Well, good evening, everyone. Good to see you. Can you hear me? Put thumbs up if you can hear me. Yes? Yay. OK. Very good. Well, it's a joy to be with you all again. And as I say each time, for me, this is one of the highlights of my week. And I really appreciate having this opportunity to be with you all and practicing together in this way. not only during this particularly challenging time, but always. And so what I'd like to just do, take a brief moment for anyone who might be new to this particular online practice session, is to let you know that what we usually end up doing is we start with a meditation. And I'll begin the meditation with a little bit of a guided, a few guided pointers. and then slowly fading into silence. And then after the meditation, I'll offer what I call a Dharmet, which is a brief Dharma encouragement, some things that might be on my mind that I'd like to share with you.

[02:24]

And then after that, we'll open up and see what you might like to bring forward, any particular questions or experiences that you'd like to share from your practice, either in our session today or during the past week or so. And then we aim to wrap up by 6.30 or so. So that's kind of the flow of our time together. And before I go into the meditation, I want to briefly mention that due to another program that I'll be participating in next week, I won't be able to lead the Tuesday, Thursday practice session for next week, this coming week. However, we have a special treat. I've invited Susan O'Connell to fill in for me for both Tuesday and Thursday of next week, so no worries. You'll still have a practice session in time with the teacher. I think some of you may already know Susan. She actually participated in and led two of the first practice sessions that we did together at the end of March.

[03:29]

And this was because she was meeting, co-leading the March intensive on work with Mark Lesser. And so I've invited Susan back and hope that you will all support each other in our collective practice together. So here we are, our practice pandemic journey continues together. And we see, you know, you could say we see the shore of the past fading in the distance. When this all began seems to already be a ways behind us. And the other shore, the shore of the future, still seems quite far away. And there's rather a hazy horizon. So it's so hazy, we're not even sure about what it is we're seeing. And all we can really know is this present moment. which is eternal and timeless, and yet continually shifting and unfolding.

[04:32]

So before we begin our meditation together, I'd like to share a quote from Stephen Mitchell. This quote is from his book, Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist. He writes, to live on the shifting ground, one first needs to stop obsessing about what has happened before and what might what might happen later. One needs to be more virtually or vitally conscious of what is happening now. This is not to deny the reality of the past and future. It is about embarking on a new relationship with the impermanence and temporality of life. Instead of hankering after the past and speculating about the future, one sees the present as the fruit of what has been and the germ of what will be. Shakyamuni Buddha did not encourage withdrawal to a timeless mystical now, but an unflinching encounter with a contingent world as it unravels moment to moment.

[05:40]

So Zazen, of course, is our practice of sitting right in the middle of the contingent world as it unravels. And sitting there and of letting go of the past and ideas of the future. And just residing in the here and now. And doing our best to find composure amidst the ever-shifting ground of experience. So let's enter now into our meditation together. And I invite you all to once again find an upright, authentic posture that will best accommodate you. your body. Many of you already have taken that posture. And as I do each time, I want to encourage you that throughout the meditation, give yourself over to both the physical and mental posture that is attentive and yet relaxed. So finally, what is that balance between attentiveness and yet a deep, subtle quality of being relaxed?

[06:50]

I'm going to ring the bell three times to begin the period of meditation. And I invite you to allow your awareness to gently accompany the vibrations and sound of the bell until it fades away each time. And then afterwards, simply allowing awareness itself to abide. And I will end the period with one bell. So here we go. allowing yourself to make contact with and become aware of and relax into your present moment experience in whatever way it's showing up.

[08:10]

So gathering your attention from wherever it's been, whatever it's been occupied with, busy with, and simply allow it to abide right here in this momentary experience. It might be helpful to first come home to the body. Come home to the grounded, sensate experience of being embodied. The checking in with your embodiments, noting the experience of the head, the shoulders, the limbs, torso, and the muscles, and even sensing, if you can, the blood flow.

