Well, I've already met you, and I see a few people that I know from the south of here in Mary, and some people who heard this talk already at Tassajara, so now I have to give a whole different talk, but some of it may be a little familiar. I tend to be thinking of something for a while, and what I'm thinking about now and talking about in Santa Cruz and Monterey, I'd just like to bring up here. I think these are the same questions happening for you, coming up for you. Can everybody hear me? No. Oh great, if I talk really slow. Did you hear me here? Really? Oh, so this isn't being recorded, this is amplifying.

[01:17]

All right. I haven't spoken here for many years. It's rather nice to be back. We used to give the talks on Saturday morning, so Wednesday evening, well tonight I usually talk in Santa Cruz, and last Wednesday I talked at Tassajara, so it's just a different time. In Tassajara the talks are 8.40 or 8.45. I've been reading some poetry and listening to the program on television, Language of Life. Can you hear me now? All right. If you

[02:22]

can't hear me, would you raise your hand, please? Thank you. Get my attention with it. This is a Bill Moyers program on poetry. How many of you have seen parts of it? Ah, okay. I've been enormously moved by this program and the poets and their interviews with Bill Moyers and the poems they have read, and it's brought up for me one of the questions I've had in my practice over the years about the seeming separation between Zazen practice or the separation that I have made in my mind between Zazen practice and the energy and

[03:25]

the activity that goes into poetry or painting. In my mind I made some division as if spiritual aspiration or the practice of no-self, non-attachment, was in one realm, and the stuff of poetry or painting or drama, of dance maybe, was someplace else. And I wasn't, I would ask myself this question, you know, some part of me seems not to be included in my Zazen life. I don't know if anybody else has this question. I think it's because in the early days, I started sitting in 67, we had Suzuki Roshi with us, and we were beginners, little babies, and

[04:34]

we thought, at least I thought, and I think others did too, that my practice was to become Suzuki Roshi. We started talking like Suzuki Roshi, you know, broken Japanese. It was kind of cute. But it fit in with my intention, which was to come to practice and get rid of Catherine. And actually become something else. And I think this is a common problem for us in practice. We want to become something better than, more translucent, more beautiful, lighter, probably something lighter, something with wings or a glow around us. Right? You don't

[05:39]

want to be you. Gosh, you can be that anyplace. You certainly wouldn't want to come here and sit hours in the Zendo if you weren't going to get some relief from you. So Zazen practice was some idea of relief or release. Transcendence. And Suzuki Roshi died, and we had his Dharma heir, and I kept up this practice of not being Catherine. And I think collectively we kept up this practice. So we practiced being what we thought a good practitioner should be. And I'm mentioning this right at the beginning because I don't want you to have to spend thirteen years thinking you're supposed to be somebody other than yourself. Actually, practice is to become whole. It's not to become perfect. I thought it was to become perfect.

[06:49]

My whole life I thought I was supposed to be becoming perfect. Practice is to become whole. You're already whole. You're already complete. But that wholeness isn't available to you because you don't believe it. It's buried under ideas of becoming perfect or becoming something other than what just naturally arises. Becoming whole, for me, is including that stuff that I didn't know how to include, that I thought, gee, if I were painting or if I were writing poetry, that's what I'd be thinking about. That's what I'd be dwelling on. And actually, there isn't any difference. I'm very happy to let you know that whether

[07:50]

you're sitting in meditation, watching your breath and watching what's arising, watching the pain in your knees or your shoulders or your lower back, or whether you're painting or given to putting into language some experience, the process is the same. The process is to go deeply, deeply through your experience. Go deeply down, as completely, as thoroughly as you can, beyond what your mind can imagine, to the bottom out. You go all the way down into your pain, to your grief, into your loneliness, to your shame, to your despair,

[08:51]

your fear, to your sexuality, completely, until it's no longer personal. When you bottom out, it's no longer personal. That experience is no longer yours. It's not uniquely you. It's communal. It's shared. And you know it. That despair or that shame or that fear becomes everyone's. Oh, that loneliness, that's the room where everyone lives. You actually have this kind of experience. That anger, that's the anger everyone is afraid of. That shame, that's

