So I had to continue talking about the title of this huge sutra, Flower Adornment Sutra. If I talk like this, can you hear me? One of my friends sent me a note and said it felt like I was being a little fierce in my lectures, and that was fine with him. But he also thought that I sounded a little angry or hurt, frustrated, kind of like some feeling like,

[01:05]

Come on, you guys. Can't you get it? And I thought about, was I angry? Or something like that. I'm not sure, I don't think so, but I'm not sure. So I thought about what was going on in there. Well, part of it is that, Part of it is that there's big trucks outside. That's part of it. And I remember at Tassajara, Catherine Thanos came down to the practice period last winter. And she had been in Minnesota, so she hadn't been at Tassajara for most of the practice period. And she came back, and it rained a lot, and the stream was very noisy. So I was really screaming. to be heard.

[02:10]

And the people at Tassajara were kind of used to it. But she thought she was kind of scared. She thought I was really angry. But it's hard to scream without a little feeling like that coming. And actually, Part of the yelling that I've been doing is because of the street noise, but also part of it is that I... If I'm frustrated, I think I'm frustrated with my own words. They keep slipping and going the wrong... They don't seem to be connecting the way I would hope that they would connect. Not that you don't get it so much, but I'm sort of not saying quite what I want to say. And I do feel some frustration about that. And that frustration I feel, I think is, makes me feel again like I'm in the world that I've been talking about.

[03:18]

That I'm living in a world where my wishes as a speaker, my wishes as an artist, are simply vanity. I'm not really able to do. But it's not that I'm, I don't feel, I don't feel like it's your fault that I, if I can't reach you. Because I feel you're very receptive actually, especially now. Like when I read that announcement, you're very receptive to the humoring. I'm actually very moved by your effort, and it's very strong.

[04:27]

You're sitting very well. And the people that are telling me about the practice, I mean, I'm really moved. So it's not anger at the people in the session. It's more frustration with my own inability to convey what I want to say. Nonetheless, I continue to try. One person came and told me, he said that for a while there, when she was practicing Zen, she felt like it was something like a forced march. And now she feels more like it's a voluntary march. But, of course, I had to one-up her by feeling actually that it's a heroic march.

[05:34]

And I've been trying to talk about the heroic march concentration, the one where you really walk heroically into the center of the world. And there, nothing we try works. But we are heroes, and we still walk into the place where our art, our life, Because it's living in the real world, it is just vanity. But we still go in there and we still write a poem or draw a picture or say something or make a posture. But it's vanity. It's vanity because we do it in the real world rather than up in the bleachers. Again, you know, up in the bleachers, you can out-think You can out-think those morons down there in the end.

[06:37]

Why didn't they do that? Why didn't they do that? But when you're out there, I often use the example, you know, again, I used to be a boxer and, you know, sometimes you watch a boxing match and you see two men standing up there, you know, hitting each other. And finally one of them is totally unconscious but still standing up. And the crowd can see that, you know. All you have to do is go over and blow on them and they'll fall away. So they say to the other guy, get him, knock him down. But they don't know that the other guy can hardly stand up. And can't even hear what they're saying. But when you're in the center, you know, of your life, it's just, there's so much there that you can't get a hold of anything.

[07:42]

And you try, but it slips, especially words slip. Like T.S. Eliot said, they slip and crack. You know, they don't make it. So part of the imagery that I got about what I've been trying to do is actually I've been restraining myself to a great extent because I didn't want to distract you too much from the work I feel was most fundamental for us to do. I didn't want to distract myself either. I thought this morning about the image of the Bodhisattva where there's this family of people inside of a burning house. And the elder notices that the house is burning, and he tells the younger people, this house is burning.

[08:51]

We've got to get out of here. But they're so interested, they've got such strong interest in the games that they're already playing, that they don't really want to stop the games they're playing. They don't really hear the message that they've got to get out of there. So he actually tells them, well, I've got a better game to play. Even better games are outside there. And then they can understand that, and then they run outside. And when they get outside, you say, well, actually, the games I told you I don't really have, I have a different game. So, to some extent, the game I really have to play is not the game I've been telling you. The game I really have to play is just the person I am. Which, if I told you about that right away, you wouldn't have been able to get out of the house.