[09:19]

Let bodily presence be the prevailing ground of your experience now. that groundedness in the body and how that groundedness actually is connected to a greater groundedness, the groundedness of the earth itself, which sustains us. Touching the groundedness of our being. You might also find it beneficial to use the breath as a touchstone, as a grounding mechanism or device. So simply allowing awareness, mind's attention to follow the rhythm and flow of the breath.

[10:26]

Breathing in, being a really out in-breath, and then breathing out, being a really out-breath. awareness to gently accompany the natural rhythm of breathing in and breathing out non-judgmentally. Maybe feeling the breath first, initially, beginning in the abdomen, as well as ending in the abdomen. You may wish to also experiment with giving particular attention to the exhale. Sometimes people find it helpful to first take three intentional breaths in and out.

[11:35]

Taking the in breath in for a count of four. and then exhaling, and then exhaling, extending the exhale to a count of eights. And doing this three times. And after the third time, returning to simply allowing the breath to be natural. Although maybe giving a little bit more attention to the exhale. Feeling that exhale actually in the abdomen, in the heart, in the center of your being. Note how that space connects you to a greater space. We're sitting quietly and coming home to ourselves.

[12:43]

our embodied sense of being. We set an intention to stay present with experience in whatever way it shows up. And then we notice when the mind wanders. We become distracted perhaps by thoughts or worries, planning, or maybe by emotions or body sensations. Whatever it is that pulls us away from just resting in this direct immediate experience of here and now.

[13:49]

Simply allow mind's attention to return once more to the breath as a touchstone to this present moment. Going back to the embodied feeling of spaciousness and resting there. Slipping into that inner sense of wholeness and solidarity. Maybe there's a sense of balance, composure, equanimity. felt in that spaciousness, in that stillness. I often speak of the aperture of awareness when offering guided meditation, the way in which we can narrow the aperture to focus on a single point, maybe beginning with the breath, allowing the spotlight of awareness to just focus on the particular spot of the breath in our body, that embodied experience of breathing.

[15:52]

whatever is most noticeable. And then in time, we have a kind of ongoing relationship with that particular on pointedness, widening the aperture to include the experience of the whole body. The whole body is a field of awareness. Maybe even feeling the experience of the breath throughout the whole body, being with that, resting with that. Opening to that experience of being breathed by the body. Maybe in time, if that feels somewhat of a stable experience, widening the aperture even more widely. Kind of a boundless, borderless aperture. just an open sky of awareness itself, unlimited.

[17:01]

Allow yourself to rest there, believing, simply allowing yourself to fall through that open spaciousness, that realm of the ungroundedness of all being. that gets to be too much, we can simply redirect attention once more, denarying the aperture to a more focused location, the breath, the body, until once again ready to open. So now resting in stillness, in silence for the rest of the period. Well, thank you everyone for sitting together again.

[32:11]

It's always a joy for me to be able to do this with you all. For the Dermet today, I'd like to say a few things about groundlessness. And I think you could say that even before the advent of the coronavirus, many of us have had lives in which we feel we are constantly being thrown off balance in some way, either by the pushing and pulling energies and vicissitudes of our life, or by the demands of our personal and work and communal responsibilities, or simply just by our kind of own disorderly desires and fears and emotions. And for many months, because of this, we might take up meditation or come to places like Zen Center looking for a refuge, looking for a sense of of groundedness, looking to recover some sense of inner composure among all of this constant change.

[33:17]

And while it's true that Dharma practice and meditation affords us a significant measure of ease and stability, we also need to realize that true equanimity means we need to come to terms with and embrace a fundamental groundlessness. and impermanence, seeing that there's, in a certain way, there is no escape from this groundlessness. So I'd like to share with you one of my favorite passages from Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. And I think this passage speaks to this point. So Suzuki Roshi says, To live in the realm of Buddha nature means to die as a small being, moment after moment. When we lose our balance, we die.

