I vow to taste the truth of the Tathagata's words. Somehow I was, for the last few days, kind of worried about giving this Dharma talk because it's actually rare to give a talk to just the, or for the most part, just the residents. And I wasn't finding the time to really prepare the way I wanted to. And the more I began, the more I felt this way, the more kind of upset I got that I didn't,

[01:01]

that the talk wouldn't meet the spirit of the group that was coming to listen to the talk. And the more I thought that, the more serious I got. And then I remember Red's talk from a couple of weeks ago about not taking yourself too seriously, which was, kind of helped me to just relax and just realize that it is rare that we get to talk to each other like this. And is there anything that I would really like to talk about? Kind of just get down to the basics. Is there something I want to talk about? And I realized there are a couple of things. But I wanted to start out by saying kind of what my day was like today, so you kind of know. Got up in Sazen and went down to the fields. Left work a little early to get back up to the house to make, to wake the kids, get them ready for school, make two bag lunches and two breakfasts, get in the car, drive the kids to school,

[02:07]

dropping them off elementary school, then high school, then back. Staff meeting all morning. And then Wednesdays, the elementary schools get out early now for teachers to work, so back over the hill right after lunch for 1.45 pickup. But when I got to the car, I left the lights on, so the battery was dead. So then I ran to my neighbor Lee, got his keys, got in his car, drove over the hill in his car, came back, got the batteries, the clamps, what do they call them? The jumper cables. We jumped the car and got ready, and then Una, wherever she is, took, picked up Sarah at high school, took Dave to soccer back over the hill. And I went to practice committee and spent the afternoon practice committee meeting, and then right after practice committee, I got back in the car and I went over the hill to pick Davey up at soccer, and the soccer coach had a lot to say,

[03:12]

and the parents, and so soccer practice ended much later. We got back here, I think it was about 6.30, 6.35. They hadn't eaten, so then I threw together some leftovers upstairs to eat because I didn't have time to come down. And then, and then what? And then, oh yes, I have a lecture. I'm giving a Dharma talk tonight. I've got to get ready for Dharma talk. So, and it's kind of been that way. It's the first day of school, you know, the other day. So there's been a lot going on. And even with that, I was able to distill at least a few things that I want to say, and then maybe we could talk together the way Norman did the other time where you actually talked with each other. Didn't ring a bell, however, but we'll see. So Captain Hook in the story Peter Pan,

[04:15]

you all remember Captain Hook, he had those corkscrew curls, and he was very well educated, educated in the finest schools in England. And one of the things that they brought up all the time to the young boys in England was about form, good form. To have good form was like, and to have bad form was very bad, and good form was really like wonderful. And he had bad form, Captain Hook did. And Peter Pan, on the other hand, had, it says in the book, good form. And I remember as a kid thinking, what are they talking about? No one had ever even used the word good form, bad form, as a praise or something to be working towards. It was this English thing. I remember asking, what are they talking about? And reading the book over several dozen times over the years, plus Zen practice, I got a sense of what it is, because the truest good form is not knowing that you have good form,

[05:18]

which was really Peter Pan. He was not conscious of trying to have good form. He was naturally this way, which had to do with, for example, when he was fighting with Captain Hook on the boat, at a certain point Captain Hook's weapon got dropped, and he had tripped, I guess, and Peter Pan gave him a hand up to get his weapon, because it was unfair to get your man while he's down. And Captain Hook thought to himself, there it is, it's good form. He just killed him, because it so naturally came out of Peter Pan. I think his final thought as he fell over into the water and the crocodile ate him was the fact that Peter Pan had good form. Oh, no, the last thing he did, this is it,

[06:18]

the last thing that happened between Peter Pan and Captain Hook was that Peter Pan exhibited bad form. He was a little bit nasty right at the end, and so he went happily to the crocodile to have seen, which was probably bad form, but to have seen Peter Pan exhibit bad form that he could rest in peace. Sorry. So I realized that for a long time I've been drawn to form and devoted to form or tried to be devoted to form and examine it, examine what this is about. Another story is when I first came to Zen Center and the Susan Zen Center was at Sokoji in Japantown, I was a guest student and there were these Victorians across the street

[07:20]

in little households and they made dinner, each little Victorian flat made dinner, and I remember walking into the kitchen and seeing two people, the woman's name was Joyce, can't remember the person's name, they had been at Tassajara, and they were chopping onions, and I remember I went, I looked, and it was like I had never seen such activity. It was like, what is it that I'm looking at? And all they were doing, what they were doing was chopping onions, but that's all they were doing. They were completely chopping onions, quietly working away, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was, I don't know if my jaw dropped open, but my mental jaw just dropped open. It was almost like, what are they doing? What are these people doing? What is the difference between my mother chopping onions away in the kitchen that I had seen and what they were doing? So it always, it hit me at that time.

