So we're still in this section of Zen Beginner's Mind that is offering the wisdom teachings. So wisdom teachings are the most challenging of the teachings that we have to deal with if we're going to come to some understanding of Zen teaching. you know, what's going on there. And many of you have listened in on conversations about the two truths, the ultimate truth and the relative truth and the relationship between the two truths and so on. So this is that terrain, the terrain of the wisdom beyond wisdom, the Heart Sutra, emptiness teachings, dependent core rising. So these are all the terms, the kind of philosophical terms that you'll find when you open the bag. of the wisdom teachings. So we're in that bag, and this lecture by Suzuki Roshi is entitled Naturalness, Naturalness.

[01:16]

And then the quote that follows the title is, moment after moment, everyone comes out from nothingness. This is the true joy of life. Moment after moment, everyone, everything, everyone comes out from nothingness. This is the true joy of life. So I found that statement a little startling, you know, a little strange. Maybe you do as well. You know, that everything comes out from nothingness seems somewhat mystical. And as I said last week, it's the poets and the mystics and the scientists that invite us to see beyond what is visible. You know, nothingness is not visible. You know, I can't even conceive of nothingness. I was always somethingness when I'm conceiving of things. Seems like I'm conceiving of something. And yet at the same time, this teaching resonates with me that my life is continuously emerging from nothingness or from what I've often thought of as the darkness.

[02:27]

So maybe just take us a minute right now to imagine yourself emerging in each moment. from the darkness darkness meaning that which you can't see that which you can't know that which you don't have access to it's like think about that as being the past you know like coming out of what happened 10 minutes ago your life is emerging from things that are gone that have already passed away You know, it's a little bit of a kind of eerie feeling, but it's one I rather enjoy eerie feelings when I'm meditating, especially in the morning. You know, just to try out that idea that my life emerges from out of darkness. Darkness meaning, I don't know. I don't know where this is coming from. I don't know how I'm appearing here, how I'm coming forth. This is... I'm not in charge. Really, there's nobody in charge of what's happening now. And yet here I am. You know, even to me, I seem to be arriving moment after moment.

[03:33]

So this darkness is the darkness of before the present moment, of before I was born. You know, I was born out of the darkness. My mother's womb, her mother's womb, her mother's mother's womb, and so on. Long chain of darkness out of which we all have been born. and before the awakening of the Buddha. What kind of darkness was that? So in this talk, Suzuki Roshi is bringing up the concept of naturalness, which by the time he arrived in California was a very popular idea among the beatniks and the hippies who would soon dominate the culture of the San Francisco Zen Center. You know, I happened to be one of them. You know, I arrived when the elders among us were beatniks. They had all been in college during the 50s, and they had read a lot of poetry, and some of them had gone off to Japan and studied Asian poetry and Asian culture and so on.

[04:34]

Gary Snyder and Philip Whelan. And those elders of ours were really interesting and very mostly... pretty well educated. They'd all gone to kind of alternative universities like Reed College or Antioch or whatever. So they had this counterculture vibe to them. And then along came the hippies who didn't matter if we were educated or not. That wasn't sort of our thing. Our thing was more like naturalness, you know, or liberation or freedom, freedom from formality, from what was expected of us and so on. So this very attractive idea of naturalness, of freedom and informality, included some familiar cultural mandates that we refused, like cutting our hair or even wearing shoes. You know, one of the things that attracted me to Zen Center was they weren't wearing shoes. I thought that was very nice because I don't really like shoes all that much. So Roshi says that in Japan, such an attitude is called let alone policy.

[05:40]

The let alone policy, or he says, sloppiness. So this is not what naturalness means for him as a Buddhist teacher. It doesn't mean sloppiness or whatever, or just letting it all happen, let it all go. For us, in order to learn how to be natural, we need to tune into certain cycles, natural cycles, like the cycles of nature or of seasons, and to be aligned with each phase of our own personal growth. We're cycles. of the cycles of nature, that sometimes I think we lose our alignment with that, with our own growth, how we grow, how we change. So when we're little, we don't really have any idea about what kind of a grown-up we're going to be. But whatever it is, it will have some form and some color, as I have, and that form and color will be in perfect harmony with all beings, or not.

