So today I'm going to talk a bit about Dogen's teachings on how we support each other and ourselves in community and support the community as a whole. So as some of you may know, part of what I do with my life is I'm a professor at a Buddhist seminary in Berkeley. called the Institute of Buddhist Studies, and we're a part of the Graduate Theological Union. So I teach classes in Zen there, and I also teach classes in ministry, in pastoral care. So I teach Buddhist ministers and Buddhist chaplaincy students. So I was thinking about community and realized that a model that I use for teaching pastoral care also could work for how we actually engage with community.

[01:02]

So I'm going to tell you that model, and then we're going to go over some of Dogen's teachings that I think fit quite well with it. So the model is, and just keep this in your mind, assessment, response, reflection. Assessment, response, So each of these guides our relationships, guides how we move, how we relate to others. And each of them is guided by how we understand the world. What do we think the truth is? Who do we think we are? Who do we think other people are? what is the nature of suffering? What is the nature of the alleviation of suffering? This is what I use a risky word here in Buddhist circles, but the theological basis of our response.

[02:13]

Some people don't like the word theology because theos is God, but I use it anyway. So if you don't like it, forgive me. We'll use it anyway. The central question in understanding what the theological basis is for your response to the world is what guides your understanding of a situation, your assessment, okay? We're making assessments all the time. Any time you step into a room, any time you encounter somebody on the path, Anytime you are trying to help someone, trying to avoid someone, whatever you're doing, you're making an assessment, right? You're saying, this is my understanding of the nature of reality in this moment. So the central question is, what guides your understanding of a situation?

[03:14]

What guides your response to that situation? And how do you understand what arose from that response? Assessment, response, reflection. So let's stop and think about that. What is the basis of our understanding of reality here in this place? Dogen's teachings, right? Buddhist teachings. So the challenge is to actually make that process conscious. Assessment, response, reflection. Make that a conscious process in community. So we're not just bumbling around with one another. We do that anyway because, as the Jodoshin folks say, we're all foolish human beings. We like this. We're all foolish human beings. We swim in delusion. But I thought I'd focus on a few teachings of Dogen that actually inform this process and can, if we consciously cultivate it, deeply inform all of the relationships that we have.

[04:24]

So the first one I want to tell you about may sound a little familiar based on what... You may pick out a word here and there that sounds familiar based on what Shinji was talking about. So just listen. St. Benedict says we should listen with the ear of the heart. He also tells us that we should... Study so much that when we belch, we belch the teachings. Okay? And Dogenzenji tells us that the bones are the sutras. He says this quite explicitly, that we should study. And he says that when we study bones, we study the sutras. And when we study the sutras, we study our bones. So listen with your whole body. That's the kind of listening, and we could go on and on about listening and the skills of listening. But this is the way we listen to the Dharma. It's the way we listen to one another.

[05:25]

It's the way we listen deeply to every situation that we're in in order to understand what is the appropriate response in that moment. What's my best shot? And then as one of my dear teachers who happens to be sitting in the front row here said to me once, do your best and then apologize. Psychology is a very important Buddhist practice. So listen to Dogen. This is from Zenki. Life is, for example, like people sailing in a boat. Although we set sail, steer our course, and pull the boat along, the boat carries us, and we do not exist apart from the boat. By sailing the boat, we make the boat what it is. Study assiduously this very time, okay? At such time, there is nothing but the world of the boat. The heavens, the water, and the shore all become the boat's time.

[06:29]

Hence, I make life what it is. Life makes me what I am. Okay? So stop there. You notice that there's activity involved. So sometimes when we study the teachings of no self, we might think that there's no self or there shouldn't be a self, or there's some problem with the self that we should solve or obliterate. Anybody ever had that misunderstanding? Maybe not. But it's not uncommon. But Dogen Zedji is telling us, we engage completely. And we make the boat. We are one of the particularities of that. So we could say, Tassajara... is, for example, like people running a monastery. Although we set sail, although we follow the schedule, steer our course, pull this place along, Tassahara carries us, and we do not exist apart from it.

[07:41]

This is like a work crew, right? This is how it is when we're on a work crew. There is no work crew except for you. There is no kitchen except for you. There is no dining room except for the guests, except for you, except for the food and the kitchen and the teachers and the zendo. That is it, right? That is it. And that's the way we understand reality. The heavens, the water, the shore, all become the boat's time. The zendo, the kitchen tables, the compost, The flats look great, by the way. Really so neat. Cool. You know, all of that is a part of this time. So part of what I want to say to you is, what happens when you think that way? What happens in your relationships when you actually understand yourself?

