Today I want to talk a little bit about just how happy I am to be here practicing with you here at the City Center. I haven't practiced here for a number of years and there are many old familiar faces and good friends and many of you whom I'm just meeting and hope I will be able to become more intimate with as I'm here and living and practicing with you. One thing I think we need to be really clear about, you and I, is that we're a group of people practicing together. I don't want anybody to get the notion that somehow I'm sitting up here, I mean, there

[01:11]

is this situation where I'm sitting here facing that way and you're sitting there facing this way, but we're just all practicing together and we're each trying to find out how it is that this practice of sitting meditation, this practice of not moving in the middle of our life, will help us to take care of our life or to live our life more carefully or more attentively or to be more willing to be just this one, whatever it is. I think most of us come to practice thinking that we're somehow going to be a different and better person after a while and it may be a disappointment to find that however long we practice it's still me, you know, and there are a lot of old familiar things that

[02:20]

come up that I had hoped might wither away by now. So, what have I been doing all this time and why do I keep doing it? Well, one of the primary reasons I keep doing it is because at a time in my life in which I was in a great deal of confusion, I met someone who had been practicing Zazen for fifty years and he was a wonderfully open and, I mean, he was the first person I ever met that it seemed to me that he accepted me completely as I was. He was not making some requirement that I be different before it was all right for me to be here.

[03:20]

And I got the notion after I'd been around a while that Suzuki Roshi got that way by sitting Zazen for fifty years. Now maybe he was that way already, I don't know, but anyhow I got that notion and then I met a few other people who'd been sitting Zazen for a very long time and each person I met who'd been sitting Zazen for a very long time, there was something about them that gave me some confidence in this sitting, in this somehow finding out how to not move in the middle of my life. Because my life was always, things keep coming up in my life, you know, there's an expression that I saw once, life jumps. You're going along and you think you know what's happening in your life and all of a sudden it jumps and something else is happening.

[04:26]

And how do we maintain some composure and find out how to meet this new situation in our life? For me, one of the ways that, you know, as I sit over the years it seems to me that when life jumps it doesn't throw me for quite as much a loss because I have Zazen, an established practice of Zazen that can help me kind of stabilize myself in the midst of this great wave. And in fact, those of you who know me know that my life just jumped quite recently. I was planning to come into the city to lead the practice period and looking forward to

[05:28]

it and all excited about it. And I had some idea about leading a practice period, I don't know what I thought. And then I got a call while I was visiting at Tassajara from my daughter to tell me that she was ill and bedridden and could I please come home right away and help her take care of the baby and help take care of her. And so you know that Lou and I have been, some of you know, that Lou and I have been doing a lot of that in the afternoons we've been going out to help take care of her. She's getting better but she has a chronic illness which will come and go and is totally unpredictable. And it's just, you know, it was a big jump. And the only way I could maintain some composure in the face of it was to not move.

[06:33]

And you know, I don't lie to you, there was a lot of little wobbling in there but it seems to have steadied down some and I think because of Zazen it seems to have steadied down some. Now this not moving to me doesn't, I don't know how to talk about this practice of immobile sitting or this not moving in a way that doesn't sound like some macho trip of I'm going to sit here and not move. It's different than that for me. It's more, it's softer than that.

[07:43]

It's more flexible than that, it's more yielding than that, it's more about finding out how to settle into where I am with some ease and some willingness to be here rather than clenching myself and holding myself still. And, you know, I'm talking figuratively about Zazen but I'm also talking literally about finding your posture. It's not a question of forcing your body into some posture and holding it there. It's a question of finding how you can stay with what's going on, on your Zafu, in your

[08:53]

life, moment after moment, without fighting it. If you have some particular problem with your posture you may have to work with your posture, you may have to find some other way of staying with the schedule or staying in the Zendo, you may have to walk Kinyin half the time, you may have to lie down, you may have to do standing Zazen. How can you not move, how can you not run away from your life, how can you work with whatever resistance comes up in some way that respects the resistance and still responds to your effort to find out how to be willing to be right where you are, be willing to be feeling what you're feeling, be willing to be as you are and not as you would like yourself

[10:07]

to be, not some idea of how you think you ought to be or how you think someone else wants you to be. How is it to be just this one, just as she is? What's that? Can you settle into being this one? Can you, in settling into being this one, appreciate its connectedness with all of these apparently separate beings that you may see? Can you notice how much the idea of self comes up for you?

