Good evening. Dale is kindly going to get me some water, and somebody got my Zafu from the send-off. Thank you. You can't hear me? Really, I can hear me. Something's happening. So I should make this closer to my neck. Hello? Can you hear me now? No. Right there. Can you hear me? Is that it? No? Speak up. Okay. Can you hear me now? Yeah. Okay. I'm not going to say anything that you haven't heard before. That's perfect.

[01:04]

Thank you so much. In coming in this evening to this—oh, now I can really hear myself, huh? Coming in this evening, I was struck by the sense that speaking with you Wednesday night instead of on Saturday is more like speaking to people at Tassajara, which by that I mean I'm beginning to know you a little bit. So it's more intimate. I like it. Some of you I don't know, but soon I'll welcome back. Yeah. It's nice. I like it. We don't know each other too much, but we will.

[02:07]

People. People. Hey. Yeah. That's yeah. I came back from my vacation with a cold, which I'm just getting over, so I hope, seeing as I'm the one giving the talk, that it's going to be a short talk. And if you don't mind, I will try to stop maybe in about a half an hour so we can all go home and get some rest, partly because I think I need it and also because I know how busy you all are. I lived for five years in the building myself, so I know that you have what? You have Zender job, kitchen job, house job, job job, right?

[03:16]

So you're really busy. Hopefully it won't take too long. And what I'm going to say can be really simple and in outline form almost, because what I would like to do really is just to encourage you in the next practice period. And I kind of feel like that the Wednesday night talk in a way can just be a reminder. You know? All we have to do is really hear it again so that we remember what our vow is, what our intention is, and just keep going. It's the hardest thing, Suzuki Roshi said. Just keep going. So I'm going to read you two poems, one in the beginning and one in the end. And the first poem is going to be a question poem. Can you hear me? Okay. I will speak louder. I will speak as if it's really important what I'm saying. Okay?

[04:18]

I will tell you what the end most important thing is right now, so that while I'm talking loud you're actually a little bit of a hearer. Well, I have a couple of most important things, but the very most important thing is to integrate your experience, whatever your experience is of, what should we say? Whatever you want to call it, okay? Wholeness, fullness, oneness, the times during, even the moments during the day when you don't feel a lack, or when you have really an insight of emptiness. What a word. I was told by Mel I shouldn't talk about emptiness, I should talk about no-self. But it's really not so different, is it? Right? But what does it mean, no-self? And what does it mean to practice no-self? Well, it means to take the insight that we've all had, right? And integrate it, which means that when the self comes up,

[05:20]

which you see all the time during the day, you forget it, okay? You don't locate yourself there. You don't pay attention, you're not bothered by whatever it is that the self manifested at that moment. Do you understand? Do you understand what I mean? Hmm? No. Well, remind me to explain later, okay? But that's the most important thing. So, for example... Oh, look, I'm not even talking about my talk yet. It's not ready. Okay, so what is it? Well, you know, you're with people all day long and you can see yourself and the other person manifesting themselves. Like when we always self-reference, when somebody says something and you, you think it's about you, you take it personally. There's yourself, right there. Ooh, it's icky.

[06:24]

You know, you feel a lot of way defensive, you feel separate, the other person feels like an other. You have to justify yourself, you defend. Right? That's the self. It's not a mystery. It's so much splattered all over our face and everybody else's. All we have to do is look. It's there all the time. It's not so bad. It's ourselves. You know? It arises all the time, the self. That's the thing we study. That's the thing you want to kind of see what it is. You know? You understand that part, right? Yeah? Oh, good. And then sometimes you get an insight into that self. And sometimes you even get an insight to the non-substantiality of that self. Right? Right? Then you have to take that insight of the not-substance of that so-called apparent self

[07:27]

and you put it into your daily life. So when you feel sad, okay? You feel those feelings in your body but you don't invite it to kill you, as Haseeki Roshi said. You don't chew on it. You don't... Achoo! Were you going to sneeze? You don't chew on it. You know? You don't work it or anything like that. You just watch it and you forget it. Well, of course, we can't do that very well most of the time, right? But that's our effort. That's the vow. So... That's the most important point. So I was going to... Part of why I'm doing my talk backwards is very strange. So it's going to be really short because it's almost over. Unless I go forwards, right? What was I saying?

[08:30]

The point, right. But before... Oh, I was going to tell you this experience. Oh, yeah, my experience with myself. I've noticed this experience. I thought I'd share it with you. Sometimes, you know, we have insight. That's probably why some of us even came to Zen Center. We have this insight, right? Or we come because we suffer. For those two reasons, we come usually to Zen Center. Turns into the same reason. It's interesting. But anyway, we have some understanding. And then we feel one with things. We've forgotten ourselves. We go along and life feels pretty smooth, right? We're kind of open. We're open, a little bit joyous. Wholehearted, we do things. We even tell people things. We think we know something. And we do. We've had an understanding. It's a real thing, you know? But then that experience and that understanding kind of floats away. It becomes the past.