[08:26]

So I wanted to talk a little bit about our relationship with form. You know, in some ways we don't say as much as we could about it, about how to do a certain thing. We expect that people, that it works better if people kind of pick it up, you know, kind of get a feel for it, you know. So like orioke practice, when I first was given orioke instruction, it was without words. You just followed along whatever the person was doing. You tried to just do it with your body and get into it that way. And then we adopted more instruction. Now we talk a lot. But there's a lot of things we don't say to each other. And then years go by, and I know sometimes it feels like, well, is this practice lost? Are we not doing this anymore?

[09:34]

Like, you know, bowing before you go into the bathroom and bowing when you come out of the bathroom. Is that something we mention to people, guest students? I actually don't know. Is that something we're all doing? Is that something some of us do have been to Tassajar and some of us don't? So on a Sunday it's hard to talk about these kinds of things, or it may sound weird to a group of people who just come on a Sunday morning. But I feel for the community to look at the forms that are arbitrary in some way, that are created, that are not some kind of divine revelation, that are human beings teaching other human beings to try to do something a certain way, like cut onions without talking, for example, or feeling the heft of the knife and how it goes through and getting a rhythm going.

[10:35]

What is that all about? So we, in some ways, we don't, everybody chafes kind of sometimes at the forms, having to do things a certain way. Why can't we just do it any old way? And this came up recently in the study that I'm doing with Rev. Gary McNabb about the forms. And in the Dharma Transmission Ceremony, which we're looking at what goes on in the ceremony, there's certain parts of the ceremony where the regular forms that you've been doing for 20 years are changed. Within the ceremony, as part of the ceremony,

[11:36]

there's something that you do a little differently that you never would do on a regular basis. But because for all these years, let's say, one has taken up the forms and devotedly worked on them and upheld them, then at a certain point, you can throw it away and try something else. But if you haven't devoted yourself to the form and completely immersed yourself in it for a long time, but you want to throw it away or try something different just for the... because... for no reason particularly, then you have to be very careful there. Now, at the last Seshin, in fact, the last couple Seshins that Norman's done, he's done various things that were like surprises,

[12:39]

like bringing music into the Sendo for the last sitting to end the Seshin with this Sweet Honey in the Rocks singing Seven Day Kiss, you know. That was the first time that a Seshin that I ever sat ended that way. And it was great. And then this last one, you ended it with A Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, who had passed away during Seshin, and we ended it with that. So my feeling is that's kind of out of devotion and upholding the forms and studying them and practicing with them for years and [...] being so intimate, you can do something like that that's very... that just turns it around and it's within. So it's not exactly that it's got to be this rigid kind of thing always and forever, but the... the flexibleness or the creativity with the forms comes out of, I feel,

[13:43]

needs to come out of thoroughly immersing your body and mind in the forms. So... And then, like any of it, you throw it away when it's beneficial, you know. So the two areas that I wanted to talk about were speech and food. And, you know, I was reading the Vasudhi Maga, you know, this 5th century work, it's about this thick, about various meditation practices and monks' practices in India. And there's this list of various ascetic practices around food. For example, one can take these on, you don't have to, but you can be a house-to-house alms receiver.

[14:44]

And they have these various names where you make a practice of going from house to house and not going to certain areas of a village and not other areas, which is a general rule, but you take it on where you... It's in quite detail where you stand there, you don't step in the house, you give the bowl away and you let them put food in and bring it back to you, you don't save any until later, you eat what's offered, you don't sit there, you don't sit down and wait for them to bring you the food. All these practices that you can take on. And I remember someone not too long ago told me that they were doing a one-scoop practice at mealtime, which, the way that the person said it, it sounded like I should know about this, that this was one of our Green Gulch practices. But I don't know, maybe you know about this one-scoop practice. I didn't really, I had never heard of it. But basically she was taking one scoop only of everything,

[15:48]

and that was it, that was her practice. So it really reminded me of some of these very old ascetic practices that one can take on for a time to see what happens, see what happens when you decide you're going to try something that may mean you refrain from doing something a habitual way. So this was one thing I thought people might want to talk to each other about, but maybe not. I think our practice around food is very individual, and yet I feel like there's some things that maybe aren't said about it. For example, and this comes out of doing one thing at a time,

[16:51]

which is a kind of general, you know, kind of a Zen guideline. You know, you do, you take care of one thing at a time, that which is before you. So in that way, I should preface this by saying, I want to be very careful that people don't, and I can't help it if they do, but anyway, start thinking of me as a policewoman, which somebody once called me at Tassajar when I was the Ino. They said, you policewoman. They were trying to, what was it? Oh, I remember, it was student bath, and this guest didn't want to leave the baths during student bath time, and I had to ask him to leave, and ask him to leave more forcefully.

