Just one question, would these calls put in any specific order? I mean, is it just a random ordering? Well, I feel that the order is logical, reasonable, intentional. In the early ones particularly I feel, in the first several I feel like they're very much kind of going like this and then going like that and then going like this and then going like that, kind of like presenting basics of the teaching in different sides. And I think we've often felt that the case we're on flows naturally from the last one. It might be interesting to see how this one flows from the last one.

[01:02]

Want to sit here, Cathy? Want to sit here? This is Cathy. So we have this next case here. It's case 36. And in the booklet record, it's case three. The great master, Matsu, was unwell. Seriously. Seriously sick. by near death. And the superintendent or the chief priest of the monastery came to ask about his health and said, how is your venerable health these days, Master?

[02:27]

And he said, sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. That's the story. As I think many of you know, these names of the Buddha can be found in certain lists of names of Buddha. You can find these two names. And the sun-faced Buddha is said to live for, I believe, 18,000 years.

[03:32]

And the moon-faced Buddha just lives one day and one night. This story seems to be, I mean, this koan seems to be very difficult. Although we can say things about it, it seems that it would be good to... What do you say? I guess I kind of feel like... Since it's so difficult, we shouldn't... Since it's so difficult, let's not depend on what anybody else says about it. if we are encountering some very difficult to understand expression, we might want to get some help from somebody else and then, with their assistance, say something.

[04:52]

But in some ways it's more straightforward just to express our understanding, because then we know, not we know, but we have a sense that we're really, we're just really expressing ourselves. And we don't think that, oh, there's some chance because I'm using what some other Zen teacher said, that I'll be less foolish than I might be if I just said what I thought. In some ways that's even more foolish. to, in addition to not understanding, to hide behind somebody else's words. So I would suggest that we approach this really from our own sense of it. On the other hand, sometimes people like to have a little bit of point of departure.

[05:58]

to express something. So do you have some point of departure available to you now, or do you need anything more? Yes. Just a question. I wondered if you or maybe anyone else knows whether or not in the sort of the Chinese cosmology of this time, the sun was understood, as we understand today, as casting light on the moon, which is then reflected back to the earth, or whether or not, I know a lot of people from earlier times sort of believed that the sun had one kind of illumination and the moon had another kind of illumination.

[07:18]

And I just wondered when people at this time were thinking of the moon, if they were thinking of it as reflecting the sun's light, or if they were thinking of it as self-luminous. I don't know what they were thinking. Yes. I felt that this poem expressed the contradictory idea that As individuals, there'll never be a time in which we don't exist, and yet our existences are fleeting. Yeah. I think that's part of the imagery here. The sun, you know? And... One image that somebody suggested is you think of the sun, and particularly think of the sun setting, maybe. You know, maybe in its last glorious moments, just before it starts going down into the horizon.

[08:30]

And in that golden radiance, where you feel some poignancy, too, that it's going away, but in that golden radiance, in some sense, you feel all of eternity just in that moment. And even though it's going away, still in that moment, you feel eternity. Whereas the moon, you could say the same thing about the moon, but the moon, I think, for Asian people, conveys more fragility. Asian people don't, like, look at the sun too much, except when it's setting. It's, I guess, a safe time to look at it. When they look at the moon, they usually don't look straight at the moon. Usually they like to look at the moon through clouds, or through a window, or, like, take a plum branch, hold the plum branch up in front of the moon.

[09:33]

Yes? Yes. So it's like a whole, a whole day or a whole life. So it seems like the whole of life. It's an expression of the experiencing of the whole of life. Yes. And I think generally we can go ahead and, you know, watch all koans, if we want. We can watch everything, actually. And we can watch certainly all Buddhist teachers as... using some opportunity, like you're dying and somebody comes up to you and says, how are you?

