The advertised title for this series of classes is Calm Abiding and Complete Wisdom. At the beginning of this year, I said that I would try to concentrate on concentration or concentrate on samadhi. And so that's, I have been endeavoring to do so. And combining is another way to talk about, or is a way to talk about the development of samadhi, or the development of mental one-pointedness, which is translated sometimes as mental one-pointedness, concentration, calm, tranquility, and so on.

[01:13]

And so I think I offered at Green Gulch this winter, we studied Samadhi, and then I offered a course here on Samadhi in spring, I believe. And then this summer I offered a class here on the three kinds of wisdom, and I also offered that at Green Gulch. The meditation of the Buddha has these two aspects of tranquil concentration, mental one-pointedness, and wisdom. They are united in the Buddha mind. The Buddha mind is the same as Buddha meditation. There are other kinds of meditation besides the meditation that the Buddha practices.

[02:27]

I occasionally mention these other kinds of meditation just so that you can understand the difference between other types of meditation and the meditation of the Buddha. Even within the Buddhist tradition there are meditations which are not actually the way the Buddha meditates. And the Buddha even gave meditations which were not the meditation that the Buddha was involved with at the time of becoming Buddha and afterwards. But my main concern is, and the main concern of Zen meditation is The central concern is meditation of Buddhas and their disciples who are intending to follow the path of becoming a Buddha.

[03:39]

Now, some of Buddha's disciples in the past and in the present are not intending, are not aspiring to become Buddhas, and they're still the Buddha's disciples. Even people, anyway, they want to attain enlightenment, but not the enlightenment of a Buddha. They want to attain, some people want to attain an enlightenment which will liberate them personally from all suffering. And they consider the Buddha their teacher. And during the Buddha's lifetime, he had a number of disciples who attained enlightenment and personal liberation. But the Buddha is not just someone who attains personal liberation. A Buddha is someone who attains an enlightenment which is for the sake of the entire world, not just for one person.

[04:49]

although I may not talk about it too much, in the background of the meditation which I'm concerned with here, in the background of it, is the path towards Buddhahood. And also in the previous class here this year, or previous classes this year, I mentioned that the path to Buddhahood, the foundation of the path to Buddhahood, is compassion. That's the fundamental seed or source of the meditation of the Buddha. And then from this compassion, which at first might be just wishing yourself and some other people to attain freedom from suffering, there arises a wish for all beings to attain freedom from suffering.

[05:57]

And then even beyond that, there arises the wish to work for, to help beings become free of suffering. And finally this culminates in the great aspiration to actually become a Buddha in order to work for the welfare of all beings. And that is called the thought of enlightenment. You actually think of being a Buddha. You think of becoming a Buddha. You think of attaining unsurpassed enlightenment so as to be most effective working in this world. And I just want to parenthetically mention that one might think, well, there was supposedly a Buddha who founded this tradition 2,500 years ago, and that Buddha, that was a Buddha who supposedly was like totally skillful in helping beings, and we want to be like that, but how come that Buddha didn't save all beings?

[07:12]

And didn't that Buddha want to save all beings? And I would say, I think so. That's what I heard. And that's our interpretation of his life, is that that Buddha wanted to save all beings. But this is supposed to be just a parenthetical remark, so I'll try to cut it soon. But this process of enlightening all beings does not, like, enlighten the beings who lived 2,500 years ago and then stop. Even the Buddha that appeared 2,500 years ago was a mortal being and didn't finish the work. So, of course, sometimes people say, well, Buddhism's so good, how come the work isn't finished? How come everybody isn't enlightened? How come we have all this misery, this cruelty, people bombing villages and stuff? How come we have this? If the Buddha was the Buddha, why didn't the Buddha just enlighten everybody?

[08:21]

Well, the Buddha did some of that, enlightened quite a few. And the process has been going on, and it's not going to end. So, of course we want all beings to be enlightened, but at the same time, when we die, it's not going to be over. The process of the enlightenment process has no end. We're trying to practice in such a way so it won't end. So that when we die, it won't end for us or for the world. We're not trying to finish it off now, even though we wish everyone would get with the program. So, close parentheses. And also I mentioned earlier this year that there's different meanings of calm abiding or samadhi. One kind of calm abiding is calm abiding which is basically really calm, really tranquil, peaceful.

[09:24]

And in that state of deep tranquility, there is buoyancy and light and joy, and the afflictive processes of mind have been suspended. So in well-developed calm one is quite peaceful and happy and unafflicted, which is great. However, calm abiding by itself or samadhi by itself, not united with wisdom, is a temporary suspension of the mental processes which give rise to affliction. And as long as you're in the calm state, you feel good. But when the conditions for the calm come to an end, which they do, unless you can restart them, affliction reappears.

