Good evening again. Welcome. Welcome back. I was gone last week as most of you know. I was down in Los Angeles, which is huge. It's just a huge thing. It's a huge thing. If you've never been to Los Angeles, it's a big, big deal. Somebody I hear has their... You have your audio on someone? Anyway, I check to see if you do. Anyway, I was there visiting my daughter, Sabrina, and it was quite wonderful. We spent several days just helping her around the house and enjoying her company and going out for meals.

[01:04]

And then we drove back. So I still feel like I'm holding on to this wheel because I do a lot of the driving, mostly because I'm a nervous passenger. So let me drive. Anyway, it's a long drive. And California is beautiful. So there was so much of the coast that I hadn't seen in years and years. So that was a real treat. Just... kind of get away from the bay area see some other parts of of where we are on the planet so it's nice to be back i'm i'm back in hillsburg and um we went through a the day we arrived back it was a hundred degrees here which i don't know that i've experienced in very very often in my life coming from san francisco and living at green gulch all this all these years it's usually about at least 20 degrees colder at green gulch than in Healdsburg. So I was kind of nervous. I didn't know what 100 degrees felt like. And it was fine. It was fine.

[02:05]

We just stayed in the shade and drank a lot of water. And so I've had my first taste of what it's like here in the summer. It's very, very warm. Anyway, that's my catch up with what I've been doing. So as you know, I'm going to be gone for a couple of months or I mentioned that last time I was here and I'll be gone the end of July until the beginning of October and I thought maybe next week we could talk together about what you all might like to do during that time you could continue meeting you could talk with each other you could read something together or not you know we could all just take some time away which I would be sad to know hopefully everyone but then come back. That would be the main thing, is that if we separate, that we'll be able to return to our sangha. So next week, we can talk about that a little bit. For tonight, I have some thoughts I want to share with you, and then I want to share hearing yours and talking together.

[03:13]

So something got stuck in my mind after our last conversation times together, so two weeks ago, and we were reading the talk on Suzuki Roshi's talk called Right Effort, Right Effort. And in this talk, Suzuki Roshi digs rather deeply into this interface between what he calls big mind and small mind. You know, that's, that's us, small mind and big mind, we are made up of those two, two aspects of reality. And we are the big mind and we are small mind which you're a little more familiar with but learning how to open ourselves open that aperture to to the vastness of our of our nature our large nature is part of what these talks are about his talks are about and it's part of what the dharma is about part of what the buddha was trying to explain after his experience of vastness in the morning that he he woke up so um

[04:16]

You know, I was, I was noticing that I wasn't quite done with this idea that he brought up around this interface between also not just between our big mind and our small mind. There are other ways to other kinds of metaphors or ways of describing those two, but one would be between knowing and not knowing, you know, not knowing is much faster than knowing. So that's another, another pivot. And then there's also the intersection between sound and silence. which is something he mentions in the koan in that chapter about one hand clapping. So that's what I got stuck on. I got stuck on this sound of one hand clapping. And this is the dynamic, this sound and no sound or silence and stillness is this dynamic between what we've been looking at often called the two truths, these two truths. There's the relational truth, you know, where sound is happening and where differences are happening. And there's the ultimate truth, where no sound can be found, nothing outside of the experience of hearing.

[05:21]

There's nothing separate from the experience itself. So this pivotal opportunity between these two aspects of ourselves, the greatness and the smallness of ourselves, is also where this opportunity for liberation from suffering is possible. It's this kind of suffering that we can actually do something about. There's certain kinds of suffering which are just pain. Like you break your leg or you scratch yourself or something. That's just pain. There's not much you can do about that kind of suffering. It hurts. But the suffering that the Buddha talked about is the suffering that comes from how we think. And we can do something about that. We can do quite a lot about that. But we have to understand something about the mechanism of thinking in order to self-reflect and notice our own thinking, which is not so easy to do. So I wanted to begin sharing my thoughts with you with a brief review of a teaching from the Mind Only School, which I think helps us to better understand how thinking works in our everyday life.

[06:32]

So this model of how thinking works is pretty simple. It's pretty simple to understand. However, it is less simple or easy to observe in ourselves. So that's kind of the rub. We can describe it theoretically, but then can you actually experience the sequence of what happens? What happens to us around how we think? What's generating our thoughts and our actions based on those thoughts? So part of the reason it's so hard for us to catch the origins of our thinking or the impulse that comes from our thinking is because in response to our senses, our senses, our smelling, hearing, tasting, touching, and seeing, we think very fast. Very quickly, we come up with an idea about what our senses are relating to, the relationship or the dynamic, the connection between sound and hearing. And so it's this fast thinking that we do that drives us to take actions, and actions with consequences both for good and for ill.

[07:43]

So, for example, I was thinking, if I were walking down the street at night and I heard a large cracking sound, like a big pop, my attention, so there's sound, my attention immediately turns in the direction of the sound. So that's step two. First step, a sensory event. Second step, the attention goes toward that sensory event. And then the next thing is that I have a feeling. So this is all pretty much automatic. I have a feeling about the sound, and in the case of a large popping noise in the dark, I think I would be afraid. So my feeling would be fearful. And then, if in addition to the sound and the fear, I saw someone across the street, I would probably hurry into my house and quickly lock the door. Pretty certain that the sound was perhaps a weapon of some sort, and that that person across the street wants to hurt me. So that's a story. That's a kind of story that is familiar.