[10:43]

And you use this opportunity of the words coming out of your mouth to express the whole. And part of the whole, part of the way we are is we're this strange combination of feeling like lasting forever and feeling impermanent. you know, what is it about you that would help you understand this, you know, what is it about the way you are that shows you what this story is about? Yes. Well, when I was approaching it, I was thinking about, I have visualizations of what a sun face would have, a moon face would have, what it would look like in a relationship. to the experience of doing Zazen. In the sun-faced one, I saw the light glowing out and the rays going out.

[11:46]

In the moon-faced one, it was more like being receptive, a receiver of light and stuff. To me, then, it was this experience of breathing in and breathing out and Zazen breathing in through all my pores, kind of luminosity when you get very quiet. and breathing out again, kind of worries of why all the people with the idea of being, coping on being, . Was there a hand over there? Yes? Yes. I guess this is what happened because I was sick. I've been sick for a long time. And so I came tonight because the colon... You heard about this colon? Mary was reading it, you know, and I, I said, she said, I mean, I said, okay, she said I've been sick.

[12:52]

And I remember she had a cross and she said, did she get, I said, I have to read the colon. So I read the colon and said, I should call. Mary, is Mary over here? Yes. So anyway, we read it and whenever I read those things. Where were you when you read it? I was sitting at the dining room table. Was Mary with you? Yes, Mary was sitting there. Are you roommates? Mary lives in my house, yes. I'm with you, too. Yeah, so I thought, well, I did it because it was about someone that was sick, and how are you, and the medical master said, you know, something's been really good. And I thought, you know, that's exactly why. According to how I feel, that is...

[13:54]

You know, it's kind of, to me, it was like saying, what you try to say close to your soul, how you live close to yourself. I know this is, I'm trying not to be too unholy about this, but that's how it first hit me. And I thought, it's always easy to find something deeper in anything, because if you look at it, then it becomes awesome. But in the beginning, I think it made me feel good to hear someone say, it's a very calm thing to say. You know, how are you today? One minute it would blow and the next minute it would turn around and be, you know, frightening. And that's the way life is. It's, you know, something's going to move you through that. You stand for a while. You'll get out of it then.

[14:56]

And I always think of children as wouldn't food us. I think of them as something's food us. It won't take food us. They're really either juicy, it's crying, or they're brilliant with joy and laughter. So I don't know. It just seemed like everything was said. I don't like people to say that to me. I want to talk. Well, that's simple. You know what to say to Carla. Yes. I think there's a certain problem with my experience with the people I've been with.

[16:05]

A lot of things get less and less important. Whether it's a sun-faced moon or a moon-faced Buddha, it's one or the other, and it doesn't look enough. It's not so much, I didn't experience it so much as what is a sun-faced moon and what is a blue-faced moon, because it's more like, to me, they're the same thing, and it's all the same thing. It's one version of the same thing. How's the air?

[17:05]

Is it starting to get a little warm here? Would someone be willing to open some windows? Not Andy, it looks like. It would appear to me that when they're making the statement that there isn't a difference.

[18:12]

But I think when you're living it through death or loss, that even though you have an understanding of that, that while the loss is occurring, whatever, it's an entirely different thing. You can't hold on to So, how? through understanding that there actually is no real loss.

[19:16]

And how do you understand that? What's the road to understanding that? I tend to say preparation, but an understanding in the... in just the way life functions, the way life is. Right. So what do you study to find out how life functions? The mind. So, that's right. So now, let's hear about the mind. It says... It says here, um... It comes from religion. Religion comes from the mind. Mind is no more beyond one. Why does this always come to be? When he had fallen on this thought, suddenly he was well. That comes out of a sense. You just simplified the whole thing. It's really nice. We've all been real. I have an image of

[20:18]

My mother comes to see me when I'm ill, and it's like this pretty melodic, oh, I'm really ill, and blah, blah, blah. And my girlfriend comes to see me, and I'm like, I'm alive, you know, I'm like, okay, I'm not that bad. It's a frame of mind, you can't, they tell you, you just take it on. So service is the depth of loss of a loved one. I used to be just a friend going through loss of a loved one, and his preparation and The way he handled it was really unique for me to see. There wasn't this boring and this grasping to human form. So I get ready to go. So how do you prepare yourself? Well, I still do now. By realizing how we cling and our attachments to certain things. I think. Yes? I have a feeling that it has to be a complete surrender to all our pains, and it's kind of been to feel that we have to overcome this separation or so, but it feels to me that somehow it's more a process of an opening, if we really get ready to actually welcome this pain in our life.

