Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome again. I assume you can all hear me okay. Is that true? Great. Excellent. I'm just going to give you a heads up now. I've been having some technical difficulties with the internet. So it may be that if I drop off or slow down for some reason, that that's what's happening. Do not fear. I will come back. and reconnect maybe using my phone. So just bear with me and we'll go from there. So the joys and the challenges of having our virtual connection together. So it's a joy to be back with you. And I just want to thank Susan O'Connell, who stepped in last week to fill in for me while I was away. And I really want to share that she enjoyed herself and really appreciated the opportunity to be with you all.

[01:59]

And so thank you for supporting her to also lead last week's session. I don't know anyone who's new to this practice session. My name is David Zimmerman, and I'm the Abiding Abbot at City Center, Bigger's Mind Temple in San Francisco. How we run this is that we begin with a 25-minute period of Zazen. And I'll start, for those who are nearer to meditation, by offering a few guiding words, supporting words, leading us into the meditation. And then eventually just settle into sirens altogether. So I'll ring the bell three times to begin and then once to end the period. And then after the period of meditation together, we'll have what I call a Dharmet, a brief Dharma encouragement, which I'll say a few things for about 15 minutes or so, and then turn it over to all of you to bring forward anything particular in your practice that you're working with at this time.

[03:05]

So before I begin a meditation, I'd like to set the tone by sharing with you a poem. And this poem is by the American poet and meditation practitioner, Dana Falls. I believe she pronounces her first name, Dana. It's D-A-N-N-A, Falls. And the title of the poem is Just for Now. So what I'm going to suggest is that you get into your meditation posture and get all settled and prepared. Because surely after I read the poem, we'll go right into Zazen together. And so it's only right now. Here is the poem. It's called Just for Now. Just for now. Without asking how. Let yourself sink into stillness. Just for now.

[04:12]

Lay down the weight you so patiently bear. upon your shoulders. Feel the earth receive you and the infinite expanse of the sky grow even wider as your awareness reaches up to meet it. Just for now, Allow a wave of breath to enliven your experience. Breathe out whatever blocks you from the truth. Just for now, be boundless, free, with awakened energy tingling in your hands and feet. Drink in the possibility of being who and what you really are.

[05:23]

So fully alive that the world looks different. Newly born and vibrant. Just for now. So this poem reminds us The power that meditation and mindfulness practice has to make us pay attention to ourselves, to our bodies, our minds, our world. And it reminds us to be gentle with ourselves. We are reminded to live fully in the now. To live this breath. this moment. To allow our connectedness with the now to catapult us into full awareness.

[06:30]

To slow down and take precious, much needed moments to open our hearts and minds. to release and let go of burdens, irritations, and stresses. To allow ourselves to become aware of and accept possibilities, even in the face of not knowing. transitioning now into our practice of exhausted together. I invite you to take three deep inhalations and exhalations. Intentionally breathing in and out.

[07:36]

Perhaps extending the exhale twice as long as the inhale is a way to allow your whole being to settle more deeply into this moment. after the third exhalation, simply allowing the breath to return to its natural rhythm. You might explore using the breath as a touchstone throughout your meditation, allowing awareness to gently accompany it, accompanying the physical felt sensation, the rhythm of breathing, and where it be the sound. the breath. So I'm going to ring the bell now three times and allow your awareness to generally accompany the sound until it fades away.

[08:44]

And then notice it once it's faded away, what is it that remains in the silence and stillness? I'm noticing now, what is it that you're present to? What do you notice rising within your awareness, within the field of experience?

[09:58]

is present just for now. Perhaps it's thoughts, or feelings, or body sensations, noticing that all of these is simply temporary, transitory, just for now. Presencing this moment. To have the willingness to come back again and again to what is. To whatever it is that we're experiencing in this moment. And to completely acknowledge it. Completely feel it.

[11:13]

Again, it's just for this moment, just for now. What is this experience? What is it to open to it, to feel it, acknowledge it, and then allow it to be released by holding on, not following it, not trying to change it in any way. Allowing experience to rise in whatever way it does, for however long it makes itself known, than letting go. And it's not that we let it go. It's that we simply don't follow it. We don't get caught by it. Awareness doesn't get distracted by it, entranced or entangled by the experience.

[12:21]

Noticing, acknowledging, feeling, releasing. Noticing, acknowledging, feeling, releasing. we find ourselves getting caught, unable to release a particular thought or experience. Simply notice that this has happened. It's okay. It's what happens. So in those moments, perhaps using the breath as a touchstone, returning to that grounding experience, that present moment sensation of just breathe, Rest in that spaciousness.

