So first I'd like to thank Fusan for giving me this opportunity and Hakusho. Ten years ago, we used to walk up that road together. Way back, we both had hair and thought we were... What did you say? I didn't wear it to you. back when we just thought we were passing through. Watch out. And whether you're here for good or just passing through, thank you for your support and your dedication to practicing the way here. So I first encountered the teaching of Mahatma Gandhi when I was in college.

[01:14]

And I was very moved by his life and his philosophy. And I did a long paper on him in college. And it was just, the more I read about him, the more I just felt this stirring. I guess it was like the beginnings of bodhicitta. And then later on I find out also that he obviously influenced Martin Luther King and other people who were practicing non-violent civil disobedience. And one of the quotes that stuck out for me for all these years now is this one. Peace between countries must rest on the solid foundation of love between individuals. And when I first read that many years ago, I was like, that's, yeah, that's true. How can we expect countries, which are just, what are they anyway? They're just a gathering of people living in some made-up border that separates us.

[02:24]

At least we think it does. And then I was writing this talk. I was thinking about this quote came up, and I was pondering it more. And I thought, well, let me take this a little bit further. Because yesterday was Armistice Day, and... When Hakushoa said something about the practice of laying down arms, I made a wisecrack, as occasionally I do. To the person to my right, I said, well, that worked out really well. Because clearly we still haven't laid down arms. There's lots of death and destruction and ideas of separation still persisting. So I wanted to take this quote a little further, a little bit of a Buddhist perspective to it, which is, love between individuals must rest on peace within ourselves.

[03:27]

And this peace arises from the experience of no solid you and no solid me. The final echo in our morning service reminds us that we're unceasingly trying to free all beings so they may dwell in peace. And sometimes when we hear these words, we might think, oh, that I'm trying to save my family and my friends and my Dharma brothers and sisters from their ancient twisted karma so they can dwell in peace. But usually the reality is I'm trying to change everybody so I can dwell in peace. So... That's the outward gaze, the outward focus. Blaming someone else, not taking responsibility for how we feel emotionally and psychologically, our own well-being. So this is a fundamental misperception we have, a topsy-turvy thinking that somehow something outside of myself is going to make me feel whole or complete.

[04:34]

And I started thinking, well, what are these beings anyway? you know, these beings that we're trying to save. I mean, we're unceasingly trying to save them, so that's quite a strong effort. So there are these conditioned identities inside of us, you know, the hungry ghosts that we inherited from countless causes and conditions, our own ancient twisted karma. And when we practice Zazen, we're taking that backward step to study these karmic beings and how they affect us psychologically, emotionally, and physically. The next question is, so what prevents us from knowing peace? I don't really have that answer, but this is my exploration of this. I think that it's partly that we believe that these conditioned identities, these, as Fu's been saying, emotionalized conceptualizations, or emotion thought is a little less of a mouthful, that we think that they are an independent, permanent self that needs to be protected.

[05:36]

The more we identify with these emotionalized conceptualizations, the more solid they seem, and the more suffering arises. And maybe in a grand way, all these boundaries we have between countries are these, what we think, definitive barriers. Like Fu said about the caravan coming up from Latin America, thousands of people seeking refuge. And I was reading in the New York Times, Some people are afraid of these people. They think that they're terrorists, and they're going to take their jobs and ruin the country. And on the front cover of the Times, there's this picture of these people, and there's this beautiful girl right in front of it. And I thought, so some people perceive this girl as a threat, as terror. We need to guard. We need to build a wall. You need to build a wall to keep people out. So on the morning of his enlightenment, the Buddha described the liberation from suffering, the liberation from these barriers like this.

[06:55]

I have found a nectar-like dharma, profound, peaceful, free from reference points, luminous, and unconditioned. So I was playing around with this phrase a little bit, and you know how Zen masters always negate everything. So I came up with something like this that maybe, I don't want to say the opposite of nirvana, but maybe something like suffering or the idea that we're suffering maybe feels a little bit like a bitter dharma, superficial, agitated, noisy, obstructed by reference points, cloudy, and... based on conditions. It's like, oh, that sounds a lot more familiar to me than his description of nirvana. So it seems like these reference points are... If nirvana is free of these reference points, then it seems to me like that's a key. We should really be looking at what are these reference points, how to understand these reference points. So good for... Fortunately for us, the Heart Sutra, or as Karl Brunholtz translates, the Sutra of the Heart of the Glorious Lady Prajnaparamita, which I really much prefer.