[21:43]

And myself, my tendency is not at all to get strong, but actually I feel that freedom is more like a complete surrender to it, which is kind of the return. But that's not easy. It's not an easy thing to do? Oh, no. No. It just came up to me, because you were talking so much about the away training, I don't think it's so much about doing, it's really, it's a process of opening, and actually, and for disease or illness or weakness, it's just already this kind of preparation, or it can be sometimes a chance to that, because it's something that doesn't give us the chance to agree. The disease is the preparation? Yeah, it can be a chance to that. If it can give a chance. A chance for what? You already said it. The disease gives a chance for what? To not run away, but to open up to anything else.

[22:48]

You realize the non-infection. Mm-hmm. Well, I think I was going to say something like Peter said. My sense in listening to Chris was that I felt something tightening, that in the presence of some terrible tragedy, if we were really practicing, that we would somehow hold back the fear or hold back the fear, and that through some kind of trick of the mind, we would be able to kind of circumvent some real tragic, you know, some relationship to a tragedy. I feel like this poem is about Master Ma being told we won't face Buddha, and being told that they're not meeting each other, necessarily, by being there together, and see how he could be pounding his head on the earth

[23:56]

to hear it pouring out of every place. He lost his son or his teacher. And that would be in the place we go. And right through the center of that would be the someplace we go to. That's this alternation, you know, just the way the sun and moon alternate. You know, the sun comes up every day and sets and moon rises and in life, you know, brightness, you know, comes and goes. And so, you know, in the situation of being sick or someone else being sick, I think there are moments where we can maintain our brightness or our cheerfulness or our sense of peace and other moments when we lose it and slip into despair.

[25:23]

I get the impression from you know, from the way that the expression is used here, that this person who's saying something is Buddha, he's not captured or he's not caught by despair, not caught by happiness or the lack of despair, but he's not stuck in it. For him, It's kind of like an equanimity between sun phase and moon phase. For me, there's no equanimity. It's like an alteration of the two. So I think that there's something in this about being able to experience sun phase and moon phase, joy and despair, or peace and despair, without without becoming trapped by them or owned by them.

[26:31]

Yes, certainly. And more. What more? Yes. Well, I'm thinking about the person who asked the question, sort of thinking about what Carla said about there being this easy level of access, but when I think about this monk coming and asking about him when he was clearly very, very sick, I think he was asking him to say something pretty profound about what was going on. Well, this guy, you know, this Master Ma, always said something profound. Everything he did was profound. That's called... That's called right faith.

[27:44]

I leak. I wonder about the monk, though, whether he dared to ready himself to receive this response. I wonder about that monk. Aline? I was just going to say that I wonder about defining illness, or what is the difference between illness and... And that maybe it's in the definition to illness that we experience. That maybe if we didn't define it as illness, we would be gone. Yeah. And Master Ma let it be called guilt.

[28:54]

the great master said, it's illness. Watch me be sick. Check this out. And come and ask me questions now and hear what the sick man says. But it's true that without defining that way, he wouldn't have been able to use sickness to teach the way he did. And then look at the way he teached. He teached. He said this very amazing thing. Now that he's already said it, you think, well, there it is. But nobody ever said that before, as far as we know. We've checked the records. There's been a computer search. Somehow he managed to say that. And because he said it, now they wrote it down, because they said, this is really interesting that he said this.

[29:57]

Yes? What is . It means horse or cow. Because he could lick his nose with his tongue. He was a big guy with a long tongue, so they called him Horse Master. His posthumous name was Great Silence. He has more certified enlightened disciples than any other teacher in China or Japan. or Korea. I don't know if there's any Tibetan teachers that have as many as he did. He produced 139 Zen masters. Not to mention lots of other, you know, probably very fine disciples who weren't officially Zen masters.

