I vow to taste the truth as though the target is worse. Hi, you're back. Okay. Thank you for coming. My name is Tia and I'm 61 and a half. And I used to practice here more than I do now. So I'm very happy to be back with practitioners of the way. It's excellent.

[01:00]

I'd like to, when I was offering incense, I couldn't help but see the card on the altar. So it must mean that you guys have done a service for the people who, have died and are displaced by the hurricane. Amen. Thank you for doing that. Amen. And, we, you know, the first noble truth is there is suffering in the world.

[02:33]

And each of us has our own. I think Bob Dylan has a song, something like, I don't know, I'm not sure it's Bob Dylan, but there's a song that says, if you tell me your, I'm not sure it says suffering, but if you tell me your suffering, I'll tell you mine. But, you know, suffering is not that big a deal. Suffering like these people have that we can all feel is a big deal because they're massively displaced and some people have lost family and pets and loved ones and everything they have. So it's, you know, awful. And at the same time, it's a little bit risky to say, but

[03:41]

at the same time, we actually don't know. I mean, we know that some people have real pain, but we don't know whether that is going to cause despair or whether it's going to cause awakening. We don't know. It depends on how each particular person responds to what's happened to them. We don't actually know. We run around trying massively to control everything in our lives thinking that we have a chance to do that. But it should be clear to, I think, everybody in this room,

[04:45]

we're all old enough to have noticed that we really can't control it at all. We just imagine that we can. We pretend that we're doing really well. My life's getting better. Or not. But the one of us, the person in us that so desperately needs to protect itself and make itself happy and get better is the very thing that keeps us suffering.

[05:47]

The idea is to just simply stop. Just stop. Just stop. I mean, what would it be like, actually, if when something happened in your life you didn't do anything with it, you didn't resist it and you didn't want to make it any different than it is, you didn't want to make it into a drama or a story or didn't judge it? What if we just took the mind that has those ideas and just let it rest?

[06:57]

We can do that. We're all here in one way or another because we think doing this practice and we're all here to get better, right? We're trying to get better. I want to be better. How long do we have to do that? How long? Three years? Five years? Ten years? Fifteen? Twenty? Twenty-five years? I'm going to be better tomorrow. I've heard that the reason why people have difficulty letting go

[08:21]

is because on the deeper and deeper and deeper level they just don't think they're good enough. They have to control the process of letting go. But it's been said over and [...] over again that it's here, that we let go of wanting to change anything now, not tomorrow when it's better, now when it's exactly the way it is, tonight at a quarter to eight. And we're told that the reason why we're given this information is because the peace or joy or peace really, contentment,

[09:27]

I mean very deep acceptance of things as they are, right? That's what the awakened mind is. The qualities of the awakened mind is a very deep acceptance of things as they are, peace, at peace. It's kind of, you get that circular thing, right? So that can happen now, right? The point is, Suzuki Roshi said that, same thing, on page... I can almost remember it's on the top left side of the page. What he says is, he says the whole point is to make yourself peaceful and then stick to it. He doesn't say you need to be better first. He says make yourself peaceful and stick to it.

[10:30]

That's the whole point, he says. In the beginning, you know, this process is a process, is a kind of a psychological process. I was explained, you know, I'm a teacher at a high school. I teach high school kids meditation and ethics. That's my job. And... What was I talking about? Oh, thank you. Process, thank you. These kids are very close to...

[11:35]

Very close to, what can I say here? They don't have a really very much of a veil between who they think they are and nothing. It's a very, very thin veil. So today I was talking to a girl and she was telling me how frightened she was of death. And I said, why? I mean, not that I'm not. And I'm a lot closer to it than she is, I hope. She said she was lying in bed the other night and she had a lot of anxiety and she began to, you know, put her mind in her body and kind of relax in what we do in the morning when we are in gathering, when we meditate together. And she said she kind of fell into this empty place

[12:40]

and it was scary for her. I asked her, what was it like? What were the characteristics of this kind of empty place? And she said she wasn't there and she was afraid of not being there. I said, well, what was it like? What was your experience? Well, she said it was peaceful and quiet and wasn't making judgments about herself or anything like that. And it was awake. And then I said to her, well, you know, that's really, that's a kind of a nice place, isn't it?

[13:45]

She said, yeah. I said, what's the difference between that place and how you usually walk around? She thought for a minute. She's fifteen. She thought for a minute and she said, well, my mind was gone. I said, really? She said, yes. I said, oh. I said, notice that when that happens. That might be really interesting. Just notice that. It's not necessary to do psychological work It's necessary to wake up. We don't have to do psychological work.

[14:46]

So if you get angry, instead of saying, the reason why I got angry was so-and-so and such-and-such and la-di-da-di-da, just say, first say, ask yourself, who is angry? See if you can find out who is angry. Is there anybody in there angry? And then, if you don't find anybody in there, ask yourself, who knows that? I told another fifteen-year-old today, no, I didn't, no, this was during practice discussion in the morning, a sixty-year-old person. I said, we were talking and she said something, something, something about the mind, and I said, well, you know, when you read the Avatamsaka Sutra,

[15:47]

what happens is, those of you who don't know about the Avatamsaka Sutra, it's paid five, it's probably a thousand pages, right? Something like that? Three volumes, and, three volumes, and, you know, every so often, the plot is like one page long, and then there are five pages of names, right? Bodhisattva moon-gazing, and Bodhisattva flower-loving, and Bodhisattva of horsemanship, and Bodhisattva of, you know, scary sword dragon, and for five pages, right? On and on and on for five pages. And I thought to myself, the reason why, obviously, is not to follow a plot. This is not a book about, you know, holding on to something's going to happen here and get better, right? This is a book that throws your mind into,