[08:42]

Hence, I make life what it is. Life makes me what I am. I make Tassajara what it is. Tassajara makes me what I am. I make this work crew what it is. I make this meal what it is. So this is the Zenki, the dynamic activity that's a part of our life. Then we have the teachings of Buddha nature, right? You all familiar with that term? Since you talked about it yesterday, Buddha nature. Sometimes Buddha nature can be easily understood as a thing, some essential, beautiful aspect of us, right? Perfect, pure. But in the wonderful book on the Buddha nature treatise by Sally King, so listen to this. This is about Buddha nature, it's about the word thusness.

[09:45]

The word for thusness in Chinese ru means like as, like as much, comparing qualities and actions rather than things. Although it does have an ontological quality, thusness refers to how something is rather than what it is. All it means is that things are as they are. As the awakening of faith in the Mahayana says, the word dustness is not a term that has qualities or attributes of being this or that. It is a word by which words are undone. A word that points at our language and indicates what it will not do. Hence, to equate Buddha nature, which she does earlier, with dustness indicates that there is something positive about it. The teachings, the language of emptiness can sometimes sound, not this, [...] right?

[10:51]

Really, really important, because we cling to all these ideas, we have all these ideas about what this is and what that is. And so that language takes away, ultimately, till we realize, if you follow, if you study Nagarjuna, Ultimately, you become intimate with what this is beyond your ideas. Buddha nature language. Buddha nature language is positive language, what's sometimes called apophatic language. Positive language. It says, the Buddha nature treatise says that Buddha nature exists, right? But it exists outside of the categories of existence and non-existence. We want so much for something to be either solid or absent. Right? Want it to be there or not there. But that's not these teachings. Instead, it's Zenki. It's total dynamic working. This is Buddha nature. This is Buddha. So we think, what is this? Hence, to equate Buddha nature with thusness is to indicate that there is something positive about it.

[11:58]

One says that it's real. It exists. But to use the term thusness... serves to remind us that the direction in which our minds begin to move upon hearing the term real and exist will not be totally appropriate. Somewhere else he says, Buddha-nature is the thusness revealed in the dual emptiness of persons and things. Buddha-nature is the thusness revealed in the dual emptiness person, subject and object. So think about this. When we talk about how we interact with one another, if we are really discovering the Buddha nature, which is the dustness revealed by the dual emptiness of you and me, meaning that we're not this fixed, solid thing that we think we are, and neither is the other person. even though we may have known them for years, even though we can hear their footsteps on the Ngāwa and we know exactly who they are.

[13:05]

We know them, but we don't know them. And I think one of the beauties of practicing for any time here at Tassahara is that you really discover the love that exists beyond knowing and not knowing. You may not like somebody, but you love them, right? So we have these ideas of someone. But what is it? What is the action, the appropriate response, when the dual, when the thusness is revealed in that moment, in that time, that time? I make the boat, the boat makes me. Life makes the boat, life makes me, I make life. That dynamic activity, anything is possible in that time. which is this time. So when we think about this, and we think about, we reflect on this, right?

[14:13]

So I said, assessment, response, reflection. When you walk into a situation, when you... hear the wake-up bell when you go into the kitchen, when you come into the dining room, when you visit your parents, when you drive out for the first time after a long time and you're just like, whoa, what is that? What is this other, what I used to call interplanetary travel? If you make life and life makes you, how does that affect how you relate to people? And dogs. and stones. Because as we know, Dogen teaches that sentient beings, all beings, all beings, is Buddha nature, not just people. Sentient, insentient, old, young, every category. So when we have this attitude, when we cultivate this, and I mean this very concretely, when we cultivate this,

[15:22]

Dogen Zanji says in the Mountains and River Sutra. It is Buddha... No, this is actually this Shohaka Okamura discussing Dogen's Mountains and River Sutra. Okamura Roshi says, It is Buddha studying Buddha's way through our practice. And it is Dharma studying Dharma through our study. When we sit, it is not us sitting zazen, but zazen sitting zazen. Our practice is Buddha's life. It is the manifestation of Buddha. Okay? Every day. Every day is that. Every moment is that. There's a kind of vitality that's available to us when we understand that. Does this make sense to everyone? Any questions about that so far?

