The title for today's talk, which I had in mind, was Don't Waste Time. And between the time I thought of that title and right now, a number of things came up that I kind of want to talk to you about. So it's going to, in some sense, disturb the pristine structure of this talk, Don't Waste Time, although you may be able to see that it's related. So starting earlier this morning over at Green Gulch and continuing through this morning, welcome Steve, your first time here?

[01:07]

Is there anybody else here for the first time? There was somebody here earlier who I guess left, she was sitting in that room. Anyway, someone said to me this morning, she said, you told me a while ago, you need to know what you really want. And that reminds me of a Sufi poem by Rumi, which starts out, the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. You have to say what you really want. Actually, it doesn't go like that, it goes,

[02:11]

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You have to say what you really want. Don't go back to sleep. People, everybody, is walking back and forth at the threshold where the two worlds meet. The door is round and open, don't go back to sleep. You can change it to, the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you, don't waste time. Anyway, so somebody said that I said that to her, and I said, you need to know what you really want. After she knows, then I would say, now you have to say it.

[03:14]

But anyway, apparently she found out what she really wanted, but then when she found out what she really wanted, she came to the realization that she didn't know how to realize what she really wanted. And then the next person came in and said what she really wanted, and what she really wanted was to practice the great Bodhisattva precepts. And then she said, but I don't know how to practice them. So to both, and then this morning other people come in and tell me what they want to do and that they don't know how to do it. And in all cases, I have been saying, this is the normal human condition.

[04:20]

What is it? We have aspirations. Some people don't know what their aspirations are, but we've got them, and they are to be discovered, and we need to discover them. But they are already in us, I would say. And before you find your aspiration, things are kind of like, it's hard to orient, your ship doesn't have a keel, you're like out in the ocean in a flat-bottomed vessel. So, anyway, the normal human situation I propose is we do have aspirations, children have aspirations, and adults have aspirations.

[05:24]

And children understand often that what they aspire to, they have not yet realized. For example, some children want to be a mother, some children want to be a father, some children want to be a doctor, some children want to be a baseball player. And many of the children understand they are not yet a mother, and they are not yet a father. They understand that, that they are aspiring to something that they have not become. But what the children don't usually realize, and we let them not realize it, is they don't know what they are talking about. They don't know anything about being a mother, because they are not a mother.

[06:43]

But we don't stress that usually, we just say, oh, you want to be a mother? But an adult, a mature person, for example, might aspire to be a mother, and might say, I want to become a mother. And after they become a mother, they might aspire to be a mother, or even a good mother. But a mature person realizes they don't know what they are talking about. I mean, not really, I aspire to be a mother, but actually I am not sure what a mother is. This is a more adult life, and this is an ironic life. And I would say our full vitality has an element of irony in it. Namely, we aspire to be something, we are devoted to be something, like a practitioner

[07:46]

of kindness, but we don't know what kindness is. And we still aspire to it, and we don't know what it is. And it's a little bit stressful, irony is a little stressful, but it's also like this tungsten filament in a light bulb, it has energy. To have a life where you aspire to be, for example, if the men here aspire to be men, and they think that's fine and appropriate, but if you think you know what a man is, the juice isn't on very much. If you turn the juice up, you realize, well, I do aspire to be a man, because I am, but I don't know what a man is. Then your life becomes more alive, more ironic, and more challenging, and more humorous. So, some people here do aspire to be bodhisattvas, they really do, and some of them realize,

[08:58]

but I don't know what that is. Some people aspire to practice zazen, but then they realize, but I understand that nobody, including me, knows what zazen is, really, for sure. But that doesn't mean to give up your vows, it means be encouraged by the irony that you're getting to be a big kid, you're more mature now in your relationship to your aspirations. And then again, people, when they start to face this, they say, oh, it seems hard, yeah. Being fully alive can be really hard, but if you really want to be fully alive, you may be willing to learn how to deal with that. So that's something which I wanted to mention to you, and I also want to tell you that last time we had a meeting here, I think in the afternoon, I brought up that one of you asked