[06:41]

So being out of harmony with other beings is not natural. You know, for plants and rocks, he says, being natural is no problem. For humans, it's a lot of work. So having big desires and expectations and preferences as humans, we often overlook the simple daily act, for example, of taking food when we're hungry. Instead, we look at menus. And we try new recipes and we send things back if they aren't cooked to our liking. That's all familiar, I'm sure. And when we expect too much, he says, to have some food is no longer natural. There's no kind of new feeling or fresh feeling or kind of wonder about it all and no appreciation for what we eat. You know, we're simply served. So then he gives the example of sleeping. when you're trying to avoid work or because the other workers are goofing off. He says sleeping is what we do when we're tired, not when we're trying to get away from doing work or when we're trying to do what those others are doing and not work too hard.

[07:52]

So we might think, well, they're not working very hard, so why should I? Or we might want more money or we might want better things because other people have more than we do. Again, all of this is familiar. I once read that in villages where everyone has more or less the same size house and the same level of income, such as I had growing up in the suburbs of San Francisco, we all had pretty much the same size house in the neighborhood where I grew up, and we all went to the same public schools, and we all had the kind of same clothes and the same shoes, and there wasn't any big difference between the families. in my town. But when a big house is built in the neighborhood, that's when the trouble starts. Then there's a lot of comparing, which begins to corrode the harmony of the community. I was also remembering driving around some years ago, many years ago now, on the East Coast. I had been sent to the East Coast by the Zen Center to help take care of an older woman who lived in a town called Old Westbury, Long Island.

[08:59]

Old Westbury was a very old part of the East Coast. A lot of Europeans had come there and established really large estates. And there were big houses there. Some of them were left over. And a lot of those big houses, one of them in particular up the street from where I was staying, had been converted to a golf course. So the big house was the golf club. And in the morning, I used to like to go out there and run around on the green when there was nobody there. So And there were also, along with the big houses and big properties, there were lots of no trespassing signs and private property signs. And it all in all didn't feel like a very welcoming place. So one afternoon I came into a very small town. I was driving around kind of trying to figure out what was going on there in Old Westbury. And I came to this little village where all the houses were the same size, around a large village green. And so I was quite curious, you know, how did this get here?

[10:01]

They were old. They were old houses from several centuries ago. And so I went to a bookstore in the town, and I asked them, you know, how did this town get here? And she said, oh, this town was founded by the Quakers. And so the idea the Quakers had is everyone had a house the same size, and they all shared the commons. So, you know, when our minds are entangled by thoughts of having more than others, or being better than others, it's hard for us to find the harmony of naturalness, or of interdependence, of how we are here on the earth, and we are all in this together. So Roshi says that our meditation practice can also be entangled with confusing ideas about our neighbors, about our own posture, or who the teacher likes best. I can remember that one. Who does the teacher like best? So this is not true practice. You know, we don't have to force ourselves to drink water when we're thirsty or to sleep when we're tired.

[11:04]

We don't have to force ourselves to sit upright when there's the true joy in our sitting practice. And yet, even when there's difficulty in our sitting practice, there's something very good about it when we welcome that difficulty and when we learn from that difficulty, when we want to have difficulty that's there. So that wanting to take on what's there to meet the challenges of what's there, that's naturalness. This is what Suzuki Roshi is talking about. So although it is difficult to explain, Roshi says, when we experience the actuality of the nothingness that's at the core of our practice, the nothingness at the core of reality, the nothingness of where it comes from and where it's going, of what it is right now, then whatever we do will be natural, and the true joy of life will be there. He says that true being comes out of nothingness, repeating that earlier verse.

[12:05]

True being comes out of nothingness, moment after moment. Nothingness is always there, and from it, everything appears, like flashes of lightning in the night sky. Like flashes of lightning in the night sky. So we humans, however, forget about the source of our life. We forget about nothingness. And we think that we have something. You know, lots of somethings. And those somethings are mine. And so that kind of thinking is possessive. It's possessive thinking based on concrete ideas. It's a funny idea itself, right? Concrete ideas. You know... The notion of concrete ideas already gives us a clue to what kind of thinking that is. I looked up in the dictionary this word concrete. So it's kind of fun to look up words. And it says concrete means solid. Think of ideas being solid or real, tangible, touchable, visible, existing, fixed, set in stone, material, substantial, and genuine.

