It's raining. I don't have an umbrella. I mean, I do have an umbrella. I have a half umbrella, the kind that you can... that folds into itself, you know. I keep it in the car because the car... usually if I park the car, I'm a lot farther away from where I'm going to than I am from my house to here, so I keep it in the car. But when it's raining, as it is this morning, kind of heavily, I don't have an umbrella from my house to here. So when I walked outside the door, the weather was there. It was raining. You get it, you

[01:19]

get it. It really is raining. Things really are the way they are. It was fine that it was raining, and I got wet. This session has been really interesting for me because... I don't know why, but for some reason, maybe it's because I have to be very careful because I have a torn tendon on the top of the hamstring on my left leg in the back, and that tendon attaches to the sitting bone. So I can't be too much on the left side, because then it...

[02:21]

I don't know what it does, but it doesn't feel good. On the right side, I have just a teeny weeny bit of sciatica, so I can't lean too much on the left. I have to really be right in the middle and off the sitting bones, not quite on the sitting bones. So I've paid careful attention this time to my posture, to the pain. And I think it has helped me to really be present and sitting, and so I didn't have any... I didn't want the bell to ring at any of the periods, really, so far. But I haven't necessarily been happy. Practice is not about psychological cures and getting better and states of bliss,

[03:52]

any kind of mind states, or some experience, or happy, being happy. It's about being able to be with things really the way they are, the way they actually are, without programming, without having to control it, or judge it, or grab onto it, or push it away, or just being able to just be with. Not even with, just be. So we have another so many hours.

[04:58]

So session is still happening, and it's not over until it's really over. So we still have time. Not time, actually, because if we're really present, moment, this moment, this moment, there isn't any time. So we have to be careful, because on the seventh day, it's very easy to let time slip back in, the tyranny of time. It's really easy to let the past, or maybe that's

[06:01]

what you've been doing, I don't know, actually. But it's easy to think that the past has some real reality, and it's easy to think that the future has some reality, and that they have to be dealt with. That's not my experience, really. My experience is that if we really are able to surrender to what's happening right now, and by that I don't mean like resignation, or I don't care, or averting from it, or whatever. I mean letting what actually is happening, being open to that.

[07:03]

That's what I mean by surrender. Surrendering the past and the future, surrendering control, surrendering self-centered ideas, surrendering the need to define things, yourself, ourselves, or anything else. Letting all that pass, and just letting the definition of who I am, be, come up, as, together, all together. That's what I mean. And then if something comes up that we need to take care of, we can take care of it. So tonight we have this ceremony, it's just a ceremony. I think the idea of the shi-so ceremony, we can say, I think, is that it's a kind of an intimate

[08:15]

meeting of us and the shi-so. So we want to bring the shi-so a question that we care about, or just present ourselves truly, and then the shi-so can meet us back. And in that way that kind of brings the shi-so out. I hope that happens tonight. It's hard to think of a question, isn't it? It almost doesn't matter what the question is, I mean, in a certain sense. I just said that you should get something that's meaningful to you, right? But, you know, either we can't find something that really is meaningful, or the thing that we think really is meaningful, we know what the answer is. I mean, you know, I mean, we do really often know that inside, and you can go through lots of different answers. I've been to a lot of these ceremonies. That's what happens, you know,

[09:21]

you try to think of something. Anyway, you do, we do the best we can, you know, come up with something that, at least at the moment, you really have some commitment to. So, even though I'm saying that the sasheen isn't over until it's over, I do want to say, though, that we do need to be careful, some of us anyway, need to be careful moving from sasheen back into our regular normal world, because even though, whatever we think, we are more tender and more open, so we have to be a little bit careful.

