When you find the, I'm not sure, I don't remember exactly this, so I don't remember correctly, but when you find the inseparability between self and others, you're back in the spirit. I don't know why you've developed a spirit. I think I maybe, I think, I don't think I said that, but I think there's something to that. I think probably what I said was when you get close to the separation of self... Does that mean as it dissolves or... No, as you come close to feeling that place of separation between us, as you get closer to that place of separation, you become closer to the other too. As you get closer to the other, you feel more anxiety. As you get closer and closer, you feel more and more anxiety, usually.

[01:04]

Not necessarily a straight line increase, but a rhythmical increase. And when you get to the ultimate closeness, just before there's no distance at all, it's almost like war, sometimes. Intimacy, just before intimacy is attained, it's most difficult to face that tiny bit of separation. It's the most subtle and most dynamic. So I think I meant, what I was saying I think was as you get closer to the separation, it becomes more and more anxiety, more and more anxiety builds. And I wouldn't say it was scary. It's not scary unless you think of the future. Then it becomes scary. You can think, well, what might happen now? What might I do? Or what might he do? Or what she might, you know, if you think about what might happen next, then fear arises. that point. But when you finally realize that the separation really is an illusion, which arises from our processes of perception, particularly from eyes and mind, then the anxiety drops off.

[02:27]

Or rather, you re-enter the mind, where there is no separation, ever. And then the anxiety drops off, and the pain drops off, and then you're all sick. That's what the nature of the anxiety is that, as we do it, ego maintaining itself is... That's part of it. The anxiety is that as you come closer to being fully your ego, as you come closer to, like, coming right up to the fullness of your ego existence. At that surface where your ego ends and where the other starts you feel immense anxiety in the face of the unlimited other which is a lot bigger than our ego even if you've got a big ego. But whatever size ego you have you should come to the full size of it. You know, if you're a 100 watt bulb, you should be at 100 watts.

[03:29]

If you're a 50 watt bulb, you should be at 50 watts. Not 51, not 101, but 50 or 100. Right up to your max of selfish ego existence. And that's where you meet the other, and that's where the line is. And that's where we feel the anxiety. But if you can sit at that place and be still there, you can see that this... Separation is just conjured up by our processes of perception and has no real essence to it. And then you don't have to reach across and get anything. You're at peace and you're at one with the other. And then the self also is forgotten. And then everything out there wakes you up no matter what it is. And then after that The self is revitalized spontaneously and can do all kinds of things, like draw lines just right in a helpful way.

[04:35]

You can say, let's not do this. Let's do this instead. But that revitalized self is very fresh and free. It's soft and flexible. so they can adapt to the circumstances of the next moment. Like another story, me and my daughter, a couple of years before we were in the bathtub, her mother was out of town and she said, let's go in the kitchen and get the dishes and break them and throw them in mom's bed. And I said, okay, let's do it. And she said, no. So I'm not always that flexible, but you know, I'm telling you about my high points, right?

[05:45]

So, you know, the self is reborn then, after being emptied. It is empty, not by negating it or denying it, but by feeling it in its fullness. But the problem of feeling yourself in fullness is that then there's anxiety. All around the self, the other is pressing in. In one sense it's pressing in and suffocating you, but also it gives you your life. You're born of the other. There's no self definition without another. So the other, all the other gives you your existence. But you have to come right up there and meet it until you reach, you know. Now my hands are in front of my face and my voice is coming right back at me. It's like that. If I shrink away from the other a little bit, or a lot, I think it's not me. And I don't realize this gives me my life.

[06:46]

But coming right up to it, There is terrific anxiety. Terrific. And you have to be still or you have to discover the still person who can sit there in this terrific situation and he can see that it's him he sees. In a contradictory way, it seems. And then again, you realize the way in that moment and then start over. with a new self which might have the same name but he's much more flexible and creative terrific relief terrific relief a relief so fabulous you can't get a hold of it and if you do get a hold of this you kill it but if you could just let it revitalize you it relieves you from being your old self and lets you be a new one

[07:50]

And that new one, that freshman, who doesn't even know what to do, does just the right thing, spontaneously. You do all kinds of stuff that you would never be able to think of. Yes? I thought it was a real wonderfully upsetting talk. I feel really, like you said, things I just never considered might be true, and they sound like they really might be. but I feel like there's a little piece of it that I either tuned out on you and talk about, that I'd like you to talk about, which is that if you don't go over to another to look for the solace from the bonding, am I right so far with what you said? That we tend to want to go over somewhere else because the, you didn't use anguish, but whatever words you use. Anguish is in there. Pain, anguish, anxiety. So if you don't go over there, And then you just said this thing about terrific anxiety.

