Good evening. trying to arrive at where I am, think about where I'm going, and see if I can manage to get there. A few months ago, I had one of those pleasant experiences during Zazen. I just sat down in the normal course of events to sit zazen.

[01:06]

And a few minutes into it, I almost feel like something forming in my mouth. Not quite like when you're reading and you're sub-vocalizing. You can feel your tongue going through little movements. But almost along the lines of that, as though there was a ball gathering in my mouth. And eventually, the word love formed. And then I felt that's it. That's the answer. The question had been, and when I sat down, I wasn't thinking of the question.

[02:12]

The question had been, what is the practice? And I think I had stopped aggressively asking the question, and in previous talks I mentioned the three Bs, the bed, the bath, and the bus. These are Occasions when world-renowned scientists have had breakthroughs. That's when they've been thinking of a problem for so long. They've pulled their heart and soul into the problem. And then they stop to go to do something banal, something ordinary, like that's it. Well, along those lines, they're getting on a bus. or they're just happily sitting in the bath? And the answer pops into their head.

[03:15]

They have a eureka kind of moment. So it kind of felt like one of those breakthroughs. I stopped asking the question, and then in the ordinary course of events, sitting down, the word... about what kind of formed itself. And I was kind of pleasantly surprised. That fits. Don't know how, but it fits. And then I thought, I think Suzuki gave the same answer. But I don't know if it was the same question. Kind of guess what it was. And later in thinking about it, I was thinking, you know, this is not the same as romantic love.

[04:19]

It's not the same as the philosophical agape love. The kind of generalized love for all of humanity. it's not even the same as metta. And I would go so far as to say it's not even the same as the love of God. At least if we take the tone of the verse in the Bible that says, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that seems too forceful, too aggressive. So the kind of The lab that I think I hit upon was not identical to any of these, but certainly does not exclude them. In fact, its nature seems to be one of inclusivity rather than exclusivity.

[05:29]

And those of you who know me know that I like to dabble in Aikido. And just for those of you who know me and those of you who don't, there are five grades of Aikido before you reach a black belt, and I'm the lowest grade. So I'm by no means speaking as an expert in Aikido. But I did remember, after remembering that Suzuki gave the same answer to possibly the same question that the founder of Aikido after years of practice and years of studying he was very eclectic in his studies he said that the role of the warrior is to manifest divine love

[06:34]

And at the time, I thought he just read too much of Western philosophy or Western religion, and that he didn't really know what he was talking about, or he did, but it was kind of new agey, even though it was in the 50s or so. But now it seems to make sense. The role of the warrior is to manifest divine love or great love. Let's call it great love. So I mentioned that it's not identical to romantic love or agape love or even metta. But these things may in fact help get us there. If we are developing metta in the

[07:46]

cultivation of metta. Metta or badma as a meditation practice. It can be a challenge to our usual way of thinking. It asks us and invites us to think differently. To rub up against the confines of our habitual and to see if we can go beyond them, to think outside the box. You may be aware of a set of dolls, seven dolls. and one fits inside the other, apart from the size, they look pretty much identical.

[08:52]

So I often think that meta can be, or this doll arrangement can be a metaphor for meta, with the progress getting bigger. And I sometimes think that in terms of Sitting with the koan, the progress is getting smaller. As your attention hones more and more into it, it wanders less so that the size, so to speak, gets smaller. There's a wonderful play on this theme in a novel by Flann O'Brien. call the third policeman. And without giving away the plot, which incidentally, if you buy the book copy that I bought in America, the plot is given away on the back and on the introduction.

[10:07]

But it's been worked into so many movies that it probably doesn't matter. So I won't give the plot away. But the hero, or the anti-hero, or the main character, on one of his journeys decides to go into a police station. And after his encounter with the first policeman, he was put in jail. He was put in prison. And while there he has an encounter with the second policeman. And the second policeman, by means of passing the time, takes out a box. And he opens it. And from inside it, he takes out another box, identical in every detail to the first, except, of course, for the size.