[17:53]

And anyway, by the end of that, he called me a policewoman. I had robes on and stuff. But anyway, I can feel, as soon as I begin talking about this, there's something gets kind of constitulated, like policewoman, or I don't want to listen to you, or authority figure telling me how to eat, you know, like that. So if that happens, that's okay. There's nothing I can do about it, except try to be very careful about how I talk about these things. Anyway, so basically, I think the practice, you might say, is if you're not in the Zen Do, which we don't offer Zen Do meals, except during one-day sittings and sessions and practice period, to actually sit down while you're eating. I don't know if anyone's ever mentioned that, but as a practice, rather than kind of standing up and eating, and coming to work meeting, and walking around and eating,

[18:56]

to actually take the time to sit there and eat, which actually I think the food, actually probably your digestion might be better that way as well, but not for any health reasons or anything, but mostly coming out of the form of doing one thing at a time. Now, someone could say, yeah, doing one thing, and standing and eating, that's one thing at a time too. But to take, to give the time that you eat and the full respect and honor, because what happens to this food is it goes into you, to be transmuted into Zazen energy and your energy to live for the benefit of all beings. So the Bodhisattva vow, and basically Buddhist practice distilled down,

[19:59]

you might say, is to wish that all beings may be exposed to the Buddhist teaching and be awakened, and to live and to benefit others. So when we eat, and our chant, which I wish we could actually wish in the evening we chanted, or at a time when, I'm not at breakfast, we do chant at breakfast, but I miss chanting with the community, the meal chant, which reminds us about this. But anyway, to have some practice where you actually take the time to eat, because the food, as Philip Whelan once said, the food is the Dharma, that's all it is. Now, Philip's food practice is a koan for some people, but he spoke very strongly about food is Dharma, that's what it is.

[21:01]

So I don't feel like our practice is one scoop, unless you want to take that on. But if we could sit down while we eat, there are occasions when you're in the kitchen and you're working and you have to grab a bite or something. So that's one thing about food. How's that feel so far? It's okay. It's okay? Thanks, Lee. Let's see, the other thing, and this was something that Suzuki Roshi mentioned, which made a big impression on me, which was to lift the chairs up when you move them. I remember the dining room at Page Street, we used to have to clear it for various meetings and things,

[22:08]

and the dining room was right above the zendo, and if you scraped, oh, for dinner, setting the table, if you scraped the chairs, if you were sitting five o'clock, you could hear all this noise and clatter above you. And at one point it was suggested that we lift the chairs when we move them. And that, of course, spilled over into all sorts of other things, that if you lift them and place them down, there's something about using two hands, just like in orioke, you use the left and the right side to lift things, to develop that, whichever side it is for you, that undeveloped side, you can always just lift a cup or a bowl with one hand, but to actually get that left hand in there and do both together, that's something very awakening about, you kind of awaken your whole left, if you're right-handed,

[23:08]

left side that isn't called upon so much, so you get to feel what that's like and sit it down. So orioke brings that up. But moving our chairs quietly... That's all I'll say about the chairs. Now Shantideva actually mentions chairs. Shantideva wrote Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life. He's an 8th-century poet, and Norman did a class on his Bodhicharyavatara, last practice period, Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, and in this text he talks about not moving chairs around noisily. So this has been a problem for a long time. But isn't that great, in the year 800 or whatever it was, 758, 8th-century, 700s, that someone, for your bodhisattva practice, to live for the benefit of all beings,

[24:10]

to lift your chair up and set it down quietly. He also says, I didn't bring it, but he said... It has to do with mindfulness and being awake. He also mentions not kind of gazing off and sort of drawing in the sand aimlessly with a stick. So you can kind of picture this monk who's kind of waiting to go on his rounds, kind of passing the time by kind of aimlessly drawing in the earth. And this kind of... Now, what's the problem with drawing in the earth? There isn't. It has to do with kind of the aimless, unconscious kind of blah-blah activity. And you can test yourself. Is that a benefit to anybody, you know, to self or others or not? You can always ask yourself that.

