This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning, everyone. Oh, thank you. That's so nice. Thank you. So I have a confession and repentance this morning. Um... So during first period zazen, which is often when I notice, I don't know how it is for you, but I call it like a short-term memory download. So oftentimes things that have just happened, sort of like dreams, I think, where you're kind of trying to work out some of these little griddlies that have happened recently. So they often appear in first period. And after kinhen, I can be a little more settled, kind of my pattern. So during first period this morning, I was having a bit of a flashback to this very moment yesterday when I was getting ready to give a talk.

[01:06]

And this is about me. And then something happened. A bell rang, and the kokyo introduced you to chant, and you all started chanting, and I was still futzing around with my glasses and stuff. So I think that kind of a tortoise thing happened. I froze inside. So this is about me inside. So I kind of froze, like... I don't know what to do. Do I stop futzing? Do I start chanting? And then I don't know what I did. I just kept futzing and then started chanting. And that was the end. This morning, I thought about it, and I remembered the story that I told you about the birds being liberated from the cages. And I was thinking that I'm in a cage of Zen ritual. I had been conditioned and trained for 45 years to Zen ritual by my own wish. I mean, I volunteered to go in this cage. And then what happened to me yesterday was that I couldn't get out of the cage and do something.

[02:15]

So then I started thinking, well, what could I have done? I didn't want to be unkind or... irreverent or, you know, I don't want to do anything that would have been disturbing to the spirit of Sashin or how much I care for this practice and all of you. And then I thought, oh, I have a baton. I could have said, whoa, whoa, whoa, stop. Wait a minute. Hang on. Everybody stop chanting. I got to finish doing this right now and then we'll start over again. And then I thought, oh, if I think of Zen ritual as rehearsal and not performance, I'm free. Because then we can just start over again. Like, oh, oops. Why don't we start over again? So I'll get all ready, and now the bell rings, and now you chant, and now we chant, and then I talk. And it would have been fine. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't break out of the cage. So it made me very happy this morning to review that and to see the possibility of my own freedom.

[03:25]

from something I love. I don't want the cage to be a cage. I want it to have a door, you know, and a swinging door. So I also thought of this poem that I heard a long time ago, read this to us. It's a poem by Jacques Prévert called To Paint the Portrait of a Bird. First paint a cage with an open door. Then paint something pretty, something simple. something beautiful, something useful for the bird. Then place the canvas against a tree in a garden, in a wood, or in a forest. Hide behind the tree, without speaking, without moving. Sometimes the bird comes quickly, but she can take just as well spend long years before deciding. Don't get discouraged. Wait. Wait years, if necessary. The swiftness or the slowness of the coming of the bird having no rapport with the success of the picture.

[04:32]

When the bird comes, if she comes, observe the most profound silence. Wait till the bird enters the cage and when she has entered, gently close the door with a brush and then paint out all the bars one by one. taking care not to touch any of the feathers of the bird. And then paint the portrait of the tree, choosing the most beautiful of its branches for the bird. Paint also the green foliage and the wind's freshness, the dust of the sun, and the noise of insects in the summer heat. And then wait for the bird to decide to sing. If the bird doesn't sing, it's a bad sign. a sign that the painting is bad. But if she sings, it's a good sign, a sign that you can sign. And so then, so gently, you pull out one of the feathers of the bird and you write your name in a corner of the picture.

[05:42]

So, one of the ways I now see, or want to keep seeing monasteries like this one and our robes and bells and rituals and all these teachers are painted cages that have been finely crafted over many centuries. I mean, the idea is to support and encourage us and to give us some clues about where to look for the Buddha's awakened insight, you know, the bird, the song, the song of the bird. An insight that freed him from his own imaginary contrivances such as that he could become liberated by himself alone. But he hung in there. He waited until he found complete freedom for all of us, all inclusive. I think it takes a lot of courage to paint a portrait of a bird and then to wait silently to see if the bird is going to sing. There's a risk that the painting won't be any good and that only silence will follow.

[06:50]

And I think that that's where this poem ends too soon. It's a failure that it doesn't wait even longer. Maybe another bird will come along, or maybe all the birds and all the trees and all the animals in the forest will come and sit with us as they do. To wait for the call and the response as it comes together, as the Buddha himself did, and as he knew. No one, nothing outside of this. So with that in mind of waiting as long as it takes, I want to return to the cage of our Zen tradition and its stories, which just might be a set of keys for us to open some of those empty doorways. So this is the last day of our November seshin. Did you know that? Or have you lost track of time?