[11:15]

And he does the same thing numerous times. And then our friend, Joe, sees the policeman put on a pair of eyeglasses, big eyeglasses, and proceeds to make strange movements. Eventually, the policeman invites Joe over to have a look. And there's boxes smaller And then the eye can see boxes within boxes. And then he tells him, I made these myself. And he shows him the instruments with which he made them. This one says took two years. This one took five years. And this one took ten years. So he shows him some of the instruments. that he used to make these boxes.

[12:19]

And with these glasses, you could see that some of the instruments, the point on them would pass through your finger before you feel it. That's how small they were. He made the instruments themselves as well. So sometimes I think that we're just living in a box. this room of the box. And when we step outside the door, all we're doing is stepping out of one box and into another box. And when we step outside, we're just stepping into a very big box. And maybe we're actually in the smallest box that whatever beings it is that made these boxes can see.

[13:24]

And when we actually put something into a box, we're using a box which they cannot see. It's smaller than their range of vision. So with this kind of understanding, what does it mean to think outside the box? What kind of thinking would that be? About a year ago, could be two years ago, I was walking down 8th Street at night. I think it was around about Buena Vista, the park up there. a little bit further down the hill than that. At least I think it was 8th Street.

[14:29]

Pretty sure it was nighttime. And I'm pretty sure it was downhill. I noticed that somebody coming up the hill had really long hair and a long beard and he seemed to have a backpack and just over one shoulder. And he was wearing a vest rather than a long sleeve or t-shirt. He was wearing a vest. And he was burped. And I felt, wow, must be kind of fit. And as he passed me, I was wearing, again, some of you may know me, and the strange hat that I used to wear. It was kind of a broad brimmer. A hat that I gave Sonny the privilege of disposing of.

[15:34]

Anyway, I was wearing this hat, and as we passed each other, out of the corner of my eye, I'd say his arm go up. And almost like a magnet, my arm went up. and I could feel the pressure from his tricep on mine. So I did what anybody else would do. I pivoted, and I ended up taking a turn, 270 degrees. Turns out that he did the same. So I was going that way, and I turned, facing that way, and I'm facing that way. He was coming this way, and now he's facing that way. And I end up with my right foot in front of my left, and my hands are my thighs. He ends up with his left foot in front of his right, and he makes these kind of movements now.

[16:51]

So I just walked away. It was the direction that I'd gone. I made it 90 degrees and completed the 360s and started walking downhill. And then I thought, fool, it turned your back on it. And then I saw a bus stop, and there were people at the bus stop, and they were looking, and they were beginning to turn away. So I thought, it's okay. I think by the way, I'm saying, don't turn around now. Okay. So the part where I put up my hand, because he put up his hand, and we pivoted, that can be put to maybe conditioned response from Aikido training. But the part that I found really difficult to explain was, why did I just turn away? And although I didn't think of it at the time, I think a little later, I thought, well, it must have been that somewhere I understood

[17:58]

And that was his opportunity if he was going to attack. And he didn't take it. So I walked away. So I don't know if that was the manifestation of divine love. Certainly didn't feel like it. Way before that, once upon a time in 1993, I did spend two weeks living in a box. Quite a small box, a little bit bigger than the box that I'm living in now, which is two stories up. Except that I didn't have the bigger box to support me. I was living in a, you call it an RV trailer?

[19:04]

You call it a caravan, which I think is the smallest possible RV trailer you can imagine. And I use that for sleeping, meditating, washing, and bathroom. And cooking. I was on my first two-week solitary retreat. And of the two meditation practices that I was doing, one of them was the Matabha. So I spent two weeks, but I'd already spent two years, but that was in it once a day or once every other day basis. This was two weeks on a four, five, six times a day basis. It was also chanting. And the person who owned the caravan His name was Michael. He had asked me to do some work while I was up there.