[08:47]

I think we've all been afraid of. Buddha was afraid. He heard crackling sounds in the forest when he went away from the palace initially, and it scared him. And he used the fear as an opportunity to explore what is fear. to look at that fear. He'd hear the sound, he'd have the feeling, and then he'd look at that ideas that came up out of that sound. So this sequence of response to our sensory stimulus is going on throughout our waking day. It's just that I don't notice it. I'm so used to it, I'm so good at it, that I don't notice it until the stimulus is really strong, like this loud cracking sound in the dark. at which time I become extremely alert and self-protective. Kind of built like that. I'm built for that. So there's nothing wrong with the sequence itself. What's wrong is that the story that we make up about our sensory experience is often wrong, if not always wrong. Often wrong, I mean really wrong.

[09:48]

And yet we are most likely to believe our own stories in order to justify our responses. And we're most likely to blame others for our defensive responses. It's this tendency we have of self-protection, including, well, that's not my fault. Well, I didn't make that happen. So I have a friend of mine, a black friend, who told me that he would never stop on the highway to help a white woman who had trouble with her car because of the fear he would see on her face if he did so. that response, you know. So it's not just these benign reactions to, you know, sounds, random sounds throughout our day. They're also all the prejudices and all of the conditioning that we have as a culture and as people that causes us to respond to sensory input in ways that can be extremely harmful and lead to such things as, well, you're not going to get any help from me because you're going to be afraid of me. You're going to be afraid of me because how I look. You know, we all know these things.

[10:49]

We all know these patterns. And part of what's going on in our painful culture right now is these habits of ours, very hard to break. So this is why the Buddha gave that simple teaching to Bahia that I read two weeks back about liberating ourselves from the trap of adhering to our stories about what's happening. Just to remind you, Buddha says to Bahia, Bahia, you should train yourself thus. In the seen, there will be just the seen. In the heard, just the heard. In the imagined, just the imagined. And in the cognized, just the cognized. That is how you should train yourself, bahia. And when for you there will be just the seen in the seen, just the heard in the heard, just the imagined in the imagined, and just the cognized in the cognized, then bahia

[11:49]

You, you in connection with that, you in connection with that will not exist. You in connection with that will not exist. You will not be found in this world or in another world or someplace in between. This, just this bahiya is the end of suffering. This is a pretty big teaching You know, I've heard a number of Zen teachers quote this particular exchange from the Pali Canon. This is very old Pali Canon in Pali Canon suttas. So if we look again at Suzuki Rashi's talk about right effort, I thought it might be helpful to share with you an experience that I had around this teaching that came from a very unlikely source at the time. So this is many years back, and I was thinking, as I often try to think about thinking, and also about the relationship between my impulse to respond to my sensory inputs to respond to stories, and trying to watch how my stories come up.

[13:02]

Oftentimes I'll try to say to myself, really? Really? Is that what you're thinking? Is that what you think just happened? Or that's what you think that means? Or, you know, all kinds of assumptions that we make. So at the time, back then, when I was reading about this teaching of Bahia, to Bahia, I came across what may sound like an unlikely source for inspiration, but it was in the music of John Cage. I wonder, I've got to go on gallery for a second. If I can, how do I do that? Okay. I just want to know how many of you might know, be familiar with the teaching of John Cage. And I think we're going to gallery. Can you put me on gallery for a second? Can you do that? Yeah. So I can see. Oh, there we go. Okay. How many of you know John Cage? I mean, how many hands am I seeing? Quite a few. Okay. Okay.

[14:03]

And are you familiar with this piece called Four Minutes and 33 Seconds? One, two, yeah, quite a few, okay. And some of you, oh, you all are? Everybody? Well, that's no good. I was gonna surprise you. Okay, Karina, I'm gonna go off gallery. I think this is a very sophisticated audience. Anyway, I'm gonna do it anyway, because I think it's so perfect as an example of this thing that we do, you know? when we are expecting one thing and something else happens, you know, when we get thrown off. Um, so I actually very happy to know that you all have heard of John Cage. I'm familiar with John Cage. Um, so with his teaching of Bahia in mind, I want to play this piece four minutes and 33 seconds for you and, and then talk with you about what happens to you, you know, while you're listening to this very famous piece of music. Um, So I wanted to say a little bit about John Cage for the few of you who maybe don't know who he is.

[15:05]

He was quite something back in the 50s and 60s, really at the center of the whole avant-garde movement in New York, which I only really know from reading about it. So I didn't know very much about John Cage, except that, as it turns out, I had gone to a concert at Mills College in Berkeley, When I was in college at San Francisco State, someone said, you want to go to this concert? This guy is a musician. He's becoming quite famous. So anyway, I went over there with my friend. And it was so weird. I mean, you know, I'm kind of a kid from the suburbs, and I hadn't heard anything that weird. And I was like, whoa. But I did also feel like it wasn't unpleasant. And whatever I came away with was memorable. Because I've remembered it now for a very long time, you know, 50 years. I can remember watching him walk around on stage. He performed this piece called Water Walk, which you can see on YouTube if you look it up. I had been living at Zen Center for a while.

[16:09]

At the time, I went over to one of the museums in San Francisco, and I was browsing around in the bookstore, and I saw this book entitled Where the Heart Beats. subtitled John Cage, Zen Buddhism and the Inner Life of Artists by a woman named Kay Larson, who's a critic, fairly well-known critic, apparently, art critic, as well as a longtime practitioner of the Buddhadharma in both Zen and Tibetan traditions. So on the back cover of the book, she says this. The composer John Cage, whose joyful, exuberant creativity transmitted his influence beyond music into art and literature, cinema, and multiple forms of cultural experiment as he stood at the absolute epicenter of the international avant-garde of the 1950s and 1960s. Where the Heart Beats is a biography of John Cage is the first biography of John Cage to address the phenomenal importance of Zen Buddhism in freeing Cage from suffering and opening his heart to bright new possibilities of thought and action.