[31:11]

So he was an amazingly effective teacher, and here's one of the most, apparently the most effective and amazing of his teachings, which we get to look at and wonder about. But I will say over and over that I recommend that we approach it from ourselves, that you try to... I like the instruction of, you know, go back to yourself. and check that out, and then tell us about this story. Remember, you know, that you're a person sort of on your own speaking here. Now let's see what that person has to say. And tell us about what it's like to walk back home through yourself. Tell us about that. And see if that's what these other people went through when they contemplated this story.

[32:18]

Yes? All my life, I've been with a surgeon. And really, it seems that... Even when you were a little baby, you did? Probably not. When did you start? How long has it been? About 14 years. And what they're saying right here in the first sentence is that after all that investigation, the mind entered into consciousness that is still this. And for me, there is the sun-faced Buddha and moon-faced Buddha is the sun. It's the sun. My experience is still this, the heat of the sun. And the moon is still the and the feeling of the moon. So without thinking and getting too deep into a lot of this, and I think what you're telling us to do, and I think it's really important, is to try to know these people through our own experience and embody the teaching.

[33:39]

I like the way it works. Narrow faces, four inches without subjectivity. You know what it is about that that you like? You know what it is? What is it encouraging you? It's beyond mine, basically. illness or wellness like for Dave. This brings up some of the other cases for me that we've studied. I've been investigating it also, that this whole duality thing, moon face, sun face, a lot of the footprints that are embedded in the mud, the thing that makes the footprints, a lot of duality.

[35:01]

And to me, what it brings up, and I'd like your instruction about that, but what it brings up for me is when you talked about being Hitlerian, That was really a key thing. And I realized that I define myself by what gets me. That I react to that. So it's like there's part of me that's defined by the objects that I call not me. And then there's a part of me, and then there's a process in some way, and I'm still investigating this, where I create the objects too. And so it seems to me that there's a circular flow that I'm feeling when I read this kind of thing, where there's an inflow from the objects and then an outflow from me when I create the objects.

[36:02]

And it seems like I'm creating my own objects and then reacting to that, almost. So the duality to me is not sequential. It kind of happens all at the same time. I don't know if that's that term you talk about or not, but that's what I think. And it's a good feeling. It feels very calm. And I think that neurophasis forms without subjectivity for me might help me in noticing that there are objects out there I let go of my processor. Notice there are objects out there. Notice this. Well, I think I'm getting in trouble here. Well, what you're saying, and the line that Janine just pointed out about the mirror contemplates or confronts objects without subjectivity, or confronts the image without subjectivity,

[37:08]

faces, faces formed, or faces images. I don't think that I individually create my images, but my life system is such that it interprets whatever is happening by these images. And I get the images from myself, so I interpret what's happening by using myself. I use myself to interpret who's out there. And then the next line is, the pearl in the bowl rolls on itself. So we're rolling on ourself. Yes.

[38:14]

What I got from that verse, and a little going back too, sun-faced pulmonia of the free hand is what we've already talked about physically, an illumination that's reflected in the moon, or in the particulars of each situation, whether it be the distant, the cold, the sick, the dying, or in other situations. So it's a complete reflection without subjectivity. The illumination directly reflected the moon without anything really interfering in that reflection. And then the pearl in a bowl rolls of itself. A pearl looks a lot like a moon. And the bowl also, for a pearl, has a sense of eternity to it. Pearl basically just rolls constantly inside of the ball. It can't really get out. Hopefully. Hopefully.

[39:16]

And so what I kind of envision from that is Pearl constantly rolling and meeting certain senses and directly reflecting or directly getting intimate contact with the ball, which is the illumination of And the pearl rolling in the bowl, the circumstances of the pearl are that it's luminous and that it rolls in the bowl. And its luminousness rolling on itself, it can even imagine that it sees a moon outside itself. But really, the moon we see is really our own luminousness. And our luminousness is our interaction with circumstances. It's not our own thing.

