This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. I intend to begin with going to the center of the sutra again to look at the place where tranquility and insightful observation are united. And then I'd like to go to a topic which I mentioned earlier, and that is how to apply

[01:00]

some of these teachings to working with pain and disease and all sentient beings. And in particular to talk about the crucial role in this process of working with limits and boundaries. So at the central point in the sutra, and especially at the center of the message of chapter 8, on the definitive instructions on yoga for bodhisattvas, Maitreya asked the Buddha, at what point are having combined shamatha and vipassana?

[02:04]

Or at what point, having combined shamatha and vipassana, are they united? And the Buddha's answer, when they mentally attain to the one-pointed mind. And so I just want to look at that a little bit more. When we practice, according to this sutra, when we practice observation, for it to actually be authentic observation, it is practiced on the ground of tranquility. So, in a sense, whenever we're actually practicing observation in this authentic way, The two practices are combined because there must be this attainment of tranquility for the observation to qualify as vipassana, higher vision, insightful observation, rather than just looking at objects.

[03:22]

And then the question is, at what point are they united? And I would again use our word for this practice period. At what point are they intimate? And they're intimate when they attend to the one-pointed mind. They're intimate when the calm is so intimate with the observation that the observation is now understanding that it's looking at the mind when it's looking at objects. And the concentration understands that when it's looking at objects, it's looking at its mind that it's always focusing on. So that total intimacy is the place where they're intimate, where they're united. And also, the observation goes on.

[04:26]

Now they're looking at this intimacy. Now they're looking at the realization of this teaching. Now they're looking at suchness. So this is the place where we would like to get to in relationship to pain and suffering and our relationships with all beings. So that we're looking, again, we're looking at beings And we're looking at the suchness of the beings. I suggest then, as I mentioned before, that the practice of generously giving boundaries and limits in relationship to the practice of generously giving boundaries and limits for the sake of intimacy in relationship to pain disease all sentient beings and Buddhas we even in order to become

[05:54]

intimate with Buddhas, we need to set some boundaries. In order to be intimate with sentient beings, we need to offer boundaries and limits. In order to become intimate with our own bodily pain and disease, we need to give boundaries and limits, I propose. Buddhas may not need us to set limits, but we do. If we walk up to a Buddha, we often say, oh, sorry, wrong place, see you later. I don't really want to talk to you. You're a busy guy, right? See you later. I got an appointment with Buddha today. You do? Yeah. How did it go? Actually, I left before I got it. I chickened out. It was a little bit too much light for me.

[06:55]

Bring sunglasses next time. That's a good idea. Limits. Wear a sunshield. The other thing to mention at the beginning, fundamental thing I feel is that these are offerings. We're offering. We embrace the limits ourselves. We accept them. And we offer them as gifts rather than as control strategies and manipulations. Again, if you try to control the pain, we're separating ourselves.

[08:06]

We all know how to do that. We all have done that. We may do it in the future. But these limits are... It's possible to use these limits as a way to get closer and finally to get so close that there's no separation. That's our intention. And we can constantly slip off from giving it as a gift to using it as a strategy to keep some distance. If we're trying to get control of the pain, it's not the same as remembering that we're offering this limit with the ultimate... purpose of becoming intimate with it.

[09:12]

And the point of becoming intimate with it is that we can be at peace and free even when there is pain. Because there are situations when we cannot, when nobody and nothing can get us any distance on the pain. So it's fine to take pain medication. No problem. You can do that. I can do that but I'd like to get ready for the time when there's no medication there's no medication for death you can't get away from it you can only resist it and fight it distract yourself from it but then you're basically you know suffering it's not peaceful to fight it And other kinds of diseases are really, we're not going to get them under control.

[10:19]

So this practice is to get ready for the things, for the big ones, the big white wave that nobody can stop. So let me say this. So part of the limits are... Another kind of limit is that when you think of doing something... It's good to yourself.

[11:22]

Limit yourself. Give yourself a limit, I should say. Not limit yourself, but give yourself a limit. Not limit yourself. Give yourself a limit to work with. Not to limit yourself, but actually to, what do you call it, fulfill yourself, to make yourself more completely a person that you are. So for example, if you're practicing in a family, on a team, in a community, and Zen is family practice, Zen is team practice, Zen is community practice. And part of the reason we have that is so that when you contemplate an action, you consult with your community members. you consult with your family members, you consult with your teacher, with your brothers and sisters, with your children, with your parents.

