I'd like to go again a little bit deeper into this teaching of Dogen Zenji, which has these two aspects of zazen, or just sitting, and I'm going to see the teacher and asking about dharma. I mentioned them together, but I don't know if I can get into both today, but I want you to always remember that they go together, even though maybe we do one at a time, apparently. How many times can we go over the same ground?

[01:12]

And how many times can we repeat the same instructions? When a child is trying to learn something, they go over it and over it until they learn it. Parents sometimes, or other adults around, may get bored or irritated even listening to the child go over what they're trying to learn again and again. In spiritual practice also, we have to go over things again and again until we learn

[02:28]

them. And sometimes we may have learned something ourselves, and so for us looking at a child or a teacher who's trying to learn how to teach something, we may have to watch the child, the young student or the teacher, go over and over until they learn it. So excuse me for going over and over certain things until either I learn how to teach it or you understand it, which of course is the same thing.

[03:31]

And part of the problem is some of you understood it before I started talking, so you're already bored, but I don't know when to stop, I don't know, should I stop when half the people understand it or eighty percent? This is part of what I have to learn. Of course there has to be some rhythm I suppose in any case. Once the great teacher Yaoshan was sitting and a monk saw him and said, what's it like when you're sitting so still? Literally he said, what's it like in gotsu gotsu chi, what's it like in the immovable

[04:47]

ground, immovable earth? Or what kind of thinking is going on when you're sitting still? And Yaoshan said, think of that which doesn't think. And the monk said, how do you think of that which doesn't think? And Yaoshan said, non-thinking. And Dogen Zenji says, this is the essential art of Zazen, this instruction. It's the core art. It's the initiatory art, it's the door to the realm, to the inner realm of Zazen.

[06:09]

It's not all kinds of Zazen, there's other kinds of Zazen besides that, this is the door through which we enter true sitting. And when we enter, if we can enter this door of this teaching, then we can walk out into the world and go see somebody else and try to relate this inner truth, see if we can do it with somebody else, see if we can integrate this inner practice, this inner core practice of Zazen with the rest of our lives. Think of the unthinking, think of that which doesn't think.

[07:20]

This instruction could also be translated as the merging of difference and unity, the merging of difference and oneness. Thinking is in the realm of difference. The unthinking is the realm of sameness. Thinking of the unthinking is kind of to difference the sameness, or it's the union of the difference and the sameness. To think of sameness, to difference the sameness, differencing the sameness, the sameness and the difference merge, or bring sameness into the realm of difference, bring sameness into

[08:30]

the realm of thinking, into the realm of discrimination. Dan Howe gave me an article from National Wildlife Magazine about a parrot, and this parrot, like a lot of parrots, can talk, it can say things like, same and different, and if you put out, for example, three keys on the table, parrots can say, same, if you put out a key in a box, the parrot can say, different. Not only can the parrot tell the difference between something that's the same and different,

[09:35]

but it can say so, because it can talk. All living beings can do this, I mean they can't all speak English, but they can all tell the difference between things that are the same and things that are different. And telling the difference, of course, is difference. This is called thinking. So in sasan we have these three things, we have thinking, we have the unthinking and then we have thinking of the unthinking, which is also called non-thinking, which is the same as san, do, and kai. San is thinking, do is the unthinking, and kai is thinking of the unthinking, or san

[10:46]

do kai. So you have thinking, the unthinking, and non-thinking, these three things. These three things are always together in a living creature. How does one think of that which doesn't think?

[11:49]

And Dogen Zenji re-words this as, how does a monk think of the unthinking, Dogen Zenji said, unthinking is how's thinking. Unthinking or that which doesn't think is how's thinking. That which doesn't think is the thinking of how. That which doesn't think is the thinking of how. That which doesn't think is thinking which is a question. In other words, you can think, but you can't exactly figure out how to think of the unthinking.

[12:55]

That's why when the monk said, how do you think of the unthinking, Dogen Zenji said, he already answered his question. How's thinking is the unthinking. So we have thinking, the unthinking, and non-thinking, and non-thinking in one sense can be understood as transcending thinking and the ordinary thinking person and that which doesn't think. Non-thinking sort of transcends them you could think, that's true, but it's more true or more to the point that non-thinking is the dynamic realm of thinking and the unthinking.

