I really don't have some definite plan in mind because I don't know you all or what you're ready for or interested in. So maybe I can talk with you and gradually find out how we should proceed. The first thing that comes to my mind is I guess that I was here for some time four years ago and I spent a lot of time in this room sitting with the people who lived here and still do live here and I've been looking for a way to get back here and finally succeeded so it's very nice that you provided the opportunity and

[01:09]

Then arriving here, I got this morning and came and sat here with a few people. And every day, actually, I wonder what's the way to live, how to live. Although I've been exposed and studied lots of traditional ways of conducting my life, conducting our life, I also every day wonder what to do, how to do it, how to basically get myself into my life. These days, almost every day, when I wake up in the morning, I have some little problem.

[02:19]

Either I'm tired or I'm sore or... Anyway, I don't wake up with no problems. And my own experience, and it turns out that the Buddha said pretty much the same thing, is that life is... life is quite an event to handle, quite an event to figure out how to respond to, pretty difficult. And today, the way I would put it is that it seems like the main question is how to sing, how to sing in the midst of all that's going on. And that leads me to a story, a poem, a children's poem, which I'd like to use as a background and also a kind of poetic meditation instruction, or kind of meditation, poetic Zen meditation instruction.

[03:40]

And it's a poem written originally in French by a man named Jacques Prévert. A children's poem. And it's been translated into English by Laurence Ferlinghetti. I don't remember exactly, but it's something like this. It's called, How to Paint the Portrait of a Bird. And it starts by saying, if you want to paint the portrait of a bird, first you get a canvas. first thing you do is paint a cage and then you paint something some things for the bird paint something beautiful something simple something useful something pretty for the bird in the cage then take the canvas and bring it out and put it

[04:48]

Lean it against a tree. The forest or the woods or garden. And then go and sit behind the tree and wait for the bird to come. Don't worry. Sometimes a bird comes very quickly, sometimes a bird takes years to come. But the quickness or the slowness of the bird's coming has no rapport with the quality of the painting. When the bird comes, if the bird comes, at that moment observe the most profound silence.

[06:04]

When the bird enters the cage close the door of the cage with your brush. I forgot to tell you, when you paint the cage, paint the cage with the door open. You close the cage door with your brush. Then, I take your brush and Paint the cage away. Paint the bars away. And before you leave the bird in mid-air, paint a branch under the bird's feet. Beautiful branch. And then paint insects and sun and blue sky and summer warmth and so on.

[07:17]

Everything nice for the bird now. And then wait again. Wait for the bird to sing. If the bird sings, that's a good sign. A sign that you can sign. Your name. And so if it sings, you can reach over to the bird and pull a feather out of the bird and use the bird's feather to sign. So that's kind of it. If you look at this poem a little bit, you see all kinds of wonderful things which, you know, it's incredible that I don't know if he was trained in meditation, this poet, but somehow the poet's, what the poet produces is coming from someplace very wise.

[08:17]

The muse is a big help to us. It seems to know all about meditation. So going back over the story a little bit, I'd like to point out a few things which are also characteristic of the Buddha's meditation, the way a Buddha practices. The first point is, I guess the first thing is, There's a canvas. There's a place that you make this painting. Second point is that there's a cage. In other words, Buddha says, we're trapped. We live in some enclosure. We have limitation. We've got to admit, we've got to honestly put our limitation right out there on paper, on canvas.

[09:20]

with flesh and bones we have to admit our limitation honestly admit that we're limited here to this body and this mind then next in order to somehow in order to get the bird into this cage here the circumstances and limitations of my life I have to put something in the cage to attract the bird something pretty, something simple, something useful, something beautiful. This bird doesn't want something complicated. If it's too complicated the bird will never find the cage. Something simple and attractive to get the bird to come. These are things

[10:21]

The cage is not something you have to work at. You've got a cage. You have to admit the cage. You have to put it out there. But the coming of the bird you can't do anything about. You just have to wait until whatever you want to call it enters. In other words, until you enter your life. Until you stand in the place you're standing. Somehow we have to encourage ourselves to believe that being here is interesting. That being in this cage is interesting. How can we encourage ourselves to be here? That's a real art to figure out how you can encourage yourself to do that. So it says, when the bird comes, if the bird comes.

[11:23]

So the length of time it takes the bird to come is not so important because although you should be patient, also perhaps sometimes you should change what's in the cage. Now if you waited for several years and you put something in the cage, you should freshen the cage now and then. calmly put something else in the cage to attract the bird. Not worrying, just being creative about how to day by day, hour by hour, attract yourself to yourself. Encourage yourself to be yourself. And another important point is when the bird comes, The moment the bird comes, observe the most profound silence. In other words, when the bird comes, it's fairly likely that we'll get very excited about the bird coming.

[12:32]

If you see the bird come into you, you might get excited. But the point is, you don't want to get too excited because you've been quiet all this time, and that's what allowed the bird to come in the first place. If you get too excited, the bird will fly away. Or the bird, if it's in the cage, will bash its head against the cage or something. At that point when you're very likely to get excited, continue to be the way you were when you were waiting. Quietly waiting. And then the bird will go in the cage and then quietly close the door. Then paint the cage away. You can paint the cage away because you painted the cage in the first place. And then when there's nothing holding the bird anymore, still just the bird with nothing around it isn't enough. You have to provide a new environment and then wait to see if the bird sings.

[13:34]

If the bird doesn't sing, then it's still not you yet. And if it doesn't sing, paint another picture. Start over again. Until the bird sings, until you sing. and then you can sign. This is, as I say, a picturesque way of talking about how we try to sit in meditation. This morning at the breakfast table, I was talking to this woman. What's your name? Anabuti.

[14:34]

Anabuti was talking about this very problem of difficulty with discipline, difficulty with being in some kind of structural practice, a practice that has some structure and some form to it. And some resistance or difficulty with that. And I also mentioned in conjunction with this that one of the Greek myths that's very helpful in this regard is, for me anyway, is particularly speaking of the feminine resistance to this structure, is amor and psyche, that myth. And particularly the labors that she has to go through to get reunited with her husband. in some ways the cage or the structure of our body is a kind of masculine side and whether we're male or female to the side of us it doesn't like to be pushed into that structure it doesn't like to admit where each bone is where each muscle is where the lungs are how the posture is being held doesn't want to go through all that doesn't want to be in that place

[15:55]

but it also does want to be in that place it just said it can't go necessarily bull-headedly into the place you have to find a more subtle and indirect method to get yourself into the situation if you study that myth you might if you're trying to do this practice of being yourself of entering your own situation you might read that that myth and find some encouragement for how to sneak around your resistance. When I first started sitting, you know, we have various postures we can sit in meditation. And when I first started sitting, I wasn't too tight. I was younger. I was about 20 or so. And so I wasn't, I was pretty limber from various from practicing yoga and various sports. And so I could cross my legs, but still it was pretty difficult to sit in full lotus.

[17:00]

And so if you ever try to sit in full lotus, you maybe know that if you put this leg up here like this, and then somebody says, now put the other one on top, you say, well, it's impossible. You know, you just, you start to pull and say, it just won't go. It seems like there's some kind of... iron bar to it, just won't go. Or you feel like if you got up here, you would break this lower one. And so I just look the other way. Hold it up. I looked away from what told me I couldn't do it and just did it. It took me a while to figure out that that was the way to do it and also how to look the other way. How to really forget about the part that says impossible. Say, oh, impossible? Oh, really? And then it's up there.