[17:19]

The Cage-ian revolution, as it's been called, touched many artists of the day, including the man who was to become his life partner, Merce Cunningham, as well as Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and Yoko Ono, among many others. A story of profound spiritual transformation where the heart beats, reveals the blossoming of Zen in the very heart of American culture. Who knew? I don't know, but I read that jacket and I read the back and I bought the book and I read it cover to cover very quickly. I was just absolutely riveted. by finding out about these early pioneers who were exploring Zen and were exploring themselves through all these mediums of dance and sound and love. It was all love. So John Cage himself called the revolutionary work of his contemporaries the transitory and ephemeral poetics of the here and now. The transitory and ephemeral poetics of the here and now.

[18:24]

So one of the first quotations that I read of his that led me to a fascination with his insight and his work was this one. The first question, he says, the first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful. The first question I ask is, why do I think it's not beautiful? And very shortly, I discover that there is no reason. You can try that one. Look at something you don't think is beautiful and just keep looking at it. It's very powerful. Actually, these are transformational teachings that are experiential. You actually use your senses to confirm that you're biased and that you have a lot of weird stuff going through your head and not take what's going through your head so seriously. So later on he also said, if something is boring, after two minutes. This reminds me of Zazen. If something is boring after two minutes, well then try it for four minutes.

[19:28]

And if it's still boring, try it for eight, 16, 32, and so on. Eventually, one discovers that it's not boring at all, but very interesting. That reminded me also of Charlotte Selver, another pioneer of sensory awareness teacher who was around Zen Center for many, many years. She died at 102 down at Muir Beach and had a big influence on the Zen students that enjoyed so much going to work with her and practice with her around sensory awareness. It was all about senses. One of the things she said to her students, I went to a class actually, I heard it. I was there. She had us lay on the floor and she said, If you lay on the floor long enough, I promise you something will change, and it won't be the floor. And she was right. Very much like Sada said. I promise you something will change, and it won't be the wall. Anyway, after devouring the book, John Cage's book, I started to look for some more examples of his work, and I found quite a lot online that satisfied my interest, and of course you can do the same.

[20:43]

So one of the most extraordinary examples of his was his concert that I found online. And that has been performed for many years. I don't know if it's been performed recently. Maybe today is the first time in a while. This one called 4 minutes and 33 seconds, which I'm going to play for you in a minute. Less than a minute, perhaps. According to his biographer, Kay Larson, that Between 1950 and 1953, John Cage's life and work changed dramatically in that he made a great turning of the heart that opened his eyes to the boundlessness of the world all around him, and in particular to the world of sound. Or as he came to say, I do not study music anymore, I study noise. So it was during this time he introduced into his work a host of new ideas that were raging through the art culture of our time, ideas like chance and indeterminacy and immediacy, all very zen kind of notions and teachings and truths.

[21:51]

And then, according to K. Larson, at the height of his leap in August of 1952, he accompanied a man named David Tudor to a Rustic Music Marne in Woodstock, New York. He handed him a score with instructions that I will tell you later, after I play this piece for you. And the piece that he played for David Tudor is this one. So I'd like to invite all of you to sit comfortably, if you aren't already, and then tune into your body sensations. and in particular to the sensations of sight and of sound. You're free to look around, you're free to get up if you like, you're free to do whatever else you feel inspired to do, or just listen, just listen. This is not a trick, it's a serious work of art, which doesn't mean that we are not welcome to cough or sneeze or laugh or yawn or anything else that we humans like to do, tend to do.

[22:56]

So here it is, 4 minutes and 33 seconds. If you're ready, I'm ready. And here we go. That's it.

[27:46]

Four minutes and 33 seconds. So, this piece has been played, actually, in concert halls. Back in early 2000s, I watched one performance. It was a full orchestra. And the conductor lifted the baton and then set it down and stood there. And you could begin to hear this kind of, kind of murmuring from the audience after a while, after about a minute or two minutes. I also saw a performance by a pianist who came in, and he had full tails and tucks, and he sat down at the piano, he lifted it up, he put the score on the place where he put music, and then he set a timer, and then he closed the keyboard, and he sat there. So I'm... I'm curious to engage with you all about how, if you haven't heard this piece before, even if you have, how is it to be told you're listening to a piece of music and then, and then, you know, and then what?

[29:00]

You know, what happens? What happens there? Yeah, please, please, whatever you'd like to say or however you're thinking, whatever you're thinking about, whatever you noticed about your effort. perhaps get a hold of something, or to make something, or to, you know, I think in some cases, people get frustrated, you know, so anyway, maybe you did too. Would anyone like to offer some thoughts about the last four minutes and 33 seconds? This is our sound person. Hi, Fu. Hi. Thank you. Thank you for playing that piece for us. You're so welcome. That's an interesting piece and an interesting experience.

[30:08]

I think what you were saying, I related to what you were just saying in terms of finding patterns and trying to find something to get a hold of, right? Something that becomes the music, which I think is really interesting. I went to, I know John Cage because I actually went to CalArts and I believe he attended CalArts as well. So there was a big presence of John Cage there in some classes related to to how we listen. And I think all the music possible is right there, right? Even in composing, there's nothing, you know, we don't make the music ourselves there. It's already there and we just filter through it, right? The big mind is all the music there is. Small mind is us trying to put it into something, put it into airwaves, right?

[31:10]

But even that is limiting the true potential of what music is and allowing us to explore the music of the moment and the depth of, well, I think we make music to bring about emotion. At least I think most, a lot of music, right? Or at least some kind of reaction. So it can be very powerful just experiencing the thoughts. So at least that's what came, What came to mind to me is where we always try to find patterns, the brain doing its thing. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I like that very much. I appreciate that. We're looking for something. We're trying to make something out of, not nothing, something out of everything. It's like, oh, how do we squeeze it down so that we can understand the language or hear this song or whatever it is, when the song's being played all the time, as you said.