[13:28]

Now the mind is to redirect. Redirect and raise attention to once again the gentle receiving and releasing of the breath as a reminder over and over again how it is that we receive life. And life is released. settling now into complete silence and stillness, breathing in silence, embodying stillness. Just for now, being present with what is as wholeheartedly as possible.

[14:36]

Thank you, everybody, for sitting together in silence. And I thought I would begin the format today by sharing with you another poem by the same poet, Dana Foltz. And the title of this particular poem is Let It Go. It's not the Disney song, by the way, in case you know that one. A favorite of mine. But I thought that this particular poem by Dana Fultz offers us some wise counsel for investigating the unique and uncertain times that we find ourselves in. So here's the poem. Let go of the ways you thought life would unfold. beholding of plans and dreams or expectations.

[31:44]

Let it all go. Save your strength to swim with the tide. The choice to fight what is here before you will now only result in struggle, fear, and desperate attempts to flee from the very energy you long for. Let go. Let it all go and flow with the grace that washes through your days, whether you receive it gently or with all your quills raised to defend against invaders. Take this on faith. The mind may never find the explanations that it seeks, but you will move forward nonetheless. Let go. And the waves crest will carry you to unknown shores beyond your wildest dreams or destinations.

[32:48]

Let it all go and find the place of rest and peace and certain transformation. So I think this poem speaks basically directly to this time of pandemic, you know, to, to, Let go of the ways you thought life would unfold. The holding of plans or dreams or expectations. Obviously, most of those for us have been completely shattered or dashed in some way. We're undermined to such a degree that we no longer are sure what it is that we're actually standing on, that we can rely on. So it's typical for us to hold on to so many things. Past. Dreams. possessions, lost loves, and, of course, plans for the future. And I think that during times of great distress and uncertainty, our tendency is to want to hold on, you know, that tendency becomes even stronger, right?

[34:00]

To hold on to how things used to be as a way of reasserting some sense of normalcy. hold on to our ideas and stories of how things should be so that we have some sense of control or that we even have a say or a voice of what it is that's going to happen. Just to say how we think it should be and sometimes there's an expression of holding on and resisting what is. And regardless of the circumstances, most of the time we hold on The tendency to hold on is one simply coming out of fear. Out of fear of the unknown. And Zen reminds us that it takes practice and courage and a willingness to listen to a deeper inner wisdom to let go.

[35:01]

And to be willing to let go over and over again. And when we do, when we're able to let go completely, deeply, who knows what can happen? Sometimes great things can happen in that opening, in that space. And in fact, holding on can sometimes have deadly consequences. I want to share with you a parable that gives an example of this. Once there was a group of mountaineers who were trying to ascend K2, the second highest peak in the world, in the Karakoram region in Pakistan. One night, they were trapped in a terrible storm and were forced to turn back. During the perilous descent, one of the members lost his lighting, became separated from the group, and had to repel the mountainside on his own.

[36:12]

He came to the end of his rope, and he could not see or feel the ground beneath him. He was also too exhausted and cold to ascend. Hanging in the dark of the raging storm, he cried out for help, but no one could hear or see him. Although he was not a religious man, he calmed himself and prayed for guidance. The answer came immediately with an inner voice, which said, just let go of the rope. He was too frightened to trust the guidance and continued to hold on. The following morning, the search crew found him frozen to death, dangling in the air two feet above. a rocky ridge. So like the unfortunate mountaineer, we are often frozen by our mistrust of the unknown, of life.

[37:32]

We are reluctant to go on. Until we are completely certain that we are at the end of our metaphysical rope. And even then, we still have a tendency to hold power. And often it takes a health or a relationship crisis or some kind of upheaval or disaster to catalyze a deep surrender. A deep surrender of the illusion of control. and a true willingness to let go. It's basically a fundamental renunciation. There's nothing to rely on. The other week I spoke about the practicing the groundlessness and the way in which practice asks us to come to the end of what we know and are familiar with and then extend beyond to allow ourselves to stretch and expand and release into the open, undefined space of the next moment.