[40:19]

It's that we're rolling on ourself in the bowl all the time. That's our luminousness. And we can see that luminousness in everything because we roll on this luminousness. Now this is the, what do you call it, this is the, I don't know what to call this, this kind of description, but anyway, the other description is, for 20 years I've suffered bitterly. How many times have I gone down into the green dragon cave for you? I can't tell the depth of this cave. You clear-eyed people, don't take this lightly. So there's that side to this business of realizing that this pearl is rolling on itself in the bowl.

[41:26]

For some reason or other, it's difficult for us to experience the very process which helps us realize that the luminousness we see out there is really just our own process which can project itself all over the place so we have a good chance here we all have the opportunity right now to go down into the cave and and find this pearl, which happens to be either under the dragon's neck, under the dragon's chin, or in the dragon's mouth. So the actual functioning, strangely enough, is going on right now. And if you see a pearl, or you see the moon,

[42:32]

then you can see it. Otherwise, otherwise you have to find it in yourself. Once you find it in yourself, then you can say something like Master Ma said. But somehow, for a strange reason, it's hard to get down there and find this pearl in ourselves. it seems to have something to do with some bitter struggle. It seems like it wouldn't have to be that way. It's not exactly like we were saying it's mandatory, but... On the other hand, Master Ma got sick. He could have died in good health. Believe me.

[43:33]

Believe me. He could have died sometime before this story when he wasn't feeling so bad. And they could have said, Master Ma was feeling fine and was about to die. Buddha was sick and then... And then when, just before Buddha died, he went into a state where he was feeling fine. Wasn't, wasn't feeling bad, he was feeling quite equanimous, quite detached and at peace when he died. But here Master Ma is not feeling so well. And here's where he's teaching. About this, he's showing this bowl roll, this bowl, this pearl rolling on itself in the bowl. That's us. That's what we are.

[44:37]

That's each of us in our different way, because we're in different bowls. Where each of us is sitting is the middle of a different bowl. Are you enjoying your position? Do you want to say something, Sonia? The pearl is rolling on itself in the bowl. It seems that as far as the bowl or the shape of this thing to roll, if it was just sitting flat on land, maybe it wouldn't roll unless there was an earthquake or something. Another translation is the pearl on a tray is rolling on itself.

[45:44]

But can you, the part of this teaching happened with this being ill, or came out of that, so there was some dynamic there, in this case of the pearl and the bow, or something that brought this forward. We're never, that's kind of like, it's amazing that we're never without an opportunity. We get one all the time. Can you believe it? And, you know, these kinds of opportunities are what these past beneficent beings, they used those, that's what they used, is opportunities that we have. They were just exactly like us. Let's see. Okay, let's see, I think it was, I think it was Janine, and then I think it was Carly, and then it was Martha.

[47:04]

Yes? How does a pearl know how to roll on itself? Can you think about, imagine how a pearl knows how to roll on itself? It knows how by its roundness. It knows how by the bowl, by the shape of the bowl. That's the kind of guy Master Ma was. He knew how to do it by the circumstances and no other way. He didn't use anything other than what was happening to play his part. That's what I think bottom anyway so you don't need to know it's not a matter of knowing knowing is a kind of like I don't know what it's like it's like trying to pole vault on crutches you don't need crutches to pole vault they're just going to be extra extra complications to try to do that

[48:20]

Next, Carla. What would it be like if everyone was like the last of y'all, could still talk to young people without them, could say such a profound thing? So you couldn't be thinking that it's good or bad. I was wondering how everyone would think of it. And I was wondering how it would be if everyone in the world would listen to the person next to them in that way, or the person across the room, or that they really did have something of great value. And we did that all day long because I think that I'm, I'd say 75% of what ever tries to come out of me, come out of me now.