[18:05]

And then you're in quite a fix. But anyway, you got it. If you brutishly pull it, you can hurt yourself. You have to... You have to listen to your body, and if the body's resisting certain postures, certain disciplines, then you should say, oh, oh really? Oh, thank you. And you shouldn't say, well, I'm going to... No, just pay attention, respect your body saying, no, it's impossible. Your mind saying, my body can't do that. Respect that. But also sometimes walk around it. Come at it from the back door. Don't go in that place anymore where they say you can't do it. But if they're saying you can't do it, then don't argue. Say, okay, yes sir. Tomorrow it may not say that. Tomorrow they forget to say that. But today it says no and you should listen to it. So basically we take some posture.

[19:07]

This is called full lotus. You can also sit in half lotus this way. this way you can also sit like this like this you can also sit in a chair or you can sit like this and you can also raise yourself up like this okay anyway the point is that you put yourself someplace you place yourself somewhere in this world And you really admit how you're placing yourself. In other words, you're careful about how you place yourself so you know where you are and how you're putting your legs and arms and so on. So that you can admit where you are. You can confess your circumstances to yourself. And we call, you know, our sitting practice in Zen is called Zazen, which means literally sitting

[20:12]

Zen, or sitting meditation, or sitting concentration. And we say sitting, but it doesn't really mean just only that this sitting posture. It's any posture you're in where you can be very aware, or where you are very aware, or where you have to be very aware of where you are. Any posture like that is what we mean. For example, if you string a a wire from this porch here across this ravine over to the other side there and you walk across the wire if you walk across the wire you will you will be very aware of where your feet are and you'll be very aware of your posture whether you're vertical or tilting somewhat over this way or that way you'll be very aware and so that would be a posture where you would very much be admitting your physical situation.

[21:14]

And if you could not get too excited about it, you could walk across there, if you could honestly admit your circumstances. But most people can't do that. It's too dangerous to have that be their meditation practice. So we do a kind of less dramatic version of that and we just For example, just sit up like this or just stand. We try to sit in such a way that you can experience your life or experience your effort. So if you sit up either right away or eventually, you will be aware that you're making some effort to do this. You'll feel your effort. You'll feel the motivation of your life.

[22:15]

You will experience it. And for example, if you sit up like this, it's not necessarily a better way to sit. You sit up somewhat more straighter, but it's a way that you can experience your effort to sit up. You can feel yourself do this. As a matter of fact, it's It's pretty hard not to feel yourself doing this when you're doing it. Whereas lying down, some people do not, by myself, for example, lying down, don't feel quite as encouraged or forced to be admitting what I'm doing when I'm lying down. I can't feel that I'm doing so much with my body. I am. You're always doing, your body's always going full tilt. But the question is, what circumstances will you feel your body doing it? And sitting up straight, you feel your body. I shouldn't say feel your body, but you feel your effort to do that. And as you feel one kind of effort, one kind of life force, you feel lots of other ones too.

[23:38]

which are not necessarily related to this sitting up. In other words, you'll feel the great force, the great emotional force that is us. We have tremendous emotional power and it's not as T.S. Eliot says, they're undisciplined squads of emotions. And if they are undisciplined, it's hard for, they resist making some concerted effort like this. I wouldn't say necessarily they resist, but it may be hard for us to see on what they are concerted.

[24:46]

They actually are all concerted on something. What is it that they're concerted on? They're all working for one thing. What is that that they're all working for? to feel. What about this question I asked?

[26:35]

What is it? What's happening with this question? What are you doing with it? What? You have an awareness of the question? Do you like this question? For me it's a difficult feeling. I feel like all the sensations are trying to teach me how to be free of them. There's a part of me that doesn't want to hear it and won't get the message and so I feel a struggle.

[27:35]

I won't surrender to that teaching. For me it relates to what you're talking about, the cage, the cage of your own protection. You can get around some of these. By the way, another way to tell the story, which wouldn't be the way Jacques Prover wrote it, would be after the bird gets in the cage and you paint the door shut, don't paint the bars away. Leave the bars in and then wait for the bird to sing. See if the bird can sing in the cage. I was thinking of what Suzuki Roshi said about containing the cow by giving him as much pasture as he could Possibly. The larger you bounce to the body, the easier it is to contain.

[28:40]

Okay. Right, so when you're talking about these feelings, these painful feelings, there's a lesson from all these feelings, all these sensations. And it's painful because it's hard to see what the lesson is. Because it's hard to think of a lesson which would include all that. or we talk about our undisciplined squads of emotions coming up, which we can see how emotional we are. If we sit still, we see how emotional we are. You just sit still, you'll see we are very emotional creatures. But that, if you can just make a bigger field, then these emotions aren't, they're not out of control, or they're not causing you trouble. If you make a small field, you kill it, or you suffer, or you feel suffocated, limited, constantly frustrated with too small a field.

[29:53]

So the usual way, what Suzuki Roshi says, the worst thing to do is to ignore the cow. the movements of the cow or ignore these emotions or ignore this pain. That's what some people do. They ignore it. In other words, the cow is being suffocated in a tiny little pen or you're squashing your emotions and squashing your feelings into a tiny little space so you don't really notice much movement. You just ignore it. The other way is to So ignoring is one way, you just don't even know the problem. The other way is to put a leash, a chain on, some kind of rope around the cow's neck. Hold it that way. Now at least you know the pain. Now you experience the frustration. So to ignore it means whatever you want to call it, ignoring it. Anyway, you don't know that you're suffering. You don't know that you're squashing your life, that you're...

[31:01]

You're constraining your emotions. You're constraining your feelings. You're constraining your thoughts. You're constraining the possibilities about what life can be. You don't know it. You'd ignore it. The other is you admit you're constraining it. You catch yourself at constraining it. So one way to catch yourself constraining yourself is, for example, to sit still. The sitting still is not constraining you, but the kid sitting still will show you how you constrain yourself. The sitting still will show you how much we just are really limited in what we think is possible. So when you're sitting there, you think, Jesus, almost nothing possible here. And in other words, you think of many other things besides this that you could do. In other words, your emotions think of millions of other things you can do other than just sit here. But you don't think of what you can do sitting here. You can't imagine what you could do here compared to what you could do if you left. So you feel this real constrained, limited, tied up feeling.

[32:04]

Literally you are tied up by this. But actually you're not tied up because actually your life's going... All these emotions are coming up. So one says they seem to be taking you away from this. Another says the reason why you're thinking of them is because you don't feel complete here. You're striving for more than this. You can only stand at a certain amount of time until you realize that there's something that contains all of this. That all this activity and emotion is contained in one what? What is that thing that contains it all? That's the question. And if you sit and experience this tremendous desire to not sit, to do everything else but sit, Well, I shouldn't say everything else but sit. You're making some effort to sit, but you have a lot more energy to do other things.

[33:07]

You have some commitment to be here, but compared to the commitment to be here at first, your commitment to be other places is much greater. But at some point, you maybe have some actual tactile experience of what it is that includes all this, so that all this activity is in one space. What do you call that space? You can call it anything you want. I don't know the answer to it. What do you call that space? It contains the cow in all its movements. It contains all this tremendous emotion and feeling of our life. What is that space? The self. You can call it the self. And what else could you call it? Any word is okay. It'll be right. What? The soul. Sure. Anything else? Singing bird. Singing bird. Huh? Avoid. Avoid. Any others?