[09:53]

So I just told you about the part of the story which is you've got to concentrate. You really have to concentrate. Now I feel like you're out of the house. And now I can tell you a little bit about myself. I mean, I can be myself more. Because you're out of the house. Aren't you? Thank you. I think anyway, what you say, ready or not, I'm gonna try to just sort of say how I feel and not worry about whether you can cope with it. Again, I said earlier, I think part of the function of a teacher is to disequilibrate the student. So I'm hoping that you're balanced now so that I can be myself, which might shake you a little bit. But I hope you keep, you know, you keep doing the practice of concentrating on one thing, the rest is sashid, and getting just, you know... And I'll just be myself too.

[11:15]

Uh... I don't know. I don't know. And now it's happening. But it's a garbage truck. There are, as you know, many Dharma gates, right?

[12:34]

They're boundless. So sometimes certain Dharma gates, which are very useful and very popular, and therefore sometimes we think that they're the only Dharma gates. because we hear about them so much. So I mentioned a few popular dharmagates, and one of them, of course, is dharmagate of following your breathing. And it's a wonderful dharmagate. As a matter of fact, I was going to lecture, but I didn't quite get to it yet, on the Six Dhamma Gates, which are six gates having to do with breath meditation. And I don't think I have time to get to it yet. But anyway, it's still possible, we'll see. You only did three, give a whole practice period to us, of course.

[13:36]

So these six subtle dharma gates have to do with breath, and breath itself is a dharma gate, of course. And it's a very basic Buddhist practice, and it's good for almost everybody, but not necessarily for everybody all the time. And so I think I said once or twice during the session already, and other people have said, trust everything to your breath. But I haven't been talking about the breath too much. And the reason for that is that I decided to talk about the postural thing. And besides that, I didn't want to talk about too many things. But also, some people should not start meditating by following their breathing.

[14:49]

Some people, as a matter of fact, spend years trying to follow their breathing and cannot do it. And they keep trying. Heroically, they keep trying because they are obedient, and they keep trying, which is great. And even though they can't get concentrated by following the breathing, they still are practicing very nicely, but also very frustrated by that lack of success. And sometimes after a couple of years or more of frustration, they mention it to somebody, like sometimes they mention it to me and I say, oh. And they even sometimes say, but if I concentrate on my posture, I get concentrated very nicely. But I don't do that because I focus on my breathing. Then I say, well, why don't you concentrate on your posture?

[15:55]

And they do. And they can do it. So that's that. And actually in some texts, many texts, most texts on Buddhist meditation, actually they don't start with breathing. They start with posture. Posture first, then breathing. And one of the texts, he points out that you should not start with breathing, you should start with posture, because if you go directly to breathing without having meditated on posture, without a basis on posture, the breath that you go to is likely to be a rough, coarse breath. And if you concentrate on that one, you might get quite disturbed. And that's another thing that I've had the experience with, is that people come to that here that they're supposed to follow their breathing, do so and get very upset because the breathing is rough or it makes them self-conscious and they become short of breath, they hyperventilate.

[17:14]

Many kinds of problems can happen if you follow the breath in not the proper way. So because people are having so much difficulty starting out immediately following the breath, I suggested to the Zazen instructors that they don't tell people about following the breath, that they just instruct people about the posture. And of course the people will soon find out, if they haven't already heard, about this practice of following the breath, or counting the breath. And also, even in the instruction, probably somebody will ask, well, I thought you followed your breath. So you probably have to deal with it anyway. But don't highlight the breath. First, try to get people to concentrate on his posture. The text I'm referring to is called the small or short Stabilization Insight text, Shao Juerguan, or the small Samatha Vipassana by Deary.