[08:06]

The Glorious Lady Prajnaparamita says this about nirana. With nothing to attain, a bodhisattva relies on Prajnaparamita, and thus the mind is without hindrance. Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirana. That seems very clear. But what are these hindrances? And also, what is nirvana? So I started to look at a couple of other translations like I usually do just to understand what the words might mean from a different perspective since I don't read any ancient languages. So other translations of the line refer to bodhisattvas as dwelling without thought coverings or living without walls of the mind or, as the Buddha says, without reference points. So when we see that these reference points, these walls of mind, are impermanent, not who we are, and that they cause us to suffer, then this fear and trembling dissolve. Far beyond all inverted views, one realizes nirvana.

[09:10]

However, the more we believe in these reference points, the more likely we are to harm ourselves and others in an effort to move away from this suffering. We act out or internalize our internal suffering as a temporary release of from the psycho-emotional turmoil because we wrongly perceive that our suffering lies outside of us. One of my favorite teachers gave me an invaluable Dharma lesson about what happens when we identify with emotionalized conceptualizations. And this was back in the 70s. This teacher, I wonder what she would think of that word, that phrase, emotionalized conceptualizations. Or the stories. more simply of who we think we are and how we think life should be. So when I was in third grade, my favorite teacher, her name was... Well, I only had three teachers, so it was a good chance that she'd be one of my favorites since there was just three. Her name was Miss Joan Kopecky. And I'm not exactly sure why I loved her so much, but I don't know.

[10:15]

She wasn't like soft or warm or even funny, but she was really into learning, and she really wanted you to learn. And I... I think I just felt that about her, that she was very interested in what we were learning in that school. And also, excuse me, it was a Catholic grammar school, and she wasn't a nun, so that was a relief. Or at least I thought it was. So it was lunchtime. You know when that bell sounds, and that to kids means freedom. That same thing that it means for us here is freedom. Nothing's changed much, and there's cookies out there. I'm going to get some. So everyone's filing out of this little classroom, and I see my teacher, she's got this compact mirror, and she's going like this, putting on some beige powder. And my mom didn't really wear makeup, so I wasn't sure exactly what she was doing. And so while everybody else was running out the door, I went over and I asked her, I said, Ms. Kopecky, what are you doing?

[11:16]

You know, aren't you just going to lunch? She's like, well, I'm putting on makeup. I was like, but you're just going to lunch. Why are you putting on makeup? And she put that on her mirror and she said, because I might meet Mr. Right at lunch. And I was a little confused. I'm eight. And I say, but Mr. Right is dead. And she smacks me across the face. It's funny now, but it wasn't then. It's not even funny now, actually. She smacks me, and I was just, as you can imagine, stunned. My whole body just filled with this hot shame, and my face, of course, was red, and I did my best not to cry, but I just ran out of there, and I was weeping and weeping, and I was just irate. As soon as I turned the corner and she couldn't see me, I gave her the finger. That's the kind of kid I was. I gave her the finger because...

[12:18]

I knew that she couldn't see me, and I also knew that I didn't do anything wrong. You know, there was this strong sense of I am not wrong. I am right. I've been misunderstood. I was so livid, and I was so confused. I didn't know what happened. I don't remember the rest of the day. My house was pretty close to where we went to school, so I might have actually gone home right after lunch after that and went to go see my mother, but maybe it wasn't until later on in the day. Anyway, so I go see her. I'm in my kitchen with my mother, and I explain to her what's happening, and maybe I was crying. I don't know. And I told her what I said, that Mr. Wright is dead, and she just stares at me like, you said what to your teacher? I said, well, aren't Orville and Wilbur Wright dead? And she's like, Heather, yes, they're dead. But basically what you did is you insulted her. You told her she's never going to find an ideal future husband. Okay, so my Eliza, Viznana, my storehouse consciousness did not include, at the age of eight, a Mr. Wright.

[13:25]

So the thing, too, was that she's actually the one who told us about the Wright brothers. I mean, it wasn't, she's the one who, I mean, so I was even more confused. You told me, like, two weeks ago, the Wright brothers are dead, but they're airplanes, and then now you're telling me, you're smacking me because I'm telling you back the lesson you gave me, is that they're dead. So that was my side of the story, right? That I interpreted Mr. Wright as one of the Wright brothers, and she interpreted as an ideal future husband. And so obviously neither one of us was wrong, right? Her perception was her perception. My perception was my perception. It's that reference point, right, Mr. Wright? The whole thing pivoted on Mr. Wright. And... And had she... been maybe a Zen practitioner. She might have been able to stop herself from hitting me and maybe taking that backward step, but she didn't. And, you know, so my reference point bumped up against her reference point, and we both were harmed.