[49:43]

And I don't know that whether that's because I'm found, because I was prisoned throughout, or maybe I shouldn't say more. But I think to myself, But everybody wants to have this tremendous voice of all these things. And all it means for someone to ask, well, what do you think? How are you? And when people ask me how I am, I don't dare ask. Number one, I don't think they want to hear. And number two, you know, I don't know how much I really care. They're really ready to ignore it. So I just thought, well, if we were all, if everyone pretended all over the world to be sick, rest, alone, or the one that was listening to them, that maybe it would just change the world overnight.

[50:46]

If everybody just suddenly did that. Or even if one person did that, it would change the world. Immediately. Just like it did when Master Ma had to say what he said. And I think that would be good if we all spoke Just like Master Mao, if we made the effort to speak like that all day long, that would be very good. And every time we did that, every moment we did that, it would be sun-faced Buddha, moon-faced Buddha. And if we listened... I don't know how this monk was listening, but I know how Master Mao was listening.

[51:48]

Not know, I believe Master Mao was listening like you're talking about that monk listening. When he was listening, it was the same thing. But we don't know until he talks. That's why it's good to talk, so people know how you were listening. Your speech can teach people about your listening, so speech is important. But listening is equally important to speech. They're both necessary, and we I want to listen like Master Ma and speak like Master Ma. And the way Master Ma spoke was that he wasn't trying to speak the same words as his ancestors, but he was doing the same practice as his ancestors. And the practice is to go down into this cave and find that pearl, which is you.

[52:52]

Watch this pearl rolling on itself. And then study how this pearl listens, how this pearl speaks. And for some reason or other, that might be difficult a good share of the time. There's a strange thing of somehow corralling this horse and pulling her back on the path. Martha? While I was sitting here, this thought came up, which I thought, it's interesting that some Facebooker, a new Facebooker, I didn't think for a minute that he was talking about himself. I mean, in a sense, in a kind of arrogant way. But I, in some ways, .

[53:55]

But there was this kind of declaration of love for Buddha. And I felt that he said that in the use of the word face, he didn't say sun Buddha moon Buddha. He said sun face Buddha. Right. Face Buddha. And it was like, there's this face that's the sun. There's a face of . And then there's the Buddha. And what kind of declaration of Buddha nature that connected him to the person who was asking the question. I felt very connected to him. Right. Because you and me, there's these faces. Yeah. And these faces keep coming, but they seem so different. Yeah, that's important. Sometimes knowing you, sometimes somebody else. It's Buddha. Yeah. Yeah. The word face is important. It's got a lot of things going on here in these little six characters. Sun face Buddha.

[55:01]

Moon face Buddha. Six characters. It's got face in there. It's got sun and moon and Buddha. Pretty good. Do you think he was waiting for somebody to ask him? Where did that come from all of a sudden? What does it say? Stars fall, thunder rolls. I mean... Stars fall. And this guy says, Sun Face Buddha. Face is really important. What's like birth and death and no birth and death? Birth and death, no birth and death, and face. Face. It's face. And... How do you see this? Where do you think that came from? How could that guy be that way? To say that all of a sudden. Carolyn? You had your hand raised a little while ago.

[56:03]

Wasn't it, didn't you? A little while ago. Do you still have something you want to say? I'm rolling. Keep those doggies robed in. I was very intimate with Mark when I was thinking about when you said go back to yourself. And when I started looking at this at home, it didn't compare because I had this terrible backache. And Brent had given me a couple of valentine cookies that I read this, and it was like sun-faced, blue and neat, because it felt like Valentine's. So often, these still works, you know, like either they're opaque or putting it off, but there's something like this that was just like a sweet gift.

[57:09]

And it's like, you look just like me on the couch. Yeah. This family was on the face. Most of these stores, I never see these guys, because each of the guys had a face, but somehow Ma actually had a face. And I look back at other cases, this Greek where he was mentioned. Somebody asked him for his scooter. One time he said, why his scooter? One time he says, remember I have no scooter. Watch my pain coming and going. How sometimes It's pain comes and I fight it and do all these things and other times it goes.

