Can you hear me if I talk like this? At the beginning of this practice period, how's that? I read the story about our ancestor Sherto and our ancestor Yaoshan. One day, Yaoshan was sitting and Sherto said to him, what are you doing here? And Yaoshan said, I'm not doing anything at all. And Sherto said, well then you're sitting idly. And Yaoshan said, if I were sitting idly, I would be doing something. And Sherto said, you say you're not doing anything at all.

[01:09]

What are you not doing? And Yaoshan said, even the 10,000 sages don't know. I went reading this story and being quiet a little while afterwards, I had the same feeling around my heart that I got after lunch, I think yesterday, when Leslie and Tayo and Daniel and I got to Tayo's cabin and I looked at those tulips, particularly when I looked

[02:25]

inside of the tulips, they're pretty from the outside, but when I looked inside I got this exquisite pain around my heart, and in defense, I immediately wanted to call them beautiful. I said that to the assembly and I think Leslie said something like, yeah, you kind of want to make it smaller, make it small. And even hearing this story about Yaoshan and Sherto, at the beginning of the story, it's pretty, I think so anyway, kind of pretty.

[03:27]

Great Zen master is sitting there and his teacher comes up and says, what are you doing here? It's pretty. But as you get more and more into the story and look into the center of the story, it shocks me and hurts me, it's so beautiful, or rather it shocks me and hurts me, it's so real. And then I call it beautiful to defend against my pain at what it is, to get a hold of it, to make it small. And again, I think of Suzuki Roshi's shocking definition of sin that I heard in my early days of practice with him, that when you see a flower and you call it beautiful, that's sin. Terribly strict, but the more I think about it and experience, the more I see in it.

[04:36]

And yesterday, or the day before yesterday, or some day, I was walking, it often happens when I'm walking around Tassajara and Green Gulch, but in particular on the 49th day I was taking a walk with Dorotea and, well, it's really painful out there. And we went over by the waterfall and looking at the waterfall, you know, it's just sitting there, this event, you know, this water on these big black and white rocks, and in a way I wanted to stay there forever, but I also keep inside myself, I want to defend against it, I want to do something with it, I can't just stand there helpless before it. I want to strike back and say, you're beautiful. It's too much just to sit there and quietly be overwhelmed. I want to get a hold of it, I want to take it home, I want to report back.

[05:45]

So, I kept quiet, I didn't say anything the whole time, I hid my sin, but inside I was constantly saying, it's beautiful, it's beautiful, it's beautiful. I couldn't just sit there and be quiet. And then at the end of the trip, just before the sunset, we got to the place where the Tony Trail starts, and we came around this corner, and here was this grass shooting up out of the earth, with the setting sun going through it, and it looked exactly like a fairy tale, I mean, just exactly that color they have in those kids' books, you know? It's just like, and again I just, oh God, it's beautiful, take that, fairy tale, wonderland. I kept quiet though, because I didn't want to express the insult, it's an insult, it doesn't get anywhere near it. You can say those words any time of day or night, but really, what happens there when

[06:47]

you see that stuff, it's just, you can barely stand it, right, you got to sit down and take a rest. After the sun kind of set and things had calmed down a little bit, I said to her, you know, many times I wanted to say it was beautiful while we were walking there, but I felt like it was an insult, so I didn't. Anyway, stories like this about our ancestors' practice, tulips, when you get up close and look inside and not only that, but get surprised, you know it's going to be neat, but then it gets you, especially that one yellow one that's got that shocking piece of red color blaring out there, totally out of control. Like Van Gogh said, you know, when he really started to be able to paint, he said, finally

[07:48]

I'm not standing helpless before nature, I can paint back at it. But you know, it's hard to take, especially when you're a being like that. One of my friends said, you know, it's not that bad to be a little insensitive. So again, that very strict definition of sin that Suzuki Roshi offered goes very well with Goethe's definition, which is, yes, sin is whatever you can't stop doing. It's impossible. I can't go around and stop myself from thinking beautiful. It just happens so fast that I defend myself by naming reality when it really hits me. When it's not hitting me, then I can be quiet, but when it gets to me and when it hurts,

[08:48]

I often want to say beautiful. Another word I often use is, you know, awkward, or something like that. Anyway, some word to get a hold of it. When you meet a friend and it's difficult just to stand there and feel that intensity, it's pretty hard. You want to find a word, you know, to bring it down and call it awkward or whatever, you know, or unfriendly or painful. And I also mentioned that Scott Peck, who was doing his book on evil, he said that when he found the word evil for some situations, that it gave him power, it gave him strength. It gives us power if we can name this stuff, but when we get the power by naming the thing, although it may be necessary in the case of evil, it's very tricky, because in a way getting

[09:57]

the word also gives us the power, which also makes the evil, or something like that. It gets messy. So, I propose, and I think all of us have some sense, that this world, that this life of ours is incredibly wonderful and joyful and beautiful beyond anything we can say about it. But, at the same time, any, you know, self-imposed or self-asserted beauty kills beauty. And any self-assertion of goodness turns into evil. So it's a wonderful world, but we just have to not leak. It's an incredibly joyful thing, human existence, if we can just not lie.

