is am
you
christmas
the streets
good evening everybody has just want to say two words to introduce camera probably already know her and her books and know her teaching
real lucky that she's been able to spend some retreat time were miraculously least a little bit of peace and quiet and little green gulch and and how that's possible sankar she sent to achieve them and
she sat as i'm sure you know the real treasure dharma for us really bringing
i'm very rich and complicated teachings straight home and straight down to earth were soft for to her speaking tonight

well first of all i'd i'd like to say thank you to everyone care
and to green gulch place
cause i
i think on friday the thirteenth i will have been here for six weeks
it's been a
six weeks are really deep
relaxation and meditation contemplation for me
it's actually been a very profound time i i've been recovering from an illness and ah
i needed something just like this
and i feel about i
ten years younger and
fifteen years healthier than i did when i first came here
so i've read as then mind beginner's mind about prime times
yeah blocked all over this land
and it's a very special and then i am sexually are so beautiful timing
as
look or went away to teach in berkeley and when i came back for my last ten days
the i hope cottage was ready and so for the last ten days i've been up there were the hawks fly value
and i
wow thank you very very much all of you i i hardly got to know anybody catena a few people
quite well
i've been beautifully taken care off
hi guys would ride from nurturing actually
i'm sorry i thank you and thank you to the southland was laugh
what i wanted to do tonight
instead of giving a formal talks
i thought instead i'd i've had you asked me questions
and
and that would be the form of this
time together tonight
and also i have been requested
to teach the timeline practice and so i also would like to tell you a bit about that practice which is the practice for a very specific practice for awakening compassion
ashley for wakening the absolute and relative products cheetah
a compassion they experience of compassion and emptiness and sacrifice
but was a big emphasis on the compassion
so on
i thought we could just start and see if there are any questions and ah that i could
in just from my own experience see what i can do with your question

what worked up
you have a mosque getting on the social work to say is your primary purpose in having a monastery
you hope to accomplish
hmm
originally we started the monastery
was one monk and one none just because
but among particularly soltren he had been ordained by that time for almost fifteen years and never had a monastery
and i don't know how long i'd been ordained about ten years or twelve and i also had never had a monastery so really had simple motivation to just have a place where people who wished to follow monastic path
could do so and we have other centers for jars secular and
so it seems that this was needed as an additional center then as it develops over the years it's ah
we live by precepts there which include a celibacy precept so whether someone is ordained as a monk or nun for their life or whether they take the temporary ordination of rock and none or whether they just a visitor
our everybody lives by this five precepts which includes salad celibacy
and also know that drinking of alcohol
ah
quite strict terms of precepts he also it's a very isolated place
i'm very isolated place and
so i think the big the main discipline there is that you can't get away from yourself
it's a small community at the end of the world where there's no no entertainment
that becomes the main disappoint and it's pretty harsh discipline in some ways which is probably why my teaching has a that's so much emphasis on compassion and gentleness and softer side
so we hope we trained people there to be monks and nuns and then
and i'm particularly interested in the place as a place where people can learn to live together in a compassionate way as a journey of awakening it living together in community as a journey of awakening and learning how to be kind to each other
in a
in a really non conceptual way not a moralistic way but of really
griffin unconditional way

hundred and ninety nine as mine
another time
i don't know so much
and gonna stay in practice i heard prices for it
mergers and are instead of doing here
white manifests
well you know when i read suzuki roshi then i'd say now no difference
ah body definitely in other's differences in terms of how it manifests was tibet and practices
as students with trungpa rinpoche's we sit a lot and there's a lot of influence from suzuki roshi actually for instance we do our okay and a lot of our forms are from japanese tradition but still the practices are so different you know in terms of visualizations mantras
ringing bells and and little dramas and group practice where you chant and these kind of clinics
but we also have what's called asked mahamudra and so chin and that is actually likes then
and
when you when i read suzuki roshi
well actually my feeling and reading suzuki roshi here was i i i think i'm just going to keep reading suzuki roshi for the rest of my life and at
as a teacher and try to figure out exactly
what he's talking bad
and am
it's so profound what he has to say and it's so close to what i feel i understand and yet so beyond and i understand at the same time that i find it totally exhilarating to read it and it has this amazing humor tenderness
and and
he's certainly understands pete he is able to speak from a place of a separable compassion and emptiness which is so rare
ah in a reading him it it feels like
not familiar and challenging and just exactly how i've been taught
which is probably why trump permission a so admired and it's the story is that when trump or machine managed to secure roshi he cried afterwards because it was the first enlightened person he met in the rest and he realized he had such a longing to talk with someone like that
and he hadn't for such a long time
ha reading the book i can really understand why he cried
what you know things that are most struck by his his way of