[09:52]

everyone's shame. That experience becomes communal. It's impersonal. It's what binds us together. It's what connects us. It's what allows our hearts to recognize each other. Very important. The mind separates. The mind sees discrimination and separation, and the heart sees identity. Has Stanley Kunitz been featured on the program yet? Those of you who are watching it, maybe

[11:02]

not. So today I was reading, somebody was kind enough to give me the book, which is almost a transcript of the program. It's not entirely literal. Misses some poems and some of the interviews, conversations are a little different, but it's pretty good. And I found that when I was trying to copy some of the poems off the video, I couldn't go fast enough to catch them. So this is pretty good. So here's a conversation with Stanley Kunitz, who I guess he's over 90 years old now, and he won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry and was poet laureate at one time about poetry. He's talking to Moyers. He says, poets have always loved the language of dreams. It's so full of

[12:04]

secrets. Bill Moyers, do you sometimes think you're carrying on a conversation with ancestors you never knew? Kunitz, the arts by their nature are our means of conducting that dialogue. Where is the history of the race inscribed if not in the human imagination? One of my strongest convictions is that poetry is ultimately mythology. The telling of the stories of the soul. We keep asking Gauguin's famous questions. Where do we come from? Who are we? Where are we going? The echo that mocks us comes from the Stone Age caves.

[13:07]

The poem on the page is only a shadow of the poem in the mind. The poem in the mind is only a shadow of the poetry and mystery of the things of this world. Yeah. The poem on the page is only a shadow of the poem in the mind. Right? They're resonances in the mind. We try to put them down and we don't quite do it. There's so much, so many echoes, so many energies, the language doesn't quite get it. The poem in the mind is only a shadow of the poetry and mystery of the things of this world.

[14:14]

So there's mystery in the things of this world. They're ungrasped. Buddhism tells us they're ungraspable. Yet we resonate with them. We respond to them. There's energy, synergy, all kinds of relationship. It's the mystery of the things of this world. And the poem in the mind is only a shadow of that mystery of the things of this world. So I just thought this was straight out of the Zendo, right? That's our experience. We can't quite, our mouth can't do it. Our language, our mind can't do it. We must try again for the work is never finished. I don't think it's absurd to believe that the chain of being, our indelible genetic code holds memories of the ancient world

[15:23]

that are passed down from generation to generation. Heraclitus speaks of mortals and immortals living in their death, dying into each other's lives. Suzuki Roshi is alive in my life, my experience, my body and mind. Katagiri Roshi is, and many others as well. My mother and father. Maezumi Roshi, who died two or three months ago, two months ago maybe, is still alive for us, still resonating. Those of us who knew him, studied with him, practiced with him.

[16:28]

And he encapsulated the Buddhism of Japan, his teachers, his culture, his tradition, and he was carrying on a dialogue with his teachers. You know, when I come up and offer incense, especially in this room, you know, Suzuki Roshi is with me. Katagiri Roshi is with me. Tenshin Roshi is with me. Baker Roshi. These are the people I watched for years. When I first went to Tassajara to lead a practice period, I was haunted by Baker Roshi, because he had always held a certain, he had held the position. I lived in his cabin. I had all the attention that we had passed on to him, given to him.

[17:33]

We carry these feelings, these images, these resonances, these echoes in our bodies. We inherit. We inherit the unconscious of our parents. Have you noticed? You get mad at that part. You've got the shadow of your father or your mother, or your grandmother, or your grandfather. I mean, maybe you've got their good part, the bright side, but we inherit that stuff, and we don't know how it got there. Suddenly we're speaking like our parents or grandparents or our teachers. Where's the self? Where's the separate self?