[11:03]

But we can't stand not lying, so we do. But at least we can start confessing that we're liars, and that we can't just be quiet in the face of the intensity of reality, and we have to lip off and do something to, you know, cut it. So it sounds good to just sit there and do nothing, it sounds good to sit still and be quiet in the face of reality. I aspire to do that, but it's not easy. It's not easy. And also, you know, when I was looking at that waterfall, that waterfall was an example

[12:09]

of, you know, I think what was happening there, regardless of me saying it's beautiful, I think something happened there which is true beauty, but that waterfall is not what I think is beauty. I mean, again, the realization of beauty, of true beauty, comes when you see that beauty is not intrinsically beautiful. Now that meadow with the sunset going through the green, that sort of like fell into my category of beauty, but there's a lot of other beauties that don't. Those aren't my beauties, I don't own those. I'd like to, but for a while there I don't possess them. So, I want to name my pain in an attempt to reduce it, or anyway, get away from it somehow,

[13:16]

and so I keep doing that. I was talking to a friend of mine about this business of deception and turning away from pain and all that, and repression, denial, and all that, that we were discussing. And he said something like, I don't remember exactly, but something about, I'm having trouble getting a hold of the spirit of what he said, but it was something like that pride, he thought pride had something to do with either evil or denial or repression or something like

[14:19]

that. I'm not quite sure exactly how it went, but anyway, he was saying that his parents always encouraged him to be proud. And we were talking a little bit about how some kinds of pride might be okay, for example, and some kind of pride might not be okay. The pride of, I never do anything wrong, that kind of overweening pride, that's probably pretty unhealthy or that's kind of like self-assertion of goodness, which turns into evil. But I thought of, for example, some of these Olympic athletes who do these incredibly wonderful

[15:23]

performances and everyone is totally inspired to see them, what a human being can do. And I thought, well how, maybe at the time that they're doing that, maybe at the dead center of their performance, maybe they don't have any room to like think, geez, I'm doing a pretty good job. Maybe at that dead center of their performance, all they've got room for is just to do it, and they're totally filled with joy, but maybe it's not the least bit personal. Maybe they can't even say, it happened, maybe they can't even say that, maybe it just happens, maybe they just do this, what is it, triple, triple reverse axel or whatever it's called, you know what I mean, those figure skating turns that they do, maybe they just do it and at that time they cannot think of anything and they're just simply pure action. Maybe only just a fraction of a second later they realize it happened and then there's

[16:27]

pride. I don't know. You could have various theories and try to find out. Was anybody home at the time they did that or not? I don't know. But I thought it seemed like it would be all right for them to say, well, it happened, that was a 10, and I was there. Maybe that's all right, I don't know. Anyway, I speculated that that kind of pride maybe is not so bad, but maybe it isn't so good, I don't know. But what I do feel is that what a lot of us do is that we get this idea, oh I don't know which happens first, but we get this idea that if we just don't do well, if we're sloppy or practice carelessly or lazily or in some way humiliate ourselves, that we will probably

[17:31]

avoid being conceited, arrogant, and proud. Because how could we be proud, you know, lying in the gutter, drunk out of our mind, you know, et cetera, et cetera. Wouldn't we then finally not be conceited and avoid the pain that conceit causes? Well, I don't think it works, believe it or not. I think some of these people who have humiliated themselves like world-class humiliation, that if you get in there and pry it open, there's still somebody in there saying, yeah, I'm proud, mighty proud. I don't think that practicing or living sloppily and carelessly is what will root out the conceit. I think it just may make it possible to not notice it.

[18:35]

I propose that self-conceit and pride are the birthright of a being which has objective knowledge. Yeah? What is conceit? Conceit? Conceit means that you think some ... well, if it applies to yourself, you think that your good qualities are, you know, you have a much greater idea of them than they are. Like if you think ... hmm? It's to blow your opinion of yourself or someone else way out of proportion, much bigger than it really is, to puff it up. Arrogance means to puff up. You abrogate, you bring too much to it, so you make too much out of the self.

[19:36]

And then the reverse is, you make too little out of it, you exaggerate it. But the fundamental exaggeration is you love it and are proud of it. That's what Vasubandhu says. First of all, you love it. Then you find out that it's not proper to love it, that society doesn't like you to be proud and love yourself, so then you reverse it and start talking around with low self-esteem. But at the core of human beings, at the core of people who have objective knowledge, is conceit, is self-love and self-pride, which we deny. We squash it down, we hide it from ourselves. Then, in order to make sure, in case it pops up again and we feel the pain of its re-emergence, we can do things sloppily as a kind of proof or additional confirmation that we aren't really conceited and we aren't really proud of ourselves.

[20:41]

Now, the guy I was talking to said that when he does things well, like when he practices Zen well, follows the forms well, follows the schedule well, sits well, thinks well, studies well, that he notices, he starts to become aware of conceit and pride. So he thinks maybe he should do less well. But again, I feel that we are basically conceited and proud, and it isn't that doing things well makes you conceited, it's doing things well might make you notice that you are, which is horrifying, especially if you've been fairly successful denying it. So actually, I propose that being careful and diligent and not lazy will be very helpful

[21:47]

for us to uncover our deceit, well, will help us to stop being deceitful by uncovering our conceit and also, of course, the pain that's around that. This conceit causes pain not only directly, but also it causes pain because we were told in various ways to not be that way. We were punished for being conceited and proud. Some of us were anyway. And then after we were punished to be conceited and proud, the same people who punished us often came around and told us that it's good to be proud and tried to get us to come out of our little hole. I've noticed that many times in my practice that during the times when I was very careful

[22:48]

and successful in being ethical, or also during certain ceremonies that I participated in, sometimes as an audience, but also sometimes as a don or ino or doshi, that after those ceremonies I feel so clean and so bright and so shining or so pure that it's very painful. And I look for some way to bring myself down, some way to cram sugar into myself or talk stupid or hurt somebody or get intoxicated, some way to pollute myself again because that self-purity is so uncomfortable. It's very hard to stand it. So I can understand that some of you who are quite diligent in your practice experience