[38:39]

One of the things that practicing with groundlessness and with letting go both require of us is trust. The practice then requires of us the capacity to discover for ourselves our own innate, sense of trust. To let go of the known and the familiar and discover what it is that we most deeply rely on. And to discover that capacity to really listen to it. How often do we actually listen to that deepest wisdom? Trust it. That one clear voice that tells us in a moment, exactly what we need to do. And yet, the thinking mind overrides it, questions it, doubts it in some way. Let go. And if we can extend that deeper sense of trust in our own self outward, into the world, and allow it to inform our relationships with each other in the world,

[40:01]

then it becomes transformational. And when we're able to do this, when we're able to extend a deeper sense of trust into the world, then we're able to cultivate a ground of appreciation, have a feeling of gratitude, respect for all of our experience, regardless of how challenging it is. Every situation, every person we encounter, We have gratitude and respect because we come to realize who and what is it that's before us. We see the true nature of our own being and also the being in front of us. The phenomenon that's arising within our field of awareness. Can we trust that deeply to really

[41:02]

know there is no separation. No separation. So when you let go, there's nowhere to fall. You're already here. You're already there. You're already landed in the truth of this present moment. And there's a way in which trust And letting go require a continuous effort. It's not a matter of achieving this one particular static point. Trusting and letting go is a dynamic quality. And so being willing to let go of a fundamental level of being, to let go at a fundamental level of being requires trusting our bodies, trusting our hearts, trusting our lives, trusting our experience, not the stories of our experience, but our actual wisdom experience.

[42:12]

And I know that for myself, whenever I have some kind of fear around letting go, which often is a fear about not knowing, there's, in my being, there's often a sense of a contraction, a pulling in, a pulling, kind of trying to pull myself together in some way. You know, that kind of sense of holding on. And I'll contract around a particular thought or belief about myself or about the world. I'll draw in tighter, become tense, hard, and rigid. And I'll kind of force myself to forge ahead, even though there's this deep voice inside of me that's telling me otherwise. And sometimes that pushing ahead is simply about trying to save face. trying to put on a good appearance, trying to make it look like I have my shit together. I've got to keep it together. What will others think if I lose control, if I'm truly vulnerable?

[43:17]

So instead of being vulnerable, instead of actually being honest and authentic, I try to keep up with good friends, keep my act together. Do any of you have that experience? Do you resonate with this in any way? I see a few people going, yeah, I've been there, I know that one. And so to study, what ways do you try to maintain control and not be vulnerable in the face of not knowing? And it's really, it's a valuable practice to study that habit pattern in this. It's a very old habit pattern. It's an understandable habit pattern, but it limits us. It takes away our freedom. It takes away our liberation. It becomes different to something other than truth. The psychotherapist John Prendergrast, in his book, In Touch, How to Tune Into the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself,

[44:29]

has to follow up to say. One of the reasons that we try so hard to hold ourselves together, right, to hold ourselves up and in, is because we don't feel held by something greater. This brings us to the issue of trusting life no matter what. Some call this trust faith. But faith usually means believing in something. Trust is not based on a belief. Rather, it is a felt sense of being held by a benevolent presence or a field that is greater than the little me. Trust allows us to let go. This is not a trust that things will go as we want. Rather, it is a trust that life will unfold as it needs to. So in other words, trust has no agenda.

[45:35]

It doesn't have an idea about how things should believe. It doesn't have a belief about how things should turn out. So you could say that faith in some ways is kind of a noun, right? To have faith in something, something outside of us, something separate. But trust, I would suggest, is a verb. It's a relationship, an active relationship, and something more than our limited sense of self. Zuki Roshi said in Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, the true purpose of Zen is to see things as they are, to observe things as they are, and to let everything go as it goes. Zen practice is to open up our small mind. Opening up our small minds means trusting in something larger than our conceptual mind.

[46:42]

So learning to let go and trusting is a way of culting resilience. Right now, I don't know about you, but this need to practice resilience, anything that supports me to be resilient, as we keep continuing surfing this ocean of pandemic, right? How are we going to maintain this effort of this journey? Are we going to reach the other shore? When are we going to reach the other shore? And it's not so much about reaching the other shore, it's about just right now, just for now, how are we taking care of ourselves and each other? So this letting go that is required for cultural resilience is both a physical letting go and a mental letting go. On a physical level, we allow ourselves to relax and release the body.

