Before we begin today's Dharma talk, I just want to make a quick announcement about closed captioning. This program will be offering closed captioning if you, hang on one second, I'm trying to set it up. We will be offering the live transcript and it should automatically show up on your screen. If you find it distracting, you can click on the CC icon at the bottom of your window and you can disable it as well. Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to Green Gulch. So there's a story I think many of you have heard. We like to tell it. It's a very good story. It's about this Zen master long, long ago, whose name was Birdnest Roshi. And he got that name because he liked to sit zazen up in a tree.

[01:04]

So one day a monk came to visit and he called up to the teacher. What is the secret of Buddhist practice? And the Roshi yelled down, do good, avoid evil, and purify the mind. And the monk said, well, that's easy. Even a child of three can understand that. To which Birdnest responded, yes, a child... A child of three may understand it, but even a person of 80 years may not be able to practice it. So a year or so ago, I saw this YouTube video of a little girl by the name of Tenna, not much older than three. I think she was probably five or six at the time. And she's giving a wonderful Dharma talk to her mother. So I'm going to share her talk with you now. else than me. Mom, are you ready to be his friend?

[02:06]

Yes. Try not to be that high up to be friends. I want everything to be low. Okay? Okay. Just try your best. I don't want you and my dad to be replaced and me again. I want you and my dad to be placed and settled and be friends. I'm not trying to be mean. I just want everyone to be friends. And if I can be nice, I think all of us can be nice too. I'm not trying to be mean, but I'm trying to do my best in my heart. Nothing else than that. I want you, mom, my dad, I want everyone to be friends. I want everyone to be smiling. Not like being mad. I want everything to smile. Especially when I see someone, I want them to smile.

[03:08]

Especially Nana, everyone. I want everyone to smile. And if that's for my dad and you, Mom, I think you can do it. I think you can settle your mean You mean heights down a little to short heights. Then it's both. Okay? I'm not trying to be mean. I'm not trying to be a bully. I'm trying to be steady on the floor. Not way down. On straight. On the middle where my heart is. My heart is something. Everyone else's heart is something too. And if we live in a world where everyone's being mean, everyone should be a monster in their future. What if there's a little bit of persons and we will eat them, then no one will ever be here.

[04:12]

Only the monsters in our place. We need everyone to be a person. Everyone. including me, and my mom, everyone. I just want everything to be settled down. Nothing else. I just want everything to be good as possible. Nothing else. Thank you, Tiana. Come and give mommy toot. I love you. I love you too. No one else. That's probably enough today. Last time I looked, I think this video had gotten something like 20 million hits. I think everyone's passed it around. So if you haven't seen it already, there she is.

[05:13]

There she is. So this child... of not more than three, has a very good grasp of basic Buddhist principles. And if we missed learning those principles when we were little, according to Buddhist theory, it is never too late. There are a number of features in this talk that we grownups can easily recognize as within ourselves. You know, there's those upset feelings toward our loved ones that can turn into meanness, to anger, to agitation, irritation, and by and by regret. So these are toxic features of our human life. And they're there from birth. And even before that, as it says in the teaching, there's a verse that we chant in the mornings. It's called the repentances. And all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion, born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. So this I now fully avow means that I accept this ancient twisted karma arriving,

[06:16]

right here today, in my body, out of my mouth, in my speech, in the forms of anger or greed, and that it's mine. It's all mine. And then, as Tenna advises her mother, we need to do something about it, you know, or else the entire human world is going to turn into monsters. You know, this may already be happening. We may be on the verge of turning the world into monsters. And these monsters are not coming from outer space. They are coming from inside our own hearts and minds. Yet I think it's really important that this quality that this tiny Dharma master has also comes with us at birth. And it's called a moral compass. And this morning on the stairs, Tana's moral compass is pointing towards kindness and happiness and a wish for everyone to live in harmony with one another. Her dad, Nana. And everyone. So just like the Buddha in front of the assembly of monks, Tenna is holding up herself, like a tiny don of flower, inviting us to smile.

[07:24]

And how can we possibly resist? When the Buddha sat down under a tree with nothing whatsoever to do but to sit there, he began studying these very same aspects of himself. His perceptions, his feelings, his thoughts. and his bodily impulses, his own moral compass. And some of those aspects appeared to be on the inside of himself, and others seemed to be arriving from the world around him. I think the most striking of those arrivals took the form of Mara, the evil one, master of illusions, who tried his best to frighten the young monk. And when he failed to do that, then he tried to seduce him. And then failing that, he confronted him face to face. Now I will kill you. Well, the miraculous outcome of that encounter was the Buddha's recognition of Mara as a projection of his own vivid imagination.

[08:26]

I know who you are, Buddha says to Mara. No, you don't, Mara says. Well, yes, I do, Buddha says. You are myself. And with that, Mara vanishes. And At that point, the newly awakened Buddha smiled. So I really appreciate how detailed and universal the teachings are that Tenna gives to her own mother, who is being faced by her own Mara, a Mara of her own devising, as a projection of her beloved husband, Tenna's beloved father. First, Tenna asked her mom if she is ready to be friends. And I think that's base camp for our effort. If we're going to make any kind of effort inside of ourselves to find the source of these delusions, which lead to hatred and to its conjoined twin obsessive love. I love you. I hate you. I love you. I hate you. Over and over again. So are we ready to study ourselves?

[09:30]

Are we ready to be friends? Are we ready to receive back any kind of feedback from a Roshi, such as up in a tree or... from a tiny little Buddha on the stairs who know us better than we know ourselves, who see us in our jammies without our makeup. In living our practice of the Buddhist teaching, we too start with a profound and tender willingness to be witnessed by others and then to listen quietly with our shields down as they do their best to tell us how it is that we're disturbing the air that we share and that our life depends on, you know, all of the air. Not only inside the privacy of our own personal relationships, but in the neighborhood, in the town, in the nation, in the world. Are we ready to be friends with people who think we think are so different from us and we so different from them? Different in skin tone or ethnicity and religion, sexual preferences and happy Pride Month, by the way, education, status and wealth.

[10:39]

styles of dress it doesn't take very much for us to sense differences so the hard work is in seeing the illusory nature of those differences to recognize the conditioning that we have received since we were young children to prefer and to judge one person over another and to prefer coffee over tea the teaching of the study of differences and bringing them into intimate alignment into harmony is the key message of one of Suzuki Roshi's favorite Zen poems, The Harmony of Difference and Equality, in Japanese, the Sandokai. The first line of that poem, the author, a Chinese Zen master whose name is Shito, in Japanese, Sekito, Sekito Gisen, he says, the spiritual source shines clearly in the light. The branching streams flow on in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion.