[07:53]

Yeah, you know. So tomorrow's a personal day. So I wanted to start turning away from a conversation about the teachings of the ultimate truth represented by Zhao Zhou and his animal toward the challenges of taking the relative truth seriously. So as a kind of buffer between the teachings of the ultimate truth and those of the relative truth, which is going to be represented by the story of Bajang and the Fox, I want to talk about another koan from the Zen tradition, written by our own Zen ancestor, Dogen Zenji, called the Genjo koan, in which he is teaching his disciples and their descendants how to leap clear of an allegiance to either of the two truths. The Genzhou Kuan is often translated in English as the fundamental, no, excuse me, as actualizing the fundamental point.

[08:56]

But originally, according to my reading, it's a Chinese legal term that means an open and shut case or caught dead to rights. referring to the Buddhist teaching that the enlightened nature of each and every thing and each and every person is an open and shut case. So the word koan is from two Chinese words. Again, I'm borrowing these ideas. I don't know how to pronounce them. Gong and an. Gong refers to a judge whose job it is to give equal treatment to all parties involved. Fair-minded. And on is the table on which the judge places the judgment. Ko-an. So in Zen, this came to mean a story or a public case that was told about a private meeting between a student and usually a teacher, sometimes two students or two teachers, in which expressions of truth were being made about reality, about the Buddha Dharma.

[10:04]

So the character for ko in koan usually refers to oneness, the oneness of all things, universal, all-inclusive. And the an to the authority of the case itself. This is a true story, like a stamp. So Dogen Zenji, on the other hand, as Shohaku Okamura tells us in Realizing the Genjo Koan, which is another wonderful book, uses a different character for an. So Dogen is a very playful, very creative. He's not so caged. The Chinese character Dogen uses means to keep one's place within the Sangha and to perform one's actions from that place in what we call our Dharma position, which in turn highlights the importance of our being individuals, separate selves, within a web of relationships. And as Dongshan, our founder, said, I walk alone, and yet everywhere I meet him.

[11:14]

I walk alone, yet everywhere I meet him, I meet her, I meet them. All the time. Face to face. Okumarashi says that when Dogen wrote the word koan in this way, he was expressing both the uniqueness of the person, an, and the complete oneness with all things. So koan for dogan refers to the reality of our own lives, each of us, where our being individuals is just one vibrant element, out of which the entire universe is being made. Indra's glittering net. So in this way, as students of Zen, we are being taught to view reality from two sides, as a collection of different and separate things, and as one seamless whole. And these two ways of seeing have been repeated, as I've been saying again and again, the two truths. Which in turns, they provide for Buddhism, their philosophy, basis for their philosophy, psychology, and all the Dharma teachings are based on two truths.

[12:28]

All of it and each one. And yet, for Dogen, seeing one reality from two sides is not enough. Seeing one reality from two sides is not enough. We need to express those two sides in our actions, each and every moment. Each thing we do, we need to express. So he uses the example of the Tenzo's job, which he writes about at great length in the Tenzo Kyokun, instructions for the head cook. So the Tenzo's effort is not just their own personal... activity since whatever they do impacts their crew and the food and in turn all of us in fact there's none of us who could say well this is my job my practice and so i can do it the way i like because the work that we do like with fixing food needs to be done a certain way and ready at a certain time and therefore when any of us

[13:30]

engages wholeheartedly in our work, it nurtures the practice of the entire community. In all of us, for all of us. And since all of our work includes everything and everyone, then my work is not just my responsibility. It's also completely your responsibility. And your work is completely mine. Again, like Indra's Net, reflecting all of us. For Dogen the Koan and Genjo Koan is how to actualize both sides of our life within each and every action. And how to avoid a lopsided extreme such as toxic narcissism on one hand or mindless collectivism on the other in order to find a balance, you know, the middle way. While not then making the middle way into yet another fixed view on which we become attached and freeze. Our practice in daily life is to find the healthiest and the most compassionate response to each situation as it arises, you know, moment by moment, which is not so easy.