[16:29]

I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. Every moment is like this. Yeah, not every moment is death. Well, yes, that's true. That was not what I said, but then we get into is it alive or is it dead? Yes. So if we think of the self, if we study the self in this way, if we actually wake up in the morning and make a commitment that that is the way we're going to order our lives, that we're going to recall in every moment that we can in the midst of this, the teachings... Dogen's teachings in Zenki, this understanding of Buddha nature and Buddha studying Buddha's way, we have available to us something to rely on.

[17:37]

We have guidance. We're not just floundering, right? And we make, then, each moment an act of practice. When we assess a situation, we say, oh, total dynamic functioning in this moment. I thought the salad was going to be ready, and it's not. Or, who knows? Well, somebody's having a bad day. Total dynamic functioning. How am I going to respond? And when I make a mistake or something goes well, how am I going to reflect on it? This is a matter of faith. I just finished a book on trust and faith in Soto Zen.

[18:47]

And it arose out of my time here, actually, a long time ago, wondering what works, what works to support me, what works to support others, what works to support community. And what I found when I studied it was that trust was essential. Trust in the teachings, trust in ourselves, trust in an engaged way of life. In Gakuto Yojinshu, Dogen Seiji says, is it imperative for those who practice the way to believe in it? Those who have faith in the way should know for certain that they are unfailingly in the way from the very beginning. Believing in this manner and penetrating the way, practice accordingly. Okay? Pretty simple. Such is the fundamental to learning the way. He later says, Faith is so called when the entire body becomes faith itself.

[19:58]

Faith is one with the fruit of enlightenment. The fruit of enlightenment is one with faith. This is practice realization, right? This is what Shinji was talking about. This is when that practice is realization, not some goal further on down the road. Faith is one with the fruit of enlightenment. The fruit of enlightenment is one with faith. If it is not the fruit of enlightenment, faith is not realized. Faith is the entrance to the ocean of dharma, Indeed, where faith is attained, there is a realization of Buddhists and ancestors. So when we risk actually committing ourselves in this way, that is an act of faith. We're not talking about believing in anything. We're talking about putting your life on the line every morning when you get up to practice total dynamic functioning, to practice seeing all as Buddha,

[21:00]

including yourself, to dive into Buddha practicing Buddhist way. It can sound so abstract, can it? But it's really not. It's not abstract. It's up to us. We have to take responsibility for making this not abstract. If we don't enact this, it's not real. It's just ideas. Nice ideas. Maybe soothing ideas. Maybe daunting ideas. Maybe I'm, oh, me practicing Buddha's way. This is where remembering that we're all fish swimming in delusion can sometimes help foolish human beings. But if we don't make it concrete in all of the moments of our day, then it's not alive. It's not real. Okay? This is the nature of our commitment.

[22:03]

This is... There's three other steps that I want to talk about, three other dimensions. One is Kanno Doko, Responsive Communion. So Dogen talks about this in relationship between... student and teacher, but I think we can think about it in relationship to other people in our lives. What is the feeling of responsive communion? This is Zenki. This is dynamic functioning. This is you and I meet each other and create each other together. We are totally dependent on one another. We are not, you know, separate entities coming. We are born of relationship, the self is born of relationship, and it never leaves relationship, ever.

[23:07]

So, this intimacy, this intimacy is the nature of our relationships. This responsive communion If you're in the middle of an argument with someone and you remember responsive communion, that might be terribly inconvenient. You might have to apologize. You might have to go away and think. Right? You might have to take a deep breath. You might have to let go of your ideas. But it creates a different atmosphere. When we handle carrots as Buddha, like the Tenzo Kyokan teaches us to do, There's a feeling in the room that's different than when we're just hacking away. That's why we handle things with such care. Not because it's good for us, that's true, but because this glass is generously giving to me the capacity to drink out of it.

[24:16]

This is gratitude. Thank you. That's a certain kind of relationship, isn't it? Different relationship than this. That's why you set knives down in the kitchen instead of tossing them. That's why we care for the different composts. Because this is the world that we want to create. And heaven knows we need it, don't we? We really, really need it. So all of this is not abstract. It's actually quite concrete. if we take the responsibility to make it so. This responsive communion, this Buddha, bringing Buddha alive, remember Buddha not as some special entity, but life itself. When we do this, a spirit of what Dogen Zenji calls Fue, not knowing, is central, Fue, F-U-E, Fue.

