Okay. Welcome. Welcome. So I'm sorry to have missed last week. I know some of you got together and talked with each other, and I'd like to hear some of what you had to say or all of what you had to say, whatever you want to share with us. I'm going to say a few things first, and I'm also going to show you a very small little slideshow that I put together for my visit to the city center last Sunday. where they have just completed this very extensive remodel of the Page Street building. So I want to say a little bit about that, and then show you the slides, and then talk about the chapter that we're looking at right now in Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, which is, interestingly, second to last. I think we have one more talk to look at, and then there's an epilogue, and that's it. will be done was in my beginner's mind. So I was just thinking, you know, as I was getting ready to come to see you, that we should be thinking about what we'd like to look at next.

[01:11]

And I'm open to suggestions. I had thought about the mind-only teachings as a possibility, but there are lots of possibilities. So maybe if you could think also about things you'd like to study with us together, that would be helpful and let me know. So let's see, I mentioned I was going to show the slideshow. So this building in San Francisco, this amazing building, is the first place that I encountered Zen. And it was connected to my job where I was working downtown at an environmental organization called the Trust for Public Land. And my boss, who was a lovely man, named John, John Nelson, asked me if I might like to come to have dinner at the Zen Center. I had asked him a personal question, you know, like,

[02:12]

what makes you such a happy man? Because he was a very happy man and always very kind and interested. And he had a real brightness about him. And I said, what do you do? What's your hobby? How have you come to be this way? And he said, well, he was a Zen student. And that's when he invited me to come to dinner, which I did. And we had dinner was at the Page Street building. and that was over 45 years ago now. So this building was completed in 1922. It was designed by the famous architect, Julia Morgan, and is one of the crowns of jewels of her various works that she's done in the Bay Area. And it's a wonderful building. I mean, I lived there for quite about six years when I first came to Zen Center. My first job I continued at the Trust for Public Land for some time, maybe not quite a year, and then I decided I wanted to also work for the Zen Center as well as live in the building.

[03:19]

And so I was offered a position at the Tassahara Bakery. which was on Cole and Parnassus. So part of my daily routine was sitting zazen in the morning and getting on a bus and going to the bakery and working with this beautiful stuff that was being made in the back of the bakery. And many of the people that some of you know for many years at Zen Center, like Amala, Heller, and Mick Sapko, and so on, were working in the back. cooking, making bread, and baking cakes, decorating cakes, and doing all sorts of lovely things with pastries. And then my job, along with another five or six people, was to get all that stuff onto trays and sell it. So we had really good coffee. We had these wonderful pastries and the fresh bread. And there was a line really halfway down the street. So we were quite special. in those days. It was organic, everything was organic, and it was freshly made. So we had this really nice little edge on what was to become a pretty big industry in the world of organic and fresh bread and that kind of thing.

[04:34]

It's not hard to find anymore. In those days, way back then, it was not so easy to find that kind of well-cared-for food. So that was a lovely thing, to be part of that. And then after about a year at the bakery, I transferred, I asked to transfer over to Green's Restaurant, which was new and also doing very well. It was very popular. We were one of the first vegetarian restaurants not just the Bay Area, but probably many places. So we also had a really big success there. It's still good, still going. Ta-Sahara Bakery is gone. It was not a very safe building, and we couldn't do the remodeling that would have been necessary. We didn't own the building, so we eventually closed the bakery, which was kind of sad. But greens is still happening. So in terms of the building, It's not so, you know, it's a historical landmark.

[05:35]

I think there would be, it would be really, you know, not something we would be able to do or want to do is to change the outside of the building. It's a brick building. many of you have probably been there or seen it. It's at Page and Laguna in San Francisco and it's four stories. There's a basement and there's three floors and then there's a wonderful roof on top. You can look out over the whole city of San Francisco from there, which often we did. That was a place we'd go up to just sort of hang out, have tea or whatever. So the changes that have been made took a long time. The buildings you know over a hundred years old and so the plumbing and the wiring and all of that was was quite old and we hadn't done much for lack of funds it was very expensive to to do some remodeling or repairing of that building but finally a couple years back there was a capital campaign started and they did raise the funds that they needed to do the repairs and so pastry closed down I think they've been closed for probably almost a year maybe maybe that's right and now last week

[06:40]

was the first time that many people were able to go back into the building and see what had been done there. And it was pretty exciting. So I went along with a number of the donors who had provided the funds for the remodel. So a lot of the other changes that happened there aren't visible. So some of it was infrastructure. They redid all the bathrooms, which were really old and really hard to, you know, to appreciate as someone living in the building. So those have all been redone. They're quite nice. And then they also created a new entryway. So if you've been in that building before, when you go in the front door, on the right, there's what we call the Buddha Hall, where we go up for chanting in the morning. It's a tatami room, rather large. It was the living room. When the building was originally built, it was built as a Jewish women's residency. So single Jewish women who were living in San Francisco and working had this very nice place where they could live.