[47:48]

To notice the places where we hold tension, anxiety, grasping, inversion. Notice that in your body right now. Do a body scan. Notice it where are you holding on. Where is it clenching, tension, grasping? And so when we notice that, what is it to bring breath to it, to bring spaciousness to it? Spaciousness itself is a possibility, an opening. The act of simply bringing awareness to those places in the body often helps them to release and to hold them with sustained awareness. It's a way of cultivating a deeper sense of trust. I can let go. The I, the one that's holding on, the actual contraction itself, can soften, release. And this letting go is tapping into a sense of rest and ease. It's fundamental to our body.

[48:51]

The natural state of being in our body. Resilience also requires of us a willingness to let go of the various thoughts, the narratives, the stories, the opinions and judgments, the worries that we have about our situation, about ourselves or about others, about the world. So just to let go of thinking, to allow the mind to stop its chattering, to have a break from its constant chattering, to become quiet. and simply rest in open spaciousness. When we're caught in our deluded stream of thoughts and emotions, of reactivity, beliefs, we're kind of tethered to our ingrained habits, there's got to be very little sense of resilience. And this is why we practice.

[49:51]

This is what meditation offers us. This is what zazen offers us. this opportunity to let go moment by moment by moment. Zazam, the 10,000 beings arise and we let them go. This whole kaleidoscopic cacophony of sensations and thoughts and reveries arise and then vanished. We notice that when you study these, they're all just specters in the mind. They're all empty. We don't react to them. We don't go out to them. We see their true nature as empty of inherent being. There's nothing there. We're being fooled by the movie. Right? So, any hopes and expectations that we have for our meditation, right? You might be like, I want to stay present, focused, and peaceful. I want my meditation space to be comfortable and quiet.

[50:54]

I'm going to learn something. I'm going to make some progress in meditation. Today, I'm going to taste enlightenment. All those ideas and expectations that we have about a meditation, just let them go. Let them go. Let go of these hopes and expectations and just let the 10,000 things be as they are, to manifest, to show themselves. Then we study what ways did we get caught? When do we get stuck? A place is there a tightness where we separate ourselves from the moments, from the truth of just things as it is. Right? You notice we direct a breath to it, we direct awareness, allow ourselves to let go, to loosen, to allow the moment to unfold. Effortlessly opening to each moment. Accepting each moment as it is.

[51:57]

Embracing it. Experiencing it fully. Just as it is. Just for now. Okay. I've yapped it longer than I intended to. So my apologies. So let's open up the room and see what is it that you're practicing with right now. Right? Maybe it's around letting go. Maybe it's around something else. What is it that you're practicing with in this present moment? Barbara is going to help me to identify people with their hands up. She's giving you instruction in the chat box about how to raise your hand. And so let's see who might have something they'd like to bring forward. Well, you're all kind of shy tonight, are you?

[53:01]

I see Nicholas. Is that a hand up? Nicholas Schmidt, can you unmute yourself? Try again. There you go. Yeah. I just want to say, well, thank you personally. Well, what I've been working with in terms of letting go, well, I thought this talk was very helpful and relevant, and I was in a luckily minor cycling accident, and I have a lot of tension with regards to, well, advocacy or how things should be with a relation on the roads, and I think there's a lot I can work with there. Well, I'm glad you're well.

[54:13]

It sounds like you weren't injured too badly, I hope. No. Good, good. And yes, it's really quite, you know, we see how we think others should behave on the streets. You know, we have our kind of rules and our guidelines. And if we notice most of the time it's, it revolves around us, right? They should be behaving in a way that I'm going to be okay. And I noticed that that's true for me, whether or not I'm in a car or on a bike or walking down the sidewalk. Suddenly my orientation, my rule book changes based upon what it is that I'm doing and how I think people should relate in regard to me. So it's one of the things I find peculiar with myself, how quickly My terms about how people should behave is based on what I'm doing and what I want in the moment. Actually, rather than actually noticing who we, how are we together in this moment collectively? How can we take our collective connectivity into regard and into consideration? We're all equally taken care of and safe.

[55:20]

So I hope you yeah yeah well it's interesting because uh i mean i i it was on on a crest and uh there was a car approaching uh and if the car were to have passed uh it would have been very close so the way i put my hand out to signal to slow down and i uh ultimately the car passed and it it There was space, luckily. Well, I still think there's more I can do to think more wholly and not in terms of me and always, or think of the collective benefit and lack of some aggression. I find sometimes I have to remind myself, you know, before I go to that criticism,

[56:20]

you know, to soften that quickly and say, may we both be safe, you know, so that I'm taking in their regard just as much as my own, even though I may want them to feel the same kind of fear that I initially had, you know, so that they know better. But in the end, it just kind of puts a weight on me that I end up carrying away from the incident rather than putting an aspiration forward, you know. in some ways. Thank you, Nicholas. Thank you. Jody Green. Barbara, can you help bring Jody on? Hi. Hi, Jody. Thank you. The poems you shared and the talk and the examples and the story of the mountain climber, all of those things were really helping some loosening and spaciousness to come for me.