[10:00]

me about lay teachers in the zazen tradition, which could also be put as lay bodhisattva teachers. So we have lay bodhisattva teachers and we have priest bodhisattva teachers in this tradition. So this afternoon, because I want to talk about this other thing now, this afternoon I will talk about this, being a lay bodhisattva teacher and being a priest bodhisattva teacher and how to work with that. Now, back to the topic of don't waste time. One of our frequently recited poems in the zazen tradition ends with the lines, don't

[11:07]

waste time. And I guess most zen students, including me, when they read that over and over for years, they thought, oh yeah, right, let's not waste time, we should not waste time. And I'm not disagreeing with that, but I'd like to look at that a little bit today. I'd like to look at what that suggestion is intending to do for us. Most people do think that it's possible to waste time. And as I often mention, here we are, we're living beings, and we're in the world, or

[12:11]

a world, and we living beings have consciousness. We human beings have consciousness, and it looks like many non-human beings have consciousness too. We have bodies that somehow have cognitive processes and unconscious cognitive processes and conscious cognitive processes, not just humans. But we seem to have it. And conscious cognitive processes, consciousness, in consciousness, somebody's there, and there's the appearance of some other. So we have a consciousness, a karmic consciousness, a self-consciousness, which is kind of dualistic. It has a self and a not-self. It looks like that. Looks like you're not me. That is, of course, a total mental construction.

[13:18]

It's not really true. And also, the way consciousness works is that it creates this illusion of self and a separate other, and then it has a subliminal message written underneath the picture, which says this is actually true. This isn't just a conscious construction. So now the Buddhas have come to write on top of this picture, this is a conscious construction only. But that's our situation. Consciousness, that seems to be dividing the world into self and other. And in this situation, there is an endeavor, so we got this self, and there is an ongoing

[14:24]

endeavor to keep that self going, or establish that self as a particular thing in this world, which it is. And the other is also particular things in the world. Each of you, in my consciousness, I see each of you as particular and unique. And there's an effort to keep this thing being particular and unique. There's an endeavor, ongoing endeavor. However, I'm not so much concerned with keeping you being a particular thing. It seems to be going on that you keep being particular things, but I'm more focused on this one. And I think that focus makes you be particular too.

[15:24]

That's part of the story. And I'm guessing you're doing the same thing. This is part of the human condition. And there's irony in that too. We semi-consciously are endeavoring to make a particular, discrete, determined being, self. And also, if you're mature, you realize you don't know what the thing is that you're trying to make concrete and particular. So the irony is right in there with this project. This isn't the project of practicing the Bodhisattva precepts. This is the project of keeping a self that might practice them going. So, this self, this unique self, possesses an unconditional property.

[16:31]

It is unconditionally itself. That's the way it looks. Everything else changing all over the place, no matter what happens, it's the same thing. It's itself, no matter what. And we're trying to maintain this thing, which is free of all the conditions it lives with, and actually depends on. So that wouldn't make... So if it depends on them, then it wouldn't be unconditional, and we're trying to make it unconditional, which is stupid, but that's going on. Self-maintenance project. So here's now turning into the time business. As long as we are engaged in this project to establish our unconditional being, we are...

[17:48]

Yeah, we're involved in the question. What do I do next in time? Beings that are concerned with maintaining a self are concerned with, what do I do next? Or also, what do I do now? Which is kind of like, what do I do now next? Or, beings who are concerned, as humans are, with establishing this unique, unconditional being, which can be itself no matter what, we get concerned with not wasting time. So if someone tells us, don't waste time, we say, right! Don't waste time in the project of keeping yourself all together and unconditioned.