[14:41]

Things move fast around here, and so it's good for us to be careful and especially to be kind. In the Genjo Koan, Dogen uses the metaphor of the moon in a dewdrop to express the reality of a person, a dewdrop, and the all-inclusive reality of the universe, the moonlight in the sky. Enlightenment is like the moon, reflected in the water. The moon doesn't get wet, nor is the water broken. Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dew drops on the grass or even in one drop of water. Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. The depth of the drop is the height of the moon.

[15:43]

Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dew drop and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky. So because we naturally lean into one side or the other of the two truths when we think about reality, given that our thinking is dualistic by nature, Zazen is a very important opportunity for us to set aside the overwhelming domination of our thinking and our feeling, a kind of cageless cage that traps and snares can never reach. So the ceremony of Zazen is also what Dogen means by the Genjo Koan. Genjo in Japanese means presently manifest case, the presently manifesting case, as in reality that is taking place right now, right where you're sitting, right now.

[16:51]

So it might help now and then to reflect on the ceremony of Zazen as you know it from inside your own awareness you know is sitting a singular thing for you is there anyone there is it a unified thing is it seamless is a person sitting there have a name is it one thing or is it everything or is it nothing at all what is it is it different than you Sometimes people say to me, oh, I haven't been practicing. And I know they mean they haven't been sitting. I thought, oh, you mean you haven't been sitting? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're not practicing? Hmm. Maybe you should practice not sitting. And just practice, you know, with everything you're doing. So whatever words we use to speak about Zazen will not reach it.

[17:52]

And yet words are part of it. As I told you my story this morning, certainly for me, words are a big part of it. Stories, understanding, confusion, trying to come to clarity. A number of years ago, I was sitting at Zazen at Green Gulch. I can remember exactly the seat I was in. I was using a bench at the time because my legs were beginning to do funny things. Anyway, in the midst of my familiar discursive ramblings, this very big... male authoritative voice said, who are you talking to? That was it. And it got really quiet. So I don't know, maybe it was Joujo coming down from the heavens or up from somewhere. I have no idea. But for that brief period of time, there was utter silence. As I listened for whatever else that big deep voice might have to say to me, which it never has.

[18:56]

Who are you talking to? Shohaku Okamura says, Genjo Koan means a question that true reality is asking us, which can only be answered through the activities of our everyday life. Practice realization for Dogen is one word, referring to the one complete activity arising in the present moment in which both the universe and this person are one voice. Who are you talking to? What are you doing? I'm talking to you. That's who. In the first few paragraphs of the Genjo Kwan, we can hear how Dogen is illustrating the two truths. And then we can hear him leap, just as Master Basso does in his... his 17th century Enlightenment poem, which I think you probably all know. Old pond, frog jumps in, kerplop.

[19:58]

Old pond, frog jumps in, kerplop. Which I'm going to talk about in a few minutes. So here's Dogen's Leap. As all things are Buddhadharma, There is delusion and realization, practice, birth and death. There are Buddhas and sentient beings. As the myriad things are without an abiding self, there is no delusion, no realization, no Buddha, no sentient being, no birth, no death. The Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one. Thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and Buddhas. Yet, In attachment, blossoms fall, and in aversion, weeds spread. So it has been proposed that the first sentence, as all things are Buddha Dharma, means that when the world is seen with the Dharma eye, the eye of the Buddha, and then with the Dharma eye, the Buddha's teachings appear, which Dogen then names in this first paragraph.

[21:12]

There's delusion and realization, that's the first and third noble truth. There's practice, the fourth noble truth. There's birth and death, the teaching of dependent core rising. And the distinction between Buddhas and sentient beings. So this sentence basically is summarizing the most basic teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha from his first sermon, in which he emphasizes how our individual selves are caught up in an endless cycle of causes and their effects. The opening sentence is naming all of the teaching elements of the relative truth, which each person has involved in their karmic life. It's our karmic life. And the second sentence sees the world through the eye of wisdom. So first the Buddha eye, now the eye of wisdom, conveying the teaching of the Buddha from the point of view of perfect wisdom, such as the familiar Heart Sutra. As the myriad things are without an abiding or a fixed self, no self, then all of the skandhas are empty, and by means of emptiness are relieved from all suffering.