describing
rondo reality
how as etc as if the way i would i was getting so much in common was how he describes out as path
does as he has a way of talking about how we just look at the world
ha and he has a way of conveying how everything
there's nothing to be nothing that's you reject and nothing that you emphasize as being right
so like when he talks about weeds and flowers
i i was talking on the par meet us in the teaching in berkeley
and i wanted to teach the parameters as practice
and i wanted to teach them as practice
ah that as non dual practice
and i'd always had a problem with the parmi it has actually because they are so frequently taught at dualistic way
that when you practice generosity you overcome poverty mind when your practice patience is
it's the antidote to aggression but it it it was like that but that's not house is okuma she talked to
hey i'm
he had a way of describing things ah
that's somehow ah
yeah a see both sides and both sides are somehow equally valuable
on both sides are equally how things are
so like when he says
her that he quotes dog is saying data
ah the flower falls even though we love it and weed grows even that we don't profit or we don't like it he says it's like that was just like that
and somehow they gave me so much insight into era
non dual nature the carnitas
because of course if they were dualistic they wouldn't be
perfection and wouldn't be parmi meters they wouldn't take it to the other side if generosity really was that was the opposite of something
so then i had a talk with norman and he was he told me about how teaching
our about investigating the opposite side
for instance ah
if you teach the parmi of exertion rich ah has also been translated as enthusiasm
it said that it's the antidote to laziness norman was saying that it could be taught or understood as if you teach the primate of exertion and that becomes a method of beginning to explore and become curious about laziness
and then
so actually i taught it like this in in berkeley and a which was to say
and that if you set out to be a patient
and you think the point is to overcome in impatience then you really never going to understand patience
that is really only by a knowing the nature of progression of restlessness of
impatience only by actually knowing it
and that you ever really understood it really understand like patience is transcendental patients
which is to say what does it mean then to to know the nature of aggression
what does it mean
well that's where i kept reading suzuki roshi over and over because basically it has something to do with weeds and flowers that are you don't come to know it it's nature because it's bad and you want to root it out a just come to know it's nature because it exists in your experience
and it's part of the human condition
and in fact and are correct understanding is that it's just the other side of ha
it just the other side of patients strike they they don't one can't exist without the
but to understand that
we always go about it from dualistic perspective of trying to get rid of
ha impatience or in generosity trying to get rid of the stingiest or the
holding on and so forth
so he started to practice instead if you know if you would actually pre warned that if you're going to a whole heartedly try to practice any other par meet us she can whole heartedly practice patience
then very soon probably are in the first forty five minutes you'll discover ah not patience the discovered in patients and aggression
then if you haven't been on
if you've been taught to look at that and holistic way then you think your practices a are failing in your practice
and as western students and this means that we're getting very good at what we already know how to do which is
beat up on ourselves
so the dharma becomes a method for becoming more confused
all in the name of practicing
harmony protected
so but then if someone says no no that is not that's not correct understanding that's not compassionate understanding that's also not has no understanding of emptiness or openness the next are just ordinary bewildered
every day understanding the ideas he tried to practice patience knowing that you're going to become very intimate regression and you're going to know it really well
and you allow it to be that way
when we say it will allow it to be that way
who doesn't mean that way
we press it
and it doesn't mean that we
act or speak out of our aggression
it means that we the basic later learn to be fully and completely with her a feeling of aggression where you learn to r
read all the ideas about aggression or the sauce and words and conceptual
overlay go
and we just come back to just
coming intimate with
what that feels like when aggression feels like
for laziness or poverty or whatever it is
and then somehow in that process something really begins to shift that you're just looking at the the whole thing
and somehow in that process also your continent really know generosity and discipline
a patience exertion and so forth
a
huh so for instance one man who was doing the weekend he said afterwards
he he laughed and the weekend he decided on the way home he would practice patience
in traffic
and so he and he was practicing patience in traffic and
he was feeling just coming from weekend of meditation so forth quite patient
and he felt that he had some feeling for patients want it really meant and a kind of trash
the spacious way
and then it came to a stop sign
course his car stuff in this man was walking front very very slowly
he was practicing patience
the man turned and kicked his car and yelled at you
and he said at that point this this great and welled up in him
and then he remembered at that point
if you're going to practice patience you're going to come you're going to get he was also going to be practising coming to know
becoming intimate with aggression and there it was
and he said what he did at that moment was actually based on the tongue land practice he to sort of
he breathed in and completely found that aggression for him that he was feeling and or from all the other people in the world who feel that