[10:34]

The only way to have a stable freedom from pain is to unite the samadhi, the calm, with wisdom. And when the calm temporarily changes our state of mind and body, temporarily our body becomes flexible and buoyant and relaxed, at peace and bright and joyful. but we haven't really changed necessarily our understanding of our relationship with all beings. When we realize the wisdom of the Buddhist tradition, then we actually change, we actually are transformed, and we're a different person and that person's not permanent, but we seldom go back to understanding the way we did prior to the arising of the wisdom we are changed our actual the way we see the world changes when that when that kind of wisdom is then joined with the calm abiding then we can attain first of all personal liberation and then when a deeper wisdom is united with the calm abiding we attain

[11:58]

inconceivable universal liberation where it is attained. And also I talked about how wisdom goes through three stages or three levels and the first two levels of wisdom as taught in the Buddhist tradition at each of those levels we are changed at each of those levels of understanding we are transformed. The third level of wisdom is the level where the wisdom is united with the calm abiding and then we are transformed even more deeply. That's a kind of review of the first six months of teaching here and other places. And this way of talking is what you might call, the way I've been talking today is kind of an overview of what you might call the standard presentation or the scriptural presentation of the path to Buddhahood.

[13:18]

And when I was talking about this path, both here and even more so at Green Gulch, I would usually start the talk by giving a Zen teaching and then give this kind of like standard scriptural teaching, just so the Zen students wouldn't forget the relationship between their ordinary Zen practice and the scriptural presentation of the path. In other words, the Zen presentation of the path to Buddhahood is not found literally in the scriptures of the path to Buddhahood, of Bodhisattva's path to Buddhahood. Zen tradition from the early days was said to be a tradition. transmission from generation to generation which was sometimes one way to say it is outside the scriptures another way to say it's separate from the scriptures but it's not really outside the scriptures are separate from the scriptures it's more like beyond the scriptures or you might say a creative a creative flowering of the scriptures

[14:43]

So I thought I would start this course with a Zen presentation of tranquility and insight. Now if you look, tranquility and insight, separately and united, is presented in the scriptural description of the bodhisattva path to enlightenment. But if you look in Zen writings and listen to Zen teachers in China, Japan, Korea, and America, but particularly in those other countries, they don't very often say calm abiding and wisdom or insight because they're not really, they're kind of a little bit beyond the scriptures. So they don't talk like the scriptures. They talk in another way. And at the end of the last class, I asked for some feedback about what people would like to see in the next class.

[15:59]

I didn't get much feedback. One person said to me, I think it maybe was Minnie's friend, he said he would like to have a teaching which related more to daily life. And part of the reason for a transmission which is outside the scriptures is to make the teaching more related to daily life. Because if you read the scriptures, in fact, a lot of them are really old, and sometimes there's not very many examples in there like our daily life. So in order to apply it to our daily life, we sort of have to say some things which have never been said before. So this presentation, which I say is going to be more like Zen, is a presentation that probably never happened before in the scriptures or in Zen.

[17:01]

Because I can't even repeat the old Zen teachings and still be in accord with Zen. So what I'm presenting to you is kind of new. which is typical of Zen and I think there's a possibility that it will apply to your daily life now if there's time I would be happy if you want to relate this presentation to the standard model of the scriptures because I personally love the standard model and also I do not want to be in any way out of harmony with it But even though I want to be in harmony with it, I also realize I must say something that it is never said, otherwise the tradition is kind of dead. So the new approach to tranquility in wisdom or calm abiding in wisdom, the new approach which I'm going to suggest is something like this.

[18:12]

And I don't mean these to be steps, because that's not Zen. Or maybe they could be steps, since Zen's not steps, we can have steps now. But I don't mean them so much as steps, but more like conditions. So the first condition is confidence or trust. based on experience. The next condition is or another condition is relaxation. Parenthetically, I'll mention that what I mean by relaxation is the way I want to talk about comorbiding, close parentheses.

[19:21]

The next condition is play or playing. And the next condition is sort of playing together with somebody else who's playing. The next condition is creativity. Parentheses. The Buddha's teaching of dependent core rising, the central teaching of Buddhism, is creativity. But the Buddha said, but that doesn't apply to daily life, so, close quote, close parentheses. But I'm going to say creativity instead of the pinnacle arising of pratisya-samuppada. But that's my Buddhist kind of thing in the background there. And then the next condition or the next event or phenomena is understanding or wisdom.

[20:36]

And then there's freedom and happiness The wisdom that arises out of creativity or dependent co-arising is the wisdom of the Buddha. It's the wisdom of true freedom and peace. And then, in the context which I told you about before, this understanding, this wisdom, goes to work for compassion which was in the background of this meditation so this meditation practice is in the context of compassion and the wish to be a buddha now as a result of this process of meditation one one has realized the buddha's wisdom and now one is not necessarily a buddha yet but one now really can work in the world with great skill because there's understanding

[21:42]

And to go through this again and add a little bit to it, again, first in a kind of abstract way, I would say that you're in some situation, call it X. You're dealing with some, you're in the presence of X. And so in that situation, the first thing that we need, I think, is confidence and trust based on experience. I'm not asking you to trust in whatever the situation is, like this class. I'm not asking you to trust just because I said it's one of the conditions. But I am saying it is one of the conditions necessary for this meditation process is trust or confidence. But if you don't feel trust or confidence yet, I say it's okay.