[23:49]

pain around that because, not to mention self-righteousness that might happen to you when you notice that people aren't doing that or who appear to be not being careful. So it seems better just to sort of drop this doing well and doing our best and not have this pain, but I actually am proposing the other direction is that doing our best and doing well will uncover our conceit and the pain around that, will uncover our pride and the pain around that, and then we have a chance to really go to work and practice patience with that pain, the pain which is already there all around the conceit right now. And it's the pain due to isolation which happens because of the conceit and it's the pain because

[24:53]

of our training which told us not to be that way. So it's impacted with lots of layers of denial and repression and fear and pain. It's a terrible situation to look at. So I was talking to this guy and he said, well does that mean we're supposed to spend our time delving into pain all the time? And it's not so much that you sort of go into the pain like a pain vampire or something like that, it's not so much that way, but it's just simply to be honest and then the pain comes. It's not like you go for the pain, just stop being deceptive, just stop denying and that the pain comes. Don't ask for the pain because you'll get a deceptive form of it. Just be honest about what you think of yourself and how you feel about yourself, down deep,

[25:55]

uncover it and you'll find pain too. These self-love and self-pride and self-view and self-ignorance that Vatsubandhu talks about which happen as soon as you have awareness of the object, those are called afflictions, they hurt. And also when you notice those afflictions you're getting down to the birth of the self and the birth of objective consciousness, you're getting down to the core of the psyche and that's where realization and liberation happen, right in that space. And if we can be patient with the pain around these afflictions we can settle into the nature, the core nature of the human psyche. We can settle into the space where the mind creates objects and where the attribution of substance to concepts is clearly separate. So I'm not recommending we delve into pain or look for pain, I'm just saying let's

[27:05]

and try then when the pain comes up to practice patience with it and practicing patience with the pain that comes from conceit deepens our resolve to let go of that conceit. Not to try to get rid of it, that's not letting go, but to admit it and be willing to let go of it. And so this process may sound painful but actually this process is and should be joyful all the way through because it is joyful to tell the truth. It is a relief to stop lying to ourselves. If this seems morbid and horrible it's only these visions when they first appear to us that are morbid and horrible but the actual opening up to them is joyful and a relief

[28:08]

and lightens the whole situation. But it's not evidently joy that we think that joy is. No, it's not joy that we think joy is, it's real joy, again, not this self-asserted joy, but real joy, joy that's inconceivable. And this kind of joy sponsors and supports and sustains the returning to admission of the truth and the returning to a truth which might be embarrassing to the self and painful. But again it offers the opportunity to practice patience with it and deepen the resolve to let go of it and opens us again to the possibility of complete release. But it shouldn't be that the pain, that the joy just comes at the end of this process, the joy should be all the way through and the joy and relief should be partly a sign that you're on the right track. You're saying the joy should be there, do you mean the joy actually is there and it's

[29:18]

our own systems that don't allow us to experience it? The joy is there already and when we stop leaking and denying it appears. When we uncover the conceit that we've been denying we also get to see the joy that was denied along with that. The problem is that when we deny one thing we deny a whole bunch of other stuff too. And we don't deny everything, there's some stuff we don't deny, that's called us, that's what you think you are. So I'm not denying everything, but what we're denying, the stuff we're denying is mostly, is mostly, as Jung said, pure gold. There's some kind of stuff in there that's not so helpful, it's just raw, primitive, dangerous stuff that's not so nice actually. But denying it doesn't help either.

[30:23]

But a lot of stuff is wonderful stuff that jealous people told us we couldn't have. Like taking your clothes off at the airport. So, that seems like enough. How do you feel about all that, about all this, about yourself? I feel a little bit stuck on the issue of what is pride, what is good pride, and damage to pride. And it seems to me that in one sense when you think about conceit and self, the assertion

[31:29]

of self as being maybe an unwholesome pride, it seems that there's a kind of sense of integrity of self that maybe is classified as pride. It seems like a very wholesome thing. And also the people that I've known who've had the greatest problems, the biggest issues around pride, pride in the sense of self, are not so much people who were repressed, although there are certain chapters where it's told or indicated that they shouldn't be proud of themselves, but people who sustained some real damage, who had experiences that disintegrated them, that didn't particularly directly address the question of their self-view. Sort of brushed by that.

[32:29]

So, I think that maybe the whole issue of pride in the sense of self maybe runs a little bit deeper than the conventions of social interaction. And it's trickier than that. Yeah. Well, I think it runs, the issue of pride, I'm suggesting, is very deep. And, well, let me just say, let me make a, what do you call it, a testimonial in favor of what you might call a strong ego. I subscribe to the notion or the teaching or whatever that a strong ego is necessary for spiritual practice. And a strong ego, I would propose, is an ego that's not at the center of the mind. I remember E.E.

[33:36]

Cummings said he never met a non-centered ego. And when he said that, I thought, well, that's probably true, and I thought, I guess maybe I never have either. But I think the fact that he or I never met or never knew we met a non-centered ego, or in other words, never met anybody whose ego wasn't egocentric, doesn't mean that there aren't some. And Jungian psychology proposes that the ego that's centered is a weak ego. But an ego or a self that's not centered, that's just part of the psychic complex that performs the function of self, of individual self, the individual self, if it's not centered and not in a fixed position, it's not only do you have to have it, but it's actually necessary, it's useful, it's good to have a strong self, a self that doesn't have such strong, heavy boundaries, and so on.

[34:38]

But some people have a damaged sense of self, plus, at the same time, they put that damaged self right at the center of the whole psychic field. I think that in school, also, we have terminology for it. I think it's an issue of hosts and guests. So, for example, where you began with the issue of calling things beautiful, that move us, that we get kind of empowered, it seems that that empowers guests at the expense of hosts. Right. Well, a lot of what you're saying these days is giving off a lot, but I was just thinking this morning, this experience, the centered ego in front of the waterfall, it's too big, the waterfall's too big.