and he wrote me august and our he he said then he said it as that moment he
she just felt so sad for that guy current kick his car in didn't even know and who is just
somebody i was so that i agree that he kicked in the alley know someone even even now
huh
huh
one home
are you practice will be no
the enormous that's gone on is some on

where my illness has been a really interesting one it's sort of falls in the general category of a a male breakdown system breton down
so you know to be really honest you know like worth the journey of the whole thing as dennis
it's been a
it's been a lot like having my teacher
standing behind me with a stick
and hitting me every time i start to get
speak act or particularly just think or react in a habitual way
because i began to realize that s the feeling of fatigue and flu like symptoms intensify were intensified by what he normally would cause stress
when i began to realize that what stress is is that we tightened in a very very
world for know your way
basically i think as practitioners it means we're getting close to the edge of were about to step outside of what is known what is predictable
what confirms us and makes us feel secure and comfortable
and there's like a disaster
this perfume
fear stress that are coming up and i became so familiar with the process but usually i think or without seeing it so precisely basically what happens is and just things all the time in our life cause
us to shut down clothes off and actually not only do our minds close down but so do our bodies and which is so kind of tension at every level of our game
and so as soon as i would start to do that which i came to think of as just reacting in a very ancient conditioned pattern for natural tendency basically a yeah i think it's what we would call how ego presents itself the case sort of or
it's april presents itself the moment to moment my one sort of tension
and so as soon as i would start to do that
ah hell would break or us in terms of my sickness
which is to say how the sick most of the time
can have begun to feel like
and am
so i just started training
in a row
acknowledging when i won't be when i was on
starting to shut down to a tense close and it was physical but was also mantle it was completely synchronized situation
and i started to train in kristic acknowledging it and then in in
in an
what we would call dharmic league for basically a changing the habitual pattern or
ha
not grasping in fixated
letting go of old ways of seeing and no agent acting and reacting so but at a very personal level it would feel like a not and just training in how to sort of know it's just
relax basement or a deeply
and
and so began to feel like every time
my old ways of holding myself together literally i began to feel like i just like held myself together tenaciously or it's like a fierce determination to just hold myself together but it was making me sick
so every time i would start doing it he was as if my teacher hit me and went ahead door over the on the shoulder i got hit
so i would just train in
hum began to feel that it had a lot of ways like turning around and facing what i was running from or
definitely letting go of story lines
i've i've learned a lot from illness and i think no matter what people's illnesses that teaches them a lot but i just will emphasize this one point because there's such a powerful kind of path quality to it needless to say it also teaches you about ah day
death
it teaches you about and death in every moment
he teaches you about the futility of holy on in grasping
peaches you add the total insanity and sadness of you know that
ha human condition terms seven he not thinking that we can get it all together control lighting
make it go a certain way and how we all are making ourselves sick he nodded theresa
three creating suffering every moment of our lives so it's tommy lot about that
way you we need to get stuck in the air that that kind of
must have whatever work go away
well well
sometimes it won't go away right on princes terminal cancer anyone who has aids
ah so first of all it teaches you to give up hope in a pot as a pause as an affirmation sort of them
let's put it this way it causes you to stop getting stuck in the dualism of hope and fear
no first that's just words right that's just
something you hear
but at the practical level
ah i would say i ain't it is very much like the exploration of the power meters ah
he could say you tried to have a dual understanding of the whole thing which had a very practical level means that you become intimate with fear
and you don't meaning
not that you're becoming intimate with something bad but featured actually just becoming intimate with your experience
and of course it has a very negative connotations and so forth but how to stop resisting our own energy i guess this really when it comes down to
so am
i think for ah
while it was complicated for me i had a lot of fear and anxiety which was complicated by maddow paws which i didn't know at the time but was met a pause he you sometimes sometimes goes along with it that you have these anxiety attacks just because of the chemical changes in taking place
so basically the same time i was getting sick there's also going through metaphors and i would have every night
intense anxiety about three o'clock in the morning that which basically to stay there and also would arise very unexpectedly at any time of the day or night if it just like come up like a
he know like a horror movie or something x of nothing would be causing it
so forth
it was far at least five years i really trained and trying to understand how did not resist
i asked every dharma teacher i mad at i actually asked you know emma
i asked bus drivers and and and you know people i meet on the beach or any for anybody i was just asking everybody about fear and i was reading everything i could find all the dharma teachings all the therapy everything but basically my question why
was how do you how do you not resist because i had a feeling that it was that i will be learning how to die if i can learn how to relate with this