[11:41]

According with sameness is still not enlightenment. The spiritual source shines clearly in the light. The branching streams flow on in the dark. Grasping at things is surely delusion. According with sameness is still not enlightenment. And as Suzuki Roshi says in the very first talk that he gives about this poem, He gave 12 talks and all down at Tassahara very shortly before he died, maybe a year or so before he died. He says that the source, the spiritual source, is something wonderful, something beyond description, beyond our words for things, beyond the discrimination of right and wrong. And that whatever our minds can conceive of or can know or can put into words is not the source itself. That spiritual source shining clearly in the light is here, in some sense, is always here, waiting for us to stop, to sit down and to take a long overdue look at our karmic conditioning that has been driving our life for a very, very long time.

[12:53]

Conditioning that is based in thoughts, in language, in naming things, and in how those things are related to the self, to myself. such as my car, my house, my friends, my religion, my gender, my beliefs, and my convictions. Once we perceive a thing and name it, we then fall into the vat of our emotional responses in order to determine whether that thing does or does not belong in my world, whether or not it has the same right to live and to breathe as I do. So in the light of the spiritual source, all things exist within ourselves, our big selves, beyond thinking, beyond words, pure and stainless. Suzuki Roshi says that to think that things exist outside ourselves is a dualistic, primitive, shallow understanding of things.

[13:55]

And yet it's that way of understanding that it's usual for us humans, you know. Just as Shito says in the third line of this poem, grasping at things is surely delusion. So grasping at things refers to us getting stuck on how we think, you know, like flies on sticky paper. We grab after things as if we have a right to own them or to disown them, to like them or to hate them, to welcome them or to forbid them to enter. On the other hand, once we have studied reality for a while, you know, quite a while, and come to believe the truth that there really is no thing outside ourself, our big self, that we are connected to everything just like a baby to its mother, we may then fall into the sticky trap of oneness. As it says in the verse, the trap of according with sameness, such as all lives matter. A sameness which is still not enlightenment.

[15:00]

So falling into sameness or into oneness is failing to discriminate in this very human world, the world of relative truths, the difference between right and wrong. And although discriminations are delusional, some are right and some are wrong. And either way are extremely powerful in the human world and in the world of needless sorrows. I recently watched a very good example of wrong. There's this documentary on HBO Max called The Crime of the Century about how the language of delusion, thinly disguised as compassion, was used to create great and outrageous fortunes through the widespread distribution of highly addictive prescription drugs. Some of you may have a young friend, I have several now, who have died from a drug overdose. such as fentanyl, while celebrating a special occasion with their friends, like their birthday.

[16:02]

Before we can find peace in this world, it is very important that we understand how delusion works and how we too can skillfully utilize the rules of logic and of law in order to protect each other from the evil one. Do good, avoid evil, and purify the mind. It's so easy to say a child of three can understand and so difficult to practice that even a well-educated, wealthy, older person, as recorded in this documentary, may not even have begun to put this basic law into practice. The next lesson from our little Buddha is an instruction on how to bring our emotional overloads back down into peaceful abiding for the sake of ourselves, our loved ones, and for the sake of humanity as a whole. The first step in returning to sanity is, as she says, not to be high up if we're going to be friends. Not to be, as the Bodhisattva precept says, praising ourselves at the expense of others.

[17:09]

We need to be consciously and intentionally placed, as in still, and settled, as in silent, on this very spot where we are standing, sitting, or lying. Silence and stillness is the harmonious core of our spiritual life and of reality itself. So this is step one in coming back to our senses. In the teachings of the Buddhist tradition, step one is called shamatha, or tranquility practice, calming of the mind that allows us to see, to truly see clearly. And then step two, insight, vipassana. Reality itself flowing everywhere. When we're agitated by anger or lust, both of which are arising from a mind that's trapped in delusion. Thank you, Mara, the evil one. We do not see clearly. So if you imagine yourself riding on the back of a galloping horse or perhaps sitting in a little boat on the open ocean, everything looks like it's bobbing up and down until we get off the horse.

[18:19]

or till we get out of the boat and stand quietly on the land. And then we look again. Are the mountains bobbing up and down? Or was it our agitated mind? The Buddha says that it's your agitated mind. So as a meditator, we can learn to establish ourselves in a relaxed and stable awareness, or what we call in Soto Zen, a silent illumination. Silent illumination is the literal backbone. of our sitting practice the upright backbone connecting the sky above to this very spot of earth on which i'm sitting right now you are sitting right now it's always right now this living backbone of ours is flexible allowing us to seek the balancing point or the tipping point between serenity on the one hand and energetic endeavors such as speech and action on the other between a falsely perceived self and a correctly imagined world.

[19:23]

So here's a wonderful poem by the master of silent illumination, Hongzhi, 12th century Chinese Zen ancestor of our particular branch of Buddhism called Soto Zen. All the myriad things in the universe emit radiance and speak the Dharma. All the myriad things in the universe. emit radiance and speak the Dharma. They all attest to each other and correspond in conversation, flowers, trees, birds, and people. Corresponding in conversation and attesting, they respond to each other perfectly. But if in illumination, silence is lost, then aggressiveness will appear. Attesting and corresponding in conversation Perfectly, they respond to each other. But if in silence, illumination is lost, then you will become turbid and leave behind the Dharma.

[20:27]

But when silence and illumination both are operating and complete, the lotus flower opens and the dreamer awakens. The hundred rivers flow into the sea and the thousand peaks face the great mountain. Like geese preferring milk, like bees seeking out flowers. When silent illumination is perfected and obtained, the teaching of our tradition is set in motion. So like our elder savant, Hongzhu, our tiny savant, Tianan, offers some further advice on how to bring balance back into an agitated mind, a mind whose source is inherently bright and clearly aware. A brightness that is been temporarily clouded over by these pathological emotions of hatred, of greed, and of confusion. Clouded over by our belief that those toxic formations are real and true. I love you. I hate you.

[21:29]

I love you. I hate you. Over and over again. So Tenna says, I'm not trying to be mean. I'm not trying to be a bully. I'm trying to be steady on the floor. Not way down, but straight in the middle where my heart is. If we live in a world where everyone is mean, everyone will be a monster. We need everyone to be a person. Everyone, including me, my mom, and everyone. So a person really knows who they are. They know their tendencies, and they know that they make mistakes. And they realize how important it is to practice zazen. Because before we know who we really are, we don't know why we should practice. Again, as Suzuki Roshi says, we think that we are free and that whatever we do is our choice. But actually, we are creating karma for ourselves and for others.

[22:31]

When we don't know who we are and what we are doing, we don't see any need to practice. But he says, we have to pay our own debts. No one else can pay them for us. Brightly luminous without defilements, you directly penetrate and are liberated. You have from the beginning been in this place. It's not something that is new to you today. And although this is the case, you must act on it. Cold and like dried wood, practice the great rest with broad and penetrating comprehension. If your rest and cessation is not complete and you wish to go to the realm of the Buddha and to leave this world of birth and death, there is no such place. If your rest and cessation is not complete and you wish to go to the realm of the Buddha and to leave this world of birth and death, there is no such place.