[34:20]

And at the same time, to lose our balance, sometimes, means to develop ourselves or to grow. If we are in perfect balance, we cannot live as a small being. So wherever we look, we see that things are changing. losing their balance. Why everything looks beautiful is because it is something out of balance. But its background is always in perfect balance. And in this perfect harmony, everything exists, losing its balance. This is how everything exists in the realm of big Buddha nature. So if you see things without knowing, Without realizing Buddha nature, everything is in the form of suffering. But if you understand the background of everything, which looks like suffering, suffering itself is how we live, how we extend our life.

[35:24]

So in Zen, sometimes we emphasize the out of balance or disorder. I think Kira Suzuki Roshi is reminding us that everything is beautiful because of impermanence. Because everything is impermanent and not stuck in a fixed, stable state is experienced by us as losing its balance. So he counsels us that we must be willing to fall out of balance, to release the known position in which we are standing, and to tumble into the next. And we do this all the time, actually, as this is what's required in the simple act of walking. In order to walk, we need to lose our balance for a period of time. We need to let one foot leave its connection to the earth, hover in space and uncertainty for a moment before falling forward and then hopefully land quickly again on solid, stable ground.

[36:42]

at which point the process starts over with the other foot. So you could say that imbalance leading to balance, leading to balance, imbalance, and so forth, is this process of walking, is this process of moving forward in our life. This is the only true way to move forward. So impermanence leading to eternity, leading to impermanence. If we're honest with ourselves and look deeply into our experience of life, most of us are aware at some level of a deeper sense of groundlessness, a sense that there is nothing ultimately on which we can rely. Our expectation that our next step, you know, that there will be solid ground of some sort, you could say is in many ways a self-deception.

[37:47]

How do we know that for sure? So the Dharma teachings point to this repeatedly, again and again, reminding us that all things are impermanent, and impermanent because they lack inherent existence. So according to the Buddha Dharma, everything, all phenomena, is empty of unbeing, empty of an inherently self-existent aspect. But the most problematical, problematical experience of black for us has to do with our own illusory sense of being a separate self. Because it lacks any reality of its own, any stable ground. This sense of a separate self, you could say is haunted by a sense of deficiency or disease. Our sense of a separate self is a phantom. And Buddhism says that our dukkha, dukkha is a word that means kind of our basic experience of dis-ease, dissatisfaction, or suffering, isn't just due to the reality of impermanence and to death.

[39:03]

Dukkha is itself a reaction to the groundlessness of our being. Somewhere we know the truth. It makes us deeply uncomfortable. It makes the separate self, the belief in a separate self, deeply uncomfortable because it knows at some level it's a lie. But while the lack of a solid self or groundedness may seem to be a problem, it's also an opportunity. If we can open up to the truth of the ungroundedness, at the core of our being, if we can let go and yield to it, then we find that it's also the source of our creativity and our spirituality. At the very core of our being, there's something else there, something formless that can't be grasped, something that transcends the small self.

[40:16]

And yet, is the very ground of that self. As the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart expressed it, God is closer to me than I am to myself. Or you could say Buddha is closer to me than I am to myself. And that's a wonderful way to put it. Buddha or awareness is closer to me than I am to myself. own conditioned self. Because what I am is awareness itself. What I am is boundless, luminous space in which all experience arises, passes through, and dissolves, including our phantom experience of being a second self. So the question is, how can we learn to open up to our fundamental ungroundedness or groundlessness and live courageously from that place of, you could say, a liberated freefall?

[41:28]

There's a well-known Zen koan, which asks the question, how can you proceed from the top of a hundred foot? How can you proceed from the top of a 100-foot pole? What is it to reach the top of what is known, of the familiar? And then take one more step. How do we step or jump, perhaps, beyond our habitual deluded ways of thinking and perceiving and grasping? How do we not hold on to what we think we know? and extend beyond our ideas into the not knowing. And when we have the courage to do this, then suddenly we find ourselves falling, falling through emptiness and into the abyss of not knowing.