[13:17]

So that's concrete, concrete ideas. Well, none of that, no ideas have those qualities as far as I've ever had one. You know, ideas, as I hope you have already noticed, have none of those things going for them. They're kind of flashes out of, you know, lightning flashes in the night sky. So what we do have, Roshi says, rather than concrete ideas, is this Japanese term, shinku myoyu, shinku myoyu, meaning from true emptiness to true nothingness, wondrous being appears. From true emptiness, wondrous being appears. Roshi then talks about how we listen to lectures as an example of naturalness. If we listen with our own ideas, our own concrete ideas about what we are hearing, we won't be able to hear what's being said. Having nothing in our mind as we listen is naturalness. It's like welcoming.

[14:18]

An open mind is a natural mind, just like drinking water when we're thirsty. The water goes in quite easily, and as the sound of the speaker's voice also goes in quite easily, if our mind isn't being blocked by its own understanding, by comparing what we already think to what we're hearing now. That's familiar to me as well. kind of tracking what the person is saying and going, I don't know about that. What about that? Your questions are all kind of lined up as you go along. So whatever we do should be done in this same natural way, completely open and available to what is arriving fresh, the freshness of creation herself. There's a lovely poem that I've liked for a very long time since I first read it. It's in the first case of the Book of Serenity. Some of you may not know the Book of Serenity. It's a collection of koans that's quite well regarded in our particular school of Zen, Soto Zen.

[15:21]

And some of them will be very familiar to you, and some of them maybe not so much. But the first case in the Book of Serenity is one of the great ones. Do I have it here? I don't have it here. But anyway, the world-honored one is pretty simple. The world-honored one, the Buddha, gets up on the seat to give a lecture. So just imagine that. The Buddha's getting up on the seat to give a lecture. And Manjushri, who's the bodhisattva of wisdom, points to the Buddha and says to the congregation, clearly observe. The Dharma of the king of the Dharma is thus. So the Buddha's up in the seat. Imagine the duck is the Buddha. Buddha's up in the seat. Manjushri points and says, clearly observe, the dharma of the king of the dharma is thus. And when he says that, the Buddha gets down from the seat. So that's the koan. So, you know, the poem that's included in this case, the explanations of this case, goes like this.

[16:31]

The unique breeze of reality. The unique breeze of reality. Do you see? Continuously, creation runs her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring. And yet nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking. So... So these first three lines are about this naturalness that Suzuki Roshini is talking about. This unique breeze of reality. It's unique. This moment has never happened before. And it will never come back. Every moment is unique. It's unique. It's fresh. Do you see? Do you see the unique breeze of the present moment? Next line. Continuously. Continuously. creation runs her loom and shuttle. It's like a loom, right? A loom and a weaving. And continuously, creation is running her loom and shuttle, weaving the ancient brocade, incorporating the forms of spring.

[17:39]

And yet nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking. So, for me, what this... this verse is about is that this freshness of the naturalness that the presence in the present moment this fresh new unique moment of creation which is wondrous look at this tapestry right now all around you all around me is the tapestry that creation has woven over you know untold millennia of time For this to be here now, she's been weaving, you know, she's a very busy girl, weaving this unique brocade, the beauty of reality that we experience. That's this first point of this verse. And then this part about nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking has to do with pointing somewhere. And in this case, Manjushri, the bodhisattva of wisdom, is pointing at a person, the Buddha, as though that, You know, behold, the king, the dharma, the king of dharma is thus.

[18:44]

He's saying thus and points at this particular person. And what does the Buddha do when he's pointed at? He gets down off the seat and goes back to his room. It's like, don't point at me. The unique breeze is everywhere. You know, Buddha is everyone. It's this entirety. It's not something you point out. We make that mistake. We think, oh, there's the special one, or there's the special thing. That's what I want. We point at things, and we pull them out of the hole. We try to take them out from the weaving, from the hole of creation, and we want to hold them. We want to put them in somewhere where we can hide them, like... Well, we hide them in reality. We hide them in our own reality, our tiny little boxes that we've got for ourselves. So we think we've removed them from some other place, some other reality, and now we've got them in our own reality. But really, it's just completing. You're just continuing to weave. We're just weaving all the time. All of us are joining in weaving this ancient brocade.