[34:11]

Consciousness. Consciousness. How about life? So life, consciousness, soul, the singing bird. Those are some answers. They're not the answer. They're just things you can say. The important thing is you actually have a feeling that all the things we said are included in this space. You have a feeling when you hear a bird, the bird goes, oh, that's my consciousness. You feel that your consciousness. You see this microphone and you see, this is my life. This is my life. It's not like I'm alive over here and this wobbling thing over here is over there. This is my life. Did you see I touched it and it wiggled? And the fact that it wiggles means something to us, doesn't that impress you? Doesn't it?

[35:14]

I mean, if it doesn't, then, I'm sorry to say, you've got too close a fence around the cow. And if you can't appreciate this little wobbling thing here, then there's all kinds of emotions in your own self that you're producing that you'll also go, that's not my life, those emotions. So the space, the space we have to somehow include everything so that everything we meet, everything, everything out here and everything in here, it's all our life. This is my life. This is my life. And so the sitting, the putting yourself in the cage is a technique, is a form through which you encourage yourself basically to first of all face the cow, second of all catch yourself restraining it and noticing that there's something outside of it, a lot outside of it.

[36:27]

and it makes you miserable to see all that stuff outside of it, or it makes it miserable for you to see yourself trying to escape the situation, and then just sort of try to feel, well, how could this stuff that seems to be going out really be going like this? How can you feel it all going like this? Going out, but really coming back. It seems like we need something, some way to experience this restraint, this limitation, this pain. And then you don't have to try to think of something that's bigger or whatever. You just, you'll find it. The bird will come. Again, the bird will come. And when the birds sing, the singing is an expression of when you actually feel this inclusion. So that wherever the cow goes in the field, it's not just that you let it go, but you actually enjoy wherever the cow goes.

[37:33]

You watch it. You say, oh, it's going to that field today. It's going to this field today. Look where my life is going. Just before that, you feel like, oh, my life's going that way. Oh, my life's going this way. Oh, my life's going that way. Oh, my life is coming this way. Oh, my life is coming that way. But we don't even usually say that. We say, oh, this is going that way, or that's going that way, or this is going that way. That we're losing something, or something's attacking us. Maybe this is... So, I don't know. Maybe this is enough kind of, like, just background and... What do you think? Is there anything that you want to talk about now? Do you have any ideas where to go? What you'd like to do now? The impression I got from that was to watch the energies moving in the body and notice them going one way and then coming all the way.

[38:50]

Just watching and accepting that that's my life moving then. It's the same thing to watch something outside, supposedly outside the body. So the watching inside is good practice for accepting the outside. Watching inside is good practice for accepting outside. The outside. Right. And watching outside is good practice for accepting inside. Both ways. Consciousness, individual human consciousness, is a biological phenomenon. rises out of out of living living beings have some way that they separate themselves from the rest of the universe the way they separate themselves is by means of their sense organs the entire physical universe including all other living beings from ourselves the structure of that

[39:55]

whole world, that whole external world, living and non-living, is just like consciousness. It's basically, they're analogs of each other, or metaphors of each other, they're basically the same. And the only way that consciousness can be aware of the external world is by separating itself from the external world by means of some sensitivities, which we call the sense capacities or sense organs. Without the sense organs, consciousness in the external world would meet each other and there would be no awareness because they're the same. In order to have awareness of the rest of the world, we need to make a little space by means of eyes, ears, nose, tongue and physical sensation, that makes a separation between us.

[40:57]

But the structure of all this, from my point of view, is the same as my mind and same for each of you. The structure of all this is just like your mind. So if you think an external world is, or if you think your mind is calm, if you think your consciousness is all tranquil, then you should look at the external world to see if it's true. And you'll find, perhaps, that the external world is not calm. But you might also find that it is calm. Vice versa, if you think your mind's agitated, look at the external world. Is it also agitated? You might find that it's not agitated. So, for example, if you feel agitated, if you look at the ocean or go out in the woods, you may feel some kind of encouragement because you can see another side to your consciousness.

[42:08]

The side which the external world shows you. So basically, we say... If you want to know about yourself, study others. If you want to know about others, study yourself. Yes? You've been talking so far about perception, how you can interpret life in different ways. Can you say something about actions? Actions? actions. We can be different kinds of actions. See what we are doing ourselves to participate. Well, this leads me to think of the indication or the comment that our life can be seen as consents to

[43:18]

two kinds of situations. One, where you're basically you're receptive. Part of our life is just being receptive or just simply experiencing. Another part of our life is responding or acting. So our life is not just all acting, it is not all just receiving. What we receive, at the moment we receive it, there's nothing we can do about it. We just have to receive, in fact, we just do. Then we can respond to that. So what about action? What about response to our circumstances? So that's what I did so far.

[44:36]

I didn't do too much, did I? I had experience of him raising that question, and I had experience of me talking in response to it. Then I said, what do we do? And I didn't do too much. And I noticed I didn't do too much, so I told you about it. Somebody must know better than that, right? So what did I do? I mean, I tried to articulate what I thought Stan was raising. And then I came to finally see, now, what about my example of action? And I looked. I looked. That was the action I chose because I was looking for what kind of action we should have.

[45:41]

That was my action in that case of looking for what the action would be. And then I noticed that that was my action. It doesn't always have to be that way, but today that's what I did in this case. The action I took was to look, see what action it should be and then I thought then I told you about it and I thought after all that I thought well that's not much is it anybody can do that that's not much direction or and even that does it doesn't seem like actually a good thing to do or a bad thing to do that looking and even commenting on that looking that I noticed that I was looking doesn't seem like a good thing or a bad thing but that's what I did And then I thought, gee, that must not seem like much to you. Shouldn't there be something more, I don't know what, than that?

[46:47]

That's the way my mind worked. Did your mind work like that? What did you think about all this I just said? So, gee, what do you think about what I just said? part of the answer. Not all of it, but there are some other dimensions which I was sort of thinking about when I was asking the question. Like when you were confronted with a situation, whether you act or not, or how do you act? Whether it's in your personal life or whether you're responding to social or political circumstances. How do you reconcile the civility? What would be appropriate action? Well, again, we're dealing with today, right?

[47:49]

You and me right here now. And did you notice what we were just doing together, the two of us? He was talking to me and I was going... In other words, I was... And I was watching myself. I was responding to him. Everything he did, I responded. I didn't say much. I was just trying to be with him and listen to what he was saying. That was my response. Nothing bigger than that. It has also brought up all kinds of other things like social political concerns. But in the moment of you talking to me, I was just responding to you. I was moving and blinking my eyes and making little grunts while you were talking. So I guess what I'm emphasizing is to live on the level at which I'm aware of this instant response to everything that you do. Just like now, he's doing the same thing. I'm talking and he's going... All kinds of, he's doing millions of things in regard to all the things I'm doing. And Brother David's nodding over there too. We're all, we're all, you know, I'm talking, you're bobbing, I'm talking in regard to your bobbing, you're all bobbing.