[42:34]

Zazen is itself an act. I would say it's just of intentionally becoming intimate with the experience of groundlessness. That also entails what Dogen described as chopping body and mind. That is, chopping our defecation with our body and our mind, chopping our investment in these momentary empty phenomena, these aggregated conditions, and instead allow ourselves to simply rest and abide in our true nature, which in Buddhism we say is open, boundless, spacious awareness. So we are free as long as we experience our lives as arising from awareness itself. I read somewhere that a student once came to the Zen teacher Charlotte Jocko Beck complaining of

[43:43]

episodes of vertigo and disorientation that seemed somehow triggered by her zazen. And the student was actually quite unnerved by the experience of always kind of seemingly being on the edge of falling. So Charlotte is said to have responded to the student that Zen practice requires that we eventually get used to the sensation of falling. She said, get used to the sensation of falling. So what does it mean for you to get used to the sensation of falling? To get used to a fundamental sense of groundlessness, of having nothing, absolutely nothing fundamental to rely on. In emptiness, Nothing is solid.

[44:44]

There is nothing to hold on to. In the free fall of not knowing, there is no way to control our experience. We have to surrender. Our practice is ultimately about surrendering to what is. And when we can do that, with that surrender comes the taste of liberation. And, you know, The truth is oftentimes that taste of liberation can actually initially be disorienting. So much freedom after we've been kind of contracted and held for so long can really throw us. The Chan teacher Guru Jun says that the experiences of free fall teaches us not to grasp at the way we want things to be. We must accept the pace of the experience. Difficulties will end when they end.

[45:45]

Not knowing makes us fearful, but life is filled with uncertainty. It is far better to embrace this fluidity than to resist it or pretend that our lives and the lives of those we love won't pass away. We emerge from the void or emptiness. and it is to the void we return. There is no point in resisting. Falling through space and gently breathing in the abyss, these are the great teachers. How does groundlessness for you to become a teacher? And this is the koan that practice has sent us. This is what practices us in each moment, to come to the end of what we know and what we are familiar with, and then extend beyond, to jump off, to allow ourselves to stretch and expand and release into the open, undefined space of the next moment, which is actually really just this moment now.

[47:00]

in the infinite. So we become larger when we're able to do this. We become larger by allowing the world and life to be what it is. And in doing so, the world allows us to truly and fully take our place. So friends, I hope you find ways to have the courage to leap into the unknown, to take the next step and embrace the feeling of groundlessness that is the gift of life itself. It's the gift of possibility. So I'll close with a quote from Pema Chodron. He says, when we resist change, it's called suffering. When we can completely let go and not struggle against it, When we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that's called enlightenment.

[48:10]

So thank you for your kind attention and presence. And now we'll go ahead and open up the space to all of you to see if you have any particular questions or things that you'd like to share from our practice together. So Barbara is playing the Zoom host. So she will see anyone who's raised her hand. She'll give instructions for how to raise your hand. And the first person I see is Michelle Ferrer. Barbara, can you help to unmute Michelle? Hi, thank you so much. Can you hear me? I can hear you. You're on the phone, I guess. Yeah. OK. So I just, I really wanted to understand this idea between this enlightened free falling and allowing for change, but then also how to incorporate, not allow that to be also passive and incorporate a will to want, if you want something like, I'm trying to think of how to word it, but...

[49:19]

let's say social justice or social change that we would like to happen? How do we kind of have those two living together, allowing for these experiences to go through and then also pushing for something that we feel is just? A wonderful question. I really appreciate that. So I think just as when we're walking, you know, there's this intention to take a step forward, to move into a direction that offers us possibility, that somehow fulfills a particular goal or intention, something that's important to us. So we set the intention, we set a vow, you know, to move in a particular direction. We lift our foot, we take a step, and then we see how are the conditions for us? Are they supporting us once we take that step and land our foot back down, you know? Are we able to stand for a moment in that spot, right? And oftentimes, you know, the conditions support that.