and i seen people die and i knew that people can die and it can be like watching someone become enlightened because they just like go into her big mind and they can also die in complete care like screening and pushing against and so i knew this fear head was worth
the of exploration pages didn't know how to do it
so ah there's a story about milarepa where he meets demons in his cave and even these demons are things like fear and hope and fear and these kind of things and he tries everything to try to make them go away tries compassion he tries magic spells
he tries sitting down and teaching them about the dharma he tries everything and they won't go finally he just gives up and he says well listen i'm not going anywhere and either use so why don't we just sit here and have a cup of tea and down the stories that they all evaporate except one
and i was not yeah that one is called might appear and in any case except one and he said all this one must really be
strong and so what he did was he went and put himself in its now
and then it it solved also so that was my call on how to put myself in the mouth
and so i can say is
that's the dharma path i can't really tell you how i learned to do that i can tell you is that for at least at least five years it was my main koran and i
tried everything and i brought my practice till that i brought my whole life to it but i wanted to find out how to
put myself in the mouth or behemoths sp and which is to say to not separate myself
camden
and then i just realized at one point that i've gotten the hang of it
and so that's how practices best again notice is the girl she talks about that a lot how it's like a or it isn't like walking in the rain it's like walking in the midst
and you don't even know it's happening
i think this i think if we take the but we consider that
pain and confusion and obstacles of our lives and used them as path to enlightenment they're the best path as i think we are best path because
ah right in there in the all of that is where you actually discover the compassion and emptiness writing all of that in that which seems to be a baker blockage
pretty well maybe it is but
the global blockage if you're trying to get rid of it are some more now
how is in my experience with planet retain the most posting for me has been mass
he's been the the other demon the hope you know that
the when things go well
very easy to get on his role or sidewalk your passes it you know now everything is going to be cool and a kind of get better and better from here and on and as if you know that's usually land i really crash you know what's going on i really lose my
concentration and things happens that are kind of farmer
is do and you see any difference in the way to practice
with the
impulses that costs for us on ah
the hope the had a agreed for more good experience or help
what control over circumstances there any difference for you to not in the fear now i don't think there's any difference i think you are basically said about to become a sort of intimate with your experience can i think the first first part of that as answer
practitioners of students is that we we acknowledge
greek knowledge what's happening with us
but we acknowledge it was compassion
in other words we're not are not sitting out here to become really good at being judgmental and harsh and critical are just setting out to basically open our minds as large as they can get towards whatever is occurring and open our hearts as
largest they can get towards whatever occurring so i think you work in the same way but you've become intimate with your experience because hope is is much for the one to put them out yourself in the mouth of from here you know it's it's basically i think of them as like hooks
the things that kind of like
really hookahs
another way i think of it is is we get very solid around these things very very solid so for me i'm actually sort of like
i almost have to
work not getting too excited when i find myself seeing how i'm getting solid because i find it
because they realized such an opportunity to enough
another woods i don't want to just have this life that everything goes well because i know perfectly well that they're just means is the causes and conditions have not arisen just now that would provoke my insanity
so basically when my sanity gets provoked or i value it very much
i value at very very much because our i want to see i want to be able to acknowledge that and getting hooked you know and then to practice compassion and
complete open mind with that basically to put it simply practice running how not to shut down and closed down and
so how to a very very simple way to talk about it as you learning how pain escalates and learning how pain v escalates at a very personal level you know
how confusion escalates how efficiently escalates
and
and it doesn't seem that confusion
the escalates by buying into dualistic thinking of us and in a right and wrong i'm getting very very behind a good and bad
it seems that that just causes suffering to escalate so somehow to go beyond dualistic thinking
but at the same time
jumping right into the middle of life now
if you see what i mean
so for instance i was talking with people from a buddhist peace fellowship and
and they had one fry provocative questions about humping activists
and this whole thing about power
isn't there aren't there times when you should say wrong and right and so forth kinda so we had good discussion about that and and my main feeling i realized was that
you set out to heal the suffering of the world
so suppose that's on
to try to stop the car
nuclear weapons
who nuclear power or anything
and
you set out to protest the bombing of iraq or anything
and but you do it as your path to enlightenment
so that basically huge it'll teach you everything you need to know because if you really do it as a path to enlightenment you quickly see that you just cannot do it was right wrong mind like you may mind could bad mine good guys bad guys mind
it it just will never take you anywhere to just where you already are spinning around in confusion if you if you do it that way so it challenges you greatly how to basically try to