[48:59]

Tremendous inter-responsiveness is going on here. And what I, as a disciple of Buddha, what I... dedicate myself is to the realm of that level of inter-responsiveness. And I trust that the kind of actions that come out of that kind of rapport and that kind of interrelationship, those are the kind of actions which I entrust our lives to. And my experience is that kind of thing does not violate the precepts of the truth. That when we get away from that immediate interaction, which is always going on anyway, in other words, when we get away from being aware of this constant interplay, then we can get carried away, quite carried away. And I must say, I can't be there all the time myself, I'm sorry.

[50:04]

I miss, you know, I miss that... good sharing of time. And that's usually where I see things get off, get off of, you know. And it's not really that they're off, it's just that I'm not there with them to catch that they're on. I believe they're on all the time, it's just a question of whether I'm there to be with them. Right now, they're with you. And you're all moving your toes. all your things, and you're moving all over the place in regard to each other and me. So in a sense, I'm kind of what I would point to as a holy state of consciousness

[51:09]

is a state of consciousness that is all the people in this room right now in the way we kind of, I don't know if we're all being aware of each other, but I think we're approaching kind of this kind of sense of the tremendous responsiveness here and a state of great readiness. And again, it's not just a readiness that I feel, but a readiness that I feel in most of you, I can't see you all at once, but there's considerable readiness here. And again, if I feel, if I'm sitting over here and I feel ready, okay, I'm ready, and I look at you and you're all asleep, then am I really ready? I don't think that's really ready. My readiness is a readiness that again, if I look in, if I look out, it should be out there too.

[52:10]

It's not And if I don't see it, then I say, well, maybe I'm not so ready. It's like sometimes in meditation when I'm sitting up and I feel I'm quite awake, you know. I look around, everyone else is asleep. Or not everyone, but a lot of people are asleep. Is that really what we mean by awake? That kind of awakeness, the kind of awakeness such that I'm the only one who's doing it. That's not what we mean by awake. We mean awake that The way I am, even if I don't think it's awake, I look out and everybody else in the room is just zip. Then I say, oh, I'm awake. This is really what awake is, that I have some friends who want to be awake with you. So maybe being this awake is an awake that nobody else wants to be with. So you're that awake, but everybody else is down here asleep. There's another awake that maybe is in here sometimes that everybody else wants to do. So when you look out, you see it everywhere. The birds are looking back at you.

[53:11]

The trees are looking back at you. This is an action. This kind of awakeness, it's a kind of action. It's an action. And it's using your whole body and mind. It's not just using... this part of your brain and your left hand. It's not just using this part of your brain and your ear. It's using your whole brain and your whole body. This thing I'm talking about. And one of the ways you can test to see if you're doing it is to look at other people. If you're actually doing it, they'll probably be doing it too. If I make a scientific I don't know, scientific, but what do you call it?

[54:12]

Empirical digression. I read in a German book, a German magazine a couple years ago. I don't know what it said in German, but anyway, I saw these pictures. So since I don't know what it said, I'm really speaking not as an expert. But on the pictures, here's what I think it said. I know a little tiny bit of German. It said something like, these are different pictures of... the metabolism of sugar across the surface of the brain. And it had different pictures. You get different colors according to how the metabolism is going on. So they had all these different color patterns on these pictures of the brain. So you can see the metabolism pattern for using the right arm repeatedly. You can see the metabolism pattern for using both arms symmetrically. You can see the metabolism for thinking a certain kind of thought over and over and also for listening and also for talking and also and so on for various different activities and they all had these different patterns but the one where the color was all practically even throughout the whole brain where the metabolism was not getting overly active in one place and underactive in another where the brain was really working kind of

[55:34]

A nice, even, overall hum was a state where the person was just sitting, still, waiting, not knowing what was going to happen. They didn't tell the subject what was going to happen. They just said, something's going to happen. Are you ready? That uses the whole brain evenly. Not to say, somebody's going to come in the door, then it gets off a little bit. Still pretty good, though, because you don't know who. But when you don't know if it's going to come in the door, whether the floor's going to fall off, whether somebody's going to kiss you, you don't know anything. It's just anything could happen. That's kind of the most general way to use the brain. It's also the most very general way to use the body. I don't know. Think about that. But that's finally what Hamlet came to, isn't it? First he tried to figure it out. What's going on? And he almost committed suicide. In other words, I would say he became depressed.

[56:38]

He started going on certain psychological or intellectual ruts, thinking certain things over and over and over, really ruining himself with his thought process. And he gave that up and he started to act, killing people and various things. And then he just, in the end, just ready. That's what he came to, just being ready. Now, of course, since he acted so much in the middle of the play, he had some stuff coming down on him, right? So the great tragedy is finally he's ready, you know. But finally he was mature. But by his foolishness in the earlier part of the play, there's some results he had to face. But I think he faced him pretty well. my feeling. So I'm wondering what you should do now.

[57:45]

Do you have any suggestions? Anybody? I have a comment on this. Oh, yes. Question for your dialogue on responses. You were sitting here and your co-fellows were sitting there. So what you're doing, you're getting response, but in other sense, you might have been also creating reality. Exactly. And so too, if you come into the room, prepare a lecture, and they're ready to lecture, and the people are not ready to speak lecture, and you look within yourself, and you touch what it is, and you change yourself, I do have a comment, as a matter of fact.

[58:54]

And that is, you said you changed the reality, but you notice that you have this thing you want to talk about, and you notice that people don't want to hear it. They don't want to hear anything. They say, well, if you don't want to hear anything, maybe I should shut up for a little while. And if you shut up for a little while, then they might want to hear something. Anyway, you said you changed the reality by that. But another way to put it is that you actually entered into the reality. The reality is actually where the internal and external are unified. Before that, when they were off, the adjustment didn't really change the reality, it found reality. So I would say it's more even than changing it, it's actually that's what reality is, is when the subject and object are, when two people, or you and others, when you find that place where you're not on top, they're not on the bottom, they're not on top, you're not on the bottom,

[60:01]

Of course, you almost never get it for very long, so it gets off again. And if you're coming like this, you often miss the point and go too far. But there's a moment there. I was saying to Brother David, I read this in this book, which is probably pretty popular these days. It's called The Name of the Rose. And in the book, I had a discussion about what Right love is when both lovers want the same thing. The lecturer and audience, when they want the same thing, how do they find the same thing that they want? The lecturer wants to give something, but what do they want? How did he find what they want? How do they find what he wants? So right now, how do I find out what you want?

[61:03]

I have certain things I want. What do I want? Actually, it's not exactly what I want it, but I guess I want that I don't talk too long. I would like that. What would you like? You probably also wouldn't let me talk too long, right? So, what time is it? 10 p.m. So, what should we do? We could do something else. We could take a break. Would you like a break? Yes. I'd like to do my thing. We walked into the room and I was talking about you. I didn't know that Brother David was here. We introduced, we talked about both of you. David was telling that you would be with us.

[62:08]

So I would like to apologize. We didn't see him. We came down from San Francisco together and Brother David's going to go off on a hike now into the mountains. Brother David lives right down the road here from Esalen. at the Sacred Heart Hermitage. He's also helped Zen Center a lot. He comes to visit Zen Center. He keeps us from getting too monkish. That's just the opposite. Shall we take a break now? Is that all right? Wow. Before we go on, I also would like to...