[19:00]

Q. It seems to me when I look into this, that it's a conditional self. When I see the conditional self, I really look closely. A. When you look closely, you see a conditioned self, yeah. Q. Conditioned? A. Conditioned. Conditional, conditional. And I'm proposing that that observation of seeing a conditioned self, a conditional self, that observation can occur in a place where somebody is trying to maintain a self unconditionally. But one can examine the thing that is trying to be made unconditional. While the effort to make it unconditional is going on, you can examine it and see that

[20:04]

actually it is not unconditional. And that can make you wonder, well, what should I do next? So either way, whether you're looking or not, this question of don't waste time is up. So part of what I'm doing today is, I'm not saying, no, forget that statement, that teaching, don't waste time, I'm not saying trash it. I'm saying, well, maybe saying don't waste time means be aware that you're concerned with not wasting time. That most of us are concerned with not wasting time. That's part of our human condition, is to think, is to not want to waste time. And to use time in a way that will make us valuable and powerful and able to live,

[21:13]

not depending on anybody else. Now, if you look, you'll see you do depend, but somebody else is not concerned with looking, somebody else is concerned with being all-powerful and being able to be this one, depending on no other. That's, I don't know what to say, maybe that's evil. Anyway, that's going on in consciousness, that's part of the human condition. And for some humans, there's also the interest in studying the situation. So, in some Zen lineages, there's a strong encouragement to study the situation. What situation? Where there's a being in the world who is involved in having a separate, unconditional self. And there's a teaching, let's study that self.

[22:16]

Or let's study the project of making that self. And if that project seems successful, like, aha, I've got an independent self, let's study that. So the teaching is, let's study that. Studying and learning about the self-making project can also be called studying the Buddha way. But it's challenging to keep studying the self simultaneously with somebody who is trying not to study it, but to maintain it. Some effort to not just maintain it, but make it into something, to make it into one thing that doesn't depend on anything else. Which is against Buddhist doctrine, but in this tendency, is well established. And, you know, I think Siddharishi said, you've got some problems, or whatever, you've got some problems,

[23:24]

it would be good to be ready to have those problems forever. And, again, I notice among living beings, human beings, there's some tendency to not have the problems they have now forever. Maybe a few more minutes, or a couple more days, but not forever. Well, I think it's helpful to be ready to have this problem of this project of making a self, to be ready to have that problem forever. Not to try to make it go on, but to be ready that you may be trying to do that forever. But by accepting that this is what's going on, even if it does go on forever, there can also be something else that goes on forever, which is the wisdom that understands that this is an illusion. And that we actually don't waste time. So telling people not to waste time is because we really don't.

[24:28]

But when you get involved in certain projects, you might think that it's possible to waste time, and then you say, well, I shouldn't waste time, because that will be undermining my project. So the self project leads to the wish to not waste time on the self project. The reality project is not worried about wasting time. It's not possible to waste it. So that's a start on my talk about don't waste time. Yes, Eric? You said one ingredient in this feeling of wasting time is the impulse to create an all-powerful being. No, no, no, no. The one who thinks that wasting time is possible is the one who thinks that it might be able to make this all-powerful person. The people who are not concerned with making all-powerful people, they're not concerned about wasting time.

[25:35]

I kind of feel like I was reading Benjamin Franklin recently. He's like, at the end of your day, look at all your actions. Think about how you worked on your efforts, how you worked on your goals. And I think it's different than perhaps the confession practice that we practice. But the way he was praising it, it felt like he was trying to practice virtue, he was trying to cultivate good things. And he also kind of felt like he was wasting a little bit of time when he wasn't meeting his aspirations. Yeah, and he might have felt like when he was noting his wasting time, that noting his wasting time was not a waste of time. He might have thought that. He might have thought his daily review was a worthwhile use of time. He might have even thought that this review of wasting time might make him an all-powerful being.

[26:39]

Most people who do that are at risk or involved in using this practice of observing their non-virtue as a way to become an unconditioned, all-powerful being. And if you would adopt Benjamin Franklin's practice and do that review at night, you could look at yourself and see if you're trying to do that for that purpose or not. I'll be right with you, quite soon anyway. But this is an interesting example because I would again propose that the practice of reviewing our shortcomings at night, or not reviewing our shortcomings at night, the essential point is that if you are reviewing the shortcomings, that you realize the pivotality of reviewing your shortcomings.