[12:29]

So again, I don't say this to limit myself, but actually, these limits, by bringing them up, they're ways to fulfill myself. And, again, the ultimate point is, To fulfill myself, yes, dash, intimacy. The bringing up the limit of checking with others that we're living together with about what we're doing is for the sake of intimacy. But it's also kind of a limit. Like, I'd like to just do this. Okay, I've got this pretty good idea. I think, well, I'll try it. Wait a minute. Actually, it is a good idea. I agree, but check with your family members about this good idea. Not just to get their agreement or disagreement, but for intimacy.

[13:33]

They may disagree with you, but bringing up the boundary and sharing it with them... develops the intimacy. This morning, actually, I had this nice idea. And so I checked with Reverend Frane about it. And he didn't say right away, yeah, that's a good idea. He said, I'll consider it. Because the idea I had would affect his life. and his relationship with other people. It would affect my life and relationship with other people, but I had already checked with myself. And I said, okay, cool. And if he says, okay, cool, then I have to also check with, or he has to check with Anna, and Mako, and Judith, and Kathy, and Leslie.

[14:44]

Because the idea is, how about in the last day, no doksan or practice instruction, and just everybody sits? That was the idea. It's an idea that occurred to me. It's an action I was considering. I might also ask my trusty attendant what he thinks. He might say, I think it's okay. Or he might say, no, you've got to see these people. It's a limit. I'm not limited by this. I'm facilitated by this. I'm facilitated by the fact that everything I do affects everybody. And that fact that everything I do affects everybody is a manifestation of the intimacy, a factor of the intimacy.

[15:48]

So I have these ideas and I find out, well, actually, I can't do anything. But that's okay because I have various things I'm thinking of, I just can't do any of them because after I check, I can't do anything except check. Except I can think of good ideas and I can check with people and then none of them are acceptable. But what I'm doing is I'm realizing intimacy by checking. All I accomplished in this whole practice period, I didn't do anything, all I accomplished was intimacy. They wouldn't let me do one thing, but everything they wouldn't let me do, they were totally intimate with me about. Bodhisattvas are encouraged basically to give everything away. all their possessions, not hold on to any of them. It's major precept number eight. Not being possessive of anything.

[16:51]

Not being possessive of the most precious thing, the Dharma. Not to mention anything else. So we just say not being possessive of anything. Literally, usually it says not being possessive of Dharma. But in the West where Dharma is not yet equal to money... We say, you know, everything. For example, your body. Somebody wants your body? Bodhisattvas are encouraged to give it. However, give it with intimacy with everybody. Don't just give it unilaterally like... Somebody says, can I have your body? I say, yeah. No, it's not like that. It's, yeah, you can have it after I check with everybody. And they won't let me, but I'll, you know. And you go check and say, actually, it's okay. Go ahead and give it. You know, you're really old.

[17:53]

It's all right. You're only going to be around for about 15 more minutes. Go ahead and give your body. I mean, you know, it's been great. We appreciated you up till now, but... you know considering how much that person needs and you know we're not going to get much more out of you anyway go ahead so it says in the bodhisattva instruction manuals when people ask you for their body it's fine to give it but first of all you should check with your family and your teacher your teacher has a sense of whether you're actually going to be able to follow through Because it's not good to give your body and then change your mind halfway through. You know, like, yeah, here, have my arm. And then they start munching, you say, wait, I changed my mind. And the person says, well, you said I could, so I'm going to keep doing it. No, no, I changed my mind. And they get into a tussle, you know. It's rather advanced to give your body. So you teach them, I say, that's great that you want to, but you're not ready.

[18:57]

It's too advanced. I'd like to give my house away. Well, check with your kids and your parents. It's fine that you want to, but don't do it without consulting with your family. I'd like to give the pines away. Give some pastas of hard property away. Fine. Talk to the community. See if they support it. If they do, great. And it's also not your gift all by yourself. It's our gift. wholesome act you're considering still check with others if possible sometimes you don't have time like somebody's in the creek and you and you think about going in to help them and you jump in and you drown so we just heard the other day that if we have a storm here and somebody's in the water you're not supposed to jump in to help them

[20:07]

And if you ask your supervisor, they say, don't jump in, it's not going to help. Here, put this rope around you. Now you can jump in. No, not even then. See what I mean? I can't even do that. How about throwing them a rope? OK, I checked. I can do something at last, but not that rope. That's not a good one. We have physical difficulties here and during practice period.