[22:46]

Because I want this trust to be based on experience. Now some of you may have experience already such that you can already trust even before you hear anything about trust. Just, okay. Some of you may say, well, should I trust? No, I'm saying actually maybe some more experience is necessary. So part of this class will be to talk about what kind of environment do we need for trust and confidence and what is it that we have trust or confidence in and i guess the first thing that i would look for to have trust or confidence in would be what do you think rochelle i think Right. And the first part of the teaching to have confidence in would be? Well, it could be the teacher.

[23:47]

But in Mahayana Buddhism, you're not supposed to really trust the teacher. You're supposed to trust the teaching. Not the person, but the teaching. And the next phase of the teaching, first phase... So the first phase of the teaching, I guess, to have confidence in, is the necessity of confidence. or the first thing to see if you can trust is see if you can trust having trust. But it's okay to not trust and see if you trust to say that you don't trust so we can develop a situation where you can. I guess that's the first thing to see if you can have confidence in, that confidence or trust would be something that would be apropos to your life or any way that you might see as apropos to this path to Buddhahood. So do you have competence and trust in the path to Buddhahood? Is that really what's most important to you?

[24:49]

And if not, there's some work to do there in terms of developing competence. But also more kind of like short term or up close for this class, the question is whether you trust or have confidence in relaxation. And I find that a lot of people who would just love to realize relaxation kind of don't have confidence in it, or they don't have confidence that it would be all right to be relaxed, or people are afraid to relax, etc., etc. In other words, In other words, they don't have much confidence, they lack confidence in relaxation. So these first two are really major steps, are almost the foundation of the meditation. Someone just said recently, they said, well, I really feel like if I trusted, then the relaxation and the play would just fall right into place.

[26:03]

And I think that's true that they fall right into place, but still there's a lot of work to do there. But the trust is really deep and basic for this process of meditation. Some people think, think in terms of meditation as being, you know, highly focused. And But in a way, when you're highly focused, another thing that happens when you're highly focused is you're not putting a lot of energy into your boundaries, into your borders, into your defenses. You're temporarily not out on the edge of your boundaries. Awareness guarding yourself you're not using your energy to protect yourself or guard yourself So when you're really focused on something You're actually quite open So when you're really relaxed and

[27:19]

you're actually very focused and calm and open and that's why it's hard for people to dare to relax or dare to be calm because when you're really calm you're really focused you're really open and you're kind of unafraid even though you're open and vulnerable So people who feel fear at the prospect of relaxation practice, of calming down, either they have experience or intuitive understanding or insight of some kind to know that actually as you move into the calm abiding practice, although when you attain it, you feel good, you're also quite open and vulnerable. does it go the other way that when you feel closed and highly protected that you're not relaxed i think so and does it go that when you're that way you're not very concentrated i think so and does it go that you're kind of like afflicted i think so because you're like you feel afflicted so you're like really like

[28:48]

you know, watching, you know, you're watching, watching. That is the affliction, that you're constantly watching the enemy. You know, many things or everything with that attitude is like an affliction. Everything bothers you. So you're not, it's not exactly that you're distracted, but it's certainly that you're not settled, calm, open, and relaxed with your vulnerability. The The calm abiding doesn't take away the fact that we are vulnerable creatures. We can be hurt. We can be hurt. And if we spend all our time thinking about that, we won't be able to play because we won't be able to relax. We won't be able to learn to play and we won't be able to play if we're spending all our time defending our whatever, our, our, me.

[29:50]

So that's why the trust is important because moving into this area of relaxation, a lot of people might be frightened of it. So we need enough confidence so we can dare to relax even with our fear of relaxation. I said earlier that relaxation is a situation in which we learn best, and in particular it's a condition where we'll learn best how to play, how to play with ourself, with our own body and mind, and how to play with somebody else. And if we can't find anybody who knows how to play, even how to learn how to teach others to play so they can play with us.

[30:54]

So in one sense, I had some experience that if people, that in some sense you might think, well, we should learn how to relax before we're going to learn how to play. But sometimes talking about giving instruction about how to play, and in some sense, All the challenges that there are in play will help us know sort of what things we're going to have to deal with and actually may help us relax before we relax. So we sort of need to relax in order to play, but if we know something about the game that we're heading for, that might help us know what to learn to accept and be patient with. Because the realm of play that I'm talking about is not a realm where there's no difficulties. So I will, before we necessarily fully fully realize complete calm and total relaxation, I would like to move into the area of play and what kind of things we might be able to play with there.