[27:48]

Because reviewing your shortcomings, in a sense, is a shortcoming, because they're not really your shortcomings. But you don't have to do that. You can just realize that your idea that you wasted time during the day was based on the premise of you wasting time. And reviewing how I wasted time is part of making myself into something I can never be. Then I'm studying myself when I look at that. So the project of not wasting time could be a project to learn that you can't waste time. To notice that I think I can waste time, to notice that and notice that and notice that, could be part of the cultivation of realizing that there is no time to be wasted,

[28:54]

I cannot waste time. I think I mentioned to you recently that this guy who wrote this book, In Search of Lost Time, Mr. Proust, I think that's a good translation of his French title, In Search of Lost Time, but for Zen purposes we could say his book is In Search of Wasted Time. In the last chapter of the book is recovery or recapturing lost time. We could say recovery from wasted time. In the end he realizes that all the time he wasted was not wasted. Realizing that we have not wasted any time is, well, the end of suffering. And in doing that you don't even have to stop thinking about not wasting time.

[29:57]

You can continue. Thinking about not wasting time, thinking that you are not wasting time, thinking that you don't waste time, all those things could be seen as wasting time. Or they could also be understood as not wasting time. They are all opportunities for realizing peace. John, and then Karen. I thought when you were talking about the last chapter of Proust, that you could also phrase it as recovering the lived moment. Recovering the lived moment, yeah. In John's reality. Which you never really lost. So in John's reality project, when I really plunge into it, I see... You said John's reality project? Could I also say or? In the reality project of John...

[31:00]

Or in the reality project of John, there is... The reality project of John? Yes. Well, not the reality project. The reality project of John is better, I suppose. No, it's not better. It's clearer. Oh, thank you. There is this sense that when I think these thoughts that I have that come up again and again, or I have these desires that come up again and again, or I want something, or don't want something, there is this sense of repetition. And when I really look deeply into it, I see that this keeps me going into the next moment. It's like, oh, I get to live another moment, oh, I get to live another moment. It goes on. Right. There is that sense of time. Oh, this must be... Yes. There's time. Yeah, and that's the sense of time. And seeing that is opening to the reality of the process of creating time by trying to make something independent. That's how time gets created. Time isn't just now.

[32:03]

It's now for me, so then there's more of me. Becoming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think of myself since having birth and death, and so in that context, it's possible to waste time. In that context. And then that makes me think about, in Rilke, there's a story about a miser who was trying to hoard time. Yeah, well, it is possible to do something impossible. Yes. But it is impossible to waste time, and it is also impossible not to waste time. Because... I mean, I hear you say that. Yeah, well, because... let's keep talking. So, wasting time is impossible, and not wasting time is impossible. Karen is impossible, and John is impossible.

[33:06]

Sure. Buddha is impossible. But it's also possible to have an impossible thing, like a Buddha. There's no Buddha by herself. You can't have a Buddha by herself. You can't have a Karen by herself. But the Karen that we're talking about is the Karen by herself. That is impossible. And the wasting time that you were talking about is wasting time by itself. It's not wasting time along with not wasting time. It's wasting time. And you say it's possible. And I say it is possible, but it's also impossible. Because there's no such thing as wasting time by itself. Of itself. There's nothing like that. And Buddha isn't like that either. There's no Buddha by herself. But wasting time is not great wisdom, right?

[34:11]

We don't think that, do we? But we do think Buddha is great wisdom, don't we? Yeah. Well, Buddha is great wisdom. Buddha is the wisdom which understands that there's no Buddha by itself. There is no Buddha by herself. And Buddha is the cognition of that. But that cognition is not something by itself. Because, you know... And she says because. Because the Buddha is not by itself. Because there's no Buddha without stupid ideas like Buddhas by themselves. Or Karen by themselves. Or wasting time by itself. You have the nicest way of calling people stupid. And you have the nicest way of noticing if anybody is being called stupid. I didn't even notice that I was calling somebody stupid. But I appreciate your pointing it out. So anyway, it is possible to waste time.