[08:50]

I mean, what do you do? I mean, I assume you're going to say Siddhartha, but I mean... What do you do? That's the question. What do you do? My answer is... What's my answer? Siddhartha. Well, but more literally... Uptright sitting. You don't do anything. You do Zen in action. In other words, you take refuge in Buddha. That's what you do at that place. You take refuge in Buddha in the face of that anxiety. Somebody will take care of you. There is a who there who will take care of you. And that who is you before you move. And that who will sustain you in the face of this awesome reality of the other. And you need help to stand that. You can't do it by your own personal power. But there's somebody inside you who doesn't move ever. and she will be there for you. And then you can sit there and you will see the cause of the anxiety is that you believe that the other really isn't you.

[09:57]

And if you see that's the cause, you can say, you know, I just didn't drop that. And if you're willing to drop it, then you'll let it drop. And when it drops, the anxiety will grow. Still, you will have your Buddha nature to help you then too, but then it won't be so much helping you stay there in the anxiety it'll help you to go to work. You'll say, okay, now do this. But first you have to go to this place of stillness and then the spontaneous expression of whatever the precept is, the spontaneous expression of no sexual greed. No sexual greed isn't just not doing something, it is doing something. It is like saying to your son or whatever, you know, take a walk. I'm not your lover. There's a creative expression which follows this, which spontaneously emerges from this preset. You're welcome.

[11:00]

Yes? Can you talk about planning the future? Yeah. Whether or not necessarily... I would think that if you plan for the future, it can help you stay present in the present. But you could also abuse it. Well, that's the way to plan for the future. Exactly like that. Plan for the future as a way to be more present. And if you're planning for the future and you notice it's taking you away from the present, then that kind of planning for the future is not helpful to you or anybody else. So just drop that kind. And of course, we often say, well, I can't drop it because of blah, blah and blah, blah. But that's all the more reason in those situations, those important situations, to rely on the present. and realize that when you're planning the future, you're not planning the future, you're talking about the future and the present. But sometimes that does help you meet more present. And sometimes people who are unwilling to contemplate the future, that unwillingness to contemplate the future means you, like, lean backwards.

[12:03]

You lean back from the present by being unwilling to face the future. And a lot of other people lean forward into the future out of being unwilling to face the future. Same with the sexual thing. You lean into the person in order because you can't face the anxiety of being present with the person or you lean away from the person because you can't stand the anxiety of being present with the person the person you most want to be with you run up to them and as soon as you get there you want to get away or vice versa you run up there and you can't stand to be with them so you grab them you know so like in my case I did a great deal to come to Zen Center to study with Suzuki Roshi. I arranged my life to be available to him if he ever needed my assistance in any way, you know. I became director of the building and assigned my, gave myself a room right next to his, you know.

[13:05]

So if he ever needed his, you know, his windows washed or his TV fixed, I was there. And sometimes, and because he noticed that I was there and I had arranged my life to be there, it kind of occurred to him that maybe I didn't want some instruction. So sometimes he would give me special attention. He would say, okay, come into my room and I want to give you some special teaching. As soon as I got in there, I wanted to get out. As soon as he like really came up and said, okay, I'm here for you. Here I am. Oh, thanks. Thanks a lot. But you're busy. I got to get out of here. You know? It's very hard. to meet somebody who's really coming to meet you. I mean, really coming to meet you rather than not coming to overwhelm you, but coming to meet you. Very hard to face that. Or the other way is, of course, you reach over and grab it. It's the other extreme. Hmm?

[14:06]

Well, she asked that. What's the answer? Be still. And be still doesn't mean you hold yourself still. It means you be with your beating heart. Your heart's beating. Boom, boom, boom. You're there. Boom, boom, boom. It's not like your heart's going boom, boom, boom. You're going boom, boom, boom. You're going boom, boom, boom. With your heart. With your mind going wish, wish, wish. You're wish, wish, wish. When you're with yourself, completely, there's no motion. There's no movement. You're not trying to get ahead of yourself. or behind yourself. And then you discover Zen in action. And then from that in action comes a spontaneous right action, which you do not figure out. You can never figure out right action. You can do your best by figuring. You can figure, okay, I think this is good, so do it.

