opposite as well. So the difference that is the defining characteristic between them when its right effort is restraining the unwholesome from arising or letting go of the unwholesome is that there's no sense of self involved in that. It's not me restraining or me renouncing or me letting go. It's not something that there's that sense of self is clustering around. But that is more that the effort is coming from a place of kindness, of attention, of mindfulness, and an attunement to the time and the place, the situation. That's what guides the effort. That's the sort of igniting force of the effort. Not me trying to get rid of something or me trying to get something. So that... whenever you want to explore, where's this coming from? Am I working in the best way? Is this right effort?

[01:01]

Is this wholesome and noble effort? Just to look and see how much of a sense of self is there woven into that. How much is it me and my project and my wishes and how I want to be seen and all the different ways that the feeling of self clusters around. that. And whenever you see that sense of I and me and mine falling, as you feel that, and like we're talking about using the body as a reference point, it's pretty tangible where that's a self-driven motivation. That's the clear sign that it's being co-opted by the desire to become, the desire to get rid of. And the results will always have some kind of disharmony in them. When effort is coming from that place of kindness, of mindfulness, of attunement, then, and it's not driven by self-view, then the results will always be in accord with Dhamma.

[02:12]

It'll always be harmonious. But you don't get it, it's not like one of those little computer programs where you get a little tracker in the corner saying, you know, what this mind state is, you know, where it's being produced from. It's a C drive, you know, documents and settings, you know. You don't get a little readout in the corner that tells you, you know, three units, you know. Right. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's... Different people work in different ways, but you can use the meditation to explore it. When you are noticing that state is there, or you can deliberately trigger it. Like if you have some sort of favorite ambition or way that you want to be seen, then deliberately bring that up in the meditation and say,

[03:19]

I want to be. And then, you know, I want to be loved. I want to be enlightened. I want to be... And that the... Seeing where that sits in the body, what arises in the body. Or with the other, like, I can't stand, I don't want, I've had enough of. You know, and then insert your own favorite flavor. Choose your flavor. And... And then, but it's a useful practice to do, to let the mind be as calm as possible and invite that kind of state in. So then you say, okay, that's what, it's sort of a tightening in the throat, or it's like, or it's a, the jaw goes solid, or there's a dead, I feel dead from the neck down. And then... noticing that and seeing how you feel it, then you can use that in the course of the day. The more you get familiar with how those states manifest, then in the course of the day, when you just bring mindfulness to the body and you notice, oh, it's that becoming feeling.

[04:26]

It's me trying to get somewhere. And even in simple things, just like the way you're walking along a path. Even if you're walking very carefully or pushing your little carts. You're in great carts here. thinking of taking some measurements. And you're walking along very carefully, but still your attention is riveted on the place you're going, and that you don't want to be interrupted. There's that forward-directed, I'm going somewhere. So it doesn't have to be connected to any kind of visibly unwholesome object at all. It's just, I'm going somewhere. And just noticing that, what's that? what that feels like. And in the meditation, that's the kind of phrase you can use just to bring that up. I'm going places. I'm going somewhere. And then just feel what that's like. And then using more of a non-becoming phrase, if you like, to say there's nobody going anywhere.

[05:32]

There's just life happening. And then notice what that feels like. And that was another of the phrases that gets used in our teachings is, Nibbāna is the cessation of becoming. [...] Nibbāna But you're taking some sort of absolute principle and applying it on the relative plane. So it means that you're still walking along, you're still pushing your cart, but there's an awareness of that fundamental not going anywhere quality, fundamental sort of transcendent, spaceless, timeless quality. Yes, there's a hand.

[06:35]

Yesterday we were talking you mentioned that they were an accomplished meditator. And in Soto Zen, and I didn't say anything at the time. It took me a while to digest and think about it. What does that mean? In most strains of Soto Zen, those two words are not allowed to be next to each other. I'm wondering what an accomplished meditator might be, and if you have any idea why it could be a teaching to never have accomplished in meditation in the same sense. Well, you'd have to tell me that. Well, I mean, in a way, I think it's probably to do with that, avoiding the becoming. Because you might think, well, if it's I've achieved something in my meditation, then there's got to be a big self there, or it's woven into that achievement-oriented...

[07:36]

habit. But I was using it in the sense of the person I was talking about can quite happily sit for 12 hours, 24 hours, 48 hours without moving in samadhi. So on a worldly level I'd say that's accomplished. There's some accomplishment there. And he's not just freezing himself. So he's he's a very gifted in those aspects of meditation that involve absorption and deep, deep states of concentration. That's how I meant it. But how would you... Why would you say that you don't use accomplished and meditator in the same sentence, side by side? Maybe it's a little bit of that. Even more reggae needed.

[08:40]

Even more reggae needed, yeah. More joy, more joy. I don't know. I don't know if that... You know, I guess it's, in a sense, that sounds like impressive and better, and then I'm like, I don't know if it's impressive. Like, I don't trust... I don't trust my sense of feeling impressed by, I was curious, but there's a part of me that's impressed by people who sit in the crowd and say, what is that being impressed? Is that better? So, but I don't know why. Yeah, and whenever I hear, come across teaching where there's kind of more, you know, this is why we're practicing, this is our goal. I'm like, yeah, goal. You know what I mean? Well, I can see that why it can be helpful to be not just falling into those judgments or sort of ranking each other.

