i kind of promise this morning that i'd tell you are a myth which is
kind of applicable to what i posted
suggesting and the myth is called the myth of a more and psyche or cume but cupid and psyche
a cuban so cuba and cupid and psyche or a more and psyche
so i'm going to tell the story which is not accurate
but at a certain point i'm and as charlie to look at the story and and say what it says because a certain key part i can't remember a cruelly so here's the story the story is that there was a very beautiful being
who is often imagined to be a female
a young girl and her name was psyching
the mind

and she was so beautiful on what she was so beautiful that on
most men were afraid of her
it's just you know they couldn't imagine a taken
i have a relationship with such a beautiful creature
and many of them basically worshipped her
even though they didn't wanna they didn't dare to like have a normal relationship with her they did worshipper
and so many of them worshipped her that they stopped going to the temples of aphrodite
the goddess of
crazy love
or in a the goddess of divine madness
so aphrodite's temples were going into ruin and aphrodite god upset with this young
psyche simultaneously her father goes getting upset with or too because he wanted to marry her off to some young man
and have grandchildren but no way so
a to forces coming together one is aphrodite is getting upset with her and sends her son basically
to give her a really hard time and the way i remembered is she sent her son to killer
and simultaneously or father takes her away and put them on a cliff to be devoured
so
yeah so there it is she is in big trouble so he's out on this cliff
i'm really scared abandoned by her father not knowing actually that aphrodite's sent an assassin together
and so the assassin comes
the assassin whose name is love
and when he sees her he falls in love with her instead of killing her
pardon
cupid yeah cupid coming to kill her
and but when he sees her instead of killing her a falls in love with her and then he started to figure is there some way i can like ah you know my mom told me into killer and i better do what she said
so what does he constructs this idea of taking her to me
one of his divine
palaces
and keeping her there
so they can hang out together
and she's pretty happy with this situation
but the thing about it is he only comes to see her in the night
so he comes to kill her and he hasn't come up and say hello i'm i'm i'm supposed to kill you but i'm i'm falling in love with you and i'm not gonna kill you he doesn't do it that way he comes and sees caesar falls in love with their and then come plans to come back again in the know
night and it comes back in the night and takes her to his divine abode
no abode
and they're very happy there only problem is she doesn't know what love is
and love tells her i'm sorry if you can cassettes it would you please tell me who you are what you are would you please show yourself i mean i love hanging out with you is really great and i m and when the sun comes out i liked the palace you've given to me and the divine food is great
but i'd like to know who you are
i'd like to be able to see you
with my eyes and he says no you can't see me
you can't see me if you see me you will lose me
so that's directly related to the story
if we try to see this love
we lose it and he says if use if you make if you turn the lights on and see me you will lose me
so she goes along with that but then somehow during the day when she'd hang out and is very nice
palace that he's provided for her
somehow she sends word to her sisters to come and visit and they come to visit and they say this is a great place but you know what about where's your boyfriend where's your lover where's your husband she said well he's not around his he only comes at night
and
they say well young whoa
you don't really think bottom right she says well i know little bit about bottom i know i'm happy with them
but i don't know where it looks like and i don't know what it does during the day but for a living and just say what he might be no a gangster
he might be a serial killer who knows what you don't know hick it maybe he's just fattening you up for the kill
and then she becomes full the jewish
and again there's no option on this foolishness you have to fall for this i wanna know who he is i mean i love em is great but also i'd like to know who he is because it might it might be helpful to know who he is
then i can grasp them with my eyes to anyway
he comes to see her in the night and she's got this plan of taking an oil lamp and lighting it and bringing it to see who is and she brings the lamp over to him and the lamp illuminates his
body and my his body and face and she is like star struck with how beautiful love is now she can see it
but she accidentally spill some oil on him
and he wakes up and said i told you not to put light on me now i gotta leave so the flies away if she grabs onto his leg but he's the good hits a good fire
and she can't hold him and he flies a well she'll lose who
just like we lose our true home
by making it something that fits into our conscious perceptions
the difference is that
he flew away it would do thing where he flew away but actually he cooked came and stood behind her all the time and you couldn't see him because he's are to home doesn't fly away we gonna make it fly away and we fly away from it by preferring to know it rather than