[10:26]

So, I would suggest, you know, trying to use the forms of your daily life to help you, help you continue developing this continuity of presence that we've been talking about. And you can watch, it's really interesting to watch, how during this transition time from this kind of safe, cloistered environment, back into the regular world, how we grab onto... Right now we've been practicing not grabbing onto thoughts, but notice, pretty soon,

[11:34]

we're going to be grabbing onto the ones we really think we need to have in order to make our way through the world. I am so-and-so, that person is thus-and-so, and I know what the relationship is like, and I understand what's happening here, and I'm kind of in control, everything's going to be okay, I'm safe, because I know what everything is already, and we keep grabbing for ground, this kind of solidity, where there is none. That's why we get into trouble. So watch it, it's interesting. And watch the ones that you believe, that's even more interesting. We pick out of all the thoughts that we could have, and there are many, we pick a few, maybe five at the most.

[12:35]

You know, our repertoire is really dull, boring, very boring, and if you've heard the same thought over and over this week, right, the same few thoughts, maybe five, if you're creative, eight, but basically the same ones, you know, I'm a failure, that person's a jerk, I'm a jerk, that person's terrific. You know, it's variations on that, mostly. Yesterday, when I was in the world, the real world, they say, it's madness, you know, I was driving on the freeway, slow, very slow, in the right lane, safe, and I was just kind of going along, I was there, but I guess I didn't see this car to the left of me,

[13:42]

and the car wanted to exit to the right of me, and they kind of pushed me, they didn't just kind of cut me off in front, they kind of almost pushed me over, it was a white car, and it was really interesting, my response, I wanted to be angry, but I didn't have the energy of anger, but so what happened was, at least I wanted to beep the horn, it's the funniest thing, so I couldn't find the horn, and it happened really fast, so my hands kind of went like this, and by the time I kind of knew where the horn was, the car had already passed, you know, so I had this moment of real disconnect, where I kind of, there was a situation where theoretically

[14:50]

I could have been angry, I kind of wanted to be, but my body sort of just couldn't get it together soon enough, so it was hollow, I had the outside, it felt like an empty shell, it was like an empty shell, and I had the outside facade of getting angry, but inside there was nothing there, so I couldn't, so I wasn't angry, it's really funny, but I had this other, this other thing happen to me, I thought was really interesting, I was driving on the street, and a woman crossed the street, and she was bent over, and kind of gimpy, is gimpy a real word, gimpy, in one leg, and she was limping,

[15:56]

and I think the top part of her body wasn't doing very well either, and I had this thought, and the thought I had was cripple, you know, and that could be a neutral word, with nothing real extra tied onto it, but the feeling that I got was, it was immediately, it was a separation, it was a very interesting moment for me, because I had made a separation, it hurts, you know, it just hurts, I didn't even know her, didn't know anything about her, nothing, there was just a sight perception, there was just a perception, and boom, I put a label on it, and boom, made the separation, and you know, the response I had was kind of like,

[17:00]

it was more like, like that, you know, it was like, I didn't, I didn't, you know, make a judgment out of it, it wasn't even that much, it was just a label, and it made me just a little bit sad, but you know, we have these thoughts, it's not, we don't have to damn ourselves for having the thoughts, they're conditioned thoughts, so we have them all the time, but we don't have to buy into them, and anyway, even not buying into them, though, even so, just having a perception and labeling it makes an object, and as soon as

[18:05]

you make an object, you have a subject, and there's separation there, and it hurts. So, during this time when we leave session and go to our regular, you know, lives, whatever they are, notice how we do that, and which ones we grab on to, which ones are our favorite stories, which ones are the ones that we can identify as me, my thoughts, my truth. And when you sit,

[19:06]

you know, a thought comes up, and a thought goes away, and I'm sure that you guys now, you have thought, and then you come back to present, and then there's a gap before another thought comes up, right? That gap is very important, Note that gap is really interesting, because nothing's happening in the gap. You're awake, alert, aware, right? But nothing, no thought, right? Thought, gap, thought, gap. Dualistic consciousness, non-dual consciousness, dualistic consciousness. That's an important moment.

