Well, it's very nice to see such a big group out at Green Gulch today. We've been having so much rain. It's rained nonstop since Sunday, Saturday, last Sunday or Saturday. So I hope that all of you have been safe and that your houses haven't been flooded and no trees have fallen on your cars. And Green Gulch had a few, a few things happen. Our windmill blew down, you know, the windmill that sits in the garden. It doesn't function as a windmill, but it's kind of symbolic of Green Gulch. That blew down on some power lines and some trees blew down and a roof blew off one of

[01:13]

the little houses out here. So we've had our share of small incidents, but for the most part, the water has just been flowing out of the hills and into the creek and rushing along into the ponds and no big problems. But we have this blue sky out there, it looks so beautiful. Every time I prepare for a lecture, I find that I swing back and forth between this and that, between wanting to give a brilliant lecture that just shows my genius at Dharma inquiry and my eloquence, and not only that, but how I can move people to tears.

[02:19]

So that's one side. And then the other side is saying, you know, this brilliant stuff, it's cold. People feel it's too much, you know, if you're perfect. So just, you know, kind of slouch around, just be comfortable, just kind of, you know, be friendly and comfortable. And that's kind of going another way, that's intending, one is kind of intending to be brilliant and the other is non-intending to be brilliant, intending to be a slouch. And both of those, you know, neither one is right. So if I study it enough, I see, well, what I really want, what my ultimate concern is, is to just be myself, to just be completely myself, well, what's that?

[03:25]

And the more I look at that, I realize I've got some ideas about that, like, you know, if I'm just myself, then I suppose I should do my imitation of the Wicked Witch of the West, which, or some other things that I really think about that are, you know, me alone. But that doesn't seem like the reason you came to Green Gulch today, so. So, actually finding out what it is to be myself is a vast undertaking, and it goes from, you know, one side to the other, looking at one side and the other, and not falling off, or if I fall off, come back and know that I've fallen off. So what is it to be yourself, truly, really and truly yourself?

[04:31]

We had, right after New Year's, we have a retreat every year at Green Gulch. We close down Green Gulch, we don't have any visitors, and the guest house is closed and no conferences, and the kitchen doesn't prepare meals, so they have a chance to have a break and we have a retreat. Usually I kind of dread these retreats. This one was particularly enjoyable. We started out the first day with a woman named Sarah Ludlow, who might even be here in the works with, she does theater, she's an actress, and she did theater games with us, and one of the things she did was have us choose a partner just randomly, and then your partner would show you three different gestures that they felt were really themselves, and then you copied them, and then you got up on the stage and said, I am, you know, whoever the

[05:35]

person was, and then you did these mannerisms or gestures, and, you know, as we watched each person imitating the friend, you know, some people just hit it right on the nose, it was so funny, they looked exactly like that person, but, you know, with a different face and a different body, but there was something about it, and we got such a kick out of that, it was so funny. I got a very bad headache imitating my partner, but that was actually, we both decided that was just what should have happened, because that's how she was feeling too. That was the first day. The second day, Kaz Tanahashi came and did calligraphy with us. He's the wonderful person who's worked with us for years on translating Buddhist texts and working with the abbots, and he does that one brush stroke calligraphy, maybe you've

[06:40]

seen that, it's a book. Anyway, he came and we all had sumi ink and rice paper and brushes, and we learned to draw, to calligraph characters. He brought us the character healing, and a lot of different ways to do it, and then we each tried it out. And then he came around and actually put his hand over our hand and said, you know, just let me lead you, and then he would calligraph the character. And the intelligence, you know, having this intelligence, intelligent hand over my hand as the pause and the shift and the move and the circle, it was so far beyond what I had been dabbling around with my brush, the intelligence that was there, and the rhythm and the nuance, it was just wonderful.

[07:41]

He handled us very beautifully, he's a great handler. And the next day we did communications workshop, there's a group that's been meeting out here pretty regularly, working on their communication skills, and they presented something and we broke into small groups and basically did the exercise of what's sometimes called active listening, and we call it looping, where you listen very carefully to the person and then you say back what it is they said, and if you got it, they say you did it, you know, and then they do back and forth. And somehow I felt that that exercise also was very much like this intelligent calligraphy, there was, as the people spoke, as each person spoke, there was a rhythm and pause and nuance and inflection and tone of voice and smile that told the story as well as the words,

[08:45]

and if you were there, if you were present, you got the real gist of what they were saying and could say it back, maybe in slightly different words, but you'd get it. So they were very similar in some ways, these two days of calligraphy and listening for me. And then the last evening we had a fellow named Doug Goodkin come, who does, teaches music to children, and we had percussion, lots of percussion instruments, and he did circle dances with us, and for whatever reason, the group was just ready to do this with full, wholehearted joy, and we used the zendo, which was, we've done that for some square dances and things before, and we danced and danced for like two hours. One particular dance, I think it was called Johnny Lay Down Your Comfort, and he had this

[09:51]

little piece of cloth, and he'd give it to someone, they'd dance into the center, and they'd lay down the cloth, and then you'd fold up the corners, and then you'd do the, a certain action, and everybody copied you, and then you picked up the little cloth and gave it to somebody else, and they came in doing their little dance, and it was just wild, I mean, to see what people came up with for dances in the center, and I've never actually been at a Zen Center event where people just gave themselves so fully to such a thing. And afterwards, someone said, what it reminded them of was when they lived in Africa and taught, there was a dance that African children did at this school, and she couldn't for about, she lived there for about six months, and she could not figure out what the dance was all about, that someone would be in the middle, and they'd be all around and kind of cheering them on, but she couldn't figure out what the, what they were doing was not particularly skillful or fabulous or difficult steps, and after time, she realized that what the child