[20:07]

The caravan was in Wales and was nested about two-thirds up. The mountain might be too strong a word, but certainly a big hill, maybe 2,000 feet. He had asked me to go occasionally to a nearby quarry and collect. because you wanted to build an outdoor restroom. Chemical. So I'm up to the side of this mountain, a wonderful view of a Welsh valley laid out before me. And on one of the days that I'm over at the quarry, I pick up this piece of slate. And it has the word Jenny written on it.

[21:10]

That was really amazing. Totally amazing. Because this was the third anniversary of my mother's death. And her name was Jenny. What a coincidence. And it was also a little bit encouraging. It kind of said that maybe I was doing the right thing. In the course of this two weeks, halfway through, I ran out of food. It had been a long haul to get there. Drove up the mountain, and then we had to very... my belongings and food across the field. And although it was in July, that part of it had been bad weather. So I decided to walk down to where there was a campsite.

[22:13]

This is halfway through. To get some more food. And as I got towards the end of the hill or mountain, I was turning a bend and I was quite happy. I heard this running, this scoffering and barking behind me. And as I came closer, I just turned around and welcomed this dog who was one minute about to attack me and the next minute wrapping up all the affection that I had to offer. And just while I was doing that, I could hear a second dog coming, also from behind me, which would have been in front of me. And when he saw, or she saw, I don't know whether it was a he or a she, when that dog saw, I had much fun, the first dog was having, I just wanted to join in.

[23:22]

And so there I was with two dogs who I'm pretty sure had my response been different. would have really been in some kind of tunnel. But that meta-response, which had come from, I guess, predisposing myself to that kind of response, was able to trigger a switch in their approach. Another story on this thing, and this work maybe gets a little bit too much, is that maybe during the second week, I saw this little bug making its way across the floor.

[24:26]

And I realized the grave danger that it was in. And my response was, hey, little fella, you're going to get hurt. So I got a piece of cardboard and pushed him onto it and opened the door and that and that. So the Jenny part, coincidence, that I think Suzuki calls things like that letters. from emptiness. So when I got home, there was another letter from emptiness. There was a friend of mine who we were pretty close friends and she was really happy to see me and we would often go out for coffee. And during this going out for coffee, she was telling me of

[25:35]

Something that happened in her meditation, or which she thought was a result of meditation. And I forget what kind of situation it was, but her response was, hey little fella, you're going to get hurt. Wow. Word for word. And I know that there's many people who have had similar experiences. The most eyebrow-raising one that I had was when I was visiting Ireland with my teacher, Norman, back in the year 2000. And we were staying in this small house, and the owner of the house was in one room. Norman and myself were sharing another room. And...

[26:39]

I was really tired from the events of the day, and there was Norman reading. I don't know, 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock, I don't know. And I had this thought pattern, why doesn't he do A, B, or C? And I think it was three items. And what kind of blew me away was that Norman said, I don't have to read here if it's bothering me. I could do A, B, or C. And it was almost verbat. No, not almost. It was verbat. The same sequence of thoughts in the same order, the same words. So this, and stories like it, It don't lead me to think that I'm telepathic or that the other person is telepathic.

[27:41]

It leads me to think that five skandhas are empty. That we do not own our thoughts. We think, and we think that thoughts are mine. I kind of have the notion or idea that apps are just surrounding us like cell phone signals. And we just habitually tune into a certain frequency or train. But we don't actually own them. They're not necessarily ours. There are... Other instances like this, a friend of mine was visiting the United States, and he got back. And people were a little bit concerned about him because his girlfriend's nephew had, without any cause or reason that they could see, he just came out with, Steve is in a graveyard, so naturally.

[29:04]

People got worried, but Steve came home. And they said, were you in a graveyard on this day? And he said, no. So they thought it was just this random thing. Then Steve went home and said, wait a minute. He did pay a visit to somewhere in California where there's this wealthy person who wanted to be buried on their own land. And I don't know the full story, but he had gone to visit that grave on that day. Quite amazing. And when my sister's oldest boy was born, his cousin, living in another part of the country, out of the blue, said, the baby is born now. So parents looked at the clock.