[23:32]

Just as you are, you must break through. You must understand without the defilements of defiled thinking. And be pure without any worries whatsoever. So this style of Zen, as Reverend Angel calls it, is the no big deal approach to enlightenment. We are already imbued with awakened consciousness. And so the teacher calls out to the monk, hey, you. The monk says, yes. We just don't believe it, though. And therefore, we don't understand what to say or how to act like Buddha. So the teacher calls out again. Hey, you. Yes. What is your Buddha nature? The monk at a loss shrugs her shoulders and quickly leaves the room. So that's why the Buddha talked to us and gave us some sound advice on how to realize who we really are and then how we can retrain ourselves to be it. So this teaching begins with the unshakable confidence in the truth of the Buddha nature within us.

[24:37]

As Jenna says to her mom, If I can be nice, I think all of us can be too. I'm trying to be nice in my heart, and everyone else can too. I don't like being mean. I want everyone to smile, to settle our mean heights down a little to short heights. And then it's both. Not way down, but steady. In the middle, where my heart is. My heart is something. Everyone else's heart is something too. So this work of coming home to ourselves and to we have always been, even as the clouds of doubt, anxiety and self-protection roll in, also needs to be balanced in terms of effort, the kind of effort that we make. And to remind ourselves as serious seekers to harmonize the goallessness of nirvana with the undermining effects of striving for it. In some forms of Buddhism, the focus of study is on the clouds themselves, on the activities of the deluded mind, the meanness, the lust, the confusion.

[25:42]

And a strenuous effort is made to purify the mind of illusory thoughts and desires, what we call the dusts. Such an effort may result in something called temporal enlightenment, a kind of realization that is known by oneself and possibly one's teacher and so on. maybe one's friends, such an awareness when we attach to it is already wrong. When we are not aware of our true nature, we have everything already. But when we mistake our true nature for ourself, this is a big mistake. As it says in the song of the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, another wonderful Zen poem, you are not it. You are not it. In truth, it is you. Look around. It's everywhere. Already you, without the slightest gap from the very beginning of time. And for this reason, Suzuki Rashi says that enlightenment is not something that can be known.

[26:46]

That the true source is beyond our thinking, is already stainless and pure. When we describe such a thing, we put a mark on it. We stain it with defilement. is nothing but each being. And then he goes on to say, you cannot say there is no enlightenment or that there is enlightenment. Enlightenment is not something about which you can say there is or there is not. At the same time, real enlightenment is not something that we experience. It is something that we realize, that we become, by good daily practice, by how we live our life. So what is the real teaching of the Buddha? The student asks the teacher. And if the student doesn't understand, they just keep on asking. Well, so what is it? You know, what is it? What does it mean? Such questions are demanding answers that the student can understand. And this is a mistake.

[27:48]

One continuous mistake. And yet, surprising to say, that is good. To recognize our mistakes, both the ones we feel inside ourselves, and the ones our friends and our family are helping us to name, like Tenna has done for her mom, proud, high up, and mean, is good, is very, very good. As her mom says at the end, come and give mommy a bit too. I love you. And Tenna says, I love you too. And there we have it, you know, all of it. How to recognize the true value of each and everything, of each and every person, Both dependent, like a mother and her precocious child, and independent, like a mother, like a child, like a flower, like a song, like this day and like every day. No big deal, Zen. Thank you very much. May our intention equally extend to every being and place with the true merit of Buddha's way.

[29:09]

Beings are numberless. I vow to save them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. I want to thank everyone for joining us today. If you feel supported by the Dharma offerings of our temples, please consider supporting San Francisco Zen Center with a donation. Any size is greatly appreciated. The link will show in the chat window now with ways to donate. Also, we will be taking a five minute break. So if anybody needs to sign off now and would like to say goodbye, please feel free to unmute yourself.

[30:14]

it very much. It was very subtly. Thank you. Thank you very much. Bye-bye, Fu. Bye-bye. Thank you. You're welcome. Bye-bye, Fu. Goodbye. We'll see you on a few minutes. We'll return back at around 10.53. Okay, good. Thank you. Thanks, Kogetu. Welcome back, everyone.

[36:46]

If you would like to offer a comment or ask a question, you can raise your hand through the reactions icon at the bottom of your Zoom toolbar. If you click on that icon, there's a raise hand button there. And if you happen to be on an older version of Zoom, it's in the participants panel. Thank you. Joan, Joan May, would you like to unmute? Thank you for that teaching. You're welcome. I would like you to explain further or follow up when you say that falling into wholeness or sameness, like all lives matter, is possibly a trap. It is a trap. Okay, how is that, let's say, the Buddhist concept of emptiness or dependent arising, that we're all connected? Yeah. Well, I think one of the main teachings is that it's not always so.

[37:49]

You know, we are independent. We're also dependent. And if you just pick one side, like we're all interdependent, isn't that nice? All lives matter. Everything's one. No problems. You're falling into sameness. The sameness is just one side of reality. It's the ultimate truth. And the ultimate truth is partnered with, conjoined with the relative truth, which is the truth of our human life. And if we just want to go over there to the sameness, like wanting to be in Nirvana or someplace where there's no troubles, like he said, you know, Hongzhi said, if you want to go someplace to Buddha's land where there's no troubles, there's no such place. So as human beings... We have no options, really, other than to really become skillful. Even though it's so that there's no non-dual nature of reality, the Buddha had a realization of that.

[38:55]

He saw the star, but he hadn't been in that state of mind before he had that realization. That was something really startling and new. And for a while, he just sort of hung out there with this non-dual realization. But then in the sutras, it says the gods begged him, said, please don't just stay there. Come and help these people. And the Buddha said, well, that will be a vexation to me to have to deal with people who are thinking dualistically. But he said, I will do it. And so he spent the rest of his life talking to us in terms that we can understand. So, you know, we don't want to abandon human beings who are suffering. That's not our vow. Our vow is to stay in the world of birth and death in order to help others. So that's the two sides of our human, of the face of being a human. Big mind and small mind. But not one without the other.

[39:57]

Okay. Does that help? Thank you. You're welcome. Grace has her hand up. Hi, Grace. Hi, Audrey. You know, this seems like such a basic question, but I wonder if you could reflect a little bit on what the importance of silence, stillness, which absolutely seems critical. Mm-hmm. And then when I turn around in Zen, it's just absolutely snowbound in words. I come to hear you. I read. I listen.

[41:01]

I'm the way besides Zazen. That's a real sitting. That's separate from what I'm asking today. The words just seem to tumble all over the place. Anybody else feel this in conjunction with the silence and how to find the middle way? And maybe you can talk about that. I'd love to, except they're words. That's right. I'm going to get stuck doing the very thing you're questioning, right? The snowflakes falling on a hot iron skillet. So words are transient. I'm just talking away here, and they're just disappearing. As soon as I say I'm there, they're gone, which is the nature of reality is impermanent. Just like words, everything is like that. Every moment just passes away. It arises and passes away. Nothing permanent. But you need silence. If it was solid, if it was just sound, you wouldn't have snowflakes.