[63:25]

So I guess what I would like is to do whatever is most helpful for all of us in the next hour or so and then tomorrow morning. Is that right? Tomorrow morning we're meeting again. So one idea I had was we could just chat informally for a while now and then maybe tomorrow we could begin by some more formal elements being introduced and put them into practice and then discuss that or I could introduce some formal things now but then we wouldn't be able to put them into practice for very long but we could we could do that whichever you any either way is fine with me or some other way if you have suggestions any any feelings tomorrow morning?

[64:27]

Is that all right? One person asked me during the break something about, he himself is, where is he? You described yourself as what? Embarking on a new path. Embarking on a new path. And so I guess he's wondering how how I got on this path, whatever it is. Well, should I talk about that? The longer that I have try to figure out what is the enlightened way or what is the way to live fully, the longer the beginning of that effort keeps getting pushed back earlier.

[65:39]

So when I first started, I thought the place where I started was where I started. But after I practiced that long, I thought that the place I started was back a little bit. When I practiced longer, it keeps going back further and further. So I suppose when I'm very old, I'll think I started a long time ago. And that's partly because, again, I think this thing about the field gets bigger. So you think when you first start practicing that that was where you started, but then you, that's just because that's what your definition of what practice was at that time or what taking care of your life was at the time, but then you feel actually you were always doing it. or anyway, quite early. And then you even get into thinking, well, maybe before I was born I was doing it, and how was I doing it before I was born? Or even we say, you know, what was your face like before your parents were born? And these kinds of things you... Or another way to put it is, the more grateful you become to the wonderful teachings of the Buddha,

[66:49]

the more you can't figure out how somebody like you would be so lucky to receive them. I mean, I can't figure it out, really. I mean, I look at my life that I know about, and the way I was a kid and the way I was a teenager and so on, and then I think the way other people's lives are, why was I so lucky to, how could I be so lucky to meet Suzuki Roshi and actually get to spend a little bit of time with him? You can't figure out from what I did how I would get that chance. Believe me. Even if I'm a better or more wholesome child than some, I wasn't more wholesome than any. I knew other people more wholesome than me, and they didn't get the chance that I got. So you start thinking, well, gee, I must have many lifetimes ago been very good. Because I can't see him now. So it's not exactly literal, but you feel that way. You feel like there's something very... A lot of stuff's working for you when you start to appreciate.

[67:57]

And the longer you appreciate, the more grateful you get. I married a Chinese woman. And I must admit, I kind of... I mean, I can see I'm pretty lucky to marry her. Quite a person. Anyway, her mother also thinks I was pretty lucky to marry her. And her mother says of me, it's a Chinese expression, she applies to me. In Zen, when we chant, in Chinese, when you chant classical texts, sometimes you chant them syllable by syllable. So you go, like, like that. And to the chair of the group, we hit this drum, which is in the shape of a wooden fish.

[68:59]

It's literally called wooden fish. Moku is wood and fish is gyo. So it's called a moku gyo. Hit this drum. So my wife's mother says of me that I must have broken. many of those Mokugios in my past lives to be able to marry her daughter. So the very fact that I married her makes her feel like I'm good-looking, intelligent, and so on. Just because, you know, must be, because... So in that way, what I say about my background is kind of just talk. I really don't understand my background. of causes that led me to be able to basically appreciate how wonderful Buddhist teaching is, and then try to do it. But anyway, with that caveat, I would say that, just again, just pick out of a hat a reason.

[70:04]

This isn't the one I thought I was going to say ten seconds ago, but the one I thought of just now was, when I was 18, I had a girlfriend. Really my first girlfriend. First one I really sort of, that's my girlfriend. Really crazy about her, you know. And she was crazy about me and so on. And then, by various twists and turns anyway, she married somebody else. We didn't really break up. That's part of what made it so difficult. We were together and... She loved me and I loved her, but I didn't want to marry her because I was just starting college and saw this long thing ahead of me. I thought I was too young to get married, and I think I was. She was too. But she wanted to get married because she wanted to get out of her home, get away from her parents. So while still going with me and not telling me anything, she was dating somebody else, which she told me about, but all of a sudden she said, I'm marrying you.

[71:13]

And that event, I would say, is one of the real kind of pushes towards practicing Buddhism. Because the first thing I thought was, I'm crazy. Because this is impossible. I just couldn't figure out how the world could work this way. And so I went to see a psychiatrist and he said, no, you're not crazy. The world's crazy. Obviously, look at this, you know. So I only saw the psychiatrist once and went about living in a world where things like this happen. So here's another one. Another origin of practicing. A few years later, I bought a motorcycle. I think that also had to do with another girlfriend. She liked motorcycles, so I bought a motorcycle.

[72:20]

Unfortunately, I didn't have any money, so I took a loan out to buy the motorcycle. And also, unfortunately, I didn't get insurance the same day I bought the motorcycle. So three days after I had the motorcycle, it was stolen. Then for two years, this poor college student was making payments on nothing. This also was a monthly lesson in the way the world sometimes works. It doesn't always work this way, but some people are very lucky and they get these nice lessons. So that was another kind of thing that sort of nudged me towards looking for, you know... How do you live under such circumstances? What do you do when these kind of things happen? How do you take care of yourself? Should you knock yourself out?

[73:22]

Should you say it didn't really happen? What should you do? So in these early college years when these kinds of things were happening, I started reading Christian Murthy. and also reading some stories of some Zen people. And so I've told this story many times, but there's two stories, two Zen stories that really, they weren't about enlightenment like, you know, some enlightenment experience, they're more like just the daily life of two rather, it turns out, I didn't know at the time, but two rather famous Zen monks. The first one is named Ryokan. He's a Soto Zen monk who was also a poet.

[74:24]

And he wasn't like a monastic monk. He would live all by himself and play with children all day. But one of the stories about him was that on a full moon night, he was in his little hut and He sensed someone was approaching, estevefully approaching his hut, so he thought it was maybe a thief. So before the thief came in the house, he threw his possessions out the window and he said, I'm sorry I can't give you the full moon too. There's another version of the story which said he didn't have any possessions and he said, I'm sorry I have no possessions and that I can't give you the full moon too. But anyway, the spirit of not only giving away, but with real love and wanting to give even more, I thought, no, if I could do that, that would cut through all this stuff.

[75:28]

Like when my girlfriend told me that she's going to marry somebody else, I could have said, well, can I be the best man? Or... Or here, here's a wedding present. How can a person be that way? And yet, it didn't seem miraculous. It seemed like you could almost do it. You know, it's like, it's one step away to, instead of our usual reaction, how to have that one. And another story, which is in the same book, about another, this man was named Hakuin. And he, on the other hand, was a big, big deal Zen master. I mean, he was very powerful and had lots of disciples and he was famous and very powerful. But anyway, he lived in this small town not too far from where Suzuki Roshi lived in Japan on the east coast of Japan near the fishing villages there on the Pacific side.

[76:31]

And there was a girl in his fishing village who got pregnant and she told her parents that he was a father. And he was, you know, even at that time he was a venerated and respected Zen monk. So the parents came to him and said, you terrible person, you know, and really, really criticized him and really put him down. He said, and when the baby comes, you take care of it. And he said, oh. In Japanese he said, aso desu ka. Which means, oh, is that so? Oh. So then when the baby came, they brought the baby, gave it to him, and he took care of it for, I think, two years. And he got milk from a wet nurse and took good care of the baby for two years. And then the girl told her parents that actually he wasn't the father, that a young man in the village was the father.