[07:44]

It was very safe and it was really warm and cozy. And that room, which is our Buddha Hall, had a big fireplace. There's an altar there now. And so people could sit around and that's where they'd take their dates if they were having somebody over and they'd have and tea and so on. And then upstairs were all the rooms, so these long corridors with these very nice rooms. And I lived in many of them over the years I was in the building. It's a very beautiful space. It's a very special, very special. The things that you can't really see, that I didn't see, so when I came in last week, when I went into the building, I saw the usual, to the right was the Buddha Hall, and that was the familiar, and then I looked to the left, and that's where the big change in the basement, on the first floor was made. They've had this open, the whole thing is now opened, all the way to the back wall. We used to be kind of closed off space with a little office and a little place you could talk to people through a kind of enclosed, it was,

[08:52]

little screens that would open and you could talk to people and then they were closed in the evening but now the whole thing is open as you'll see in the photographs and in the back there's this very beautiful new bookstore and a sitting area for people who are coming for programs that are happening there and then a nice counter with a tea service so you can have some tea and so on so without saying any more about that I will show you this little slideshow that I've done of the new It's Page Street. Let me see, you gotta get this screen share. Okay. Tell me if this is working. You see it? Yeah, okay. see the full page yeah i heard that just a sec all right now you need to stop for me now no me i gotta okay so um so what happened here i maybe this needs to be in the center all right i'm gonna try it again

[10:25]

Center the slideshow. Okay. Is it in center now? What's wrong now? What's wrong? Oh yeah, I'm going to get rid of that. But the images are in the center? Yes. Okay, here we go. One more time. Better? That's that.

[14:20]

That's the new building. Yeah, really nice. For those of you who have been in it before, it was redone. It's all been painted, too. It's really sweet. It's so nice to see this lovely thing, this lovely building taken care of so well for the next generation of students who are already arriving. It's a really nice feeling, both at City Center and at Tassajara and at Green Gulch. There are a lot of new people coming, and we always worry. You know, will we make it to another generation? Is this just a little, you know, a little thing that happened in the 60s? It's not going to continue. But I think right now I'm feeling really encouraged. And I think signs are good. Signs are good. So what do I want to do? I want to. I want to return to this talk we're having about the chapters of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

[15:24]

This one, the next one that you all, some of you, spoke about with each other last week is called Beyond Consciousness. Beyond Consciousness. It's kind of a challenging idea. Beyond Consciousness, what could that be? So there's a statement that follows that title. To really purify the mind in your delusion is practice. If you try to expel the delusion, it will only persist the more. Just to say, oh, this is delusion, and then not to be bothered by it. That's the recommendation. Oh, that's delusion, and not to be bothered by it. So I want to offer a few comments of my own about this talk, and then to hear from you about your own understanding or what it is you may have talked about with each other last Sunday. So when I read this talk, the first image that came to my mind about looking for enlightenment in delusion, that seems kind of opposite. Why would you look in delusion for awakening or for realization?

[16:31]

But there was this cartoon I remember seeing quite a long time ago that kind of came back into my mind of somebody under a street lamp. It was a night and there was there's a street light, a circle of light, and this woman was looking for her car keys in the circle of light. And her friend's saying, well, but you dropped them over there by the car. Why are you looking over here? And she said, well, that's where the light is. So I think this is kind of the same idea. Like, if we keep looking in the light or what we think is the light for the light, we're going to kind of miss out on what it is that we really need to be looking at, which is our own mind and our own behavior, our delusions. you know, the way we actually do see the world, rather than some way we wish we saw the world, or some fantasy we have about what the world would look like if we weren't deluded. So I think it's kind of encouraging to have this permission, not just permission, but understanding that the practice is with delusion. And I remember reading something a couple weeks ago that Buddhas are born from delusion.

[17:34]

You know, they're born from a realization about how our minds are confused. And when you realize how confused your mind is, then you're awake. It's like, oh, I hadn't noticed. So there's a great freedom there in understanding how the mind actually works. So I think this is what Suzuki Roshi is talking about when he tells us to be looking for realization or enlightenment in the areas of our life where there is always, excuse me, where there's already some peacefulness, if we keep looking there, then we're not going to make real peace with the parts of ourself that are not peaceful. You know, it's sort of like, one time someone, one of the teachers said to me, well, you don't practice patience when you're feeling patient. You know, that's not the practice. The practice is when you're impatient, you know. So the practice of awakening comes from our understanding of delusion.

[18:39]

That's where the work is. So we look in these places where we don't expect to find contentment. We look at our discontent. We look at our irritation. We look at our anger, at our reactivity. And we look at our own consciousness, which is where all that's happening. It's not happening out there, although we often attribute our disturbances to something outside. You made me mad. Actually, the madness is internal. It's a response, and it's a response to what we think and what we feel. So this is our study, you've heard this many times, studying how the mind works. You know, that's our job. One reason I thought looking at the Yogacara teachings might be good, because it's all about very specifics about how the mind works in terms of Buddhist theory. And it's pretty interesting. It's not very complicated. I think it's something that it's not so hard to understand. What's hard is to apply it to your experience. That's always going to be the challenge.

[19:41]

It's like, oh, I get it when I read it, but what about when I'm doing it or having those experiences? How about when I'm thinking? Can I actually pay attention to my thinking while I'm thinking? So we have to have deep faith in our true nature, which is beyond. whatever our conscious mind can understand, or whatever it knows, or it thinks it knows. You know, Roshi tells us that we are to establish our practice there, in the unknowable, in the inconceivable nature of ourselves and of the world. So the world that's outside of our conscious awareness, you know, outside the light of the street lamp. It's kind of dark. And he tells us that even having some good thing in our mind is not necessarily good. You know, I was kind of startled by that. Maybe you were too when you read it. You know, it's a little surprising. And yet what I understand he's saying is for us not to hold on to whatever we think of as good, you know, to make it a possession.