[57:33]

But I'm really struggling with just moment by moment, my mind identifying things as, good and bad you know things i like things i don't like and it's and just the very quick so quick it's imperceptible um conclusions and and then of course the cascading emotional and narrations of stories that are attached to these conclusions that just Yeah, I feel that I'm under the control of. And so anyway, I was appreciating the spaciousness you were opening up for that. But it just feels like a real endless struggle with that. Mine is a terrible backseat driver. You know, it's constantly commenting and telling us what we should be doing and critiquing everything.

[58:44]

And the challenge is not to give it authority in that way. Ask ourselves, what do we want to give authority to? Do we want to give authority to the chatter, the capital, you know, judgmental mind? Or do we want to give authority to a deeper wisdom within us? Wisdom that comes from spaciousness itself, that comes from silence and stillness. So even if the mind is doing its, you know, yada, yada, yada in the back seats. If you bring, you redirect awareness to your heart, to the center of your being, to kind of the bottom of the breath, and see if you can rest there. And at a very deep level, ask yourself, am I okay? Regardless of what the mind, the backseat chatterer is saying, right? Ask yourself, am I fundamentally okay in this moment? And I think you'll get a different answer. You know, the mind might go, rah! You know, no, it's horrible.

[59:46]

But wisdom mind, the center of your being, that spaciousness where you can rest will give you an honest answer. So the more you turn to that and rest there and stay close to that, the more quickly it will be available to you, the more it will come forefront. And the more that kind of backseat driver chatter is kind of quiet because it realizes it's not getting any traction with you. It doesn't have any purchase. It doesn't have the same amount of purchase that it did before. So it begins to lessen over time. So you get to choose in each moment. And again, I give authority to the backseat driver marring and it's yada, yada, yada. And it may initially want to start yelling even louder. When it notices you're not paying attention, it's going to come on even stronger because it realizes it's losing control, and that terrifies it.

[60:50]

So all the more effort will be needed to come back to the breath, to come back to spaciousness, to come back to that open, boundless awareness, come back to awareness itself and rest there. You don't have to do anything in awareness. Just rest there. The more you come back and rest in awareness, despite all the storm cloud that the conscious mind sometimes throws around, the more you can trust awareness and come in contact and rely on what it is that you fundamentally are, the more you'll have the capacity to do that in day-to-day, all kinds of day-to-day activities and endeavors and situations. It's not easy, of course, and that's why we call it practice, right? Strengthening that capacity to rest in awareness rather than the capacity of the, you know, habitual chatter to take control.

[61:59]

Thank you. Thank you. Let's see. Anyone else? David? Yes. It's Barbara. Hi, Barbara. Somebody wanted to know, please advise the name of the psychology book you referred to. Oh, yes. The author, psychotherapist John Prendergast. It's P-R-E-N-D-E-R-G-A-S-T. And the book that I was referencing is titled In Touch. Colin, how to tune into the inner guidance of your body and trust yourself. So it's a really great book because it really talks about embodied trust. What is the experience of embodied trust? How does that feel? I see Kathy Hyland has her hand up. Hello, can you hear me?

[63:06]

I can. Hello again, Kathy. Good to see you. David, thank you once again for our most wonderful talk. I always feel like you are speaking directly to me, like you just happen to know what is going on in my mind. Thank you so much. I've really been working a lot, as I have been for many years, with letting go, and particularly now with being sheltered in place and in my small one-bedroom space and all the noises around and my... upstairs neighbors stomping around and making a lot of noise when i'm trying to meditate i'm trying to do yoga and get outside on the skateboard non-stop and you know just like a lot of things while i'm trying to work or i'm trying to do um something peaceful and um so i've been really trying to and i notice my anger and my self-righteousness that comes up like They should be more considerate and how can they blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I see somebody on the street without a mask and I get the same self-righteousness comes up.