[22:19]

For example, as Dogen then says, there is no delusion, there's no realization, there are no Buddhas, there are no sentient beings, there's no birth and death, no eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind, just no. No cage, no door, no problem. So having been released from an egocentric view of the universe by means of perfect wisdom, so good times or bad times are simply painful or pleasant. That's all. They are no longer the power drive that cycles us around and around. Samsara, the circle of suffering with us trapped inside. So the eye of wisdom, Prajna, sees the world from the ultimate point of view. with a non-judgmental eye and a mind that's abiding nowhere. And yet, for Dogen, if we get stuck there, if we imagine we have found nirvana anywhere, but inside samsara itself, then that is not nirvana.

[23:22]

If we can't find peaceful abiding within our busy daily lives, then there is no place we will find it. Desiring to end our suffering is simply another kind of suffering, another form of longing. Please let me out of here. No cage. And so he adds the third sentence. The Buddha way is basically leaping clear of the many and the one. Thus there are birth and death, delusion and realization, sentient beings and Buddhas. So this is the world as seen through the Buddha's own eye. Buddha has two eyes, which sees both truths clearly and equally and then leaps free. of all of the traps and snares of dualistic thinking, such as two truths, such as Buddha nature and sentient beings, such as who we think we are. So how do Buddhas do that? They do that by seeing, accepting and letting go, surrendering, leaping, without abandoning anyone or anything, just leaping.

[24:35]

the way of living one's life in accordance with reality, in accordance with relative truth, the Dharma I, ultimate truth, the wisdom I, and most importantly, in accordance with the truth, it leads one to take actions in the world, the Buddha I. Now you see it, so do something. Open the door and fly out of the cage. People need you. They need your help. For Buddha, the action was to spend his entire life teaching the Dharma to those who came to find him. And as I've mentioned a few times, Dogen's practice question, the one that drove him to China in search of a teacher, was this profound internal conflict concerning the teaching that said, why should I practice if all beings already have Buddha nature? Why do anything about that? Just chill. Things are fine. And Dogen's answer, once he found it, was just practice.

[25:40]

Not to reach nirvana or some great understanding or to get anything out of it, but to be right here without any goal-oriented agenda. So go ahead and leap and then land and then leap again right back where you started. Up and down. It's a good exercise. The place we call here. So with this kind of practice, nirvana is already here too, right inside of samsara, you know, like a sandwich, with not the slightest difference to be found. That is the practice of the Buddha way, wholehearted engagement in whatever you are doing right now, with both hands firmly on the wheel. Yet, in attachment, blossoms fall, and in aversion, weeds spread. But you can't leave it alone, can you? And yet, There we are. We humans are with our preferences for and against the objects of the world as we encounter them.

[26:40]

Not really remembering to see the myriad dharmas, the flowers or the weeds as they truly are. Empty of own being, dependently co-arisen, just like us. No problem. And so we go on wishing and dreaming and planning for things to be otherwise. as my therapist used to say in response to my lofty aspirations, human first, back down. And so we go along like this, hand in hand, through birth and death, just like that last scene, one of my favorite scenes, in Toy Story 2, if you're old enough to remember. As all the toys are sliding down into the recycling furnace, they look around at each other, Their eyes soften. They smile. They take each other's hands as they continue sliding down. Remember that? Just this is it.

[27:42]

Gotta go. Remember what happened? Anybody remember what happens next? Oh, my God. What have you people been doing? Did you see Toy Story 1? Oh, you didn't raise a child in those years. Yeah, I've seen everything. Well... Up until she was 14. Anyway, in Toy Story 2, they get rescued by... Nobody? No. No. He's one of the toys. He's on his way to the furnace. Woody and Buzz and everybody. Okay. The claw. Yeah, remember? The claw with the little aliens. and they pick them up and everyone's fine. Close call. Anyway, so in that story, the toys are rescued. I wrote here, does anyone remember?

[28:45]

I'm going to write here, no they don't. But as we know, that doesn't always happen, right? You don't always get rescued. So however the other parts can happen. Our soft eyes, our warm smiles, our holding hands, our being together. You know, gotta go. Gotta go. It's been great. So before we go, you know, the 108, sliding into the recycling machinery just up ahead at the end of December, there are a few more things that I want to say this morning having to do with what was happening in Basho as the frog jumped into the pond. So it's a very simple story. I think... Most good stories are simple ones. And there's just these three interdependent parts. There's a pond, a frog, and a sound. Old pond, frog jumps in, kerplop. So if you like, you can imagine yourselves up in the mountains somewhere.