[10:56]

in the center, the one who won, was the one who was most themselves, and most just naturally being, so it didn't matter if it was brilliant execution of steps or trying to be anything, just naturally expressing yourself. And that's kind of what this dance of Johnny lay down your comfort was like, I think. And each person, each person was out there just doing it. And while these people were dancing, I realized that I didn't care so much, not that I even know the latest dances, but I didn't care what it was they were doing, I was just appreciating it. And for, in the years, like in high school, I remember, I danced until I got to this one

[11:59]

high school where some kids really knew how to dance. I mean, they were really good, and I never danced again after that. After I saw what I thought real dancing was, I just couldn't dance. It was too embarrassing to not meet that perfect, you know, really had style and soul, you know, and I didn't, from my viewpoint, my judging of it, and so I could never dance. But watching this dance with everyone leaping about, and I leaped about too, I felt I was not, I didn't know what the latest dances were or what was in style or, it was something beyond that. I had no way to judge one way or another. It was just, are they who they are? You know, that was it. Recently someone was talking with me about how they felt after

[13:03]

this last Sashin we had in December, and she was saying she, the word she used was love, that she, everybody she looked at, she just loved them, even if she didn't particularly get along with that person before or they were annoying or something, but they just were revealing who they are, and she just appreciated them and didn't judge them, didn't have any way by which to judge them. They just who, they just were who they were. And this being able to be with things without judging, without saying whether that's a cool dance step or not a cool dance step, just appreciating our life is, I don't know what it is, it is what it is. But if we're not there, if we're falling off from one

[14:07]

side to another, it's very painful. You can't dance, you know, you go to a party, you just can't dance. It's pretty painful. And certain people you can't sit by, and there's a lot of arranging and avoiding and going over here and going over there, unless there's some way to appreciate things as they are. And sometimes this is called being unstained, and this is a book that Dogen Zenshi, the Japanese Zen master in our lineage, in a chapter in this, this is Kazutani Hashi edited this book and translated Dogen with lots of students at Zen Center years ago. And in this fascicle, which are these little chapters

[15:10]

called Only Buddha and Buddha, he talks about what it is to be unstained, unstained being not this dualistic separation of this and that, unstained. Now it's interesting in this, he actually says, what is it like to be unstained? That's something he says, asking this question. And recently I was reading a book where the author was talking about metaphor and how when we really care about, want to know something, we'll say to our friend, well what was it like? What was it like to be at Green Gulch during that storm? And then we say what it was like, and that gets closer, you know, than we want to know what it was like. So he says, what is it like to be unstained? Being unstained is like meeting a person and not

[16:17]

considering what he or she looks like. Also it is like not wishing for more color or brightness when viewing flowers or the moon. So our human tendency is to many times look at someone and right away it's like we do a whole bunch of stuff around them, considering what they look like, you know. Meeting a person and not considering what he or she looks like, just meeting a person, what's that like? It's being unstained. Or looking at a garden and wishing, gee, I wish those were a little more purpley, just a little bit dim for my taste. You know, kind of always, it's always not quite right. This is the pain of being unstained.

[17:24]

Picking and choosing and this and that. Always this unfulfilled longing and pining away for things to be a little different, just a little better. This past week, by the way, I didn't actually celebrate it, but I marked the 20th anniversary of my ordination on January 11th. And that occurred to me just now because I had just been reading a book yesterday that I got, I received around that time, called The Unknown Craftsman by a Japanese person named Soetsu Yanagi. And he started the folk craft museum of Tokyo, I think, and the whole folk craft appreciation in Japan. And he writes these

[18:30]

beautiful essays about, not exactly aesthetics, but about the practice of being with objects, I think, maybe I put it that way. And the book has some beautiful plates in it, color and black and white plates, of articles that were made, crafts of different types, pottery and woodwork, lathe work, and cloth, not tapestry, but weavings and different things, stitchery. And all of these items are very beautiful in a way that is not necessarily the opposite of ugly. They have a beauty and integrity, and they're all unsigned. These are not artists' work. They're all unsigned, which is why it's called The Unknown Craftsman, because they're

[19:30]

made by people who didn't have this idea that they were going to make this beautiful thing that would probably get into this museum, you know. And there was no idea, intellectual ruminations about this particular object being seen one way or another. It was a useful, most of these things were useful, like there's this rain, it's called a rain cape, that's a woven straw with all these tears. It's woven like a collar, and then all these tears of straw that go down would have been perfect for Green Gulch, because I'm sure each layer just sheds onto the other until it's all the way down. It was a farmer's rain cape. And these were made to be used, you know, they're utilitarian. And this pottery talks about these craftsmen, what their life was like. They worked hard, morn till night. They were uneducated, poor. They just did this work, they had the kiln going, they had to

[20:37]

keep turning these pots out, get them used. Many of these were rice bowls that were later on appreciated by the Japanese tea masters for their unexcelled beauty, but a beauty not this kind of brilliant, perfect, hard, unapproachable, perfect beauty, but a beauty that comes out of just the materials and the natural feeling of it, the heft, the glaze is not quite perfect, it runs off and it's a little bit out of kilter. The Japanese tea masters realized, and this is a quote, the heart's ease from gentle deformation. We have, there's some ease of heart to see something like that. The heart's ease of gentle deformation.