[25:11]

Which goes into this other thing that I wanted to talk about. That was just a little tiny bit about food. But I thought if we did talk together, you might want to talk with each other about one's food practice or not. We'll see. The other thing was about speech and... Let's see. I happened to be at my parents' and I was visiting my mother quite a bit in the spring. We don't have a TV, but they do, my folks do, and I happened to watch this movie called Little Lord Fault Leroy. You've all heard of Little Lord Fault, right? But do you know the story of Little Lord Fault Leroy? Very hard to say. I didn't know it either, but he was... Fault Leroy. Little Lord Fault Leroy, right. How many of you have ever seen that movie? Cecil B. DeVille, I think? No. The book we read.

[26:15]

Did you read the book? Martha read the book. We read the book. The movie was very delightful and it was this kid who had this English accent. His dad came from England anyway. And he lives in Brooklyn and he dresses in these nice little outfits. But the main thing about him that I want to bring up is that he uses kind speech all the time. And it's not Pollyanna-ish. He actually appreciates people and treats them a certain way. Even the bullies, you know, he kind of wants a fair fight and that kind of thing. He has... kind of like Peter Pan. He's got good form. And it's very unselfconscious. And he's very unafraid. And he ends up... His grandfather... His father has died and his grandfather is the lord of this manor. And he sends for him to become the heir. And his grandfather is a terrible person, very mean to all the peasants on the land,

[27:15]

and his dogs he's mean to, and his butler, and Little Lord... Thank you. Doesn't know anything about that he's kind of a rascal, this man. And he just goes in there and comes up and says, Grandfather, I'm so glad to meet you. And the guy's taken aback because nobody's glad to meet him. He's a jerk, you know. But this little kid is just kind of fearless, interested, out there, curious. And he ends up, of course, turning his grandfather around. He begins to treat his tenants well and so forth. But just watching how the effect... I mean, this is Hollywood, right? But the effect of kind speech, how it can turn someone to be spoken to kindly, especially when you expect someone to speak unkindly to you. Galen gave me this interesting book,

[28:16]

and it was about solutions to difficulties people have that are kind of brief, not interventions exactly, but just solutions, a way of talking about someone's problems. And I wanted to mention one which had to do with someone telling their friend that a storekeeper was just the most obnoxious, rude, and horrible person. Whenever they went into the store, they just couldn't stand them. And they really wanted to tell them off and have somebody tell them the kind of person he was. And then about two weeks later, these two friends were talking again, and the person said, I went into that store, and that guy was so nice to me. And did you talk with him? He said, yeah, I told him that you thought he was the nicest guy around. So, I thought that was pretty interesting. One wants to live up to that.

[29:19]

You hear someone thinks you're really kind, and you say you might find you try to cultivate that more. If someone tells you you're a jerk, you might say, oh, yeah, well, you should see what a jerk's like. Or I don't know. But I do feel there's this effect of kind speech that even to, and this is, I think it's Dogen, but even to hear somebody else use kind speech with another person affects you very strongly. So, with that in mind, the strong effect of kind speech and not using harsh speech, and the fact that the Bodhisattva lives for the benefit of all beings, and their strongest vow and wish is that people will be benefited. So then it's like when you apply that to your speech,

[30:26]

what you're going to say, you may decide you don't need to say that, or maybe you're going to say it a little different way, or I was recently at a soccer game, and something happened. Let's see, how do I say this carefully? Anyway, something happened with the coach, and one of the parents got really kind of up in arms, and they began describing how they felt about it, and, you know, we should do this, we should write a strong letter, and then they went over to somebody else, and they repeated the whole thing. I happened to hear it a second time, and then I was somewhere else, and they repeated it again, and then they repeated it again, and then today when I went to the soccer practice, they were repeating it again, this whole thing about the same points, about writing a strong letter, and da-da-da, we should vote with our feet, and we should, we did say we should vote with our feet, Anyway, I was kind of trying to examine

[31:32]

what it was about hearing this over and over and over and over again, that, how I was feeling, you know, when I heard it, and one of the other things that Shantideva talks about is that a bodhisattva does not have frivolous talk and idle chatter, frivolous talk and idle chatter, so I think there is an effect, a certain, I was feeling drained, that's when I kind of examined how I was feeling when I heard this, it was a refrain, I guess, it was over and over and over, talking about this same thing, I began to feel kind of a little bit drained myself, and I do feel that there is this effect of, this is a technical term, you know, frivolous talk and idle chatter, when you hear frivolous talk and idle chatter over and over,