[32:13]

But before that, I want to go back now to the relaxation. And again, in my mind, I heard somebody, I thought somebody might say, well, okay, relaxation, how do you relax? And so then I think, well, that's a reasonable question. You know, if we're talking about relaxing, then then it's perfectly reasonable for someone to say, how do you relax? But then I thought, but relaxing is somehow, it means kind of like to like give up trying to relax. Sorry. And also even give up, in a sense, give up being concerned about relaxing. That's part of relaxing. So I'm responding to my own question of how to relax by saying, well, don't worry about it.

[33:19]

And then someone would say, well, then what should I do? And I would say, well, I don't exactly want to say do nothing, but kind of like that. Don't do something to be relaxed. But I don't mean don't do something to relax. I mean it's not necessary to do something to relax. And I don't do relaxation. But it will happen when we have the conditions, when the conditions for it are there. And part of the conditions for it may be to keep asking how to do it and be continually told in various ways not to worry about it. So we can start that process right now if you want. Yes. What's your name again? Roy. Roy. Roy. And your name is Roger, right? Okay, Roy Roger. Pardon?

[34:21]

Letting go. Another word for relaxation is letting go. You have to let go of your job. You have to let go of all your concerns. You have to let go of your job. What else do you have to let go of? All your... Sorry. You have to let go of any concern. Let go. You have to let them go. That's right. And relax. Well, you don't have to say and relax. If you let them go... You will relax. No, not you will. You are relaxed. The person who lets them all go is relaxed. And again, calm abiding isn't just being relaxed in the sense of letting everything go. It is also, it isn't like relax and go to sleep, although it's okay to go to sleep at the right time. when you're tired. In Zen, you get to sleep when you're tired. When you're not tired, you're not supposed to sleep. You can also eat when you're hungry, but not when you're not hungry.

[35:24]

Only when you salivate can you eat. Anyway, the relaxation is alert. So you're letting go of all your concerns, and now things are happening For example, one of your concerns might arise. So you're sitting there, you let go of your concern, and then W-O-K, O-R-K just pops up in front of you. Okay? Or some other thing like that. Or the word concern comes up. Or some horror comes up. Things keep appearing to you in this practice. And you meet them in the relaxation which was giving up that thing now it comes back again and you've already given it up and you meet it again you meet it and give it up you meet it without grasping it and you meet it without wishing it would go away without seeking something other than it you meet it so there's an alertness and there's a meeting and you see how this gets you ready to play

[36:32]

It isn't just let go and drift off. You let go and then now you meet the next thing in this relaxation. And this is, now you're getting, see how you're almost, you're on the verge now of playing with this thing, whatever it is. So if X is pain, and you got, if you got pain, then if you have confidence that relaxing with the pain will be beneficial. will bring calm and brightness and flexibility and alertness. And then you actually do let go of the pain. You'll push it away. You just stop clinging, clinging, clenching, gripping it, and you stop trying to get away from it. So I got the pain. The pain's still there, maybe. Or maybe it went away, but... its offspring came back, came up. So now you've got pain. And I just exhaled.

[37:39]

You have pain and you let go of the pain. You let go of clinging to the pain. You let go of manipulating the pain. You let go of trying to get away from the pain. You let go of trying to have an expectation of what's going to happen with the pain. You let go of trying to have an alternative to the pain. You let go of everything. You let go of the pain in all ways. And now you're relaxed with the pain. So according to what I said before, if you can relax with the pain, then you can learn to play with the pain. If you learn to play with the pain, then you can play with the pain. And if you can play with the pain, and you can find a playmate who is playing with the pain, then you can enter into the creativity of the pain. And when you enter into the creativity of the pain, you will understand the pain. And when you understand the pain, you will be free of the pain. also it could be to the pain X could be work yes yep right you can but you can go up like you could like

[39:01]

You could be out by yourself in the forest and do the... You could go... You have confidence in this process, relax and play without anybody else around. Okay? But then the next step is to find a playmate. Because this is the Buddha's meditation. Buddha's meditation is culminated when two of these relaxed players play together. So it is possible to enter into creativity without another person like you who is practicing this with you. It is possible to enter into creativity. But the path I'm talking about, you're going to find a playmate or two or three or ten. Okay? So again, you can substitute for pain, work, go through the same process. In the end, you will be able to be free of your work. But at the beginning, you are sort of free of your work when you're relaxed with it.

[40:07]

You kind of give up your work, temporarily give up your work, learn to play with your work, and then you will understand your work and be free of your work. Now, if your work, or even with the Buddhist teaching, X could be the Buddhist teaching on some topic or on this very topic. You relax with the teaching. First of all, you have competence, not so much in the teaching, but in the situation. You have competence. You should work with the situation of the teaching. Not so much that you trust the teaching, but you trust being in the teaching. So it's trusting being with it rather than it. you don't exactly trust the pain you trust being with it and then you trust have enough trust being with it that you trust that you can relax with it so you relax with the teaching and you can play with the teaching then you play with somebody else with the teaching then you understand the teaching and then you become free of the teaching because even a teaching that you understand that you actually had entered into the creativity of the teaching and you understand

[41:25]

If it's, you know, especially if it's a Buddhist teaching, you must become free of the teaching. Otherwise, you're carrying this raft around on your back and you don't need it anymore. So the teaching did its job on you and you did your job with the teaching and now you should let go of the teaching too. Now, you can bring it up again, but that's after you let go of it. So anything, I'm suggesting anything can go through this process with anything. But again, we may need to do some work to be confident that we can relax with our suffering and relax with other people's suffering, too. Are we playing now? Well, it's not for me to decide by myself.