well preferring to we we actually wanted and know what we want our cake and eat it too
but he told her that he would any if she knew him if she saw him she will lose him and she did and now here comes the part where i i'm not sure what happens but she has i remember it she's gonna have a conversation with cupid's mom did you find that per would you read that proved to us through it
nearly every venus venus aphrodite is greek and venus is roman okcupid is roman and a more is a greek to their parallel version of this method in both traditions i think it's the same one
so there's just probably many versions of this time if this is an oral tradition
psyche dissipated and to attempt to look around and in doing so she loses him
in her search for him she undertakes a series of cruel and difficult tasks said by venus in the hope of winning and back
you can can eventually no longer bear to witness her surgery excuse me i'm so there's a part in there were somehow she has some kind of conversation with venus dash aphrodite where she said you know
perceval he didn't follow your instructions he didn't kill me and she's pissed off about that this is an abbreviated version of what i shoot she's really angry that he didn't do it because he told her that he did said i killed her she's like mincemeat you know i got rid of her she's gone
no more problems mom
but he didn't he when he hit her or her mom his mom couldn't see or now the words out
his mom knows but she doesn't kill him and somehow she accepts that he didn't do his job and somehow aphrodite gets to have a conversation with her but not with him
he feel some compassion for her
and says okay
kind of like rumpelstiltskin and rumpelstiltskin
okay okay you wanna to get back together with them okay well i have some things for you to do the training
the training
our training
so there's three things i remember one is to go and collect so to go and collect the police the golden fleece from rams
at one another one is to sort out i think sand and mustard seeds or i think you can route one reads as her chess
okay so one task yeah will please look them up one task is go and collect the the place off the rams
i think it's golden fleece i'm not sure
so she goes she goes to do it
but on her way to the pasture
the budding field
the death trap of where these rams are
she goes through some
swampy area where there's reads and reads whispered to this fool
this foolish girl
who abandoned her love for the sake of grasping it
and they say don't go to the rams at noon go at sunset don't go and night either go at sunset and sunset there they're more docile and even then don't go up to the rams and try to directly get
the place from them collected from the brambles around the edge
point she does not perform this amazing deed by herself she does not trained by herself she got sign the dark job but she got some instruction from the reads who take
who have compassion for her silly girl trying to get ahold of love but you still want to reunite who will help you
so venus is kind of tough she says she just tells you to go get it will tell you how so with the help of the reads she collects the golden fleece next task i think is to separate sand from something like mustard seeds
and again as she's approaching that job or as she started a job
i think she realizes it's impossible and maybe faints
and in her fate
ants come and do the millions and millions are ants come and help her and they separate
into two piles and the third one is did you find it
his third task she has given a crystal vessel in which to collect the blackwater spewed by the source of the rivers sticks in
yeah so she had to go down into hell into the land of the dead and collect what black water source of the rivers yes i had to go down to the river styx and the other river and collect as blackwater
and another little twist in the in the foolishness is ashes bringing back the conclusion of or third job
he can't help but look into the mirror or something she can't help she what does she she have to collect it and not look huh
she's pushed to collected and not look at something and she can't help but look i think it's maybe not look at her own picture something she can't help it and she foolishly looks and blows it however she again
she again gets forgiven
i know that happens
but anyway there is these trainings that she has to go through and she cannot do them by herself
and an end she gets her united
and they have a baby and their baby's name is joy
guess my memory of the story and that's our story to we are on the same path
a reunion with the original home and we have lots of training to do and we're going to be foolish along the way
but we're going to confess and repent
and when we confess repent the dharma wheel will turn and they were going to
flip again and confess and repent
and the dharma will return and we will we will come in to union
of our mind which knows
and our mind which lets go of that knowing and realize another knowing those two are inseparable
so that's one story about it and another story which is loon maybe more complicated is the story of the wizard of oz
basically pretty much the same story
she
dorothy's and better or something and
a turbulent things happen and
she gets knocked on the head and a her dreams