[20:21]

So, I don't think it matters so much, you know, whether we call ourselves acceptable or not acceptable, or happy or sad, or good or bad, or regretful, or whatever it is. Those things don't really need to go away, although much of our work is, you know, having those things fall away, because that just happens the more we're present. But ultimately, it doesn't really make any difference. It doesn't matter if we're, you know, if I can say this, anyways, what came to mind, mentally, you know, twisted up or anything like

[21:42]

that. What matters only is our attitude toward who we are. Can we simply accept, can we surrender to what is actually happening? Can we just be who we are, and just be without having to mess with it? I used to think compassion was a feeling, you know, that if your heart was open, you kind of,

[22:43]

you know, when your heart is open, when you're in love, and you have these flutterings of hardness. I used to think that you had to develop a feeling to have compassion, and I don't think so anymore. I think that kind of feeling is in love, you know, it's in love, or loving, or something. But I think compassion is just the willingness to be there, the willingness to be with. Compassion, I think that's what it means. Come is with, right? Passion is with... What's passion mean? Suffering? Oh yeah, passion of Christ. Suffering. With suffering, that's it. I don't think you have to have this feeling of, you know, whatever.

[23:45]

Just our willingness to be who we are. First, compassion here on this side of the ball. First, our willingness to be with our own suffering. Just, that's it. Or be with our own happiness, or be with our own neutralness, you know, or be with our own whatever it is. With awareness, that gap, that gap place, that kind of awareness is healing, fundamentally healing, to just be with. Surrendering to now, now, now. Forgetting the tyranny of time,

[24:51]

forgetting the call of the past, the call of the future. Pay attention to me, pay attention to me. Me, me, me, me, me. Holding to self-centered thought is the misery of our world. We can trust things as they are. I brought this poem,

[25:56]

and luckily I also brought my glasses. So, you know, I just pulled a poem out because I wanted to read you a poem, because, you know, poems are close, closer than, I think, than prose. And I don't even know if this poem is close,

[27:10]

but I brought it anyway. Because yesterday I was really talking about the trees. It's called, A Final Affection. I love the... No, start again. I love the accomplishments of trees, how they try to restrain great storms and pacify the very worms that eat them. Even their deaths seem to be considered. I fear for trees, loving them so much. I'm nervous about each scar on bark, each leaf that browns. I want to lie in their crotches and sigh, whisper of sun and rains to come.

[28:16]

Sometimes on summer evenings I step out of my house to look at trees, propping darkness up to the silence. When I die, I want to slant up through those trunks so slowly I will see each rib of bark, each whorl, up through the canopy, the subtle veins and lobes touching me with final affection. Then to hover above and look down one last time on the rich upliftings, the circle that loves the sun and moon, to see at last what held the darkness up. I'll read it once more. I love the accomplishments of trees, how they try to restrain great storms and pacify the very worms

[29:26]

that eat them. Even their deaths seem to be considered. I fear for trees, loving them so much as I do. I am nervous about each scar on bark, each leaf that browns. Sometimes on summer evenings I step out of my house to look at trees, propping darkness up to the silence. When I die, I want to slant up through those trunks so slowly I will see each rib of bark, each whorl, up through the canopy, the subtle veins and lobes touching me with final affection. Then to hover above and look down one last time on the rich upliftings, the circle that loves the sun and moon, to see at last what held the darkness up.

[30:27]

We can really trust our own experience, our own loves, you know, our own basic instincts, our own inmost desires, because I think that they come from a very deep place in us that actually we all belong to, you know, this deep place. When Rev one time asked people in the practice period to come to him individually and just say what their deepest reason for practicing was, I forgot what the question was, to actually tell you the truth, but then he listened and he told us later what happens, I'm telling you. He listened and person after person after person basically said two things, every single person, no matter where they came from or what their story was or how long they've been practicing, it didn't make it any difference.

[31:53]

Basically what they wanted to do was understand emptiness or they wanted to have the heart and love of the Buddha. They wanted to be with human beings through wisdom, through wisdom right into the heart of the Buddha. I think that's what we want, you know, I truly believe we're all good basically inside. We don't have to mess a lot, we just have to be the person we are fully as we can, and that's the gift that we give each other. And when you see somebody stand up like that, it encourages us.

[32:57]

So we have another some amount of periods of the day to practice just being who we are. So let's go do that.

[33:32]

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