[14:32]

My words harmed her inadvertently, and she smacked me. Because she wasn't able to stay with whatever that was. And it was instant. It wasn't like, now I'm going to smack Heather. It was literally as soon as I said those words, I felt her hand come across my cheek. So the slap, which I am calling, or there's many names for the slap. The slap of separation, the slap of self-hatred, of fear. And now that I have new vocabulary, internalized patriarchy, maybe? Internalized sexism? In any case, an internalized story of herself not being worthy is how I would interpret it. So she was so strongly identified with this story that she was never going to find the ideal future husband, that her perception of me as an innocent third grader was obscured by this sense of self. In that moment, my grown-up teacher, and I don't know how often you're around eight-year-olds, but we're actually really kind of small. And so she took me as a threat, an external threat to her.

[15:36]

So her view of me was obscured by this emotion. Her imagined story was an imagined self that needed protection. And at the same time, that very same belief, that very same story that was a self, was actually causing her to suffer. Because if she didn't really believe that story or that story didn't exist like it didn't for me... If someone said to me when I was eight, you'll never find Mr. Wright. Like, yeah, okay, I don't care. If I find him, I'll probably play baseball better than him. I don't care. Who's Mr. Wright, right? It didn't affect me in a way, obviously, because it wasn't part of my consciousness at that time. So Mr. Wright obviously doesn't exist, but in the fantasy of her head, Mr. Wright existed, right? In the fantasy of what was going on for her, I completely, I very quickly... swiftly brought down her idea of the self. I threatened this idea. I wounded her. So was she born with this story of having to find an ideal future husband? Of course not.

[16:39]

As a child, she must have internalized these stories that her parents or her, I'm assuming it was her parents or society. This was the 70s. I think that was probably much more true back then about being an old maid. I have no idea. how old she was. And I decided not to say what she looked like because I think if I did, you'd have another perception, right? If I said that she was this beautiful woman with a shapely body, blah, blah, blah, or if I said she looked like this, then you'd say something. So I just thought, well, she wasn't married. What does it matter what she looked like? What does it matter that she wasn't married? Anyway, so this story comes from... People telling us, you know, our parents and society's reference points bumping up against our reference points. So she carried this unexamined story of self forward and overlaid it onto this present moment. And I understand that I'm projecting and I'm making this up. But the true nature of her mind, of mind, was obscured by this thought covering, this wall of mind that made her feel separate from me, from life, and from her own nature.

[17:51]

And this is the ultimate alienation, feeling the separation. So this brought up the question for me, who, or more precisely, what are we without our stories? As I was pondering this question, I thought of some lessons that I had learned from two of my favorite little and unknown Zen masters, my nieces, Frankie and Nola. So six years ago, I spent Thanksgiving with them in New York at my brother's apartment. They lived... They live full-time in L.A. with their mother. And it started snowing, and they had never seen snow before. So I picked up Nola, who was about three years old at the time, so she could see the snow out of the window. And she was just mesmerized by it. And she just stared at it for a long time. And then she said, Uncle Heather, we're moving with the snow. And I said... Yeah, we're moving with the snow. That's great. Yeah, I was surprised that she called me Uncle Heather, and I was also surprised that we're moving with the snow, but I went with it.

[18:59]

So later that day, I was reading Frankie, her older sister, I guess she was maybe six, a book about a snowman, and he loses his mittens, and they fall asleep. They fall in the book into the foreground. And he's there with his stick hands. And he's a snowman, so he can't pick up the mittens, right? So he's just standing there like this until some sweet little kid comes by and gives the mittens, puts the mittens on each one of its stick hands. And then I thought, oh, they're teaching kids how to be helpful and not be selfish. So I say to Frankie, so if you came across the mittens, would you give the snowman the mittens? And she said no. And I said, oh, this kid is so selfish. She's only six. I can't believe that she's not going to give the poor snowman the mittens. So this is all churning in my mind in like a few seconds. But I didn't say that she was selfish. I didn't externalize any of my judgments. So I just thought I would teach her a lesson. And so I said, well, why wouldn't you give the snowman the mittens? And she looked at me like I was daft and said, well, I don't live in the book.

[20:07]

Yeah. I said, oh, right, yeah, of course, you're not in the book. I got it. And then I just was like, boy, I really, I really, I really become an adult. You don't live in the book. Okay, right. So, my niece's marvelous perceptions illuminated my own mundane and static perceptions of the relative world. My mind had a lot more walls than theirs did. They were more spacious and flexible because they were not yet filled with lots of reference points like, that's snow, this is me, that's a book, and I can't live in it. So children dwell in their own brand of Prajnaparamita. This is also why they are so impressionable and vulnerable. Their sense of self, the inverted views of I, me, and mine, has yet to be reified or concretized into a story of me. Of course, children need to learn to make these distinctions, distinguish themselves from objects, of course, as they're going along, so that they can learn about their world and make sense of their world.