[32:11]

So that was his point, too. And Suzuki Roshi's point in this chapter we read, which is why I got stuck on it. He's saying that if the sound weren't there, you couldn't make sound. The hand couldn't clap if there weren't already sound there. Yeah, that was very challenging. It was something I came across when I was first, I think, watching YouTube videos on Suzuki Roshi and I came across the film. And I think at some point he was talking about the Blue Jays and how they're... you know, how loud they are. But if there wasn't, if the Blue Jay wasn't, if there wasn't already sound there, there would be nothing for us to hear in a way, right? It's the actualization of sound. It's very, that was a challenging one for me that I had to sit with and dissolve some barriers, right, that I think we create in in understanding what our experience of sound is, and the limitations we put on it.

[33:15]

Yeah, especially Blue Jays, their sound is, well, at times, very unpleasant, and very persistent. And so, you know, they're right out there outside the Zendo. Even better occasion that we had at Green Gorge a couple years back was some turkeys were in the main area outside the Zendo. And they were the worst noise. I think of it. And they went on and on and on. You know, they were just like, and we kept saying, I hope they don't get hurt, but I hope they go away because it was really terrible. But I think his point there in that lecture he gives about the Blue Jays is that once you release all of your need to make it pleasant or for yourself, or I don't like this or I do like that, you just kind of notice that the Blue Jays is not outside of you. It is you. you know, you're not without the turkeys or the Blue Jays, we don't, there's this we're gone, we disappear without the light and the sound, you know, this is what makes us are all of these incoming and all this stuff that's coming in.

[34:21]

Without that we would have we would be like a vacancy. And but it's hard for us to remember, it's not us reaching out to pick up stuff. It's really that the stuff is picks us up. Makes us. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. No, thank you. Yeah. Hey, Dean. Well, I have to admit the only time I've ever heard a John Cage is listening to you talk. So I don't know anything except some of the things that you have said. So I probably could have been someone to raise my hand and say, I don't know. But so I didn't know what to expect. I expected something weird because of what you had said. And I thought I knew it didn't occur to me that it would be music. But I thought there would be something weird. And so I was listening and I I was a little bit I was sort of looking forward to what it was going to be.

[35:30]

And I couldn't really tell that it was nothing because on Zoom, there is a sound of the room. There's a sound. And every once in a while, I'd hear you cough or someone would move or something like that. And I would hear those things. And at some point, the sound of the room, to me, felt like it got a little bit louder. It started getting louder. And I realized I'm just noticing it more. It's not... probably not changing i'm noticing but hearing the sound i started thinking and this is because earlier you had said when you said something about that we think something's boring but when we look at for a while it is becomes not boring and i was i got one more thing after this because that's this is the question is is it is it not boring because we change how we feel about the thing or is it not boring because we're witnessing this we're witnessing a change while we're looking at this thing i mean we're recognizing a change in our body and that's what makes it not boring so that's my question but then so i'm hearing this and i hear it get louder and you had said something earlier nice about how our perceptions we think that something is but hearing that sound was kind of like a rumble

[36:59]

And I thought about a train being way down the track and how people try to rush and get across the track. And the train is coming slowly or a boat, a motorboat. It's coming slowly. And what we do with all that time and how we decide, I can pull out and take my right now. That car's way back there. Or I can do this because of that. So that's... So it was kind of exciting. And it was exciting to watch what I'm doing with it. That was the thing that was exciting. And to witness, oh, wow, you're really coming up with this creation. And to just watch it change. And I think I hear the sound changing. The volume is going up. And to just realize that. But I am curious about... is why do why is it not boring is it not boring because we're having this experience of you know it's like when something happens and you got an attitude about it and you're all decided this and then something happens and it changes that's really exciting not because the thing changed but because oh my gosh I thought that and now I don't and it doesn't matter yeah that's it that's it

[38:21]

It's just taking delight in your own, you know, processes and your own, whoa, you know, that's me doing all that shifting around. You know, that's how my mind is worried boredom is mine. It's not boring. I'm bored. I'm bored. You know, so what is that? So the more you look at whatever it is, it's there, and your mind begins to quiet that's the shamatha is about a concentration practice is about staying with an object. So if you stay with an object like your breath or the wall in Zazen, if you just keep staying there, that's actually the traditional practice for calming your mind. So little by little, your mind begins to calm. And boredom is not a calm mind. Boredom is like, I want to be out of here. This is not, this is stupid. I don't want to, you know, that's noisy. But when your mind calms down, there's something so pleasant about being content, you know. It's like, ah. Yeah, it's what you said earlier, liberating ourselves from the trap of our stories.

[39:27]

Yeah. I mean, there's the excitement. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It keeps you coming back to the Zendo. It does. 30 years and me too and lots of these folks, you know, it's just like, and how boring, I mean, didn't you get Zazen instruction way back when? It's like, that's it? That's it? Just sit there and wait for the bell? I mean. What are you people nuts? Yeah. And then something very compelling about that experience of just sitting there. Yeah. I remember when I first started sitting at one point, I was so distraught and I thought I was dying and all this stuff. But all of a sudden I thought, oh my gosh, I'm sitting in this room and nobody has like had a heart attack. Nobody's fallen over there. And I haven't either. I'm just sitting here. And it was so absolutely fascinating that I was really doing nothing.