[18:21]

And he says, if you first are mindful and concentrate on your posture, your mind becomes refined by that process of attention. And the body also becomes refined, and also the breath becomes refined. So then when you shift from mindfulness or concentration on body to concentration on breath, the breath you look at is a different breath than the breath you would have found if you had gone directly to the breath. So in that text, it recommends first work on the breath and the posture as the first kind of course level, and after doing that, then move to the breath. It said if most people go to the breath right away, the breath they find is rough and will agitate the mind rather than calming it. So that's just a piece of lore about meditation.

[19:24]

And I might also mention that in Zen texts, the teachers, the published texts, the teaching don't spend much time talking about breathing practices or any of the meditation lore. They mostly talk about attitude or the attitude or thought of enlightenment with which you do these yogic practices. The yogic lore is mostly spread person to person, from teacher to student or from student to student around the monastery. And there isn't enough kind of student to student kind of transmission I feel at Zen Center about yogic details. Of course, some of it will be wrong, right? Can't trust those students. But still, the talking back and forth, you know, of somebody saying, well, I don't think that's right.

[20:27]

That isn't correct. The back and forth will finally, you know, you'll work it out. And in some ways, it's better to hear from a student because you don't take it without a little bit of question and answer going on. Good. You should do that with the teacher, too. You should say, I don't think that's true. So I think more of that would be good. Then the teachers here, when they get lectures, could get more classical lectures. They wouldn't have to get into the dirty details of yoga exercises. I'm just kidding about that. In fact, anyway, we needed public lectures still to deal with these concrete details, because they're not generally circulating through the Sangha. But please circulate them if you're interested. Talk about the smaller stuff, or having coffee. This kind of thing is OK to talk about.

[21:28]

And it actually helps to get it spread around and get it at different angles and helps you start becoming teachers too. In all the works of Dogen Zen that I've read, there's almost nothing on breathing. He says in the Pukan Zazenji, take a deep breath, inhale and exhale. at the beginning of Zazen. In Bendo Ho, he said a few words about breathing practices. But in thousands of pages, that's about it. Of course his monks were doing all kinds of breathing practices. As a matter of fact, he himself and many of his monks had been Tendai monks before they started studying Zen. They have elaborate systems of breath meditations there. But in all of his works he doesn't mention it, hardly at all.

[22:37]

So that's because the monks were talking about it, and they already knew about it from other texts, and also they were discussing it privately. Because again, this person should follow his breath. This person should not follow her breath. So to give a lecture on that kind of physical detail doesn't necessarily work so well. because then some people try and shouldn't. Posture is a little different. I think you can tell a whole group of people, be aware of your feet on the ground. It's okay. Nobody's going to get upset. But breath is more subtle and has more to do with fear and these kinds of things, so it's more complex. Back to the flower, another thing about flowers besides what I mentioned yesterday.

[23:57]

Again, I remember I said the many meanings of a flower, the primary one for me is a flower is zazen. So I'm talking about zazen. Or I would say the flower is talking about zazen. And one of the things, another thing about a flower besides things I mentioned yesterday is that flowers, of course, are fragile. Does that mean that zazen is fragile? Well, I think so. I think zazen is fragile. Does that mean that reality is fragile? Well, reality is not fragile exactly, but reality in its phenomenal aspect is fragile. So zazen in its phenomenal aspect is fragile. You sort of, you find Zazen, and then it's gone.

[25:08]

You look for it and find it again, and it's gone. It's elusive. Now, you can also say Zazen is not only the finding of Zazen, but it's the losing of Zazen, and the looking for it. And all of our stories are just about looking for zazen, finding it and losing it, finding it again. This is the fundamental story. The literary critic I quoted yesterday who said, that a sacred book is normally written with at least a concentration of poetry.

[26:11]

And like poetry, is closely involved with its language. That same poet said, the job of literary critic is to show that all literary genre are derived from quest myths. But the root of all literary genre is the story of quest. And quest means that you lose the truth lose the way, you've lost the way, and you're looking for your way back. So the story is about a circle going back to where you start. And that basic phenomenon is the story of the illusion of the Buddhist path, of that you're taking a path to where?