[11:11]

I mean, can you acknowledge that? And admit, oh yeah, I'm thinking of this separate independent being again that I call myself. There's a, I think I always have and maybe always will bring up this line that Kadagiri Roshi said in my first Sazen instruction. We sit to settle the self on the self and let the flower of your life force bloom. And this was really, it has stayed with me. And more recently it took a little turn and it's more like if I say and let the flower

[12:20]

of my life force bloom, it might make me feel that my life force is somehow different than your life force or different than your life force. And so how that expression comes up for me more recently is to settle the self on the self and let the life force bloom as me. Let the life force which we all share, this life which we're all living, bloom here like this, and bloom here like this, and bloom here like this. So as not to confuse the life force as being, this life force as being separate from that or that or that. And so in settling here and being willing to be here like this, without moving, it's

[13:35]

To be able to appreciate this flower also helps to appreciate each flower. The connection among us and the particular manifestation of each one. It's interesting to me in this particular difficulty that I've been settling into, you can't really pick some aspect of your life and say, oh, this is unfortunate or this is bad, you know, and this is good. You can't really pick some aspect of your life and say, oh, this is unfortunate or this is bad, because while it's difficult and upsetting that our daughter is ill, at the same time,

[14:45]

this has been a very intimate time for the family. It's been a time of great family solidarity. And Lou and I are with Trudy and Dennis and Jacob, my grandson, every day. This is not a circumstance that would have occurred otherwise. So that there's this new bond and appreciation for each other and our intermutual dependence that would not have happened without this illness. So it's hard to look, you know, it's hard to, any event in your life is not just one color. It's not just, I mean, just, it's rounded, it has various facets to it.

[15:50]

It's not really possible to say, oh, that's bad. That's just what's happening now. How can I settle into this and live this? One of the, you know, the theme of this practice period, which begins on Saturday, is taking refuge in Sangha. And, you know, this word, the Japanese word that we use for taking refuge is kie. Namu kie butsu, namu kie ho, namu kie so, the three refuges in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.

[17:02]

And this kie is two characters. The kie means to plunge into or to throw yourself into without reservation. And the ee is to rely on or to return to. So to take refuge in Sangha is to throw ourselves into Sangha, to throw ourselves into this community of practitioners. This, Karihiri Roshi used to say, Sangha means peace and harmony. So how do we throw ourselves into, how do we rely on each other? How do we support each other? How do we together, you know, this practice is something that we can't do by ourselves and no one can do it for us.

[18:05]

We need this practice. We need the support of others practicing, and yet we have to do our own practice for ourself. Part of that relying on Sangha or plunging into Sangha or taking refuge in Sangha is developing an intimacy among ourselves so that we can fully appreciate each other, so that we can fully appreciate each other's practice. So my hope is that I will be able to reveal myself to you as fully as I can and that you will be able to reveal yourselves to me as fully as you can and that we will all be able to reveal ourselves to each other. So there are many aspects of a practice period which help us reveal ourselves to one another.

[19:18]

We have teas in which we have discussion together. We have ceremonies in which we come forward and present ourselves to someone in front of everyone to the degree that we can. My feeling is that this practice of Sangha is one of the things that helps us to see to what degree we're willing to let other people see us just like this. It helps us to see whether we're willing to be this right now or not. It helps us to see what idea of self we're carrying that makes us not really want to be seen quite like this. What is it that we want to keep hidden and what is it that we don't mind revealing?