[25:24]

So not knowing is not cluelessness, right? It's a stance of curiosity, openness, willingness, beginner's mind, we might say, humility, willingness to be taught by the Buddha that's standing in front of you, by the Buddha you're sitting on. The other thing that we cultivate is the spirit of fearlessness. There's a wonderful book called Bringing Zen Home that Paul O'Reilly wrote. Are you all familiar with this book? It's beyond good.

[26:26]

And she's beyond good. She's great. She studied in Nagoya with Ayayama Roshi, woman, very famous woman Roshi. And then she spent a number of years with Japanese lay women to study their practice, their ritual practices, and wrote this beautiful book about, it's called, Brings in Home the Healing Heart of Japanese Women's Rituals. And it gives us a view... of Zen practice that is really important for us right now. And one of the things she describes is ten principles of healing. Healing meaning, healing in this is remembering, remembering the nature, our nature of interconnectedness. When suffering is isolation, fear, despair. Right?

[27:28]

Being out of community, out of relationship. Healing is, not everything's okay and I'm hunky-dory, but healing is remembering that we're in relationship, we are of relationship. John Muir said, when you pick up anything, you find out it's hitched to everything else in the universe. Right? John Muir Roshi said that. But Dhyan Deji says, we are that hitchedness. That's who we are, is that hitchedness. So when we remember that, suffering eases. We may still be grieving, we may be in pain, we may have a broken leg, we may have lost a job, all of these things. But when we remember hitchedness in our world, suffering is eased. So... Kito-sensei, one of the women in this book, who most of the people, most of the women are lay women.

[28:31]

This is Soto Zen-nan. She says you have to have Fudo heart. Do you all know who Fudo is? Yes. Fudo is a bodhisattva. Fudo is, he has a lasso. And he is bound and determined that you're going to practice. And if you try and crawl away, he will get this lasso. And he has flames, shooting flames, and very fierce kind of looking person. So he's the embodiment of stability, and he's strong enough to overcome any obstacle to compassion. That's what he wants. That's what he's lassoing you into. So Kito-sensei says, you have to have fudo heart. In order to do this practice, you have to have Fudo heart, an accepting heart, a fearless heart, a heart of stability.

[29:34]

So the Bodhisattva gives many things, but one of the things that the Bodhisattva gives is fearlessness. So when we give fearlessness to ourselves, we're able to look at ourselves clearly. without judgment. I screwed up there. Time to apologize. That went well. Time to learn. Falls down, gets up. Falls down, gets up. Food of heart can see clearly, can accept, has the stability and the kindness. One of the other wonderful, maybe it might have been, it was Uma Mara-san in Hirsut. I know that I am healed when I am kind. I know that I am healed. In other words, I know that I have remembered my true nature. I know that I have remembered my dignity as an embodiment of life itself, of this total dynamic working when I am kind.

[30:40]

And, she says, kindness is, you have to be strong to be kind. It's easy to be mean, it's just it's hard to be kind. So this is this, this kind of fearless stability, this ability to see things as they are, is fudohar. And I want to read you something that Saigiri Roshi said about this. Mine. Okay. It's called Trust, Realization in the Self and Sotos in Buddhism. So I'll send a copy down to the library. It's an academic book, so a little, I don't know. Anyway. So listen to what Katagiri Roshi has to say. If I hear the heart, everybody, you'll wait. Along with giving the Dharma, giving fearlessness is very important, particularly if we are practicing a spiritual life.

[31:49]

Through understanding the structure of human existence, right? So the self is a way that we organize reality. That's it. No big deal. Nothing fancy. It's a way we organize our experience. It's mutable. It's ephemeral. It's relational. Okay? So he says, Through understanding the structure of human existence philosophically and psychologically and through directly experiencing human life, we can build up perfection of character. This does not mean being perfect. It means food of heart. A person's character must be perfectly beautiful, allowing us to be generous, tolerant, compassionate, kind, and strong. Perfection of character is something that makes us free from human suffering, even though we are in the midst of it. Our presence is very important for all sentient beings, whoever we are. If our life wobbles and is shaky, it is very difficult to be present from moment to moment.