[27:32]

It must be back home. We're taking the path back to our Buddha nature. This is the fundamental story of Buddhism, the fundamental story of... all stories are basically that. And therefore, that's part of the reason why all stories are empty. And they're not really talking about anything. They're talking about an illusory leaving yourself and going back to yourself. Oh yeah, thanks. And we had this class on basic counseling skills, and the teacher said that a therapist shouldn't necessarily be self-revealing.

[29:11]

You should be self-revealing when you're being self-revealing is the next step for the client. But then, when is the next step for the client? That's the hard part, right? Also, how do you be self-revealing? Anyway, I thought I'd tell you something about myself. And that is, I'm noticing some pain arising in my body. And if I start talking more strongly, I'll be more comfortable. So I might start talking more strongly, but it's just because of the pain in my own body. that I start sort of getting going. I might not, but if I do, that's the primary motivation. Distraction. Actually, maybe I'll talk about that a little bit. You know, it's kind of like I'm particularly feeling it down my butt.

[30:14]

And if I sort of like get going, you know, so to speak, it would sort of work out. If I could exercise the pain, and just talking about it this way, and sort of moving around a little bit there, and sort of settling into it, it's starting to feel better. Now you're not supposed to move around like this in his office. But actually, you know, I just sort of did that, and I feel like I sort of settled down into it a little bit. I feel sort of more cozy with it now. And I don't feel quite as pushed by it. Which reminds me of another story. Someone came and told me that in the morning now, or at Zazen time, she feels pushed or catapulted out of bed down to the zendo.

[31:17]

Part of the reason why she feels pushed down is she doesn't want to miss the part. But I ask you now, what's pushing you? What is it that pushes you out of bed? So if you're pushed out of bed, I ask you, what's pushing you out of bed? And if you're not pushed out of bed, if you're getting out of bed on your own, what makes you get up and go? What is it that makes it not a forced march? Or if it's a forced march, it's forced by somebody, by nobody there. What is it that makes you march heroically down to that zendo day after day, hour after hour? How can we do that? What's he mean?

[32:26]

What makes you be heroes? Huh? Don't know any better. Don't know any better, okay. Yeah. Don't know any better is really good, you know. There's a certain kind of stupidity that's necessary in order to traverse this path. And... I don't know, but somehow the dumb boy gets the rap, rather than the dumb girl. It's called a doomling, stupid boy that's willing to just go right up there into a situation, go right down there into a situation where everything's vanity. Why would you do that? That's essential that you're willing to. Anyway, All of your answers to what's pushing you are the right answer. Yeah.

[33:33]

Here I am. Nothing's pushing you. Right. I'm just pushing hard, too. That's right. Nothing's pushing you. I'm pushing hard. Well, sir, Yeah, the vows are pushing you. Yeah, your vows are pushing you. Another person has some pain. And she feels, she figured out what the pain was. The pain is the reason why she's here in the world. The pain reminds her of why she came. She came to help people. And the pain reminds us of why we're here. Somehow that we're built in a strange way that pleasure doesn't necessarily remind us, oh yeah, I'm here to benefit people.

[34:40]

But it is, somehow, strangely does. So the first noble truth of Buddhism is not that life is pleasure. It's true that it is pleasure. It's equally true. But somehow that doesn't remind people of their job. The way pain does. The way frustration does. It's funny. And a little bit of frustration doesn't necessarily remind us. Like, you know, if somebody insults you, you think, oh, they insult me, huh? Well, I don't like you. But if six people insult you, you might say, oh, this is really terrible. You people are really picking on me.

[35:41]

But if everybody in the room here came up to you and started pummeling you, kicking you, you'd probably say, Now I remember why. Now I remember, I came here to help people. That was the only thing that was... But sometimes you have to get really strong before you remember. We have to get points over the edge before we just drop the whole thing. And remember, all this stuff is not really a point, is it? I didn't come to defend myself. I didn't take a human life in order to protect my case. Because that would have really been stupid. Because if you take human life, you just put yourself in a situation where it's going to be really difficult to protect yourself. As a matter of fact, you're soon going to be wasted. So that's not a really good point to be born.