[20:24]

How can we come to trust one another more? And so little by little this possibility of trusting one another and being willing to be seen by one another develops. It's a great relief to not have anything to hide, to be able to be as you are without worrying that somebody might know it. To take a chance on revealing yourself and see that you're not rejected for being who you are.

[21:36]

And so part of our practice is not only to reveal ourselves but to accept one another and appreciate one another fully. And of course if we have some sharp edges that bump into someone and they say, ouch, then we get to see that we've got a sharp edge. Hoitsu Roshi, Suzuki Roshi's son, calls it potato practice. He said, when you want to clean up a bucket full of potatoes, you don't pick up each potato and scrub it. You put a bunch of water in the bucket and you stir them around and they clean each other up. And so practicing closely together with this kind of intimacy is a little like that too.

[22:44]

It's sort of, you bump into each other and then you find out, oh, excuse me, I didn't realize I had that sharp angle there. So we need to be able, you know, if song is peace and harmony, we need to be able to let one another know about sharp angles that hurt without rejecting them. We need to accept them and be able to let them know about sharp angles that hurt. So we have to find some kind speech, some kind way to let people know when they have sharp angles that hurt and still fully accept them and appreciate them and be ready to hear about our sharp angles that hurt when we bump into someone and appreciate that someone has the kindness to let us know.

[23:46]

So this kind speech is a very important part of our practice together as sangha. Ah, excuse me, sometimes I think just to sit here together

[25:36]

is the most wonderful thing we can do and that the talking is really um, unnecessary. Is there anything you'd like to bring up? Yes. I don't know, I'm sort of confused, I don't think I can put in a question exactly, but I think it's, I really appreciate you putting the emphasis on appreciating each other and being kind to each other. But then I guess I have a little difficulty putting that, and I'm not condemning it necessarily or anything,

[26:45]

I'm just, it does seem like there's been a different element at the Zen Center, or there is sort of a different current or a different thrust. Then, you know, there's been that, but there's also a certain sense of, and maybe inevitable, or is it, I don't know, if not for some people in the Zen Center, if you violate certain rules, you will be asked to leave, or, you know, there's certain requirements that you have to do, and, I mean, it just won't be accepted if you don't, I mean, at least in the sense that you will be asked to leave, you'll be asked to be not part of the community anymore. So that there is a certain sense of rules and requirements and so on. Well, certainly, I mean, we do come to be residents in the building in order to be able to participate in the practice. And as far as I'm concerned, whether one wants to be here and participate

[27:45]

to the degree that residents are expected to participate, or doesn't want to be here and participate to the degree that residents need to participate, doesn't have anything to do with whether I accept them or not. It's just that while you're here, naturally you do what you came here to do, which I think is, I mean, I think people come here because there's an opportunity to practice. You're close to the Zen Do, you're right here, it's no problem. Somebody rings a wake-up bell, it helps you to do what you want to do. If you don't want to do that anymore, then naturally you live in a situation where that's not required of you. I don't think that has to do with accepting and not accepting a person as being completely a wonderful person and a Bodhisattva, and, you know, that's no problem. It's just that when you want to do what we're doing here, then you come here to live and do that. And when you want to do something different, then you live where you don't need to do that.

[28:50]

Does accepting you fully as a Bodhisattva mean to you the same thing as saying, as inviting you to be a resident of the building, whether you follow the schedule or not? I mean, I think I'm hearing two different things. Being a resident of the building and being accepted or not, to me, the same thing. I mean, when I was a Green Gulch and I was not paying attention to my conduct at one point, and I'd been around for five or six years, and the ventanto said to me, if you want to stay here, you're going to have to straighten up your act. And I got really furious. I was so mad.