pence stop something harmful from happening but not in a way that actually as adding more aggression for dualistic thinking
more pain to planet
so then then our practice actually gets really meal and also that know things so the girl she says somewhere there in the bucket system like encouraging students to really question really question the doorman he says that's what gives them life
i think that's sort of what i'm meaning
that it it just take something that's important to you
just like i took fear you know that was very personal but it can also be more social action you take it as a way of trying to really understand the broader way or the path to enlightenment
all the words you hear what do they really mean when you're when you come face to face with really difficult situations that push your buttons of causing you to get very very tight and tamsin
righteously indignant performance you can't just call yourself bad
that doesn't change anything
an alien you can't just call yourself right because that's what you're already doing right new righteously indignant
so
something in the middle that heals us i think and hills hills everybody heals the whole situation something in between extreme views
i'm right and wrong
virtuous in on virtuous and so hard

maybe i should teach the timeline practice
i well
when it when we were having this discussion with the buddhist peace fellowship
one of the men remarked and ah one of the problems he came up against a lot
was
not being able to feel
really connected with the pain of others particularly of the others were
car away on the other side of the world
and that he found that very painful disorder
inability to really just the kind of distance the distancing he would pale so i so we talked about tomlin in that respect
tomlin is practice it can be described in lot of ways but i waited i find it so extremely valuable is
whenever you feel stuck in any way whenever you feel pain in any way
sir perceval that takes being able to acknowledge that you're really feeling something
whenever you feel that
instead of just criticizing yourself for that or
justifying that
he do something completely different and you used that and what we usually would call poison they like passion and aggression ignorance to you're experiencing
he used that poison and medicine
and this is to say you you used it as the seed
compassion
and actually it's the seed up a prodigy to altogether the absolutely emptiness and compassion
and this is how it works
the same man at the i was practicing patient the guy kicking car and then i'm up came this anger
so at that point what he did was
he did the timeline practice in it's simplest form he simply breathed in and connected and he felt his anger it's very non-kosher sexual actually a ages simply breathe in
because you're feeling something very strong and you breathe in a take it in and you take it in for every one feeling what you feel at that moment he just breathe in for all the angry people in the hall or org
but the thing is that you
you don't really
all you really know as your own anger that's all you really now but it's your kinship with the home
our vast
network
human beings it's your kind of into your kinship with billions of people
make you breathe in her and breathe in for all of us and then you send out with your out breath you just send out some kind of compassionate
relief in any form that you want
anyhoo have any you've done mehta practice
the outbreak was like matter
the in breath and it's very interesting as telling norman i i am describe this practice to a caravan and teacher
who is of course taught matter all upon and the teacher when i described the breathing and part teacher said oh no no no not now
buddha would never have taught that
and that you know that the purpose andhra path as to pay to conversation of suffering he would never like take on more
and that was the first time just absolutely understood the sep between the hinayana and mahayana or the wider what that in transition is really about between them
all tradition the mahayana is that actually as lioness actually away
we bow sent in games are limitless and we that they've been living with me i will part of the path is to awaken our compassion
so
so on
originally
it's i don't know about originally but often or the way this practice has taught us that you you know you see the a homeless person who wished to help them so you breathing with a wish that you could get there you could in with the wish that all of their suffering and confusion would be gone and you send them out ah
now just some sense of relief or
something like that and the way to described is that it isn't that actually a person for you're doing tong land for princess if someone has some
a sickness it isn't that they're free of their sickness it said some from a lighten up somehow their mind blindness on i would say it's probably an experience of experiencing emptiness of some kind that is due to land for person and and they they begin to connect with their own sanity with their own wisdom
for their own
bigger perspective instead of being completely claustrophobic and caught up in fear shame
anger and the various things that might go along with illness score running on the street or anything when you breathe in what you're what you're taking away from people is their crossed a hobby i basically and sending out some sense of relief so that people can begin to feel some space and began
to connect with your own for the nature we with
they can basically can connect with the wisdom that they have
so it's like helping people to
trying their own wisdom and they're all true and just creating the space where that could be possible
so usually many usually it's all it is anyway often taught that way that you do it for another person but the way trump or him she taught it was that you start with what you're feeling as the kindling for the stepping stone for understanding other people's pain
and so this man in the poorest pistol who talk him out always feeling a sense of distance