[40:29]

Exactly. Yeah. So that was... So there's your answer right there. There it is. It's fascinating doing nothing. Yeah. Don't we know? Thank you. Now I'm going to go get his book. Oh, it's great. Where the Heartbeat is so good. It's so good. I'm finally committed to getting one of his books rather than just putting it on my list. Thank you. Thank you. I think I see. Oh, Hey, hi. Hello. How are you? How nice to see your Dharma name. Yeah. Yeah. It's good to see you. Thank you for playing four minutes and 33 seconds for us. You're welcome. Yeah. I have heard it before. And this time, yeah, it was really interesting to hear it, to intentionally listen for four minutes and 33 seconds. And I think about how music kind of bypasses our cognitive thoughts and stuff, and it just does its work on us somatically.

[41:36]

And then to just listen with the same intention for four minutes to that sound, to let that... to let those sounds work on you the same way. It was really interesting because it was sort of similar to how I listen to music, I think, because sometimes I'll daydream. You know, it's like zazen is what I noticed. Like the thoughts come and the thoughts go, but it's still doing its work. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I do. I do. I do know. I know that you know. We got the same species problem. I'm trying to work it out. It's going to take a while, but it's such a good project. Yeah, it is. It's an ongoing project, right? Ongoing project, yeah. It was just really interesting to allow whatever sounds I heard to hear it like music and let it do its work. It was really liberating.

[42:40]

This guy did some stuff. This piece, Waterwork, that I saw performed, and then I later looked it up on YouTube. You can see it online, Waterwork. He had all this stuff on stage. He had a bathtub and a blender full of ice cubes and a faucet. And it's like, out comes this crazy guy. John Cage was kind of gangly, you know, he was sort of tall and a little bit awkward. And he comes out, he's kind of shy, seems very shy. And then he goes around making noise with water. Ice cube. And then, you know, it was just all water for like 40 minutes or something. Water sounds. And if you close your eyes, you didn't look at him doing this funny stuff. It was so magical. Really? Bounds of water. You know, Water Walk. It's Water Walk it was called. And so, you know, he was onto something. He figured something out. And he was very inspired by Zen. And that's part of what transformed his life. And so I feel really akin, kinship with John Cage.

[43:45]

He was gay, and that was really hard on him until he realized it was okay. So, you know, he had a lot of struggles, and he came through with a big offering. Did that come later for him, that acceptance and being okay with it? Well, I don't know how the 50s was for folks. They probably stayed close and quiet about their identities, but certainly among themselves, among the avant-garde in New York, that was probably no big deal. Not at all. Exactly. With family. Yeah. It felt like Zazen though, listening. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And always Zazen, all the time. If we're listening. Right? Yeah. But that's what I forgot to say that. Yeah, I got that. I was like, always it's available to us, right? Right. And that's the dullness that we the dullness and distraction is struck aside, as Dogen said, when dullness and distraction is stuck, just struck aside. It's right now is this immediacy of it's happening. Sound is happening.

[44:46]

Noise is happening. Color And, and, you know, and, and coolness and all of these things are happening right now. And what are you doing? Where'd you go? Yeah. Right. Yeah. That's good. It's good. It's good to be reminded as often as we can. Yeah. What a gift that he gave us. Right. Yeah. Really. Yeah. Really, really lovely. Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing. Eh, Sorin. Busan. So, you know, it's hard to, you have an idea, and then you listen to a bunch, you know, to a number of people, and the idea gets kind of fluttery. But I was thinking about the pattern forming and music and impermanence.

[45:48]

because music absolutely relies on impermanence. But in order for music to work, you have to hold on to the patterns that have happened before and add to them, react to them, connect to them. It's sort of an interesting... You know, letting go versus retaining, I think, is the question that's sort of sitting there for me. I have a question for you about in terms of the agent of control, about you have to hold on to. I think we do. I mean, it's part of our nature to have a trace of what's come before, right? I don't think I can go back and catch the pattern, but somehow I do pattern. I'm a pattern. So pattern... Pattern rises in the moment.

[46:50]

Yeah, but there's some way that we work that has some kind of, like a tail. Well, it's memory. Yeah, but what is that? Whatever that is, I'm not running that machine. I don't have control. No, there's no I running the machine. Right, there's just, that happens. It happens, yeah. It happens. But the... So you can't think of it as impermanence, or you can't think of it as a tale. You have to think of it more as memory arises in the moment and combines with the current sound, the current note. Yeah. My mind's going to like how you and I are making sentences right now, make a sentence, which is a song. I'm doing songs with you right now.

[47:54]

We're writing lyrics. I need to, I need to have some capacity or some, um, you know, whatever training and how to use language and how to, um, follow through. You know, with the beginning of my sentence and the end of my sentence, you know, how I learned how to do that is like how I learned to ride a bicycle. I don't really know how I do that. And it's kind of out of my reach. But our species has trained itself to do these amazing tricks with our memory, what we call our memory. And we get names to all this stuff. Our neurons are running around doing things, you know. And it's fascinating to study. But as the study subject, I have even greater fascination with, what am I? You know, what are you? What are you that's running around listening to music and having ideas and theories and preferences, you know, how to catch that kind of quality of being alive.

[48:58]

And a lot of it's about appreciation. Okay. Or of being in awe. I like that. idea that you're in awe of alive, to be alive and to be in awe. It seems like a real gift when that comes up. It's joy. Joy. That's right. It's joy. Joy is, yes, one of the great outcomes of our practice. So the It's getting tripped up by language again. But the sentence formation, the music, is processed in the moment, dependent on everything that's come before. Yeah, that's the alaya, the conditioning is there.

[50:00]

If you didn't already have the English language stored in you somehow, you wouldn't be able to speak. Yeah. And then the formulating the idea and Bringing that in from the other side and collecting all of that, yeah. I mean, we're kind of amazing. I mean, kind of amazing. See, you want to study it as a subject. You really do. Yeah, and realize I'll never get there. I will never know. That's my confidence. You will never know. But you can keep studying and keep questioning and wondering and appreciating, but you will never know. And that's a relief. For me. I don't want to speak for you. I certainly want to speak for you, Lisa. Infinite possibility. Yeah, right. David Bohm, another great mystic, you know, inviter to awe.