[29:55]

Who the hell does he think he is if I want to stay here? And I walked back to the room and Lou saw me. I mean, I was steaming. And he says, oh, the little kid with the turned up nose got to you, didn't he? I went around in just a total rage for about two weeks. And then I went back to the tanto and I realized, I said, I came to see you because I wanted some discipline from the community because my self-discipline wasn't working. And he breathed a big sigh because he didn't know whether I was going to stay or leave. And I didn't know whether I was going to stay or leave. I was really furious. But the fact is that my behavior had been pretty outrageous. And it was also a fact

[30:57]

that I was really angry with him for presuming, for taking this kind of authoritarian tone with me like he had the right to tell me whether I could stay or go. And I was really furious for about two weeks. And then I realized, well, actually, he was just asking me, you know, do you want to do this or don't you want to do this? And I really did want to do it. But I had to decide I wanted to do it. And he was kind of giving me a cutting edge to work with. And he was greatly relieved when I came back to him because he did not know which way I was going to go from that. But it was a very important moment in my practice for me to decide

[31:57]

if I wanted to be serious about this or not. Or if I just wanted to play around with it. It also taught me something about skill and means. And that is that a person learns skill and means by trial and error. He didn't know what my response was going to be. He tried something. He went out on a limb kind of. He tried something and then he didn't know what the result was going to be until it happened. So that's been kind of helpful to me later on to realize that a person doesn't necessarily know what's going to be helpful. But because you want to be helpful you have to try something. And so he tried something

[33:04]

and it turned out to have been helpful to me. I don't think that necessarily living in a residential practice place is what everybody wants to do. I happen to find it very supportive of practice. In a way it's kind of a lazy person's way to practice. Somebody sets out a schedule and you know you're going to do it. They ring a wake up bell and you just get up and go to the Zendo and you don't have to think about it. Whereas when I didn't live in a residential practice place I had to get myself up at home

[34:05]

and get over to the Zendo every morning. And in fact it was really hard. And what I did was I was sitting at the Berkeley Zendo is I made arrangements with somebody else who didn't have a car and I tried to pick her up and take her to the Zendo every morning. And so then when I woke up I'd say oh Pat's going to be standing on the corner. I'd get up and I'd go and whether she was standing on the corner or not I was up and in my car and I got to the Zendo. And I realized finally I'd made that arrangement with Pat to kind of get me to get up and do what I wanted to do but sometimes it didn't feel like doing. And it was just sort of a way of kind of tricking myself to do what I wanted to do. Yeah? Well I don't know if it's relevant and you haven't reacted to it it seems like many times

[35:05]

what you're describing there is a little more complicated than that. Sometimes it isn't if you had a very excellent email or whatever perhaps was interacting with you in that case. But often times many of the people are even all too human and so like an example I could come up with would seem rather extreme and not typical and I wouldn't describe it exactly or all the details and all but say a certain person was doing something during the meditation or was you know sitting somewhere or something and the email of a responsible person came up to me and I can't remember exactly all but something along the lines of why don't you leave? Why don't you just get out of here? You don't belong in this building. And they weren't entirely wrong and they weren't entirely right and I don't know who was right and who was wrong. In other words, what I'm trying to indicate is that the people enforcing the rules are often sometimes

[36:06]

very benevolent and kind and pure and so on but more typically I think they seem to have a certain sense that they have their own insecurities and fears and so on that are coming up and so it gets a lot of anger and hostility and so the issue is a lot less clear. Yeah. It can happen. Because we're all human we're all carrying whatever view of self we're carrying and that's what I'm talking about being able to appreciate one another and still try to let somebody know when their sharp edge is hurt but to try to find a kind way to let somebody know when their sharp edge is hurt. I mean we're all of us here with whatever baggage we're toting and we're all toting some you know and while we may all have

[37:10]

the intention of being very careful with kind speech with one another it doesn't always happen like that you know before we know it something's out of our mouth and we've just hurt somebody's feelings there's not much we can do about that but own it you know and we all start where we are you know I mean there was a period when things were a little rough with Lou and me and he said to me you've got a dumb shit look and I am not willing to see it one more time and if I see it one more time I am out the door and I said whoa wait a minute you can't do that I don't know what you're talking about you're going to have to tell me

