You just told me that someone who had a kidney stone, a jack bird is one of the most capable that she can have, passed it, and then had a greater appreciation. left me thinking about the rhythm of our practice, the rhythm of the shape and the rhythm of our body is a contraction, expansion. There's a way in which some form of intensity and it can be many forms of intensity

[01:06]

Sometimes we create the intensity. Sometimes the structure of our life, the structure of our body, the structure of our kidneys creates the intensity. And it sort of condenses where our attention is. and things become more expensive. And if you think about it, if you remember, I hope you do, I mentioned a couple of times, you know, the dukkha, [...]

[02:10]

both contraction and expansion seem to impact the human organism in different ways. And then there is a way in which when we're making a diligent effort, The word ones I teach, I will seem to like to use, they talk about a taughtness. But sometimes our effort comes with its own kind of contract. Yesterday I mentioned staying with my ex-wife up in Portland when I was a visitor. And how now our relationship

[03:14]

It's easy, straightforward, pleasant. It has a spaciousness. It has an expansion to it. When we were married, diligently trying to figure out what was wrong and how to fix it. It had an inconsistency, we had a contraction. Of course not by design. Who thinks, oh, I think I'll just make things more difficult. And when we overlay those notions, obviously she, you know, and we think of how she is engaged. creates its own kind of intensity.

[04:17]

And hopefully it's a skillful intensity. And how close does that intensity get to contraction and dukkha? It's a point for us to look afternoon I was thinking maybe it's getting too expensive the warmth of summer the flowers are expanding and the tree buds are expanding and the insects are expanding who are we to not go with the flowers the yogic wisdom, and that, ah, that's, that's good.

[05:32]

And yet, it's interesting, the word, it has a range of meaning, from effort, persistence, and then on the other hand, energy as in when there is contact with what's happening with what's being experienced and we're not grasping it and formulating it in somewhere or another it has a powerful energy but somewhere at the other end there's effort And you can be smart about it and say my practice is effortless effort.

[06:39]

How do you sit upright in the midst of the intensity of whatever is happening and allow to be experienced, not as a formulation, not as something that's being imposed. And so, it's like you're taking your punishment for being alive. But something that, in the middle of intensity, Unfortunately, I have a poem that mentions this. At least the way I understand it, the way it curves to me. How surely gravity's a wall, strong as an ocean current, takes hold of even the strongest thing and pulls it towards the heart of the world.

[07:53]

Each thing, every stone-blossomed child is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance, push out beyond what we belong to for some empty freedom. If we surrender to the earth's intelligence, we could rise up rooted like trees. Instead, we entangle ourselves in the knots of our own league and struggle, lonely and confused. So like children, we begin again to learn from the things because I've attempted to change the word God, but I can't do that. It's really small. So like children, we begin again to learn from the things because they are in God's heart and they never left him.

[08:59]

This is what things can teach us, to fall patiently, to trust our heaviness. Even Bert has to do that before it can fly. The main comment of this poem is, what is it to fall patiently? To trust the gravity, the heaviness, the gravity. In another poem, Roke said, God is the gravity of existence that pulls you dying into yourself. Even if God has to do that before it can let it fly. And then the craft of Shashi.

[10:04]

Maybe one way I could say is maintain a sense of being that's sustaining continuous contact. There's enough presence in now, in what's happening now, world according to me doesn't flood in and redefine what's happening in its own terms and you can watch for that you can see sometimes you can see it's persistent thinking some aspect of the world, according to me. Sometimes you can see, what am I doing here?

[11:13]

What am I doing here? What is the point? I could be doing this or that, purposeful, wonderful. And the interesting way that we lose connection to now We can forget that it opens the paths of liberation. It puts us in touch with sound, light all the way you're feeling. That we've been exploring one way and another. We're drawn into the world of me. invisible. But then, for each of us, in our sustained efforts, when I, as the rookie says,

[12:33]

Instead, we entitle ourselves in knots of our own nature and struggle. When is the contraction, the intensity, knots of my oblique, not serving anything, just replaying the ounce of my life? desires, aversions, bitternesses. However, we are not devolver. That's not the intensity. Exactly. In a few moments, I'll come back to Dobin Zengi's relationship between Chitta and Vrit.