[51:06]

I think that's true. Ah, Cynthia. Hello, Cynthia. Okay. You've got that look on your face. Like, okay. All I want to know is I think you need to play it again for me because all the stuff that I'm hearing is just did not happen in my brain. What were you doing for four minutes and 33 seconds? What was your brain doing? Here's one thing that... So I read a lot. And, you know, sometimes I'll read a book that's 700 pages and I'll think, you totally could have done that in 420 pages. And so that was one of my thoughts. He probably could have done this in 90 seconds. It didn't need to be all 433. There you go. There's one thought. But then I started thinking about the creator. And just something interesting came up. But it's just because we always have our own filter on everything that comes our way. And my filter is that I work with teenagers, and teenagers are incredibly creative, and this man has created something that reminds me of what I see quite often.

[52:18]

With the kids, with the teenagers, yeah. Right. It's just that they think completely outside of the box until they lose that ability, and then they become really restricted. Boxes. And so I thought what I saw was a person who never lost that ability to create far outside of the box. Yeah, he might have for a while, and he was pretty depressed for a while. It was his liberation that brought him to this piece of music. He'd become free of his suffering in a very profound way. You know, we don't know how. Exactly. Just like the Buddha. We don't know how. What happened? Tell us what happened. What happened? I'm imagining that, you know, at some point when I have more time and space, I'm hoping to reconnect with a very creative part that I used to have probably, you know, decades and decades and decades ago that with time and space may come back.

[53:29]

So maybe I will write a genius piece. No doubt. I will call it two minutes and 33 seconds. Two minutes. So you're fast. You got to let the rest of us catch up with you. Give us another two minutes. It was just this idea of the creative mind that we lose. And, and I see what it looks like when it's not lost. And I, and that resonated with what I pictured. that he could access. Yeah, yeah, he had a lot of insights, and they're really, and he could share them. I think that's part of the teacher, right, is being able to share what you see and what you understand with others so they can begin to enter in that way. And I think that was his gift of opening a door, you know, for others to enter. And you mentioned him many, many, many, many years ago.

[54:33]

Yeah. And then I went out and bought the book. You did? Yeah. You haven't read it yet, though. No. Time's running out, man. What I'm hoping is that it will be maybe either a summer read or a retirement read, which is coming right up. I know. But anyway, that's what came up for me. That Kids are super creative. They throw stuff out there. It's like, where did that come from? And that's kind of what he did. Yeah. Where did that come from? Yeah. Yeah. He didn't know. He didn't know. You know, we don't know. We don't know where we're coming from. We just arrive in every moment. We just arrive, you know, and somehow people reckon that's Cynthia. Isn't it? You look like Cynthia.

[55:35]

You're arriving like Cynthia. You talk like Cynthia. But I still, the depth of what you all experienced, I thought, I just need to have you play that again. Well, I'm happy to do that. If you just stay online for 4.33, I'll just push that button just for you. Anyway, so my thinking was a little different than I think what everyone else was experiencing. No, you don't know that. You can't do that. You can't do that. You can't get anybody else. You can't hold them accountable to anything you think that they think. Well, there you go. I forgot. Yeah, that's right. You forgot. Oh, my gosh. That would be the best thing to remember. Yeah, that would do. That would work for at least today. A lifetime in that time. that's a lifetime's worth of work right there, isn't it? Yeah. Okay. All right. Good to see you. Thank you. Thank you for your patience with those two minutes. Ko-san, can you put on your pictures?

[56:52]

You can take off your avatar and let us see you so Karina can get you online if you're still wanting to do so. There she is. Okay, there she is. Hi. I'm being shy because I've been crying all day and I was feeling shy. But I'll just close my eyes and pretend like you're not there, and then you can see me. Pretend you're not there. You look fine. You still look like yourself. And there's a doggy right behind you. There's a doggy. I was wondering, I am in a space right now where I don't know if the people in the song have experience with depression, but... I struggle with it. And right now my inner dialogue is devilish. And so silence is terrifying.

[57:58]

And I just, I guess I wanted to ask the question of how you practice with those times when being alone with your thoughts is just the last place that's either healthy for you or where you want to be. And I know that this is, I mean, this is the of suffering, right? Like, I know. And how do you get through it? Yeah. Well, probably everyone on this call right now knows a lot about what you're saying. And we've all been through many things, and particularly those of us quite a bit older than you. I mean, there's more to come. And there's more to come. And some of it's really hard and some of it's, you know, just getting used to things and growing into, I've been here before. This is familiar. This is part of my family of feelings. And it will pass.

[59:01]

You know, my therapist used to say to me, I used to have panic attacks. And he said, well, panic attacks usually last about 20 minutes. And so when I had one, You know, after hearing that, I was talking to a friend and I started to have a panic attack. And I said, I will be back in 20 minutes. And sure enough, you know, I was back. So somehow these tools, whether it was true or not, whether that's actually a fact or whether it just works, somehow it's helpful to have people you can talk with who have some sense of, have been through that themselves, who know what this is about, And I would say, we often suggest to people who are going through depression, sitting may not be the best thing at all. It may not be a good thing. Maybe going for a walk would be a much better thing to do. Get out into the forest. Forest bathing, which the Japanese do.

[60:04]

They go out in the woods, and there's some healing that comes from the trees. And so... To really understand that there's lots of medicine around and that you need to find the medicine that is most comforting to you. And I wouldn't suggest if sitting is feeling like a kind of horror show that you would do that right now. Just give it a rest. And just whatever you need for your own health and your own well-being, that's the right thing. Showers. Baths, walks, friends, music, whatever you know touches you. And you're the expert. No one else knows where your healing can happen better than you do. So try to think of that. Try to remember that. Where do I go when I need to be comforted?