[29:46]

Maybe it's beginning of winter, personal day. You've been walking for quite some time. It's a little cold and it's very quiet and then you come across a pond and so you sit down to meditate. And just like the waters of the pond, your mind in that moment is still and vast beyond measure. How nice. Suddenly a frog leaps into the water. Ka-plop. So try to imagine what happens next. What happens to your quiet mind when there's a sudden sound or movement? Can you see the ripples beginning to radiate out from that place where the frog had suddenly entered into the water? After a while, the water of the pond settles back into silence and stillness, and yet, as always, it's potentized for whatever might come next, whatever else might jump in, as is your suddenly awakened mind.

[30:52]

So I can really remember being touched by this haiku when I first heard it aloud. I think it was probably the Zen Center lecture. And I don't know why. I just knew there was something about it. It's like, hmm, it sounds like that might be really heavy. Some kind of spiritual significance. But I didn't really have any idea. I just liked it. I liked how it made me feel, you know, something connecting there. Kind of like Mu, you know, like a surprise. So I want to use this poem to explore some ideas about these three particular things that we humans have in common and that the Buddha considered very important for us in understanding ourselves and the world in which we live and which we create. The three things are our imagination, our sensory awareness, and reality itself. So in my understanding of this poem, reality itself, the ultimate truth, is the old pond.

[32:00]

Beginningless, endless, fathomless, and yet there it is. As this famous quote by Dr. Einstein, the universe doesn't actually exist, it's just very persistent. So we can think of the frog as an example of sensory awareness, you know, the many experiences that we have throughout the day. that disturb our minds as we go along in time. And then briefly, there's some kind of disturbance, some kind of sensory experience. So the self, or what I call me, have learned about these sensory experiences since we were very young. We have been told about that's hearing, that's smelling, and tasting, and touching, and seeing, and thinking, and feeling. Those are the kerplops. And it's only later that we learn the names of all of those things that are impacting us through our senses.

[33:03]

So at the moment when the sound of the frog hits the water, hits the self, strikes our sensory awareness, this is where this poem drops off, kind of like a cliffhanger. So what happens next? There you sit. There's the sound. That's it. And then what happened to the frog? Did it come up for air? What happened to that person who was sitting there all alone just a few minutes ago? Did they make it out of the mountains? Did they make it home in time for lunch? And so on and so on and so on. So the poem we can think of as a vehicle for our human imagination. In other words, the poem can help us see the very way that our mind creates and then tries to answer a string of questions. that arise in the wake of each sensory experience. Just as the frog disturbed the tranquility of the pond, our thoughts disturb the mind.

[34:05]

How many of you could figure out what that noise was over in the corner there? I think Robin finally told us what it was, remember? Huh? Yeah, but what did we find out it was? Skunk. Skunk. Little skunk eating the wrappers from our treats. Apparently that was the theory anyway. So I don't know. I couldn't figure it out. So was it rain? Then it was something. Yeah, something eating. Yeah, skunk. So we don't know, but we might speculate. I did that. I was trying to figure. What is that? What does that sound? So the name the Buddha gave for these ripples that arise in our minds when there's a disturbance, like this frog in the pond, Or like the honking of a horn behind you on the freeway or on the highway. It happens coming out of Green Gulch all the time. They come up really fast behind you. So irritating. Or a telephone ringing in the middle of the night. So the name the Buddha gave to these disturbances is prapancha.

[35:13]

And it's translated as mental elaborations or karmic consciousness, which is the relative truth breaking out. into song, the truth about our relationships. This term propancha means diffusion or expansion, like these ripples. And it's used to refer to our elaborating on very simple things. You know, kaplop. I mean, really, what is there to say? A lot. So in the simplest terms, the Buddha is talking about our compulsion to make up stories. And given these Mental elaborations, prapancha, are so important to our overall understanding of the Buddha's teaching of liberation, I want to give a little more detail about the mechanism of storytelling and how it works from the Pali Canon. So the Buddha said, all living beings are subject to an impersonal causal process of perception. Impersonal. There's no person there.