[21:43]

This is very wonderful and comfortable and relieving to see an object like that. Very different from seeing something that's kind of perfectly perfect. You may not feel you have relation to it. So, these objects of beauty were made without the idea of beauty in mind. They were made before beauty and ugly came into being. They were made with wholehearted, just fully, actively being produced with no idea in mind about it being appreciated or sought after necessarily useful items. And this one particular ware that he talked about have these beautiful drawings on them that you would think each one is executed with

[22:46]

such skill. You would think some wonderful artist did this, but it turned out that they were done mostly by children, mostly by ten-year-old boys who were probably made to go over to the kiln and do this work. Probably didn't want to do it, but they were shown the strokes. They did hundreds of them over and over and over until there was no idea. They drew animals that they'd never seen and characters for which they didn't know the meanings, but they just did it. And each one, according to this man, Mr. Yanagi, each one is equally beautiful. There's nothing from this pottery that's ugly. Each one has this life to it and beauty. So then he goes on in this essay that Japanese potters who really appreciated this, they

[23:51]

had the eye for this, they understood the heart's ease of seeing this and they wanted to use it in the tea rooms. And then potters began to copy this, more artistic potters. And of course then these pots, then they began to take on a self-consciousness. They never equaled these, mostly Korean, he's talking about Korean work, because this idea creeps in of ugly and beautiful and making irregularities to make it more beautiful because irregularities are beautiful, right? Rather than just throwing it and the wheel is the way it is and your materials are the way they are and it comes out that way. Worried about it. But to actually put in some irregularities, well that irregularity is pretty good. They have, you can smell it,

[24:58]

you can get the scent from these works that they have self, self is in view there. It's not before the understanding of beauty and ugly where beauty and ugly don't mean anything, this is after those pots were made. Well this one pot, which is supposed to be the most beautiful tea bowl on a pot, and it has, that's the first color plate in the book, and it's this brown and it's got this dripping, a little off, and he asked to see it, it's in a monastery now, and it was taken out, it was in five separate wooden boxes, you know, undo, and they got down, it was all wrapped in wool and then purple silk, and then they took it out, you know, and it was this, what was it, you know, this, who made it? And they made it to eat rice out

[25:58]

of, you know, hundreds of years ago. No idea that it eventually would end up in five wooden boxes wrapped in silk. It's ironic, isn't it? So, to be unstained, and to not have this, the kind of smell of this and that, and adding for effect, you know. We, this reminds me of this smell that we used to have around Green Gulch, which I don't know if you've noticed the absence of it. Some of you may have, who've been coming here for years, but there used to be this very, very bad smell, a stench actually, it was

[27:00]

a stench, that would come into the Zendo, waft into the Zendo during sittings and lecture, and it, and when we redid the Zendo, we thought, let's get rid of this stench, and we never were able to, we tried. It was coming from over there somewhere. Do you all, does anybody remember that smell? Yes? Show, I'd like to see a show of hands for people who remember that. Okay. Anyway, it was very bad, and we were told for years, by experts, there was nothing to be done about this. This was because, you know, all these buildings had been built in the creek bed. George Wheelwright rerouted the creek, but this is the creek bed, and there's nothing to be done, stagnant water, this, that, and the other, anaerobic activity, so you're going to have to just live with it. Now, on the one hand, that's, you know, the phrase good for your practice, you know, it's like, okay, unpleasant smell due to, you know, nose

[28:04]

consciousness, beware of hate, you know, you can work on it that way. And also, we were told once that Zen Center practice places are too nice, they're too nice for people, and so then you end up getting people who want to be here because it's a beautiful place, and the food is good, rather than, you know, understanding their true nature. So I thought, for a while, I thought, okay, it's good that we have this bad smell, because then it might keep people who aren't really serious about practicing from coming, you know, so that's okay. But I still, I was never comfortable with it, and the people who had to live near there and work in the offices near there had to deal with it. Anyway, one of our students who was working on maintenance for about three months decided that he wasn't going to believe what the experts said, he wasn't going to go along with that, and he was going to follow

[29:08]

his nose and try to figure out what was going on. And he didn't care what people had said for years, you know, and so he very step-by-step went, and with practice period, last practice period, they dug up all these different places, and he finally found a broken pipe that had been broken for who knows how long, and it was all coming from there, and we fixed it, and there's no more smell. So this following, you know, being on track and non-distractible from what the experts are telling you, no, no, it's creek bottom, da-da-da, just taking that information and going ahead step-by-step and following your nose, it's a very inspiring and inspirational, actually, and was very helpful. Which leads me to something else

[30:17]

I wanted to talk about having to do with sense of, with scent, scent. Now you may feel this has nothing to do with anything that I've talked about, but it really does, you'll see. There's a wonderful book called Adam's Task, written by a woman named Vicki Hearn, who's a dog trainer and a horse trainer and animal lover, and she has a chapter about dogs, tracking dogs. Now, the scent, the sense of smell, the sense of scent, the sense of sense of smell, it's not smell, it's the ability to scent that dogs have is kind of an inconceivable thing. We have no way of understanding it, because our sense of smell is very kind of primitive. We can smell major things like stenches coming up from broken pipes, but

[31:19]

she likens the ability, the dog's way of scenting, as compared to humans, is the ability as if you were to draw the map of the human brain and then the map of the surface of an egg and compare the two. One is incredibly complex and inconceivable, and the other is, you know, the surface of an egg is, it's pretty kind of obvious what's going on there. So she trains tracking dogs who go after lost children and, you know, murderers and things. The scent, the ability to scent is so strong, they can do things like, there were some tests done with tracking dogs where they laid a trail and they had to find it, you know, by scent, and I think this was done by the U.S. Army, and then they poured gasoline all

[32:25]

over the track, this wide, you know, through fields and everything, and they burned and they put inorganic, inorganic material all over, and formaldehyde, and the person laying the track jumped into rivers and snorkeled underwater and came up on the other side, switched shoes, you know, into sterilized shoes, and they could not, these dogs tracked and found the item, they could find it. So their abilities are inconceivable, they're beyond, we don't know what it is that is happening, it's beyond our ability to conceive of what it is they're on to, you know, what track they're following. And yet they, between the handler, which is what she calls herself, the trainer, the handler, and the dog, there's a conversation going on, and they are, and without this conversation, the dog won't