[14:06]

Just like the merging of difference and unity is not just the transcendence of them but it's the dynamic dance between the unity and the difference. So it's transcendence but it's transcendence while and through this dynamic dance between sameness and difference between the thinking and the unthinking. Neither thinking nor the unthinking by themselves are how's thinking. The unthinking may seem to be a pretty neat thing, sameness is pretty fancy stuff, but sameness isn't how's thinking and thinking isn't how's thinking. So ordinary thinking where you're just grasping objects, that's not how's thinking.

[15:13]

But ordinary thinking that is done completely to the end is the unthinking. Ordinary thinking which is done exhaustively is that which doesn't think. Just like the definition of nirvana, to follow something through completely to the end, to follow your thinking through, your ordinary thinking through completely to the end, that is the unthinking. And that completely, that exhaustive thinking is always co-existent with the thinking that we're ordinarily aware of. When the bodhisattva is doing just sitting, the bodhisattva is thinking.

[16:33]

And the thinking that the bodhisattva is doing in Zen is called no thought. No thought is not thinking, it's not that which doesn't think, it's non-thinking. But non-thinking is thinking of the unthinking. And none of those three are ever separate. This is the mind of the great sage of India, these three things, and one of them is just the dynamic of the other two. So there's really just two, but really there's not two because they're in dynamic, so really just one. So three minds which are really just one mind, called the mind of Buddha.

[17:41]

So the nine mind of Buddha can be abbreviated as thinking, or it can be abbreviated as the unthinking, or it can be abbreviated as non-thinking. Any of the three are nicknames for Buddha's mind. So, this kind of exercise, Dogen Zenji calls the essential art of Dazen. Thinking in this way, running your discriminating consciousness down these kinds of little tracks is his initiatory ceremony into Dazen. Once, there was a Zen monk named Taquan who actually is most famous for inventing a pickle

[18:54]

called Taquan, it's a daikon pickle. He was a teacher of some noted samurai. One samurai asked him, when I meet an opponent, where should I put my mind? If I put my mind here, I'm absent over there. If I put my mind there, I'm absent here. Taquan said, don't put your mind anywhere, then your mind's everywhere. How do you not put your mind anywhere? Non-thinking. Sometimes, we talk about not putting our mind anywhere by saying, put your mind in the palm of your left hand. This little story I just told provides perhaps a link between this kind of thinking in Shikantaza,

[20:17]

this kind of thinking in just sitting, and I'm going to ask about Dharma. When you meet another person, where do you put your mind? Do you put your mind over here or over there or in between? Meeting another person, where do you put your mind? When you meet another person, particularly a Buddhist teacher, are you trying to meet

[21:29]

the teacher or trying to meet yourself or trying to meet the mind of Buddha? Which direction should you look? If you look this way, you missed a point. If you look that way, you missed a point. If you look back there, you missed a point. Any direction you look, you're missing. How or what should you do? So practicing how is thinking, thinking of the unthinking, this is how to meet another person also. As we say, it responds to the arrival of energy. It responds to the inquiring impulse. I

[22:42]

dream at night and when I wake up in the morning, before the alarm clock rings, I'm usually dreaming these days and I try to remember my dreams because I'm getting a feeling like my unconscious is really a treasure house of my life, so I try to remember my dreams. But I've been having a lot of trouble. One problem I have is if I move to put the alarm clock off, it's kind of like there's this little pool of water and there's a picture in it and when I reach for the alarm clock, it shakes the water and I lose it. But if I don't reach for the alarm clock, I might fall back to sleep.

[23:51]

So it's kind of hard. Anyway, I've been able to remember a little bit of some of them and then write them down and now I have so many that I never will be able to talk to anybody about them. It's too many and I told my wife about this and she said that even if you don't have time to talk to anybody about them and study them, she says she thinks of herself just as the scribe, as a servant of her unconscious, just as a servant, like a loyal servant to this very generous mind that's given you all this stuff. Even if you can't use it, you just write it down. And I've been noticing that the more I write it down, the more it gives me.

[25:01]

The more energy that comes forward to meet this stuff, the more it gives me and the easier it is to remember it. It really feels like it responds to the arrival of energy. Now the it could be called, in the realm of the mind, of the conscious and unconscious mind, the it could be called the unconscious mind. But in the realm of total reality, the it, what's the it? It's the total reality. So our energy, our life energy, is mental and physical and if we bring forth energy, it responds. The entire cosmos. Or if it's between conscious mind and unconscious mind, there's that responsiveness.