[77:33]

The parents trotted back to the temple and said, of course, this time, You know, how wonderful he was to take care of the baby and not to defend himself and not, you know, what a great man he was. And he said, And again, I thought, now that, I could be like that. But I had no idea how they got to be that way or what you did to get to be that way or whatever. So I was just sort of, that's the way to be. But I couldn't figure out how I could be that way. I mean, it was close, but I still can't figure out how to be that way. But anyway, I found out that these guys, not to say that meditation made them that way. Maybe they were that way and they liked to practice meditation. I don't know. But these two people did, especially Hakuin was famous for...

[78:34]

being a very, very diligent meditator. And then the meditation is rather simple. So I started practicing it. And I practiced it, and it didn't exactly make me like they were, but I found it extremely educational. For example, as I said, by trying to sit still, I found out what an emotional volcano I was. I thought, my idea was, that actually I was a pretty well-disciplined, reasonable person. And that my life would work pretty well if just a few things were different. I found out that actually just sitting down with nothing particular to do, just doing that was extremely difficult, not because it was difficult, but because of my reactions to it. So I just found that kind of environment extremely, all I could call, it wasn't pleasant, but it just seemed like real.

[79:34]

This is really what's going on, this kind of confrontation with myself. And although I was totally moved by what happened to me under those practices, the sitting practice, just because it was so wonderful, it was also, and just because it was so challenging and wonderful, it was also kind of difficult to do. I mean, it was kind of hard to get myself into the situation. And I noticed I wasn't doing it very much after a while. There was no one else to deal with, so I thought, well, maybe I should go someplace where other people do it. Also, I was having experiences which I didn't know if they were wonderful or off or ordinary or nothing at all. But they were, I mean, something was going on. I didn't know what to pay attention to or disregard or so on. I knew what to pay attention to, but I didn't know whether, you know.

[80:35]

As things come up, you think, well, maybe I should do something different. The instruction is very simple. But then when major events occur, you think, well, maybe I should adjust the instructions. Right? You need somebody to say, no, those are the instructions. This is not important. Don't worry about it. Or this is important. Worry about it. You know. Somebody who's been doing it. So, in other words, I needed a group of people, I felt, and a teacher. So I knew about this place in San Francisco. I heard they had a teacher. And so I went there. And first I saw the group of people that were sitting there. And it was truly, it really made a difference. Where I lived in Minneapolis, to do meditation, I was the strange one. It was strange too. get up in the morning and sit cross-legged and so on. It was strange. And the experiences were strange. But at Zen Center, it was strange not to get up in the morning and sit. It was strange not to have that kind of experience.

[81:39]

So it became, you know, the herd instinct can sometimes be used to our advantage. And the first time I went to Zen Center, I didn't see Suzuki Roshi. And also the first time I went to Tassajara, I didn't see him. When I was at Tassajara, he was in San Francisco. And when I was in San Francisco, he was in Tassajara. But then one day, he did come to the Zendo, and I went in the Zendo, and I didn't really look at him. He was just sitting up there. I mean, I thought it was him. I wasn't sure. The reason why I wasn't sure is because I'd never seen him before. And also, I had sort of a funny incident. At San Francisco right now, San Francisco Zen Center, we have invited... Katagiri Roshi from the Minneapolis Zen Center to come and be Abbot at Zen Center for one year, starting last April. At that time, when I came to Zen Center, Katagiri Roshi was considerably younger.

[82:40]

He was about, when I came to Zen Center, he was about 38. And so I went over to Zen Center and knocked on the door, and I wasn't looking for Suzuki Roshi. I was looking for an administrator to admit me that I wanted to go to Tassahara. Tassahara had just started, and I wanted to go down there. So I was looking for an administrator who wasn't there, but I met this Japanese man. And I thought it was Suzuki Roshi, and I knew Suzuki Roshi was 65, so I thought, very well preserved. And this went right along with some of my ideas about Zen, namely that it keeps you young. Anyway, it wasn't Suzuki Roshi, so it was Katagiri Sensei. So then I went into Zendo that day, and Suzuki Rishi was there, but I didn't really look at him, I just sat down. And then after we were sitting for a while, he walked by, and I just saw his feet, his bare feet. And I looked at the feet and I thought, those feet can teach me.

[83:42]

So I found a teacher, and I found a group, and so that's basically the beginning of being practicing at Zen Center. I could go back other events that really were turning me towards or showing me reality of life and were encouraging me in that direction. I could go back even earlier in my childhood and so on. So I guess it's just seeing an example and being a suffering person and seeing examples of a good way of coping with suffering was what led me. And now, another thing is, the older I get, the more examples I see. For example, I was raised in a Christian church, but I didn't see any actual living Christians that showed me a good way to live. I didn't see it. But now, as I get older, I see lots of Christians that are inspiring to me.

[84:49]

Somehow, once you start seeing people's good effort, once you start appreciating how wonderfully actually a lot of people are taking care of their lives. You start seeing it more and more. You start even maybe seeing it in animals and plants. Which then leads to all kinds of unpleasant things like being a vegetarian. I just came back from France and I spent some time in the part of France where they force feed the geese to raise these big livers which are so delicious and I knew that they did that before I went but being right there where they do it somehow it sinks in and then it's kind of hard to keep eating foie gras because that's

[85:53]

kind of what you're interested in? I thank you for asking. Any answer you'd like to raise? You talked about waking up with little suckers. Do you have any more Can you tell more about how you respond to those in the mornings? What's your name? Paul. Did you hear Paul's question? It was a kind of little question. He said you wake up with these little sufferings in the morning. Can you say something more about how you respond to them? Is that what you said? Well... So you wake up with these little sufferings, you know. Or maybe you don't.

[86:54]

Does anybody here not wake up with little sufferings? Anyway, as I said, there's three levels. One level is you ignore it. And there are levels you pull in. Some people don't know it. They actually ask them, they say, I don't suffer. But I guess here nobody says that. Or they don't dare to. So you wake up, I wake up with some kind of... some problems you know and in many ways what the morning meditation for me is it's not all this but one dimension of it is it's kind of like it's kind of like I'm a sponge and you put me down at night and during the night some kind of sponge picks up some some moisture in the air and And if in the morning I just leave it sit there, it just keeps picking up moisture through the day.

[87:57]

It gets heavier and heavier. This moisture has all kinds of irritations and limitations, problems, whatever. So this analogy is going to kind of break down, I'm afraid. But anyway, my image of it is that in the morning I take the sponge and I squeeze it. And I don't mean to say I squeeze the suffering out, because actually I don't squeeze it out. What I do is, I guess, yeah, I squeeze it out, but by squeezing out, if you pick up a sponge, it can be quite moist, but not leaking, right? If you squeeze it, lots of stuff comes out. And you realize how wet it is. So if you take your body and mind in the morning and you squeeze it, you sort of see all the suffering there, see all the suffering that there is in it. by squeezing it. In other words, you kind of exert the suffering by squeezing the sponge, but then the sponge doesn't have any and it's ready to absorb more.