[33:29]

learn to track, it has to do with their relationship with their trainer or handler, and more often the ability not to track has to do with a mistake of the trainer rather than the dog. So we have need of training and need of handlers, you know, people who put their hand over yours and move it and pause and go and breathe and round and whoop, to make a character, and who are with you and have a conversation with you when you're after something that you can't see, nor can the other person see it, it's the inconceivable. The handler has no idea what the dog is scenting, they just say, go find it, find what, they don't even know

[34:36]

what is, a human being cannot conceive of what it is that dog is after, what could it possibly be? And yet they have a conversation together, like the dog might say, am I looking for that thingamajig that's kind of like the other one that smelled like that one? Yeah, yeah. And off they go, bounding with courage. The dog, a good tracking dog has courage and they will, even if they're starving or if they're on track, if they're doing their work, they will not be dissuaded. She tells of instances where various dogs who love to fight, you know, have a good old rough and tumble or are hungry, they just, you can put stakes in front of them and you can do anything and they will just stay until their job is done. Accomplishing something that's difficult is satisfying, it's so satisfying for humans

[35:40]

and dogs, we love it, to really do what is difficult together, you know. So a good tracking dog has courage, courage to wholeheartedly jump into the job and there's no, she says there's no adjective, you just have to say, that dog is a good tracking dog. That's all you have to say and handlers will know what you mean. You don't have to say anything more. Or you might say, is a real good tracking dog. But that's all you have to say and you can say the same thing about a Zen student. That so and so is a Zen student, you know, they follow their nose, you know, and they don't even know what it is. It's inconceivable. One cannot conceive of what it is you're even on track with, you know, it's not within your

[36:43]

powers of conceptions. But you and your handler, you know, which is all the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas as well as your Dharma buddies, you know, are in conversation about this and so with courage you just stay on track. And Dogon has something to say about this, so in this same fascicle, Only Buddha and a Buddha, we've been talking about fish quite a bit. Abbott, Ten Chin, Red gave a talk yesterday all about fish and his talk last Sunday was about fish and it's just coming up all over and of course it came up for my lecture too in the last part of this same fascicle. There has been a saying since olden times, no one except a fish knows a fish's heart. No one except a bird follows a bird's trace. And it goes

[37:50]

on to think that no one knows a fish's heart or a bird's trace is mistaken. No one except a fish knows a fish's heart. No one except a bird follows a bird's trace. So when the fish try to go up through the dragon gate, which is, it's this place on this river in China that when the fish go up, they're supposed to turn into dragons when they get through it and they go through this gate. But when the fish try to go up through the dragon gate, they know one another's intention and have the same heart. So when the fish try to go up through the dragon gate, they know one another's intention. And again, when a bird flies in the sky, beasts do not even dream of finding or following its trace. When a bird is flying, you know, the animals on the ground, they're not conceiving of what it's

[38:57]

like for a bird to fly through the sky. They can't even dream of following its trace. However, a bird can see traces of hundreds and thousands of small birds having passed in flocks or traces of so many lines of large birds having flown south or north. So Buddhas are like this. You never know a Buddha's trace when you're not a Buddha. So only a Buddha and a Buddha. This pottery, this tea bowl, Mr. Yanagi was saying, the tea bowl sits there and seems to say, I don't want anything. I don't need anything. Come on over here and be saved. Just be yourself. And that's what he was saying.

[40:03]

When you clarify that there's nothing to be disliked or longed for, then the original face is revealed by your practice of the way. There goes my sutra cover. So when you clarify that there is nothing... Thank you. When there is nothing to be longed for or changed, then you reveal your original face in the practice of the way. Okay. Thank you very much.

[41:17]

May our intention... Would anyone like to talk about something? Would anyone like to bring something up, talk about something? Ask a question? Okay. What's at the root of our not being ourselves? Ignorance. Ignorance is what comes up. We actually... Yeah. Ignorance. Did you hear what he said? He asked... Yeah. And I said, ignorance, which is the kind of root problem. But what that ignorance is, as a result of our not being

[42:22]

ourselves, we actually are actually ourselves, but we have all these thoughts that are looking somewhere else as if we aren't. Thoughts and words that are always talking about that we aren't. So we actually can't help but being ourselves. The problem is that we think a lot about ourselves. Barbara? Isn't it always also... I mean, I've been sort of going to support groups and a lot of what came up is that when we grow up, when we are children, that we are in a way always thinking we are not good enough the way we are. So, you know, it's in us that we think we are not good enough, so we, you know, always deny that we should be different, we should be better, and that that is hard, that the way we are is not good enough, so we...

[43:23]

Yes, we learn... Yes, there's all sorts of people telling us and things we read and school teachers and family that are always telling us we're not, you know, we should be different and we're not good enough. Yes, so that adds to it. That adds to it. And yet, you know, if you sit still, you know, even as a kid you might be able to, I mean, I think it's true, kind of know something else, you know. So this is... I feel like as we're talking the energy is kind of going down, down, down. Yes? This is our problem, this is kind of our human life problem, which is often why people start sitting... It's going to get really hot in here pretty soon. I don't know if we want to open the top ones. They're really sticky, but... This is often why people begin to practice. They have lots of thoughts and