[15:07]

A true Zen action comes from inaction. It comes from no preparation. It comes from just being ready and flexible. And then the situation arises and you act. But it's not your act. It's the act of the whole situation. So you have to renounce all your activity. You have to renounce your ability to act in order to act right. If you hold on to your great powers of action, of verbal, mental, and physical actions. If you hold on to them a little bit, that holding will, you know, it's kind of like, you know, somebody needs your help, okay? I don't want to rip this rope, it's very delicate, but anyway. Somebody needs your help, and you reach out to help, and your clinging stops your hand. Or if it doesn't stop it, it makes it waver, you know? And you do exactly what you don't want to do. Why?

[16:08]

Because you're holding to something. Sometimes what you're holding to makes the world do something very cruel. And if you're holding to your separation from others, you're basically a puppet of that attachment. You can be made to do basically anything just by turning certain dials. But if you let go of that, you can't be made to do anything. You can't be made to do anything. You can never be pushed around anymore. You will always do exactly what the universe wants you to do. Yes? So could stepping forward and showing some compassion be stepping into that? I mean, should you not act? Would that be considered being greedy and wanting to hold on to? Let's take the case, okay, I'm with somebody, okay, and I feel anxiety, you know, and I feel like I would just, if I would hug them, temporarily it would distract me from my pain. That's not compassion.

[17:10]

That's using that other person's body to make me feel more relaxed. Okay? When do you know that it's compassionate for them if you're suspecting that they're feeling... Well, one of the things about compassion is you don't get into knowing that it's compassionate for them. Compassion isn't going around saying, okay, I'm doing this compassionate thing and that compassionate thing. Okay, that's not... So you're talking to somebody and you notice the person is squirming in their seat, right? They're sweating or, you know... A lot, sometimes people come to talk to me and I often ask them, the first thing I ask them, how are you feeling? And they often say, I'm really anxious. They come into the room, you know, to see the whatever. And they feel nervous, just like I did when I went to see the whatever. I wanted to get out of there. Voluntarily went into a room that I wanted to get out of. So there's anxiety there. So when I find out somebody's anxious, what do I do? Do I try to talk them out of their anxiety?

[18:11]

I know why they're anxious. They're anxious for the same reason I am. Because they think I'm not them. In a big way. Not them. They've got a big not you there. So what's compassion? It's to basically share that anxiety. Not to try to get rid of it. Not to try to talk them out of it. To reduce it. I'm not into that. To accentuate it, I'm not into that. To ask, how is it? When the Buddha sees someone in mud or in quicksand, the Buddha does not reach down and pull a person out. The Buddha says, the Bodhisattva says, how are you doing? Now if it's a child, if it's a child and they're unable to get out, well then pull them out. But if we're talking to an adult, a practitioner, Then you ask them, how is it? And they say, well, it's all slimy and I'm sinking.

[19:13]

I'm scared and so on and so forth. How did you get in there? They tell you. And as they contemplate, it turns out that these kind of problems that we have that are the basis of our illusion, we get into those situations ourselves. And if you watch how you get into them, you can see how to get out. And if the teacher reaches in there and does it for you, you don't learn that you could do it yourself. However, it's important that the teacher be there and not do it. So you not only learn that you can do it yourself, but you learn that the teacher who could have done it for you did not. And therefore, in a situation where you also are faced with someone who needs help, that they should supply themselves, you don't do their work for them because you saw how valuable it was for your teacher to be right near you when you fell down and to say to you, how is it down there? And you say, well, it's low. And how did you get there?

[20:15]

Well, I fell right here. Where are you going to get up? Well, I'm going to get up right here. Well, are you going to get up now? Yes, I am. So a teacher helps you do your own job, and they also show you that they won't do it for you. Of course, part of their heart reaches out to you and wants to do it for you, but that's not compassion. That's that they can't stand their own pain at seeing you falling down. They have to sit there and let you be down there and know that you might not get up. Because some people will stay down there a long time just to see how kind the teacher can be. Will the teacher let me stay down here? Does the teacher love me so much that he won't do my job for me? And they'll push it way, way out there to see if they can get you to lose your patience and say, get up. Get up. in a way that they're basically going to start to lift you up. The Buddha does not reach down and pull beings out of the mire. The Buddha talks to the people and teaches them the Dharma.

[21:17]

And when they see the Dharma, they fly out of the mire, which they never were in in the first place, only because they thought that way. Who can untie the bell strings around the tiger's neck? Who can do that? Hmm? Of course, Buddha can do it. But who else? The one who tied it. And maybe you tied it when the tiger was a cub. And now it's gotten pretty big. But you still remember that cub that you were intimate with, that you got up real close to, and you put a rope around it, and you tied it. the one who tied it can go back and untie it. When I was a kid, I had a rough relationship with dogs at a certain point, particularly when I was around eight. They came, you know, like, you know, and they really had it out for me.