[35:12]

But it is also impossible to waste time. It's impossible because what you mean by wasting time is not... For example, when you say wasting time, you don't mean a good use of time. That's not what you mean by that. You mean wasting time as this one thing called wasting time. Not a whole bunch of stuff. That. You mean that. Well, nothing could be like that. Including good old Buddha. But it's possible to have this Buddha which is not by himself. But there he is. There's Charlie. Who's not there by himself. But there he is. Not by himself. And he's just like that and like nothing else. Yes. But not by himself. Therefore, this Charlie by himself is impossible. But there he is. Seems like he's by himself. Yes. Enrica.

[36:15]

Enrica. Yeah. I have kind of a take on a wasting time situation in light of recovery. It's like every incident of life prior to recovery led to a moment of awakening to go into recovery. Right. But sometimes you're not there yet. Right. But it felt like wasted time, wasted life. Wasted time, wasted life. It had to be that paradigm shift to look at it that it was all necessary to happen. Exactly. For this awakening to happen to stop doing what I was doing. That's right. So, Proust has this very long novel where he tells us over and over again all the time he wasted. And he needed all that stuff to make this novel which recovers from all that waste. But if you take away the first part of the novel, the last point that you can recover from wasting time doesn't have much impact.

[37:26]

Because we don't know what he's talking about. And during the first part of the book, the first majority of the book, not only does he think he's wasting time, but his mother keeps reminding him he's wasting time too. Peter often thinks that he's wasting time. Yeah. So, there it is. And he couldn't start writing his book, in other words, stop wasting time, until his mother stopped telling him that he should be rewriting his book. So, after his mother wasn't pointing out to him that he wasn't doing his work, which would save him from his suffering, then he started to do the work which saved him from his suffering. And he suffered all the way to the end of his life. This guy had a hard time. And not only did he have a hard time, but he wasted time while he was having a hard time, running away from his hard time, which is understandable. To have such a hard time, everybody would like to waste time and not be there. He was not there.

[38:29]

And then he wrote and wrote and wrote and told us how he wasn't there. And then he was there, from beginning to end. And he tells us about, I wasn't there then, I wasn't there then, I wasn't there then. Like Benjamin Franklin, I wasn't there then, I wasn't there then. But now he realizes, it's not just for that. It's to change the time I wasted into not wasting time. It's like the death of B. Benedict Ehrlich. He's a few minutes from death. Yeah, exactly. And we're all a few minutes from death right now. But we can recover our entire life and make it the reality that this life is not about wasting time, so that don't waste time. It's like, given that people think that they can waste time, we'll tell them not to. And then when they start looking at how not to, they'll realize that they can't. So Proust was telling himself, his mother was telling him, don't waste time.

[39:31]

You're an artist, do your art. And then it turns out, the irony is that the art was to talk about how he didn't do his art. All the things he did that weren't his art, his art was to tell us about them. And it's amazing. And some of us are willing to follow his description of all the time he wasted. And all the stupid, nasty things he did. And all the stupid, nasty things that other people who were wasting their time did. And he saved all them too. He made, you know, what is it? Monsieur Charluz. He redeemed him. Anyway. Shrikant. I wanted to go back to the prelude to the talk. You talked about something I'm not quite following. You said that people aspire to things they don't know about.

[40:36]

And that's a pattern. Isn't it always the case that we don't know it entirely? So it's not a question of I don't know or I do know. I know a little bit. And so that is the nature of aspiration. Do you say, isn't it that we don't know in entirety? Entirely. It's not that I don't know at all. Thank you. It's that I don't know entirely. I don't know for sure what a Bodhisattva is. I have some ideas about it. But I'm not sure. Yes. And I'm saying that that way of being, which is demonstrated in the Western tradition,

[41:38]

the Buddha did not... I have not yet been able to find how Shakyamuni Buddha taught about irony. This is like bringing Western culture together with Buddhist aspirations. But Socrates did. Socrates did say, I aspire to these things. And then he would look at them and find out that he wasn't sure about what he was doing. He was sure that he wanted to practice friendship. But then he looked at friendship and the more he looked at it, the less sure he was of it. But he wasn't completely sure at the beginning either. That's why he was investigating it. So I appreciate your point. It's not that we don't know it all. It's that we don't know for sure. And the nature of the human being is, they want to know for sure. That's part of our self-making project, is to know for sure. I want to be a bodhisattva. I want to be a good father. But not just generally.