[18:35]

We're sounding, trying to sound like Suzuki Roshi, trying to sound like Tenjin Anderson Roshi. After a while I thought, when I started teaching in Monterey in Santa Cruz, I thought, you know, my teachers have all been men. Now I have to find out what it is for me to teach. I can't teach the way my male teachers taught. Took me a little while to get that one. They're men. They've had their experience. They have their lineage, and my experience and lineage is different. I had to figure out what it was to be a woman teaching on my own with all this wonderful, you know, 25 or so years, 22, 23 years of training. And I'm grateful for it, incredibly grateful for it.

[19:37]

And yet, I have to enact it as Catherine. Kunit said, the poetry is the most difficult, the most solitary, the most life-enhancing thing one can do. Here's a poet speaking. I read that and I thought, hmm, the most difficult, the most solitary, the most life-enhancing thing one can do. Then I thought of the Sando Kai. Practice secretly, working within, like a fool, like an idiot. If you can achieve continuity, you become the host within the host. And I teach people that practicing watching the mind, practicing observing thoughts, feelings, perceptions, impulses,

[20:40]

and not acting on them, just observing them, is the most difficult thing to do. It's a very solitary act. Try being in a crowd and having a reaction, a strong reaction, and just sitting with it, just watching it, and not sort of blowing off the energy. Just paying attention, noticing the energy in the mind, the thoughts in the mind, the energy in the body. I think that's the most difficult thing to do. But then my practice is Zazen. His practice is poetry. Whatever you bring your whole self to is the most difficult thing in the world to do. And I wanted to tell you, thinking about this, that if Zazen doesn't work for you, try something else. If you don't love Zazen, if it doesn't invoke your deepest energy,

[21:41]

your deepest passion, your deepest fear, find something that does. Natalie Goldberg said, she kept listening to Kadagiri Roshi, listening to Kadagiri Roshi, and she didn't understand what he said about Zazen. And he finally said, your practice is writing. And when she put her complete energy into writing, she understood what he was talking about in Zazen. You can't keep the funny stuff outside the door. It has to come inside. Your whole life has to be there. Fear has to be there. You have to bring the fear inside. It's there. It's there in a little disguise. It comes up as something else.

[22:42]

So bring it in. And I know we're not ready. I know it takes a little time. And that's the practice of sitting still. I just, I thought this was so wonderful. The poem on the page is only a shadow of the poem in the mind. And the poem in the mind is only a shadow of the poetry and mystery of the things of the world, this world. So we must try again, for the work is never finished. Aitken Roshi says, Shakyamuni Buddha is only halfway there. Do you know who Shakyamuni Buddha is? Right? He's only halfway done. The work is never finished.

[23:43]

That's very, very releasing to me. The idea that we can complete this work and accomplish something is one of our familiar delusions. It's one of the things we like to play with. When I went to Tassajara for the first time, I thought, well, three months, I'll get it together, then I'll get on with my life. That was 1968. After three months, I thought, well, maybe another three months. There's no end to this practice of opening, putting, somehow I have a wing image in my mind, but of opening to what is fluttering inside of us, what is uncertain, what is unrecognized.

[24:47]

The stuff that's recognizable, even that we have to pay attention to, because that can get in our way too. We can stumble across people, run over people that way. John Tarrant, one of Aitken Roshi's disciples, says, practice is the inclusion of the excluded. I think there's something you've excluded in your life, perhaps, you don't want to think about, you want to pretend isn't there. It keeps coming up in Zazen, or it keeps coming up in relationships with each other, but you'd like to kind of act like it's not there. Practice is the inclusion of the excluded. Vicky did a very nice article for the Windmill a couple of years ago on the Sagaki ceremony, which I happened to be looking at at Tassajara this past week.