[64:10]

So I'm really trying to sort of just let things be as they are. And I have to say, I was really struck by some of the things you said in your talk, particularly early on when you were saying how letting go can really can open up to new possibilities. And you said something to the effect of like deeply surrendering control can allow us the strength to go with the flow. And I'm paraphrasing. I didn't write down exactly how you said it, but it was something to that effect. And that really struck me deeply is that idea of it's not just letting go of this resistance, but letting go gives you the strength to be with what is. Mm-hmm. And I don't know if you can say more about that, but I just want to say that really struck me and I really want to practice more with that. Thank you, Kathy. I appreciate your question. One of the things I notice is when I'm holding on, when I have that sense of contraction and resistance in my body and mind, it takes energy, actually.

[65:16]

It saps my energy. I get de-energized by resisting what is. You know, and that kind of... energy gets trapped in the body and then I don't have the energy to kind of create something new or open to new possibilities as much because my energy is somehow being frozen. And so when I'm able to just simply acknowledge and allow things to be as they are and say, okay, this is what is, and to allow that to the energy that's frozen in resistance to be released. then I find often there's kind of this kind of rising sense of energy. And it actually expresses itself in many ways as creativity. Suddenly, kind of my mind becomes more creative because it has this extra energy that's been caught for so long to be able to kind of walk through and entertain new possibilities and see things in a new way.

[66:19]

Actually, I notice that my eyes open up. Things become more apparent, brighter. I see new connections that I hadn't seen before. And in that space of just the mind-body relaxing, something else, there's space for something else to come forward in a new way. So just that little activity of this is the way it is. Yes, there's noise of skateboards. Hello, noise of skateboards. Yes, there's the neighbor stomping upstairs. Hello. sound of stomping. But notice that that is labeling. Your mind is labeling, skateboard, bad, right? Stomping, bad. So the mind's getting trapped, that energy's getting trapped in, you know, judging what is and then resisting what is. So again, whatever helps you to kind of open to and accept

[67:19]

and allow what is to be just the way it is, to say, hello, welcome, may I open to this, and not to let the mind fixate on our concept of what it is. So the noise is just sound. The noise of skateboard, it's not the noise of a skateboard, it's just sound, it's just vibration, it's just energetic vibration in the mind. That's all it is. We put the label of skateboard and then bad. And don't they know it's wrecking my meditation? So step back from that. Deconstruct that process of imputing meaning onto a sound and come back to the original source. Come back to the original experience. Just awareness. Just being aware of

[68:21]

this experience, before we put a label on it. The more we do that, the energy of being with what is, the capacity to be what is, becomes strengthened. We have more resourcefulness, more resilience, more flexibility to navigate what is. It's kind of like surfing, right? Surfers, if they're all stiff and resisting, you know, they're going to... tumble quickly. And if they can stay agile and allow themselves to have a soft body and mind, they're more able to kind of direct their energy to going with the flow of the weight. And she mentions that in the poem. So that's helpful. That is helpful. Thank you. It's the, you know, trying to not layer on top of it a meaning, you know, to just let it be sound, let it be... what it is without labeling it, putting an emotion onto it.

[69:23]

Right. Like, yeah, using the emotion comes after the label. Yeah. So what is it before the label? What is the experience before we name it in any way? Right? Rest with that. Okay, one more. Joe, and then we'll wrap up. Joe Tedesco. Is Joe around? There you are, Joe. Are you able to mute yourself? Oh, he's gone. No, he's here. I see his face. There he is. Thank you, David. You're welcome, Joe. Good to see you. Good to see you. Thank you for the wonderful talk. And as someone mentioned earlier, he put everything together. Very nice flow. Good points. You mentioned resting in the moment or resting in awareness.

[70:27]

And I know there's many techniques for being noticing what's arising, whether that's anger or negative judgment. And then looking, welcoming it, as you said. And then when you welcome it, feel it, be with it. And let it go. Rest in awareness seems to be all that. Could you speak a little bit more about that? I mean, which one do you do? Do you just rest? Do you do like Pema Chodron who says, let it penetrate your heart? Which to me just means be with it. Without, I guess, grasping, which is very subtle. You know, it's just like be with it without hanging on to it. Could you speak more to that? Well, for many of us, it can be kind of a process, right? And it's kind of a slow melting. I kind of think of it as a slow melting.