[42:40]

I want to be a particular, exact, unique good father. And I don't know what that is. Completely. Entirely. And that's ironic. That we would allow that uncertainty and we would still aspire to something that we don't completely know what we're aspiring to. It's like children, again, aspire to something but they're not yet open to that they don't completely know what they're talking about. As they become more mature, they say, actually I'm not so sure what a good mother is. But that doesn't stop them from aspiring. No, it doesn't. But actually some people then do kind of give up their aspiration when they hit the irony. Because it's so dynamic and intense. Sometimes they say, maybe this is too much for me. Before they found the irony of the situation, again, they were kind of half-heartedly doing it,

[43:41]

it wasn't so intense, and they were fine. But when they grew to open to the fullness of the situation, namely their uncertainty, sometimes they say, oh, I'm going to give this one up and go to another one where I think I could be sure. Which is a kind of regression to a more childish attitude towards aspiration. But the great beings, we aspire to be great beings who can tolerate this irony and actually thrive on it. So I'm bringing the irony in because people are bringing this to me, right? But also because I think that this makes the aspiration come to full life. So we can continue to aspire, like I can continue to help people not knowing who they are. I want to help them, but I don't know who they are. Isn't that kind of ironic? But I understand that that's normal. It's not that there's something wrong with me, or there's nothing wrong with you that I don't know what you are.

[44:43]

I can be devoted to beings without knowing what they are. And that's a more mature endeavor. I'm okay to go on. Pretty soon people's blood sugar is going to drop and you're going to get crabby. So you want to go on a little longer or you want to have some lunch? Go on. Okay. So I see... Oh, these two guys have not... Did you have your hand raised also? Abhi? Okay, these three. Charlie. I think there's another kind of irony there too, which struck me last week as I was yearning for something and I was trying to figure out what yearning is. It's kind of like an aspiration. But the irony that struck me in that case was that

[45:43]

when you're busy yearning for something, you're missing the gifts that are coming right now. Right. And so... I'm yearning for a gift, and while I'm yearning for the gift, this kind of surprising thing happens is that the gift comes and I don't even notice it. That's kind of ironic. And it goes with, I'm yearning for a gift, but I'm not completely sure what it is, and this thing is coming, I know something is coming, but I think maybe it's not the gift, but I'm not sure, so I'm going to keep... Well, even other gifts come. What do you mean, even other gifts? Well, other gifts come and you think they're not that gift. But you're not sure. You're not sure. So, how can we yearn and be present? Because we do yearn. I think we can yearn and be present. How? Are you present? Mostly. Were you yearning to get something from that how?

[46:52]

No, I was just poking you to see what you would do. Were you yearning to see what I would do? No. No yearning yet? Come back when you have... It's coming up now. Are you present with this? Here we are. Isn't it great? I still don't know how. I don't know how. Well, you have some ideas. It's kind of like this. It's kind of like this. But not for sure. Maybe it could be different. But it might be just like this. Or approximately. It's kind of like a gift of presence. A gift of presence. Leonid? So, if I think I wasted time, for me it means I have a regret about a choice I made before. But I make choices that are optimal

[48:00]

for the way I feel at the moment, my mental state, and so on. So, even if I'm given a chance to go back in time to this, this moment of choice, I'm on a level that I will make the same choice again. It doesn't matter how many times you bring me back, I will make the same choice. So, I cannot have a regret. I mean, I can have a regret, but it doesn't make sense to have a regret. And that ties in with Benjamin Franklin reviewing his day. Reviewing his non-virtue, and then examining it and realizing that although he regrets his non-virtue, in some sense regret is impossible. But we have to face the regret to find out that there cannot be regret without not regret. I think we have to regret wasting time

[49:10]

to realize not wasting time. We have to see the wasting time and we have to regret it in order to realize that we don't waste time. We're being told not to waste time, so we want to realize not wasting time. But the path to realizing not wasting time is by facing the appearance of wasting time, the issue of wasting time, and the regret about it. That is a good practice, but it's not just to do that so that you won't waste time. It's to do it to realize that you don't waste time. Not wasting time is reality. Not killing is reality. We study the precept of not killing to realize the truth, which is not killing.