[36:46]

But if you want to be born to help people, that's a good reason. Which reminds me of another meaning of the flower. Which again, it's a cliche, but on the sixth day of Sesshin, cliches are acceptable to you. And that is, flowers grow in dirt. They grow in dirt or mud or, you know, or in garbage or compost, you know. They grow in dirt, typically. And in Zen we all sometimes mention, although it's kind of scary to say so, that the lotus flower, that big fat juicy lotus flower, grows down close to, you know, sea level usually, in mud. Not to dirt, but mud. And then up in the mountains, there's some pretty flowers up there too, but they ain't lotuses.

[37:49]

Up in the high atmosphere where it's not so muddy, there are little cute little flowers, and they're lovely, but anyway, when it comes to lotuses, you've got to get into the heavy mud. And gook. And we say, may all be free from self-clinging. at the beginning of the milk chant, and at the end we say, mainly it says, in muddy water, purity like the light. And sitting session, and all that happens to you there on your cushion, that's really muddy water. Isn't it muddy? It's full of all kinds of difficult stuff. Is there anything much muddier than that? Well, yes, having a baby is pretty muddy too. But it's a real muddy situation.

[38:52]

It's full of all kinds of mundane stuff. Hey, All kinds of pain, many kinds of pain, many kinds of aversion to the pain, many kinds of trying to get away from the pain, or wishing for something else, or doubts about what you should be doing. Anyway, you know about all this stuff, I don't have to tell you. It's muddy. And that's where we grow our lotus. We should not grow it in a less muddy situation. Ordinary life in some ways is not muddy. Does that make sense to you? We can stay away from the mud under usual circumstances. We can keep ourselves out of that direct contact with this stuff. But we don't grow lotus flowers in real life. I'm sorry to say, we don't grow it unless we get down in the mud. And the sajin schedule and this posture pushes our whole body down into it.

[40:01]

So a flower is an interesting, there's many beautiful things in the world. I think so anyway. The sun sometimes is beautiful when it sets. Clouds are beautiful. The moon is beautiful. Mountains are beautiful. There's many beautiful things. But the flower is the symbol that we have in the sutra. the lotus sutra and the flower, the morning sutra. The flower is a beautiful thing too, but it's a beautiful thing that grows out of dirt. Not that, but when it first opened, it's very pure. It's a delicate, beautiful thing that grows out of dirt, out of the dirt of human life. And that's what zazen is too. delicate, beautiful thing that grows out of the dirt of our experience.

[41:03]

Another thing about flowers is flowers don't talk. Well, Zazen doesn't talk either. And I would also suggest to you that poetry does not talk. Sculpture does not talk. Novels do not talk. Art does not talk. Zazen does not talk, and flowers do not talk. And if I'm talking right now, that's my problem, not yours. I hope I'm not talking.

[42:19]

From the beginning of Zen, The message is silence. And Zen teachers are the most talkative of all Buddhist teachers. And their message is constantly silence. It's because their message is silence that they're the most talkative. Because the only way that they can demonstrate their silence is through speech, is through language. Not saying anything, not making a sound and not making a gesture does not demonstrate silence. Is it silence? Is it silence? No. Silence does not mean there is no sound. And I said this before, and again and again I say it, language is not talking about anything.

[43:48]

I'm not talking about anything. It's not because I'm clever, it's because I cannot. Nobody can talk about anything. Language only talks about language. and everything that we experience is language. None of our experience is about anything. In other words, suchness is not about anything. Thusness, the teaching of thusness is not about anything. And language is not about anything. The teaching of thusness is thus.

[44:52]

Language is about language. And a sacred text, because of its concentration, is all tangled up in its language. and can't get outside of it. You as a sacred text, you as a sacred being, are all tied up in where you are, how you are. You're not about anything. You're silent. As a sacred being, you are silent. So at the beginning of the Zen tradition, the Buddha held up a flower and turned it, and Mahakasyapa smiled. So, you know, we have a nine-year-old, remember him?