[61:06]

Where's my comfort? Those are just words, Melissa. I wish I could get my arms around you right now because sometimes that's really what we need is just to be touched, to be held. Thank you. I appreciate that. I try not to be too mean with myself when i can't sit for very long or i can't sit still for four minutes and 33 seconds um self-compassion turns out to be a really tricky beast for westerners yeah yeah yeah probably world round you know but you're right our culture isn't really trained for self-love We're trained for competition and other kinds of things that are so not helpful to us.

[62:14]

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I'm so sorry. I hope it passes quickly. Yeah. Maybe so. Hi, Drew. Well, it's always tough to go after somebody really talks very personally about personal, just to get off on what I was going to get off on. So I just want to acknowledge to Melissa that I've been there, and I don't mean to discount anything I just heard by not addressing it or something. Thank you. Anyway. Have you ever heard of Shinzen, Zen teacher, Northern Vermont?

[63:16]

No. Well, maybe, but no. Not enough to know who that is. Part of his practice, what he teaches, is labeling. That was the first I've ever heard of it. It's like if you hear, apropos of what we just heard, you label it hearing out, like the guy with the lawnmower. and hearing in. Because there is a sense that when I'm going off on thoughts or whatever, I'm hearing them. So it's like label. So that's what I was doing. I remembered what he had said during that John Cage's piece. I was listening out and I was listening in. The thoughts, you wonder how do the thoughts get, what's the medium by which they get conscious. I don't know if it's hearing or not, but it's the same with seeing, seeing out, seeing in. The colors, sometimes you actually see the sentences or something.

[64:22]

Anyway, this was my experience of Cage. Well, the Yogacara model, the manas, which is the self-love, the one who loves the self, that loves the unconscious, thinks the unconscious is itself, all the things you've experienced, and you know, and that you have been through, and your whole life of accumulated experience, this element of ourselves called manas, which is the lover, called the lover, is in love with that bag of experiences. And it mistakes it for me. That's me. I think that's me. And manas is the one that's hearing the thinking. It's like into thinking things about what it hears and what it sees. So there is a whole complex of creative actions going on there with our different parts of our minds that are playing these roles. The sensory consciousnesses are doing their thing, the ears and the nose. They don't really have thoughts connected to them.

[65:25]

My hearing doesn't think, but my thinking thinks about my hearing. You know, so there's a interesting way that the Yogacara school has helped to kind of put the map up for us to be able to see our experience and how it plays out. Mostly with the spirit of, you know, learning not to fall for it, learning to be to free yourself from those stories. I mean, that's kind of the whole point is like, those are just stories that I've made up about what I hear what I see. They're not more than that. And they might be helpful stories or they might be cruel or whatever, but their power comes from what I then engage with, how I engage with my own storytelling gives them power. My body, what I do with my body. You know, just thinking is pretty benign. But speaking is the next level of karmic consequence and then acting.

[66:26]

You know, I can say something like, I hate you, but then I can threaten to hurt you. So those are different levels of how we act out our thinking. Thinking, no problem. You think whatever you want doesn't hurt me. But as soon as you start calling me names, something's gonna start happening here. So there is a way for us to understand these mechanisms and to blunt them somehow, both on the lust side, gotta have that second bowl of ice cream, and on the hate side, And I like that about listening in and listening out. I think that's a good way to kind of explore. So could you say more about, we just had a Dharma study group and we were talking about the stories, not believing your stories. Don't you have to walk the line there with the relative and absolute?

[67:29]

need my stories to get through the day you do you do but you don't need to you don't have to believe them you don't have to be right you know it's righteous this view of yours the buddha says to the skeptic that you have no liking for views do you have no liking for that as well you know so are we willing to hold lightly our views are we willing to you know our shopping list whatever it is you think you got to do today you know can you hold that can you hold those things more lightly than you're used to you know give them less weight can you wait you know i'm using the word but just the patience like there's this there's a phrase that i learned really early on some many years ago now that i used to recite to myself the patient acceptance of the continuous arising of non-existent phenomena you know, how can I abide? And I used to work in a kitchen, that's where I would the patient acceptance of the continuous arising of non existent phenomena, you know, as a people are doing crazy things with their knives, and something's boiling over on the stove.

[68:44]

And it was like, Can I be patient with what's arising here and take care of it, you know, without getting angry or hysterical or blaming or whatever, just patience is a wonderful way of moving through the forest you know, the challenges. The last retreat I was on last month, Ajahn Amaro threw out this idea of unentangled participation. Oh, nice. And that was just blew my mind. And it's just been, I think that kind of, he said, a friend of his came up with it. He said it kind of sums up the entire Buddhist teaching. That's really good. Yeah, unentangled participation, was that it? Unentangled participation. That's really good. Yeah. A little aside. I don't think John Cage just came up with four minutes and 33 seconds.

[69:44]

He used to, I don't know how they did you do it, but you throw the I Ching. And that's how he came up with stuff. Those numbers? Those numbers. He used to do that all the time. He would like throw the I Ching and And it would like, where should I go? And it would tell them, you know, Broadway and 18th street. So we'd go to the corner and tape the sounds, and then he'd throw it again, and it would send them to the Bronx to do something. So a lot of it was, I don't know, it's not quite chance, and it's not quite predetermined, you know, you don't come up with it. It's something in between. Yeah. Dependent core rising. And co-arising. You know, he's using the I Ching as one of those things, elements and himself and the fact that he's into it. And, you know, all of that stuff coming together is John Cage doing his impulses and delighting, you know, generations of people who heard about him.