[26:11]

But also between people. If you bring forth energy, the other person responds. So we have this Buddhist term, zenki. Zen means complete, ki means energy. So, if ki, and that character ki is the ki that they use in the Hokyo Zangmai when it says the arrival of energy, which we translate as the inquiring impulse, too. When ki comes, it responds. The fact that when energy comes, it responds, that's called zenki. That's called the whole works. In other words, the whole works. As soon as some energy comes, the whole works through that energy, or meets that energy. But also that energy then is the whole works.

[27:18]

So, this little talk is surrounded by this ceremony, this Dharma Transmission Ceremony. And a couple of days ago, we started the ceremony, the formal beginning of the ceremony started. Before that was called additional practices, kind of preparation for the ceremony proper. And the beginning of the ceremony proper is what's called menju hai. Which men means face, and ju means to receive, but men also means face to face. Face to face transmission, and hai means bow, the bow of face to face transmission. And what we do is we act out. The scene which took place in around 1226 in eastern China, on Mount Tiantong.

[28:39]

This young man named Dogen went and met this old man named Rujing. He got an interview. He went in, he offered incense, he did three bows, and then Rujing said, the Dharma gate of face to face transmission from Buddha to Buddha, ancestor to ancestor, is realized now. When he first met the little guy, he said that. And they started together for a couple of years after that. And their relationship deepened and became more and more intimate. But as soon as they met, Rujing said, the Dharma gate of face to face transmission between Buddha and Buddha, ancestor and ancestor, is realized now. So at the beginning of the ceremony we say that, we act it out. Isn't that interesting?

[29:45]

Little skits, Dharma transmission skits. This is an example of inner relationship, formally acting out, thinking of the unthinking. Here's these little people in the room, right? They're thinking, they're thinking stuff like, I'm sitting in a chair, or I'm bowing, or I'm looking at a person's face, and they're looking back at me. And I'm saying stuff like that, you know, is now realized. My mind's thinking, is it really? Could this be so? That this has happened between Buddhas and ancestors before? Could it be so that, take a person here, you know, and a person there,

[30:48]

and this person's kind of hating this person over there. This person here thinks this person's a jerk, and wants to kill this person. And this person is very irritated with this other person. They're just about ready to kill each other. Could that be the case? You ever see anything like that happen? You have, haven't you? Once or twice, or three years. People sometimes do that, right? This is called human ugliness. This is called ugly. Then you take these ugly people, or people who are acting ugly, I should say, and then they go through a door, offer incense, and somebody says, or they say, how could that be? Well, it can be, it is. But what does it mean? Shouldn't those worlds be a little bit more separated?

[31:54]

Shouldn't there be a few feet between that anger and the Dharma gate of repose and bliss? Or at least a few minutes, or a few weeks, or several years, or several lifetimes? Well, of course, that's what human beings usually think. They don't mind if when you were 16, you, I don't know what, smoked marijuana, or punched somebody in the nose, and then when you're 97, people think you're a Buddha. That's a reasonable distance, right? But if you're 29, and you do that kind of stuff, and you're 31, and you do that kind of stuff, it's kind of close. But what about 29 and 6 months, and 29 and 7 months? Or what about 29 and 6 months, and 29 and 6 months, and 1 minute? That's really close.

[32:56]

There should be more distance between an angry person and one who has face-to-face transmission, like the Buddhas and ancestors do, right? This is called thinking. This is the way one can think. You don't have to think that way, but some people do. Most people do. This menju doesn't happen in the realm of thinking. That ain't where it happens, because in the realm of thinking, it's only going to happen under certain circumstances, like when you think that the requirements for menju have been met, namely, this person has not been angry for 7 years, or 87 lifetimes, and therefore, or I haven't been angry for innumerable lifetimes, and therefore now I think it's reasonable that I would be able to have face-to-face transmission of the truth. Or vice versa, this person's been good for, you know,

[34:02]

years and years, they haven't made any mistakes, and therefore now they can do that. But if that was the case, then I don't think there would ever be any menjus around. There might be one, there might be a men, but there wouldn't be menju, there wouldn't be another one of them. The likelihood of that happening, I think, is pretty much, I would just soon consider it to be zero. Zero. Some of us have got some problems. And the chances are, for some of us, that those problems are pretty much lifelong. The likelihood of them being reversed is, you know, very small.