[20:41]

You know, I know. I know what's good. I know what's right. You know, and we know people who think like that. It's really challenging. And it's challenging when it's us thinking like that, you know. So, you know, we have learned through, you know, something, by learning things that we take as solid, become like these facts or knowledge, bodies of knowledge that we have, you know, we then repeatedly apply that to ourselves, what we think is good, and to others. So then we have this kind of rigid notion about what's right, what's wrong, and who we are and who we aren't, and so on and so forth. And our views get very narrow. We start to narrow everything down, you know. As Suzuki Rishi said earlier in the book, in the expert's mind there are few options. In the beginner's mind there are many options. Because you don't know. You're just beginning to learn. So you have all kinds of curiosity and interest and really wideness of willingness to learn, to teach me, teach me.

[21:44]

But if you know, it's very hard to teach somebody who knows. So, He says that this solidity, this solidity in our thinking, it can become a real burden for us, you know, knowing what's good, knowing what's right, and the solidity of I know, or I understand, and so on. So that's one point he's making. And then he tells us that the real point of our practice is defying peace within ourselves, not to be right, or not to know what's right, or not to know what Buddha said, you know, or memorize scriptures and so on and so forth. That's fine. That can be encouraging to us in our practice. But really, we want to find peace. Nirvana, one translation of Nirvana that I like, I mentioned before, is utter contentment. Utter contentment. We've all had moments of utter contentment. Even saying those words, I can kind of touch the space in myself that knows what it means to be content, to not want anything, to not wish things to be different than they are, to really be resting and relaxed and awake.

[22:50]

You know, we want to experience that contentment. It's nice to have that in an awakened state. So, you know, when we have something that's sticking in our consciousness, we do not have perfect composure. We are either leaning toward or leaning against the current situation that we find ourselves in because of our preferences for what should be happening right now. You know, you should be or what I should be, you know, that shoulding on each other. That's not recommended. And then he says another somewhat startling thing, that the way to perfect composure is to forget everything. You know, a big fear here at Enso Village is that we're all forgetting everything, that we've all kind of lost the ability to remember, you know, our short-term memory clearly is not functioning all that well. And oftentimes it seems like we're just kind of learning to enjoy how our memories have become, you know, kind of, perforated.

[23:53]

It's part of what's amusing for each other because we're all going through this together. It's not like one of us is sitting there at the table not remembering everyone else is feeling impatient with them. One of our dear friends who teaches us swimming, aerobic swimming, water aerobics. She's a lovely woman and she's maybe in her 80s. She'd been teaching water aerobics for a decade or more and she said that you know here in the village it's just amusing when we all forget the name of the movie and who was in the movie and so we can't recommend it because we can't remember the name and and so she was saying that here it's fine you know everybody enjoys that as a just a fact of our life when she went home to her grandchildren for the holidays And she's sitting at the table. She couldn't remember the name of the movie. And they're all looking at her like, Grandma, what's wrong with you? And she said, it's really helpful to hang out with, you know, people of your own kind, your own kind of people, because we all know what's wrong with us.

[24:58]

You know, we're aging. And that's just something that's happening. And it's okay. It's okay. Nothing to be afraid of. So, anyway, so here's the good news. Suzuki Rashi says that the way to perfect composure is to forget everything. Right? Just forget it. Let it go. And then he elaborates on this idea, saying that forgetting everything isn't just another activity that would then be a problem for us. Now I'm going to forget everything and I'm going to squeeze my brain so it starts forgetting things. That's just more tension, more a lack of composure. He said the activity of trying to forget everything as soon as it happens is too busy. It's too much. But instead, the practice is just to leave everything that comes into your mind just as it is. Just let it go. Let it come. Let it go. It's not your control anyway. You're not deciding what comes into your mind. You're not deciding what leaves your mind. You're just, you are what's coming and going from your mind.

[26:01]

That's what you are. And so just letting it be, letting it be as it is, is restful. You know, it's just not to be bothered by your own mind, you know, to be friends with your own mind. And that's one of the aspirations that I have felt in practice is, can I learn to be a good friend of my mind and how it functions? So basically he said, just don't mess with it. Things will come and go all by themselves. And then eventually the mind clears on its own. If you sit for a while, it's just like a glass of of sediment with water that has sediment, if you just sit the glass down little by little, it just clears all of itself. I found that to be true in meditation. If I just stop worrying about, oh my, I can't, I'm thinking about yesterday and I'm thinking about what I have to do later. That's going to happen for a little while. That goes on. That's normal. That's just normal kind of my karmic consciousness is downloading, very downloading, mostly stuff that's kind of recent that happened.

[27:04]

And then once it downloads, it has a little chance to do that, then the sediment quite naturally starts to settle. And the next thing I notice is my breath. And then I notice my spine. And I notice the sound in the room. And I notice all these things that were always there when I wasn't so focused on what was going through my mind, what I was thinking. And that's very restful. I find that to be very restful. So in order to take up such a practice of just trusting your mind that its natural restful state is there and it will come if you just don't get too involved or trying to control what's happening, you need faith in the healthy working of your mind, that your mind does work well, meaning that you have faith in the inherent emptiness of your mind. Emptiness basically means that... The mind is dependently co-arising.