[21:10]

We have some problems with, I don't know, sleep, too much or too little sleep. We have problems with the temperature, too hot or too cold. I had some problems with, well, in 1990, I had a problem. It was hard for me. And I heard that after November comes December, And it gets colder here. One time it got down to ten here. Ten's cold. So if it gets to be ten, then that's going to be a big white wave for us to deal with. So how do you get intimate with cold and... So I've been working on that here and other places for some time, trying to work with how to be intimate with cold.

[22:15]

So I swim in the Pacific Ocean, and I have swam in the Pacific Ocean all the way through the winter, some winters. But I started swimming in the San Francisco Bay. I started swimming. The first time I went, I think, I went... in August when it, you know, it was like above 60. Now 60 is, you know, 61 for some people is quite cold, but, and it was cold, but it was a warm day and I went in and it was, it was cold. My, my body was intimate with the water. Actually, initially it wasn't intimate. Initially there was some kind of like me in the water kind of thing going on. But I found some intimacy with the 61, or whatever it was. And then I just kept swimming. And if you swim every day, then the water will only drop maybe one degree from what it was the day before.

[23:26]

And that amount of drop I could be patient with. I could be somewhat gracious with. Of course I can be careful with, too. Not of course. And I can be careful. I can be careful, patient, and somewhat welcoming. And when I go into the water, I didn't used to do it, but now when I go in the water, I try to go in, not exactly slow, but I try not to get ahead of the experience of the water touching my body. A lot of people just run in because they don't want to feel that. They just want to get themselves in the water. I like to see if I can feel the water rising up my torso. My legs don't mind so much, but my torso is more sensitive to the cold. And as it rises up my abdomen and chest and sides and back, it's hard to stay present with it. But not impossible.

[24:29]

Especially if it's only one degree colder than the day before. If I take several weeks off and it's 10 degrees colder than it was the day before, it's harder to do that. But it's actually harder just to go into the water at all. So in some sense, I would set a limit on myself Yeah. So I kind of know from experience that just flat out, having not been in the water for a long time, I can go into water that's about 55 and it's not a problem. If I hadn't been in the water for a long time. But if it's below 55, particularly below 53, I offer myself a boundary. It's a bit too much.

[25:36]

Now, if the day before I'd been in 54 and swam around in it, then I can go in 53. And so on. I've gotten down to 43. I got intimate with 43 degree water. I went swimming in it. I didn't just go in it. I went for a swim. It wasn't a leisurely swim. But I did swim. I swam... half a mile in 43-degree water. And it was, yeah, I was intimate with that experience. And I would like to be intimate with other intense experiences like that so that I can be intimate with intense experiences that I can't choose that are going to be given to me without consultation with me. without consultation, that I know about. I also, in thinking about this, I remembered an article that is in the New Yorker magazine, which I have not yet read all of.

[26:52]

And it's an article which I think is called A Dip in the Cold. is written by Lynn Cox. Lynn Cox set the world's record in the English Channel when she was 15. She became a long-distance swimmer when she was 14. Before she was 14, she swam shorter distances. And she set the world's records, and then she moved on to swimming places that no one else No one has ever swam before. Like she swam the Bering Strait. She swam from Alaska to Russia. Then she decided that she wanted to swim. She wanted to find the limits of her body.

[27:53]

And she wanted to see what extremes her body could tolerate. And in particular, she was interested in how cold water she could tolerate. She might get into the hottest water, but she's into the coldest water now. Now, as you know, water can't get indefinitely cold. It turns to ice at a certain point. But she actually, some time ago, she went swimming for more than a mile off the coast of Antarctica. wearing nothing but a swimsuit. However, the preparation she went through to do this was basically a preparation of limits. She kept checking all kinds of limits. She had a big team of doctors working with her. She had all kinds of physiological scientists working with her.

[29:01]

about whether she would die if she tried this. Some people who have experienced this place say, if you go in to water that temperature, you will die in two minutes. But she wanted to be in for more than two minutes. She wanted to see if she could. And she did. She swam more than a mile, and she was in for about, I think, 22 minutes in water that was, I believe, about 32 degrees. 11 degrees colder than I could do, or than I have done so far, probably ever will. Then the latest, and she wrote an article in The New Yorker about it, and also she came to the dolphin club where I swim and gave a talk one time. I didn't see her. I asked, what does she look like? She said, well, she looked like a fish. Anyway, now she's written an article called A Dip in the Cold.