[38:11]

when I'm doing it so I can see what it is that you're seeing so you know we went along and it wasn't very long there that's it that's what I'm talking about and I kind of looked inside and oh my god I'm thinking you dumb shit you know he had me nailed to the wall I am still working on trying to drop that dumb shit look I mean I'm still working on when I was you know out of Greenbelch the Dons were terrified of me because they would ring a bell wrong and I'd look at them you know with that dumb shit look um you know we have habits and it's really hard to to catch them before the cat's out of the bag we just have to work on them uh but for me it's useful if somebody tells me I mean I'm giving you all now

[39:13]

permission to tell me if you see me with this dumb shit look on my face you know um because I don't want to do that but I have a lifelong habit of judging people and going how could you be so stupid um and I you know we all have habits like that that are hard to be around and yet we all you know we all want to practice and we help each other practice by being able to find some kind way to say Blanche you're doing it again you're doing it again um and trusting each other's intention I mean why would we put ourselves in this situation

[40:13]

if we didn't really want to practice the Buddha way there must be some reason we're all here so to in the first place appreciate and give you know give some credit to the people who are here is that we're all trying to practice and we're all practicing with whatever baggage we happen to accumulate this life you know and we're doing the best we can with it and I agree that if a person is trying to maintain the discipline of the building in a judgmental and harsh way it's not so helpful it's not so helpful and yet we need to maintain the discipline of the building or we won't have any practice the structure really helps us to practice so how do we maintain the structure and help each other practice and still be and not be harsh about it

[41:15]

it may be that it's not appropriate for someone to be living here because it's just not what they want to be doing right now but how can we then arrive at that decision together with the person in a kind way so the person doesn't feel I'm a bad person it's just this isn't what I want to be doing right now excuse me yes the proposal is to learn to be accepting whatever but it doesn't mean that we have no maybe we are not so the difficulty is being together with people that are not tolerant being together with people living together in a community where mostly we are not tolerant we are not tolerant yeah but the learning

[42:21]

and you know again I see that sometimes rules reinforce this non-tolerance because the kind of rules you can say you can not do that you shouldn't do that rules are there and then plenty of plenty of yeah yeah yeah each other to be non-tolerant so when the rule is telling us to be tolerant and how that's very difficult and the second thing is how can we manage this non-tolerance

[43:24]

of the community you know because we can get lost in the middle of this non-tolerance and what to do in a community in order to help this black tolerance can I explain myself yeah that's one of the problems that I see in my life so you're feeling yourself some non-tolerance of you and the way in which you're practicing being in a community where all of us learn and then we get lost in the middle of something that is public and then what is the resource that we have to help the situation

[44:24]

not be a question in order to help the situation where we are fighting where we cannot understand each other what I'm suggesting is for one thing this kind of trying to develop greater intimacy with each other trying to be able to reveal to each other what our difficulties are and where our practice is where we are seeing our own difficulties so for example at a time when things were very unharmonious at Green Gulch Mel led a practice period out there and he did a shosan ceremony every week a shosan ceremony

[45:27]

where each person comes up and presents a question of his or her practice directly in front of everyone and my experience of that was that it was very it contributed greatly to our mutual respect because people at Green Gulch were not understanding each other's practice some people at Green Gulch were practicing going to the zendo for every scheduled period and some people were practicing going to the field 10 hours a day and almost never coming to the zendo and other people were not respecting each other's practice because they didn't understand each other's practice and they didn't understand that this person who's not doing what I'm doing is nevertheless really practicing the buddhadharma they're really trying to understand their life through what they're doing

[46:29]

they're really questioning and turning their life even though they're not doing it the way I'm doing it but when we started having these weekly shosan ceremonies people actually began presenting their practice to Mel in front of everybody we began to say we began to appreciate each other's sincerity of practice and not carpet each other about the details of how you're not following the schedule this way and you'll never come down and work in the field with us I think that the more we can see the more we can reveal what we're working on in our practice where our problems are where the edge of our practice is the more we can reveal it to each other reveal the sincerity of our effort to penetrate our life through practice the more respect we will have for each other even if each other's practice is not the same does that make any sense?