[50:25]

We can take that step. We can rest there. And it helps us to move forward in our intention, whatever that might be. Social justice, you know, racial justice, being able to take care of this beautiful world and the environment, create beneficial change. So we keep moving in that direction with attention, particular intention. And then we also notice, when is it that we're grasping? Or when is it that conditions particularly don't support us to take the next step? That we stumble in some way, that we fall in some way, that the ground for us to kind of rest on, you know, isn't quite there yet. And it's become shaky. So we notice that, right? And we notice how is it that we become, how did I say this? We expected maybe too much. of the situation. We expected things to be a certain way, and then we become disappointed and upset, right?

[51:26]

So when we notice the conditions aren't right yet, right? What do we do? We pick ourselves up again, right? And we establish our intention and continue moving forward in that direction as best we can. And we're doing this all together. All of us are trying this process of walking through walking through the sky, right? Walking through both emptiness, but also possibility simultaneously. Trying to, in that process, bring us to awareness of the way that we're already liberated. All of us are already deeply, unfathomably liberated, right? And yet we don't perceive that. We don't perceive that. And because we don't perceive that, we create social conditions that don't emphasize or don't support or don't bring into fruition that inherent liberation in our social systems and our institutional structures and the way that we, you know, educate each other and so on.

[52:33]

So we keep moving towards this attention to bring awareness of our ultimate liberation, our ultimate kind of capacity to be free at any moment, falling through the beautiful sky, you know, luminous mind together and bringing forward as best we can conditions that's going to happen. Is that helpful or is that a little bit too much of the emptiness world? Michelle, oh, she's muted again. Hi, sorry. That's okay. I was unmuted. No, yeah, thank you. Okay. And thank you for your work. I wish for everyone to hold that intention to how do we support each other to be liberated. So I see two other hands have been raised. Barbara, can you help me bring the next person forward?

[53:34]

I'm not sure who it might be. Fred, is Fred there? There, Fred. Hello, Fred. Oh, you've been muted. Barbara, can you unmute Fred? There we go. Thank you. My question for tonight, well, thank you so much for the teaching tonight. Groundlessness is a great teaching to meditate upon. I'm just wondering, Well, my meditation has struggled a lot with focus. So going back to the basics of meditation, how do you strengthen focus in groundlessness?

[54:40]

How do we strengthen focus in groundlessness or groundedness? Yes, how do you focus in groundlessness? How can we better focus when meditating and being grounded? Well, one of the things I might suggest is, you know, when we, at the beginning of our meditation, focus on the breath. And the breath is a great tool for our initial kind of direction of the mind because itself is kind of its essence of spaciousness. right? So if we can stay with the sensation of the breath, however we best experience that in the body, feel that the breath as an embodied experience, and then kind of deepen into that and feel the spaciousness itself of the breath. And then from that spaciousness of the breath, this is why I encourage, like, become aware of the spaciousness of the breath throughout the whole body.

[55:44]

Allow the breath to permeate the whole body. Allow awareness of that spaciousness to permeate throughout the whole body. And then I was suggesting widening the aperture to feel the sense of spaciousness around us, around our body first. So beginning with that kind of breath work and breathing into any particular parts of the body that have a sense of mountedness or contraction or holding on in some way, allow kind of spaciousness to enter into that. And then another, so you can sometimes when you sit there and you just kind of continue opening, allow yourself to just continue opening and relax, opening and relax. Kind of a gentle encouragement throughout your meditation, open and relax, release. That sense of

[56:47]