[32:34]

it's kind of draining, a little bit draining, I find, and so, this is not, you know, I'm trying to make a distinction between that and casual conversation, dinner table conversation, friendly conversation, I'm not saying that everyone should be totally silent, I don't want anyone to misunderstand me, but I do feel like there's time set aside for silence, you know, during sasheen and at our workplaces, and where we actually try to practice around refraining from frivolous talk and idle chatter, basically, and this is a struggle, you know, it's really a struggle, and we all feel it, and because we're all in it together and struggling with this,

[33:39]

I feel, you know, like we're all doing this together, I feel my own confusion around saying too much or speaking too soon or speaking out of, what's the word, boredom or something like that, so I just want to bring it up for each one of us to look at both harsh speech and whether or not our speech is beneficial, and also the other side of that which is the frivolous talk and idle chatter, and the effect that it has. I do feel like people come, you know, we have a practice period coming up, with 34 people who are in the practice period, another in a small waiting list, people who were not accepted,

[34:41]

and then a group of people who wanted to do the practice period and we asked them to be on staff, maybe five or so people who really were planning on being in the practice period but are agreeing to be on staff, so I feel like when we go into practice period, it's not just the people in the practice period, it's all of Green Gulch that really enters into this eight weeks of intensifying our practice, and there's certain things we ask, you know, like the silence and being really aware of how we handle our body, you know, and the objects of our life, and times of silence after Zazen in the night, and I would like, we've had this long period, what has it been, about five months, six months, between practice periods, which is a more relaxed time, and our focus is on the growing season and it's summer, and I do feel like coming into the practice period time,

[35:46]

I would like all of Green Gulch to take on the practice period feeling, which will be very helpful to the people who are following the more strict schedule of practice period, and I think it will help us too, and it will give a nice rhythm to the year, you know, like these ascetic practices around the house-to-house alms person and the one lump, I think it was something about the lumps, they do these for a time, you know, they give themselves a certain time to do this, it's not forever, so we have this time set aside to really practice strongly together, more intensely, and to refrain from certain things that, you know, refrain comes from pulling back on the reins, the bridle, which is, Latin is like the frinare or something, pulling back on the bridle, you know, the horse is kind of, and you just pull back a little bit, go at another pace, different pace.

[36:50]

So, talking and our speech and really examining, is our speech beneficial, is it the truth, you know, is it truth, is it beneficial, and is it the time to say this, whatever it is you're saying, is now the time, maybe at a picnic it's the time, but maybe at another time it's not the time, so is the time and place right, is it truthful, and is it a benefit to actually take a look at that. There's this Bobby McFerrin song that I've been listening to, and I was going to bring, I don't have a CD player, I was going to ask someone to bring it, but maybe some of you know it, he wrote it, and it goes, the refrain, it goes over and over and over, it's another use of the word refrain, and the words are, for those who have been trained by it, no discipline is pleasant at the time but is painful,

[37:55]

is pleasant at the time but is painful. And do you understand what that means? It took me a long time, I had to play it over and over. For those who have been trained by it, no discipline is pleasant at the time but is painful, is pleasant at the time but is painful. And then his father sings, I should play it for you, his father sings the song with him, he has this very low voice, we borrowed this from Mick, so no discipline, I can't misunderstand what he was saying, no discipline is pleasant at the time but is painful, no discipline is pleasant at the time. I think there is always this element of chafing at the old bridle, as you're being refrained, chafing at the bit, that's kind of what chafing at the bit must be like, right? You're being refrained. So for all of us to understand that no discipline is pleasant at the time but is painful, we're all kind of in the same boat. It's not like it's fun.

[38:57]

I have it on tape, I might be able to get it. Yeah? Yeah, do you want to hear it? Do we have time? You'll like it I think, it's really great. Sure, why don't you do that. So knowing that it's not easy for anyone to practice in this way, it's... and to help each other, you know, we can all help each other. So, let me just look at my little list here. Yeah, Bobby McFerrin, Little Lord of the Rings, Captain Hook. Oh, I was given a wedding present from Dan Wells, some of you know Dan Wells, he drew these wonderful Bodhisattva figures,