[35:41]

If it's off to the side, though, the waterfall can be in the center, no problem. Right. So, this morning, I've been sort of admitting to my pain, and I didn't get to do the Han, really upsetting, this kind of thing. And then I was kind of walking around this spring, this rain-washed spring morning, and it was like too much. And I'm not drinking coffee these days, but I'm fixing myself a cup of coffee, I think this is going to be really great, and wondering, why are you doing this? And the reason was to try and bring this centered ego up to speed. Right? To try and have it keep pace with this thing that was really kind of painful to me. Well, it didn't work. Or what sometimes happens when we try to do that is we get the centered ego ahead of what's happening, and then the body gets shredded in the process. Yeah, that's a good way to see it.

[36:41]

When you're meeting a waterfall, which is your mind, you know, what is it, 200 foot waterfall over black rocks and moss, that's your mind, and then you want to get your ego in there, but it doesn't fit. You know? Put it over on the side a little bit, then just sort of, and that quiets the whole thing down, but it keeps wanting to come back and say, beautiful, beautiful. When you're out in a house building, you know, often there are wonderful natural features of this. There's an impulse to sort of put a picture window right in front of it that actually works out better than just having a small window facing it, and have the picture window facing something else. And a strong ego can also be a great servant. A strong ego can negotiate between the reality of the precepts and what is ethical behavior

[37:49]

and our desires. It can make an arrangement between them, but it doesn't have to be right in the middle. Just because it does such an important job, it doesn't have to be right in the middle. It can be off to the side a little bit, doing this rational, reasonable function for us. We need it. And it's all the better servant if it's not in a fixed position, if it can go around and be flexible and try different approaches and stuff. But if it's in the middle, it's kind of stuck. Yeah? I thought about the ego actually last time, in terms of the kind of functional task of denying the oppression of the ego. And then, the shadings of deception. You know, the central ego doesn't share the request material with others. It's sort of like a Bodhisattva model of deception. And then, it shades over into, possibly, a prime cause for deception.

[38:59]

It's kind of like several gradations of breaking another precept down, but not applying it. But there's a functional component of that, for a while. Yeah, for a while, we have to do that. For a while, in order to make this servant, this ego servant, it sort of has to have a definition. And so, it has to say, well, it's not everything. So, it pushes this stuff over here, calls it not itself. It seems to be unavoidable that we do that. But now that we've done that, that's over, or we've done that and continuing, or whatever, we need to bring this stuff back, which will mobilize and more effectively let the ego function and continue to do its job, which we needed it to do all along. But the more we can bring this stuff up that we're denying, the better. The problem with that is, what kind of substance does that have? What kind of attribution of substance is within that stuff?

[40:00]

Is it really true that there's something behind it that's more real? Or underneath it's more real than what's on the other end? No. You know, one of the basic conceits of the ego, one of the basic ways of making the ego too important, is to say it needs to be in the center. All this stuff, on both sides of consciousness, both conscious and unconscious, all this stuff lacks inherent existence. That's why everything's so wonderful. It's because of that. Now, as we notice our conceit, and as we bring up this stuff, it isn't that this is the good stuff and this is the bad stuff, but as we bring this stuff up, our experience will encourage us to live without conceit, because we'll notice that that's the main thing that's causing this pain. And the basic conceit, besides putting this ego in the center, the basic conceit is that there's inherent existence.

[41:02]

That's the basic problem. And we can see that if we start bringing this stuff up, because we're not in much pain about what we already have admitted we are. We don't feel so much pain about that. We're in pain about what we're not admitting. And then we'll also be in pain when we notice that that's what our pain is, and when we start uncovering that stuff, we'll get into all kinds of conflicts and feel all kinds of tensions that we're now denying, which are hurting us, but we don't admit. So we're going to expose ourselves to more pain. But if we sit with that pain, we'll see where the pain's coming from more and more clearly, and we'll be more and more willing to let go of the cause of the pain, which is this belief in inherent existence, which we're really into. Yeah? I don't know if we're having a conversation or not, so keep trying. No, I mean, I don't know if I'm understanding what you're saying. You don't want it to be a quantity of substance that exists.

[42:22]

It isn't, right. That's why it didn't make much sense to deny it in the first place. You don't know what it is. Yeah, all right, it's not a fact, it's disturbance, and it's not the disturbance, it's a fact. It's some dynamic there, which makes life more complicated, messy, and difficult. And totally changing. And totally changing, yeah. And we think, we wonder if we'll survive exposing ourselves to what looks like, before we look at it, like it's going to be chaos. But it's not chaos. It's actually quite lawful. You know, it just said it could be chaos because we don't know what it's going to be. Well, that, like the wondering whether you might survive, is the self itself. The one question on how to survive is

[43:24]

is the self as hard to remember. That's part of the stuff which we don't like to think about, yeah. Right. That's part of what... It's hard to carry that around as part of our ego. Right. It's hard to carry around the feeling of I wonder if I'm going to survive the next moment. I wonder if I... Or the feeling like I couldn't survive if I admitted the truth. It's hard to carry that around consciously. And that's not exactly a fact, but it's something. But also we have a big feeling reaction to that called pain and fear, anxiety. But there's nothing... It's hard to not believe that there's something behind it, you mean? Yeah, it's hard to not believe it. Right. It's hard to not believe that there's nothing behind the demon, the demon just created by our fear. And other people's fear, yeah.