[25:50]

Feeding the hungry ghosts, that part of us that's never nourished, never satisfied, that part of us that cannot bear our life. I cannot bear to go through my life. I cannot bear this life I am living. Well, most of it, 95% maybe I can bear, but that 5% or that 2%? Practice is learning, gradually, gradually learning to bear this life. After we've brought in all the distractions, and all the toys and games and delusions and everything that we can imagine, relationships, positions, fame and glory,

[26:52]

all the attainments, all the recognition, what are we left with? Bearing this life. The equation doesn't change. This is still this particular mind and body enduring, recognizing itself, meeting itself very deeply. The part that's hard to meet is the hungry ghost part, the part that's never filled, never satisfied. And she says there that the way we meet the hungry ghost, there are images. Hungry ghost has long neck, big belly, can't take in food. And during the sagaki ceremony, we come in here with instruments that are really

[27:54]

kind of mournful, kind of wailing, unusual instruments, which summon this energy, this unrecognized, excluded, unresolved energy in our lives. And we don't invite that energy to this altar, she said, because this altar might scare it. It's too beautiful. But we set up another altar. So when we summon that energy, we take it off to the side a little bit, and we welcome it. But we try to meet it where it can be met. This is the mind of compassion. This is the mind of non-judgment. Hardest thing to do is to summon the mind of non-judgment and look at your hard stuff. Look at your pain. Look at your shame.

[28:58]

Look at your sexuality. Look at your fear with a non-judging mind, a mind that doesn't want anything from this activity, a mind that's completely at rest, relaxed and open. It can be, I can tell you it can be done. This is practice, to bring that compassionate mind to what's arising. Just as we invite the hungry spirits, the hungry ghosts to the ceremony, and we feed them, we offer them food, we symbolically offer them food. We offer them recognition. What we want is to witness our life. You know, the deepest thing we want is to be witnessed, to be seen, to be known, just as we are. We don't necessarily want to be helped. That would be a little, we know deeply,

[30:01]

the only help can come from here, from my own witnessing of my own body and mind. It's very helpful if somebody else witnesses completely, witnesses it completely too, without trying to cure me. We probably all have people who want to cure us, right? We can all cure each other very easily. So I think these two thrusts in practice, the thrust, the deepest intention which brings us here, to meet our deepest self. I don't use the word our highest self. I use the word the more we just let them go.

[31:04]

That which is not recognized, which is not seen, stays around as a solid thing, as a hindrance, as an obstacle. When it's recognized, it's just, it's, you know, like everyday life. Making the unconscious conscious. That which is conscious is not so difficult for us. It is welcomed into the circle of the recognizable. Here's what John Tarrant says about the character development, or this part going into the excluded. This part of us, he says, is a mess. It's full of loose ends, the uncalled for, the unanticipated, the unforeseen.

[32:06]

It embraces what we know most dimly about ourselves and what we shudder at, our secret passions and insomnias. Helpless and almost indestructible longings, despair. And the continuing undercurrent of knowledge that some losses are irretrievable. So that's the path toward character work, compassion. The other transforming movement is the practice of insight. The recognition of emptiness. Does everybody know what emptiness is? Somebody know what emptiness is? You've heard about it probably, right? Chanted the Heart Sutra, a little bit.

[33:09]

Being unfulfilled. Unfulfilled. Anybody else? It's really more fun to have a conversation. I guess, as you ask it, I think of more like a unified field, like a formless, distinct, or discrete entity. So I think of it as a kind of field in which everything, things are not discrete in individual levels. So emptiness is the field? The energy field in which there are no things, there are discrete things. But all discrete things are actually present. All things are present.

[34:17]

Yeah, the way you're saying it makes it sound like emptiness is a thing. I don't mean that it is. So say it again. The field of energy is a thing. I think of it as a field of energy from which things may arise. Emptiness is this world. Yes, you were going to say? I was going to say the lack of a separate, independent community. That's what emptiness is. It's the lack of that separate, independent entity inside. Does that mean you? What does that mean for you? About you? That I do exist. Yeah, yeah.

[35:23]

Emptiness means nothing exists independently. Nothing exists independently. That's what you were trying to say. I'm sorry, it's a little different from what... Emptiness is not that part of us that's not filled. Emptiness is the fact that we're all filled. Another way you can talk about emptiness is that it's fullness. It's that everything exists in this mind and body. That I am not separate from any of you, my parents and grandparents and my teachers. Who is giving this talk, you know? Teachers, my community, the Greek community I grew up in, the Berkeley community I went to school in. I grew up in Berkeley. The Greek church in Oakland.