[71:30]

So awareness itself, you could say it's just kind of this warm sunlight. And as we're with whatever the experience is, you notice the ways in which we have a tendency to either, if it's pleasant, kind of lean towards it and want more of it. or if it's unpleasant to kind of move away from it, right? So one of the first things we notice is, what is mind's tendency with the present moment experience in whatever way it's showing up? Is the mind grabbing on, trying to get more of it because we like it, right? Or is it resisting it, pushing it away, wanting to, right? You know, wanting it to be different in some way. And we notice usually whatever happens in the mind, there's going to be some... Viberation in the body. If you study deeply, you'll notice oftentimes the body is telling you what is happening in the mind. And sometimes we notice the tension in the body before we realize the tension in the mind.

[72:30]

So part of what Kama is pointing to is when we feel it completely, when we allow it to be completely known, there's a way that our resistance to what is softens. Because in actuality, the experience itself is nothing but open awareness, just taking the shape of the experience in the moments. There's nothing fundamentally there. And so the more we open to it and soften it and allow it to be felt and to be known and actually to study its true nature, what is this really? What is it really made of? How do I know this experience? What is the experience, for example, of pain in the knee, right? Before we even label it pain, what is it simply to kind of settle into, to breathe into, to go deeper into the actual sensation?

[73:36]

And when we continue to do that and let go of our ideas about it, particularly let go of our sense of there's a self in there, That's going to be an impact on your self over here, right? The minute we dissolve that sense of separation, and this is what basically practice is about, dissolving any sense of separation, right? Once we do that, the dualism that creates suffering fades away. And to such a degree that eventually we just notice there's just experience arising, passing away. There's no one here experiencing the experience that's being experienced. There's not a separate self here that is experiencing this experience. When we go completely into the experience, we discover that. And in that, we find liberation. The experience no longer holds us. We're no longer caught by it. We're no longer identified by it.

[74:40]

There's not a me experiencing anything. There's just awareness arising, manifesting as a particular form or shape. Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. It's the same thing. We get to just simply observe this light show of awareness unfolding. And it doesn't cause suffering. Because we see there's no sense of separation here. There's no one who's hurting separately on an ultimate level. And there's nothing that's being hurt. So the more we see that and then combine this kind of absolute view with the relative view, we find ourselves not getting caught on either end. Is that helpful at all? Yes. Do you recommend also investigating it like asking what is possibly underlying this feeling or any unmet needs?

[75:49]

I know you talked about unmet needs before underlying it, or is there anything underlying this? Do you recommend that as well, investigating it sort of intellectually, asking questions? There's a time to do that. So, you know, we talk about shamatha and vipassana. You know, shamatha is the experience of just resting with... Resting with what is, opening, softening into, being with the experience. And then Vipassana is the insight, studying it, seeing the nature of what is, right? Now, you can, Zazen, we typically wouldn't say, don't engage the investigative mind, right? But maybe afterwards, right? Or you can just say, you know, simply to yourself, what is this? What is this? Right? but don't engage the conceptual mind to try to figure it out. That's not zazen. So inquiry is a profound practice, and I think it's a powerful practice, and I support it, but if you're doing zazen, do zazen, which is just being with the experience.

[76:53]

If you're doing inquiry practice, then do inquiry practice, and know that you're doing inquiry practice. To study into what is this, And what's my relationship to it? And what's my narrative around it? What's the old spiritual story that I have about this? And usually that story is always evolving around a sense of a separate self. There's some sense of identity that is reinforced by the story that we have about any experience. So where is the sense of a separate self located in that experience? When you can identify that and begin to deconstruct that story of that belief in narrative, in time it loosens up. The layers begin to fall away. It doesn't have the same authority that it used to have. We don't believe it as quickly as it used to. We don't get caught by it as long as we may have in the past. So it doesn't mean it's not going to still come up at times.

[77:58]

It doesn't mean we're still going to have a contraction of some sort. Because we've been practicing with it, we know how to relate to it in a way that the holding on doesn't persist and create greater suffering. So inquiry is powerful practice. But be clear, if you're doing zazen, you're doing zazen. If you're doing inquiry practice, you're doing inquiry practice. I hope that's some help. You're welcome. Thank you, Dave. You're welcome. So I'm sorry, friends. I realize we're quite over time, and I got carried away. So thank you for your patience and for, again, being together in this way. I really feel deeply nourished by our practice together and by supporting each other to navigate this remarkable time, which looks like it's going to continue.

[79:00]

you know, for a while longer. So may your practice continue to offer you a sense of resilience, you know, in the coming days and weeks and months ahead. So thank you, my friends. Take good care. And I look forward to seeing you on Wednesday. Thank you.

[79:24]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_93.89