she loses her home and goes to this really scary place
but she gets her united
basically back home pardon she gets home she gets she gets lots to home couldn't get home he killed she was able to pass yeah she had to get the bro
from the wicked witch she goes to the whole thing
keep in mind that it is which he comes back it's a todo
post to heard away exposes the wizard who was up his own here he
so the wizard of oz is another version of this without the all the you know another version of alicia's put it that way
because everybody's life is another version of this were all on the same path in our each one different but this is the path we're on
we're so fortunate and you know
in some scary stuff going to happen between now and a and forever
we're going to have some tough times and every tough time is another opportunity for training and if we don't accept it as training that's the mistake and then we know and will notice that and they will confess or i actually thought that this per
ersan was not an opportunity for training i thought this person was an exception to compassion or i thought this feeling was an exception to compassion i thought my own foolishness was an exception
just like these stories everybody thinks it's exception but it turns out we're all going to do that quite a few times we've done are already
and we have confessed it already and weren't felt sorry already and we tried again and again and we're going to keep on this until everybody keeps on this and that's the path wrong

according to various lives each of our life is the story of this

chapter three will be about the beginning of the
have they training
the great happiness of being able to shovel shit yes
so each of our lives is a version of his story but
it seems at least i have read the i haven't seen and yet but it seems like i different people's stories and differently you know cupid doesn't always find safe they don't always
successfully plead their case to the gods and get reunited
right but the way
it sounds like the one hand it's all the same story but it seems like it everyday life like maybe
whatever that
whatsapp up with the differences
yeah feels like the air
it doesn't feel so storybook in indiana their life was like and think things don't always go according to plan like that
who will the things didn't go according to plan for a for a more and they didn't go according to plan for psyche and they didn't go according to plan for look for dorothy they didn't go to they didn't go according to plan so not the way the path goal
was is that sometimes it goes according to plan and sometimes it doesn't but when it doesn't go according to plan that's the way the path goes
and some people do not want to walk this path
they do not want to do it that's the way they do it and some people do on to walk the path and they do want to but they don't and that's the way they do and some people do want you and do and there's gonna like happy campers but that's just a temporary provisional
situation because although things are going according to plan
something's rotten in denmark dash
oh
i'm yearning for something and i don't know what it is
and actually i did a whole bunch of stuff
and i was actually at one according to plan
but somehow this isn't what i'm looking for like i often tell a story about
me
the i
to make a long story short i felt like things are kind of going according to plan
even though i had quite a bit a hardship
i also had the or to the blessing of being up for hardship
like i had polio when i was a little boy but i i had a lot of support when i had polio
my people the doctors and nurses were kind to me and my parents are kind to me and after i got out of the hospital after the inflammation went away i had to do physical therapy for long time and my mother helped me and it was painful for a little guy to urls
but i did it because i felt loved and supported so i could do this hard thing
and i had other hardships after that
but things are kind of going according to plan more or less
i had some frustrations and some disappointments but basically i felt like things are going according to plan i don't know what i want to do with my life but i'll just go to school for a logger which is fine until i find out
and then i'll go i went through college and they've got into graduate school nervous
how graduate school was gonna going according to plan like i i planned and i go to graduate school and take classes and talked to brilliant professors and i didn't plan to get good grades but by accident i did which seemed fine
i didn't plan to get bad grades either i'd planned to go to classes and i got they went quite well
and then i had this little vision of
well if i keep going like this are probably get a phd
maybe
and then if i get a phd maybe i'll be
and as an assistant professor
maybe it maybe i'll be teaching assistant first and i'll be a persistent professor and then i'll be associate professor mammy and then i'll be a full percent professor mammy and that will be chairman of the department amy and then and then i'll be professor emeritus maybe and then all seems like a nice plan
you know with all these beautiful intelligent young people and brilliant coat colleagues and ivy-covered halls and
it looks like pretty nice thing to me and then if it on and all die
and i thought wait a minute something's missing here