[42:32]

We might be playing at trying to understand the practice of relaxation. And again, I say relaxation, but another way to put it is to meet whatever arises with complete relaxation. So it isn't just, like I said, plop. It's like you're upright, awake, and relaxed. You're ready for this phenomenon. Any questions about either the trust phase or the relaxation phase? Yes. Reid? Yeah. Yeah, it does take courage.

[43:40]

Now, I didn't mention, but now is the time to mention, see, I'm not presenting the standard model, right? but he just brought up something from the standard model. Usually, when they present the meditation, before they present the meditation, they tell you some other practices which support it. So the bodhisattva practices, which include the meditation practice and calm abiding, there's five practices of giving, ethical precepts, and enthusiasm or diligence or courageous effort. And then comes samadhi or calm abiding. So, I don't want to mention those four, but as we talk about them, as we talk about relaxation, we will probably find that these four are there. He just noticed that there needs to be courage, but another translation of that word

[44:42]

Another translation of it is diligence. Diligence has the root of, you know, loving to do something. Another translation of it would be effort or energy. So it's an energy, and there's courage in it, there's heart in it. And it's a courage which makes us so that even when there's fear, there's courage. of relaxation, some other part of it feels like, yeah, there's fear, but I'm still really up for this practice of relaxation. I still think it's really good, and I'm really happy to contemplate now relaxing with what's happening, even though I also feel some danger. there's some danger to the self which we don't yet understand completely is in danger.

[45:44]

So yes, courageous effort or courage is part of the background of kamabaiting. Yes? Sometimes I'm in a place where I really can feel relatively blessed just based on experience, the other shoe drops. So is there a way of resting in the knowledge that the other shoes could be dropped? That sounds like a good idea. What's the other shoe? Specifically? That would be nice, because somebody wanted to have this applied to daily life, right? So specifically might be good. Well, I have adult children who sometimes are in a crisis. For example, I got a phone call in the middle of the night last night. That's the other shoe. A special situation, a special environment.

[46:50]

So in the scriptures, which we're not going to mention... But, you know, one of the things about Zen is that it's apophatic. In other words, it talks about what it says it's not going to talk about. Like Zen says, we're not going to talk about Zen in Zen. So we're not going to talk about what? We're not going to talk about the scriptures, right, in which it says that in order to practice calm abiding, you should go... to have a quiet room with no telephone or unplug the telephone in the middle of the night if you're meditating. Now, if you're off the job, plug the telephone back in. But anyway, when you're meditating, maybe have a special situation of no telephone calls.

[47:51]

Like I heard You know, Thich Nhat Hanh told me one time that he looked at his mail once a week. He gets some bad mail, you know, from Vietnam. Not so much now maybe, but in the old days he used to get horrendous mail. But he wouldn't look at it every day to create, I guess, a special situation for himself so he could practice calm abiding. And then if you get calm, you're relaxed okay all right ready for the mail if you're relaxed now you can maybe open the mail and learn to play with it so the other shoe so Vera said that there's some situations in which you can relax but the other shoe is the situations where you haven't yet learned to relax That's a big shoe for most of us. But it's okay for starters to pick a special situation where you feel more likely that you could trust and have confidence that it would be okay to relax.

[49:03]

That's part of what you can do here and learn about how to do in other places. Sometimes called learning creating a container that would promote you having confidence that you could relax in relative safety. Asking for complete safety, it may be unrealistic, but you may be able to get enough sense of safety that you dare to relax, dare to let down your guard, put aside guarding and let go of your guard. But there is the other foot and when the other foot drops, then maybe you can't continue the relaxation practice for a while. So you reach, there's a limit to when I can do it.

[50:07]

So ideally, we want to learn to play so deeply and so skillfully and get in touch with creativity. Once you get in touch with creativity, suddenly some of these other situations where we couldn't relax before, we may be now able to relax because our understanding has changed. That's sort of the hope. In the meantime, we may have to shelter ourselves a little bit. And that's part of the practice. It's part of the reason for having classes and special setups. Does that make sense? Anything else about relaxation that you'd like to bring up? Rana? Mm-hmm.