[46:24]

His disciple is who? Who's nine? Ron. [...] And Nan Chuan. Bai Zhang, by the way, means 100 times 10 feet. 1,000 feet tall. 1,000 feet. The name of the mountain that he lived on was called 1,000 feet. And Nan Chuan means South Spring. So one day, Nan Chuan was working in the fields with his friends. An itinerant monk strolled by and said, could you tell me the road to Nanchuan? And Nanchuan said, this sickle cost me 30 bucks.

[47:32]

And monk said, I'm not interested in how much your tool cost. I want to know the way to Nanchuan. And Nanchuan said, It cuts really well. Isn't that a nice story? That's what I mean by silence. Nonchalance is not talking about anything. And yet, his answers were correct in the usual sense of language. If you come to me and you say, would you show me the way to rep? And I say, I have a new coat. You like it? And you say, I'm not interested in your clothes.

[48:38]

I want to know the way to rep. And then I say, well, it's wrinkled easily. Flowers don't talk. Actually, nothing talks. We just think things are talking about something. And the basis of illusion, the basis of discrimination, is this basic bifurcating function of our mind, that we think about something. We think we can think about something, but we can only think about our mind. Ed gave me a poem from Kabir, which says, don't look for flowers outside your mind.

[49:44]

You can never find any flowers outside your mind. But we think we can think of something, so we think we can talk about something. We made a language just like our mind. Not only do we, not only do human beings think that they can think about things, also dogs think that they can think about things. So does a dog have Buddha nature? And Njaojo said, Moo, that's not about anything. That Moo is silence. It doesn't go anywhere. It's not about anything. It's just talking about itself. Moo only talks about itself.

[50:45]

And the monk says, well, why doesn't it have wood in nature? Because, you know, mu means don't have no. Ain't got none. The monk says, well, why ain't it got none? All sentient beings have wood in nature. Why doesn't a dog? And Jaojo says, because dogs think of things. Does Leslie have wood in nature? Mu. Well, why not? She's a nice person and nice people have Buddha nature. Because she thinks of things. Because she talks about things. That's why she doesn't have Buddha nature. But nobody can talk about anything or think about anything. That's an illusion. Therefore, the reason why you don't have Buddha nature, there's no reason why you don't. The only thing that can block you having Buddha nature is you think you can think about something, or you think you can talk about something.

[52:02]

If right now I'm talking to you and I think I can talk about something, then that's the only thing that can block my Buddha nature realizing itself. But if I'm not bewitched by this language, and if I don't think I'm talking about something, then I don't obstruct the Dharma. But we're built from the ground up to be caught by the apparent ability to think about something, to see flowers outside of our mind, to have a language which says, we are talking about that. That is a tree over there. Language has no reference but language. And you have no reference but yourself. And your mind has no reference but itself. But the magical incantator, it puts us under its spell.

[53:09]

And we think we can do that. But the wonderful Nanchuan, Old South Spring, when the person says, show me the road to Nanchuan, he says, this circle cost me 30 bucks. Note the language. Look at that language. Show me the road to Stuart. This sweater cost me 30 bucks. I'm not interested in that sweater. I want to meet Stuart. Where is he? And it's already falling apart. The person who talks that way is not full of language. and actually talking perfect sense. So this is what flowers are like, right?

[54:20]

They don't talk, just like Zazen doesn't talk. And Zazen in that way is simply the way we really are. The way we really are is we do not talk about anything. We are always silent. So, I don't know, maybe that's enough on the flowering Zazen, is it? Only problem is it's two more words and we only have one more day. So now I have to get two words in one lecture. Ornament and sutra.

[55:22]

It's going to be hard. One more thing I want to say about Dharma doors. And that is, sometimes we think one of the Dharma doors of Buddhism is that if you concentrate, your mind becomes stabilized, and you can see more clearly. Because things aren't jumping all over the place. Or they're still jumping all over the place, but you can jump with them. Kind of like, you know, if you get good at meditation, you can You can drink hot tea on a surfboard. It's a rough ride, but because you're good at keeping your toes gripping the surfboard, you can stay fairly stable. And you can even sort of go sightseeing on a surfboard, I guess, if you really get good at it. So to say, oh, look at the hotels over there.