[13:34]

these two together. But for each of us to watch. What is the intensity of the nights of my own making? And on the other side, when it is I The expansiveness. The product. I've just. Made myself. Some version of the pure one. Oh on the exercise time. I'll just. Whatever. I remember a couple years ago. Watching someone. Well, actually, they just passed me as I was walking.

[14:43]

And they had a big load of coffee. And they had a big peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Apparently, essentially, grievances of their exercise time. If we delve a bit deep, we could say, the human condition is so mysterious. Who can really say what is or what is not appropriate this once? How strict shall we make this game? Shall we walk the boat door before exercise time starts. Shall we scrap it all together? Shall we make everyone have a conversation with the tutor?

[15:53]

You're going to go to your room? What are you going to do there? Give me a detailed answer to how exactly we'll have to talk. You've got exercise lying on your back. How does that constitute exercise? You've still been grieving. Okay. There is, in the Zen way, there is what we move close towards using structure. Actually, we move close to it, sometimes we jump into the middle of it.

[16:59]

We use structure to help create the intensity. And that in that intensity, hopefully we find how to have ease in that intensity. Well, sometimes they teach your passion with tricks. The place they teach them. The whole schedule is an option. If you don't want to go to the meditation, it's up to you. Don't go. You want to sleep in late and skip breakfast too? Okay. And almost every retreat,

[18:11]

with some Zen students. And they know confidently, I don't have to follow the schedule. But they always do. Something in them has discovered. If I just go with liking or disliking, knots of my own naked are much more likely to heal. Fight me quite realizing how. So I would ask you quite frankly, quite directly, for today's exercise time, hold yourself accountable. my version of the Pure Land, and we go to a form of exercise that had within it the wisdom of how to relate to the body's and the body's energies in a way that enhance the

[19:42]

we can look at your sheet and say, it's a yogic experiment. How do you engage body and mind in a way that so thoroughly nourishes it that it's capacity for awareness, it's capacity for the energy of Raya. It is brought forth. friend of mine he really is like a teacher he said in Japan the Tenzo is supposed to be able to look at the folks and think how to adjust the diet look at them and think a little bit more this a little bit less that so that the food they're eating

[20:56]

it is appropriate for enhancing the energy of body and mind. And I would say for each of us, this festival that I'd be referring to Arousing, waste-seeking mind. That's a production. How do we do that? Shall we make things inherently strict? It's a certain style. I restrict, and you're obliged to stay within those parameters.

[22:04]

You could cancel the exercise time. It just doesn't. I'm too tempted to ask for a show of hands who they're watching. Well, it's not such a bad idea. My own notion is, how do you find the place between? Stripped enough that there's some intensity, some gravity to let you down into yourself. supportive enough or spacious enough that the whole thing isn't just a kind of exercise in survival.

[23:11]

It's stirring up a kind of existential desperation. I've just got to get through this period and I can go bad. I don't have a balance. My thought is something like this desperate mind is not so insightful. It has like a home of agitation. There's a way in which awakening mind, opening mind, has a quality of awareness and trust.

[24:19]

Just this is enough. It's okay to be the person I am in the place I am right now. trajectory of patience is the willingness to face it the willingness to experience it and in that experiencing kind of well not a kind of a transformation that the self-inflicted contraction is seen for just that Not in a cognitive way, but in a physiological way, psychological way. You know, we could say, well, we're all going to create enough.

[25:20]

In whatever the situation is, we're all going to create enough problems for ourselves that we have something to work with. But some of the problems we create for ourselves are like endless loops. to visit a funeral ant hospice. And I learned that in that tradition, they have these little recorders, and they have an endless loop. And so when the person's gone, you just turn on the chanting of Amitabhita, and it just runs there. Most of our endless groups are not set to become recovered, or they are, and we haven't quite realized. So, in the alchemy of our own process, each of us needs whatever it takes to keep us on.

[26:36]

I would say to you, to have for yourself a repertoire of things that keep you on track. It's very helpful. I have a well and great habit. When I walk to the bath and walk back from the bath, I do it as kind of. I was told that. Sometimes I talk to somebody. Way sick in life. There isn't, you said, you can't force it on yourself, and nobody can force it on you either. could say, okay, let's scrap exercise time and we have this.

[27:56]

And anyone of us or all of us could sit there thinking, I hate this. I want to be out there with the birds. I saw colony rats a week ago changing their rat nest, whatever it is. I think they picked this new weather's permit. And then to take this notion back into what Dogen says, he says, This thinking, like, it usually generates enough fixed notions to get us into trouble.