[44:25]

So let me see if I can understand this. I mean, this is an interesting conversation here. We're first of all talking about something that doesn't exist. Yeah, as usual. As usual, right. And yet, out of this something that doesn't exist comes patterns and habits. And so there are patterns and habits. No, it's not out of this something that doesn't exist. It's out of the belief that it does exist that causes the habits and patterns. But so when you look into it, when you investigate it and you discover, my gosh, there's nothing there. But the pattern and habit, the movement is going. There's something happening. And if you're 25 or 35 or 45, there's a cycle of things that go. So sometimes we call it life and sometimes we say there's a pattern. But when we investigate it, we don't find any substance to it. So partly the question I have is

[45:29]

how do we work with this, with the understanding that there isn't anything behind it. There's nothing there pushing it along, yet there's still movement. And how not to get trapped by these patterns. So we look at the beauty. Well, let's see. Maybe I'll try to use something a little personal here. I've noticed since I've been here, but have never been down the road, and I looked up the hill and there are those red tulips at the bottom of the hill. I was a little awed. I sort of staggered. I sort of stopped. Sunlight and a purple cloud. And then all of a sudden something said. I said, you know, you're enjoying this. There's too much joy here. I didn't say it was beautiful, but something shut down. And yet I don't find any substance there, but I find a pattern there. I find a habit that I can't step out of, that I can only recognize as it arises and say, oh, something's happening. And all I can do is give myself up to it. So I'm curious as I listen to the two of you talk

[46:33]

and hear you talk about these things, how do we take the next step and say, oh, we recognize something's arising, but are we not a victim, but are we just sort of tossed around by this? Have we no choice in this? So is it the ego you talk about that makes some choices? Okay, that's enough. I'm not going to be overwhelmed any longer. So I don't know where my question's leading except these are things I've noticed as I hear you two talk and I wonder about them. I wonder how patterns or habits are dealt with when we understand there's no substance to them. Well, maybe, you know, many people might have theories about what happened there, but one thing that came to my mind was he got overwhelmed. The egocentric ego felt upset because he wasn't in the center anymore. He told you to not take this experience too seriously

[47:37]

so he can get back in the center. That's one way to interpret it. However, that's sort of painful because now this wonderful feeling that you had has got this thing moving and taking over so you start feeling bad. You start feeling bad right away actually and worry what's going to happen to the centered ego in the face of this enormous, of this overwhelming life that you were having there for a little while. So then the controller came back to work because he got upset. The consciousness wasn't paying enough homage to him so the conceited one took over again and came back to normal and everything's fine. And now you're hearing this conversation and now you're hearing this conversation which is also probably somewhat wonderful and somewhat horrifying so you'd like to bring the ego back in the middle of this too. We all would. And get this under control too. How is practice or how is this used or worked with?

[48:41]

How is this... I mean here we're sitting in this wonderful experimental space. How do we make use of it other than bringing it up like I am right now? So you say that in our hallway and think about this. We're doing it like this. This is how we're doing it. Now let's do it some more. Yeah. I'd like to hear you talk about... There's something that's been troubling me. I don't think it's exactly a contradiction but... It's okay if it is. Well, yeah, but I don't think it is. Maybe it is. It's about the relationship between this notion of self-conceit and the notion that I've had most of my life and it's been lightening the last two years but that I am evil, that I am worthless.

[49:42]

I also know that I have self-conceit and that I sometimes think extremely highly of myself and the ego certainly is in the middle. So, I mean, is that simply another conceit? Or what? Well, again, I'll just propose some, you know, some sense of theory and you can check and you can think about it and discuss it with us and experiment with it, okay? It also relates to what you were just saying and that is I feel that one of the things that I try to use these days is in a situation like you described I would say that probably what I would have felt in what you described is I would have felt an intensity and a tension and a kind of paradox between myself and the environment at that time and what I'd like to do then is do something to

[50:49]

if I feel uncomfortable with that intensity to do something to lower the intensity or remove the tension and I feel like very deeply in our upbringing and it's in us too is another tension which is between asserting our position being who we are and as a way of expressing ourselves in the world and finding out what we are and also that because of the way we're built as human beings we need another being who's doing the same to recognize us. I think we sense from early childhood that our life doesn't mean anything unless somebody's looking back at us or it doesn't mean enough that if nobody's looking back at us we have not much sense of ourself. I like this theory that when our mother or whoever

[51:51]

when that figure looked back at us when those eyes looked at us and saw somebody's there that this was a key point for our sense of identity and we do need to feel like we're here. If we don't we just simply continue to make an effort to feel that and to realize that. But not just that but also not only is somebody seeing me but I'm also saying what I am and I think that what we're taught imperfectly both in the positive and negative direction as we grow up is we're taught that if you assert your position if you say that you're worthy to be in that place and to say who you are if you say that I or one of us others will remove ourselves from your presence we will not give you recognition we will go away from you

[52:53]

and we will leave you all by yourself asserting your existence which you know on some level won't work because in order for you to realize the meaning of you asserting an existence depends on somebody else who's doing the same thing who you recognize is doing the same thing and you think is pretty pretty good example of a human being that they would look back at you and see that you're doing that that completes your story but some of those same people say to you when you're young that you really are doing that too strongly and at some points children do do it too strongly they say basically I want you to recognize me and I'm not going to recognize you but the one they're talking to is somebody they do recognize but the moment they're saying recognize me they're not saying I also recognize you right now too they're just emphasizing mommy or daddy recognize me and mommy or daddy say sometimes they say if you keep going like that I'm going to leave