[70:46]

You know, it's just... That's a song that's always on, huh? That's it. That's the one. Can't turn that one off. Can't turn it off. Yeah, thank you, Drew. Hello, Millicent. Hi, Sue. Boy, what a symphony I've been listening to with the song that's been played since you played John Cage to us. And a bit like Lisa, I think, I've been so engaged with each conversation that's arisen since, each movement of the song that's arisen since, that I've almost forgotten why I've put my hand up.

[71:53]

well now you've added your own little what do you call it passage of a song like your own little yeah it's why I didn't take it down again but I'm very aware that I've been listening to a song of such complexity and depth of feeling I'm very grateful to to these encounters. So, yeah, I'm happy to add my own triangle. Tuba. I don't know about that. But it was such an interesting experience listening to Cage when you played that music to us. It was different from Zazen.

[72:59]

You'd think, oh, yeah, just, you know, five minutes of Zazen, but it wasn't, and I became really aware of listening as against hearing. So any, I live in it, quiet bit of the world, but, you know, there was an occasional car that went by and I could hear my own tinnitus pretty loudly. And watching the unending stream of thoughts arising and how tempting they were, for instance, I thought pretty quickly about Gerard Manley Hopkins' beautiful poem called Elected Silence. Elected silence, sing to me, beat upon my walled ear, and so on.

[74:05]

Oh, nice. And, yeah, and then, you know, I was distracted by thinking about the difference between elected silence and, say, silence imposed by... deafness and so on that stream of thought went. I became terribly aware that I was listening. There was a listener listening. And my question is, harks back to talks that Robert Aitken used to give about how, and I'm not so familiar with Suzuki Roshi on the Blue Jay, But Aitken used to say that the bird sings on your cushion. And while there's a listener there, the bird cannot sing on my cushion. Does that make sense?

[75:06]

Yeah. Yeah, it does. To you as well. It does. And it seems to me that the listener has to stop listening before the bird can sing on my cushion. Yeah, that's what Suzuki Roshi talks about. You have to really drop down into, we have the word samadhi, but into a concentrated state where you're no longer focusing on your discursive thoughts. You're letting those little birds fly away. And you're just allowing the kind of larger context of like the arena of experience. It's just, just that space, spaciousness, spaciousness. Yeah. You know, and then there's all kinds of events, but you don't turn to them. You just, they just come and like a little flea circus.

[76:08]

They just come in and they go out and you're not bothered by your mind. I think it's the not bothered is the, is that there's no listener. Yes, because I was very interested in my thought about the poem by Gerard Manny Hopkins and its beauty and the exquisite music of a poem as against the music of music. And I had a lot going on. Yeah. Yeah. Quickly. And even the desire for the bird to sing on my cushion. Yeah. Yeah, painful. Anyway, I just think that, you know, Cage is saying, listen, listen, listen. Always listening.

[77:08]

I think it's hearing. Yeah. I don't want to listen. I just want to hear. Well, that's important. I think you're right, and I think it's okay not to quibble, to let hearing and listening be good friends. Because sometimes we turn toward, the attention goes toward something as an object, and then you have a subject, right? Oh, that's a bird. So I've now split the universe into subject and object. I think that's what you're pointing to. If I'm hearing, there's a feeling of presence. my mind goes to if I'm present and there's an arising within presence of just call it sound you can call it sight you can call it odor you know just of of arrival just of life of my life that's the life that I have is coming in those forms and if I'm relaxed um it's very nutritious

[78:21]

receiving my life. That's why I go to the Zendo in the morning. I want to get nutrition. I want to get some nutrition. And from that receptivity. And we slip out. We go from listening to hearing. I think it's pretty hard to be just one or the other. It's so seductive. Oh, it is. Yeah. Those poets, those orchestras, those saxophones, you know, they're just seducers. They're seducers and they're inviters, of course, but what is seductive is yearning for the bird to sing on my cushion. Yeah. Again. Even if it does once, then you want it back. I wanted to stay on my cushion with what was me.

[79:25]

Yeah, I know. Well, we're like that. That's kind of our nature. Yeah, it's all part of it. Thank you so much for this conversation. Melissa, thank you. Alexa, stop. She's listening. There's no hiding. Not only are we always seeing our actions. Alexa. I just wanted to first send a big thank you to Kosan for the book that she sent and also send my best wishes to her as well. I appreciate her sharing that because it's It's very, my experience of it is very difficult and there's something almost beyond thoughts, something very visceral in those experiences of those depressive states.

[80:31]

So I wanted her to know that, to thank her for sharing and send the best wishes because I think we all in our own ways share with that, right? And like you said, through the gift of impermanence that can bring about such grief but also such relief that one way or another in some way it'll all change right and then we'll all change together so yeah yeah together i like that together part exactly yeah we've all got this same illness and same and same relief exactly yeah thank you for that no thank you thank you Okay, 6.30. Thank you all for being here. And I'm going to go back on the, there it is, the screensaver. I mean, what do you call it? Whatever it is. The gallery. The gallery.

[81:32]

I'm losing vocabulary very quickly. All my nouns are dropping away. Those of you in the advancing years know what I'm talking about. One of the delights of Ensov Village is sitting at the table and someone starts a story and then they can't remember where it was or what they were saying and we all laugh and then the next person takes up the story. So it's lovely to be in the company of my fellow travelers at this age. So thank you all. If you'd like to come on to Audible, you're welcome to do that. Say goodnight. Good night, everyone. Good morning. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, just send my kids to camp. Thank you. Thank you. Good night. Thank you. Good night. Good morning. Bye. Bye, everyone. Be well. Yes, please take care. All of you. Sorry for the screen music.

[82:34]

Bye. Yeah, I got two of you.

[82:38]

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