[56:25]

Oh, there's my friend on the beach. But when you first start surfing, of course, you can't be sightseeing. You've really got to work to keep on the board. So that is a certain kind of meditation, a certain aspect of meditation. As you become more stable, you can see more clearly. But another aspect of this is not so much that you get clearer, but that as you get more concentrated, even your unclarity, Whatever's happening, you start to see in a different way. In this way which I was talking about yesterday, which we call the whole works. You start to see the whole works, but the way you see the whole works is through the phenomenon of your life.

[57:29]

Even your anger, or even your confusion, or even your passion, In that passion, the whole works. And again, notice the language. Notice how the language is tangled up. Because if I say, in your passion, the whole works. That's one way, okay? The whole works through your passion, or your passion... In your passion, the whole works. Or you can say, your passion is the whole works. Your passion is the whole works, and the whole works your compassion, et cetera. See the difference? Religious books are closely involved with their language.

[58:34]

Do you feel how close the language is involved with that? Just like in the other story. Do you feel how tight it is? Show me the way to Nachman. He says to Nachman, Nachman said, this sickle cost me 30 bucks. Can you feel the compactedness? The concentration of that language? How much is bearing down on it? And someone said to me that, so she thought, this person thought that you were concentrated, things would get clearer and so on. But her experience was that wasn't so much what she was impressed by. Rather what she was impressed by, and she felt kind of embarrassed to say this, was she said she sort of made her hands go like this.

[59:43]

She said it was like a, it's like a tunnel. It's like a tunnel, and then she went. Experience is like a tunnel to everything, or everything is tunneled through us through the experience. That's the whole works. Now there is a relationship to getting clear, and somehow we may not notice that unless we're clear, but the point is, even delusion is the whole works. Anger is the whole works. And there's no obstruction there. Everything that happens is a tunnel to the whole works.

[60:46]

And again, her hands went like this. Because the tunnel goes out and comes back on itself. It's really not a tunnel going any place. And yet we need a tunnel to get back home. But everything is a tunnel back home. And that's why everything I try to do fails. Because I try to put something out there But it doesn't succeed because it just goes right back home. If I live in the real world, everything I try to accomplish, it just sort of like, I stand it up there and it goes back down. It won't stand up. And Zazen won't either. Great old wonderful Zazen won't stand up.

[61:46]

Stand it up, it sits right back down. Prop it up, it falls back down. Now you're getting probably, I've been talking now for an hour and minutes, so probably you want me to stop, and I want to stop, and you're in pain so you can't even hear me anymore properly. So everything I say now, it's useless, it'll be more stuff. But I just want to say that if you can experience and if I can experience that Zazen and everything else that we produce in this life really can't stand up, that it immediately goes right back home. If you could tolerate seeing that, well, This is another promise I'm making.

[62:50]

This is another promise to get you out of the house again. And that is, this is the great attainment of the bodhisattva, which is the patient acceptance that dharmas aren't even produced. That things don't even happen. That as soon as they seem to come up, they go back home. This is the great insight of being enlightened being. that they enter the world, and they have pain, and then they try to do something, and they can't accomplish anything. Because everything, as soon as it stands up, it goes back. As soon as you use Zazen, it disappears. So in this world, everything doesn't happen. Doesn't even start to happen. If you can accept that, this is a promise to be a great bodhisattva.

[63:58]

Oh, and one more thing. Bodhisattvas are not enlightened. They do not attain complete enlightenment. But they have great skill and means. They vow not to attain enlightenment. They vow to have pain until nobody has pain anymore. So they do not hang out in enlightenment. They pass through. They check it out. But they do not have it. So the person who's talking to you is not enlightened. Don't forget that. This is just somebody being self. Somebody in pain, just like you.

[65:07]

But remember what my need is. Yeah.

[65:22]

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