[19:46]

The only problem that we're having is our possessiveness, our wish that we can own or know what it is. That's here. We can have it. Somehow we can have it. We can understand it. So these efforts that Manjushri is making and that Buddha was trying to make before Manjushri got in the way by pointing at him to help us basically are also a kind of noise. The Buddha is making noises. He's speaking in human language. Manjushri is pointing with his finger and speaking in human language. So it's kind of unnatural that they would say anything. I mean, the duck just quacks. It doesn't have to try to explain anything about why it's flying that direction or the other direction. It's cold, so it's going south. So we try to explain all of this. We try to understand all of this, and we try to own it. We want to own our understanding. So this kind of noise that the Buddha and the Bodhisattvas, Manjushri, are making is called leaking.

[20:52]

Nothing can be done about Manjushri's leaking, about the awakened ones willingly making some kind of provisional teaching, some pointing, in order to help us to remember who we really are. So that's what this little verse is about. So when we devote ourselves completely, Roshi says, there is true nothingness there. We have nothing to show for it other than the effort and the devotion that we offer to the task, whatever the task might be. A wholehearted effort and devotion to the task leaves no trace for our ego, of our ego for others or ourselves to trip over. So when we're completely involved in our activity, it's like Suzuki Roshi talked earlier in one of his lectures about a bonfire that completely burns. There's no smoke. There's no residue. It's just a really wonderful flame that burns very, very brightly and very completely.

[21:54]

All the fuel is burned up. So that's how he's helping us to understand what it means for us. to practice wholeheartedly and completely, leaving no trace of ourselves. Like, look what I did. Oh, what a great job. We have such a need to be admired or seen in some way. It's hard to not find ourselves there. I remember this other wonderful line that I read about a contemporary Zen master, older guy, who said, even after all these years... I still put my okesa, that's Buddha's robe that the monks were, even after all these years, I still put my okesa on with a flare. You know, so I like when these, you know, teachings are really helpful, but then also, you know, human first, as my therapist used to say to me, he'd always say to me, human first. You might have these really high... high style ideas that you really love and you like to think about and you wish to aspire to, but human first, you know, putting your okesa on with a flair.

[23:00]

So when we devote ourselves completely, Roshi says, there is true nothingness there because we have nothing to show for it other than this effort and devotion that we have offered to the task. Wholehearted effort and devotion to the task leave no trace for our ego, right? So in the last part of the talk, Roshi brings up the impression he has of our generation, the hippies and the beatniks. Holding up the idea about us, he says, it's all about love. You guys, it's all about love. You know, love, love, love. That was the big hippie mantra, right? Your minds are full of love, he says. But when things don't go the way you think love should be, you don't accept that. And he says that we are very stubborn about our ideas, our concrete ideas about how love should be and about how freedom and naturalness should be. This is not naturalness at all. This is just talk. And then he recommends that if we want to study Zen, we should forget about all of our previous ideas and just practice upright sitting to see actually the experience that we have in our practice.

[24:15]

And what's the actual experience you have when you're sitting quietly, when you're walking quietly, or when you're just being, just that ease of being? What's that experience for you? So the last paragraph of this talk, I thought I would just read to you, which I thought was good. He says, whatever you do, this attitude is... necessary, the attitude of naturalness, true naturalness. And sometimes he says, we say this Japanese phrase, nyu nanshin, nyu nanshin, meaning soft or flexible mind, a soft and flexible mind. Nyu is soft, feeling, and nan is something which is not hard, so really soft. Shin is the mind. So nyu nanshin means a smooth, natural mind. When you have that mind, you have the joy of life. When you lose that mind, you lose everything.

[25:17]

You have nothing. And although you think you have something, you have nothing. But when all you do comes out of nothingness, then you have everything. Do you understand? He always says that, do you understand? And we're all going, ah, not really. So that is what it means by naturalness. Do you understand? Okay. That's my bid for the evening. I would enjoy hearing from all of you whatever you'd like to offer or any impressions you have from the reading you've done. I hope you're taking the chance, if you have time, to read these talks yourselves and maybe make a few notes. So, Karina, could you put us on the gallery? Thank you very much. Hello, everyone. Let me just look around for a second. I see Cynthia's hand, but let me also say hi. So there's Kathy and Chris. Hi, Chris. And Griffin and Carmina, Marianne, Amar, Kakuan, Helene, Linda, Tim, Stephen, Jakuan.