[36:24]

My month in Japan. Bob Derman says, the absolute is this relativity. The absolute is this very relativity. We don't have to go anyplace to experience. It is the way things actually are. Things are formless. You notice that thoughts come and go? It's hard to catch them. We do, we hang on to them. And that's how we hang on to and create a form. But actually, things arise, and if we watch them closely, we watch our experience closely, things come and go. They pass. No breath, no thought is exactly like the thought before. Even if you've thought that thought before, in this moment, it's not the same. Because the context, the energy of this moment is different. Irreplaceable, unique. So, we're here because we want to experience emptiness.

[37:30]

But we think of emptiness as freedom from the conditioned self. We think of emptiness as the unconditioned self. It's one of the ways it's talked about, unconditioned. And then we think of unconditioned as transparent, angels flying. You know, something out in the sky, the space in which form arises. We think of emptiness that way. Emptiness is this very form. Emptiness is the absolute nature of how things exist. And that's why, really, we're here. We're drawn by the emptiness side of us, our true nature. The lack of solid self, the fact that things are transforming, arising and transforming continuously. Everything is transforming simultaneously with its arising and passing. And that's the meaning of emptiness, one of the meanings.

[38:34]

Thich Nhat Hanh has a wonderful book on this subject, The Heart of Understanding, where he talks about this piece of wood is empty of being a, what do you call this, a little stand, a lectern. Because this is just wood, basically, though it's a tree. And a tree is fundamentally a seed in the ground with all the microorganisms of the ground and of the air and of the sun and the wind and the rain. All the elements of the universe which grew the tree, allowed the tree to grow. And then the person who came and cut it down and hauled it away and milled it and sold it, and the carpenter who put it together. So this lectern is empty because it's completely not separate from everything,

[39:40]

all the elements of the universe and the human society and our human skills. And now it's a part of this event. So it's empty of own being or empty of separate existence. And you can find that in yourself. If you're reading a poem and you're suddenly really moved and you resonate with the poem, and is this the poet's mind, your experience, when we're moved like that, our experience kind of spreads out and encompasses so much. We cannot say it's happening in a specific location. The energy is quiet. It reaches everywhere. I think I've almost completed my talk.

[40:49]

Do we have questions here? Can I read one poem and then you can ask your question? Great. Thank you. Somebody, a 13-year-old girl, did the yoga workshop at Tassajara that we just concluded. Norman Fisher's there now doing another workshop, but we did yoga in Zen last week. And she asked me one evening going to dinner, what is the meaning of life? Just as we were going into dinner, right? So I made an attempt to answer her. And I talked about that at Tassajara, but the next day I was telling Judith because she... No, Judith came to that talk and she said, it's the wrong question. I wish she'd told me that the night before because I really tried to meet this young woman. And what came to me later was, you know, life just is like flowers just are,

[41:53]

and the morning glory is, the rose is. And if nothing, if life doesn't have meaning, then what's the implication for our experience, our activity? And that leads me to this poem, and then you can ask your question. Thank you. And here's, if life doesn't have an overall meaning or purpose, well, we can talk about it in many ways, then everything as it arises has meaning, and has meaning, everything. Nothing is more important than anything else. This is the fundamental axiom of Buddhism, that each moment is the only moment, each moment as it's arising,

[42:56]

and the next moment, and the next moment, and each moment is timeless. Each moment we can realize our unconditioned nature by entering deeply our experience. Through this narrow concentration, non-judgmental concentration on the self, on the experience, we can discover and experience our unconditioned side. So, here's a poem by Merwin, W.S. Merwin, Place. On the last day of the world, I would want to plant a tree. What for? Not for the fruit. The tree that bears the fruit is not the one that was planted.