[58:15]

Sometimes it doesn't matter at all. It's just the next moment. And somehow this huge sun face we would lose that feeling of getting a sort of stifled feeling of this non-active moment coming well and it might be a long life, it might be a short life, it might be pain, it might not be pain, it just keeps going and somehow it's this mind that, you know, clutches fear there that makes it turn into pain or not pain. Then this sort of sweet feeling, when you brought up this sort of going into the cave, then you're like, ooh, there's something else here.

[59:17]

There's this sweet valentine. And I always want to hear, you know, go into the cave, but it's... It already springs up the question of, where is it? How do you do that? What does it mean? What is it? You asking me? It means to go into yourself right now. It means to turn around and walk back into yourself. So it's something just to do. It's something to keep doing. How many times have I gone down into the Green Dragon Cave for you? I can't tell how deep it is. This distress deserves recounting, is worthy of recounting.

[60:19]

There's something about us that it's... There's some difficulty in this for some reason. Of going back into ourself. Because the nature of the mind is that it thinks that everything out there is outside. So basically what you're doing here is you're... You're reversing evolution, in a sense. You're turning it around, and then it comes forward again. So it isn't like the pearl turns around once and stays there. It keeps turning, round and round. You go back, and then you relate. Then there's people, and you care about them as though they're not you. And then you remember to go back home. And then you come back and then you go back out again. And this constant turning somehow brings this tremendous working of the whole into your own process.

[61:35]

So you realize that the whole world and you are turning on each other. But the going back home is the hard part. Going back into yourself when you're talking to somebody, when somebody's insulting you, when you hear a great story, when you hear the difficult teaching, to go back home so that you can come back and turn this thing around and make it an opportunity for benefiting beings who are suffering because they're not doing this, because they aren't celebrating this constant turning. So we have to do this work on ourselves in order to encourage others to do the same work. And we have to be healthy when we're healthy too. But not just be healthy but go back into the way we're healthy and be the healthy that we are.

[62:37]

It's hard to be healthy too. It's not harder, it's actually not harder to be sick than to be healthy. And usually people first learn how to be sick and then later learn how to be healthy. Because most people, almost always the breakthrough is in sickness, not in health. The first time you completely turn around, you almost always is in sickness. I don't want to make an absolute rule of that, but that's a classical, classical opportunity is a moment of illness, a moment of pain when we wake up. Once you can do it in pain, you can do it in pleasure or health. But it's harder to do it in health than it is to do it in sickness. Some people who haven't spoken yet want to speak since it's, yes?

[63:44]

Well, it says, he's referring to Master Ma, you know, offering these wonderful opportunities and then says that This is still, you know, even though he's offering these wonderful opportunities to people by the way he lives, this is still gouging out a wound in healthy flesh. It can become a nest or a den. Do you understand? Even though this is a great kindness that he offers, still is kind of, it hurts, it in some sense hurts us that he does this for us because we can make a nest out of this and stop turning and stop doing our work. That's why, part of the reason why I asked us to, you know, use ourself as a resource right away in this koan.

[65:01]

Come at it from your own work, come at it from yourself. Don't use, let's not get too much into how wonderful it was that he said this. I've already done it too much, probably. Yes. I've been thinking that a guy with a tongue that big ought to have it cut out and sold in the market. Well, please do. Linda. I've been thinking about the last call. Andy. I was thinking it's kind of like the acquiescence kind of like set the scene for the child to speak.

[66:09]

So Master Ma did it. And it's, I know for me that acquiescence, like you think they're going well, there's a certain kind of confidence or kind of inertia about being carried forward or something. It's kind of habitual or something, and it doesn't necessarily feel that way. And then with sickness or something like that, it's a little more hesitancy and, you know, a little more opportunity for acquiescence. We have less of a feeling. We don't feel so much like we have something to lose when we're sick.