[53:56]

they say that in some way and you know that if they leave you're done for not just because of your nurturance but because of your recognition as a psychic reality so you in order to continue to maintain the relationship you cool it but you don't consciously cool it like okay I'm going to back off for a while and come back later to assert myself because if you did that that would be too conscious and you'd be keeping and if you did that would be fine you say okay temporarily I'll do it and then when I can handle the tension of recognizing them at the same time that I'm asserting myself I'll try it again because if I recognize them they won't abandon me but right now I'm too little I only know how to just assert myself or submit so I'll submit and I'll come back later meantime the relationship will be maintained because I'm not asserting myself so strongly that they leave me but what we do is we don't do that subconsciously we do it in a kind of primitive childlike way

[54:59]

and we say the reason why you can't assert yourself is because there's something wrong with you you're no good that doesn't let you continue to be aware of this your real motive and the selfish part about why we do that is because we want to maintain ourselves through this difficulty and we know that we are not yet adult enough to sustain we don't have enough meditative powers and skills to maintain this tension we don't want to lose the relationship so we back down but we can't consciously back down because that would continue to expose us to this tension and this paradox so we make it simpler we just say there's something wrong with us and we start to believe that and then we can't even move back later to assert our position or if we do again we do it like a child of over-asserting it and saying so strongly that the person who we're asserting to again threatens to leave

[55:59]

because we're attacking them but that's anyway what we have to do we have to come back assert our position again with all these voices around us from our childhood those simplistic voices which were hiding our real agenda which are actually just simply childhood defenses against this intensity which we're now coming to face and so we come back and try to assert our position but then at the same time as soon as possible try to recognize that the person you want to assert this yourself to is somebody who you have respect somebody who you feel is worthy of recognition otherwise if they weren't you wouldn't want them to they wouldn't be the person you want to recognize you and again that opens you to two things at once both that you're recognizing yourself and expressing yourself and that you need somebody else in order to fully realize who you are

[57:02]

so you're making yourself vulnerable at the same time you're being strong and what's easy for us is to be either vulnerable and weak or strong not easy but that's both of those ways don't work but we can do them easily and some people specialize on being submissive and some people specialize in being dominant and expressive and assertive and getting all the recognition but it doesn't work right? so now we're doing this impossible task which a lot of psychologists and philosophers say is impossible and that is for two people to actually meet where both of them are asserting their position and both of them are recognizing the other side that's the ultimate and some of us as we approach we have these voices around us saying you're not up to this you're asking for too much space etc. etc. you're not worthy of this and others of us have a different story

[58:03]

what's the story? this person is not worthy of me this person is not giving me enough attention they have to give me more attention more attention, more attention I have both stories yeah it's good that you have both stories it's good to have both stories finally at the same time and that's the most intense situation and that's a situation where the ego can't be in the middle, the ego has to set off to the side and sort of be a servant and arrange these, set these situations up you know, say okay now put your robes on and go to the zendo and you're going to get one of these things that's going to happen to you you know go study buddhism you know, go pay your respects to someone go ask for something from someone, the ego can arrange all this stuff and if it's off to the side it can just sort of like sit there and hope for the best for us while the whole psyche is going in there the whole psyche can stand this incredibly intense life and the strong ego can say, come on now

[59:04]

we figured this out, this is a perfectly good theory of practice let's try it, you know, get in there and do it and don't worry that this is going to be intense rather intensely intensely? uh oh when you were talking about assertion and non-assertion and reputation and non-reputation and separate ego and acts of separate ego it seems to me that you're talking about them as exclusive and somehow it felt um like it was a way of simulating so it feels to me

[60:04]

like it's not um it's not as if at one moment I'm being self-centered or I have a centered ego and then at the next moment I'm not having it but it's more like um both are there at some point and that's the point yeah, really both in reality the ego for a lot of us is centered but it's not really centered, we just think it's centered and in reality in fact we're not submitting or asserting just one or the other it's just that we think that way we simplify the situation, we want to make a we split the situation into two parts and take one side, it's not really happening that way, this is just a mental thing we're doing and so somehow we have to catch this illusion

[61:05]

and not be fooled by it but the problem is that when we catch it and not be fooled by it, we immediately get thrown into the experience of our actual life and then we want to go sit in the sidelines again and simplify it and let somebody else live it so it's very, you know that's why we have this wonderful practice called sitting there and not doing anything at all which includes all this but that also means you don't lie to yourself about this to make it less intense it's pretty difficult so I forgot right

[62:11]

now we're able to stop would you say that louder please? somewhere there's got to be a little atom but somehow still that's not it but it's something I always find my own solid spot it's difficult so I keep finding like say myself I get excited when I think I've got something

[63:46]

but yeah, as soon as you can put your toe on something you can build a universe right right, either one's conceived either one's blowing things out of proportion making too much out of it and I think we have this practice wonderful practice which is like, you know let's just sit and do nothing and that's not being idle and no one knows what that is it's incredibly it's incredible and there's no good and bad there really

[64:49]

it's just more mental constructions so with a practice like that I just feel like, well, okay but let's not like then, if that's the way it is then let's not, we don't need any deception either, right so if there's all kinds of junk there and all kinds of pain and stuff since it's empty, we don't have to deny it then, right but what we sometimes do is say, well, you know there's no pain, there's no pleasure, there's no good there's no bad, so then we go ahead and therefore it's okay if I deny that stuff but if there isn't any you don't have to deny it, so let's just let the pain and garbage and all the tricks we're playing come out as much as possible not, it wouldn't be that that stuff wouldn't come out because in fact we do we have past karma so this teaching that we don't have to worry about this stuff is not that we deny it, the teaching is that that's why we can let this stuff come out and dance with it and be whatever we turn out to be we won't probably go crazy we won't be immoral people probably yes

[65:52]

yes yes yes yes well, first of all, I don't feel a whole lot of joy you don't feel a whole lot of joy? so second of all as I begin to look at how much perception that I'm going on I just I don't know I don't know okay, so now am I trading substance? am I trading mora?

