If you can hear easily back there, please, it's okay to sit there. If you can't, please move forward so I don't have to holler. And regarding last night's meeting for a moment, remember we are talking about only a four- or five-week period in which we have to be concerned with being cut off and

[01:24]

during that four or five week period there will from now till from when the road is fixed now until April 1st about during that four or five week period there undoubtedly will be days like this where it's possible to get in and out So we're not talking about being cut off for your medical lifetime, but just a few weeks and only part of those few weeks. But still, we should weigh the consequences of being cut off for a while. And since I presented that, showed you that story about the Hidden Springs, it looks like their geography is quite different, or fairly different from ours, and the way the stream and the buildings were is quite different. Anyway, again, I doubt if we could get that kind of, in this narrow, steep stream, we could get that kind of buildup of water.

[03:06]

But again, I'm just guessing. Last time, or a while ago at least, I talked about passive attention and making our actions accessible to us. In the sense, suffering has a cause suffering can be ended. So how do we make our actions accessible to us? And also we can ask, how can we make our thoughts accessible to us? Our thoughts also, of course, are a kind of action. And there's two... You know, in Buddhism there's two main ways of... two fundamental ways of practice. One is, as we always say, don't cling to self, detachment and so forth. Or, as I talked about, will, willingness and insight, to sit down, to sit.

[04:38]

still and to sit long, or will, willingness and insight, starting with detachment. The other side is the mindfulness of Buddha, or as even Nagarjuna says, the premise of practice is to saturate yourself with the way or to saturate yourself with the presence of Buddha. Everyone, we can even say, everyone to begin to see everyone around us as bodhisattvas struggling to be reborn, even fox and sundee. our bodhisattvas, who have taken the form of dogs to enlighten us. That's true. Why not? Look at Fox and Sunday. You will see it if you look. This is more emphasizing, rather than detachment, emphasizing our constructed reality.

[06:02]

are fabricated reality, whether it's Jewish or Christian or Buddhist, you know, are fabricated reality. Like Kei Chu's cart, you know, if our reality is fabricated, it also means emptiness or detachment. But one is granting way and one is grasping way. not-Buddha, not-Buddha, not-Buddha, or this is Buddha, you know, 84,000 hymns. Some Avantamsaka, you know, Huayen, expensive, full, multiple world, multiple universe view, multiple world view. Or Prajnaparamita, Not Buddha. No Bodhisattva. So our thoughts, you know, when you see how thoroughly this is a magical show, this is a constructed reality, your own culture, you know,

[07:28]

how passive attention and habitual consciousness, how thoroughly we are locked into perceiving a certain way. Yesterday, on the tail end of Philip's class after Choson, I was able to join, and we ended up talking about unidentified exploding people and flying objects and various mysterious occurrences that now the world is much more media-ized, much more connected always by media. So many more unexplained events are coming to our attention which we can't brush off as something happening in southern France or Mexico or Georgia or Maine.

[08:38]

and talking, you know, about the magician's use of passive attention. The other... What the magician also relies on, our willingness, our desire to believe in another explanation. We want some other explanation. We're ready to... And intuitively we know this particular magical show of our own culture doesn't explain everything. But even when we take on another view, ESP or the dead are speaking to us or people are coming from other planets, you know, those explanations are usually just versions of our cultural formula. So the emphasis in Zen is not, as I said, I believe, last time, not to add any explanation, neither a mundane nor spiritual or magical explanation, to leave yourself radically open.

[10:06]

This is also to thoroughly practice Kechu's cart, or this is a constructed reality, or really it's the same practice, to make yourself aware of the presence of Buddha. So with this kind of effort, of detachment and mindfulness of Buddha, you become more and more able to look at yourself without attachment to some idea of something substantial there, something natural or basic you can't get rid of. I remember a cartoon back in the days of the San Francisco Oracle, you know, I don't know where it appeared, but it was at that time. And it's a kind of LSD, you know, that Haight-Ashbury period of view of our reality. Anyway, this guy who looks kind of bug-eyed and neurotic and in real funky clothes, you know, he goes in to see Doc Destiny.