Groundlessness itself will make itself known in time. It's not something you can kind of get, right? It kind of reveals itself. It kind of almost fall into it, you know, from a kind of almost like a grace, sense of grace, right? It makes itself known the more that we continue to open and relax and let go of the known, right? We kind of fall into it. Gravity. Kind of. You can play with gravity, but it's more than gravity. Thank you. One of the things that I also sometimes suggest is look for the edges of experience. Go to the edge of what you know, what you experience. For example, the body. Where is the edge of your body? If you close your eyes,

[57:47]

and look for the edge of your body. Can you really find it? And even if you do that, even if you try to find the edge of your body, close your eyes, there's some kind of flapping going on, I don't know. Okay. Even if you close your eyes and find the edge of your body, you might have the concept, the idea of the edge of your body come up. But that's just a concept. That's just an idea. That's not a felt sense of the edge of your body. So what is it to kind of continue to question those boundaries, those edges in some way, right? And when you feel into them, when you extend into those edges, you see that there's actually nothing there. And that helps you to kind of expand out into openness, right? And that sense of groundlessness will itself, again, make itself known in some way. So those are maybe, you know, something to try on, see if that is at all.

[58:52]

Helps you to discover how to practice this with grantlessness. Thank you, Fred. And Barbara says, Denny Chu has a question. Denny, are you there? Hi, can you hear me? I can. Okay, sorry if my internet connection is on speaker. or something. But my question is, I'm kind of confused about the, you know, the concept of separates, no separate. As far as I have had a kind of difficulty forming a, through adolescence and beyond, an identity of my own. So I have weak boundaries. And take advantage of the fact that people that are aggressive take advantage of the fact that I cannot set boundaries with them.

[59:57]

So, I mean, I would like to have a separate, you know, separate, integrated, whole self. And I feel I don't because I grew up in a dysfunctional, codependent family. Thank you. That's a wonderful question. I appreciate you bringing that forward and kind of your, you know, the vulnerability that you're showing there about what it is to kind of experience, you know, try to figure out what is my identity. You know, kind of say you need to have a sense of self first before you can let go of a sense of self. And I think one of the things that's beneficial, you know, to combine psychotherapy with, you know, meditation practice is that the psychotherapy helps us to enter into a new, healthier sense of self, you know, a new narrative of self that is more intentional and that actually honors and respects the boundaries that we need to have in order to be healthy human beings and have, you know, respectful, healthy relationships.

[61:13]

So boundaries are very beneficial. And we need to be able to learn what our boundaries are in ways that honor our being, honor a sense of healthy self, right? And also make sure that as we relate to others, we're also honoring their boundaries, honoring and respecting who they are as individuals. So we need to start with that as a foundation. And then when we start with that in time, right, we're able to also begin to explore what is this sense of selflessness, right? What is that quality? And how do we relate to that sense of selflessness? So basically that's saying who we think we are is not a fixed being. Our sense of self is not a fixed thing. It's a narrative. It's a story. On a relative level, this is how we negotiate our lives. We need a sense. We need a sense of self.

[62:14]

And we need to respect that. We need to find a way to navigate in the relative world from that sense of self, from a perception of identity, of differences, right? It's very important to acknowledge those and respect those. And we realize that ultimately we are not who we think we are and others are not who they think they are or how we perceive them. So what's appearing before us then It's simply kind of, you could sometimes I say awareness itself, taking the shape of, for example, a Denny or a David or everyone on the screen, right? For a brief moment, it takes the shape in the appearance of, but that appearance is just kind of a dance of kind of energy and lights, right? It's not a fixed thing. So we become to recognize that on the ultimate level, You know, there's nothing there for us to hold on.

[63:15]

And we all kind of share the same open quality of beingness. And yet on the day-to-day relative level, and they're not two different things. They're just two different ways of perceiving reality. And both are equally valid and equally real that we have to, you know, work with and negotiate. But on the day-to-day reality, you know, we need to start with basically kindness. and compassion, kindness for ourselves, respect for ourselves, and also kindness and respect for others. And the more we practice that, the more we'll have a rooted sense in our fundamental selflessness, you know, this one mind, this one heart of Buddha itself. Is that helpful at all? Yeah, it's kind of paradoxical, but also it is, I think maybe from my, you know, from where I am at, you know, I need a a stable identity, you know, a sense of self. Otherwise I feel constantly knocked off the ground and just literally I have a really bad sense of physical balance.