what's missing
and then i thought i saw the zen people they were what missing what's missing is integrating our original home with our daily life
that's what was missing
and the way they integrated it i thought that's that way of being is what's missing in this program they do not teach you in graduate school or even when your professor you did not learn how
to relate to people compassionately no matter what happens they don't teach you that
but that's what i wanted to learn i can see that's what i wanted to learn but how did how could that happen it was totally wonderful but it didn't seem like far fetched somehow what they did wasn't far fetched of like opening your hand rather than what keeping your caused
so we can do that but sometimes it's hard to open your hand when somebody says open your hand
or give me what's inside sometimes we go nowhere i want to
how can we do that these people could
and then somehow the message got to me the reads the reads told me oh they have a training program they didn't get there just by good luck they went through a training process
so that they could like open up to insult and praise the same
and then i found out with the training program was
and it wasn't that bad
and but then i also didn't understand
that the training program is not something you do by yourself i tried to do about myself and
i i couldn't be very rigorous about it
so then another the message came to me
which was
you have to practice it with other people
in order to be rigorous you can't do it by your own power
so i thought another massive game or maybe if you are some place where people were into helping people do the training you would be able to do it and also maybe if a teacher would be helpful and then i heard about san francisco zen center and so on
and i went there and there were people who dare to help me i arrived in the walked in the zendo and they all stood up and said we've been waiting for you to help you thanks for coming now they didn't say that
there were just sitting there and i sat with them and they did help me
can i help them and they've been helping me
for fifty two years and i've been helping number fifty two years yesterday was the forty ninth anniversary of becoming a priest
so for fifty two years at the beginning i was only concern about them helping me and they did
it didn't occur to me how go to san francisco and help them
after a few decades though i've realized oh maybe i'm helping them to be it started saying to me thanks for helping us oh yeah he prayed you been helping me i probably was helping you to
so through this training i've been waking up to my true home which is that you're here helping me and i'm here helping you
and everybody's here helping you and your here helping everybody by doing this training together we wake up to what we have been yearning for all along
as things go according to plan or not but in my case things were kind of going to plan and got close enough
you know i didn't finish my phd but i got close enough to see that if i would get that take the next step if i was if these next step works out it still wouldn't be what i'm looking for
that was fortunate i didn't think i'd have to wait until i retired from being a college professor before i started practicing
and the other thing was i saw that my college professors who are so brilliant i didn't think that there were gonna help me
it was a training even though they're wonderful people
and i was wrong they were helping me to the training i just couldn't see it them they were supporting me to to
walk away from the university and walk in visit washington drive into zen center in my hearse
and get out and just stay as sensor for now fifty two years and as we say counting
that it includes things going the way we according to plan and not going according plan and not wanting things to go the way they're going and wanting things soil going and not caring about the way they're going whatever or on this path together and we can't do it alone and the other people can't
do it without us
so even though it's hard
they need us to hang in there
you're not doing this just for yourself if you are your quit
it's too hard to you just for yourself but it's not too hard to do for everybody
and everybody's helping you do this for all of them
that's the path we're actually on regardless of what we think we have no alternative because this is our actual original home we can only put up
a parents obstacles which are not really obstacles are opportunities to verify
this original thing
at least that's what the books about
and then i hoped
in in the training phase to put a whole bunch of zen stories in there which are basically have two phases of cent stories one phase is shit siblings stories and the next phase is stories of when you get and of confidence to be chairman to be on the manager of a shit travellers and then you get to go up into the house
house with your parents who had first you are afraid to be anywhere in the near neighborhood of and then finally realize that you've always been home but yeah we have to go through this
and we are right we sometimes think this is a ship
like we sometimes think things have never been worse
no argument nobody's argue with your bought duck is just said of this is the place to train that
that's the hard part

shall we just let the silence
guide us