[51:15]

Yes. One side you want to answer the phone and the other side what? Yeah, right. So anybody else know about that? So I have some limitations too, which I have not yet gotten over. In my case, which you can test me if you want to, in my case, I do answer the telephone in the middle of the night. Partly because I'm so relaxed. Hello? Also because my wife is not so relaxed. I'm not supposed to tell you that, but anyway. She can't go right back to sleep. whereas I'm pretty relaxed, especially in the middle of the night. And so if you ever want to wake me up, don't worry, because I'll go right back to sleep. I'm not supposed to tell you this, but she said one time, she said, you're like this, for the sake of the tape recorder, my hand is held upright now.

[52:57]

She said, you're like this, but you're always ready to go like this. So anyway, when I'm like this, I don't mind going like this for a while. So, in fact, I answer the telephone in the middle of the night because, you know, partly because she doesn't want to hear the telephone ring more than, any more than necessary. So one ring, she wants me to pick it up. I usually don't hear it the first ring, but she pokes me and I pick it up. But even if she's not there, I answer the phone in the middle of the night. Okay? So I'm pretty cool, huh? But I have my limitation. I guess my limitation is during the day. I don't answer this phone during the day because it's almost always somebody trying to sell me something or tell me a prize I just won to go to Disney World in Orlando, Florida. And not only that, but half the time it's a recorded message.

[54:01]

That's my limit, you know, which I would like to, during this class, try to relax with those telephone calls. But those are the ones that are hard for me, people who are trying to sell me something which I do not want. So, you know, it's very challenging to play with them, you know. They're hard. At the middle of the night, those telemarketers never call me in the middle of the night. I guess they've done some kind of study and they know that's not a good time to call people. Get them at dinner time with the kids all over them and they'll say, okay, okay. Get it, daddy, get it. But in the middle of the night, I answered, but in the daytime, that's my limitation, but I'll work on that. I'll try to relax and play with those people too. One of my assistants, I think maybe I told you this story already last summer, but I wasn't really talking about relaxation, although you could say I was.

[55:18]

I was talking about something somewhat different. I was talking about asking a good question, because we were studying a scripture about a certain samadhi, And at the beginning of the scripture, one of the bodhisattvas asked the Buddha a question. But before he asked the question, he has this thought, I would like to ask the Buddha a question. He said, I would like to ask a really good question. I would like to ask a question that would really be helpful to people. And then he goes down a long list of good qualities he would like his question to have. And it's just like this beautiful thought of asking this spectacularly wonderful, helpful question. And then he finally asked this question, you know. And then afterwards the Buddha says, my God, that was a great question. So I was talking about that. But I could have been talking about practicing relaxation. So when this guy got this telephone call on one of his breaks during the meditation retreat, got this telephone call, and this person called him up and offered him some great deal.

[56:28]

I forgot what it was. Now, if he was trying to practice relaxation, I think he would have done something like this. But actually what he was trying to practice is he thought, I should ask her a question. But I think, you know, if you're relaxed when those people call you, you might say, could I ask you a question? And she said, sure. And he said, do you have to make money to, you know, do this thing you're offering me? Oh, I think she was offering him a credit card. Something like that. She said, do you have to make a certain amount of money to get this credit card? And she says, well, yes. He said, well, how much? She just told him how much. He said, well, I don't make that much. And she said, you don't? How much do you make? And he said, well, I just basically get room and board and a little stipend. And she asked how much, and he told her. And she said, where do you live? And he said, well, I live on this farm in the country down by the ocean.

[57:40]

And she said, what do you do there? I said, well, we meditate and we garden. She said, oh. She said, well, can I come there? But, you know, usually we have our limit. Usually when those people call, we don't stop. We think, and what question could I ask? You know, what good question could I ask this person, right? So there was relaxation there. He was in the middle of a retreat. He was pretty relaxed. And he asked this person a question, and... And, oh, and then she said, she said, so could I come there? And he said, yeah. And she said, and would I have to meditate if I was there? And he said, well, you don't have to, but, you know, that would be offered. And she said, well, could I smoke too? And he said, well, there's no smoking here.

[58:46]

She said, oh, well, maybe I shouldn't come. But it was really nice talking to you. Thank you very much. So anyway, so you see how that leads to, you can play with people. But sometimes, if you're walking around your house, you know, and you're not, like, relaxed, then when the telephone goes, it's kind of like, you know, or maybe it's not that bad, but you pick it up and those people do that thing, you know, and so you're not ready to play with them, right? But this lady... You know, she was pretty ready. So when he offered her an opportunity, she played with him. So it was a great story, right? A happy story. Now, they could have played longer, you know, or maybe he shouldn't have said he couldn't smoke. I don't know. But if they played longer, it might have even gone even further into the land of wonder and happiness that they opened the door to there.

[59:53]

But anyways, we have our limits means our relaxation has limits. So some people, in the middle of the night, they're not so relaxed. So if the telephone rings, they go, oh, no, no, I'm not going to be able to sleep all night. Oh, no. And then they stay up. But other people are relaxed at night. But some people are relaxed not in the daytime. Some people aren't relaxed. The point is, completely relaxed and meet those telephone calls with complete relaxation but we have our limits so when you have your limit part of the practice of calm abiding and part of the practice of courage and part of the practice of precepts and part of the practice of giving and part of the practice of patience all these practices part of the practice big part of the practice is to confess when you're not doing the practice so part of practicing Relaxation is to confess that you're tense. Part of practicing courage is to, is courageous effort is to confess that you're, I feel kind of half-hearted.