[10:00]

But also there is the fact that sometimes if the rice isn't cooked, you can't just say, oh... What wonderful rice? No, it's not cooked. We're all kind of, jeez. Everyone's grinding their teeth and looking miserable and getting indigestion. It's like, okay, ultimately, there is neither rice nor not rice, but this is not lunch. So I wouldn't be afraid to use relative language where it's applicable. You know, I mean, would you say that Suzuki Roshi was an accomplished Dharma teacher? I mean, I'd say if he wasn't, Tassahara wouldn't exist, you know. If he would not have had so many people gathering around him, he wouldn't have had, like, how many years after he passed away? It's like, it's already 35 years, you know, since the teacher passed away.

[11:01]

It was 70? 71. So, it's... I'd say that's a pretty fair adjective to apply. It's not saying that therefore everybody else is a total washout or there's something wrong with washouts. But you can be over-cautious about using relative language or over-politically correct or don't want to be abusive to the washouts. But to say, yeah, sometimes the fact is Like, if a human being wants to eat rice and be nourished by it, there are certain things that have to happen to it. And if they haven't happened, you can't chew it, you can't digest it, it's not going to nourish you. Biological fact. It's not a kind of biased judgment. It's just common sense. So, I do admire the Zen tradition a lot, because as I was saying in the beginning, the readiness to talk about

[12:10]

ultimate truths and the brilliance with which that's articulated, particularly by people like Dogen Zenji and others, is incredible and wonderful. But you can get a bit too over-ultimate, you know, whereby it becomes a faux pas to mention anything on a relative plane, like, well, that's nice, you know. Yeah, it gets a bit much. There's a famous story about Wittgenstein. He was a when he was at Cambridge, the philosopher Wittgenstein. And it was his birthday, and he lived in this little rooming house in Cambridge. And his landlady made this birthday cake for him. This is supposed to be a true story. And she brought out this birthday cake and said, Happy birthday, Mr. Ludwig. And he said, What exactly do you mean by happy? and apparently she dropped the cake and burst into tears because Sammy's philosophers you know so it was you know he should have said thank you very much Mrs Handley that's a beautiful cake but he couldn't put down his you know his ultimate philosophical position on everything and it wasn't the right moment you know so that there's a moment as a ripeness you know ripeness is all as it says you know

[13:33]

in King Lear. But, you know, there's a time to be, to use worldly language, there's a time to use ultimate language, and so... Oh, I want to be an accomplishment. Like, how do I clarify that intention? Like, how do I turn that around and make it something else and say, I want to. Yeah. Well, it comes down to the question about this right effort. seeing where the sense of self weaves itself into the things that we do. And recognizing, oh, look at that. It's my accomplishment program. And I tend to talk about this a lot because I was totally blind to it for years and years. I didn't realize how much... All of the effort that was going into my meditation and trying to be the perfect monk was all about moi, you know, trying to be some sort of stellar special being.

[14:38]

And it was horrifying. It was deeply embarrassing and horrifying when I realized, gee, this is actually just all about me. And it was a horrible wake-up, you know, horrible good wake-up call because The initial interest had obviously just been, oh, this is great Buddhism. This looks like good stuff. Oh, meditation, right. Good people to live with and living in a wholesome way. This is great. And then you get woven into the system and you get used to the vernacular and the practices. And then next thing you know, the self-centered, ambitious achievement... urges to inveigle themselves and take over. And yeah, I was shocked at how long it had really been going on in my mind without noticing it at all, because it all, I was doing great. All the signs were there that I was a really good monk trying hard and et cetera, et cetera.

[15:45]

But one of those, one of the ways of working with this is just rather than than just seeing that self-centered motivation and trying to push it aside, or reacting against it, is to consciously let yourself feel it, like thinking the unthinkable. So in the meditation, I know you're not supposed to do any deliberate thinking in Zazen, but you can kind of sneak this in. You can tell the practice leader. Just sneak in and say, you know, Just a phrase like, I'm really going places. I'm going to be the best, most accomplished, most enlightened priest in Tassajara. Not just this decade, but ever. Just you wait. Thinking the unthinkable.

[16:49]

And what happens is... You can usually hardly get to the end of the sentence before it falls to pieces because it's so patently absurd. But there's a power in thinking the unthinkable that you actually get a perspective on it. Whereas if you're always trying to make it shut up and go away, like, don't think that. Did he hear me? What does she know? Does she know? She knows I'm thinking that way. You're trying to make it sort of shut up and get back in its closet. But if you say, here, Talk to me. Say it. Come on. What's the message? Talk to me. Talk to me. He says, I'm going to be the best, most enlightened priest that was ever in. He just falls to bits. And then when it arises, it's like you more easily know what it is. And you say, OK, well, thank you for sharing. You just carry on with your practice.

[17:50]

It's totally natural for those sort of feelings or voices to arise. We're geared to be ambitious or competitive or defending our territory. Like I was saying, you don't even have to scratch the skin to find the hunter-gatherer. We have these sublime minds with the body of an animal. We're very deeply woven into the animal realm with animal instincts. And it's important to recognize how deeply those can affect us. But just by recognizing what it is, it's not like you're trying to wipe out all the animal instincts and the competitive urges, but they're only certain members of the committee. So you can listen to that and hear that, but then also not put that in control. Just to pay attention and then to let the quality of wisdom be the one who's chairing the meeting.

[18:57]

Not easy to do, but recognizing, well, this is the voice of ambition, or this is the, I want to be the best. I see it's five past five. I'm not sure if people have to... I mean, I'm happy to carry on talking forever, of course. I don't want to interrupt people's schedules. You might get in trouble with the authorities. Whoever the authorities are. Okay. Thank you.

[19:41]

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