[16:48]

your mind just can't hold on, it just gives up. It does, and then you find yourself just reading, Bodhisattva flower-dwelling, Bodhisattva sword-carrying horse-person. And then I said to this person, I said, look it, if you don't have the Avatamsaka Sutra, take the telephone book, because the same exact thing will happen to your mind. All you have to do, I'm not kidding, all you have to do is just read the telephone book as if it were a holy book. You can wrap it in a sutra cloth and take it out, and then open it up to the bees, let's say, and start reading. And pretty soon your mind is going to go just exactly the way it goes when you read the Avatamsaka Sutra. First thing your mind does is it says, this is stupid, right? No. No. My mind.

[17:51]

This is ridiculous, I'm not going to sit here wasting my time with five pages of these names, you know, over and over again. And then you get over that. And this is like bowing a hundred thousand bows that they do in the Tibetan thing. Your mind finally just gives up. The concepts are useless. In a situation like that, your mind cannot help you. It doesn't know what to do. Conceptuality will not help you one iota. So it gives up, it stops. And you're just there, aware. And guess what, people? There it is. That's it. The place we've been looking for. And then some people have experiences of oneness

[18:53]

and, you know, true nature and la-di-da-di-da-di-da and those experiences, 99% of the time, they go away. And some people just, you know, wake up from get up from zazen and just know, you know, their true nature. It doesn't make any difference. What matters at that point is to actually live from that place that you know. So whatever your insight is, to stabilize that insight is to live from that place, which means no grasping at anything. No being fascinated with the mind that you just let drop away. No being fascinated with anything that changes anymore. No being fascinated by ideas.

[19:56]

No being fascinated by emotions. No being fascinated by sensations. No being fascinated by anything that the conceptual mind has to offer. No attachment. No grasping. No holding on. No resisting. Nothing like that. And that stabilizes and deepens insight, which is not far away. It's just always what never changes, never has changed, never will change, is here all the time. Just read the telephone book. Read Dogen. Just let the mind rest. Don't pay any attention to it.

[20:56]

What's looking at me, some of you, most of you, what's looking at me is not you looking at me. I'm not looking back at you. I'm not looking back at you.

[22:12]

I'm not looking back at you. I'm not looking back at you. We're just sitting here.

[23:18]

Nothing is happening. Nothing is happening. My name is Dharma Servant. When I received that name, I had some questions about it. There wasn't enough me in it, you know, servant.

[24:27]

But actually, I really like that name now, because we can choose in our lives, we can choose what it is we want to pay attention to. Do we want to pay attention to the mind that divides? Do we want to pay attention to the mind that struggles? Do we want to pay attention to the mind that knows right and wrong, you know, that won't let go of point of view? Has that mind made us better, happy? Or we can choose to serve the truth.

[25:38]

We can choose to serve what we are deeply, the deepest of who we are, the one that knows. There is no one there to be afraid. There's no one there to protect. We don't have to uphold some image of ourselves. We don't have to convince other people that we're okay. We don't have to convince ourselves that we're okay or not okay, whichever you prefer. Can we serve that? Are we finished with our stories? If you're looking at it from the point of view of a small self,

[26:49]

and the self is very small, and we can feel it when we contract around the idea of me, physically it actually contracts, and the mind contracts, everything contracts around me. When we look at the world from that point of view, it's gigantic and a mountain to climb because we're this little being in this gigantic universe. But if we drop this contracted, kind of constipated point of view and look at the life that we have come to be from this really wide point of view, the self kind of just... You know, our problems are not that big a deal

[27:50]

in the scheme of things. My web page at home... Oh, dear. My web page at home is Antwerp something, NASA something or another, and I get pictures of the universe every day to remind me. And they're gorgeous. Do you have any idea what's happening out there? It's incredible. We're whirling around at fantastic speed and there are light shows going on all over the place. And they're whirling galaxies, and we're just one galaxy, and then there's like the Holmes cluster of galaxies, and that's just one galaxy in billions of galaxies. We're just, you know... Well, some people say we're that, which is actually true.

[28:56]

Anyway, I've been just wanting to be with you tonight and it's late, so I'll stop. I just hope to encourage all of us to stop fighting. You know, we see it too much around us. So inside the first place, just don't be at war inside. Relax. Take it easy. The mind that's awake is already here. You don't have to grasp at anything. As a matter of fact, the more you relax and release and just let yourself be who you are... Let's see. What can I say here? Stop mucking around.

[30:02]

Just release back into just being awake and trust that place. And it will take care of itself, and it will take care of you. Just relax back and stop having a war inside, grasping and averting. Just stop. Stop. And it doesn't promise things will be happy. So you can choose. You can try to be happy and better, or you can be free. Your choice.

[31:06]

Anyway, thank you for being patient with me and listening. I appreciate it. And I wish you to go as far and deep in this practice as you possibly can. And please, including myself, let's try to be nice to each other. Because these little places where people try to wake up are little pockets of sanity. I mean, at least we're aware when we make mistakes and stuff like that. And there's so terribly much suffering. You know that... You know what I mean.

[32:27]

Yeah. May I have your attention. Eclipse. May I have your attention. Eclipse.

[32:39]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