[89:02]

So it's not that you squeeze it and it goes away, but rather you squeeze it and it comes back and you squeeze it. So it's kind of a rhythm in the suffering. And the rhythm is that there's little frustrations that happen even during your sleep For example, the frustration as I get older of waking up, most mornings I'm stiff when I wake up, which is one of the reasons why I sleep less and less. If I sleep eight hours, I'm very stiff. If I sleep five, I'm not so stiff. Anyway, I wake up usually stiff, so I have to stretch when I first get up in the morning. I particularly stretch my lower back, but if I don't stretch my lower back, it will bother me all day. But if I stretch it, it will bother me more right then but then it releases the tension. So I kind of emphasize that, not to make it worse, but just to emphasize my awareness of it, and then that releases it. So in that way, in the morning, I go and I admit all these little problems, and by admitting them, I let go of them.

[90:09]

And then more come, and then I admit them again, and they go. So it's kind of like I'm squeezing it, and then, oh, look at all that, ugh. But not to get rid of it exactly, because it comes right back, but to have a rhythm in it. The important thing is rhythm. We have rhythm. As Gregory Bateson said, religion is a rhythm about rhythms. As a living being, we have rhythms. We need to have a rhythm about that rhythm, a rhythm of appreciation of that rhythm. your meditation practice is a way to introduce a kind of a squeeze or a pulse into your daily grind. Like that. Like your heart. So it's not so much a matter to get rid of the blood, but to keep pumping it. And that morning meditation is a kind of a squeeze on the life.

[91:12]

And you let go and it comes flowing forth. Another example of that is that before I came to Zen Center, to support myself as a graduate student, I worked on computers. And the reason why I worked on them was because I knew how to do it. I learned how to do it in conjunction with research. And they paid good money and I only had to work five hours a week to make enough money to support myself. But those five hours a week I found extremely alienating. Punching those cards and working on environments, fluorescent lights, really an alienating environment. One time I was working in the evening on the computer and I went back behind into the computer area where the operator was and I went up to him and I said, excuse me, and he went, ah! He was just terribly frightened to see me because he didn't expect to see a person. That was kind of the environment it was.

[92:14]

It promotes that kind of isolation. You never see any people, so to see a person is just too much. So I hated that job. I could barely do it at all. I could barely go in the room, but I did it, sort of. Then when I came to San Francisco and started practicing regularly, meditation get up in the early morning earlier than I want to and go over there and and when I first started sitting I had a lot of problems sitting two periods of 40 minutes in this posture it was really hard really hard but after that basically I was ready for anything and I when I first came to San Francisco to support myself as an institute and I got a job in a computer company and I worked 40 hours a week and no problem To me, it was just like sweeping the floor. It didn't make any difference because I had faced the pain of isolation, the pain of all the different things.

[93:21]

So the morning meditation sort of clears you out and makes you ready. And then the evening meditation, after you get all jangled from all this stuff, whatever you do, the evening meditation then sort of realigns you. And let's go of those tensions from the day. And then you sleep again and you dream and cause a lot of bunch of problems for yourself. So you've got to have some kind of thing like that. I don't know when you want to do it. Morning, noon and evening. Or morning and morning. It's up to you to decide when in the day you're going to make some space for yourself to be alone. To face your life fully. all the problems as much as you can and then experience the kind of vitalizing effect of that meeting with yourself. So Brother David's very, if I can speak of you, I'm sorry, but I like him very much.

[94:24]

He's a very wonderful person, but he also spends some time by himself. If he had to be with people all the time, he might not be so nice. But that's the way I am. If I'm by myself long enough, I dearly appreciate people. Sometimes it takes five minutes of being alone, and I'm just really happy to meet somebody. Sometimes it takes six hours of being alone. But there's a point at which, if you're alone long enough, You really, really appreciate other living beings. And we need that time alone. And some people find that time alone by sitting meditation. Some people find it by swimming in the ocean. Some people find it by running. Some people find it, you know, in other ways. But you have to find what it is in your life that makes you basically do nothing for a little while.

[95:31]

Really do nothing. And doing nothing is the same as simply just facing yourself as doing nothing. It's an action of doing nothing other than being yourself. It's an action, but it's nothing. And after you do that for one minute or three hours, you very much want to meet other people. So I leave it, I say to you, the world really wants you to find that leisure. If you don't do that, you're missing one of your main responsibilities. As a living being, you really need to do that. If you don't do it, who is going to do it? So if you're not going to do it, then get somebody else to do it for you. But somebody's got to be spending time by him or herself so that they can really want to be with people. And don't you want to be that way? I mean, don't you want to enjoy meeting other people? That means you have to be alone sometimes.

[96:33]

And many people say, no, no, I'm too busy, I can't do that. Or even people feel it's too selfish to make that time for myself. But it's not. It's for other people that you make that time for yourself. It's for their receiving your openness, your interest in them. It's for their benefit. Of course you'll enjoy it, but it's really for them. So they really need you to do that. And each of us has to find out what is the thing that gives us that time of being alone. And I don't know what that is for each of you. Maybe some of you don't know what it is. You have to keep looking. Some of you maybe know what it is, but think you're too busy. But also yesterday I was talking to Brother David and you have to be pretty, you have to be firm about this. You have to be firm because there's not much in the world maybe that's promoting making the space for yourself.

[97:44]

Even though people want you to do it, the very people who want you to do it say, could I talk to you a second? You know, could you? It's, you know, even at Zen Center people who want me to do that sometimes also want me not to. want me to come to a meeting or something instead. So you have to be firm about for yourself. You can't say it for somebody else. You don't know when somebody else wants it. You only know when you want it. You can feel it. And the morning is a good time because that's when it's happening. You're awake in the morning and so do it then. But any time is okay. Just find the time. Excuse me, but I think you really need to allow yourself to do this. I'd like to ask about the opposite problem, you know, problems that can come from meditation, the problems that can happen to people on the spiritual path.

[98:59]

I've been very much interested in what we call spiritual versions of people who do some practice, meditative practice, and then it opens up too much, they get sort of overwhelmed by the process. I wonder if you see those kinds of things and what you do about it. Well, we have this puny little can opener, puny little key, you know, called sitting meditation. It's a very simple little activity. But that activity then can open up just, you know, oceans of experience.

[100:01]

And so then what to do about the oceans that open up? Some of the oceans are very rough. And then sometimes even while the people are riding these waves, other people think there's something funny about them, or they themselves think there's something funny about them, or they don't trust the experience, or both they don't trust and other people don't trust. And then we have... So there's some tendency to just close our eyes and just ignore it, get rid of them. So... When I was here last time, you know, one of the questions I didn't satisfactorily discuss with you was, what is a non-spiritual emergency? Is there such a thing as a non-spiritual emergency? So if someone's doing some kind of spiritual practice and things come up which are really, you know, you can't really, there's no form to contain them, there's no precedent for them, they're really something

[101:06]

unseen before, unknown before in a way, this person's unique expression of their life. And it just has nothing to do with the form. And it's totally, not totally, but tremendously impressive to them and their behavior is very changed by it. How can that person and maybe some of the more experienced people in that practice, how can they treat this with respect? as this person's life without clamping down on it too much to try to stop it and without letting it run free? That's kind of the question and in some ways I guess today I feel like as much as possible not to decide that something is or is not a spiritual emergency I just you know how can a person decide that for himself or another so I guess I would treat all basically as as as my life and then as much as possible try to give it a big field this this whatever this thing is and if it

[102:33]

And if it doesn't work there, try to give it a bigger field. Give it as big a field as I myself have the energy for and the other people I live with have the tolerance of. But again, there is a limit. There's something there. You don't ignore it. You don't restrain it. But there is a fence, but it's hopefully a big enough fence so that they can live it. First of all, the big fence is me. My looking at them. Can I myself face this? And sometimes I can face it, but then other people I live with can't. Or sometimes I can't face it, other people I live with can't. But basically it's that same attitude, I think, of trying to give the person room to live their life. But again, it just isn't forgetting about them and ignoring it. There's some limit. They bounce against some walls, but they have enough room to do it. So it's not so much a matter of diagnosis anymore for me, but rather creating a life space.