[09:34]

We can't hold on to it. You can't keep manufacturing it because then it gets kind of stale. Some people get stuck there. You have to be careful. When I was in... I was in my family. My brother and my father over the holidays. My brother lives in Colorado. My father lives in Los Angeles. When I was with my brother... Don't tell him that I told you this. You'd recognize him if he ever came here. Looks like me, but taller. That's what I'm told, but I really don't believe it, actually. I can tell the difference. But anyway... He had a very clear and somewhat deep awakening experience that he told me about when I was in Colorado. And he's a little bit caught in it. Right? But I was very impressed. It was very kind of neat. And... So, we have these experiences.

[10:39]

And then what happens, they go to the past. And then we enter a period of kind of a fallow kind of period. And the longer we're in the fallow period, we begin to have little doubts. You know? A little bit less full, less whole. We feel something's lacking. We begin to feel separate. Does this make sense? Do you understand what I'm saying? You've had that experience, you know? And what we do is we want to rush right away back to get this experience so that we can feel whole and... know something. Right? Well, my experience over the years is that what happens to me anyway is you have an experience and it's an insight. And then you drift over to this other side which is also our life. Right? And...

[11:39]

and then we go... then we have another experience if we keep practicing. And then it becomes the past and you feel separate again and you doubt, think you don't know anything again and... you have an experience. And so what I'm understanding is is that kind of... it's not about having an experience. That's not our life. And it's not about not having some experience or being in lack. That's not it either. It's something in the middle. Just like they said, the middle way. And the middle way, turns out, is groundless. There's nothing there to hold on to. What would life be like if it's not an experience

[12:42]

and we're not identified with our suffering? Interesting, don't you think? Then what do you have? Right? If you don't identify with lack or separation, if you're not into... if you're not working this other side, anger, blame, separation, jealousy, defensiveness, you know, grasping after images and... recognition and so on and so on and so forth, if we're not there, if we let that go, okay, and we also let go understanding, what do we have? Problem. Hmm? Interesting, don't you think? Am I discouraging you? I hope not. You do have to walk this path.

[13:42]

What's in the middle is our vow. It's our intention. And the practice. So we're going to start a practice period. We get another opportunity to remember our intention and to remember our vow. Okay. So here's the poem. I've got like two minutes left. Who made the world? Who made the swan and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This very grasshopper, I mean. The one who has flung herself out of the grass. The one who is eating sugar out of my hand. Who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down. Who is gazing around us with her enormous and complicated eyes.

[14:43]

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention. How to fall down into the grass. How to kneel down in the grass. How to be idle and blessed. How to stroll through the fields which is what I've been doing all day. Tell me. What else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last and too soon? Tell me. What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver. Well,

[15:48]

for many of us and I think most of us on Wednesday night anyway, we plan to manifest our understanding through vow. And as Dogen said, we vow to forget the self, to study the self, and to forget the self. And we forget the self how? By diving completely and wholeheartedly into the present activity of the moment. And therefore, during practice period in particular, we get to concentrate, for example, on form. Does it really come down to that? It seems so silly, so meaningless, doesn't it, in some way? You know? But where else is the meaning? Even if you do social work

[16:50]

and help people, how do you do it? You do it in each particular activity, wholehearted activity with total attention, giving somebody soup in a homeless shelter. So again, what we need to do is integrate those experiences, and we integrate those experiences by manifesting wholeheartedly attention, forgetting the self, in the forms that we do. So before I forget, I want to say that next week, when we meet for the practice period meeting, please bring your orioke. I'd like to just go over it a little bit with people, all together. I'll just go through the meal and talk us through it, so hopefully it won't take so very, very, very long. And we'll just remember

[17:51]

some of the details and get that down. And also, I've been working with the... I will be anyway this week working with the Dons and the Kokyos during Soji to try to help them make a container for everybody to be able to do service with some attention and energy. I think that will help a little bit the day, get started with some sense of consciousness. So the last thing I want to talk about is how is it that we are unable to just be doing what we are actually doing wholeheartedly. It's not so easy, turns out. Why? Because our apparent self that is just dependently co-arisen, you know these words, is tenacious. And it will take

[18:51]

anything at all to maintain its veracity, its truth, its dominance. Because otherwise it's unnecessary and it dies. And it doesn't want to because it thinks, I think, that it needs to be there for our own survival. Because it's the nature of the mind to reflect like that. It's how we survived. So when we see that it's not necessary, we have to actually, with kindness and compassion, practice integrating this understanding of the transparency of the self into our daily life, slowly, carefully, bit by bit. So what stops us doing it is our emotion thoughts. So I'm just going to give you four or five quick,

[19:51]

very quick, just an outline, and we can elaborate it some other time. Just a tool, just tools that you've heard before, so I'm just going to remind you. This is how to work with difficult emotions. It's very simple, but you just have to remember to do it. The first thing is you have to be present. And what do I mean by difficult emotions? You know, I don't want to tell you, you know what they are already. The main ones are doubt, fear, greed, anger, restlessness, and torpor, the hindrances. Those are the main ones. Jealousy, pride, right? There are lots of them. So the first thing is you have to be present. First of all, you have to know what an emotion thought is. What is it? Really,

[20:54]

what's an emotion? I'll tell you. I don't want to embarrass anybody. But wouldn't it be neat if I called on somebody? Who will I call on? Does everybody know what an emotion is? Yeah. Did you shake your head yes? I won't put you on the spot. It's energy. Emotion is just energy that we put words with. That's all. So first, you have to be present to know that something is there happening. Then, the next thing is you have to see clearly what it is. Then the next thing is you have to accept that it's actually there. And then sometimes what happens is we resist the emotion. Then what happens is you're no longer feeling the emotion. So drop that one.