[40:02]

and it's a picture of two Bodhisattvas having tea, and his daughter Johanna, she's now in her, I don't know, how old, 25 or something, misunderstood form is emptiness and emptiness is form. She thought it was form is happiness and happiness is form. So Dan drew these two little Bodhisattvas having tea, which was supposed to be Steve and me, and it was our room in the Zen Center building, and across the table it says, form is happiness and happiness is form, like that. And I actually, in some ways I think that's true. There is a kind of happiness and wonderfulness about, especially with people doing the forms together. It's nothing like it, you know. Literally, it's nothing like it. We happen to have this little place called Gringotts where we do these things, we practice them together, we've just decided that we're going to do them,

[41:04]

and you get to try that out together. The other thing I wanted to tell you, which has nothing to do with anything, but someone told me this recently, they were at a funeral, and it was a Buddhist funeral, Chinese Buddhist funeral, but in America, and it was a casket, an open casket. It wasn't a cremation, they were going to bury the body, and before they closed the casket, they put in a little tape and earphones on the corpse and turned on the Heart Sutra that would be playing until the ever-ready batteries were out, I guess. And then they closed down. I thought you might want to think about that. I don't know if we have a... I don't know if... This tape player doesn't play. I can bring a tape player. Well, I don't know, we're getting late. I had a friend who did that.

[42:11]

Yes, Mark? I did that during an operation, a five-hour operation, she had this Heart Sutra. Who did? And the Tibetan monks also, which showed this medley of things. So let's see what time it is, 8.15. How would you like to just, for those of you who are residents, the visitors don't have to do this unless you really want to, kind of turn to the person next to you and talk about, in turn, if you want to, maybe I'll ask for hands, kind of practices around food and or speech. Would you like to do that? Would you rather not? Or would you rather just do discussion? Discussion in the group. Discussion in the group, okay. Or is... I heard two people say discussion, anybody else? Discussion? Discussion. Discussion, okay. So, would anyone like to add to the conversation? Yes.

[43:16]

I found myself during session with the orioke, tending to eat faster. And so when I have, sit down in the dining room for a meal, I tend to, I think it has something to do with it. I tend to eat faster than I normally would. I think it's, I feel like, oh, I only have so much time. Then I realize, wait a minute, I can take as much time as I need. But during the orioke and the zendo, since there's only so many minutes, I tend to kind of, you know, I'm very conscious of that, and I tend to kind of rush, rush through. Yeah, for certain people who have more need of more food, bigger, taller people, the bowls are small, and, you know, we don't have much time. So I think that's true. There's also, I find that if there's talking, I kind of lose track of how much I'm eating,

[44:17]

or if I, do I really want seconds? You know, there's this thing that I've taught the kids, rather than being part of the clean plate club, which we had to belong to, my family, they belong to the just right tummy feeling club, where you actually, when you feel full, you know, or just about right, that's when you stop. And it's very hard to feel that even when you're talking away at a meal. So we don't have a silent time. Partially, I think, because of the guests in the evening, we don't have like ten minutes of silence, but I think that does help to kind of calm yourself and eat more slowly. On that same topic, I have an unusual oreo piece, because it was a pilot project, and the guy didn't make them right, so the bowls are too small. But it's become a great thing,

[45:21]

because I have joined this practice that you mentioned, One Scoop, which I do here in Sashini, and since the bowl is small, in any way it only holds one scoop, more or less. And to avoid the difficulty that Jim was talking about, which I have in previous years found unpleasant, this sort of rush, you need to know so that you're ready for seconds, and so on. I found that, after a number of years, highly unpleasant. So now what I do is, with this little oreo piece, it's too small bowl, the bowls are too small, I just take one scoop of everything, and then I eat slowly and relax and enjoy myself, and I never have any more than that. And I found out that, maybe it's because of my advancing age or something, but that's perfectly fine. What you were saying about restraint, actually, again, it could be a case of advancing age, I had this odd...

[46:21]

Now, I find that it's actually pleasant, more pleasant to exercise restraint in a variety of things in my life than not to. So in other words, like now, in my ordinary time of eating and not eating, I have various restrictions on what I eat. And to carry out those restrictions, I find pleasant. If I'm conscious enough, in other words, to choose what I eat, and stay within the guidelines of those restrictions, that's actually a pleasant feeling, a positive feeling. If I'm a little bit agitated, and don't have the presence of mind to operate under those restraints, I don't enjoy myself as much. And that's true in a lot of different aspects of my life. So at this point in my practice, I actually see restraint as a positive thing. I enjoy it, and I look forward to it.