[26:26]

Jakuan may be a new person. Welcome. Welcome. Shozan, welcome back. Millicent, Chunlan Yang. Chunlan, welcome. Jerry and Michael. And Tom, Paul, and Kate. Kosan, Kate Summers, welcome. Marie Stockton. And then there's a DB14. I'm not sure what that is, but welcome. Lona and iPhone. Carolyn Argentate. Welcome, Carolyn. Then we have Irene, Justin. I don't see faces, but they're your names. I'm welcoming you. Kira Kay, with a kitty. Michelle Ferrer. Senko, hello, Senko. Roy and SR. Okay, you're all very, very welcome. And Cynthia, what would you like to offer tonight? Hello, Fu. Hello, Sanda. Well, I'm very pleased that you said human first, because I can get just very excited about the ideas, and sometimes I think I'm starting to get them, and...

[27:36]

But then when I go out into the world, it's almost as if, okay, I have to only just do this one thing, which is my work, my life's work, and it takes all my attention. But I guess maybe what I'm getting out of the practice is that I have a talent and I can help people, and that's what I do. And if I'm going to wake up in the morning and I'm going to have to do something during the day, and I spend that time helping people, then I go to bed at night with a very warm feeling about how I spent my day. And that's when I'm getting out of the Buddhist practice. But the intellectual, which seems in alignment with the human first, But the intellectual stuff just, I love it when I hear it, and then it goes someplace.

[28:42]

It goes into a pocket. I don't know. It must be working because I feel like I'm doing what I'm supposed to be, what the practice would have me do. It's helping. Yeah, good. Good. Well, thank you for your work, too. I mean, I know you understand that that's what you do with those kids. is very precious, and they're very lucky to have a teacher, a high school teacher who cares so much about them. So, you know, thank you. And I'm glad that the teachings are stimulating. I think it would be probably not so interesting if you understood it as soon as you read it. It's probably like reading a novel, like, well, that was nice, you know, but it just would pass on through. So part of what makes this, for me, engaging is that I don't get it, you know? And then I'll get a glimmer, like a flash of lightning in the night sky. You get a little glimpse and you go, oh my God, I got it. And then it's gone. It's just like, you know, and then you get another one. So, you know, it's like just being patient and not expecting that there's going to be like just a big sunbeam of light and it never turns off again.

[29:51]

I mean, I think that's one of the mistakes of spiritual practice is imagining it's just going to be like enlightened. So I think it's more like stars in the sky, you know, twinkles, twinkles of light. And and I do appreciate that human first as a very good reminder for all of us, you know, and not only first, but invaluable to hold that preciousness of our human life and care for it. So what I do with my students where my practice comes in and they don't know it, but. I'll hold my hands when I need them to be calm. That's probably where I do most of my meditation is standing in front of them with my hands like that. Nice. I don't tell them anything about my Buddhism or my Buddhist practice or my Jukai or any of that. But when I stand there, and I can't even remember the name. What do you call that when you stand there like that?

[30:52]

Like this or like that? Like this. Shashu. Like this. That's the cosmic mudra. Right. Well, whatever. That's what they get. And it works. That's a lot. It works. I'm sure it does. When you practice, you convey that. That's your gift. You're showing them. When you're calm, you're radiating that for them. They see you calm. I feel like I do radiate the practice. It's a practice that I don't understand and I radiate it. How does that work? Perfect. Nobody knows. Nobody knows. I'm grateful to be here. Yeah, we're glad you're here too. Thank you. Hi, Amr. Thank you. Hello, everybody. I was kind of...

[31:54]

Curious about is a little bit of a synthesis of your. Two classes going on, maybe you have more right now, but. You know, you mentioned Roshi talking about. Seems like, you know, it always comes back to Zaza and obviously this is Zen practice and. I'm not sure if it was in. It might have been the preface to read book that we're reading for your preset class, but guess my understanding was. Yeah, the hippies and beatniks, they just came to sit and meditate. And it wasn't until later on that the precepts started coming into it. And I was just curious about how you had witnessed that as you grew up as an incentive. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think that was, I don't think we were, I don't think we were ready for the intellectual part. You know, I think we were kind of tired of all of that noise. We'd all just, most of us had gone to college and that was sort of like, I don't know what that was about.