[22:23]

I don't know how it developed, but anyway, like, I'd be walking down the street and dogs would come running from blocks away. They'd come running right over me and jump on me and bite me. So I developed a fear of dogs. And like even little tiny dogs I would walk on the other side of the street. And then my sister got a dog. A German Shepherd. A male German Shepherd. A healthy male. But he was a puppy. And I grew up with that German Shepherd. Until he was like you know, 95 pounds of testosterone with teeth. And I grew up with him, so, you know, I wasn't afraid of dogs anymore. And my friends would come over and he would do his thing, you know, and they would tremble, you know, and I would say, he won't hurt you unless you move.

[23:28]

But... Intimacy, intimacy, intimacy. It's all about intimacy, intimacy. But intimacy is not easy to realize. It takes courage. It takes carefulness. It takes gentleness. You have to gently settle in. You have to gently go up to this tiger. If you go up to this tiger roughly, he know what will happen to you. He didn't... If you put that spring on the tiger's neck in a rough way, And maybe you don't want to go untie it, because he will remember. But if you're gentle, you can go untie all knots. And it's not really even you untie it. They get untied as soon as you get close to the monster. And we have some monsters, and they're very difficult to get close to, but we have to. There's no monster we can overlook. Again, it doesn't mean you stick your head into the monster.

[24:35]

And while learning it, it means you meet it and realize that the whole world, with all its demons, is you. Demons are, the strength of demons is directly proportional to their distance from you. Demonic power that's a long ways away from you has pretty much got you for sure. But when it's off real close, and finally not any distance at all, there's no possession. And then demons are resources for compassion and skillful means. But of course, it's not easy to get close to them. And get close again doesn't mean you come up and lean into them. You come up and just meet. Just meet. Not kind of become a demon. But also not... be separate from a demon.

[25:37]

Not women becoming women. Not women becoming men. Not becoming your lover. You need it. And on the way where there's tremendous anxiety that you come up. That's the way we're built. Face to face. You know? So how do you settle in just right? Until... And so in Zen, we have this, we have mudras. This is a mudra. We have mudras. Like this one. Joining the palms. And these mudras are practices in intimacy.

[26:41]

And if you can bring your whole being to joining your palms, you realize no sexual greed. Right like that. This satisfies you sexually. And if it doesn't, then you're in trouble. If you do a Zen Bao without bringing your entire body and mind to it, all your sexuality, all your hunger to this action, then this is not a real, you know, Zen-ian action. But that's what these forms are for, is forms to practice that doing something with your whole being. and feel completely satisfied and intimate with yourself in that act. Yes?

[27:49]

I've got a question about how you were talking about going up to the edge of yourself, the edge of self, where other begins. What I'm wondering is, say you're working on a project, or say writing a book, which other people will be reading later. Is that book part of self, or is that book part of other, and there'll be some sort of line between you and that book? Well, I think for, you know, probably when you first start writing it, if you have any tendency to, like, feel that the things in your environment are objects, you probably feel the book's an object at first. Or that your expression, your own personal expression, is an object. You can be aware of your own personal expression, you can be aware of your hand, you know? be aware of a pencil in your hand, where you can be aware of the words you speak as objects, as external to yourself. And as long as your actions or your body is external to yourself, you're agitated and uneasy and dissatisfied. So writing a book may be very difficult to do in that way.

[28:53]

Poetry may be easier in terms of the writing arts. Poetry may be easier for it to be just a pure expression of the oneness of yourself in your speech but that's what you strive for and as you come close to having your writing be you then you feel the other all around that writing and you feel great anxiety about your expression if I say what I have to say to you like I try to do today and I really say what I have to say fully express myself, then at that full expression, I feel anxiety. If I back way off and don't say what I have to say, or if I say what I think you'll like, there's no anxiety. Because nobody can find me. I'm not there. Nobody knows where I am. Because I'm just doing what you want.

[29:56]

But if I say what I have to say to you, you know where I am. And you can find me, I'm right where I look like I am. And you can be angry at me because where do I get off being able to express myself? Because you can't express yourself. Nobody will let you express yourself. I had a workshop here a few months ago on fear and anxiety. And at the end of the workshop, one of the women said, I had a great time because it's wonderful what you get by with. It's wonderful what you get by. Yeah, it's wonderful what you get away with.

[30:31]

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