[35:03]

Like, I think I told this story before, it's a story about this guy who, I think his name was Johnny, or something like that, and he was, when he was a young man, he was in the Navy, and he was an alcoholic. And he continued to be an alcoholic for a number of years, and then, because of the alcoholism, I think these little glands called, I think they're called mammillary glands, something like that, they're in the brain someplace. They got kind of frizzled, and as a result, he couldn't remember anything, except what happened up to the time he was 19. Did you hear about this guy? How many of you heard of him? Okay, so, can I tell the story again? So, he... You know, he could remember, he could speak English and everything, because he learned how to do that before he was 19. And so, he pretty much, he walked around thinking he was a 19-year-old guy in the Navy, and he wondered why he wasn't in a battleship or something.

[36:10]

But anyway, he thought he was still in the middle of World War II, and so on. He was 49 years old at the time this story occurred. And so, you know, he could remember, if you would just meet him now, if any of you would meet the guy, he would say, Hi, how are you? My name's Johnny. What's yours? And you'd say, My name's Tayo. He'd say, Hi, Tayo. That's kind of a funny name. And then he'd look over and say, What's your name? You'd say, Oh, my name's Vanya. Oh, hi, Vanya. And then he'd look back at you and say, Oh, hi, how are you? What's your name? Oh, you're Tayo. How do you do that? That's kind of a funny name. And what's your name? Oh, your name's Gil. And what's your name again? Not again. What's your name again? So, he could remember that when he sees a person, that's a person and he liked people, but 15 seconds later he couldn't remember he met you. And he could type, too. He could transcribe if he typed real fast, but if he slowed down, he couldn't remember. Like, he could see the word the and he could say T-H-E.

[37:13]

But if he saw the word the and he looked over at you, then he couldn't remember. So, he couldn't remember his way to the bathroom and stuff because he never could remember. And the, not the therapist, but the neurologist said, asked him some, I guess he said, do you have any feelings? And he said, I don't, I don't think I do. And he showed him a picture of him, he put a mirror up to the guy, and the guy was terrified to see this old man in the picture, in the mirror. And he took the mirror away and the guy was just terribly upset and then he forgot that he saw a picture in the mirror and he felt okay again. So, he could get scared and he could get upset, but he couldn't remember that he was scared and upset.

[38:16]

And he asked him, do you have a self? And he said, I don't think so, I mean, I can't find one. Now, this is the goal of Zen practice, right? To look for yourself, to just look for the self and look and look and look and not find it. If we can do that, this is a kind of liberation for us. He could do that, but it wasn't because he looked and, you know, couldn't find it because he found what ordinarily was a self and couldn't, he couldn't find it, there wasn't one there. He lived in a kind of no persons land or no self land, which people for selves, people who have selves and who can identify their self, this is where they need to find out. But, he was not really human in a sense and he had a disease which probably will never be cured because you can't put new glands in people yet. But, when the neurologist said this to some nuns

[39:19]

who were taking care of him, they got angry at him and said, it's not true that he doesn't have a self or a soul. Because when he went in to do service or the communion, in that present moment he could, he was as moved and as moving as any other person who receives the sacrament. So, although we have, a lot of us, at least in this lifetime with this body, incurable physical and psychic disorders, still, could it be so that we could think of the unthinking? Could it be so that there could be face to face transmission? I propose that Dogen Zenji's practice

[40:27]

and Dogen Zenji's teaching is of that kind, the kind that really is utterly universal. And again, the strange thing is, the dynamic is, the tension, the contradiction, is that because it's so universal, very few people can do it. Because very few people can believe in a really universal practice. A practice where an ordinary person can actually do Buddha's practice. Dogen Zenji proposes Buddha's practice, not sentient beings' practice. The practice he's offering is the practice that Buddha does. Buddha thinks of that which doesn't think.

[41:49]

Well, actually, I shouldn't say Buddha does that practice. This is Buddha's practice. Buddha doesn't actually even think. Buddha doesn't do anything. But Buddha's practice that the Bodhisattvas do is this kind of thinking. Whatever the thought is, it can be done. Whatever the thought is, if it's an angry thought, the angry thought can do it. It's an angry thought of the unthinking. It isn't that we get in there with our little, I don't know what, and change the angry thought to another kind of thought and have that be the one that's of the unthinking. Thinking includes all kinds of thinking.