[64:23]

So I can't hold, you know, standing yoga poses. So, I mean, maybe are you saying that, you know, this no separate self, maybe that's something that is relative to where an individual person, might be in their life. I mean, for someone who is maybe four years old, you know, maybe they need to develop, you know, mentally to where they can at least have a core. And maybe that's one of, you know, kind of Erickson's, you know, the state of self. And I feel I never went through many of those things. So what I'm looking for right now is to build a sense of identity and a stable, secure sense of a self and where my boundaries are. So your wisdom is coming forward.

[65:24]

That wisdom is telling you this is what you need to give attention to right now. Honor that wisdom. Follow that. I think that's very wise of you to be able to recognize this is what I need right now. In my own stage of development, in spiritual practice, this is what I need, right? So follow that wisdom, honor that wisdom, do what you can to kind of, you know, work towards having a better, healthier sense of boundaries and identity and self, right? Yeah, so that you're not literally saying, well, no self, you know, applying to everyone, including people with very unstable, you know, inchoate personalities or Well, fundamentally. It doesn't mean that, oh, I just let everybody in because that's the problem. I can't keep people out, including people that are aggressive, you know, take advantage of. Yeah. Again, on the relative level, we need to give that attention.

[66:26]

You need to take great care. And simultaneously and paradoxically, on the ultimate level, there is no self in the way that we think there is, right? So we're not separate on an ultimate level. But if that's too confusing at this point, don't give your attention there. Well, yeah, we don't want to close ourselves off. It's already true. It's already true. You don't have to make it happen. You don't have to get there. It's already happening. I feel very, very more porous than I would like to be. So do something right after this that's grounding. Come back to your body, doing something that takes care of your kind of physical sense of well-being, your physical and emotional sense of well-being. So whatever that is. So if that sense of porousness feels a little bit too much for you right now, then respect that. And then do something that helps you to kind of stabilize in this moment. This is, again, what we do.

[67:28]

We take a step and we make sure that we're kind of stable there. And then we take the next step. And sometimes we need to pause for a period of time where we've stepped and wait till we get a sense of balance and orientation before we can take the next step. Again, that's how we walk through wisdom. So do what you need to. Honor that sense of this is what you need right now. It's beautiful that you see that and you have a sense of that. And it's difficult, you know, when you feel so ungrounded and you don't exactly know exactly how to grow roots or exactly where you're going to come from. Yeah. Well, thank you, Denny. I appreciate your practice and coming forward in this way. I really honor it. So I see there's one more hand up and maybe very briefly we'll turn to Terry. David, I think things that you've said to other people have answered my question.

[68:37]

I just have a hard time with, you know, no self. And it's not that I, I mean, I would say the top of my brain gets it, that it's probably true. But my experience, when you say, Where does your body end? It seems pretty clear to me. I can feel the air against my skin. And that's where my body ends. I did once, when I was performing, have the experience of falling through the whole performance. And that was an incredible experience. And then once, when I was doing the practice period with Christina, I felt, the boundaries dissolving. I felt that in my skin, you know? Other than that, I just don't... Do you live with that feeling?

[69:40]

That's... Do you walk in emptiness with no self? I mean, what is it like? I just... When you said you just have to let it come, I know that that's true. Both of those experiences, I wasn't trying for anything. Exactly. It just happened. Yeah, exactly. What is it for you to have an experience no self? When that experience comes up, it has different ways of expressing itself. Sometimes it literally feels like falling. Sometimes it has this feeling of kind of my sense of the boundaries of my body-mind just kind of fade, and it's kind of just an openness, you know? You know, sometimes it's, you know, you feel sometimes you are, I don't know about you, but I'm actually kind of afraid of heights, but I actually like heights.