[29:05]

But vritta, this fundamental experiencing and the wisdom and insight that arises from it, it can engage this chitta in a way that allows these so-called problems or difficulties or contractions, call it what you will, to become dharmas, to become teachings on the patterns of our own self, patterns of our living systems. And it's a lucky note. This is how ancient verbs learn how to fly.

[30:12]

said that the mother condor, because they're so big, and on that whole wing span, about seven feet, because they're so big, it's hard for them to take off. So the mother condor takes the fledgling condor, who doesn't quite know how to fly it, up to a ledge of the haiku. And then says, go for it. And then sometimes the flight takes off. It falls like a stone for about 50 feet and figures out, oh, I've got wings. And it flies. And apparently sometimes the condor says, it's way too high up here. It's the mother condor.

[31:18]

Get a little lunch. Even birds do this before they might not fly. They have that moment. Some fixed definition of the world is to crack open with possibility. this continuous content is what helps us cook in a way that this cracking open can happen. And when we let it dissipate, it's like in one way we fall back into the world according to me and the yogic process of awakening.

[32:22]

Becomes invisible. Why do we process it? I don't see it. I don't feel it. I'm not thinking it. So. Keep yourself. In that. Cook. Keep yourself. Influenced. deliberate request to meet the moment and yes for us as humans as we're there's a deliberate request to meet the moment and there's some kind of discomfort with meeting the moment that's the place Because it has that gravity.

[33:32]

Because it has that intensity. It can be in the midst of that. Find what's so casually called effortless effort. Just the same way when we're sitting a long sitting and something else wants to move. And we discover how to be it with the influence of sukha that allows us to keep sitting. And David Zenji says, that plays a role in that this discernment mind it plays a role another thing that plays a role which is what I thought I was going to talk about is doing something you said and arousing the Bodhisattva even if your practice is not

[34:55]

that polished and accomplished, it's powerful. Even if reform is horrible, I tip that to me, not so polished and accomplished. those who establish this mind of the Bodhisattva mind are already the guiding teachers of all living beings. To establish the Bodhisattva mind means to follow that and to endeavor so that before a crossover, I've helped all beings to cross over. It is anyway

[35:57]

This crossing over. This is explored, negotiated, communicated, realized in this alchemy of contraction and expansion. In this alchemy of inquiry. How is it to work with the human condition? How is it to relate to exercise time? How is it to relate to the ways in which I try to create for myself a pure land oasis where something in me can cope? The insight I had many years ago when I saw Tanganyahu here was on the third day after lunch.

[37:20]

I went back to my room and I sat in the chair and put my dog against the back of the chair. That was it. Yeah. Make your sleep problem for yourself and then let it go. Ah. Sweet. And yeah. There's something in there for each of us to examine. is your diligence, as Rutger says, and that.

[38:25]

But more exactly, when does it end that way? And when does it become an opening flower? A rousing waste of your mind. I will explore that. It's Chitta that starts that going. It's Chitta that helps to get that curiosity. It causes us to say, you know, this is at the heart of being in community. This is at the heart of me living out all the karmic formations, all the psychological, All the embodied suffering and pain.

[39:33]

This is not the heart of me learning how in the process of healing it's not simply a from that, it's actually a transformation. As I was saying the other day, in the process of realization, we create a different past and a different future and we realize the liberation of now. For each of us to ask ourselves, and how does that look like in how I relate to my persistent thoughts or persistent feelings?

[40:41]

How does that relate to this kind of behavior or that kind of behavior? Sometimes maybe we just need to tell ourselves. That sounds like worth the effort. To cause myself less pain and suffering and affliction. Have a more spacious, enjoyable, and appreciative relationship to being a lie and to living to others. A little bit different, but still the same character.

[41:51]

At times, it has seemed to me that when I first came here, it was an old self I recognized in the silent walls and in the creek far below. But the self has no age, as a newly even man longer than I can run, as the sky has no sky except itself, this white morning effect, with the fog hiding the barns that are emptying out and hiding behind the limbs of the gnarled trees, and the green pastures unfurled along the soil. I know where they are, and the birds But they're hidden in their own corpse. On this February morning. And from here, I come into it.

[43:05]

It's all God's God. That's what makes it so, I really have never seen. That's what makes it so precious. and hang with glasses. I look not true.

[43:30]

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