[28:06]

Emptiness means dependently co-arising. It's not separate from the world. What's happening in your mind is an aspect of the world. It's an aspect of everything about you. It's an aspect of your relationships with others. It's just that kind of like Indra's net. It's just sparkling. And the sparkling comes in the form of words and images and memories and all of that. But it's just these little, you know, neuronal blips that are going on. There's nothing really... you know, a substantive that's happening in our consciousness. So, you know, finding out how the mind works is our way of life, is the way of life, is really understanding that. And the way it works, one of the ways it works is, in the Buddhist teaching, is to give us these problems that have this incalculable, like incalculable numbers. If you've read the Lotus Sutra, if you've looked at the Flower Ornament Sutra, there are chapters that just have these numbers that are like kabazillions of of beings and they're all on these kazillions of planets and the planets are circling around the universes and it just goes on and on and on and you realize at some point you're reading this and even though the words you know the words kazillion I know that's a word but to try and and comprehend with this this machinery that I have what they're talking about

[29:27]

pretty soon you kind of exhaust the capacity that you think you have to understand something like a kazillion and you can rest in the uncalculable nature of reality. You can't calculate reality, you can't calculate anything. It's beyond our ability to calculate. So, numerical images correspond to the vastness of each moment of this present reality. You know, if we start trying to calculate how many different things are in the space where you're sitting right now. You could start counting them. That might take you the rest of the year. Another practice is this wonderful koan that's in a book I highly recommend by John Tarrant. If you don't know John Tarrant, he's a really fine teacher, a Zen teacher. He wrote a book called Bring Me the Rhinoceros. It's a collection of koans, and he comments on the koans in a very He's a very humorous teacher, and he's also very insightful, and I found his book on koans to be really helpful and accessible.

[30:35]

So one of the koans is called Count the Stars. And basically, that's it. You know, go outside on a clear night and count the stars. You know, I've done that a few times. And it's really kind of fascinating because, you know, you go one, two, three, and pretty soon you get into this realization of you can't do it. You can't do it, you know. You're just going to have to look at them. You're just going to look and appreciate this vastness, you know, this actual, the actual vastness that's beyond your ability to calculate, you know. And there's something about going beyond, like this chapter, beyond consciousness. It's taking you beyond the limits of your conscious abilities, of what you can know. And there's kind of a thrill in that. There's something very strangely comforting in understanding that it's way past what our small minds are able to carry.

[31:36]

Great mind is there. And that's our mind too. It's not like something else. It's just the expanse. Only our small mind can't calculate. the expanse. We have limits. So even though there are limits to our ability to know reality, we are reality, you know, so that's a nice little fact. We are reality even though we can't know it in the way we like to know things, you know, numerically for one, or in terms of narrative storytelling for another, you know, it's just a story. We tell stories. We make up numbers. We come up with all kinds of designs for how to understand the world. And they're helpful. They're useful. I'm not trying to do away with that. But it's also not to be limited by that, right? So Suzuki Rishi says that we will never know with our small mind how big our big mind truly is. And then he tells us, not surprisingly, that it's zazen practice that will help us to have the most pure

[32:41]

and genuine experience of our empty mind. A mind that is dependently arising in each moment, along with everything, everywhere, all at once. And he tells us that there are other names for this emptiness of mind, such as original essence of mind, original mind, original face, Buddha nature, and absolute calmness of mind. These are all aspects of that experience that we are being invited to have of beyond consciousness, beyond small mind, allowing ourselves to pop out of the confines of what we think we do or don't know. So coming into alignment or attunement with our empty mind or our Buddha nature is how we allow our mind to take a rest. We take a rest in the vastness, in the unknowable, the inconceivable nature of reality.

[33:45]

So then the next thing that Roshi offers is a quote from Dogenzenji, who said that you should establish your practice in your delusion. You should establish your practice in your delusion. And that, Roshi says, is because even in your delusion, your pure mind is there. It's already there. It's always there. It's at the core of your existence is silence and stillness, this vastness of existence itself. So practice is the practice of delusion and of recognizing and calling out to our delusions. You know, I see you. I see you there. I see what you're up to. I know your tricks. You know, I've been doing them my whole life. I know all the things that you do and how you weasel and worm and do all these various things to your advantage. You know, that's kind of what the basic strategy is for self-centeredness, is how to make everything turn out for my benefit, you know, in one way or another. And he says that delusions get embarrassed when they're seen and they kind of run away or they hide.

[34:50]

And practicing with delusion is to attain enlightenment before you realize it. So just by practicing with your delusions is already awakened behavior. You've already awakened to what it is that the Buddha also awakened to at that moment under the tree when it basically stopped. He just stopped saying, I don't understand, I don't know, I don't know. You know, he just stopped and he looked and what did he see? He saw a star, you know, counting the stars. So when we just observe delusion without chasing it away or being bothered by it, we will find our perfect composure, our perfect peace. Sitting zazen allows us to see both sides. The side of the Buddha, of awakening, which is us, and the side of ascension being, the side of delusion, which is us. In the emptiness of our original mind, our Buddha nature, these two sides are one.

[35:51]

No Buddha? No sentient being, no sentient being, no Buddha. They're intimately connected to the point where there's no distinction to be made. So he ends his talk by contrasting the usual way that religions establish themselves in the human world is by focusing on what we can be conscious of. So I just watched Enclave last night and I thought, Yeah, they really established what you could be conscious of. Big buildings and beautiful red robes and rows of very neatly clothed cardinals and everything being really clear and conscious, very conscious feeling about that. The ritual and the adornments and the majesty of these buildings and so on and the philosophy. and so on and so forth. And he says, so that's the usual way that religions are established, through our conscious human consciousness.

[36:58]

You know, the building, the music, the philosophy, and all of that. Whereas our tradition, not to denigrate the other way, because we do the same, we do that too. It's not like we don't do that, we do that. But at the same time, our focus is on unconscious, on what cannot be made aware of, beyond our conscious knowing. And if we lose track of that, we're not practicing our tradition. You know, we've just sort of gotten caught up in the buildings and the costumes and so on and so forth. So at the same time that we need to take care of not to propagate our tradition as if it's something mystical or magical, I mean, it's really important because as soon as you go into the unconscious, you got a lot of swimming room around down there. You know, it's kind of like the deep, deep, Deep sea diving, you know, a lot of fish swimming around in the unconscious, a lot of kind of potential for magical thinking or mystical thinking. So the whole point for us is to understand the limitations of our small minds, how we want to take a hold of these incredible realities that we are.