[30:11]

And this article is about swimming portions of the Northwest Passage. In the Northwest Passage, there is water between Greenland and Alaska. And until 1906, no boats could ever make it. So she wanted to go make the trip on a boat. We have more advanced boats now, of course, and also global warming makes it a lot easier. But anyway, she wanted to go and she wanted to swim parts of it. And she did, and I think she swam a mile up there. But up there, for some reason, the water in the Arctic can be below freezing. So she swam a mile in 28-degree water. But not just her feet that I'm telling you about, but just that the feet, the main point is the feet she performed was because she carefully took into account the limits of her body.

[31:17]

Her body is limited, and she carefully looked at them and related to them in such a way she could become intimate with them and find out what was reasonable and what wasn't. And she survived. But it's... She wants to push right to the limit of what can she get intimate with and what can't she? And what does it take to get to a place to be intimate with something that previously you weren't able to be intimate with? So in my case, I'm telling you that I got intimate with 40-degree water or somewhat intimate with 43-degree water, but I didn't go from 82 degrees to 42. If I had, I might have died. I mean, if I'd actually got out in the water, not just if I stepped in and stepped out, but actually get out away from the shore without a boat near me, just me in the water, your muscles can cramp up, you can have a heart attack, you can pass out.

[32:23]

Hypothermia, of course, but you don't need to get hypothermia in 10 minutes, but you can die in a few seconds. in that kind of shock. So we have this situation here. We have pain in our body when we're sitting. We have pain with the cold. These pains, in order to get intimate with them, I suggest we allow ourselves to have limits. Don't push ourselves too hard because then we'll hurt ourselves or we'll quit, et cetera. Check with your friends and teachers about the way you're working with your pain and your disease. See if they agree. So, yeah, so that's about your own pain and disease. And in relationships, it's the same. You'd like to be intimate with people, but also you feel limits arising in you.

[33:26]

You feel like, I don't know why, but I would like to ask you to stop talking to me like that. I'd like to talk to you. I'm not just setting it there. I'm giving it as a gift to you. I would like you to look at me differently. I would like you to stand farther away from me. I would like you to consult with me before you do things. I would like to offer you the limit or the boundary that you don't do things without talking to me. I would like to work for the sake of our intimacy. And when I offer that, I would like to also be aware of another limit, which is your vulnerability, if I tell you about my vulnerability. I'm feeling vulnerable, but if I tell you about my vulnerability, that could hurt you. So I have to be careful when I bring something like that up. May I talk to you? People ask to me, please give me feedback.

[34:30]

And I say, you know, I would be happy to do so. I mean, I would be happy and grateful to do so, but that doesn't mean I'll be able to. Because now you're saying you want it, but when the time comes, you won't be the same person. Somebody else will be here, and they may not be at all interested in feedback from anybody. They may not want feedback. They may want a limit. They may want people to stay away. They may want, you know... Like my grandson, we were riding down the Green Gloss Road, and I saw him come to the speed bump, and I said, slow down. And he didn't, and hit the speed bump, and then there he went, hit the ground, and that was okay with him, but when he started sliding, it got really painful. And I came up to him to help, and he said, leave me alone. Leave me alone. And then... He went back to his mom and grandma, and they tried to help him.

[35:32]

Leave me alone. Don't touch my body. They're just trying to help, and they didn't. They didn't touch him. They let him have that limit. And then, when he found out that he could have that limit, then he let them touch him. So, I also think of, what is it? this wonderful kind of person called Temple Grandin. She's an autistic person. Can you say that? She has autism, but she's also a genius. And she designed... She loves to be hugged, but she also doesn't want... She needs some boundaries in the hugging. And if people hug her, she gets so... What do you call it? What's the word? overwhelmed by the experience, that she can't even say, let go, release.

[36:34]

And there's no button on people to press a release button for the hug. But she loves to be embraced. But she also gets scared unless she knows she can turn the embrace off. So she designed a hug machine that she goes into and it hugs her But she's got her hand, I think, on some kind of like a hug-release button. So as soon as it gets too intense, she presses the button and she's released. And she also designed slaughterhouses so that these domesticated cows could go to the slaughterhouse without being traumatized on the way. they could die not in fear. Someone pointed out cows are prey animals, so they have ways of dealing with being eaten. But they're not torturers on the way to death.