[47:24]

And when I'm not able to practice the restraints under which I have chosen to live, I feel actually less pleasant. And like I say, it may be getting older, that may be different in different parts of one's life. So that's been an interesting change for me in the last few years, to feel that way. Norman, do people know about your... No. I don't know. I have a stomach disease. But that actually isn't what I was referring to. I've taken other restraints that have nothing to do with that. I see. But I do have... It's true that I get a lot of feedback, so to speak, from my stomach, if I don't mean that. But other things that I... Other restraints that I've taken on, just for practice reasons, actually, give me a certain amount of satisfaction and pleasure.

[48:26]

So that's another aspect of it. Aspect of it, yeah. That can happen. Yeah. B? Just a little bit more about the one-scoop practice that's occurring in karaoke. Of course, there's the part where some people give you, like, half a scoop, you know. So you can root, but, you know, they give you the whole scoop. You mean the servers? The servers, yeah. You're completely at the mercy of the servers. It's practice. So that's something to kind of check out, you know, what's coming up for you when they come back. But one of the things that I noticed was that, as the member was pointing out, is that if you're absolute about the practice, that you never even find an excuse. Even, you know, a lot of symptoms start coming up with this practice. Like, you need more roughage, you know, or something that isn't too bad. Take a thing or have one more.

[49:30]

Because once you have that one more, and once you give in, then you're in this position, you're tortured by making decisions, you know, all the time, rationalizing each thing. But if you never make a decision, but just follow the practice, then you're free, and you relax, and you can really taste the food better. You're chewing each grain of rice, you know, spending, lingering. That's what the Vasudhimagga says. It says, if you do, if you take this on and don't backslide, they say, then you're completely independent. You're just freed from all those... Right, exactly. You know, I don't know if I understood that phrase, that whatever his name was, Vasudhimagga. But in fairness... No discipline is... No discipline is ever... is pleasant at the time, but... So I was thinking he meant not having a discipline. That's what I thought.

[50:32]

And I thought, well, that's... I can understand that. That makes some kind of sense. But then I realized he was meaning not being disciplined. And then I wasn't sure if that was accurate. Well, as Norman just said, he's finding it very pleasant now too. And I think that's true. So there's a difference. So part of the discipline is to free you from discipline. Part of the discipline... In other words, you can take on the discipline that I'll eat one bowl, and no matter what I feel like, that's what I'm going to do. But you may discover at some point as the server comes by for seconds, you're holding a bowl. You go, oh, that's interesting. I wonder how that happens. So in the midst of this thing that we call discipline, which is sort of a form

[51:34]

that we put down on something, is this spontaneity that sort of breaks through. It can be backsliding. But there is another way. But only you can know. I'm not even sure if one can know. I mean, there's a presupposition there that our activities are always accurate to the moment. And I'm not sure that's always true. Are you saying anything, man? Anything goes, man? No. No, I'm not saying anything goes. I'm saying part of the point of discipline is to find the freedom that's available in the midst of it, which is not to be trapped by the discipline. Right, and you can't do that without totally devoting yourself

[52:34]

to the discipline and giving yourself to it. That's true. You can't just do it by dilettante, trying it out. Or you can't pick and choose. What? You can't pick and choose. Yeah. But right within that, you're just free to have it. And often we hear those stories, right, about that. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, how can you break with form unless you've established form? Yeah. You can't break with something you don't have if you haven't established it. Yeah. I wanted to say that that's a particularly interesting idea coming from Bobby McFerrin, who is an improviser, right? Yeah. But he's also very religious. He reads the Bible every morning. You know that song about simple pleasure? Yeah. He wakes up in the morning. His kids went to school with our kids, Jovan and Taylor. He checks, you know, they're sleeping and he reads. But also musically, I have no doubt, anybody who's a really good improviser is highly disciplined musically. In other words, in order to be a good improviser,

[53:36]

you are very, very schooled and disciplined musically. And it's through the discipline of your training that you are able to improvise and find freedom. There's no effective improviser who isn't also, as far as I know, in music and other fields where improvising is done, who isn't a highly, highly disciplined performer. And then out of that discipline, they take off from that. But it depends on how you discipline. It's sort of like Ontario's point. That there can be a kind of freedom, but only after, and you're saying a point too, but after the establishment of real, some period of training and restraint and really mastering. I want to bring up another aspect of, sort of you alluded to it, the policewoman, but part of the entering into disciplines or really going into form in the way you're speaking of is the righteousness that comes with it.