[38:05]

We want to turn them into something perhaps that we can market, you know, at least, very least. But to avoid doing that, to try not to be selling what we are, you know, to anybody, including to ourselves. So the whole point is to understand the limitations of our small mind as we cultivate deep faith in our true nature, in our big mind. And therefore, just to sit with a wide, firm, imperturbable conviction in the practice that just sitting is enough. So that's what I wanted to offer about this beautiful, beautiful talk. This is Gershi Gives. And then I would like to please invite you all to share whatever you have. This is a chat there. Okay. Thank you, Millicent. Got one vote for the mind-only teachings. Yes, I am. So I'm going to go on gallery. Yes, please.

[39:07]

Gallery? Am I on gallery? Do I do it myself? No, I didn't. Oh, you did or you didn't? I'm not. No, you didn't. I'm talking to Karina, by the way. I'm not on gallery. Okay. There we go. Hello. I'm going to go around the room, around the gallery, and say hello to all the artwork. There's Linda. Hello, Linda. And then next to her, Millicent and Kakouan. Hello, Kakouan. Helene, welcome. Griffin, welcome. And Jerry and Kathy and Kate. And Margaret. Hello, Margaret. And Kiki, joining us from downstairs. And Jifu. Hello, Jifu. Welcome. Welcome. And Jack. Hello, Jack. Welcome. Mushou is back. And Stephen. And Gay again. Jerome. Gay again. Is that correct? Gay again? Welcome.

[40:08]

Is that good? Is that close enough? Yeah, good. Welcome. And Cynthia. Hello, Cynthia. Shozan, Dean, Jacqueline. Welcome again, Jacqueline. Nice to see you. And Hope is here. Adrian's here. Senko, Tom, Paul and Kate, Corey and Melissa. Well, welcome everyone. Beyond Consciousness. Hi, Dean. go. Oh, I'm here. Am I here? I hear you. Oh, okay. That means maybe you are. First, I want to... Am I here? I hear you. Okay, good. It keeps cutting out for me. I really liked hearing this. I feel like I have been... I'm in a very enriched place for the last several weeks. And...

[41:13]

There's two things I'd like to say. One is probably about 30 or 35 years ago, I went to the Antarctic. It was not very popular then, and it was a lot more affordable than it is now. But when you're down there and something happens, there's nothing you can do. There's nowhere you can go. And I remember being down there and on another ship we had heard a radio call that a woman had fallen and broken her hip. But they couldn't do anything. There was no hospital. They couldn't fly in and get her. We'd had a storm. And then also, while we were out one day, these icebergs calved when we were on the shore. Some of the people ran up the shore to get away. Some people ran down to try to grab the boats as the water went up. But the thing that was so fantastic about being there, there wasn't anything we could do about anything.

[42:19]

So I had a blast. I didn't worry about anything. It was incredibly freeing. I just didn't worry. And It was really neat. And I realized just listening to you that what this practice has done is it gives me a chance to have that experience without having to go somewhere or do anything. I was talking to a friend today. I'm moving and I was talking about all the things that need to happen. And she said, well, you just need to not worry about what's going to get done. And I kept thinking that's not quite it. And I thought it more. And I said, no, what I need to do is not worry that something's going to happen, period. Doesn't matter what it is, but something will happen. And all I need to do is just remember something will happen.

[43:20]

So it reminded me of what you're talking about. It's just that I think you said something about the uncalculableness of it. It's not really something that we can calculate because who knows what's going to happen. So it is an incredibly freeing sensation. And I'm very happy that I don't have to travel to get that. Yeah. Thank you. You can get it in Berkeley. That's amazing. Hello, Hope. Thank you, Dean. Hi, Hope. Hello, Fu. Hello, Sangha. Something has been on my mind all week.

[44:24]

And last week, for those of you who weren't here, Fu was not here. And so some wonderful bodhisattvas took it upon themselves to organize. And I shoulded on them. And... was my preferences were sticking with me and I was very impatient and subjected the sangha to my stickiness and myself to my stickiness. And I sent a message to our group WhatsApp, which is available to anybody who would like to join and feel free to send your email or I mean your phone number in the chat if you are not a part of that and would like to be. But I sent a message to the group WhatsApp and stated my preferences.

[45:32]

And so I would just like to apologize to the Sangha and I would like to apologize specifically to Helene, Marianne and Griffin for leaving with some sticky energy and ask for your forgiveness. There's something we learned in our seminar during January, that was very helpful to me and along the lines that you're, you're offering hope that there's kind of a two step process for all of us that we can do all the time. The first step is atonement. Like Oh, oops. Oops. i did it i did it again um so you atone for your actions you recognize them that's watching the mind right and the second step is attunement so there's no there's no end point there's just i'm atoning for something unskillful and i'm attuning back into my desire to be skillful and my wish to be skillful which includes what you just did you know it's called confession and repentance and it's very

[46:50]

much a big part of our practice is to not to shame ourselves but to basically acknowledge oh i did that i did that and i want you to know and i want you to know that my intention is you know i don't know what your intention might be but i get the feeling your intention might be not to do that again you know not to be sticky and probably you'll be sticky again you know so part of the commitment is that this is like rowing across the the Pacific, you're gonna keep sticking and you're gonna keep unsticking. And your intention isn't just not stop rowing. You know, that's our practice. So thank you, Hope, for sharing and for offering that. And I think this is kind of the great heart of wisdom when we can be that self-revealing. And I appreciate you doing that. So thank you. Hello, Senko. Hello, Fu.