[11:42]

Doc Destiny says, oh, he tells him, you know, like talking to a psychiatrist, and they're sitting, you know, he's lying on a couch or something, he says, I've got all these problems and my life is miserable and I'm suffering and so forth, and Doc Destiny says, I've got just the thing for you, and he brings him into the other room, and he sits him down in this machine a Tesla-inspired machine with a helmet and ball lightning coming off it, you know, and everything. And over here there's a little glass jar, and as he begins zapping him, this guy sort of straightens up into an IBM executive, and this little kind of squiggly critter appears under the glass jar, you know, a real teeny one. And the guy says, �Oh, thanks, Doc. It's wonderful. I feel...� Out he goes with his briefcase, you know, which appeared somehow. And Doc Destiny takes off his hat and he has little horns, you know. And he grabs this little guy and he says, �Heh, heh, heh, another soul!� And he throws it, throws it into this big swimming pool of souls, you know.

[13:04]

But we have some... invariably we have some idea that's pretty close to that. That the way we dress, for instance, seriously expresses what kind of person we are. Or the way we look or wear our hair or what we say. You know, it's somehow involved with our soul, our identity. I remember once sitting in Sashin. It was rest period and I was alone in the Zenda. And I was sitting with my knees up facing out. sort of sitting this way with my knees. And Suzuki Yoshi was sitting, too, cross-legged on the altar, and everyone else was gone. Those sashins were a little more disorganized than ours in those days.

[14:31]

I've told, I guess, some of you this story before, but... At one point, sitting there, I got up. There was this painting on the back wall that some modern Japanese painter, Taiji Kiyokawa, had given us. And it was hanging cockeyed, you know, a little off. So I got up and went back and straightened the painting. and then went back and sat down in rest posture. And 15 minutes or 20 minutes later, Suzuki Roshi got up and went out to his room, and he went by the painting and made it crooked again. He went out, and I was sitting there, you know. And he wasn't saying, you know, the painting should be crooked, you know, or the painting shouldn't be straight or shouldn't even be straightened, but cautioning me not to think that, you know, my dress or the world being straight has anything to do with my being straight, that if I want to centre the painting

[16:10]

If I centre my... in a sense, centre myself... I mean that in a little different way than the phrase is usually used. If I centre that painting in myself, that's enough, or that's first. I still have that habit, you know, of straightening this and that. But this constructed, you know, universe, you know, this magical show, it's not necessary, you know. If you have some idea it's necessary to get it straight, you are like that, you know, cartoon which identifies, you know, the way you dress with your soul or, you know, ego or personality or something in some intrinsic way. Now, this is also—Nagarjuna's Four Keys.

[17:28]

So our thoughts, again, making our thoughts accessible to us, our thoughts are a lot like sugar. You know, you have one cookie and you want another cookie because the sugar was something good. And you're unable to take it or leave it. Your detachment wavers. easily in the face of sugar. It seems to, anyway, for some of you at least. And those of you who swear off sugar the most thoroughly, I find often the ones who are most tempted, who are most easily hooked by sugar. And then you assume everyone else is hooked. And most people in America are hooked by sugar, it's true. But sugar in itself, you know, I don't think. In Zen, at least, we don't get too much involved in food becomes you.

[19:02]

in trying, in a Taoist sense, to control what you eat and control the beautiful scenery and to make yourself, you know, by adjusting your reality and your food, you take care of yourself. The emphasis on that is much... is more... quite Taoist and not very Zen, actually. It's one of the points that Buddhism and Zen differ from Taoism. You centre yourself. Whatever you eat, you transform So... but first, you know, our thoughts are a lot like sugar, you know. For example, you know, you perceive something. And first of all, when you perceive something that makes you angry or jealous or whatever you're feeling, how you perceive it is what first allows you to get angry. So even before the problem is raised, I'm inevitably angry or irrevocably angry or naturally angry, and so my only choice is to express it or repress it. Before you even get yourself in that bind,

[20:34]

You can notice as you more and more practice detachment and mindfulness of Buddha, you can notice that it's how you perceive things that allows you to become angry. And one thing you can do that will help you, I think, And you have a choice of what you perceive. Always there are many, many, 84,000, you know, events. So, for example, when we see the sky or ocean or a bay, you know, San Francisco Bay, If we're practising with how we construct reality, one way to do it is to train yourself, you know, to look at things in a different scale. It's not exactly to train yourself to something artificial, except in the sense that everything is constructed, but to train yourself toward