[70:41]

So it's this mixed thing, right? So I go to the edge and I love looking over the edge, but the idea of falling over the edge of a cliff just scares the hell out of me. And there's that feeling, that feeling in the center of you being your guts, you know, that contraction of you. right? And sometimes when I have this feeling of open, you know, full openness, this balancedness, right? It's there for a moment. I'm falling through this open space, and then suddenly the small self contracts again. It's like, whoa, this is too much, right? So it's a little kind of, you know, kind of, what's it called? I can't think of the exact word, but little bits at a time, you know, a little bit here and there. It just kind of makes itself known. It's not something I can necessarily, you know, create. But when it makes itself known, I'm just like, oh, there it is. Okay. And appreciate the feeling that it kind of the way that informs and resonates. It becomes something that you begin to be able to recognize a little bit more in your life.

[71:46]

And it's, you know, it can be scary at first. It could be disorienting, right? It's like, well, who am I, right? And we want to hold on to our sense of a separate self, right? It's not that there isn't a self. It's just that it doesn't exist the way that we think it exists, which is a solid thing. So I want to point that out. So in many cases, it's just a matter of grace. We just do our best to sit and be open and relax and open the mind and the body. And at some point, this groundlessness makes itself known, reveals itself. You know, it's kind of looking, you know, through a glass floor into the sky, right? Or what, you know, everything just becomes this openness, right? So it's to begin to question the edges of our known experience, you know, to explore those edges is very helpful, right?

[72:49]

To extend beyond that. I don't, I think... Maybe that's something that I do anyhow, or if it's not, then I don't understand what you mean. Well, I think you do it in your creative process, right? Yeah. The creative process actually requires, at some level, you extend beyond your limits, right? You enter into an open space of potentiality, right? And the creativity, you know, sometimes people say it... It comes through me. It's not even me doing it. Something came through me. So that's the same thing. Something comes through you. It's not Terry who's controlling it. Something else flows through you. Terry just happens to be a vessel for which it expresses itself. That I experience quite frequently. So that is part of that sense of no self.

[73:50]

But Terry... you know, has to step aside for that creative process to come. Right? Yeah, that's true. Yes. Okay. Oh, so I'm already doing it. You are, see? I think, you know, all of you are doing it at some level. We just don't recognize it, right? We have this idea, these ideas about how we are and how we're limited or how small we are or fear or whatever else. And yet... All day long, we are already doing that. We just don't recognize the ways that we're doing it, right? So we need to step out of those narratives of the small self and look at, you know, this kind of other way that we already are, that's already free. You know, the awareness that see good looks out of our eyes and sees all things and looks back at us from other people's eyes, and it's not even limited to the body, of course, you know, is already that open boundless spaciousness, right?

[74:54]

We're already that. But some part of us gets caught in this little small holding on, right? Like Eddie, a being. It's like an Eddie in the ocean, right? We identify with this little Eddie just going around and around and around and we, you know, we name it or we hold on to it. But in the meantime, that Eddie is happening in the ocean of Albany, right? Okay, well, I see we're much past our usual time, so my apologies for going over. I heard a dog bark, so that probably means it's dinner time. The dog is reminding, hey, where's my dinner? You guys are going on too long. Let's stop. So thank you all very much. I appreciate our time together. And once again, I just want to, you know, say that I won't be able to join you next week, but Susan O'Connell will be joining us. So please come together once again.

[75:56]

She has a wonderful way of expressing and sharing the Dharma. So I hope you find it enriching. And I'll look forward to being back together with you all the following week. The story of a following week, wherever we think of that story. So, okay, friends. Be well, take good care. Bye-bye now. Thank you, Barbara, for hosting.

[76:33]

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