[43:57]

I want the tree that stands in the earth for the first time, with the sun already going down, and the water touching its roots, in the earth full of the dead and the clouds passing one by one over its leaves. I'll read this again. On the last day of the world, I would want to plant a tree. What for? Not for the fruit. You know, not for something in the future. I don't have expectations of sasen. I don't have expectations of this moment, just this moment. I want to plant a tree, not for the fruit.

[45:02]

The tree that bears the fruit is not the one that was planted. I want the tree that stands in the earth for the first time, with the sun already going down, and the water touching its roots, in the earth full of the dead and the clouds passing one by one over its leaves. Just doing it for its own sake. Just doing one thing that we love for its own sake, not for money or not for recognition. Yes.

[46:07]

Well, first you talked about having, being tired at times, and other times having a lot of energy, and you said, why? And then you said something about, is this related to not feeling connected to things, feeling separate from things? I think we can feel very connected and be tired. I think our energy comes and goes, and there's, if you wanted to make a study of your physical energy and your emotional energy, your psychic energy, you might learn something about what, when you're tired and when you have energy, and you'll notice certain experiences give you energy, and certain experiences you feel your energy drops, you can learn a lot about your own state of body and mind by studying that kind of question.

[48:02]

And that's probably connected to the ego, to the sense of separate self, and your worries and your expectations and your hopes of recognition and love. But I think, anyway, most of the people I know who've been practicing for thirty years or so still get tired. I don't know if that answers your question. Q. I think it's just watching what's going on in your head, and how to use your energy in the most effective way, by watching the sittings. A. Right, and that's why extended sittings are interesting, sashins are helpful, because you watch your energy come and go, and just when you think you've got energy for hours and hours, and when you think you don't have any energy, suddenly there it comes.

[49:06]

I think a lot of this has to do with giving up attachment to a state of body and mind. If we have expectations that this period we're good at, it's coming, I feel it, this is going to be great, I'm going to get it this period, when we have that kind of energy going, there's subtle attachment, expectation, there's subtle clinging, not-so-subtle clinging, that really takes our energy, it stirs up previous experiences of wanting, of whether we're worthy, of what will we do when we get there, when we attain it, all that stuff is very deep in us. Those are the echoes that Kumits was talking about, the mythology, our psychic, conscious and unconscious stuff. So what I've been talking about also is the practice of hitting the cart. You know, there's a story, Buddhism, if you have a horse and a cart and you want the cart to go, do you hit the horse or do you hit the cart?

[50:09]

Have you studied this one? So most of us would say you hit the horse. Suzuki Roshi said we should also hit the cart. And hitting the cart is working with the body. It means bringing our body to the zendo, it means bringing our body to work, going to class whether you feel like it or not. It means going through our life like this, because the way this energy works, the way everything intertwines and connects and interacts and reinforces, stifles or encourages, all of those connections we don't know, they're mysterious. We can't figure them out with our mind. So putting our body in the situation, we allow that work, the wisdom of the body, the wisdom of the mind and body to work without the interference of the conscious mind.

[51:13]

When the conscious mind gets clear, it doesn't want to interfere. Before it gets clear, it wants to interfere and direct. So we practice with the cart. It's very interesting, I'm trying to understand this because Japanese taught us form so strongly, you just do the practice period, you just come to the zendo, they're teaching us form. We're immersed in and enamored with, you know, emotional life, psychological work, psychological work, all that stuff. We don't understand just form for its own sake, but he was teaching us something about the wisdom that we can't do this work consciously, a lot of it, the doing of the work happens on its own. We can put ourselves in the place where the energy can come and go and follow its own meanderings. Questioner 1 – Do you think every individual person has something that they can really

[52:31]

love that brings up all the fears you were saying earlier, if meditation doesn't have something you really love and brings up fears and finds something that does, do you think everybody has something that can make that work for them? Answer – I think you do. It could be sewing, it could be cooking, it could be gardening, it could be working with children. It might have to be cultivated, it might have to be discovered. I was reading about Peter Volkos, the ceramist, who's having an exhibit in Oakland now. He was a painter in his early years and then he had a required class to take, which was ceramics. Once he took that class in ceramics, that was it, he fell totally in love with ceramics