[50:10]

Not wasting time is reality, therefore we're told not to waste it. But we have to face that we think we are wasting time and how we feel about that in order to realize the truth, which is no time wasted. Yes, yes. And you should be prepared for this to go on forever. Yes, yes. But I am prepared for it to go on forever, so I'm not like saying, oh, I thought I was done with this. No, I say, oh yes, I thought it might come again and here it is, welcome. So we can be compassionate to this thing arising again. Can I ask you another question? Did you just promise me an eternal life? I just didn't. Abhi?

[51:13]

So, are there karmic consequences if you have recovered wasted time? Are there still karmic consequences to having wasted time? Are there? I mean, if you have... First of all, did you say that if you have recovered from wasting time, are there karmic consequences of recovery? There were karmic consequences of the activity of wasting time. There were. And then the question is, when you have a realization, are you free to the consequences? You are free to the consequences, but that doesn't stop the consequences.

[52:17]

There are still consequences, but you are free of them. Before the realization, there are consequences and you are not free of them. In reality, you are free of them. Realization is to realize we are free of karmic consequences. But the Buddha is, I think, suggesting you are not going to become free of the consequences of karmic action. You are not going to become free unless you recognize that there are consequences. By deeply recognizing that there are consequences, you become free of the consequences. And there still are consequences. And you now would also teach there are consequences. And the Buddha is teaching from freedom. And the freedom is to study the process of karma and karmic consequences. So we have the very famous Zen story,

[53:20]

which you can study for the next period of time. It's called Baijong's Wild Fox. It's a story about this head monk whose name is also Baijong, who is asked by a student, does the highly cultivated person fall into karmic effect or not? And he said not. And because he said not, then he fell into karmic consequences. Then he does fall. So it says, fall or not fall? He said not fall. Then when he said not fall, then he was in fall. So what do you do with this situation? Fall or not fall? You don't obscure. You study it. So you study wasting time, wasting time, wasting time. And that's how you realize freedom from wasting time. But it's not... Freedom from wasting time is not

[54:22]

that you don't fall into wasting time, or that you do fall into wasting time. It's that wasting time is never by itself. And not wasting time is never by itself. You realize that. And then we don't change not wasting time into wasting time. We just realize that not wasting time, when it's completely itself, is not not wasting time. That's the realization. And that realization realizes not wasting time. And if it would help people, it could realize wasting time. That would help them. So sometimes people come, great bodhisattvas come to visit me, and they do a little demonstration of wasting time for me to see. And I can see that they're not abiding in this little show they're putting on. I...

[55:27]

You guys look really interested. You're raising your hand. Yes. But let's make this brief, okay? Yes. The idea of wasting time, or having wasted time, is kind of like as if we were really in control of all those things that happened. You know what I mean? So... It could lead you to think that somebody's telling you don't waste time because you could be in control of time. Or all the circumstances. Yeah, right. It's like that. It's like a setup. It's a setup. It's a setup. Don't waste time as a setup for the joke that you cannot control. It's like, okay, don't waste time and now you think you can control it? Okay, go ahead. And looking past and having regrets... To say don't waste time is like to help people realize that there's no way that they can control this wasting or not wasting. So we tell the Zen answers to say don't waste time for us to realize that to try not to

[56:28]

would be kind of like wasting time. In other words, you'd be wasting time by continually to play along with the thing that you're all powerful. You're a very valuable, powerful person who can turn off wasting time, turn on wasting time. So they say don't waste time and you fall into that. Yeah. They don't really mean that, but they're just trying to see if you'll fall for that setup and then they can tell you the punchline. Which you almost got, yes. Bruce. Well, I myself very often... I myself. I myself. Right.