[42:08]

You couldn't have anything changing if everything was solid and still. So you need both of those. Right. Does it matter then what you say? Everything matters that you say and you do. That's the point I was making about these opioid addiction pharmaceutical companies and this incredible thing that they did. uh quite deliberately to make a great profit by addicting people to very dangerous and deadly drugs right right so that matters it sure seems to me yeah that matters and they used a lot of words to make it sound okay that's right a lot of lawyers paid a lot of a lot of money a lot of language a lot of words right so we have to keep our eye on the ball As it's bouncing, the words, ball of words, because they're moving fast. Snowflakes on a hot iron skillet.

[43:12]

And some of them are simply wrong. They're evil. And if we don't pay attention and we don't understand words and how to work with them, you know, what they are at their core, just smoke. You know, we think they're real and then we treat them that way and we get angry and we fight. And we do horrible things because we want to make God knows what. I don't know what you could do with a billion dollars, but apparently that's a game that a lot of people are playing is accumulate, you know, piles of like Scrooge McDuck, piles of gold and sit on top of it. You know, I won. I won. There I am in my vault all by myself. So I think it matters terribly, Audrey, how you use words. how you understand words. And these Dharma words are, by design, hard to get a hold of. They're not supposed to be easy to understand. If you did, like they said, if you grasp, grasping at things is basically delusion.

[44:15]

Oh, I get it. Really? Not really. Maybe you heard the song, you like the tune. I like the tune. But if you think you got it, then you... Maybe you should step back, you know, into the silence. Yes. Yes. It's okay. Insight is about thinking. I like that. Shamatha is tranquility. That's the sitting practice. We do a lot more of that than we do talking. So shamatha is calming the mind. And then vipassana means to look, to think. And when people think, meditators think, they start to get agitated. What do you mean non-dual? What do you mean? So we start to get agitated. So then when that happens, you go back to shamatha. Calm your mind. Stop thinking.

[45:16]

Give it up. Close the book. Be calm. Okay, now open the book. Uh-oh. Okay, close the book. Oh, I love it. Great. Great. Thank you. Thank you for this morning. You're so welcome. Nice to see both of you. Of course. Hi, Grace. Hi, Melissa. Am I unmuted now? You are. Thank you so much for the talk this morning. I made a note of something you said, and I was hoping you could say more. It might be just an add on to Grace's question, but I didn't understand it. When we mistake our true selves for ourselves, we are mistaken. Can you illuminate that a little bit more, please? Yeah. If I say I'm Buddha.

[46:18]

I'm Buddha. That's me. I made a self out of something that doesn't belong to me. I'm not Buddha. Buddha is everything. You are not it. You're not the one. It's actually you. This great, wonderful life is you. It's what's creating you. It's a gift. You're not the gift. And that happens. People do that, right? They attach to some notion of themselves as a virtuoso person. You know, the greatest thing that ever lived. And I think that's very toxic. You know, I often remember back in being in high school, there was one homecoming king and one homecoming queen, and then there's the rest of us. So what are we? What are we, you know? I think the we, we are fully endowed with Buddha nature. We are fully, we have every...

[47:22]

every right and permission to be here. You know, when the Buddha sat, he put his hand on the earth for permission to sit there and the earth shook. Yes, young man, you can sit here. Yes, young lady, you can sit here. This is your home. You belong here. Every one of you, every blade of grass, every worm, every butterfly, this is your home. It's not human home. It's not our home. And we're being very bad, you know, tenants. Very bad tenants. So we have to take the cure around our arrogance. Right? Right. So it's not it. It actually is you. So it's a bit like the question first posed about all lives matter. You can't exist in the ultimate reality alone. Is it touching on that? You must exist also in the relative truth. Yes. In the right and wrong, the world of right and wrong, of self and other, of this way and that way.

[48:26]

That's not good. That's bad. We have to live in that world carefully, you know, thoughtfully, peacefully. Like Tana says, straight from our hearts. You know, what could beat that? You know, she's a winner. You know what I mean? It's like, okay. You got it, sweetie. I want to be in your club. You know, let's not be monsters. You know, and eat the little ones. So, yeah, it's all there. It's all there. How we live our life and kindness and respect and so on is modeling how we wish humans to be. Thank you so much, Fu. You're welcome, Melissa. Hi, Mei. Can you hear me okay?

[49:28]

I can. I can see you too. Thank you. Thank you for bringing us a little girl. Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, I've been teaching by my son all these years, but still, still. And, you know, this girl has, you know, she talks about this mean height, lower to another height. Like, wow. I've been practicing intensively about arrogance recently. Wow. You know, Dogen said, actually, yeah, we chant every morning. We chant, hey, we have a great hate delusions. There's three poisons, right? But actually, I think there's a seven, right? According to Green Tara, there's like... I also heard from Dogon that arrogance probably is the worst, right? But then I find another perspective is that, well, if you think you're better than other people, that's arrogance. But if you think you're not as good as other people, that's also arrogance too.

[50:31]

So can you illuminate about this? I think this arrogance was just, my God, it's too much. And sometimes I try to figure where that, where that arrogance come from because you know you you can't separate from ego and then creativity you can't separate greed and then generosity you know there must be another pair of this arrogance how do we turn that you know i i see this is a mud but there's definitely a flower somewhere so thank you yeah well there's a very helpful teaching about where arrogance comes from called the yogachara eight consciousnesses model of the mind so yogachara teaching is that my it's all about your mind i mean all these teachings are saying it's your mind that's causing the trouble it's how you're thinking it's the words you're thinking it's the way you see things that and then you add your emotions to what you think emotionalized conceptualizations is big trouble so we feel think it's not just thinking thinking is kind of bland but when you add feelings like hatred

[51:42]

anger, greed, well, that's how the world turns, how samsara turns, right? So, the Yogacara model is that you have eight consciousnesses that you are born with, and six of them are conscious. They're your five sense organs, just like Tenna would know those, eyes, ear, nose, tongue, body, mind. And the number six is thinking, thought. So, those six are conscious. That's all we're ever... that we ever know. That's what we know, those things. And the sixth one, the thinking one, is putting labels on all these sensory ones. So there's a smell, but we don't know what it is yet. And then we go, oh, that's spaghetti, you know, or that's a rose. So we add the naming. That's our big talent, is naming things. So that's going on all the time. You're doing that all the time. You want to be aware of that, how you're naming things. It don't come with labels. Visual doesn't come with – look out the window.