[61:02]

I'm cringing away from this. Part of the practice of ethical precepts is say, you know, that wasn't so skillful, that wasn't so skillful, that wasn't so skillful. Part of the practice of giving is saying, I feel stingy. I feel stingy. I was so stingy. That's part of the practice. So even when we can't do the practice, we have a practice for when we can't do the practice, which is a real practice. And when we do that practice and we admit that tension, that simple admission itself is pretty relaxed. And by the way, again, back to pain, some people winced when I talked about relaxing with pain and playing with pain part of the way to play with pain sometimes for example when you're sitting cross-legged for many hours and you have pain part of the way to play with it is to change your posture but it's best i think to relax with it before you change your posture rather than first have pain then tense up and then change your posture

[62:18]

Try to relax with it. You say, what if it takes me two weeks to relax? Well, you know, that's too long. But if you can relax with it, sometimes you can see, oh, I should move. I want to move. But sometimes you relax with it and you realize, whoops, it went away. Sometimes the reason why you're in pain is because you're tensing around the pain. So it's, this is part of the play. Flexibility is possible with relaxation. Okay? Dorit? Dorit? What's the point of doing it with the other person? What's the point of doing it with the other person? You know, I would kind of like to postpone that to when we get to the part about talking about that because it's nine o'clock and it's kind of like a big topic about the wonderful dynamic of doing it with somebody else.

[63:32]

So is that okay? Okay. Yeah. So I think it'll come up again. But anyway, it is part of the Buddhist tradition is that Buddhas do not appear in the world except through interaction with other Buddhas. It's a, it's not a, it's not a, Buddhists aren't solitary. It's not, the Buddha is not someone who like got really totally like just great and like had this fantastic consciousness, although they do have fantastic consciousness, but so do you. The thing that's great about a Buddha, even though they are great in a lot of ways, they're really, the main thing about a Buddha is not how great the Buddha is. but the kind of relationships Buddhas have with beings and other Buddhas.

[64:35]

That's the main point. That's the creativity. And that's what we need to understand. It's not how good I am or how bad I am or how good you are or how bad you are. Because two bad people have the same kind of relationship Actually has two good people the true relationship of two bad people is the same as a true relationship of two good people namely it is Creativity is the actual relationship. That's the way it really is So the problem of being get two bad people together is they can't play So bad people have to relax and learn how to play and then they're not bad people anymore And then they get to realize their creativity, which is always there, which always had been there. The problem with being bad is it exiles us from our true relationship. But our true relationship doesn't start coming, doesn't arrive when we're in some special state.

[65:39]

So I did sort of talk about why it has to be two. Because creativity is not about me by myself it's about how all of you make me and how all of us make you that's the truth of dependent core arising and when we see that truth we see the buddha's teaching when we see the buddha's teaching we see the buddha we see dependent core arising we see buddha that was the teaching that was the truth that buddha realized when buddha woke up the middle way is creativity The middle way is not my way. It's not your way. It's not even our way. It's the way of our actual middle way that we are. It's the way in between us, not my way, not me pretty good Buddha, pretty good Buddhist way, or lousy Buddhist way. It's the middle way. How do we enter the middle way? what I'm talking about it is relax and play and then play with somebody else and then we enter into the middle way the creativity part of part of the environmental conditions that develop trust in relaxation is

[67:13]

would be that with yourself you could accept that you weren't relaxed. That would be a supportive environmental condition for relaxation is that you could be patient with your lack of relaxation. Does that make sense? And also, for many people anyway, having another person with you who is in on this project or in on this practice of relaxation, who also thinks it's good and wants to do it with you and wants to help you, if that person could also help you be patient, they also could be patient. They could reflect your patience. Or if you were not patient, If you are not patient with your lack of relaxation, they could model and reflect patience with your lack of relaxation.

[68:16]

And if you thought that you were being, I don't know what, irresponsible to be relaxed, then it would be nice to have the environmental condition of having somebody with you who says, you know, you're not being irresponsible being relaxed. I, for one, need you to relax. Big time. Please. Please relax. You would do me and everybody a big favor. You're not being a bum to relax. We don't need you to tense up with all these problems. We need you to relax so you can help us. But a lot of people think that they're kind of irresponsible or hard-hearted if they relax with the suffering of the world. So it's nice to have somebody there who says, and especially somebody who, like, is pretty nice to you, and who's not afraid of your suffering, who's not afraid of your suffering, who's not queasy about your suffering, and who's relaxed with your suffering. So you can imagine if you go see someone and you're suffering, and you tell them that you're suffering, and they go, oh God, you know, you can imagine this person would not encourage you to relax with suffering.