[37:40]

So they usually like to walk along and then there's this interaction and they know how to deal with that. But she designed it so that they could go to slaughter peacefully until they get So she's really sensitive about how to set boundaries. And if we want to be intimate, we need to realize that we're vulnerable beings and we need to take care of that vulnerability. Otherwise, we'll back away from the place where the separation is going to be insubstantiated. Another very important detail here, which some people have brought up, is that if you're actually calm,

[38:52]

When you're actually concentrated, even if there's some physiological proof that you're in pain, you actually might not experience it. Certain states of concentration, there's no negative sensation in them. And so they can be kind of a relief from pain. But that's... that particular possibility is similar to dissociating from the pain or doing what now we call a spiritual bypass around pain, disease, and uncomfortable relationships. So we need, in our practice, for our own sake and for others, we need to learn the difference between being compassionate and tranquil with the pain and dissociating from it.

[39:58]

Again, I heard another autistic person say that when he was a kid in the schoolyards in England and people were bullying him, it didn't take much to bully him, but they were bullying him and he was feeling terrified and tortured, he would just start squaring numbers in his head. And he could do that. And he said, you know, as he got into the squaring, he said, I would just sort of leave the playground and I would go to this peaceful island where nothing was bothering me. And that was his way of coping with the overwhelming experience of cruelty in the playground. He said that So it kind of worked, he said, but the problem is how to get back. Very difficult to get back once you go there.

[41:05]

So the practice of being at peace with pain, one way to be at peace with pain is to dissociate from it. And people who aren't autistic also develop mental strategies. to be with pain, but it's in a dissociated way, which has drawbacks, like you can't get back to your life. So the method here is really embrace the pain, not like it, but embrace it, be gracious with it, let it in, let it be in a gracious way. Practice giving in relationship to the pain or the disease. It is that I like this disease and that disease and that disease. I don't like them. I'm not saying I like them. I'm saying I welcome them.

[42:07]

Or I say I'm trying to learn to welcome very difficult guests. I'm trying to learn that. And I'm trying to learn it now. But the guests I have now, I get a feeling they're not as difficult as some guests that are coming. But I would like to be able to welcome them too. I'd like the welcoming mojo to get really working so that even when I don't know where I am or who I am or what direction is up, the welcoming mojo just keeps cooking away and embraces my confusion, embraces my pain, embraces my fear so that I can move towards intimacy with it. And then, next one is, be careful of it. Be careful of the pain. Be careful. Pay attention to it. Be vigilant. Watch it. The pain, the pain, the pain.

[43:08]

Where is it? Okay. And, you know, that's ethics. Be careful of everything you do in relationship to the pain. Are you taking pain medication? Be careful not to take too much or too little. Be careful to consult with somebody about what you're doing with pain medication. Eating more, eating less in relationship to pain and disease. Don't do it unilaterally. Talk to your friends. Be careful with this pain, with this disease. And be patient. A patient doesn't mean just tense up. It means come to the present. Feel the pain here in the smallest place you can feel it, and now in the smallest time. And now. And now. And now. And in now, and now, and now, there's no thought of, how long has this been going on?

[44:09]

I wonder how long this is going on. You say, what day of Sashin is this? How many more minutes in this period? No, this pain. No. No, no. It doesn't take the pain away. It's just a way of being with it. It's an approach to being intimate. It's an approach to peace with it without dissociating. Then we're ready for concentration. Then we're ready to look at the mind, even if the mind's doing squares, but the mind isn't doing squares. That mind is the mind which Vipassana looks at, the squaring mind. We're looking at the mind which is there whether you're doing squares or cubes. So to look at the mind, you could, as soon as you run into pain, you could immediately look at the mind and use the mind to dissociate. But now we're going to use the mind not to dissociate, but to get more intimate.

[45:12]

So here again, you should check... with meditation teacher to make sure the way you're looking at the mind is not dissociative and bypassing tell the teachers how you're practicing tranquility in relationship to pain to see if they feel like you're not pushing it away as a trick way to get closer to it and for me all the things I mentioned about how to, well, all the things I mentioned about, not all the things, but some of the things I mentioned about how to relate to pain and disease involved other sentient beings. So the same with other sentient beings. Just as you consult them about the way you're dealing with pain and disease, you should consult your pain and disease about the way you're relating to sentient beings. And the same principles in relating to sentient beings for the sake of intimacy is to use boundaries and limits as a way to dare to be intimate, like Temple Grandin dares to be intimate with her hugging machine because she knows her limits.