[47:29]

I mean I think that the key to being more tolerant of each other is to recognize each other's sincerity how to present each other how to learn to be acceptable face to face because sometimes the raw style or the procedure does not allow people to do this face to face in the presence of each other to talk like this way this is my practice you know and we just learn the opposite we just learn to avoid each other but we are learning sometimes how to avoid each other and how to be happy and how not to worry very much about the treatment how to avoid each other how to be strong enough

[48:36]

to stay here in the community and being strong enough to say what I said instead of saying I do not belong to this I don't and then when I'm talking about how can we develop the community in order to talk face to face and in order to say what you are saying what you are saying and in order to hear when somebody says that to me so that well let's try yes I don't think we need to have to show something if we want to talk to each other no we can talk to each other and we don't have to have some rule to do it with each other

[49:37]

it's not something that we have to look up or ask everyone to do that we can do that with each other today tomorrow it's important to realize that we are armed with the power to do that practice and it's nice to have a ceremony I feel like church on a ceremony is great but we can do it every day I think it's important to realize that it's not easy good yes well I kind of agree with Brett in the sense that so many situations are so much more complex than just describing in some ways it seems it would be nice to be able to be to be able to come to each other and to be kind in that situation with the heart and lungs but you know so often the real problem is

[50:39]

not so much the people that we that we can talk to even when there's some defensiveness we can actually but you know for example I mean lately I've been wondering how do I practice with someone who is mean and who you can't talk to you know that you can't talk and try every way kindness staying away you can't and yet you're still practicing and you know in that case do you build up so much aversion that in fact maybe you should be avoiding more than getting in there with them because you're building up more aversion to these situations or more hatred you know I think in some ways I know that I listened to a tape that Don and Lana had where you said in some ways it's difficult to have an aversion because you reinforce your own hatred

[51:39]

you know your own aversion you know the situations it's so hard to know like well are you just pulling away from that and really could deal with it or is it better to go back or when to do that yeah there have been situations that the only thing I've known how to do where someone has been extremely angry and hurt and unwilling to talk to me and that hurt me the only thing I could do was just to let that be until it finally subsided there wasn't anything to I couldn't fix it I'm not really talking about sort of fixing situations of difficulty but I could maintain a practice of gassho

[52:44]

every time we passed whether or not it was returned and a willingness to resume conversation when it happened you know and eventually it did but there wasn't any way I could sort of make that connection happen again by force of will or talk or anything else whatever that hurt was had to wear itself out and I had to see how much I cared you know I'm one of these people someone said to me oh I see you want everybody to love you don't you and that's true you know I mean the first thing I started to say was yeah doesn't everybody by the way she said it I realized

[53:46]

well no I guess not because the way she said it was you're one of those people I mean it's not me maybe not everybody is like that it's just so much a part of me that I just assumed everybody was that way so you know it was hard for me to have this visible proof that there was one person at least who didn't love me at least not now you know so I had to deal with my feelings about that I had to be willing to let that go so that was my work in that process was to not be hurt by that rejection and just realize that what was going on was partly a result of some not very skillful action on my part and a person who was very easily hurt and I had hurt her you know it didn't last forever and it was

[54:50]

uncomfortable while it was going on but it finally ended you know this is going on a long time and you may be your legs may be tired so please move if you want to and let's have two more people have their hands up and then I think we'll leave yeah Wendy yeah you had your hand I just had a question about earlier that I'm trying to understand difficult situations in terms of my responsibility in them because when I do that I can't see sometimes that that other person knew I cannot even know that there's no way I can actually be inside what they're what feels like they're actually you know and they say oh that hurts so how am I you know what is the value that makes the situation happen and especially in a situation