[42:55]

The unthinking dances with that. You don't work on fixing this stuff up over here. However, in order to do this practice of thinking of the unthinking, you must start by practicing the precepts. You must practice the precepts. But the precepts, we talked about them too. So, this thinking of the unthinking is just non-thinking. It's just the dynamic, wonderful interaction between these two realms. This is how it's thinking. This is one life. One life. And that one life is again the place we practice the precepts. With the aid of all sentient beings, someone said to me,

[43:56]

I'm really having a hard time and I feel like everything, all sentient beings are helping me have a hard time and I'm going right ahead. I'm moving right along in this great difficulty with everybody helping me. Or like in the ceremony, we did a sweat. We had a sweat the other night in the, what do you call it, Poison Oak Lodge. And people say things and then afterwards the people say, all my relations. Right? All my relations. All my relations. Angry thought! All my relations. Grateful thought! All my relations. Whatever it is. All my relations. I'm very sad. All my relations. I'm scared. All my relations. All sentient beings helping me with this thought. With this thought.

[44:58]

Thinking of the unthinking. Thinking of the unthinking. Dynamic, dynamic life. Dynamic life. Life is absolutely self-contradictorily identical. This is the words of the great Buddhist philosopher Nishida, Hitaro. The true present is absolutely contradictorily self-identical. Non-thinking, absolutely contradictorily self-identical. Thinking of the unthinking. That's contradictorily absolutely. Dogen Zenji doesn't say dynamic too much. He doesn't say this is dynamic. He just does it. You know, he just says,

[46:00]

and the other Zen teachers, generally they don't say that. The philosophers come and tell us. What they're saying is absolutely contradictorily self-identical. They don't say so. They just act that way. By saying, think of the unthinking. This is absolutely self-contradictorily self-identical. Because they're talking about one thing that is self-identically contradictorily absolutely. It's dynamic. Life is dynamic and it has tensions. So our practice is Buddhist practice. Therefore we can be, you know, who we are. Completely ordinary people. Trying to practice Buddha's way and being perfectly successful. Therefore, we can

[47:02]

have face-to-face transmissions. Face-to-face transmissions happening. Guess when it's happening? Yeah, all the time. So don't go to sleep. Don't go back to sleep. It's happening all the time. And we don't know which direction or from where it's happening. This is absolutely contradictorily self-identical. Isn't it? We want to iron out these tensions, of course. This is part of our contradictory nature. We want to get rid of the contradiction. But human life is contradictory. If it lacks contradiction, if it lacks tension, we're talking about dreamsville, which is part of our life. We like to dream of a land where either thinking is okay, you know, cleaned up and looks so good that's practically good enough, or let's just have the unthinking. Let's have a place where there isn't any thinking.

[48:03]

So, no thought either is really an excellent thought that nobody could argue with it, or like Shakespeare or something, or it's just like no thought, nothing's going on. Those are the two ways, those would iron out the problems, you know. But that's not real life. Real life, real one life that we're all sharing is this kind of kinky one, twisted one. Hmm. This is the same story as when our other ancestor, Yun Yan, was sweeping and his brother came over, his brother Da Wu came over and said, he didn't say, what's it like when you're sitting still? He said, hey, you're not sitting still, you're really a busy little beaver there, aren't you? And he said, you should know that there's somebody who's not busy. And then his brother said,

[49:04]

oh, then there's two moons? And Yun Yan raised his broom and said, which moon is this? Which moon is this? That's Hao's thinking. He didn't say this is, he didn't say which moon this was. Which moon is this? Is this thinking? Or is this the unthinking? Which one is it? I really don't know. Maybe somebody knows, but Buddha doesn't know whether this is thinking or the unthinking. Well, some people would say, well, it doesn't look like it's thinking to me. That broom doesn't look like it's thinking, that stick doesn't look like it's thinking. So I'll say it's the unthinking. This is that which doesn't think. But what about me over thinking about it? Is that thinking? So the unthinking is Hao's thinking.

[50:06]

So to say, which moon is this life we have here? Which moon is this? Is this the unbusy life? The unbusy one? Or is this the busy one? I may have an answer, but still, I also have the question, which moon is this? Da Wu just walked off when he asked that question. He didn't say anything. So which moon is this? Is Hao's thinking. Which moon is this? Is the inquiring impulse. Which moon is this? Is the arrival of energy. This which moon is this? Is writing down your dreams. Which moon is this? Something comes to meet you. Hao's thinking, something responds,

[51:09]

something smiles at us. This, just the arrival of energy is not the whole story. Although we can do that. In our experience, we can put some energy out there. It's the fact that something responds that's the rest of the story. Something responds. Sometimes you see it. Sometimes you don't. Sometimes it's responding back there. When the little people are down in Tassajara sitting in chairs, bowing to each other, they're saying stuff like, this is face-to-face transmission. At the same time, up in the sky, there's some huge people that are doing the same thing. So the other thing of,