[32:59]

I don't remember any of it. But, you know, having gone through a very intellectual, you know, formation for many, many years since, I mean, we were little kids, right? They kept trying to get us to understand things with our heads. And so the idea that you could really, really just... soak up your experience of your body and just be loose. Just sit still and just let your mind run. Don't put a rope around that colt. Just let that thing run. Let it jump and try to get away and all of that. And it's very exciting when you first start doing meditation because it's impossible. You just can't sit there. It's just you want to get up and why aren't they ringing the bell? And it's just so crazy. And then you find yourself coming back. why am I back here? What am I doing? It was just crazy. And so I've never really figured out what keeps me coming back. But now that I'm retired and I don't have to go to the Zendo, I love going to the Zendo.

[34:06]

I just really look forward to going down there and sitting quietly and having that experience of just being there and breathing and little thoughts, you know, like little... hollywogs floating around in my brain. So something about coming to, this maybe sounds silly, but coming to like my mind. And I didn't like my mind when I was young because my thoughts were really ragged and horrible. They were just full of all kinds of greedy, hateful, just all this kind of gunk that the Buddha talks about, greed, hate, and delusion. So little by little, we begin to bring the colt in closer, put a little harness on it, and teach it how to let us ride. Can I take a ride on that horse? And at some point, it really feels like you've mastered something about how to ride the horse and not just have it run wild.

[35:08]

How to be the horse. So I do think it's experiential. And then there's the intellectual part, which isn't to everyone's liking. I think some people would just assume not, and that's certainly fine. I find it to be good food for me. I like thinking through these kinds of challenges and trying to get the poetry or the science of it and the mysticism of it. You know, it's beyond what I can see. And I'm grateful for those who can... can open those windows for us, you know. So you keep coming back too, don't you? I sure do, and I don't know why. You don't know why. Here I am. It's good to see you. Thank you. Yeah. Carmina. No, Marianne. Hi, Marianne. See you there. Hello, Sangha. Good to see everybody. I have a question coming from the text.

[36:12]

And that is, especially the very first line, naturalness moment after moment, everyone comes from nothingness. This is the true joy of life. But then there are the meditations or the sutras that talk about my deluded and twisted karma that is now who I am today. That seems that that's not a nothingness. Can you clarify for me? It seems like I'm coming out of a past. Yeah. How do you see that? Well, where is your past now? I don't see it, but I have a sense that I'm coming out of that past. Right. That's the dark. Okay. You're coming out of the dark. That which you can't see anymore. Uh-huh. That's the darkness or the nothingness.

[37:13]

It's already vanished, you know? But isn't it also my karma? So it has an effect on... It has an effect which is in the present. Right. So you're working with the human first part is working with the effect that comes from the actions that you made in the past. Even though they're gone, they made an impression, right? You are the impression. from what happened to you before but we're not we're not trapped by it i think part of the problem karmic consciousness has to do with being entrapped that entrapment into the what we were conditioned by our path it's like imprisoned in it so that's that's the breakout that we want to learn how to do is just like nope nope you know and not into like what he's saying is sloppiness It's not like you're breaking out of entrapment into sloppiness, whatever, kind of like the hippies were really into it, you know. He's saying it's discipline, it's work.

[38:15]

To become untrapped means you have to deeply understand the trap. You know, understand how you got there, understand what it's made of, and understand what it is to be free. So it's a job. And I think that's, I think you know that. Right. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome. You're welcome. Senko. Hi, Fu. So, yeah. Hello, everyone. So I'm really, I'm reading this book, thinking about this chapter. It's coming from nothingness. I find, I don't know, it's very hard for me to explain my question, but I find I... I often are coming from somethingness. Like I find myself, like I'm eating something, I'm picking restaurants, right? I'm trying to like, there's a lot of calculation going on behind that.

[39:18]

And however, maybe with the practice, I kind of, I can be more playful about that somethingness. I used to take that somethingness very seriously. I'm right, right? I'm like very firm about this. I'm going to do this. But now I'm like, I'm kind of delusional. Like Marianne just said, I have those things there, but I'm less serious about it. Once you're less serious about it, it's like nothingness. It's still there. It's like cloud. You see some form, but it's more penetrable. I don't know how to... Well, that's what he says. It's a soft, flexible mind. A mind that's soft and flexible can read the menu without like... Oh, maybe I'll have a cheese sandwich. You know what I mean? Or maybe I won't. You know, is there some way things like you're saying with a softness and a flexibility and like, it's okay.