i said we'll just start training in just connecting with any unwanted feelings that come up in you whatever they are just train again and again and breathing it in and failing it completely owning it completely without the words and story lines and then just sending out relief
and in that way for it actually happens over time gradually at its own speed
what actually occurs is that they are the cheated does begin to awaken it does begin to
the comfort from ignited or you know another works this a spark is enough
that's what i have pounds so incredibly inspiring for myself and working with students is is what you see is that it is in us there's no question about it because the we practice in a way that begins to
ah
where we can lighten up and relax interest in it expands it just sort of starts coming out
so that at some point
you find that you don't you don't feel this distance any longer
from the suffering of other people
and on the other hand he also don't become so overwhelmed by the suffering from other people that knew that it can't bear it
and am so somehow by doing this practice of just when you feel unwanted feelings she is breathing with a wish that all people could be free of this including yourself or even was just the idea that she just breathe in with the idea of completely running it completely
feeling and sending out relief
it's an interesting process because it awakens compassion and also or we can see how
what i would say the experience will level of emptiness each said he began to feel rider
and and you begin to feel
well as somebody said as you become lighter and lighter you can step into heavier and heavier situation
traditionally when they talk about this practice they say from that what's happening as you are completely on dissolving
i'm completely dissolving the whole mechanism of how he got function
which is to say that ah
usually they are most kind of core human realm quality is to
seek pleasure and avoid pain just episode of my next molecular level we do that and the thailand practices that you actually pick in the pain
he breathed it in and you give away and share pleasure
what saying that so when it's taught very traditionally been same reason it works is because it does such a number on eco create
it completely reverses the habitual pattern but i don't really know why of work i adjusts that seems to have a very powerful
village to open the high in the mind
huh
huh
and that's another question bugs and islam to he saw me a credit note micro so you mentioned several times during you're talking and
mommy go back created space conversion sleeping space me
right product
his idea to be
this really hope

yeah i'm always trying to find ways to talk about emptiness which also has translated openness
had the sort of like
ah to swayze to talk about it
because
it's always taught that it's inseparable from compassion
and yet that can seem so puzzling
if he just if it's just something we're studying
has the absolute you know
so i think really at the experience level
the discovery of asking is really begins with flowers space and with a great qualities of gentleness softness a kind of things were some sense of relaxation
ha
in our practice and i think it's especially helpful if we have a kind of very formal practice that has a very clear and precise form
so that in the practice itself there's a real backbone and a real of prajna in know built right into the pasture and the practice
and if we
if we
do that practice with compassion and attitude
can bring the softness in as a level per
where would you call that our attitude or hi
sort of a spirit with which we practice
then somehow we begin to awaken the interoperability of compassion and i mean it just comes out will be and understand why or how we're really not bound by anything
print the same time
ah the pain of the world
it gets gets through more and more
his personally have form on our
where some people couldn't bring myself
putting effort into practice sometimes sometimes i find it there's rigidity there he so this concept of
allowing space from rome
something
yeah me see i think that's what's so interesting is the sort of that that sort of like how it rubs against each other is that perform is
he's a real disappointment
i think ridge it would be the wrong word but it's very precise and clear and he just do it
an attitude is very compassionate and forever like
spacious and is somehow and then it starts to kind of like
then you really understand what and it means to say you know
listed here
a good buddha and are clearly isn't like uptight
huh
his earlier you said that and challenge to live together
our great practices that many of us have lived together for over twenty years
i don't know how long you could pass them together but i'd be interested i think we'd be interested to hear what are you do with as difficulty were practice since moving to read one
how you meet the interpersonal difficulties than the
serina it's funny that this quote from thomas merton where he says i know trap is very strict and government is quoted as saying how did we really don't need any austerities uses living in community is quite enough of an austerity
sam
so actually we we aren't too
we don't have we're just learning about this at the abbey
about how to live together and how to be kind to each other and how to use the whole thing is
path
and practice and
i don't have a lot to share with you because it's it's somehow it were now ten years old that in years old and i think right now that's just becoming more remained crocus it for so long we are just getting the price built-in and down and
but but definitely that's becoming more and more focus because it's clear that data a ferry over really a wonderful past is just living together and what it brings up and using that as path
so for myself i would say that
i i learned
you know next to my illness from the main teacher has been standing behind me with sticker than the community you know
and
kids kept me so honest
and
so forth so
but i do think that's the main thing is that working with it how does one work with it without it either going to too far to the degree of being a
careless