[32:57]

So we must be stable when we are around people. Now, if there's any place that I can think of where you're around people a lot, it's here, right? You work with people. You sit with people. You often go to the bathroom where people can hear you. You sleep next door to people. The walls are thin. You're on a crew. You know, people, people, people. A lot. The guests. Everybody. Our presence is very important for all sentient beings. If our life wobbles and is shaky, it is very difficult to be present from moment to moment. So we must be stable when we are around people. We cry, we struggle, we despair, and we have many difficult experiences. But those experiences inspire us and encourage us to live in peace and harmony. This is why we can practice the giving of dharma and fearlessness. Okay? So this futa heart means the capacity to be still and be present with our own experience and with other people's experience.

[34:05]

To be still and present, even when we're wobbling, even when we're in despair, even when we're having difficulties. And in that way we live in harmony. Now you notice in harmony there are many different notes, right? It's not just one note. And sometimes harmony doesn't even sound like harmony. Like when we're chanting sometimes and things don't, everybody doesn't sound the same. That's okay. I hope I'm not bothering the Eno with this, but that's okay. I'm probably one of those people who's... Yeah. And you know what? A lot of times in Japan, they don't have the same sense of harmony that we do. So, anyway, think of harmony as a big field. So we want to practice the sense of assessment, response, and reflection based in these teachings, based in...

[35:07]

self as Zenki, as Buddha, as Das-ness. This dignified activity of a Buddha that Shinshu was talking about yesterday is this remembering. When we remember that, it's like sitting up straight in Zazen, you know? We remember who we are. There's dignity in that. We walk down the path with Gashou, yeah? Take up our task with a sense of a devotion, real heartfelt devotion. because there's nothing else. It's easier to remember that here. The vulture is all over the place, right? It's easier to remember that when we have a kind of stillness. So we remember ourself as Zenki, Buddha nature, Buddha studying Buddha's way. We cultivate consciously and remember to cultivate this spiritual sense of responsive communion with every being.

[36:09]

Our beds, our clothes, our every being. Responsive communion. And not knowing, kind of, whoa, okay, that's who you are now. And fearlessness. So we ask ourselves in every interaction to cultivate these things. with curiosity about what is this great faith that's required? What is the activity of faith or the body and breath of faith? What is that? What is that? When we're frightened, what is that? When we feel like, whoa, I just heard the Dharma and it's freaking me out a little bit. Right? Jeffrey Hopkins says in... emptiness yoga, he said, you really, when you study the teachings, the emptiness teachings, you might get so agitated that you have to get up and walk around and turn on the television set.

[37:17]

Well, there's no television sets here, so you're kind of stuck with it in this valley, which can be quite, you know, it should be. You know, the Dharma is meant to challenge us. The Dharma is meant to, the self is how we organize reality and These teachings are meant to change us, right? So we're asking ourselves, we're challenging ourselves, we're supporting ourselves to really transform the base of who we are and how we understand reality. So we have to have kindness, fearlessness, sense of not knowing, curiosity, and above all, sense of trust and faith. So I wrote down some things that I thought would be some of the elements that I thought of about life at Tassajara. Heat, okay? How do you practice with heat in the summer?

[38:18]

Cold in the winter, but this is the summer. And Shincho and I live in Capitola, which is right on the ocean. So we're not used to this at all. What happens when it's a biting fly season comes? I heard it just left. Our timing was perfect. What about being in close quarters with other human beings? The dust. Not so bad now, but by August it gets pretty dusty, right? How do you respond to throwing open the gates? A gas season. The first summer I was here, one of my... friends, my fellow Tongario students, spent the entire first month hiding in doorways. Because he was like, whoa, who are all these people? There was a lot fewer of us then. We seemed to be, felt more outnumbered, I think.

[39:21]

Because it's a big change. So what happened? Where is that spirit of gratitude, of generosity, of Buddha? I was head of the office one summer, and by the end of August, I was so tired of telling people how to light a lantern. You know, I don't know how much you've been, I don't know about electricity here and everything, but how do you do that with a fresh mind all the way through to the end of the summer? Curiosity, who is this Buddha before me? What is their life? How are they healing when they come here? How are they remembering who they are when they enter this valley? Because believe me, many, many people are healed here. When you're cleaning toilets, right? Toilet after toilet after toilet after toilet, day after day after day. How do you bring a fresh mind to that? How is that fue? How is that responsive communion? Serving people in the dining room, right?