[46:33]

She wants intimacy, but she has to know that she can set limits with the hug. And if someone wants to be near to us, we may be able to let them be near to us if we know, I shouldn't say know exactly, but unless we've experimented with them and found out that we repeatedly have offered them limits and they've said, fine. So we know, if they get closer and I feel I need a limit, I can say it to them and they'll say, fine. That they're also practicing patience with their action and they respect our vulnerability. And even if we don't tell them about it, they check with us about it. Yeah. They respect us when we say, you know, I need to set, I need to offer, again. I need to offer, not set. I need to offer a limit for your consideration.

[47:38]

Let's set this or establish this limit together. So I... Maybe you've heard the example. I have younger grandchildren. I have a big boy grandson who's 11 almost, and I have one that's almost 10 and one that's almost 8, a boy and a girl, and they like to put their hands into my mouth. Even recently, at this advanced age of 8, he still likes to put his hand into my mouth and also to pull my mouth in various directions, my lips, my tongue. He likes to manipulate them. And I let them do that, but I say, I'd like to set a limit here, and the price of admission to the mouth is clean hands. So they go and wash their hands, and they say, and also another form we have here in this practice is, let me smell the hands. And then, does it not smell clean yet? Please do it again.

[48:39]

Okay, now they smell clean. Now you can put the hands in the mouth. And also, you can't pull that hard. No, no. That's too much. So some feedback on the situation is part of the deal. Some people, some grandchildren do want to get really intimate with their grandparents. And some grandparents are available to be intimized. Is it called intubated? What's the word? Intubated? Is that a word? Does it mean like going in? Yeah. Well, children like to intubate with their hands sometimes. And some people say, okay, but we need some limits here in order to perform this intimate act. And now I feel that actually we live in this, in some ways, this really great place called California, Northern California, San Francisco, and you go to the doctor's office and they say, I'm going to touch you now.

[49:44]

and my hands may be a little cold. When I was a kid, they didn't say that. But now they say, I'm going to touch you, and my hands may be a little cold. Wow. I'm going to prick you a little bit with this pin, and it may feel, and they tell you exactly how it may feel. And kind of like, you sign on for that. It's like, that sounds okay. And just like that. The level of boundary establishing, you know, has been, you know, this is one of the good benefits of lawyers. You know, people have to be very careful of what they do. And I think that it's good. I'm sorry if it bankrupt various people, but the care with which people do things in some settings is really intimacy facilitating. In other words, it's really ethical. In other words, they're paying close attention to the minute details of their action.

[50:49]

Yeah. And sometimes they're patient and generous, too. And that's really such an encouragement, isn't it? And so intimate. I don't want to leave the hospital. You people are so nice to be. So that's what I wanted to say about... but offering, not setting, offering for agreement, offering for agreement, boundaries and limits, so that we can be intimate with each other. So teachers and students can be intimate. So teachers and teachers can be intimate. So students and students can be intimate. So all beings can be intimate. And also, all beings means... you and the being of your pain and you and the being of your illness, that you can be intimate and realize there's no separation between you and your illness. And I kind of propose when illness is not seen as external, unwholesome, unfortunate states of mind are pacified and we enter the middle way.

[52:03]

And one more thing which I've said many times. Suzuki Rishi surprised me a number of times by things he said in the early days that I knew him. One thing he surprised me by was doing a funeral ceremony for his dear student, Trudy Dixon. I went to the ceremony and I was amazed. I thought it was a beautiful thing. I'd never been to a funeral ceremony. I heard that they were terrible, morbid things. And I went to it and I thought, this is a wonderful thing for living people. That surprised me. And another time he said, when you see a flower and you say it's beautiful, that's a sin. I was surprised to have him used the word sin, and I was also surprised how strict he was about sin. that to call a flower beautiful is a kind of a sin. I think he meant you're separating yourself from it.

[53:13]

I thought, wow, that surprised me. And another surprise he said to us, at a wedding ceremony, he said to the couple, he said something like, you love each other and that's good, but maybe more important than that is for you to respect each other. And then he said, another thing he said would surprise me. is that when we're not intimate with people, we can be informal. But for intimacy, we need formality. Like, wash your hands before you put them in my mouth. Consult with me before you stick a needle in me. Ask me if I'm ready for you to touch me before you touch me. Let's practice that form. Ask me if now is a good time for you to tell me something.

[54:14]

And if you ask me, I may be able to hear quite a bit. If you don't ask me, in my vulnerability, I may not be able to receive your gift. This is just my view. It's not truth. just a gift to you. And it's for the sake of intimacy because that's the topic of the practice period. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered free of charge and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[55:08]

@Transcribed_UNK
@Text_v005
@Score_92.81