or two part of cited being realistic you know and trying to set up on these very strict rule everybody has to abide by a good rules of course court rules you know that would protect people and everything but you know how do you avoid going to the extremes and actually
keep it a living fluid thing where for each person it always comes back to
trying to be completely
keep one's heart and mind open in the present moment
so of course a lot of that is coming up with ways that people can communicate what's on their minds and group and individually
in your obvious things like that people needing to be able to look there's no sense of a lid a of repression that there's like some sense of fearlessness in the environment that if you can't say what's happening but on the other hand
but that's a dual process of learning to be honest and and also learning that you might be completely off the wall you know in the process of saying what's going on you may just hear yourself expressing year neurosis
so you can completely have to sort of everybody
i think that's the main thing as the as level of community try to provide them
structures where there's a lot of opportunity for bennett it's very individual everybody working on it sincerely themselves not blaming themselves or others and just trying to really work with it
her as suzuki roshi emphasizes again and again he served in one of the things you know what's more important to make a million dollars or do you enjoyed it moment by moment effort
trying to make a million guys and so in that way what's more important to you know like have the perfect community or the moment by moment
africa i'm trying to learn to each other
so it's the moment by moment thing and as far as i'm concerned that one thing i've learned from communities that never all comes together
the
having to constantly
thank you
i don't know the oranges are your history however you sometimes find yourself in moments or struggle sang a song from your child's we reconnected with the religion off your bra that you may not have had address but i wonder if with sometimes arises
it
just
reducing harmful
we're seeing me that i don't know what kind of some for i was raised catholic and i would say that i never seeing them
in fact i don't think we are so even had any song but
no

i
i wasn't fortunate enough to have a a catholic girlhood that was a you know com had any enlightenment in it it was really it wasn't like heavy duty
but it was definitely very very dogmatic very very conventional minded
very i didn't ever made a priest that was inspiring
and you know now that i'm an adult i've met so many
catholic priests and nuns they're just remarkable and in deeply profoundly contemplative spiritual people but as a child it was just i mean i think i knew from the time i was six i didn't want to have anything to do with this halloween because it was just always
telling you that your basic feelings were sent and
i'm not good
the in my situation my mother was catholic and my father was my father didn't particularly have any religion he came from australia and he was raised i think of pisco apparently and are high church of or something but basically he didn't have a go to
church or anything
and so at church they told you that people who aren't catholics were going to go to hell and so you know that was released from bottom line you know my product is a great guy and knew he wasn't going to go down i had a lot of catholic
great aunts who are nice
a jewish the kind of really uptight and mean and i thought now this our philosophy is just like missing the point somehow you have a good favorite parts in one good to get they were catholics they were going to be saying so so basically i never had much patience for that kind of rigid thinking
huh
but now actually
hi i'm even more
even able to be more
curious and interested even in in that kind of thinking actually could be honest with you right
i really take it seriously that he don't reject anything so i would say you know i had a reaction against that but now
i think there's so many millions of people that had i have very set mine then
according to teaching fails are completely awakened beings with nature and in our pro basically everything is worth taking an interest in it for
and the more my mind kind of closes down on it why i get interested in what's happening there
i sing the songs of know rafa
only recently learned
how work appear in the help racing these times
can imagine my creature again now that i heard him or her smiling
but i only saw once and where i saw her him was a from my balcony and the guesthouse
he would ride out on the grass pile that that were all the new roster but was going to have just out there sitting in the sun in south africa
yeah squash
the now that i'm up there in the wilderness or haven't been in whatever dangerous that
ha i can't remember actually whether it was early morning or but it wasn't dawn or dusk it was kind of you know about arm out and oh maybe five and actresses
decision to choose
here
i don't know your status first and to if you have a teacher in our do miss having a relationship or teacher person emerging prime
teachers well my teacher now is ah the sock yarn near palmer shane who is trump or chaise all the son
and
but my situation it was that when trump or a machine died i was without a teacher for a while because sock yarn is actually i've known him since he was pretty young and thirteen actually and i was at one time his meditation instructor was very funny and his
father cooper machine asked me to be as meditation instructor when he was like fifteen and i now realize that was just total set up because because of that we became very close and then it's actually developed into
or that i regard him as my teacher
but
and but when crimper machine died
ah
of course you know there are times still well where are very unexpectedly start to cry thinking of him
ah mostly with gratitude cry with gratitude
but when he died it i realized very much because of how i have been trained by him data
really what you learned from a teacher goes so far beyond their than being alive or dead you know it's if something he learned about a relationship with in reality all together and they are like your are sort of like they're both person for awhile