[21:21]

And they learn who they are and what they are by what they're not, right? I remember when I was walking with my other niece, Skylar. I guess she was about three. I'm not sure. I'm not around them often enough to know how old children are. Anyway, we were walking around this pond, and there were these ducks in the pond. And my sister was on the other side of the park. And there she was. She was like, there's the mama duck, and there's the daddy duck. Oh, and that's the mama duck, but where's the daddy duck? He must have gone to work. And so I was like, okay. So her reality is her mother, the mama duck, stays home with her, and the daddy duck goes off to work. I was like, boy, this happens early. This is her family system. She's projecting onto these ducks. And then my other niece, Frankie, the older one, I think she was about four or so. I should just stop saying how old they are, right?

[22:23]

We're walking through L.A. on the street there on the sidewalk. And she is just saying hello to everybody. Like she's running for mayor, right? But she's like, hi, boy. Hi, girl. Hi, man. Hi, boy. Hi, girl. Hi, man. I was just like... And it was the sweetest thing because, you know, the people were just laughing. Like they thought it was so cute that there's this kid in Los Angeles saying, hi, girl. Hi, boy. Hi, girl. Hi, boy. Yeah, it was really... She was so precious. How do you resist that? Like that openness, right? That curiosity. And occasionally she'd high-five people. I was like, okay, just... And then I remembered when I first understood that I was a girl. This is also the first time that I felt intense debilitating shame and separation. We lived outside of the Bronx in New York, so it was kind of like a suburban, it was like an urban suburb. So it wasn't all the way out, but it was more urban of a suburb. And we had this little cottage in Pennsylvania in the Pocono Mountains, and we were on vacation there.

[23:29]

And my oldest brother, Anthony, I think he was about nine, he ran outside to play with some boys that he had just met. So I always wanted to do everything that my brothers did. I just had two older brothers and then me, and my sister hadn't been born yet. And so I ran outside, too, to play with him. I was probably four or so. And the boys are standing out there. They seemed older to me, like maybe they were 11 or 12. I wasn't sure, but they were much taller than me and taller than my brother. And since I wanted to do everything my brother did, I figured that they would let me play with them. And then one of the boys asked me if I was a boy, and I immediately said yes. And then they started laughing, and I felt this tremendous shame rising up in me, just like I had been slapped. Right? This heat and shame and just not wanting to be seen. And then I started and said, no, no, no, I mean no. And then that made them laugh even more.

[24:30]

And then I just ran back into the house to escape that, to escape that shame. So just like my nieces, my world wasn't so binary at the time. I idolized my brothers and I always wanted to be around them, so it wasn't surprising that I wasn't really aware of sex. or gender. To me, there wasn't any difference between my brothers and myself. And I kind of pretty much grew up for a long time just almost doing whatever they were doing. And sometimes I was better at whatever they were doing, which really sort of upset them, like playing baseball. But again, it was like my spacious view of little Heather at that time coming out in all of my... excitement to play with these people, these new people, and then their idea of themselves as boys, which they were. And maybe they didn't mean anything by it. I don't know. Maybe it was just a question. But they probably knew I was a girl.

[25:31]

I think they might have just been playing around with me. I don't know. Any case, but there was their reference point, trying to figure me out. And what happened was there was this shame, and then it was internalized. I felt so horrible about myself. And that was just my view spacious, their view is less spacious. They're trying to make me certain. And that is causing some somatic and cognitive dissonance. Now, I don't know, of course, how that shame affected me. I mean, I still remember the story. And I don't think I'll ever really know how that shame affected me. However, I have this theory... That maybe if it just happened once, it wouldn't have been a big deal. It wouldn't have stuck with me so much. But perhaps that idea of womanhood or sexuality, growing up in my patriarchal family, somehow it just kept getting fed, right? That seed in the consciousness, storehouse consciousness, maybe just kept getting fed by what was said to me and the energy in my household.

[26:36]

And I actually grew up heterosexual. I never... thought at all about being with a woman. And I always dated men, and men always seemed to be attracted to me. And I just went that way. And then the further I moved out of New York City, like to Connecticut, was like the first time where people started to ask me, or women started making passes at me. I'm like, wait, in New York, no one made a pass at me. Now I'm in Connecticut. So it was a little confusing as well. I think that was the first time where I felt maybe that destabilizing, that reference point being a little destabilized. Of course, I never thought about reference points, destabilization, and I really never thought about gender either. That wasn't part of the vocabulary back then for me in the 80s. So everyone here, I think, knows I'm married to Tanya, but... If you didn't know, I mean, so like for me, like even when people, I still don't even really identify as queer. I'm like, I don't know, am I queer? I don't know, I just love this person named Tanya.