[21:55]

You're feeling resistance. Go to the resistance. Okay? If you don't go to the resistance you will deny the feeling. It'll get stuck in your body. Okay? And you start packing it away. And later somebody will just say something to you and you'll just explode because you have years of anger stuffed in your left forearm. Okay? So, if you're resisting what the emotion is go there. Go to resistance. And resistance well, it was interesting but anyway. Okay. Then, once you've gone to the resistance and maybe the resistance goes away if you're stuck in resistance fine. Just love the person who's stuck in resistance. That's as far as you have to go. That's not a problem. That's working with the emotion. That's fine. Okay?

[22:56]

Then when you're able again, the emotion comes up again. Accept the emotion. Just accept it. Acknowledge and accept that it's there. Then, here's the key. Right? Here's the key. Don't locate yourself there. Don't identify with that. Don't think you're right. And the way you know that you've identified yourself there is if you think you're totally right. You believe the content. Once you believe the content you're lost. It's over. Goodbye. You're having an argument. It's true. You know? It's a real clue. As soon as you think you're really right and you can tell everybody for why you're right and so on and so forth you're caught. Another way to know is if you're in pain. If you have some kind of pain mental pain your mind is caught. You have pain. When the mind flows no pain when the mind is caught somewhere

[23:58]

you're in pain. When you're in pain your mind is caught. It's a clue. So that if you can actually not identify then you're practicing no-self. Okay? And you can see it all day. People are always self-referencing all day long. It's really interesting to watch. Their selves our selves might need to pop up all the time. Self, self, self, self. And you can watch people project it on. First it pops up they believe it then they project it out. So most of the time people are going around with their selves in their face all the time. And sometimes you're there you know they see you but a lot of times you're not even there you know they're just relating to their own projection. That's okay. It's not a problem. This takes some time. You know. Took me really a long time. We were going over and... Anyway. So basically that's it.

[25:03]

That's what I have to say today. So... So I'll give you the end poem. Let me see if I want to say one other thing. Something about meditation because we'll be meditating during the practice period. So the only way that you can do this practice of no-self and working with difficult emotions is to take the mind of meditation into your daily life. That is our vow. Okay. That's our intention. One of them. So meditation is based on being free of experience. It's not...

[26:05]

We're not after experience. It's based on being free of experience. Our happiness isn't going to happen from what happens. It's really subtle. Freedom is not getting overwhelmed by what happens and not having to go into a cocoon and die while we're actually alive. Okay? Okay. Silent friend of many distances, feel how your breath enlarges all of space. Let your presence ring out like a bell into the night. What feeds upon your face

[27:06]

grows mightily from the nourishment thus offered. Moves through transformation out and in. What is the deepest loss you have suffered? If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine. In this immeasurable darkness, be the power that rounds your senses in their magic ring. The sense of their mysterious encounter, and if the earthly no longer knows your name, whisper to the silent earth, I'm flowing. To the flashing water, say, I am. That's Rilke. Isn't that neat? I'll read it once more because he's kind of hard. So this is the response

[28:09]

to the initial question. Silent friend of many distances, feel how your breath enlarges all of space. Let your presence ring out like a bell into the night. What feeds upon your face grows mightily from the nourishment thus offered. Moves through transformation out and in. What is the deepest loss that you have suffered? If drinking is bitter, change yourself to wine. In this immeasurable darkness, be the power that rounds your senses in their magic ring. The sense of their mysterious encounter. And if the earthly no longer knows your name, whisper to the silent earth,

[29:11]

I am flowing. To the flashing water, say, I am. So just to summarize, if we can have the courage to work this way with our emotion thought, to not identify with it, to be compassionate to ourselves when we can't, and to really cut through when we're able to, we get to this middle way place where insight happens and we don't stay there when separation and lack is our life and we don't stay there and we live in a place of groundless appreciation. Because why? Because there really is no path. There's nothing to get.

[30:13]

No self is full because no self is everything. We don't need anything but being. All we have to do is let it alone. That's all. So this is an opportunity for a practice period. We can remember our vow, try again, do our best, with each other. We all, it's good to help each other. Okay? And have fun, you know, too, right? Have fun. Okay. So I'm happy to be back with everybody and happy to be doing the next practice period. Thank you.

[31:12]

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