[103:40]

And if we can do that, some of these people will be very helpful if they can exercise that space and then also return to the limited pattern and go back out, this kind of interchange I think creates a very wonderful environment. And again, on the way down, talking to Brother David, in some monastic situations where there is a real limitation, one of the signs of the health of the monastery is how much can it allow this person who has a wide range of behaviors, can the monastery, without giving up its form, still include this wide range? And so I guess that's fundamentally it. And sometimes there's an expression, a Zen saying, which is said to a person who is very well contained and very well... I mean, this is applied to a person who has some spiritual attainment and just has their life going very well.

[104:59]

And we ask, well, what will you do when the big white waves come crashing in? At some point they come, you know. What are you going to do when it just all gets wiped away? And we don't know what we'll do. But we shouldn't be arrogant to think, well, right now, it's going pretty well. But, you know, what am I going to do when the walls come crashing in? How are you going to live then? So for myself, I want to be able to give myself a field, and for others, I want to give them a field so that they can continue to live in this new area. They won't be there for long. Pretty soon, if they keep doing it over and over, it won't be a spiritual emergency anymore. It'll be a rut. And that's an example of maybe you don't give space for that. It doesn't have that fresh quality anymore. And they also are going to lose... that sense of its vitality.

[106:02]

But when things are really evolving and really coming off freshly and you really feel that way, let it go. But keep it in some awareness space. Don't just let the person run off wildly. See, I've just been talking to Brother David, so we're riding down and we're talking about... and it wasn't in my class the other night, talking about sober inebriation. Sober inebriation. And I mentioned to him this morning that the zazen, the practice of sitting can be described as an erect swoon. So this kind of attitude is kind of attitude that we should... If we have that kind of attitude with all kinds of phenomena, even the most bizarre, there's some erectness there, and also there's some very soft feeling about it.

[107:20]

So that's basically the attitude with which I approach the vast unknown of people's experience. And again, it requires that kind of... real responsiveness to stay there with the person. If you don't, if you're not alert to their situation, well, if you lose track of it, you're either going to lose them or you're going to try to be repressive or fascist about the whole thing. So it's pretty, I say this, but it's very hard to have the energy, not very hard to have energy, but you have to have a lot of energy and I should say you have to have a lot of energy. You have to be able to commit a lot of energy to stay with somebody like that. And that's why I say it has something to do with the environment too because I might be willing to accept this person but I can't maybe go 24 hours a day with the person. So that's why maybe it's these kinds of people maybe need a number of people to work with them. Maybe at those crucial times they may need five people because they're very, you know,

[108:28]

They have no limit right now because they've just opened up new areas of energy, so they're really going. And so they can't sleep or something like that, maybe. So they need a lot of attention. So they may need several people that are willing to work with them. And if you live in a community like we do, I might be willing to work with this person, but I don't necessarily take this on unless I can get some other people that are willing to help me. You know, in a way, a dying person is like this. They're also going into new areas, new experiences, and they require a lot of attention. And also with dying people, they're getting into things that they aren't sure are okay, and also their friends aren't sure are okay. But because they're dying, maybe we're slightly more tolerant. But still, even that, mostly, not mostly,

[109:30]

Often in America today, when dying people get into these spaces, their relatives tend to move away. Have you noticed that? It's very hard to face what they get into. It's almost like they're, you know, what we usually call insane. But really, they're just like the insane person, they're just getting into really new experiences, very moving experiences. Things are changing so fast, they are starting to see reality, you know. how rapidly things change, how rapidly things deteriorate. They're starting to see this. In one sense, it's very frightening to everybody. But we've got things turned around. That's when we should pay most attention to people because they are seeing reality now. They're having emotional reactions to it, but their vision is improving in a way. And they have a lot to teach us. But we have to be willing also to stay with that.

[110:31]

In the Middle Ages, I heard, I wasn't there, but I heard that in the Middle Ages when someone approached death, the person became public. When the priest went in to give the unction, that was a sign that anybody in the town could go in and observe this process because it was considered to be a real wonderful teaching to see a person in that state as they die. But now we reverse it and as they get closer and closer to death, less and less people are there. And so sometimes people die alone and people don't get this teaching of watching this person do this, well, pretty big thing, right? So basically this is kind of how I feel about it. I try to do it but I have limits on my energy so I don't always do it.

[111:34]

But with the aid of a group, you can sometimes do this kind of thing quite a bit. How frequently do you actually see, have you had situations where a crisis would be triggered in a... How often does it happen? Yeah. Well, you know, we have what we call seshins. Seshin means to gather the mind. And what that means is that we have sitting all day long from early in the morning to late at night for seven days. It can also be five days or less. But anyway, we have these seven-day intensives. And at those times, of course, people are getting very concentrated sometimes. And again, the more concentrated you get, the more emotional you realize you are. So sometimes people are very impressed with how wild they are. and are frightened by it or many possible reactions to the wildness itself.

[112:38]

Or you could say many possible reactions to the concentration. So during those kinds of things, people get into, you know, I would say usually it's almost never happens that with a group of 50 people that there wouldn't be one crisis under those environments. That would be unusual if there wasn't one. Sometimes there's five. And sometimes they're crises, but the person's very experienced meditator, so it's not really, it's not something that they get frightened of or they don't need a lot of attention. They can go through it almost on their own. But what's happening inside, if it was happening to a less experienced person, they would consider it to be something that they probably would stop sitting or they'd become very frightened by it. Because you have some experienced people going through crisis calmly and some less experienced going through crisis which challenges their composure, those people require more attention.

[113:46]

But in a given group of 50 people, there might be quite a few in a seven-day sashim. Some quite lose their confidence or start behaving strangely. Others with equal amount of crisis don't even show it. But if you know they're inside, you realize that what they're going through is something without that composure would modify their behavior. Their behavior would become radically altered if they didn't have this practice of composure to go through it with. I myself have been in situations in these kinds of intensives where I wear a robe, a bigger robe. This is a small version of the robe we wear, a big rectangular robe. There's a way of folding, it's a rather complicated way of folding it and wrapping yourself with it for meditation.

[114:48]

And I've had the experience of putting it on and just saying to me, I couldn't imagine how I could do it. Because I put it on so many times, I could put it on. My hands knew how to do it. everything else was happening with such intensity and such freeness that if I ever thought about it I would never even figure I couldn't figure out possibly how to do it but through the discipline of many years I could put it on even when my world was completely altered so an experienced monk can go through unusual experiences and and you wouldn't even notice it because they're on some cellular level practically they can they can walk They can sit. They can put on and take off their clothes and brush their teeth. But if what they're experiencing was just plopped on an inexperienced person, just plunk it in there, they probably would just stop moving because they wouldn't know where to move or what to move on.

[115:49]

And the experienced monk may feel the same way, but somehow they do it. Like I say, I say to myself, I don't know how I'm doing this. I'm putting this robe on.

[115:59]

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