[52:46]

It doesn't come with a label until you start doing it. Paint by numbers. Okay, so we do that. You want to really watch that just as a kind of part of who you are, how you function. Below the line of consciousness are these two more consciousnesses that are very important. They're unconscious. And one of them is called the alaya or the storehouse. Himalaya means the storehouse of snow. Himalaya. So the storehouse has all of your conditioning from way the beginning of time. And it's carried along in each moment. It comes from the past. It's brought into the future. And what you're doing today is going to send your karma is going to go forward. That's the karma, the bag of karma, conditioning, how you've been taught from where you were very little. So Tana was taught. She's got some good teachers. She didn't just make that all up. Somebody told her, bring your energy down.

[53:47]

You're being mean. You know, it's very kind of like Waldorfian or something. There's some education has gone on with that child, which is beautiful. So she's being conditioned to a way of understanding how to work with her feelings. So our conditioning has either been good or bad, and most of it's mixed. For most of us, it's pretty mixed. How our parents did it, how their parents did it, how we got here, what language you speak. That's conditioning, and it's unconscious. And then there's one other consciousness called the lover, manas. The lover also comes along with us at birth, and the lover is self-love. It's the big, I love myself. Or I hate myself. Either way, it's all about me. So the self-lover is a creation of the alaya. It's conditioning. We are conditioned to fall in love with ourselves, to think of ourselves, to take care of ourselves.

[54:49]

So there's four qualities. There's conceit. There's ignorance. There's self-love. And there's another one I forget. So this is the seventh consciousness. And that's the troublemaker. It's also called defiled thinking. So that defiled thinking shoots this stuff up from the unconscious into our conscious mind and tells us, oh, I don't like people who wear green. Where'd that come from? Where's that coming from? You know, that's just nuts. Well, it's coming from conditioning. Someone that when you were little said, I don't like people who wear green. And so you got that one. You don't even know why, but there it is. It's your conditioning. So racism is all about is conditioning. So we want to know the mechanism of how the mind is nuts. You know, how we got crazy. We want to know it. I think the yoga chart model is really good for studying how we get confused, the defilements, defiled thinking, and how we begin to become sane by not falling for it.

[55:57]

It's like, I see that. I see that I don't like green, but keep looking. Really? You really don't like green? Really? Well, do I? I'm not sure. Well, maybe I don't know. We go from I know to I don't know. And that's the right direction. Not knowing is nearest. We hate what we know. We love what we know. If we don't know, we're sort of like, hmm, I don't know. It's very healthy to not know. Not be sure. And that's kind of the antidote to arrogance, right? I don't know is not up here. That's like, I don't know. It's closer to your heart. I don't know, but I'd like to know. Could you tell me? Could you help me? I want to learn. So this is our job. We're learners. You're learning, May. You're studying. You're wanting to understand.

[56:57]

And that's wholesome. And little by little, you'll transform your conditioning into learning. I'm just a learner. That's what I am. We got it all? Okay. Looking at other video feeds just to see if anybody happened to just want to raise their hand in their video feed, and I can call on you. There's Richard. Hi, Richard. There you go. Hey, Phu. Hi. Nice to see you again. Yes.

[57:59]

May the merit of our listening and teaching benefit all beings. May we all be free of delusion and confusion and the causes of suffering. May we all be enlightened. Right now. [...] As a result of listening to your classes, I've started reading the Shobo Ginzo. for the first time so it's a bit to chew and uh i love it and uh but i i thought i would ask a question um from chapter one bandawa a phrase a a couple of words that i'm not used to in the context of the samadhi of receiving and using the self i have never heard It said quite like that before. So I was wondering, and it comes up a lot in that chapter, this idea of receiving and using the mind or receiving and using Bodhi, receiving and using self.

[59:14]

So receiving, I can understand this merging or relaxing into or letting go of grasping, et cetera. But then the using the best I can come up with is then what do you do with that? How do you use that to benefit others? How are you doing that right now? By asking this question. There you go. And by sending your prayer. Yes. Yeah. So that's self-receiving, self-employing. Self-receiving, self-employing, samadhi. So we're in a transaction. At all times, we're in a transaction with everything. Everything's illuminated. Everything in life is illuminated, emits this luminosity. And that's how we know. That's how we know the world. It's luminous. It's shouting at us. It's talking to us. It's jumping on our tongues and into our ears and our skin. Non-stop impact, impression.

[60:19]

I'm very impressionable. So when I'm impressed with something that really fills me with joy, like bendawa, then I want to tell somebody about it, you know? Hey, Richard, have you read the Bendowa? And now you tell me you have and you're chewing on it and it's so great and it makes me very happy. So together we generate happiness. Wonderful. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. And it also speaks to the idea of relationship. Yes. And Buddha to Buddha. So it's not just receiving. It's not just me separate from everything else. Receiving a good feeling and then being able to be happy about that good feeling that I've received. But it's about relationship with all dharmas. Yes. Yes. And also our job, we're kind of filters too.

[61:21]

We're kind of filtering out the unwholesome stuff that... tends to come through us along with the great stuff. There's these toxins. And so we want to note that, oh, I think this is toxic. I think this way of thinking is toxic. So I'm not going to repeat it. I'm not going to let it pass through me and back out into the world. I'm going to take in the dark, as the Tung Lan practice, and send out the light. That's my job. I want to filter the toxins and clean the water. Send out some nice water that people can drink. And if we all did that, oh, my God, it wouldn't take long at all, would it? We're monsters. We're monsters. Exactly. There won't be many people left. Yeah. There used to be monsters ruling the planet. You know, we've seen those big guys with the big teeth, the tiny arms.

[62:22]

Merciless. Now they wear ties. Yeah. They're our ancestors. Yeah. Yeah. For real. And they are it too. They are. Without them, we wouldn't be here. You know, this unbroken chain of life from the very beginning to each of us. So it's our job now to send something forward. Maybe a slightly better model, wouldn't that be good? Thank you. You're welcome. I don't know, it's M Farina, is that right?

[63:23]

I can't see if there's a, maybe there's a first name there too. Hi. Hi, good morning. Hi, good morning. Yes. It's not Marianne, my sister. It is Carmina. Carmina. Oh, Carmina. Yes. On the... on the problem of words and of category... Well, I think you know what I mean, to categorize. It's as if I cannot speak without that, you know, getting in my way, so to speak. And... And I keep trying to stop that, stop voicing my opinion.

[64:31]

My life has been words. I'm a writer, I'm a poet, I'm an academic, so on. So it's like, it's my gift and my burden. without trying to spend four hours sitting zazen, what am I to do? How do I deal with that? Because, you know, it came up in the teachings, yours and zhiryu. And... I'm really struck by what I heard last week from him and now from you. And I don't know any reflection or advice or whatever.

[65:35]

Yeah. By the way, the teaching today was so moving. Oh, thank you. Well, I guess that may be the trick is, you know, what are you doing with words? I mean, we're not going to give them up. I love them too. I'm not giving them up. They're like butterflies and bees and worms and spiders and everything, right? They're all there. And they're magic. You know, words are not that old. It's only been about, what, 80,000 years that we've had words. Before that, we were just kind of pointing and making noises. Grunting, yeah, which was okay. You could get by pretty well without all this kind of complex dictionaries and everything. But we are the inheritors of a tremendous, like you said, it's a gift and a curse of language. And language is the key to waking up, to realization.