[44:36]

words and people telling them that they're not okay and that they're... One person once described it to me as she had to be the perfection soldier. This was kind of her inner image, perfection soldier. She had to do everything right. It was the most demanding of lives that she had set off, internally set up for herself, perfection soldier. I just saw her the other day, actually. I hadn't seen her in about 15 years. I saw her in the grocery store. And she came up to me and said, do you remember me? And I almost said, perfection soldier. But I was able to look back. I got her name. But that's what I remember about her. And the weight of that, you know, perfection soldier. And then these negative thoughts. In fact, sometimes people will say all they have is negative thoughts. And if someone, like they read in Buddhist scripture, you know, or they hear some good news, you know, that they are actually fully enlightened just the way they are or something like that, you

[45:38]

know, it's like terrifying because they have this raft that they're riding on of all negative things. And they're very familiar with that. We get very familiar with that. And that's all we know. And anybody saying that it's something different is kind of scary. You know, we often cling to what is familiar just because it's familiar, not because it's wholesome or it's helping us or tending towards, you know, benefit of all beings or anything. It's just familiar. So let's hold on. So sitting, you know, allows you to kind of note this kind of thinking, you know, and that it's what is it? Well, it's thinking. It's these thoughts. It's not necessarily true, even though you might emotionally feel like, yes, it's all true. I am a worthless person. I'm not, you know. But if you can actually

[46:40]

see, these are just these thoughts. They have a beginning, they have a middle, and they have an end. You know, and then there's another one. It kind of loses, begins to lose the power to kind of keep you marching, you know, to the beat of the perfection soldier, you know. So sitting down is very helpful. Yes, Laura. As parents and teachers, we usually feel responsible for training children or helping them develop self-discipline or discipline. And could you say something about how we can do that and at the same time encourage them to be themselves without letting this kind of thing on them Yeah. Well, what occurs to me is this dog trainer, you know, and how she works with these dogs. Not that I'm necessarily equating, but the joy that they have in working together

[47:46]

when she asks for the difficult, you know, and they're able to do it. The joy the two of them have together, and I think you know that as a teacher. Laura teaches school to the third graders. When a child that doesn't think they can do it, but they actually do it, but you've got to be rooting for them, you know, you know it that they can. And so that's the conversation between the two. If the child, I think, feels like you're in conversation with them, you're, they'll find their courage if you are encouraging, you know, quality heart and wholeheartedness. Courage is just wholeheartedly doing it. So if you, I don't know, you know, how one does that without taps into the fact that they are wonderful, you know, without your, you shouldn't be the way you are. You should be

[48:48]

this other way. How one does that is skill and means, right? And I think some people are better than others, to tell you the truth. One thing I just thought of is that the teachers I've had that have been the most inspiring were teachers who worked themselves. You know, so many partly by marriage, for example, or a friend's example, fully made themselves as helpful teachers. Yeah, yeah. Who was the author of that Adam's Task? Adam's Task is written by Vicki Hearn, H-E-A-R-N. She's a philosopher. She teaches, can't remember what university, and horse trainer and dog trainer, and she, I really highly recommend this book. It was in the New Yorker excerpts of it a number of years ago, chapters, and then it came out in book form. You used it very well, I think, to illustrate what you were trying to tell us about the capacities

[49:53]

of the dog and our capacities that are untapped. Thank you. Go ahead. I really enjoyed part of your lecture, well I enjoyed them all, but my favorite part was where you talked about dance, and I started thinking about this, that oftentimes we can hide what's going on in our head, but the beauty of dance is that everybody can look at it. I was wondering if after you had that experience of being, you know, kind of shut down from being able to do it for a number of years, and then you found the courage or the, you know, whatever it took to do it, how, you know, how that might have affected your practice or how you started thinking about it. Are you a dancer? Do you dance? Well, no. Except yes. Yes, yes I do. Well, you know, I had, I reflected on it after the fact, after doing, going out

[51:00]

in the center and doing my thing and all. Afterwards I thought, this is the first time that I've done such a thing with people. I've danced around by myself since 1962 or something like that, you know, I mean it was like junior high, you know, I can remember doing the twist and just feeling like everybody was doing the twist, and then I saw people who really knew how to do the twist, and then I closed down, you know. So afterwards, while I was doing it, I wasn't saying like, okay, here goes the first dancing, and I didn't think about it at all. I was taken up with the event, you know, singing and watching everybody. I was just, I was not ruminating about it, you know, I was just singing away and doing these movements, copying everybody's movements and doing the game, you know. Afterwards I thought about it, and how it affected my practice was I thought, oh, what did I think, something like, did that drop away? I mean, I have a question. I don't know if there

[52:02]

were a real party. This was kind of a setup. It was a children's game, you know. It was kind of, I don't know if, what would happen in a real party situation, although it was a party. In this dog trainer chapter of Adam's Task, she quotes various other dog trainers that she's devoted to and has read their work. They're all kind of philosophical works in some way, but anyway, this one dog trainer says, and this relates to your question, I think, too, Laura, that the trainer, a dog that comes to full maturity, the difference between a mature dog and what passes for maturity in American life, which I thought was very interesting, is very different, you know. And there was a quote from Corinthians about, now I put away childish things, you know that? And it said that this dog trainer

[53:05]

was saying, people put away the wrong childish things and keep other childish things going, you know. But dogs don't put away the wrong childish things. They do keep childish things like frolicking and running around like a puppy sometimes and things like that, but there's other things that, they don't put away the wrong childish things. So anyway, the maturity of the trainer or the handler can meet the dog's, you know, so how do I, what was the, what's the dancing, yeah. Oh, childish things. It was like, because it was supposedly a childish thing, I entered into it, you know, for a fun thing. But just right now I was thinking, I perhaps put away the wrong childish things, you know. Like, oh, I don't, I'm not going to dance anymore. Well, that's putting away the wrong things. Why drop that out of your life? It's so marvelous, you know. So that's, that was the stream