[40:24]

I never worked on the serving cruise, so I don't know what it was like, but boy, was I appreciative of the people that did. It's hard work. It's noisy. lots of people. Kitchen, time pressure, close quarters, what we used to call lettuce hell. Taking care of this place, repairing, gardening, chasing the blue jays out of the upper shack or the Bad lunch area, right? A lot better than it used to be. Don't get me started. People, people, people. I used to work in hospitals, and I would say, you know, this would be a great job except for the patients. So I'm like, oh, wouldn't it be nice if I was out in a cave somewhere?

[41:33]

I didn't have to deal with any people, but this is the petri dish that grows us as bodhisattvas, that grows our Buddha mind. And I just can't emphasize this enough. It happens every single moment, every single interaction, every single job. So it's very, very concrete. So I encourage you to take responsibility and make a commitment. I've been reading, I was introduced recently to Howard Thurman, not Robert Thurman, Howard Thurman. Are any of you familiar with his work? He was the pastor at the Church of All Human Beings, founder of the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco. Really amazing African-American theologian. Christian theologian, and I was very struck by something that he wrote about this, about this kind of commitment and care for our practice in every dimension of our lives.

[42:49]

The secret is to be able to want one thing, to seek one thing, to organize the resources of one's life around a single end. And slowly, surely, the life becomes one with that end. Okay? This is what he calls the essence of discipline. Now, remember Brother David came here years ago, and he talked about discipline, and he defined it so beautifully that I really love it. Discipline comes from the word disciple. And disciple comes from the word people. And what he said was, a disciple is someone who's so close to their teacher that they can see themselves in the pupil of the teacher's eyes. Now, he said for him, this was Jesus Christ, right? So what is it for us? What are we disciples of? And to follow what you love, he said, is discipline.

[43:55]

So this is the kind of commitment that Howard Thurman is talking about. This is the essence of discipline. Commitment structures a life, giving it internal and particular order. The total inner landscape becomes altered by a central emphasis. So when you reflect, you can remember, what is this to me? How do I want to live this day? How do I want to live this summer? How do I want to take all my responsibilities in this community? How do I want to support other people? What is that commitment, that commitment that is so ordering the rest of your days? So I'm suggesting that these very central teachings of Dogen Zenji can articulate, help us articulate what that commitment is. And I think just as he says, the body and this is faith.

[44:57]

Faith is that profound orientation to this life, this day, is about this. I'm going to live this out. It's not a noun, it's a verb. Faith is a verb. It's about what our practice is, the body and breath of faith. This moment, in this person, when I want to scream, when I want to run away. when I want to fall in love, whatever it is, right? So this is this commitment, and when we study and we do this practice of assessment, meaning how do I see this world that I'm a part of? How do I see this? What world? And to ask yourself, what world do I want to inhabit? Do I want to inhabit a world that's where I'm contributing to anger? Is that what I want to add to this world? Or do I want to live in a world in which I'm contributing generosity, kindness, patience, the virtues?

[46:05]

So what is that? What is your assessment? What world do you want to live in? And then this is what's in front of me. How am I going to respond to dirty dishes that should have been rinsed? to the fact that somebody's sick and I need to do double duty, or that I'm having a blissed-out day because it's only 80 degrees, or whatever. You see, how am I going to respond? We say, what is the whole of a Buddhist teaching? An appropriate response. What is an appropriate response? That response of communion. That response of communion. And then we'll reflect. We take time in our days to pay attention to how it went. And we do this so that what becomes alive is the Dharma becomes alive in guiding every aspect of our time together.

[47:12]

And I think I'll stop there. So we have another 10 minutes or so. Is that right? So questions, comments? Yes. Or reverse. Whoever was first. Go ahead. I'm really interested in this responsive communion idea. You talked a lot about appropriate response. Yeah. And I asked this question, I suppose, out of my clinical psychology training. So with an awareness of how much stuff comes up in an interaction. I just want to interrogate and understand more about the appropriate response. So, in a situation, there's likely to be, in a relational situation, there's likely to be my own emotional efforts. There can be my history, there can be unconscious factors.

[48:15]

I might feel a pull to do or say something in particular from the other person because of what's happening with them. That may be what they really need, but it may not be the wisest choice. There's a whole bunch of stuff going on. You betcha. And it's... What I find is that most of the time, oh, let's say a large portion of the time, I will either give them what they want or I can see if they want, or I will act out of my own affect. And neither of those feel very skillful. Some of the time, somehow, I will touch something, I will act or respond out of something which feels much more skillful than the point of reflection. And I really want to know, how do I... What is that? How do I strengthen that? And it's this question. Yeah, I think you're doing it. Because first of all, you never know what the other person wants or needs. You can only make your best guess, right? And an appropriate response as foolish human beings is always approximate. And sometimes we don't know, you know, stuff, right? Response will come and we'll go, where the hell did that come from?