[67:05]

am I trading stuff? am I in? so you feel confused yes and I also feel like um I can't, I just can't quite apply all of what I'm saying to um my experience but what I think I'm doing is I think okay and right now there's not existent shape in my life so I just need to face up or at least am I losing a lot of things? or am I deceiving myself in some way that's not seen because actually I'm not experiencing a whole lot of joy um I suppose

[68:06]

usually what I've seen is expressionist and today it's like okay and how do you feel about that? what's that? how does that feel? what's wrong with me? so you're wondering what's wrong with you that's what you're thinking how does it feel to be wondering what's wrong with you? yeah so now you're not left out anymore that's how that's how we feel, we feel shitty too you think we don't feel shitty? we do that's where we're at, so now you're with us do you believe that? hmm? that it's okay

[69:23]

that it's okay to have this and to be in this because I hear that people are talking about something that will exist and this is a pattern I don't have experience in it I don't have any experience in it I'm not experiencing it as something interesting or joyful it just speaks and I know that there's something else involved in not having to use all my energy to deceive myself or anybody else so so

[70:45]

I feel like at one point I either instead of rage and grief because all that is just this total feeling of loss you know it's like everything is falling down I know it's not the end of the world it's the beginning it's the beginning

[72:29]

in this group? hmm? you don't care or you don't want to? you don't want to do you mind if I say something? huh? is that ok? we don't say that things are empty as any encouragement that's not intended as the slightest bit of encouragement to deny that we're in pain that's not why we say that that's not a reputation of pain hmm?

[73:30]

yes for me it doesn't make sense to think about the lack of inherent existence when you're working with when I'm working with it's just work it's unraveling getting closer and closer and closer until until you know you're there and after that maybe you say while you're doing the work you're just coursing in the work of unraveling whatever it is and you don't even know what's going to be ahead it's like following Ariana's thread it's your clue and you just go and it's scary it's really scary so emptiness non-existent emptiness it's just the work

[74:40]

you okay? do you want to say something to me? yeah this attributing substance this morning or earlier I was thinking about last year at the beginning of this practice period we were talking about TCA and you suggested in class then that we cannot imagine that we have an experience of lacking inherent existence in fact our primary basic stance is attributing substance we don't and so I've been which jive with my own experience but I still couldn't it wasn't there's a mystery in that sort of pecking away at and this morning the image that came to mind was

[75:42]

one of the reasons it's so difficult to get into that space where we're actually to observe or able to observe some of the fine details of attributing substance is because it's blanketed in pain it's totally socked in yeah and I put that together with my own experience of pain and frustration about being in a community of people when you start to come close to another person and there's some real possibility of extreme messiness that then you hear well I'm not going to attribute substance to that or this or the other thing or there's nothing really there and I just want to like throttle somebody at that point but I'm beginning to have some sense of why that verbal thing of well we have consent but anyway so

[76:45]

yeah so again it comes to telling the truth it's not true that it's not true that pain exists but it is true that I think so for me it exists I'm in pain that's true it does appear and one cop out is well I don't really care that much the other is it's empty this is not my business I don't care but the truth is I do care I am hurting I do believe this exists I really think this is existent shit and I'm willing to tell the truth that I think so until I don't think so anymore and that'll be that but of course admitting that I think so

[77:56]

is painful can I just finish up I'm sorry about wanting to throttle anybody I had something I was working on throttling wanting to throttle wanting to throttle I had been throttled actually yeah and also I applaud anyone's effort to sort of like hang out in the fog really more words from the fog thank you I've been I've been I had some feeling of being kind of left out and by the talk about

[78:58]

this doesn't have inherent existence because right now my experience so much is being in pain and and I remembered though what Galen said the other day about the precepts which really struck me about that you just have to practice or at least you just have to practice with this that's right in front of you with the precepts as they're written because otherwise it's easy to get into dualistic thinking so that's kind of how I thought about it that of course it doesn't have inherent existence but I know I have this pain right here and this is what I have right now so this is what I have to practice with I appreciate you bringing it up ah the evil one, yes

[80:07]

look he looks like a devil look at him yes sometimes the way I think about all this emptiness and unhappiness and this kind of stuff I think the teaching is more like like you have said that you know we confess that we see everything as inherently existing and not try to convince ourselves would you say that again? we confess what? the practice is sort of the confession that we see everything as inherently existing quite frequently we can do it but just to and not to try to see things as empty but to know that there is this teaching and sort of have this somewhere in the back of our mind maybe and have this sort of faith that that's really the way it is and it sort of it lets us be able to keep going maybe some kind of faith yeah I would say it's not so much faith

[81:15]

that that's the way it is but more faith that that wonderful teaching which all the buddhas say this is my mom and then they say so you guys because this is my mom you guys get to spend all your time admitting that you're angry in pain confused in the fog you can totally admit who you are because it's empty and you don't have to worry about being honest anymore okay you'll be okay if you're honest so go right ahead so if you believe buddha's teaching you can be charlie fully with all his wonderful things and whatever horrible things are about him you can admit that fundamentally you can admit you're constantly believing that this stuff exists so I'm embarrassed sometimes because sometimes I'm kind of a wise ass and I just thought of this really wise ass thing to say and that is when you're chanting the heart sutra