[54:11]

of consciousness there. Ed Brown, who I listen to occasionally, he brings up that, and I have a problem with something he said, where one of the things he said is, I am not my thoughts, because I constantly fight not to be carried away by my thoughts, but I have a hard time relating to that thing or person, whatever, that isn't my thoughts. It's not what I'm getting at. I'm not, I'm saying I'm not my thoughts, or I try to try and hold on to that thought, that I'm not my thoughts. I have a problem with myself. But that area that, where you're not your thoughts, I'm having a hard time relating to. Okay. Let me see if I have this. So, Ed Brown, in a lecture on a tape or something like that, said some quote from a scripture, maybe, or his own... Well, he was talking about a gentleman that had a severe handicap, and as he was talking

[55:11]

about this gentleman, he asked him how he felt, and he says, well, I'm feeling fine, but the body is not feeling fine. Uh-huh. And then Ed goes into saying, you know, that, you know, you're not your body, you're not your thoughts, you're not, etc. Yes. And it struck me, because that's usually my problem, or about anyone else's. It's my thoughts that are my problems, it's anything else that's a problem. It's my thoughts that I create out of what happens. Uh-huh. Okay. And if I'm not my thoughts, I have a problem of, then, what is there, or who am I, if I'm not my thoughts? Yes. Because my thoughts come from me. Okay. Well, we, I and we do have a strong, exceedingly strong belief, you know, that we are our thoughts, you know, and especially if you're thinking things like, I am a worthless person, you know, you feel terrible, and you think, they're going to kick me out of here

[56:15]

if they own, if they knew who I really was, I'd be out of here in a minute, you know, because I'm this, so we are very identified with our thoughts, and we believe in them. But to say, I am not my thoughts, is to look at what is self, you know, what is, what is the teaching around self, or not self, in Buddhism. And we can start with, well, there's all sorts of, you know, meditations on such a thing, where you actually, you know, the skandhas, you know, you break yourself into the five heaps, or the five rivers, and you have rupa skandha, which is the skandha of form, and in rupa skandha are all the material things, like the eye organ, ear, nose, tongue, and body organ, okay, so you have these organs which aren't the eyes, and the ears, and the nose, and the mouth themselves, they're

[57:18]

the, they're called organs, because they're, they're like the faculty, or capacity to see, or capacity to hear, capacity to smell, capacity to feel, is more like it, it's not the nose, the nose is kind of a, a thing, you know, a big, but the capacity, so that's, that's, yeah, so that's, so supposedly everybody's psychophysical event is made up of these five skandhas that flow together from causes and conditions, so one is these capacities, you know, and the other is, and this is kind of, can be a leap, but anyway, so you've got this nose capacity, and then you, you have a smellable, you know, which is this fabulous thing, I hope you all passed around, this is growing somewhere out there, so you have this capacity

[58:23]

to smell, and then you have smellables out there, okay, and there's a whole group of other parts of the first skandha, rupa, there's seeables, you know, there's tasteables, touchables, hearables, and smellables, okay, that's all part of this thing that some people call you, you know, you call you, and then once this capacity to smell, is this boring you? Once this capacity to smell has contact with the smellable, then smell consciousness arises, okay, which actually occurs in another skandha, the skandha of consciousness, so you've got these, you know, like you all out here are, to me, right now, are visibles, now if I sort of grabbed a hold of Jeanette and took a bite out of her, she would become a tasteable,

[59:27]

and if she laughs, then she's a hearable, you know, but what is Jeanette, you know, and it's Bill, right, what, so the thoughts, you know, so you have these thoughts, which also are, let's see, so in terms of the skandhas, for example, that smellable that's going around, and if you were from Mars, and you took a look at that and smelled, you wouldn't know, is it a violet, do you think, is it a violet, who knows, a purple flower, you know, you wouldn't know anything, it'd be this, you would have no names for it, you may not even be able to distinguish it from something else on the table, because you don't know it, you don't name it, you don't see it, but we tend to name it with another one of the skandhas which is a together maker, and it goes through our file, and it says purple flower, you know,

[60:32]

that's a thought, so, and then the last time you got a purple flower, your, you know, your old boyfriend gave it to you, and then all this sadness arises when you see it and smell it, it's like, oh, the whole thing all comes back now, and oh, why did we break up, and that's the whole other skandha, that's samskara skandha, all these emotions and, you know, anger, and oh, I wish he wasn't going out with her, and that all comes up under another skandha, that's another type of thing, and then there's consciousness of the whole thing, so did I get them all, rupa, samnya, samskara, vijnana, and I'm missing one, form, feelings, vedana is, there's only three, pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral, so, you know, even before you realize that it was from your old boyfriend, there was unpleasant feeling that came up when you smelled it, oh, and then you put it together, so, what is you, you

[61:45]

pick out of that, besides this whole swirl of things that's happening, and old memories that are coming up, and seeables and hearables that change your thoughts, you know, you hear a screech outside, what happened, you know, you have a whole body event that happens when you hear a scream, so, to say that I am my thoughts, it's very, it's kind of narrow, you know, it's not big enough, it's not vast enough, and of course, when you see that, when the skandhas, you know, the sutra says that all five skandhas are empty, so all these things that we've been talking about are empty of inherent existence, they all come together by causes and conditions, you know, they arise, and these causes and conditions are so vast, and so, the entire universe has come together for this one moment now, it's like you, there is nothing that you could take away that would not change the way things

[62:51]

are, so it's so vast, and we get caught in this box, you know, of, you know, I'm a worthless person is a real good one, or something like that, when there's, the understanding of how this works, you know, is seeing how, not the thing itself, but seeing how it all works is, is understanding Buddhadharma. Anyway, so we are very much up, you know how people are sort of head people, you know, it's like from about here down, it's like, hmm, what? Anything going on down there? So, I think, not that you are, because you're sort of a body person, but, you know, to sit yourself down, settle yourself, and see what's going