[22:02]

What we can say is quite real, as real as anything. So it's not, again, that you're confronting your naturalness or something or fiddling with your immediate responses. For example, looking at the sky or bay, for instance. Driving across the bridge. Instead of perceiving, you have a choice, cars, driving, and so forth. You can just look at the water. And first of all, scale or vastness of the water, or vastness of the sky, and quality or movement, the aspect of it. you see many waves, but actually very big movement. And third, the specificity or particularity of it, glint of... pewter glint of light on the waves. Or

[23:27]

quality of color of the sky. I used some big example, you know, but you can do the same looking at a flower or a person or a baby or stones or any situation. You can see the vastness of it, you know, and the movement and particularity of it. And if you take this effort as a practice, always to remind yourself, till it's a habit to see wide scale of everything, you are much less likely to get angry. Even if the same kind of thing gets you angry, the sting of it is different. Even if you haven't changed what makes you angry, the way your personality gets involved, still you will see 84,000 things instead of just one sound.

[24:54]

So again, first of all, there's how you perceive anger or jealousy or whatever it is, frustration, pleasure and so forth. And second, you know, in Zen practice, you've... First alternative, we've talked about how you perceive it, but now you're feeling angry or jealous or whatever, you know. In Zen, as you know, we can just feel it. We don't actually have to express it or repress it and so forth, as I've often and often said. You can just feel it. It's a kind of right-handed tantrism. Just completely you can feel it, but no need to scowl your face or pound the pillow or something like that.

[26:33]

Another approach is how you experience it. You can, of course, sustain it. And you sustain it. I mean, say that some... We're going back to a constructed reality again. Say something makes you angry. The way someone is driving or cooking or walking or speaking to you. Whatever. It makes you angry. You can... Next thought. You know, you actually have a choice over the next thought. And this is at the point at which it's like sugar. tendency is to want that next anger, like the next cookie. You will, like a demon, you will rile up another thought and then that will make you want one more thought and you can bring a stronger thought up. You can get yourself really angry. And at each step you are actually, just like sugar, creating thoughts.

[27:55]

Or you can have images that will make you more and more jealous. Try them out on yourself, you know. And it's very hard to stop the cycle once you start it. But actually you can stop it after the first thought. Once you get free of the idea that you're hooked into something natural or spontaneous Already, by your passive attention and habitual consciousness, you're existing in something that you've constructed through your karma. So why not unconstruct it or play with some other construction? Anyway, you can stop it. If you want, just turn to vastness of each moment. great movement of this world, the way the light, something particular is. This is also a kind of detachment to be able to do this, to renew your consciousness or effort in this way.

[29:13]

And you can also diminish it. You can diminish it by this kind of thinking. So you have various choices to how to experience something that comes up, anger or jealousy or whatever it is. And you can take the second one just to feel it, as I said, just to allow yourself to feel it. The third thing I mentioned, you know, to diminish it or sustain it or encourage it, you know, how you experience it, that's more like adapting it or changing. Another way to practice with it is

[30:44]

in the sense that you can just allow yourself to feel it, at that level you can also transform it. The more you just allow yourself to feel it, that feeling becomes, the more open you are to it, becomes just overall feeling, very alive, tingly to the tips of your fingers and feet, warm and feeling. This is again 84,000 hymns. So whether it's anger or whatever, there's a fullness always, you know, fullness in your feeling, not some narrowness, that anger or whatever is just absorbed like small flame in big light. This is also in practice terms the same as one-pointedness.

[32:06]

One-pointedness, you can't add anything to one-pointedness or take anything away from one-pointedness. Or another approach entirely. Again, these are just images, but you can work with them. One image is, our mind is like a snapped rope. So instead of vastness, in which you perceive the vastness, mind is like a snap rope means you don't even let a single thought be completed. This is another level of vastness. Vastness in that you don't even finish a thought. Your mind is very nubile or innocent or No longer do you have to worry about adding the next thought. You don't even complete this thought. It means your mind is like a snapped rope. This is another level of the practice of vastness. Your thought itself is vast because you don't

[33:26]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