[66:37]

So it's not like we want to do away with it, but we want an appropriate use of language. I think that's what you're saying. Do I have to keep saying the same? I can hear myself repeating the same old stuff again and again. I like this. I don't like that. I like this. I don't like it. So that's the part that gets boring to us. I get bored with my opinions because they haven't changed much. So I really feel like the poetry and the art of the word, the art of language is what And the language used to benefit others, you know, to help clarify what's going on, to help people, to bring medicine. The Buddha wasn't just a clever philosopher. He was that, but he was also a physician, primarily. So his use of language was to benefit people who were suffering. There is suffering.

[67:38]

And that got their attention, right? There is suffering, he said. And there's a cause of your suffering. Now I'm with you. What's the cause of my suffering? There's an end to suffering. And there is a way to live that brings an end to suffering. And the way is basically how you live your life every day. How you speak. How you make a living. How you conduct yourself. What your views are. Language. What your intention is. Language. My intention is I've taken a vow because I thought it was a really good one when I heard it. I thought, hey, I think I could do that one or I would like to do that one. I vowed to live for the benefit of others. That sounded like a great relief. I mean, I have to get stuff for myself and I have to do this and I have to accumulate all these awards and I have to buy a house. And it's like getting stuff for yourself is exhausting. But living for others felt like freedom.

[68:42]

from selfishness, self-centeredness. And I think it is. And I think that's what it's supposed to be, is getting over yourself by giving your attention to others through language, your gifts, how you're writing for others. You're probably just not writing for your own pleasure. Maybe you do that too, but you want people to share in your language. So you're giving them something that, you know, you're responsible for. So really it's your craft, it's how you're working your craft, where the freedom comes from suffering. So it's really not to do away with words, although that's nice too. It's nice to sit quietly listening to those wonderful red-winged blackbirds out there that are back. Just the sound of the birds, or the water, the rain,

[69:44]

The one true thing, Dogen said, is the black rain on Fukakusa Temple. So when we reduce the noise within our own apparatus, the word-making machinery, when we reduce it, we allow it to rest, then all this other stuff comes to us. It's always happening, but we're not paying attention. So we get this amazing gift of sound and of the wind blowing the leaves and the trees. And just stop, stop that for a little while. I think she might have heard something. Oh, I thought she was just peacefully abiding. That's another way to do it is to freeze. Are you okay?

[70:46]

Oh, maybe she'll be back. Yeah. Can you hear me? No, she's frozen. Well, I hate to leave you that way. I have no control over this Zoom thing. Yeah, maybe she'll come back. Okay. Well, if she does. Kate. Hi, Phu. Hi, Kate. I'm new to, you know, I'm just learning. I'm learning. I'm a beginner. And some things come up for me, which are a couple of things. So is there a self in Buddhism or is there not? Because I read where there is no self. There's no such thing as a self. And then I go to Dharma talks where all we talk about is the self. So that's confusing to me. That's the first question.

[71:48]

And the second question is, well, let's do the first, and then I'll give you the second. Yeah, the first is a big one. That's a good one. I think one of the most common things you'll hear is is and isn't, rather than is or isn't. So, you know, I think it's called dialethism, where you can have two things that are true, opposite things that are true, which is not allowed in most logic systems. You're not allowed to have two things that are true that are opposites. But in Buddhist teaching, it's okay. You can have an is and an isn't at the same time, and they're both true. So there is a self and there is not a self. And there's a way of understanding what that means that takes a little bit of explaining. So, you know, one of the things, one of the ways I understand the self is that It's a process, not a thing. There's a flow. You're not a thing. Yourself is not a thing.

[72:49]

It's a flow that's made up of many different aspects. I mean, just try to find a self. Nobody's ever found it, right? A singularity called me. What would that be? You could try surgery. You'll never find it. There's nothing like that. There's this flow. of sounds and sights and all the senses and the mind. And, you know, so really we're more like a river than a road. So that self is called the doer of deeds and the receiver of karmic consequences of those deeds. So that thing, that self does stuff and then they receive the consequences of what they do. So there's a moral aspect. For the Buddha in the self. It's not just neutral. No self is more. So that's the relative truth. There's two truths. One truth is relative truth about all that stuff I just said.

[73:50]

The ultimate truth is you'll never find anything, let alone the self. Because things are products of our imagination. And we're just running around making up stuff all the time. But if you try to find that thing, you know, if you like a good scientist, you try to find it. I mean, they haven't found anything yet. Right. And they're still looking for the beginning of the universe or for the smallest particle. And mostly they're finding a lot of space, you know, with little things shooting through. So, you know, no one's going to find a thing, a solid thing. is no abiding self there's no self that is just set it doesn't change like we used to think atoms were that you know and in buddhism it was dharmas there were these little things that didn't change but that's you know that philosophically doesn't work and it doesn't work in terms of physics either so reality is that there are no things there are transformations there's flow

[74:58]

And we, you know, patterns, basically there are patterns. And we work with them because that's how we evolved was to be successful, watching how patterns, like patterns of seasons, patterns of animals, how we could get something to eat. So we've learned the patterns, but the naming of things came much later. And that's where we live, is in the world of language and meaning. And there is where we get to do our work. The Dharma work happens in the study of these words, of language, of meaning. You know, and like onion, you keep taking off a layer and there's another layer, there's another layer until you don't have anything there. And that's an insight. Oh, oh, that's freedom. You know, once you get all the onion layers off of there, it's like, oh, wow. You put it back together. and take it apart.

[76:01]

Yeah. Or like scraping a really dirty window. You scrape off the layer and you scrape off the layer and you scrape off the layer until you actually get a transparent view of things where you can experience light and you can experience trees and you can experience maybe darkness. You can experience a host of things once you get the layers off the window. But you can't experience the window because you can't see it anymore. Right. So you have a lens. Now you have a lens. And that's the mind is that. The mind is that clear lens. And it's just like it's neutral. You know, it's just perceiving. So then what we really think of as self is really mind or just flow of energy. It's an element. It's an element. It's an object of awareness. It's a concept. The mind has these six, as I was mentioning, these six consciousnesses that are conscious of, they have objects.

[77:11]

So the ear has, the object of the ear is sound, and the object of the eye is visual, and the object of the tongue is things you can taste, and of the nose, things you can smell, of the skin, things that you can touch, and of the mind, ideas. So the mind's object of the mind is, you know, but the ear doesn't even have any purpose. If there's, if there's no sound, there's no ear. It's a relationship. So if there are no objects of consciousness, the mind is perfectly still and quiet. Waiting something to pop in. Yeah. Waiting for something to be planted. Yeah. See, yeah. Yeah, and that happens all the time because that's what human life is all about, is the constant arising of these little sprouts. But we want to know that. Oh, that's just a sprout popping up.