[49:17]

I don't know, you know? So this deep, deep listening to this, to the circumstance, to oneself, to to this without becoming too precious, okay? And to remember your role, right? So if you're a clinical psychologist, you've got one role. If you're a person's buddy at work, you've got another role. If you're, you know, so we are in this soup together, but we listen to the whole as deeply as we can, as sensitively with this fu-e. This is fu-e, this is not knowing. And out of that, we do our best as an appropriate response. And then we reflect on it, and if needs be, we do our best and then apologize, like Leslie said. Or we're always learning and growing. We're always, you know, we're always being transformed. And that's what we want, right?

[50:17]

So I think, for me, I find in a professional context it's easy to listen deeply and respond. holding the other person and then outside of that I might just be opposite. It's quite hard to hold that in your stage where you are compassionate to them but also to them. Absolutely. This is really important. You never, you know, I say sometimes there's a circle of concern and we'll have a gap where we exist. That doesn't work. That does not work. It's like a scene. Yeah. If you... If you look at this book, Bringing Zen Home, one of the healing principles is caring for yourself. Having joy, taking care of yourself physically, getting enough sleep, enough nutrition. That's a variable, right? If you're in sashaying, you're not going to say, excuse me, I have to get nine hours sleep tonight. And then you can question, what is that deepest care? I mean, really, it's for our vow, right? But we have to always understand that we're humans, we have needs, we have desires, they're not eliminated.

[51:26]

They are, as Dogen said, he says, a flower of emptiness. We care for these flawed flowers of emptiness. So that's what I mean by listening. So we never eliminate ourselves from the circle of concern. Yeah, me too. Me too. Yeah. Did you make a distinction between trust and faith, or were you making a quote? Well, I'm using trust in a very specific way. I mean, one of the things I do in this book is really talk about different meanings of trust and what that means. But the word shin, S-H-I-N, not mind character, not the mind character. It's another word. It's another character. has been translated as trust, faith, and confidence, right? And Ujjama Roshi has a very interesting way in which he discusses a shift in how that character is understood so that we actually understand Shin as our practice, as the living of our practice is faith, right?

[52:40]

So is this Buddha practicing Buddha's way? is Shin. And Rinzai, Linshi, also talks about Ji Shin, which is self-confidence, the character for Ji, self, and Shin, confidence. But he's not talking about self-confidence like, I can do it. It's the confidence of the self that knows itself to be none other than this moment. So it's a different meaning of Shin. But the journey of faith often starts with faith in the practice. This makes sense to me. I'm hurting and this makes sense to me, right? I don't know why. I remember when I first started studying Dogen, I couldn't understand anything. But something said, this guy's on to something. So you can spend your life studying him.

[53:43]

trying to live this practice. And then, slowly, we begin to have a smell for what it means to actually live fate, live shin. Sometimes then we fall down. Yes? How come kindness is not totally our nature, and we have to develop our fate of our kindness? Well, it depends on what you say your nature is. Our nature is this dynamic activity. Our nature is the compassionate expression of the Buddhists and ancestors. That's our nature, right? Kindness is our nature. Well, this is delusion, right? We're foolish human beings, and we are mostly... What was it I read? Kaguya Hiroshi said... Oh, I wish I had that quote with me, but I don't. It's in here somewhere. Most of the time we're pretty ignorant and crazy, right?

[54:46]

So this is what Kanika Roshi says. And how do we live with that? I can't give you a philosophical explanation for why delusion exists. Mostly what we do in Zen practice, as I'm sure you know, is we say, wise? I don't know about wise. We can do a lot. of worrying about whys. How is our life? How? Kindness does not seem to be available to me right now. How? Right? I think it was Rev said once, why questions are like children's questions. How question is our question. So why we're not kind is the same as saying why are we deluded? We can make up stories about that. I think And that could be interesting, philosophical discussions. But personally, I think our time is better spent studying the Dharma in order to deepen our practice, don't you? One last question, anybody?

[55:56]

Okie dokie. I hope you all have a wonderful summer. I hope you remember yourselves together as long as you're here.

[56:28]

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