[27:39]

She happens to be a woman. Like, I still can't, that doesn't really sit with me still to this day, which it's only been a couple of years, but I've still, anyway. So it was interesting now, sitting up here like, well, Heather, you're not straight anymore. I'm like, I know I'm not straight. Okay, what am I? I don't know. Just, I'm married to Tanya, that's all. I don't even know who she is, but anyway. I'm tired of finding out answers. Just want to ask questions. Okay. So I think, I don't know, I'm not a child psychologist. I've been to a lot of therapy, but I'm not a psychologist myself. And maybe this profound sense of vulnerability, right, this spaciousness that we are as children, maybe when we're hurt a lot, and maybe if it's traumatic, very traumatic, maybe our personality coalesces. Some of our personality coalesces around that profound vulnerability to protect it. And maybe we don't want to experience shame anymore. So there's another egoic covering on that.

[28:40]

So there's something that's protecting us from feeling that shame because shame is a very powerful emotion. At least it is for me. So I'm glad that I didn't try to correct my nieces. perceptions and whose perceptions were more correct anyway. I mean, if it were up to me, I would wish I could feel like I was moving with the snow and that I could live in this book with the snowman. So again, it's just about perspective, my reference point, their reference point. And had I told them that their perceptions were wrong, who knows how they might have felt, maybe misunderstood, angry, defiant. Maybe they would have felt ashamed. Maybe they might have just been confused because their perception was their reality. She was moving with the snow, and Nola, if she had decided, was going to live in that book and give the snowman his gloves. Or maybe at that age, my corrections might have just passed through them, like wind through the shadows, because maybe that wasn't something that was always going to be reified for them.

[29:51]

I don't know. But in thinking about this further, I confess that I think Frankie is right, that we do in fact live in books. We live in this book of me, the story of I, me, and mine. It's a collection of fantasies about who we think we are, who other people are, and how the world should be. A fairy tale of self. These tales are belief systems, egocentric karmic conditioning, whose mission is to stay alive. no matter what we're doing, it wants to stay alive. And as long as our gaze remains focused outward, like my teacher, her gaze was focused outward, we live out these reified notions of ourselves, the different characters that populate our book. We play out the plot lines we inherited from our families and society, and we look outside ourselves for someone or something to save us. And nothing ever does. Nothing ever will.

[30:52]

There's no Snow White. And there's no Prince Charming. There's no Little Mermaids. I don't know what all those fairytale guys are anymore. The Pocahontas one and the Mulan one. Anyway, I'm a Snow White, Prince Charming kind of girl. Or maybe I'm Prince Charming. I don't know. Maybe it's Snow Charming and Prince White. I don't know. So it's not until we unflinchingly turn our gaze inward do we begin to see through the fantasies of self, this karmic conditioning. When body-mind settles enough, we can stabilize the body and focus the mind to take this backward step to illuminate the perceiver, right? This one right here. Who is this one? Or rather, what is this one that's perceiving? If we pay close enough attention over and over again... Gradually, we begin to see how our karmic conditioning colors the present moment, and we start to take the outside world less personally.

[32:00]

When I first came here in 2008, I'd pick up that chant book, and I would chant it no problem. I could see everything. It was really great. And now, these years later, I pick up that chant book, and I can't read the words. But that chant book hasn't changed. It's just this eyesight has changed, this eye organ has changed. Not that chant book. Now, if we think it's a chant book, I might throw it down, get flustered, yell at it, yell at the Eno because she's done something to the chant book. But that's, again, a misperception. It's so much easier to see this when it's a chant book. The chant book can't possibly be responsible for my decreasing ability to see. And I have these little floaters in here. At first, a long time ago, I thought they were little bugs. I'm like, there's bugs everywhere. I'm like, oh, those aren't bugs. There seems to always be there, that bug in your eye. And then I went to see the eye doctor, and they said, no, they're floaters. I was like, oh, OK. It's like little pixels in the computer screen are disappearing.

[33:05]

And if you start to see flashing lights, that means your retina is detaching. So please come to me if that happens. It's like, OK, I'll do that. Unfortunately, that hasn't happened yet. So the less caught we get in what's arising, the quicker it fades away. In the Heart Attack Sutra, Carl Brunholtz says that the reason prajna, this non-conceptual, non-dual wisdom, is so threatening to our ego and to our cherished belief systems is because it undermines our very notion of reality and the reference points upon which we build our world. The most fundamental reference point, the most fundamental misperception, is that when we're sitting zazen, there is a me sitting zazen. There is no you doing zazen. There is no Heather sitting here giving a talk. In fact, these concepts are just coming up and down into alaya, into the storehouse consciousness. They don't really experience themselves.