[78:13]

And then I can have more of that mind. My mind can be more neutral or more welcoming of the sprout rather than objecting to it. What's that sprout doing in my mind? Then there's the thing that you spoke of earlier, which is that when we have the sprouts, we often put on them emotions. And that changes the game a lot. Completely. You know, I like that sprout. I don't like that one. So now we're into preferencing. And that's all about the self is being created out of those preferences as though there were such a thing. Oh, I am what I eat. I am what I like. I am what I love. But that's not true. Those are transient formations. I'm free is a better way to see yourself.

[79:16]

I'm actually free of these transient formations. And I'm here to be in appropriate relationship with them for beneficial reasons. Because it's not just neutral. Like I said, the Buddha was a physician. He wasn't just a philosopher trying to get a prize for his writing or something. He was actually cared about people and their suffering. So that's our school. That's our tradition is to care about people and their suffering and to use the teaching as medicine. The second question is, I don't know if it's a question, but... so as I move forward in trying to learn about Buddhism and Zen Buddhism in particular is what I'm doing. Um, it feels so intellectual and complex and complicated, um, in, in many ways, uh,

[80:29]

And I feel sometimes like it's gonna take me just so long to have any type of grasp, like practically four years of college or something before I have really just the tiniest understanding of what it is that when we get together on these, in the Dharma talks or in the song is just this, like, I could study for years and have just this teeny, teeny little seed of possibly, if even that, of comprehension about what I hear people talking about and there's just so many layers upon layers upon layers upon layers. And it just feels really, sometimes I feel very overwhelmed by what feels very academic and just deeply so complex.

[81:41]

Welcome. Welcome to the club. It's so true. When I first came to Zen Center, I mean, it was still true. I still felt that way. The only book, that I was aware of, that I worked in a bookstore in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. There was one little shelf of metaphysical books, and on that shelf was Zen Mind Beginner's Mind. And that was the only Buddhist book I saw for maybe a decade, you know? And now, oh my God. I mean, look at this stuff. I've got piles in all directions, and I am so far behind. I will never catch up. And so, you know, I have, as some poet, I forget who it was, said, I think it was William Stafford said to his advice to young poets, lower your standards. So, you know, if you can understand, for example, when I felt totally overwhelmed, probably the first or second year that I was at Zen center, you know, really taking notes and all.

[82:46]

So I was like, I don't know what they're talking about. And so I went to the library and I looked for the Buddha's first sermon and In which he taught, the first thing he taught was about two pages long. And in the first sermon is just about everything that anyone has commented on since. And so it was so reassuring. I thought, oh, I see. They're just elaborating on two things. Non-duality. The middle way is called the middle way between the extremes of there is something and there isn't something. Don't pick and you're wrong. Pick one or the other and you're wrong. So just find the middle way between the extremes of any kind, is or isn't, right and wrong, up and down. So the non-dual nature of reality is just what's so. Reality doesn't come in parts. Reality is a whole. Universe is a whole bunch of stuff. But it's a whole. We have a term for it. Universe. Reality. And that's where we are. That's what we are. So that's the first principle.

[83:48]

And that's in the first sermon. First sentence. He said, avoid the extremes. So I wrote that down. And the second thing he did was teach causality, which is the second noble truth. Four noble truths. There is suffering. There's a cause of your suffering. There's a cessation of your suffering. And there's a cause for the cessation of your suffering. Causality. That's the relative truth. The truth about our relationships as human beings in the world. So the first one is the ultimate truth. There's no... There's no other. Everything's connected. It's all together. The universe is all together. And every moment is arising together, is dependent on each other. It doesn't separate for a second. You know, if this stuff started flying off in all directions, that would be the end of my life and your life too. So it's coming up together and supported. That's non-dual. That's comforting. The ultimate truth. The relative truth, there's some problems.

[84:50]

Within the ultimate truth, we got some problems, and we're causing them by wanting things to be different than they are. So that's the second noble truth. The cause of suffering is desire based in ignorance. Ignoring non-duality, we think things can be manipulated. I can have what I want. I can keep you out. I can do all this stuff. And it causes suffering because I'm trying to make things the way I want them. And I'm not in charge. I don't want to get old. I don't want to get sick. The Buddha ran away from home because he didn't like the game. He didn't like the facts of life. So he ran away from home to try and get away. We could all do that, right? I'm out of here. I don't want to get old and lose my youth and die. So he ran away from home, and then he found something better. He found that it was okay. He could relax with the facts of life and actually enjoy himself and the beautiful world while he was here, while we're here.

[86:01]

So I would suggest you read the first sermon and enjoy it. And then when you have questions from that, ask somebody, and they'll probably tell you something else. next thing to read that might be helpful from there is it does it have a title or what should i look for it's the turning first turning of the wheel of the law and i have a wonderful book called um what is it called where is it a wonderful book called uh what the buddha no what is it's over there no not what the buddha oh here it is This wonderful book has been one of my primary resources for so many years now. It's called The Life of the Buddha, Life of the Buddha by Bhikkhu Nanamoli, N-A-N-A-M-O-L-I. And Englishman who went off to Burma or Sri Lanka or something back in the day, long time ago, and then learned the language and translated a lot of things.

[87:04]

This book is in chronological order, starting with the Buddhist enlightenment, His first sermon, the second sermon, when he met his first disciples. So he put in the polycanon is not in chronological order. You have to jump all over the place to find the story. So this is the story. And it's really wonderful. And, you know, there's a lot of great stuff in there. Very simple from the old polycanon. So if you had that and the first turning teaching is in it. So this sermon, the first sermon is in this book. Great. Thank you, Fu. You're welcome. Welcome. Thank you. Yeah. Hi, Landau. I haven't seen you in a very long time. Hi. Good morning, Fu. Good morning. Are you in Germany? I'm sorry? Are you in Germany? No, I'm back in the Netherlands. Ah. Well, welcome.

[88:06]

Thank you. I wanted to expand on the idea of self a little bit, if we could. I find a conceptual approach is helpful to a certain extent, but the way I experienced the self sometimes is that it really has like this kind of static quality to it. Like it's more than visceral. For example, When someone encroaches upon your physicality, you get a response. When there's intimidation, there's like a physical response. I really get this sense of self that is being endangered. And it's not so much a concept anymore, but it's really like, whoa, stay away from me. Stay away from this body. Stay away here. And this is of course like a negative example, but I'm just using this example as a means to emphasize the experience that I'm having at the time.

[89:16]

I don't really know how to create some space around that experience when it happens I get the sense that I'm shrinking down to that idea or thought or feeling or somatic response of clinging to something or feeling the need to protect something. And it's difficult to relax and to, like I said, create some space around that notion and give it some air, so to speak. Does that make sense? Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, the teaching of the five skandhas, the self, the Buddha taught has five skandhas, the body is one of them. And it's reactivity, which is not something you're choosing, you're not making your heart beat or your skin sweat or, you know, startle when you hear a loud sound.