[40:20]

Oh, you're out of cheese? Okay. Well, then I'll have a soup. Right. You know, we're not grabbing the world and making it like the way we want it to be. That's suffering. That's our suffering. You know, your tightness is your suffering. yeah so the more you relax the more you float you know yeah and so like yeah and like you said the human first but doesn't mean we take all the human condition like super seriously we let it be then there's flexibility but we're not playful as you like mentioned earlier like playful about things yeah yeah and you have those qualities we all have those qualities you know we've we've got it all We have everything we need. We just have to sort it out. And so we get a little more playfulness up front, a little more softness up front, a little more hardness and opinion in the back, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's not going away. They're not going to leave. The bus is going to be full of all those passengers. But we can ask them if they could please, you know, move back a little bit and let the qualities that actually give us joy.

[41:27]

I mean, I love the word joy. And he uses it in this talk. Right. Bringing joy to humankind. Yeah. You know, I might be taking this playfulness too far. I try to do that with my kids. You know, not like very naturally. Sometimes I get very playful with them. Like, you're so weird. Anyway. That's a compliment. I know. They like it. They relax. They're a weird mom. Yeah, they're a weird mom. I think it is a compliment. My daughter thinks I'm very weird. Yeah, my daughter said you're the opposite of Asian mom. It's like, what do you mean? Because she has a lot of examples, Asian mom in our school. Anyway. You hold out. You're almost at the finish line. You got about, what, 10 more years? Yeah, I know. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thanks. Bye, Griffin. Hi. I felt... As you were speaking, a light went off for me about a question I've been having every time I say, I take refuge in sangha, bringing harmony to everyone, free from hindrance, what that actually means.

[42:42]

And if it means perhaps acting from nothingness and not some sort of self-directed of what I think is harmonious being nice and kind and helpful. That's not what's meant by harmonious, that being harmonious would be not having even the agenda to be like that, but to be acting from nothingness. And... My question this week, and I didn't have that word naturalness, which is really clarifying something for me, is what is truly harmonious with what is arising and what is self-directed in some sense to improve reality?

[43:48]

For example, There's a retreat that's coming up at Green Gulch with some Enso people, and I want to go. I really need, you know, because I have experienced the refuge that comes from the routine and the focus and the being with the Sangha. You know, it reanimates a naturalness in me. But I have a difficulty at home. My husband is very ill and anxious. And perhaps it would be more natural to, you know, just see that everything is available right here in the moment. And you don't need to go on retreat. You know, retreat is sort of a luxury, you know, like you don't leave your newborn if you're nursing, if there's no one else to feed the baby, that would be unnatural. And I'm not saying one is right or...

[44:50]

one is wrong but it's a real question for me about what would be I mean everything is available when you open in the here and now in the moment and in some sense there's no need to go and retreat on the other hand I know what retreat brings to me But what would be natural? What would be harmonious? And I just mean it as a question, not asking for an answer. Oh, sorry. No, that's it. That's it. I have something to share with you that came to mind that my grandmother said to me when I was a young girl. She said, this is not an offense to men. This is just a thing my grandmother said. She said, never chase a man or a bus because there'll be another one along any minute. So that was my grandmother's advice. And I would say the same thing about retreats. You know, there'll be another one along any minute.

[45:53]

You don't have to chase them because there will be lots of them coming. We're going to have them here. You're going to have them at Green Gulch. We're going to have them at Tassajar. So, you know, doing what you need to do in your life, taking care of yourself and your partner and your home. And that is, you know, that is the application. Why are we practicing, right? Practicing for what? I know when my partner had a very nearly fatal automobile accident, I remember saying to my teacher, now I know what I'm practicing for. So I think we're called on, at times we're called on in ways that we didn't choose. It's not like, oh, this will be fun. You know, it's not like that. It's really, that's why we practice. is so we're available, you know, when people need us. And I know you know that as a doctor. I know you know that as a partner. And there will be other treats, retreats and treats.