[55:51]

where we're having to stay together how am I participating how am I inviting you know that reaction to me or how am I responding to the way they're approaching me and just opens it up to that and I'm not saying that that's always what actually what I'm finding is that looking at it in that way helps me to allow the other person and their responsibility in it to say oh that person actually is doing something on purpose towards me now it doesn't necessarily mean purposely negative or purposely positive towards me but they're purposely going towards me for some reason some reaction that they're looking for and when I can give away that part of responsibility then I can see you know what what the dynamic is that's how it feels and it kind of diffuses a lot I suddenly find myself

[56:52]

you know and I'm not saying it always works or that it's right or it's true anything like that but just the feeling I have is going to diffuse again and again and I don't know some way maybe my heart that may be helpful ma'am I have a question what? I'm off the track so Kim Children was here a couple of months ago she gives the most business lectures here and not a large crowd but at the larger lecture she talked about something that for me I understand what you're saying but it only addresses me one side and she said that the more we practice sometimes the crankier we get

[57:53]

you know we get sharper and our emotions come up quicker but usually they go away quicker too and we kind of balance between each other and I feel like that's kind of what happens I think people get really mellow I don't think you do I think that maybe it's more a willingness to breathe but then she said something which I really appreciate because I feel like that's the other side of the issue what happens when someone doesn't when someone gets meaner or angrier or more isolated than when they practice she talked about it she didn't say maybe she said they shouldn't she didn't make some room and that is the issue for me it's not that the practice is right or wrong but when somebody doesn't work for someone it's a very painful difficult situation and it causes all sorts of pain and difficulty and I feel like sometimes we don't talk about that side

[58:54]

of it I agree with you if you're a person but you know sometimes someone takes that on I'm not saying I don't like it but they make an alter to it and it's just a painful experience and I think that part of the problem is that part of the painful experience is not to be like that and I think the question that this practice may or may not be and I've never seen anyone who decided not to be here leave on a positive note it's always been a very painful process and it's almost like we don't know how to talk about that so I have to lay it how do we work with people but not just

[59:54]

wait and see how it goes how do you actively work with meanness or angriness you can necessarily prompt you can prompt you may have on a richer scale kind of irritated someone a little but all of a sudden you're getting back volumes of ash and prompting and you can say oh well it's not me but it's still painful so how do we how do we work with that that side of it you see the question I'm asking and how do you kind of work with that I hesitate to use the shaft because everyone talks it's kind of a lingo but that's what I'm asking when do you have something wrong someone's treating you poorly all I know is to sit with my own feelings and feel my own feelings and I just don't think I'm going to fix somebody

[60:55]

else yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah [...] maybe but still even if someone's reaction is not a reflection of you your reaction your feelings are what you have to work with right now and you need to, it's important to feel your feelings and not get caught up in your story about my feeling, you know, like Suzuki Roshi said, to say you're not angry when you are, that's not so good. To say you made me so, maybe

[61:59]

that's too much. So to find out what's in between saying you're not angry when you are and saying that somebody else made you angry, what's in there? Well, you know, what is it, the Satipatthana Sutra says, when anger arises, the monk says, anger has arisen. And I think that what's in between, as Pema talked about in her talk here, is actually experiencing, acknowledging your own emotion and experiencing it without repressing it and without expressing it or acting it out. Acknowledging it, you know, Joko talks a lot about feeling the actual

[63:03]

physical sensations of an emotion, that's what's actually happening right now, the story about what was the occasion for it or what you were going to do about it is past and future and it's not what's happening right now, what's happening right now is actually your experience of it, your this moment experience of it. It's getting too late, I think. We've got weeks and weeks. Yeah, that's right, there's next week and the week after and the week after. All right, can we save this until next time then? Yes. Could you get to be more, can you get to be more what you are? Yeah, I think you just discover something. What's already there but then you don't get to see it. You're not keeping it as hidden as you were before.

[64:05]

Maybe, maybe so, I don't know. Anyhow, let's continue later. May our intention equally penetrate...

[64:20]