[63:51]

on, you know, look, turn the light back, see what's going on, is, is training, you know, it's part of our training. Yes? I was just thinking while you were saying, when you were talking about that, you say, I am my thoughts, then you're not seeable, hearable, touchable, tasteable to anybody. I mean, it's probably the most isolating thing, because the one thing that no one can know, unless you express it through one of those senses, is what your thoughts are. So, that, you know, you would be invisible to everyone else, you would be part of everything else. Yes. Yeah. I, I wanted to ask something, and I don't really have it formulated very well, and it has to do with who, who I am, who anyone is. This weekend I found out that my mother has cancer, and I spoke to her last night, and she said, I'm

[64:58]

still the same person I was before, and all of a sudden it feels like she's seeing everything differently, and I'm seeing everything differently too, and it's almost like our roles are reversed in a way. And it's interesting to come face to face with that, and you start to think of who you are, and who she is, and I feel all the, you know, the ways to really get into it, and all the negative stuff, and now everything has just sort of fallen away, and come back to this essential whatever it is, you know. And it's, it's frightening, but it's also kind of wonderful at the same time. I think it takes that sometimes, to be able to let all those thoughts and emotions and that garbage drop away. And I, I'd like to know how to, how for myself to get through this, and how to help her get through this

[66:06]

to be, I mean, it's another part of life and process, and that's the, really that's the only way I can deal with it at all. And some members of my family are really angry, and you know, all this other stuff is happening, and some people are being real strong, and everybody's got their own way of dealing with it, and I, I want to be more in touch with her, and more in touch with myself in this, and how to, you know, get through it. I want to learn something from it, and I'm just kind of at a loss of how to do that. So anything that you can tell me, I can help. You are in touch. Yeah, thank you very much for your words. When you said that everything, all the garbage, you know, just dropped away, and there's this essential thing, you know, that you, that, you know, it's so sad that that happens often at this kind of crisis time, when someone's

[67:13]

on their deathbed, you know, or terrible accident, it's like, oh, you know, the wasted stuff, you know. So to see that, that's why the meditation on death is, is a very, it puts everything in focus, it makes everything very clear, that you have no time to waste. You just, this is your time with this person, and make it, be present, don't waste a moment of it. And to, so, so with death on your shoulder, or old age and sickness, or whatever it is, you, you come together with people, and it's a, if you can, if you can not avert, not pull away from the pain, because there will be, part of why people can't stay with this is because it hurts, you know. So knowing that it's, that it will hurt, there'll be pain involved in seeing various changes that might be physically painful, or, you know, changes in the way

[68:18]

your mother looks, or whatever, it's like to not avert, to not turn away, and be there, just be yourself, but be there, you know. That's, that will be enormous help to her, because, and to you, so, and to everybody around you, you know, who can't. I, I think that's right, because she, when I talked to her before this, and she said that the hardest thing about this for her was telling the rest of us, you know, and, and I just said, look, we're all in this together, and, because she wanted to like, she didn't want it to hurt anyone else, so, that's kind of what I decided to do, but it's, believe me, it's brand new shit to me, I don't know how to do any of this. Yeah. Thank you. I think one of the things, that my father, when I was 21, brought me a Buddhist matchmaker,

[69:18]

I know that's an old story, I think probably, it's like mustard seed, I think everyone in the world probably has some sense, and it is a shame that we have to, we wait for that moment, to find what we need to find. I was thinking about Laura's question, about what you shared when you talked about dancing, when you were young, and that's, it's very touching and very familiar to me, that sense of comparing and then shutting myself down. The poet W.B. Yeats has a, from one of his critical writings, there's a line that's always stuck with me, he says, beauty is an accusation, and in a way, it's the same thing that you're saying. And I was thinking about what Laura had said, and I think, in another way, when he says that beauty is an accusation, beauty is acting as a parent, a parent, a critical parent, who withholds love until we meet this standard, and we internalize that, we start thinking constantly,

[70:21]

unless I can do that, I'm not worthwhile, unless I can do that, I'm not lovable. And that's how that perfectionism and that judgmental mind comes into play, at least that's the way I see it. Whether it's my actual parents, who I think did, my parents did do that to some degree. They made me, somehow, they evoked in me this need to be something, to perform, to be worthwhile and lovable, and if I don't perform to that same degree, I'm not lovable, I'm not worthwhile. That's part of that whole parenting thing, I think. And what I was thinking about Laura's question is just that it's somehow giving our children the direction and guidance they need without in any way linking that to love. Somehow, just keeping those two things separate somehow or another. And we get caught up in this thing about... I mean, another thing I love to think about on it is, this psychotherapist says, in Buddhism we have a solution for low self-esteem, we also have a solution for high self-esteem.

[71:22]

Ultimately, I think that's the answer. An Asian Roshi who I love a lot says, our job is to network with all our other selves. Not to work out our separations and our power relationships, or any of this other stuff. It's simply to see that each person in this room, we're all... we're all reflecting each other, and we're all a part of each other in some real sense. That's an amazing insight. That's really all there is, in a sense, in some way. I really appreciated the way you were talking about all that this morning. A lot of that was being evoked just by the way you were presenting this. Thank you. Thank you. Say it again, beauty... Beauty is an accusation. Beauty is an accusation. Yeah, I think beauty that's opposed to the ugliness, that dualistic beauty, yeah, is an accusation. There was somebody over here. Yes.