[57:30]

Can I say something? Can I say something? That's what I said at the beginning. When we're into I myself, we get concerned with wasting time. That's a human condition. So here we have a human giving us a report now. Okay. So then comes regret from the sense of wasting time. Yes. Then I realize, well, this whole idea about wasting time, this is just a waste of time because I'm not practicing my Zen practice as long as I think that I'm wasting time because I'm leaning forward into the past or I'm leaning back. You can think that way. Right. It's not true, but you can think that way. Okay. I'm just leaning into the future being in the past which is the source of this feeling that I'm wasting time and then the source of this regret. I can do that. That's the practice. Exactly.

[58:30]

That's the practice, is to watch the show. Okay. And then? And then? So it seems like the problem is that there seems to be no real way of sort of assuaging this sense of regret in such a way that it doesn't keep coming back. In other words, it's always the practice that regret comes back. You said assuaging so that it doesn't come back. Something like that. Yeah. If you're looking for that kind of assuaging, that's impossible. Right. Correct. If you really assuage it, it can come back. Right. Hey, that was a big assuaging there. Come on back. Anytime you want to come back, you got assuaged, you're welcome to come back and we'll assuage you again. We are like on the assuaging of regret practice here. But you can't assuage regret

[59:31]

without some regret. And we got some. And one of the main regrets is I regret I ever started practicing Zen. That was such a waste of time to go to a place where they tell you not to waste time and then they tell you that you can't. It's really, this is like, what a waste of time. Thanks for coming to waste your time. Oh, did you want to waste some time now? It's a semantic thing, but to me... This is semantics. Yes. So the Han in the city center says, great is the matter of birth and death, of awake, awake... That's an abbreviation. We can do the abbreviation. Great is... Each one, don't waste this life. And to me, this one needs editing because I don't like this lost opportunity. I can't read it from here. It says, great is the matter of birth and death. Time passes swiftly. Opportunity is lost. You don't like that one.

[60:31]

I don't like that one because that's... We'll leave it there for you to not like. We can give you an edited version to carry around with you. To talk about time, you need to define it because there's clock time and there's real time, which very few of us experience. I consider clock time artificial time. I have the luxury of it now. I didn't always. So I would rather think in terms of don't waste this life, which is... is more... That's fine, too, to not waste this life. That's fine, too. No, but that's a perfectly good version of it. Don't waste this life. I say it every morning. That's another example of some... The teaching could be don't waste this life. And then... Do you think... Do you think... Wait a second. Do you think you can waste this life? I don't.

[61:33]

You don't? Okay. Well, then, since you don't think so, it would be no problem of telling you to not do that. Because, you know... You don't have to tell me. I already know. But I didn't always know. But through this practice, I learned. So if you know it, why do you keep telling yourself that? Oh, because when I make my coffee, I need a little chant. It's almost rote now. Don't waste this life. So I need a chant. I see the one from the city center. I don't know. Maybe it's not sinking in. I don't feel in terms of wasting time. I feel something called impatience, which is probably the same thing. And some people might say that impatience was wasting your life. Exactly. Yeah. Again, a lot of people feel that way. I was impatient. That was kind of a waste of my life. People don't need me to be impatient. And I was. And I kind of wait.

[62:33]

So I still need to practice, look at this thing called wasting. Yeah. Or wasting the opportunity. Or wasting life. But... But... But what? But... But what? But what? Yeah, but what? You said it first. I did. I did. I take responsibility. I was the first one. I was the first one to say but. You know, he knows a lot of songs too. You said that you wanted a song to sing with your coffee. Oh, a chant? Yeah. It's my song. You wanted something to say or a chant. Oh. Well, the one you've got is really good. Here's another one. OK. Ready? I'm ready. Here's a chant. Camille? Yes? Are you awake? Yes. All day long. Don't get distracted. I won't. I like that. I do too.

[63:35]

I do it in some version. Yeah. Well, I made one just for you. Usually that song doesn't have Camille at the beginning. But I think in your case it would be good. Or we could change it a little bit. I'll talk to you offline. I don't want you to get so much. Offline. We're going to get offline. Offline. May our intention equally extend to every being and place.

[64:06]

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