[47:52]

Hello, everyone. Yeah, so in this chapter, Suzuki Roshi talked about practice with delusion. I think it's really liberating. It's very helpful. But in my daily life, it's so hard to do. Like, if I observe my own delusion, I'll say, oh, this is my delusion. And then just let it go. Sometimes it's okay. I think I have this, I was discussing last week with the group. I said, I have this reactivity I really don't like. You know, it's very fast sometimes. And if I just say, oh, this is my reactivity, can I somehow just let it go? And I feel like I have this, I just don't like it. And Jerry was very helpful. He made a comment. I think he asked me, is your reactivity Buddha nature? And I think I was stopped by that comment.

[48:56]

And I think I'm really trying to get away from my reactivity. I didn't realize I can be more friendly to it some way. It just made me pause. I don't know. I want to say thank you to Jerry and others for asking me about that. It's really hard to... take my delusion and reactivity, somehow be whole with it. Because I have this fear, I was saying, the underlying fear is that if I'm friendly to my reactivity here specifically, I was afraid that I might be more reactive, you know, like that kind of indulging, that fear. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's two... kind of similar terms that I think we all work with. One is reactive, which is pretty fast. Like you said, I'm fast. I'm fast. It happens fast.

[49:58]

And reactions are fast. You know, you react quickly to something. Responsible or respond, to be responsible, we use that word, usually has some consideration involved. So I'm going to practice and I think the main possibility for us to slow it down is to take a few breaths. You know, like you feel something came, something came at you fast and you can feel the disturbance in the force. And so then the next thing you practice doing is breathing. Staying with the connect, staying connected because usually another person, right? That it's happening with. So staying connected I'm not going, I'm not leaving. I just need to breathe a little bit here and then to respond because I want to respond. But I'm going to need my intellect. I'm going to need my heart.

[50:59]

I'm going to need all my parts in order to respond in a way I feel is responsible. You know, it's actually the way I want to respond and not just reactive because we all can do that. I mean, that's normal. And like you said, oftentimes there's regret. It leaves a smear, it smears. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think Zen is like this practice. Like, now I think I get, I mean, I don't want to say I get it, but it's really a practice. Not just saying, oh, I learned something, now I know. It's like, you just have to change this habit. Because... Biologically, as you said, we have this default mode. When we have emotions, we just go to circular. And scientifically, they looked at that, right? So we have this default circular mode into where we are reactive. But yeah, I'm grateful for the practice. We shall continue.

[52:00]

Thank you. We need you. We all need each other. I need it. This is a team effort. This is not a personal effort. Really need it. Yeah. Here comes another team member. Hello, Helene. You are muted. Hello, Sangha. And hi, Fu. I'm glad for your talk. It was very nice. And I wanted to say something with respect to what Hope said. I felt that the meeting was kind of unexpected in a way. We all showed up to discuss what the topic was, but it was very difficult without your leadership, I felt. And I felt that Hope didn't get

[53:03]

what she sort of wanted, and so I'm glad that you brought that up, Hope, and I hope everything is fine, and thank you very much. I know you wanted to read, and we never did that. And even today, I was looking at the section, and it's very condensed, and it's relatively long, and I think For me, it's hard to even read it quietly rather than read it out loud. So anyway, I felt that we tried very hard to make progress with understanding the chapter. It is really helpful what you have said so far in bringing it more full circle for me, Fu.

[54:13]

Good. And for myself, I've been having just in my meditation, I'm very aware of things that I have done that are not nearly, are not good. We're not good. And I almost feel like I have that feeling of the iron ball stuck in your throat and you can't throw it up and you can't swallow it. And it's very uncomfortable. Yeah. Yep. That's part of the process. That's why they named it. You know, that's part of the process, because you've gone through that karmic life for much, you know, you've grown up in a very karmic relationship to the world based on your parents and your conditioning and all of that.

[55:14]

So that's that iron ball was, you know, stuck down your throat, not by your choice, but by all those conditions. And now you're becoming conscious. And the more conscious you become, you it begins to burn. Yeah. And you don't have the you don't have the you know, privilege of just being able to spit it out like a red hot or something, you know, wouldn't that be nice if we could just throw it up. But it's really has to dissolve. And it's different from other kinds. You know, I've been in therapy forever, dealing with all the same stuff. But what I get out of Zazen is, is, is really different. That, that more like self knowing instead of just kind of talking about everything and and therapy has a lot more to do with with what other people did to you um so but anyway um i'm just dealing with that hot iron ball

[56:27]

Yeah. Yeah. That's the way, the way through is through, is in, is in that very thing. You know, that's your practice. And it's good. It's good to know, you know. And just pay attention to that place in your body where you feel that. See if you can bring some rest there, some, you know, relief. Like, okay, let that, just let that open a little bit, you know. Let my breathing be a little deeper. Let my, my shoulders be a little more relaxed and so on. So it's really embodied, right? It's your body that's talking to you. Right. Right. So how do you talk kindly to your body? It's like your dog, you know? Oh, good dog. You're okay. It's okay. It's just thunder and lightning. I didn't want to hurt you. Especially when I, especially when I wake up with it in the middle of the night. Yeah. And it's,

[57:31]

Kind of Bergman's Hour of the Wolf. Yes, I remember that. My favorite stuff when I was in college was dark Swedish films. Kind of suit our moods. Yeah. Well, you know, there's The Wizard of Oz and there's other things you can add to your repertoire, you know? Yeah. Anyway, thank you for sharing. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Helene. Always good to see you. Great to see you too. Elaine, I just want to say thank you and that I completely understand. And if that were to be this Sunday, I would have responded very differently. And thank you for leading the charge last week. And I'm really grateful for this lesson. You're very welcome. Whatever I can do for anybody. Any thoughts?