[34:06]

It's like this and this. I mean, we string them together, but how often have you had crazy thoughts in the middle of a thought? Like, oh, what's that jingle from the commercial? That's because we're not really in control of what's arising from that storehouse consciousness. Has anybody seen that movie Inside Out? Yeah, right? It was hilarious, right? The thing that she kept remembering with that little jingle from the gum commercial. Anyway, you should watch it. I've seen it several times. So there's these concepts that are arising, and we're stringing them together. Consciousness is stringing these words together, words and phrases together. They always miss the mark, though, right? Baba, wawa, is anything said or not? So there is no you, and yet, and yet, there's some karmic being facing this wall. There's somebody facing you. This is the mystery of the self that we are studying. And the transformative power of being here at Tassajara is that it limits external distractions, takes away the illusion that we're in control of our lives.

[35:13]

It shows us that every preference we have is a reference point of self. The more solid the reference point, the stronger the preference, the stronger the resistance to the schedule, to the forms, to the food, to the cold, and of course to other people's reference points. So you could say, if you want to have a little handle to remind you when a reference point is arising, you could say, preference is reference. Right? That's preference is reference. We're refracting it through what we want, through our vision of the world. The Sutra of the Heart of the Glorious Lady, Prajnaparamita. reminds us that all these reference points, both the objects we perceive, that chant book, and the one that is perceiving, are marked by emptiness. I like to think of the concept of emptiness like this. Numerous times during the day, we hear the sound of the bell.

[36:14]

It arises, it persists, and it fades away. It's impermanent, like all objects of the senses and the body-mind that's perceiving it. So does the sound have any independent, abiding self? If it did, It might never fade away. Does the sound exist independently of the instrument of the bell, of the striker, of the person striking it, and all of our ears that are hearing it, not to mention the blue jays, sorry, stellar's jays, the squirrels, the deer, right? These sounds are not only just being perceived by us, they're being perceived by other sentient beings, and the sounds are reverberating throughout the valley. And then this bell, these bells are made of metal, but what is metal made of? Earth, air, water, fire, space. And someone's crafted this metal into the shape of a bell. And there are countless types of bells fashioned from different metals into different shapes by different people. So what we label as bell is empty of an inherent existence.

[37:16]

It is compounded phenomena, just like this, that exists dependent on unfathomable causes and conditions. So when we hear the sound of the bell, most of us do not identify with the sound, cling to it, and make it into a me. There might be associations that arise depending on many causes and conditions, including whether the sound is pleasing or harsh, what time the bell is struck, is it calling us to the zendo, or is it ending zazen, or is it starting zazen. Sometimes the sound evokes relief, and then sometimes it evokes dread. Dread might be too strong. No, dread. Let's say dread. Depending on unfathomable causes and conditions, we each respond or react differently to the sound of a bell. And if you say the word bell, we all have different associations with this bell. So Brunholz describes it this way. Not only is our perceiving mind dynamic, in that it changes from moment to moment, but the objects are too. Phenomena cannot be defined by themselves. Rather, we can only talk about them as complexes of mutual relationships with other phenomena, which in themselves are complexes of relationships with other complexes of relationships.

[38:28]

So that's what we're kind of saying. It's not so easy to have a conversation with somebody like that because you won't ever get to the topic. So that's why we have these concepts, these labels. It's much easier for us to... talk with each other when we have, or not, because last time I, you know, I got slapped from my teacher because I did use these concepts. Mr. Right is dead. She smacked me. So sometimes it's not very easy to use these, to use these handles that we have for all the complexes of relationships. So the Heart Future tells us that all dharmas are marked, are empty of own being, right? They're marked with emptiness. So if we substitute a thought, emotion, or a story for the sound of the bell, some insight or prajna might arise. That just like the sound of the bell, arising thoughts, emotions, and sensations, they persist and then they fade away. If we're able to witness the strong emotion thoughts of anger, grief, shame, and anxiety with a non-judgmental awareness, it dissolves them in a sense of separation, in a sense of a separate self experiencing them.

[39:40]

So the walls of mind start to dissolve. The idea of a perceiver and the idea of a perceived object falls away. The book of me is burned by the flames of Prajna. There is no author, no characters, no plots, no words, no pages, no cover, and no binding. We meet each other in emptiness, the perfection, interconnection, and fullness of each moment. One final koan from Acharya Schuyler. A few years ago, we were playing an endless game, an endless game of tag in this beautiful park in Los Angeles. And when it was my turn to chase her, she'd always tag me and start running away. And she'd say, catch you, catch you. And I said, I was thinking catch you. I was confused. Like, what does she mean, catch you? Why is she saying catch you? And then I realized that she was referring to herself as you. She's using the wrong personal pronoun. So her speech was not yet correct.

[40:45]

But instead of correcting her, I just chased after myself, also known as Schuyler, whose exquisite laughter permeated everywhere. So thank you for listening to yourself. Do we have time for questions? Anyone have any questions or comments? to just try to like imagine seeing the world that way.