[53:36]

and he's devoted his life to it. So to me that's the art of hitting the cart, because there was a required course in that school, he took that class, and then he discovered something he might not have known about himself. And it may be not in the activity so much, in some resistance, some timidity, some lack of confidence. So the practice of just doing one thing completely over and over again is to meet everything right there. So find that which, maybe you don't even think you love it right now, maybe you wouldn't

[54:40]

talk about it that way, maybe you're sort of lukewarm, but the spirit of it is to find something that engages you. And I don't at all mean to abandon zazen, because I feel like the practice of zazen illuminates and prepares us to meet each moment, each activity. Zazen in itself is liberating, it's formless, it's the practice of watching mind and body transform, it's formless nature. And it also seems to teach us how to enter other moments and other activities with that same zazen mind, zazen body. Yes? I don't quite understand how clarity is different from becoming more conscious, but how is it

[55:51]

different from... Would you say it again? How clarity is different from consciousness, or not allowing the mind to let go? When I say clarity, I mean being conscious. But maybe there's a difference. Being conscious means being present, being aware of what's happening inside and what's happening around you. So maybe you can be clear without totally recognizing all the energy inside and all the energy that's around us. It takes a long time to experience our own energy, to be there for it, to be clear about it, which means not to try to negate it or put it down or praise it, just see it as it

[56:58]

comes and goes, this energy is just coming and going. Takes time to see that about ourselves because we're used to hiding from ourselves, not meeting ourselves or each other directly. Sangha is a wonderful opportunity to see that, oh, I didn't do it that time, didn't make it that time, didn't quite express myself fully on this moment. I think there's going to be another moment. I think I'll have another chance. So I said, the sangha life gives us a chance to go back and to try to just do it, just be there with all the voices inside, all the energies inside, and stay there for that. I don't know if I'm answering or speaking to your question. I was thinking of how you were talking about how your mind reacts right after you do something

[58:08]

and I guess it was just kind of a question. Your question? I don't know. Want to try again? We're not going anyplace. If anybody has to leave. It's hard to do it in public. How do you know, how can you, how can you not, if you're practicing something, how can you not be attached or directing an attempt to practice, and how does that come to you? That's the koan. How to do something completely and at the same time be free of it, not have expectations.

[59:10]

That's your question? Only if you do something completely can you let it go. When you don't do it quite completely you still have some ideas about it, you still have some intentions. If you do it completely, that's beyond what your mind is thinking, devising, expecting. Just go into it and allow the activity itself, the energy itself to interact and to go where it wants to go. You don't know, they're all saying in here, they don't know what they're going to write when they start, they don't know where the poem wants to go. When we sit Zazen, we don't know where Zazen wants to go. We may have an idea of the self we want to meet in Zazen and the self we're going to cultivate in Zazen, but if we just enter the breath, the feeling, the sensation, the perception, the impulse, we don't know where it'll take us. Practice is just following, staying with each thing,

[60:23]

touching it, letting it go, touching it, letting it go. Unless something keeps coming back and sticks around, doesn't go away, then that you go into. Become one with it. This is Zen language. Becoming one with, nothing's left outside. You bring your fear inside, you bring your shame inside, you bring your anger inside, everything, everything's there. Nell says, no opposition. At that moment there's no opposition. Nothing is opposite that moment. It's a wonderful moment when everything begins to cook. Thank you for your question. Yes? Excuse me, how much time do we have? Do we need to quit at a particular time? Maybe one more question.

[61:24]

My question is related to what you were discussing, but you were talking earlier about having compassion for yourself. Having compassion? Extending compassion to yourself. So I've been working on doing that since I was very young, doing it during the day. One of the things that I've noticed is that when I do that, it seems to go off in the back of my body. I remember in the compassionate tradition, I talked a lot about softness, and I noticed it. It seems like, I guess it's that body-mind connection, but it's not as good.

[62:12]

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