[30:05]

and later found out that it was the same time as the actual birth. So again, you see, these are letters from emptiness. As I say, these things are more like coincidences. But then, isn't everything a coincidence? Isn't this a coincidence? It's just a different kind of coincidence. We kind of expected this coincidence. But we did not... In this way, sisters-in-laws did not expect little Marty at age five or six to come up with the baby as born and then find out that that was the correct time.

[31:24]

Quite often in Zen stories, we read that a disciple goes to one teacher and asks a question and they get an answer and they don't really understand the answer so they wander off and it may take a few days or a few weeks and they get to another teacher and they ask the same question and surprisingly they get for about the same answer Sometimes I think it's just a literary style. But now I actually think maybe that's the way it actually happened. They got the same answer. Does anybody here remember Grace Meyer? Usually called Melinda Meyer. Okay.

[32:30]

That's good. She saw either Blanche or Paul or Michael with a fly whisk. She said, do you know that thing with the hair that people sometimes have? And I said, fly whisk? She said, yeah. She said, do you know what that's for? And sometimes I like dramatic effect. So I said, yes. And waited. And she says, okay, and then what is it for? And I said, it's for enlightening people. And she burst out laughing as only Grace Meyer can. She's six foot two, and it's quite a voluminous laugh. So now that I have one, I thought, I'd give it a go.

[33:36]

Wow. I think it goes like... Did you get it? No, let me get one shot. If it didn't work, it didn't work. I'd bring it back. How do we know? I don't have an answer to that. I don't know how you would know. I think you only know if you don't know. And I bring it up because, you know, happy for the fun of it, but also because one of my heroes... suffered what you just suffered. Maybe.

[34:44]

Maybe you didn't suffer it. The record of Dangsheng. Dangsheng is one of the founders of our school. So the master made a visit to Guishan. The master is Dongshan, but this is before he was the master. And the master made a visit to Guishan and said to him, I have recently heard that the national teacher, Chung Agnanyang, will tell the doctrine that non-sentient beings expound the Dharma. And that's one of the questions that I have quite Remember, I was telling you at the beginning, the practice is love.

[35:53]

But is this expressing love? Falling. Say again? Falling in love. in Aikido. The founder of Aikido said, it's not as though I never lose my balance. He said, I'll lose it all the time. I just regain it very quickly. So I recently heard that so-and-so maintained the doctrine that non-sentient beings expound the Dharma. I have not yet comprehended the subtleties of this teaching. So it goes on and they've got a question and answer kind of thing.

[36:57]

And eventually Dongshan says, I still don't understand it clearly. Would the master please comment? Guishan raised his pride with saying, do you understand? No, I don't. Please, Yongshan, explain. Okay, so the connect would be explained to you by means of the mouth of one born of mother and father. Okay, so the dialogue goes on. Dangshan accordingly took leave of Guishan and proceeded directly to Jungians. Making reference to the previous encounter with Guishan, he immediately asked what sort of person was able to hear the Dharma expounded by non-sentient beings. said, non-sensing beings are able to hear it. And he says, can you hear it?

[37:58]

No, I can't. So eventually he goes, why can't I hear it? Jangshan says. So Yunyang raised his fly whisk and said, can you hear it now? And he said, no, I can't. So he says, you can't even hear it when I expand the Dharma. How do you expect to hear it? when non-sentient beings expand the Dharma. My apologies if... if you feel that you wasted your time coming here. And I do apologize because I didn't mean to say something at the beginning that I normally say at the beginning of a Dharma talk and I forgot to say it.

[39:06]

And maybe not because I forgot to say it. You've been wasting your time listening to me. I usually say that instead of listening to me, it just sits out there. That way, You won't be wasting your time. Is Jeffrey here? Oh, great. He asked me to finish at 8.30. If not, I can continue. Do you want to ask any questions? What do they don't want? Okay. It's 832. Thank you all very much.

[40:02]

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