come again tomorrow who may have the same name as I did. We'll see who he is. Or he may be a she. I heard a rumor that Dalai Lama is considering reincarnating as a woman. In control of that? He's not in control, and neither am I. Okay, Elizabeth. So, first of all, you can leave all of your gear here. We'll be locking the whole building up. I was with you, but the rest is fine. Also, I'm someone who won't be here tomorrow, so I wanted just to say a few words about Donna, which is a Pali word, the language, the Buddha taught in the Pali word for generosity.

[36:13]

The registration went to cover the rental of this building and reps. some of the food and things of that sort. So the rest of the offerings are given completely on the basis of donation of generosity because the teachings are really considered priceless. So if you feel moved to help Brad with his future teaching, now is going to allow him to go somewhere else and teach another group. And we're really here based on the generosity of the group that came before and helped support Rev's teachings so that he could come to us. So it's like we're part of that 2,500-year lineage of the Buddha when we give to continue the teachings. for another week or two weeks, whatever it is. Or a day. Or a day. Tomorrow, for example. Anyway, there's no set amount. Whatever is in your hearts.

[37:16]

Thank you so much. We'll see you tomorrow. Don't forget to buy another parking permit.

[37:23]

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