[58:51]

Wishes? We had a really fun, I hope you guys did, had a bit of a fun Valentine's Day here at Enzo Village. Karina and I and then one other very sweet lady, Anna, came up with a playlist because the residents here sent us their favorite love songs. And so we put them on a, We made a little slideshow, and we played Beatles songs and Donovan. It was our generation, all the good stuff from the 60s. And we thought, oh, maybe nobody's going to come. We were a little bit worried. And so around the time we were supposed to start, about eight people were there. And we were getting like, oh, OK, well, that'll be fine. And then little by little, the room was packed. There wasn't a chair in the house, which was really nice. Then we all, all of these lovely people, just belting it out together.

[59:55]

I could feel the bittersweetness of that because everyone in that room has suffered loss of loved ones, has gone through all of the heartaches of loving someone and doesn't love you and crazy. We were singing Dolly Parton. So I just felt like both the ones of being starstruck and the ones of loss were just resonating through this population of people who've lived very full lives, and as you all have. And something about just being able to sing together was very sweet, very dear. And so we're planning something for the 4th of July. We're going to sing freedom songs, you know, we shall overcome, that kind of stuff. So we're just trying to keep this kind of our own culture, our culture of what we've inherited and through our lives, you know, our generation. Keep bringing that forward and inspiring ourselves the best we can. Because these are kind of hard times right now, as we all know.

[60:56]

Yeah. Hi, Tom. Hello. Hi, Fu. Hi, Sana. Hello, Tom. I just want to say I really appreciated your slideshow. That was really neat. to see the photos and the updates and all that. What an impressive building and I hope someday that maybe I'll be able to pay a visit. Great, I hope you do. That would be so nice. Hello from Pennsylvania, yes. That sounds wonderful. Hello, Pennsylvania. Yeah, thanks, Tom. Yes, of course. Thank you. What? Senko, did you have your hand up again? oh oh yeah i was just saying i would also love the mind only teaching we had yeah yeah yeah yeah i do too i think um hello sangha um yeah i would vote mine only teachings i think there's no i think there's no going wrong wherever direction we go

[62:10]

I think maybe some cases from the Book of Serenity would be really interesting as well. I'm a personal fan of Hongzhi, so the time we spent with some of that poetry was wonderful. And one thing that I wanted to, or at least that I recognize in practice, is how much our suffering... some reason it related to this talk or the conversations we've been having of how much uh that suffering that we would say is optional occurs before or after the actual moment right it is in the very moment but so much of our suffering is oh this is going to happen or something's going to happen like dean said right um but it's trying to know what it is that is going to happen that is where the suffering is in the midst of it happening, we have to deal with it, right?

[63:11]

We're bleeding, we're hurting. It's amazing how, and I think you've said this, and I really like the saying, is how our senses are just begging us to come back to the present moment, right? And a little burn here or something, you know, pinching your finger, that'll bring you right back to it. But that suffering that's different from this pain, is really what I think is interesting about that practice. And I would say my question then, especially in practicing with the precepts and atonement and attunement is when do we recognize when we've gone too far in this self-analysis and we're sort of sinking into those thoughts rather than providing that providing that recognition that the moment requires, right?

[64:14]

Just like you said, we are not pretending that the red hot iron ball isn't there. We want to become, recognize that we are it, right? Become it and fully build that relationship with it so that when it's there, we're like, okay, this burns, but I've sat with it before and here it is again, right? In a way. And then coming back to that moment. So how How do we practice with that? Where is that? When do we find that we've sort of gone a little bit too deep into the deep end of self analysis in a way? Well, that's in the present too. So there's no way out. I mean, that's, you know, whatever you're doing is now. So even if you're thinking about tomorrow, it's now. And remembering third grade is now. So, you know, the whole machinery of our life is in the present.

[65:15]

So just to know that, remember, that's kind of what he's saying, but remember, this is Buddha nature. This is the entirety. Everything, everywhere, all at once is reality. And then anything you do with your narrative is just something you're doing in reality. It's not bad. It's just, you know, it's just notice what it is. Oh, I'm thinking. Oh, that's thinking. You know, so many of these stories that we looked at in the transmission of light, some of those moments of awakening were after the student had gotten very good at thinking and understanding the Dharma, understanding the nature of the red hot iron ball and of everything else that they were going through in their training, and then coming in to explain all of that to the teacher. And then what did the teacher do? Yeah. exactly right in the face with a whisk go go wash your face wash your face be quiet stop talking stop talking you know and that's the moment of awakening when all of a sudden they're in the dark you know they've just turned toward the not knowing from i know i know you know to i don't know and that's who i really am that's the big me not knowing is my vastness

[66:36]

That's my ticket to, you know. But we're not trained for that. We're trained for knowing. And we've been convinced that that's the only way to go is by what you know, what you can tell other people that you know. So this is kind of a deconstruction of a very strong cultural conditioning. And eventually it's kind of fun. But for a while, it's not so much fun. It's because you're basically poking holes in the whole system that you've been trained under. Yeah, and sometimes your family doesn't understand what you're doing. That's for sure. Yeah, right. Yeah, your little thing. Yeah. There's something I certainly relate with Aline in terms of There's something about that transition from sleep, from the unconscious to waking up.