[41:55]

And then try to reflect your experience through that perspective. And I don't, I guess I was like, I don't frequently, I think I fear more about dropping views, you know, and seeing views, but rarely like picking up views. Right. Picking up is from a point of kind of traditional, what do you mean? What's the view of a sycamore tree? You could walk around pretending you're a sycamore tree. You could play with your perspective. What is the perspective of a cat? What is the perspective of some other animal, tree? When you're sitting and listening to the bell, This is why I mentioned the jays and the squirrels, because I feel like I don't know when it happened for me, but at some point realizing that I'm also the object of someone's perception.

[43:00]

It's like, oh, someone's perceiving me too. I don't know when that quite happens. When does Skylar say, catch me, catch me? She knows that she's the object of my perception in a way. So when we're sitting on the cushion, I find that it's helpful. For me, I really enjoy, I really find it beneficial, rather, to practice with sounds. And so when the bell is striking, can I pretend that the bell and I are one? If that's the right word, pretend, imagine what it would be like. Even if there's still thoughts arising, what would it be like if that whole bell, if that bell was permeating through you, which it is. But what would it feel like? And maybe imagining what it would feel like to permeate through you, to permeate through a sycamore tree. It would be just the sound without the tree saying, hey, I don't like that sound. It's not very pleasing.

[44:03]

And it's not that thoughts... So those thoughts arise, it's just we start to believe them less. We don't get so involved with them. And I think that could be the exercise. Just practice not getting involved. Just practice not finishing that last thought. Because then when small mind is interacting with small mind, it's trying to help small mind. It gets really involved, right? And I think that's where prajna comes in. It's like, oh, just drop it. Just drop it. Just drop it. Go back to the body. Go back to the physicality of the present moment. The sounds that are arising inside and outside. Or keep the thoughts in the zendo. Keep the thoughts really close to the present moment. If you can do that just close, what's going on here at least, rather than 100 miles away. So that's also one way just to practice. And even if you just are able to do that for a minute or 10 seconds, that's great. And you're aware that you're doing it. So that may not be exactly Shikintaza.

[45:06]

So do that in your room. I don't know. Does that make sense? Sort of. So I think one way we can use the imagination. And that's, I think, how we develop empathy. So maybe my niece, if she were, you know, the fact that she couldn't be in the book didn't mean that she wouldn't necessarily not give someone the gloves. But we can imagine what somebody's internal world is like because we're really close to our, the closer we get to our internal world, we become more empathetic and more sympathetic. All those pathetic, here. Here. Not all those pathetics, I didn't mean to say that. Here, we become more in tune with ourselves, so then we have a better sense, external, right? Internal, external. And so we start to be able to, I think, imagine what it's like to be in the shoes of those people coming up from Latin America and have empathy for their struggle. And I was talking to my mother, and she was saying some of her friends, she lives in a very...

[46:12]

conservative place, which I know doesn't really describe anything, but just, so let's drop the word conservative. And someone said to her, well, those people are stupid. They shouldn't be coming up. Don't they know they're going to be turned away and they're going to be separated from the families? And I said, well, it sounds to me like they're very courageous, you know, and they're desperate and they want a better life for their families. That's how I see it. You know, they're courageous, just like my immigrant relatives were who came over in the 1900s, early 1900s. They were courageous. They wanted something different. It didn't matter what was on the other side. When they got off the boat in Ellis Island, that's what they wanted. So I think that imagination can help us feel some peace and some compassion toward ourselves and other people. Oh, hi, Joe. so hurt.

[47:43]

Yeah, like you said, she completely forgets that you're an angel. She completely forgets that you have no idea what you're worth. But yeah, I guess I'm just curious about those moments of she's in pain, she's causing you pain, ultimately causing you pain, and how the two you're ever supposed to really Well, in that case, of course, I had no responsibility as an eight-year-old. It was all coming from her, from her end. So again, that's like taking complete responsibility, regardless if it's an eight-year-old, a chant book. And it's harder because we think there's a person over there, right? That's not us. So I think that's what is so wonderful and transformative about Zazen is we're sitting here, strong emotions arise or something's arising, contraction in body-mind, and the more we're able to stay with it, the more we're able to bring proliferating mind back closer to the present moment, back to here, right, this physicality over and over again.