[82:18]

you know why don't you people get more upset you know why don't you say yeah but I'm angry I have eyes I'm upset there's no upset there's no pain there's no suffering there's no anger there's no eyes there's no nose why don't you get upset when you hear that why do you only get upset when I tell you that it's because you believe me and you don't believe the heart sutra you think oh it's just the heart sutra but now he's saying that that may be true but I don't agree because I'm angry all the time you should be fighting the heart sutra because you don't believe it and neither do I why don't we get upset when we hear that why don't we say I don't believe this shit this is not true for me I completely think the other way around yes it would but we'd get into Zen books if we did the whole assembly got up and totally refuted the heart sutra and went out and had cigarettes

[83:18]

and smoked coffee why don't we just admit that we don't believe the heart sutra while we're chanting it not just when I say it it totally disagrees with you maybe if you understood that you'd disagree with it oh shit god I hope you're here for service tomorrow let's just not chant the heart sutra do it in Japanese it's lovely that way I think it's good if we admit we disagree with Buddha's teaching I mean of course we agree of course we trust Buddha but actually we have a different opinion and we feel left out when we hear Buddha talking sometimes when he says oh it's fantastic all people have Buddha nature why don't we say I feel left out when Buddha said that

[84:19]

well we do don't we but we think well you can't say that while Buddha's talking wait till Reb talks if he says one thing about him lacking inherent existence well well anyway the practice is to tell the truth the truth is I feel this is shitty I think I'm angry I'm upset, I'm confused, I'm discouraged and anybody who sits around like that and tells the truth and just says that wholeheartedly and doesn't hold back that's what I call joy laughter well you know I don't think you let yourself go all the way I think you hold back laughter for your sake I know for my sake you hold back that's right, thank you very much

[85:21]

laughter but that's why it's not joyful because you still don't really believe you have permission to be believing as much you do in what you're feeling you believe quite a bit and what you feel is often pain I know but you still don't know that you're allowed to completely go for it you think you'll destroy the whole universe if you do well you might destroy the whole universe if you don't you might cause damage in this world but I don't think you'll cause any more if you completely admit what you feel then you will if you deny a little bit or some percentage I would encourage you to totally let yourself feel what you're feeling and if you want to express it, go ahead she did it pretty well we survived do you have more? I was going to say that part of why this is a truth here that I think may make it sound in certain ways that you know for myself

[86:22]

having stood up and said I heard, well this is not true over and over in an environment where nobody wanted to hear it you know, actually there was a lot of damage and the damage was really bad I walked away totally beat up and blamed and now I'm here saying another mistake yeah, I know we all had that experience did you actually get beaten up bloody by the way dear? did they actually beat you up bloody? well they beat me up bloody they do beat you up bloody but don't say bloody unless you mean it they do beat you up bloody I know you do but I'm just saying they do that to us alright, but we survived and now we're in a place where I'm telling you you can express yourself in this Sangha you can start expressing yourself completely we can handle it here this is a place to grow you can suffer all the way to the hilt and you can tell us about it you cannot attack people

[87:23]

and slug them and get by with that we will restrain you in that case but if that's what it leads to, we'll restrain you if you freak out and start breaking windows we'll restrain you we'll protect you from your harmful actions but expressing your pain and even expressing your anger go ahead, try not to hurt anybody but express yourself we can contain it here we can, I can't do it all by myself but with the help of all these people we can contain each of us totally expressing ourselves you will not get beat up here and if you do, okay I'm sorry then we'll try to take care of that too maybe you will get beat up but you'll survive, just like you survived before but holding back has not solved the problem that also mutilates and destroys inside so I say let's let it out let it out we got a nice practice here of sitting quietly you know, all these nice precepts we're not going to blow up

[88:26]

we won't go crazy we can handle it and if we can't well forget it because the other way is just totally sick anyway so let's try it let's try to express ourselves if you have more to say, more ugly things to say than that let us hear if you have uglier things to say than what you've expressed already more horrible things, let us know if you tell us we might be hurt we will survive we may have to ask for help we may have to say Pam really hurt me today, would you help me? I can't go on okay, we can survive, we're big kids now we don't get completely destroyed by this stuff we don't starve if these people don't take care of us we can survive, we can tell our own truth now and if I'm wrong I'm sorry but I don't think so I haven't seen it backfire yet what seems to backfire is holding back

[89:28]

and suppressing and denying and thinking that we're too crazy too sick to actually say what we feel and it will be too devastating if you want to punch somebody in the nose don't do it and if you really want to punch somebody in the nose well we can just set up a special situation where somebody can put on a face mask or something and you can wear big gloves and they'll be safe if somebody really wants to do that, we can do that we're just here to help each other grow and be ourselves, right? anybody afraid? I am we're afraid it's frightening that's great but we're in a group of people that most of them are willing to admit they're afraid most of them are willing to admit that they're angry sometimes most of them are willing to admit that they're in pain most of them are willing to admit they're in denial so it's a pretty good chance this is about the best chance we've got and so

[90:28]

let's go for it before it's too late I have an example of a real thing that was real petty that I think is a real petty about myself and I got really upset today I don't like it when someone sticks the suture book in my ribs yeah, I don't like that either I just can't handle it I try every which way to try to get the suture book out but when that happens it just overwhelms me I feel just, you know it really hurts and, you know I I closed down and I did one of those go for it we can handle it, don't worry don't be overwhelmed usually what happens

[91:40]

is that it's happening right now it turns into I got really then I get really sad then you get what? really sad then I become overwhelmed with sadness and then I go to bed to bed I actually thought about that this morning, I'm looking at all this happening right I'm sad you know, and I'm going okay, if I'm supposed to now what am I supposed to do here? I don't know tell the truth you're doing a pretty good job but I mean, if I just started to have an anxiety attack in the middle of service then, what happens? well, take care of it tomorrow we can get you stuff out soon tomorrow nobody will put me in the ribs with a suture book

[92:42]

I hope

[92:43]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