[67:44]

And I find that that's where my mind, I think, has really been let loose and all the emotions come and remembering that I'm not solving work issues right now or I'm not resolving whatever the problem that came into my mind and remembering the feeling of the bed and of the sheets or whatever it is. And then balancing that with, well, there needs to be and is a right time for thinking as well, right? Yes. And recognizing that as much as the practice brings us to the present moment, like you said, the present moment is thinking as well. And first, and maybe that's that first step, right, is recognizing it. Okay, I'm thinking. Yes. It's two in the morning and I should be sleeping and enjoying the warmth of my bed or whatever it is. And then... maybe repositioning that or shining the light differently or even opening up that awareness to what that is.

[68:45]

So I think it's really interesting to practice with that balance and to have a sitting practice that lets us be a little more alert to where something's... something's going on, something's burning up here, right? That I need to take a few breaths or come back to what actually is, as far as we know, real, right? Or at least our senses are saying so. And also, you know, knowing that sometimes you have sleepless nights. Yes. Oh, yeah. That's right. And things in life happen. That's wonderful. Oh, I didn't sleep last night. That's why you're seeing me looking like this. You know, I didn't sleep. And so then next night you sleep pretty well if you're lucky. But anyway, so this is part of the stuff we don't control. Right. But like you said, we're there when it happens. We are it happening. It is us. What's happening is me.

[69:45]

And so how I care for me when I'm scared and fear is oftentimes about the future. You know, usually right now, everybody's fine right now, right? Everybody okay right now? Yeah. Yeah. See, everybody's okay. So just stay right here. Just stay right here. And everything's okay. Yeah. And you start thinking about what could happen or what might happen or, you know, then we get scared. so i i think what you said is really true i don't know how many of you have had i hope not too many have had a car accidents but when i had a car accident that was pretty serious i wasn't hurt but i was terrified but i wasn't terrified when it happened i was awake i was holding on to that wheel i was turning it the wrong way and then the wrong way the other way and the car was spinning and i was like wide awake watching cars go around me i thought i didn't think anything I wasn't thinking. I was there.

[70:47]

And then the car hit the center divider and stopped. I'm still holding on the wheel. It wasn't until the police officer knocked on the window and said, lady, are you okay? That I started to cry. No, I'm not okay. You know, what could have happened to me? You know, so all of the, all of the response, the reactivity was after I was fine. There was nothing happening. My car had stopped. spinning you know but while it was spinning i wasn't afraid i just wanted to figure out how to get this thing to stop you know and uh anyway so you know we're fascinating creatures and this is part of what i love about zen is we get to really study how fascinating we are and you'll never run out of some depth some more another layer you know there's another layer another layer And then you get to have other people and how fascinating they are. Lucky us.

[71:49]

Thank you, Fu. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. It's almost 20 after. That seems good. If there's nothing else anyone wants to offer, just say good night and invite you to unmute and say farewell for this evening. Thank you, Fu. Thank you, Sangha. Good night. Thank you, Fu. Thanks, Sangha. Thank you. Good morning. Have a good night. Good morning. Bye. Welcome, new people. Please come in. Yes, welcome. Yeah, lots of new people. Yeah, wonderful. More than welcome. You're all welcome. Bye-bye, guys. Thank you. See you next Monday. Yeah, take care. Bye. Bye. Bye. Oh, look who's here. There they are. The girls.

[72:51]

Margaret's getting ready for dinner. Come here, Margaret. Get over here, Margaret. Who wants to see you, Margaret? Yeah, we're going out for dinner. You're going out for dinner? Yeah. Downstairs? Oh, there's no dinner. No, there's no dinner. No, we're going to drive all the way to Santa Rosa. Oh, you are? Yeah, great, huh? I don't know. Where did Nini go? She disappeared. No, thank you. Yeah, you're very welcome. Thanks for coming. So, I think Margaret thinks she's talking to you in the other room. Oh, she was naked? Well, she's getting dressed. hey are you text are you texting nene karina find out where she went i wonder if she thought we were not including her in our little chit chat here oh well there she is oh there she is hello you it's me it's me we don't have to visit we can just go online

[74:14]

I've got my own little coconut juice. Oh, coconut juice. What do I have? So good. You have Spindrift, which is... Oh, that's an intoxicant, isn't it? No, it's a fruit drink. Oh, it only has 12 calories. Oh, that's good. We got some of that because we liked it. I think it was what you had. Didn't you get, Karina, what they had? Yeah. Pellegrino? I think we had the Pellegrino. We got the Pellegrino. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. That's good. You see who else is here? Oh, who? Bring him over here. A kitty cat or Buster? A kitty cat. Oh, Blackie. Hello, Blackie. Oh, look. Hello, Blackie. I'm glad he didn't walk over the keys. Yeah. He tends to do that. Yes, yes. Aren't they sweet? They know where the energy is, don't they? Well, he likes to sleep near it because it's warm. Yeah.

[75:17]

Yeah. So what are you making for dinner, Margaret? Well, we're taking Ken out to dinner. Oh, you're going out. Oh, good. Yeah. For Thai. Thai food. Nice. Yeah, but we have to go all the way to Santa Rosa. Oh, okay. Well, you better get going. Glad it's not raining. Well, I don't know. What is it? Thank you. We'll see you tomorrow. Okay. Okay. All right. Bye-bye. Wait, how do we leave? I'll leave you. Oh, okay. All right.

[75:52]

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