[49:01]

We're just retraining that mind. You know, attention is a mental faculty. We're training ourselves to come back. And I think that that's the mystery of it is you're not really doing anything. Like if you could already do everything, you already wouldn't be suffering because you'd say, oh, I'm not going to suffer anymore, right? So it's like the causes and conditions arise. This is the body and mind that we've inherited. And we sit on this cushion facing the wall. and the more we're able to build up the ability to stay with what's going on, as uncomfortable as it might be. And when this was happening to me the other day, I'm laughing at this, but I actually just started to say, this is empty. This is empty. This is empty. And I did it intentionally because I wanted to short circuit this somatic aggression that sometimes arises. It's just quick, just like my teacher. It's really helpful if I'm in a jungle and I'm running away from a tiger or something, but like,

[50:01]

It's a very quick thing, and so I'm trying to figure out ways to short-circuit it. At this point in my life, I don't feel like I'm suppressing anything. I mean, maybe. I've done so much therapy in my life, I can't imagine there's something I'm suppressing still, but you never know. But even still, that somatic aggression, if it's not all the way seen through, it will come back, it will let me know. But I think my main practice now is not harming other people. So how can I short-circuit that somatic aggression? And sitting on the cushion is helpful. And sometimes, for me, if I'm off the cushion, I just say, that's empty. That's empty. That's empty. And I was like, wow, this is working. This is working. You're talking to yourself. You're talking to yourself. So I think that's the beauty of sitting zazen is somehow it works, mainly probably because we're not really doing anything. We're staying out of the way. We're not imposing ourselves onto it. I mean, we might. But that just retards the process.

[51:02]

That delays it. So like the Han says, don't waste time. Of course, we're in Soro Zen, so sometimes it takes a long time. We're walking quite a bit through that rain and the mist, and we're kind of getting kind of wet. But every now and then, like a lightning bolt, a deluge falling into a puddle is helpful to wake us up. Thank you. Where is your body now?

[52:49]

It's not a trick question. Where was your mind a moment ago? Yeah. So what really is disconnected? The body or the mind? So it can be helpful for us to use. I mean, one of the tools in the toolbox is using discriminating mind to see through discriminating mind. So when you realize it's a fantasy, just stop right there and go to your body. Maybe even stop what you're doing, if you can, and just touch base with the body. Because the more you bring your attention and awareness into the body, the more the body opens up, the more the body reveals to you maybe what part of that obsessing about going somewhere else might be. Because it's all hidden below the neck.

[53:55]

And sometimes the mind tries to keep us away from it. So you could just experiment with that. So you don't want to, I mean, it's not helpful to continue to say, it's a fancy, it's a fancy. I mean, although I just said I was doing that, right? This is empty, this is empty, this is empty. So, yeah, you can experiment. Maybe from the cushion where the body is stationary, you could say, Okay, this is a fantasy. Let me go back to my breath, right? It's a little easier because we're sitting on the cushion. Go back to the breath. Go back to the breath. Just really breathe. Count in your breaths. Whatever you need to do to stay present. And then maybe when it happens when you're off the cushion, try to think of something else. Like another way to physically, like where are your feet? Like to really pay attention to your body actually isn't going anywhere else. Your body is right there like the sycamore. It's not anywhere else. So it's not really your body, in my opinion. for yourself that wants to go. There might be sensations of I need to escape something, but that's not usually the present moment unless you're in the jungle running from the tiger.

[54:58]

Usually where we are in the moment, I mean, not usually, but right now in that moment, most likely you're safe, your body's safe. So just the mind is cluing you in to take that backward step and direct the attention to the body and see what the machinations of mind are keeping you from experiencing maybe. It's just some thoughts. One more? Kika-san. Thank you. You know, I think about reference points. And, you know, kind of like, what are my reference points? There are way fewer here than there are for me in my previous life outside of your view. And so that limited activity brings fewer reference points and truer. Well, I guess whatever is causing you to suffer, the reference points, the references of self that are suffering.

[56:07]

So when we remove ourselves from our other life, all those reference points... Sometimes they fall away. I mean, sometimes they don't, right? Like, oh, and what is so-and-so doing? I bet you they're making a lot more money now, and how come I'm not making it? Right? So that self can kind of come with you, right? And we think that out there is better than here. It's the same fantasy. So I think just pay attention to, like, some reference points, to use this Tibetan word that I've used before, have some shenpa, right? Some thoughts have some heavy emotion. attached to them, I would focus on those. What are the ones where there's suffering arising? If there's some thoughts that arise that don't produce suffering or that aren't suffering, a suffering selfing, there's not really a difference there. If suffering's arising, that's selfing. So if there's just regular thoughts, if you will, that are more... that you already feel are less substantial, maybe you practice, you start to practice with them and come back to the body. And the ones that trigger you, the ones where you're really contracted and feels like some little demon's taking you over, pay attention to those over and over.

[57:17]

So I think zazen is a place where we get to experience when we feel really strong reference points and when, oh, this isn't, I can stand it, I can stay right here while This thought, emotion is arising. Just stay, stay, stay as close as you can to whatever that, however that's manifesting through your body, mind, without getting caught up here. Because if this solved everything, this zendo would be empty. We just would have to show up for guest season. Is that helpful at all? It's okay. Stay, stay, stay. Well, you're already there. Okay. Ready? Thank you.

[58:12]

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