[54:38]

And that seems to be a stage that you have to go through, pretty much, live with it. Other people have to live with you through it. And that's what we do here. We see that, and I think it's something we need to be really sensitive to and keep very awake to and conscious of, that when you really are entering into something very fully and very deeply, you also exclude a lot. Not necessarily, but often. And in that exclusion, you can hurt people. Not deliberately, but the consequence of it. So I think we play in that a lot. Well, it is that way. I mean, people, if I say, I mean, I said to the apprentices in the beginning of the season, one of our practices is we eat what is given and we don't decide to sit down at breakfast and bring over a lot of other foods

[55:39]

which they really hadn't heard about so much. And they kind of looked at me. And they don't get it. And so we're always going through kind of this path of kind of saying, well, this is the way it is, but, you know, is it? And then what does that mean? And the kind of that odor that it often gives off to each other if you take on a personal practice. Like, I'm not going to be talking this week. So I think we're just doing that together and we're trying different things out and we're experimenting and we have to be quite forgiving and also strict with ourselves and go through that, you know, the fact that there are consequences to taking on certain kinds of restraints and disciplines. Ma'am, and then Katie. Well, those comments bring up for me the question, I wonder if it's discussed in the Vasudhi Maga, about the difference

[56:40]

between deciding for yourself, I want to take on this particular practice versus receiving that practice from a teacher. Yeah, you do it with a teacher. You work it out, yeah. Yeah, or also being in a community where this is a practice that everyone is doing together. Well, I think, you know, there's this, this section I was looking at had this long list of things that was also about clothing, wearing one robe, two robes, or three robes, and, you know, also not lying down and various things that you can take on, but you don't do it by yourself, you work it out, is this the appropriate thing for your practice at this time? It may not be, it may be, you know, like recently talking with someone who turned out was using pain in order, using intense pain during the session in order to get to certain states, you know. Well,

[57:42]

you know, for someone else, not moving is exactly what they should be doing. For this person, they were, you know, they were kind of abusing the practice in some way, trying to intensify the pain as much as they possibly could in order to kind of flip into a certain thing. So, and that wasn't, they weren't working that out with anybody, it was kind of their own. So yes, I, um, in terms of announcing at work meaning I'm going to be silent for the next week, it does have its effect, although we have had a number of people who've taken this on as a practice that they've worked out with someone, everybody agrees, you know, that this is a good thing for them to do, and then they write notes, you know. But, yes, so there's a difference between a trip, you know, being on a trip and taking up a particular practice that's appropriate. Katie, and was there anybody else? It's 8.30, then we can listen to the song for the last,

[58:44]

that'd be all right. Katie? I just wanted to add something about talking and eating. You had commented about how talking can interfere with noticing that full tummy feeling, and yet I immediately thought of yesterday lunch when I was enjoying the conversation very much, and consequently I was sitting there and not going to get seconds, and I was sort of thinking, well, maybe the conversation will, maybe it'll get a little, maybe I'll be able to get up in a few minutes, and in that time that whatever part of your brain kind of kicked in, and I was full. So I think conversation can also be very satisfying and nourishing in its way,

[59:47]

and provide time as well as doing the other opposite. Yes, I agree, sitting around a table with people and talking is one of the joyous life, really. And you feel fed, you really feel fed by it. Well, should we listen to Bob McFerrin and his dad? You just have to push play. Play. I get to do the honors? Yeah. Let's see, play. Play your right hand. My right hand? Oh, play. Okay. Play.

[61:28]

Okay. Lord, it's a blessing, it's a blessing, it's a time of painful There are no evidences of righteousness of peace For those who have been trained by it Lord, it's a blessing, it's a blessing, it's a time of painful And now you'll be forgiven, and now you'll be gained Set your heart on things afar, afar where we will be, afar where we will be And of your people's hearts, and of your wickedness

[62:46]

Set your heart on things afar, afar where we will be, afar where we will be For those who have been trained by it Lord, it's a blessing, it's a blessing, it's a time of painful Lord, it's a blessing, it's a blessing, it's a time of painful Lord, it's a blessing, it's a blessing, it's a time of painful There are no evidences of righteousness of peace For those who have been trained by it Lord, it's a blessing, it's a blessing, it's a time of painful

[63:49]

May you never pass before you'll be, may you never pass before you'll be Spreading love on the people's hearts, so we can make it here So you can make it greater, so you can make it far, far Spreading love on your wickedness Faith your heart on things afar, afar where we are to be, afar where we will be For those who have been trained by it Lord, it's a blessing, it's a blessing, it's a time of painful Lord, it's a blessing, it's a blessing, it's a time of painful Lord, it's a blessing, it's a blessing, it's a time of painful Oh I

[65:33]

Okay, Bobby His dad says straighten up your weakened heart straighten up your weakened knees You

[66:05]

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