[72:26]

I've just been listening to everybody talking, and I lived in Asia for a while, and studied there, and what I'm noticing is that it really is a silhouette between the East and the West. It really is. And when I've lived in Asia, there is a sense of ritual in life, and the way they move through life is so very natural, in my experience anyway. And I just see a tremendous amount of suffering, certainly with myself, when I have to analyze everything to this. And I think as a Western culture, it's easy to do that. And I just see a certain amount of suffering in trying to get everything in the mind

[73:33]

so perfectly compartmentalized in the mind. And what experiences in Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, China, is just so much more the sense of acceptance and ritual. I mean, there's no... I don't know, I don't see suffering there as I see here in Northern Canada. Now maybe I do. You know, I might not suffer here. I'm not separating myself here. It's just interesting to see who really is that sense of difference between the Eastern way of living to the Western way of living. And there seems to be this suffering around. I've just noticed this. It's like even in religions, there's this emphasis on suffering. In Buddhism, we talk about suffering through attachment.

[74:37]

In Christianity, Jesus died on the cross and suffered. I mean, there's like so much suffering that, God, I just want to move beyond that. You know, maybe I should move back to China. I don't know. Well, I've never been to an Asian country, and I look forward to visiting someday. But I know from having visitors here who move throughout the space here, and people who have studied, like in Japan, there's some real basic differences in body, kind of the life of the body-mind or something. And, you know, that starts doing some of the practices here, which are body practices. You know, it's a big body practice, Zen practice, you know, holding your hands certain ways and the bows. And if you do orioke practice,

[75:39]

you know, the nested bowls, and you fold and pour and do all these things that... There isn't really an equivalent, I think, so much of an equivalent. But I don't know, what you said about there's more suffering in Marin County than in other places. All right, I'll give you death, for example. Death. Death in India. All right, it's acceptable. It's not such a... It's not such a traumatic tragedy. There's more of an acceptance of just being human. And there's a sense of... Sometimes there's a sense of struggle, that I sense here, compared to what I've seen. Do you want to add to that? Yes, I'm coming from an Asian country, and I can feel what you say,

[76:41]

and that's kind of my fear in this country, that if something like that happens, how am I going to deal? And that's why I'm preparing myself. I heard my dad had a problem, and I tried the medication, then I thought, oh, my God, what am I doing? Why am I sending him medication? And then I tried to research what this medication is going to affect him, and I learned I'm going to kill him, because it's going to shorten the time. The new medication is Novex, I guess, for Alzheimer's disease, and it's the worst one so far. They don't have anything else. And I started looking at oriental medicine, and herbal, and these things. But the thing I have experienced in these cultures is the biggest support they get, the pain is there, but the tremendous support you get together, it's amazing.

[77:42]

And you melt in the process. And I feel I'm not going to have that support here. My grandmother was my everything. She was kind of my Russian princess. And then she died, and I dreamed her in my bedroom, and then she told me she's here, my guest, and she's going to leave. And then I couldn't deal with that. I felt how people are going to... First, who's going to tell me by heart, And then I felt I'm going to hide it. And that was five years ago. I couldn't believe I hide from everybody. My husband knew they were calling. I got a letter. I didn't open the letter. And then for a whole year, I hid it until I went back. And I went to the cemetery, and I couldn't deal because I was so behind on everybody.

[78:46]

Already they had the grief and everything, and I got really badly sick. My whole face started just breaking, and then I developed just terrible fever. And it's the whole thing I felt is because I didn't have the support system. And then always I had that fear, I'm going to be so lonely if something happens here. But the support system, as she said, it's wonderful right now we're putting together. This type of thing. I have a difficulty understanding the two complete geographical locations because you mentioned Asia, and I know geography pretty well, and she mentions Russia, which is also in Asia, and then you mentioned the Orient, Singapore, China, etc. Two different complete philosophies, and yet it's still the same. I think she's talking about acceptance. Right. Now, as I understand it,

[79:50]

parts of Russia are still in Asia, and the Oriental concept is completely different. You mentioned the Buddhist interpretation in one location, like, let's say, Japan. And then you take Russia, which is completely different philosophical beliefs and acceptance and their whole turmoil and all that. So that's the counterbalance. I didn't quite follow you on that. I didn't mention anything about Russia, first of all. I didn't say my experience came from Russia, I said it's Russian ground. Right. I mean, the Europeans are in Russia, which is also Asia. Yes, that's her experience in Russia. Why is it specifically Singapore and the Orient? China, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong. I think the problem of isolation and loneliness in the Western countries is well known

[80:53]

and lack of community and dissolving of community and hiding away of death. I'm not sure there's more suffering here, though. But that's one person's experience. But I do feel like it's hard to say, you know, an Indian peasant putting their loved one on the pyre, even though they've seen a thousand such things happen, what kind of suffering they're going on. But it is visible, it is out there, it is more everyday acceptance. That, I think, is very true, although it's beginning to change, yes. Well, off the top of all this, I've always wished that Greenbelt, being a place that so many of us come to for the kind of help that we're talking about, would do more to pull us together, because that's what we're all complaining about,

[81:54]

is that our culture doesn't allow us and not really bonding together as a group. You know, maybe we can have a little family or something we do with close friends. But I'd like to see Greenbelt take a role in this, because we all feel the need for it. You know, we want more things to do together. And it's the one thing that's really always bothered me about American Buddhism, that I think American Christianity has become much better, is the concept of fellowship. And it's not that I want to go to a Christian church, but after church, you know, people really get together, and they do things together, and they have social functions that are for the community. And maybe, you know, people at Greenbelt could start thinking about this. What kinds of things I'd like to hear from you and others, what kinds of things you would like, because this has been an ongoing question for years, and we've tried certain things, the lay group out here, and membership, and, you know. So I'd like to hear from you.

[82:54]

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