[67:10]

Or are you maybe even willing to lose something when we're sick? When I have a problem, I think I do, or if something is like, they don't say, you know, like, Jimmy has how to not say something like that. And it's kind of like, he's not... She said, how would he know how to say that? How would he know how to say it, except he didn't. He didn't, no. He was a tongueless man. See, that's why this case follows the previous one, Jim. So when I'm healthy, I have a tongue. When I'm healthy, I have a tongue. Or I'll say something, you know, that sounds like this to Jim. Kind of. Yeah. Our strength, for most of us, our strength is our habit. Our strength is our delusions. And then we talk from our delusions.

[68:17]

But to speak from our weakness, or to speak from having no tongue, to speak from our illness, in other words, to speak from whatever's coming up rather than our own strength, this is a tongueless woman. But who wants to live there you know, and find the jewel there in utter poverty, you know, in that cold, damp, smelly, dark cave. You're a junkie. Wait a second. Somebody who hasn't spoken has got her hand up there. I'm laughing, but... Well, that makes no sense. I didn't like this guy. I read it and I liked his basing, this life.

[69:23]

Yeah, this is it. And as an architect, I've decided to do some work with homelessness. and I'm a complete flop. I am completely emotional. I haven't even started yet and I have gone home and it's just so dark and despairing and desperate that I don't even know if I can. And this is just a volunteer, this is not. I am sharing something but there's also some I think, I hope something more. So I yesterday could hardly do anything. And I, okay, well, I'll just meditate. I'll sit here and start breathing.

[70:26]

And that was the return, I suppose, to my home. And I don't think I'll go out again, see what I, see what is there, and continue. And friends have sort of tried to encourage me, and I've needed that. And it's just surprising that I can comprehend strength so easily, and to try to live that, it's so difficult. Your distress deserved recounting. So Master Ma encourages us to do this difficult work. He was doing difficult work. You can be sure of that. And yet, this could pop out of his mouth.

[71:30]

And that could pop out of your mouth. And this can pop out of your mouth. Pop. we are separate from each other everybody else is our ball We're rolling around in everybody else. That's what we're rolling in. And the pearl is separate from the bowl. Okay? But the radiance of the pearl is the bowl that it's rolling in. Everybody else is separate from you and they're your radiance.

[72:35]

But of course your radiance isn't separate from you and neither are they. We're all your light. You're not your light. Wait a second. Just one second, though. You had your hand raised, Janet. Would you like to pop something out? When you say we can't prepare, you mean it really doesn't do any good. Well, emotionally... You can prepare for it.

[73:42]

But emotionally, you're preparing for something that you really know nothing about. That's right. But you can prepare, and preparing can be... If you understand what you're doing, if you go back to yourself while you're preparing, then preparing is just as good as any other stupid thing. It's another way of spending time. It's another way of spending time. As long as you keep realizing what you're doing, preparing is okay. Yes. So tonight you can all, before you go to bed, think about what you're going to do tomorrow. But remember what you're thinking about is not tomorrow. You're thinking about yourself. Right, Mark? Yes. Yes. What do you want to say? I was just going to read what I was feeling. Fine. Sun face through to ease the pain. Moon face through to in between you. now gone. Illness, manifestation of thought, feeling, consciousness.

[74:45]

Once it becomes word, it is too late for the moon and too early for the sun. This is good class participation, but there's a few people who haven't spoken, which we give special encouragement to. Garrett? Did you speak already? I didn't really speak. I think that it's about a really very deep surrender. Do you think that going down into the cave is deep surrender?

[75:51]

What's that? And when you said stars fall, thunder rolls, I remember the small miracle that happened this morning. At service, the spark flew out of the cloud. And I wasn't standing in front of it. I was just this way, just like, whoop. And then, where does intimacy between us come into this picture, or come out of this picture? And where does it come from?

[77:01]

Where does the intimacy come from? Where does it come from? It comes from the down and bottom. And then from down and bottom, what comes? Light. Huh? Light. In what form? Words. And what else? Faces. Words and faces, basically. You can use your hands, too. Okay.

[77:31]

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