you actually have this relationship with them and if you can get used to surrendering again and again to them
and trump or machine was quite challenging person
ah so by by basically just knowing him over the years i guess he probably put me through every emotion and mood it i could possibly experience as a human being just in my relationship with him negative and positive feelings so every
a thing was included and i began to realize a lot about how
basically by having an unconditional relationship with him it was just a a method skillful means for beginning to have an unconditional relationship with reality altogether
and so by the time he died i i had well when he died i realized that that was something that he had given me i had me and then ah and then since that time
it's sort of like reading as line beginner's mind over and over i mean i learned so much from can permission it i haven't digested yet but i haven't understood yet and then so lisa green i have plenty
trying to understand that he taught me
but yeah i i sometimes i will just unexpectedly start to cry and it is repped gratitude that somebody really was willing to stick with me with all my crazy person ups and downs and everything and just you know hang in there and helped me
me too
understand something you know
and also i that he was going to hang in there with a lot of a greeley in the same people and didn't give up on us now
i appreciate that okay
three that you meet somebody who really does not shut down on you
pursuit of a model that it's possible to actually have radley the mind and that big a heart that
hey seth curry or crazier you get the bigger the space gets you know till after well you can like you're doing your number in a in a room that's all covered with mirrors you know
just watching yourself and you're getting weren't weren't embarrassed
and then you are judging yourself and you are being harsh but it's clear this other person was just there with you
that kind of thing
here
he prepared to say something about in and home was an
and becoming homeless
while in my like
my feeling is that that is the definition of the whole spiritual journey not just a becoming a priest door
gronk or none
but that the whole path is leaving home
once children she said as the whole spiritual path of that growing up he said you know that should be your mantra om grow up swan
the faces are basically what it means is that you become on
he don't need mommy and daddy anymore
he also don't need you not revert to go home and there's a refrigerator there with everything you want in at arts
basically i think it means the way we usually feel that we need to hold onto something
and so when we become afraid gore
when it was closing down i talk about suv is usually just really a sign that we're on the edge of something that isn't known that's why it's actually very positive probably take it as negative
and
and so we train actually in being able to step out further and further the boundaries just get wider sometimes they call it the widening the circle of compassion for a could also say basically the space in which you can prove
without feeling that you need to hold onto something
sir basically the whole path is completely letting go all the old ways of looking beyond ways of knowing
they always us
having to have things
certain
and you step out into the actual refreshing poverty of uncertainty reckless as we all know
initially it is not refreshing
industry it is terrifying
or in some way we shut down when we start to move towards it so i think the whole spiritual path is is that or like weaning ourselves from from the lip
that there is even anything to hold onto
i'm realizing more and more that we actually
what there never has been anything to hold onto that we create all of that with our mind and then it causes us to suffer greatly
and damn but on the other hand it has to be very compassionate
patient
i have to allow it to go at its own speed
can't rush it or push it or tried to like breakthrough and that gradually you just become more and more at home
nowhere no homework
so program shit once said prajna makes you homeless
so i think really that's the whole package is sam
somehow learning that
he like a bird you know when you're learning how to fly
hidden and it's a lot of the path is working with the standing on the edge of the nest you at this sort of like
thank you can't
and i think that's the crucial point is how you work for you do at that point when you're when you think you can and you're terrified i think it's that's very very important how we work with that since what we're doing is is so ah revolutionaries that you're basically going to just completely step out
out
so personally i feel like it's very important to emphasize compassion and kindness and gentleness and those things
cause i i think in our culture them
we can to you when we shut down to be very self critical and harsh and loves nature
now maybe a good time doing

on i thank you are protected and feature is all this time i hope that
this is that the last time ago
the was talk
well guess what i also hope it to have to lose me
maybe next summer yeah it's really wonderful having it really as even know what you been on retreat and i hope them and i are revolved try to leave you alone but has been great area even though you haven't lived in our his stores riding down the road and just seeing the trio or knowing that your the are has veteran
the like and church in the school
having a common and be a hundred treated that may be for a week or something hang around and person talks your hands and we'll see him that would be willing us now that there's no knives have to be nearly nine here in an excellent movie africa that's what i wanted to say it was like a cash or as a really heavy
on here with us and particularly for hey the last her days and we opened this new space mountain mountaintop and ah there you were as a deeply aware of your press and
having so i think it was a real gift for the community to open new space
was they're not the press there
thank you
you can record
already
the
this issue
the
the