[69:29]

But if they really seem to hear that you're suffering, really seem to listen to you, and even say, so you're suffering like this? You say, yeah. You're suffering like that? They say, yeah. They seem to actually understand. They're actually registering it. And they seem to be kind of like, yeah, empathic with you and also relaxed. That would be a helpful condition. For you to relax. And such a person might be able to say to you, you know, it would be fine for you to relax. I'm relaxing with you right now. Actually, I like being with you. I mean, I don't like that you're suffering, but I like being with you now while you're suffering. I'm glad I'm with you. I'm glad I can share this time with you. I really am. I'm very happy to be with you. Many times when I do a funeral ceremony, you know, I meet the relatives of somebody who died. Sometimes I know the person who died, or I know, or the person who died is a relative of somebody I know.

[70:38]

And then I meet a bunch of relatives I don't know of this person who died. And then I meet them and I do this ceremony with them. And afterwards, sometimes they come up to me and they say, thank you very much for this ceremony. He said, I really am happy to meet you, they say to me. And I say, I'm really happy to meet you. And then they say, I'm sorry it has to be under these conditions. And I think in my head, if it weren't for these conditions, I'd never meet you. These conditions are how I get to have this nice meeting. And it's a really good meeting. I don't say that to them, though. But sometimes I do, actually. if it's really a good meeting, I tip my hand. Empty. Because it's because it's such an important time that it's such a great meeting. If they met me in some other situations, like walking down College Avenue, they wouldn't come up to me and say, you know, it's really nice to meet you.

[71:41]

Probably. They'd just walk by. And we'd meet, you know, and I might feel... If I was, like, really relaxed and playful, I might feel, boy, that was nice meeting that person. But people actually, believe it or not, get relaxed and playful at funerals. They're not so uptight, you know? They're kind of letting it out. The tears. And the funeral helps them even let go more. It's a letting go kind of thing. In a way, it's like giving birth. And so all this energy starts flowing, which is what they need. This person dies and a lot of people tense up around the death of their loved one, right? Tense up. And so they need help. So they go to the funeral and then the conditions, the special conditions of the funeral, people start to let go. And most important, the person who dies lets go. Sometimes when people are dying, if we tense up,

[72:45]

they don't dare die. They think, because they're kind of like into dying, right? They're kind of into, can I relax now? Would it be all right if I relaxed? Can I like exhale one more time and let it go with that? Would that be okay? And the loved ones have to sort of say, yeah, you can relax. You don't have to do this breathing thing anymore. And they do. But if they can't, if the loved one's saying, no, hold on, hold on, hold on, they get weird. Until finally we say, okay, you can go. Does that make sense? I hope that this is something you can practice. Think about during the week. What conditions do you need to dare to relax, to meet things with relaxation?

[73:49]

And if you do feel relaxed, what are the conditions that supported that at that time? And it might be okay if you sense the kinds of things that will support the relaxation. Maybe you could try to gather those resources. and then see if then the relaxation happens. So it's more like gather the conditions rather than like manipulate it. A little bit more indirect is more relaxed. And then see if you can practice meeting things with kind of a feeling of as Roy said, a meeting of just letting go of everything. At least part of the day. See if you can practice that. Especially maybe when you're sitting in meditation or walking meditation. Just let go of everything for just, you know, just a short time.

[74:54]

Just let go of all your concerns for like one minute. I think that would be okay. I would support you. I don't think you'd be irresponsible if you just let go of all your concerns for a minute and just see what that feels like. And then come back and tell us next week if a minute was too long. And if it wasn't, try two minutes and so on. The idea is anyway to extend it until you can have some room to play. OK, anything else you want to bring up tonight? Yes, Rana? It seems like for teachers to having or deciding this trust, it needs to really get to the giving up the hope of many other things.

[76:04]

Yeah, yeah. At least now. At least now there's no other door other than this. What's happening? Right, the experience of your life. You know, whatever I tried to grasp, somehow it was wrong, it was proved. Whatever I did did not work. It's him. It's you. The process of this is different from the other stuff you tried to hold on to?

[77:14]

The process of this is different than the other stuff you try to hold on to? Yeah. See, there it is. The process of this is different from the other stuff we try to hold on to. This is the way of not... This is the process of not holding on to the other stuff. And it's also the process of not holding on to this. So don't hold on to the teaching either. Because remember, in the end, you're going to let go of the teaching. So relax with the teaching about relaxation. And that will help you see that being tense about everything else, too, doesn't help. So the teaching is... I don't know if the teaching, but somehow you've seen about the stuff you're trying to hold on to is not the way. But it's not that there's anything wrong with those things. It's the holding on to them that was the problem. People are fine. Holding on to them is a problem. People are wonderful. But tensing up around them inhibits our realization of our play.

[78:36]

We are playing, actually, but until we relax, we don't get it. Check it out, okay? Thank you.

[78:51]

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