[46:54]

Okay? And you can decide, as you said. It's your decision. But you certainly have my support with whatever you do. Hi, Chris. Hi, Fu. Thank you for being here. Thank you all for being here. My question, so the way that I'm relating to this, I'm relating back to the samskaras, to the impressions, to the darkness that is underlying our reality in our subconscious mind, right? The grooves and patterns and impressions from the past. that are on many different levels that are creating the reality at any moment. And the precepts and the work that we're doing in the present to be aware of this patterning, aware of this conditioning, to change what might not be wholesome or nurturing to ourselves. That's kind of the line that I'm thinking on here.

[48:01]

And there's different layers of these impressions. Ones that... go deeper into the core of who we are. And I'm wondering, is that related to the dependent origination and co-arising? And are there deeper aspects that can be looked into when it comes to better understanding ourselves, how we relate to the world, but also going back in our subconscious minds to look at that conditioning a little bit more? Any thoughts on that? Yeah, lots. I want to suggest to you again, I think you probably have already read Inside Vasubandha's Yogachara. And if you haven't, I suggest you read it and think about it and ask questions from there because he's talking about your question. It's Ben Connolly, delightful young man from Minnesota Zen Center.

[49:06]

And it's a wonderful book, a wonderful read for any of you who are looking for something. The next challenge is about mind-only teachings. And I think it's actually pretty accessible, intellectual, but in a friendly way. He has a soft mind, and he's very generous with his way of explaining. But basically what you're calling subconscious is unconscious. You can't go in there. It's unconscious, just like in modern psychotherapy. You're not aware of it, and you can't get in there. It's shut off. What you're aware of are little shoots of material coming up from the unconscious that comes briefly into consciousness through one of your sense organs, like a little memory or a little word or a verse from a song or whatever. That stuff's all been in your unconscious until it shows up. Like, you know, if you know how to play an instrument or you know how to speak French, most of the time you're not doing that.

[50:09]

Where is it? It's unconscious. But when you pick up a flute and you start reading the notes, where'd that come from? Well, now it's conscious. So the only stuff we really can work with is the conscious stuff. The things that are happening and consciousness is always happening now. So it's what you're aware of now. the sentences that are appearing now, the sounds that you're responding to, the visual images you're responding to. So it's really fresh. You're really in a fresh relationship. The place you can make the difference I think you're talking about is when that stuff arises, like let's see, I hate green. When that thought arises, you think about it. Is that true? Is that true? Do I hate green? you have a chance to rethink and recondition your aversion to green.

[51:10]

Maybe I'll start buying some green clothes, or maybe I'll get a green crayon, or maybe I'll go outside in the spring. And I love this quote by John Cage. He said, if there's something I think is ugly, I look at it for a long time, And suddenly I realize, and I ask myself the question, you know, why do I think it's ugly? And then after I look at it for a long time, I realize there is no reason. So that's a way that we can meet our habitual conditioning is by approaching those things which we've conditioned ourselves to avert from or be attracted to by really studying. that aversion or that attraction. Really take it on. And little by little, you recondition the unconscious. Little by little, green's okay with you.

[52:12]

How'd that happen? Well, you worked it. You worked for it. You earned it. So I think that's what he's meaning by work. You're aware of what you're thinking, you're aware of your tendencies, and you're actually doing the work. You know, of aligning yourself harmoniously with others, with color, with sound, and so on. Is that making sense? It does. Thank you. Good. Okay. Okay. Well, it's really nice seeing all of you. And next week, we're going to be looking at... The chapter was still in the wisdom teachings, so keep your seatbelts on. Next week, we are... A chapter is called... Oh, dear.

[53:14]

Emptiness. Vast emptiness, nothing holy, as the emperor, as Bodhidharma said to the emperor of China. Who are you facing me? And I mean, what is the highest meaning of the Holy Truth? Vast emptiness, nothing holy. What? Okay, so that's the chapter we'll be looking at next week. Please, if you have a chance to read it through, that would be really great. And I wish you all a very good week coming up. And I look forward to seeing you again. So thank you very much. If you'd like to unmute and say good night or good morning, you're welcome. to do that. Thank you. Thank you, Fu. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, Fu. Bye. Bye. Bye, everybody. Good to see you. Take care of yourselves. Thank you. Bye. Yeah.

[54:14]

I have a question. Yeah. If you've already gone through Jukai, can you still study precepts with you? Yes. During your class? Rob, yeah, you want to?

[54:27]

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