[52:11]

there's a carved dragon, right? There's a carved dragon and there's a real dragon. So we're down here carving these little dragons. Meantime, up in the sky, there's huge clouds being pushed around by the heat of the real dragon. The same clouds. If you don't carve the little dragon, same clouds. But, if you don't carve the little dragon, those clouds are not talking to you. Because you're not putting any energy out. But same clouds, whether you do anything or not. Same smiling Buddha, whether you do anything or not. Buddha's smiling. Those who aren't putting any energy out, Buddha's smiling, just the same. But those who do bring some energy forth, those who do say, how's thinking, those who do say,

[53:12]

which moon is this, Buddha's smiling at them too, but they feel like Buddha's smiling at them. They feel Buddha responding. Just like the fan. The wind's reaching and moving without us fanning. But when you fan, you feel the response. You feel the dynamic. Or you don't feel the dynamic. Which is what you feel. So we do it by ourselves, we do it when we're sitting by trying to figure out how's thinking. Or which moon is this. Is this the unbusy moon

[54:13]

or the busy moon? And then with other people. We do try to do the same thing. And we get different kinds of information. And the other people doing it with another person are acting it out. You get different information than when you do it just when you're doing it inside. So we need these two sides. Or at least that's what the Shobogenzo tells us. And then it's kind of a question whether you want to go for the Shobogenzo or not. Or not.

[55:16]

Some people come to Zen Center not because of liking Dogen Zenji or even knowing about Dogen Zenji. They like maybe Suzuki Roshi better. Or they don't even know about Suzuki Roshi. They come for various reasons. And I didn't come because of Dogen Zenji. But I'm my respect for him keeps keeps getting deeper. And I think his teaching is really worth considering. It's not exactly his teachings. His transmission of that teaching of Yaoshan which is Yaoshan's transmission of the teaching of Shakyamuni. Sort of updating it

[56:17]

according to the circumstances of somebody asking that question. And now we've translated Dogen Zenji and Yaoshan and Yakusan Zenji's words into English. So now we're trying to make our own versions here. Trying to figure out what that teaching is. So I think you all have heard before anyway that for us Zazen is not blank consciousness. Thinking is going on. And so what kind of thinking is it in Zazen? The unthinking is Hao's thinking. So when you're

[57:23]

really still feel pretty stable and do that. And also I want to make clear that this is the same I'm using these words but this is the same as simply following your breath. Same thing. This is the same as being aware of your posture. This is the same as the whole body breathing. Breathing with the whole body. Same thing. Or an example a more physical example is a story of which is now being acted out in Eddie Murphy movies they even have this now. It's the story of a test you know where you carry water in a vase across some space. And in an Eddie Murphy movie he had to carry it across

[58:24]

some real rough territory so actually he just had a glass of water which wasn't filled to the top. But in an old Buddhist story it's a plate you know a plate that's filled with water with a what do you call it surface tension so it's bulging out a little bit and the guy the monk or the whatever the hero is supposed to carry this plate of water or plate of oil oil is even worse I suppose this plate of oil from one gate of the palace to the other gate and there's a guy standing behind him with a sword and if he spilled the slightest his head would get cut off. So he he really can't or she really can't think about the sword too much. Or the gate he or she has to really think about the hands and the feet and the eyes

[59:25]

and the thighs and the knees and the calves and the hips and the eyes and the hands and the knees and the feet and the ground. This is also house thinking. This is also thinking of the unthinking or thinking of that which doesn't think. Just complete simple mindfulness of what's happening. All my relations help help me practice Buddhism so hard. And this plate full of oil is also a heart that's ready to burst. Yeah. So this is also a plate full of suffering. Don't spill the suffering.

[60:26]

Take care of it. Whatever the thought take care of it with your feet and your ankles and your calves and your whole body. And if you can do that this is Buddhist practice and then you can study Abhidharma as a kind of what do you call it wholesome sport. It's one of the recreational activities of Buddhists. From the point of view of Zen it's a Buddhist recreation activity. There's other forms of Buddhism where that's the approach to Buddhahood. But from as Gil's question brought up the other day for us we are doing Buddhist practice and Abhidharma is in that context. But so is all other trips.

[61:29]

Chocolate trips consciousness trips all done in the context of the same practice which is one practice Samadhi. Samadhi. So I'm you know I'll probably stop talking about this over and over eventually no matter what you do but I really am interested whether anybody understands what I'm talking about. Thank you.

[62:38]

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