[90:28]

So the body has its own protective reactive history. goes all the way to the beginnings of life, right? Get away from pain and go towards food or light or whatever you need, shelter. So we have that. We have an animal body. It's very familiar to all of us. And so that's one of the skandhas. And then there's perceptions. Do you think you see an enemy coming? You think so. That's why your hair's up in the back. You think you see an enemy. Perception formation is like, I think that's my enemy. I'm going to name it. I'm going to give it a name and I'm going to be conceptualizing that. And I have an impulse now based on that to get out of here. So those activations, you know, form, feeling, perception, impulses. And then consciousness is kind of the wrapper is holding all of that, the field of awareness. So that's pretty automatic.

[91:31]

I mean, we don't have a lot of choice about that, the five skandas. But where we have a choice is like after the activation has happened, there's some reflection. You've made contact with the other. So that thing that you thought was attacking you is right. It's actually already happened. You're already attacked because your perceptions have already turned into fear and reactivity. So contact has happened. After contact, On the 12-fold chain, the next step is feelings. I don't like this. You know, that's a feeling. Or I'm not sure. Or I really, I kind of like it now that it's happening. Like it. It's changed somehow. So those three reactions are feelings. The teaching is stop right there. Feelings are retributive. They're coming from the past, from your karmic conditioning. You don't have a lot of say about how you feel. but you have a lot of say about what you do next. So if I have a feeling and I stop at feelings, and then I watch how it goes, the next step after feelings is desire.

[92:43]

And once you do that, you're just on the wheel. There's no choice. You're just going to finish off the cycle, that round. But if you stop at feelings and wait, and you're considerate of what to do next, You know, all these stories about these Zen masters with the samurai threatening to kill them and stuff, you know, and they're going like, the samurai says, you know, I'm going to, don't you know I'm the one who can kill you? And the Zen master says, don't you know I'm the one who can be killed? And then the samurai drops his sword. You know, so depending on what you do, how you react to your feelings and to what you perceive determines the karmic outcome. of that exchange, which is just one of many throughout the day, right? That's just that one. Then there's lunch and all these other things that invite us to have a feeling and to react. So, you know, being conscious, being present, being alert to how it's working, to the clockwork of your body, speech, and mind, of your five skandhas, is how we live in presence and in awareness.

[93:54]

And sometimes we're going to get it wrong and probably something terrible is going to happen. And it hasn't happened yet. Not to you or me. We're still here. So I'm kind of counting on this is going to work out okay. I think I've got it down. I don't step in front of cars. And I don't go places where I think there might be hostilities. Yeah. So I'm working it. You're working it. And I don't want to hurt anybody else. So that's my commitment. That's a great help, the intention not to hurt anyone else. It makes me feel a lot safer, too. If I know I can trust myself that way, then I become a lot... more trusting in other people. Yeah.

[94:57]

And me and you. Yeah. So what I heard you say is, is stop at feelings. Is that, that's basically the, that's, that's where you pull the plug. So that's where, well, in Zazen, that's how I live. Feelings are coming up all the time. So Zazen for me is the practice of, Just letting feelings rise and fall as they do. You know, I want to get up now. I have an itch on my nose. Whatever it is, feelings come all the time. In 40 minutes, I get a whole bunch of feelings come up. I like it. I don't like it. Somebody sneezes without covering their face. I don't like it. You know, so I get to and I just sit there. Well, I guess the difficulty for me is not so much. Although, well, I mean, I don't want to say that too lightly, though, but it becomes really difficult when I don't know or when I can't really put a finger on the feeling and when there's just a deep sense of self without a specific feeling rising to the surface, so to speak.

[96:18]

So it's not... like anger comes to the fourth or tiredness or excitement or sadness or whatever. It's when there's just a sort of this unnamed sense of self, this discongested, very dense identity that has a lot of gravity to it. And it sort of absorbs like a black hole, my awareness. And there's just identification with something that could be called a self. So it's not so much a feeling as it is like a very dense feeling, I guess. That's what really trips me out. Yeah. Well, there are different realms that we fall into, and some of them are below or lower, like animals and hungry ghosts and hell. And those are psychological states that we all know. And some of those, you know, are basically tendencies.

[97:21]

Maybe we had them for a long time. Maybe we just got them. Who knows where they come from? We don't really know. It's our conditioning to have certain kinds of reactivity to just being, you know, the kind of being that I am, you know. And I suppose most of my life I've been working not to be below the waterline, to not fall into the negative realms. And, you know, and I've gone there. I mean, I think we've all gone there. There's no avoiding disappointments and sadness and, you know, broken hearts and all of that. Or just this kind of static malaise. I feel heavy. I feel, you know. So I think practicing is really, you know, not avoiding that that's maybe how you feel or how you see it. And then looking for the medicine for that. What has worked for you in the past? What has helped to bring you a little bit higher up into some sensations that maybe aren't so aversive?

[98:24]

Asking the question, is this true? Oh, good. Is this true? This experience that I'm having and this formation that's taking place in the mind right now on the conceptual level, trying to make sense of things, is this true? Or can I just let the experience be the experience and sit with it? That that is a huge that that sort of takes it apart. And that's that's sort of like a stopper for me where I step off the wheel, so to speak, at least for a moment. Good. So I'm back on it again. But yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody's permanently, you know, none of us are claiming rights to permanent liberation is that I know of. I never met anybody like that. The earth doesn't shake when I touch it. What? The earth doesn't shake when I touch it. No. No, she doesn't mind. You're one of her kids. Oh, that's my Landau.

[99:30]

Thank you very much. You're welcome. Good to see you. Okay. I think we should call it time. That looks like it's almost lunchtime. Thank you all so much for coming and staying and asking great questions. And I look forward to more, more of you for sure. Thank you so much. Thank you, Kogetsu, for your support today. Thank you, Fu. Thank you, Fu. Welcome to unmute and say goodbye if you like. Thanks. Bye, everybody. Thank you. Bye. Bye, everyone. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Much love. Did you say hippie? Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome. Excellent talk.

[100:32]

Thanks. Could you? Say the author's name, the name of the book, The Life of the Buddha. Nana Moly. Nana Moly. Nana Moly. It's a, yeah, Nana Moly. Thank you. You're welcome. Osbert Moore was his English name. Born in England in 1905. Thank you. Good guy. We'll say hello from the East Coast, Greenville, South Carolina. And I'm kind of a regular, but I'm kind of on the back pages sometimes. Well, nice to meet you. You go by Yuge? Yuge, yes. Nice to meet you, Yuge. Welcome. Thank you for a wonderful Q&A, Fu, and for your Dharma talk. You're welcome, Sonia. Thank you for being, always being. our acting director.

[101:36]

Yes. All right, y'all. I'm going to go bye-bye. Bye, everyone. Bye-bye.

[101:45]

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