[36:15]

All living beings are subject to an impersonal causal process of perception. such as hearing the water splashing in the pond, or right now the sound of my voice being amplified here in the zendo, it's impersonal. Just sound and sight. And we perceive such things throughout our waking hours. Right now it's my voice and my appearance are jumping into the pond of your spacious awareness. This exchange between you and me depends on two things. It depends on functioning sensory apparatus on your part, ears that are hearing, eyes that are seeing, and it depends on what appears to be an external object of sensory awareness. That would be me talking. So it's working okay for the moment. So far in this sequence of events, there is no mental elaboration taking place or even necessary. It's just kerplop. Just sound. Just sight.

[37:17]

In fact, at the level of direct experience taking place in the present moment, there are no problems whatsoever. And yet, we humans don't stop there. Once there has been contact between a subject and an object, the next step in the sequence is a feeling about the object that has appeared on your radar. Kerplop. Kerplop. Did you say kerplop? What does that mean? Kerplop. When the Buddha in the Lotus Sutra opens his little white hairs on his forehead and shows everyone there, one quarter of the universe, everyone's very quiet, and they're all looking, stars and galaxies and everything, and then he shuts it back down again, you'd think that would be it, right? Kerplop. But what do the humans do? They say, what does it mean?

[38:19]

What does it mean? So then he said, there is suffering, there's a cause of your suffering. So he started talking to us in terms that we can understand. So, let's see, where am I now? Oh, so at the level of direct experience, which is taking place in the present moment, as I said, there aren't any problems. There's no problems at seeing the entire universe. There's no problem at walking around or hearing the sounds. But we don't stop. So there's this sequence. There's the feeling. There's the sound. And then there's these elaborations. So if the contact with the sensory object is frightening you or maybe confusing you or attracting you, those feelings then go into action. We go away from it. If we're afraid, we go toward it if we're attracted, or we just kind of freeze if we're not sure what to do. So I like it is greed, I don't like it is hate, and I'm not sure yet if I like it or not is delusion.

[39:27]

So once these feelings have arisen, it doesn't take us very long for this conceptual elaboration to rise, to come up into our heads, and then to do something, to take some action, like I said. So then the sutra says, what one feels, one perceives. Samya means to grasp. What one perceives, one thinks. Fatarka means thinking, fatarka. What one thinks about, one elaborates on, prapancha. So you feel something, you hear something, you have a concept about what it is, you think about it, and then you elaborate on what you think. Sometimes a great notion. followed by another one, and another one, and another one. Ripples. By our persistent attachment to perceptual objects, things out there, not simply as things in themselves, just a sound, just a sight, but as somehow connected to us, as if by these invisible strings that enforce our opinions of them.

[40:33]

You know, that's ugly, or that's pretty, or that's nasty, or that's stinky. Whatever we think, all day long. Shorthand in Zen for this process is called picking and choosing. I like that, I don't like that. Back and forth, back and forth. So the reason this is a problem for us is that the perceiving subject, me, becomes a hapless victim of a kind of relentless process of mental subjugation by our own minds. It's like we're just puppets being pulled around by our preferences. a cage without a door. Which is just what the Buddha said, your life is a creation of your mind. And how is the current creation working for you or for me? I like it, I don't like it, or I'm not sure. I don't know. So as a result of this relentless process, everything is bound together in an intricate network of concepts that are all tied up to oneself.

[41:37]

And then projected out from oneself onto the world in the forms of, I want that, I don't want that. And these are wrong views. These are errors in our thinking. But still, we're like spiders in a web, a worldwide web of personal domination, with each person endeavoring to dominate what's so. My way. It's my way. So this is bondage. samsara endless circling endless craving endless willingness to try it all again to try flying back into the cage and then closing the door behind us so there is good news the good news is that according to the teaching a focused and sustained attention to the impersonal character of sensory experience A focused and sustained attention to the impersonal character of sensory experience. Like John Cage, if I look at it long enough, there's no reason that I don't like it.

[42:42]

So we're focused and attending to the impersonal character of sensory experience combined with the practice of a wise restraint. Just wait. Just be quiet. Just let it happen for a while. Give it space. That practice can bring an end to inserting a sense of a self, you know, of a me or a mine, into what is merely a perceptual process, a kerplop. That's all. So this is just what Buddha told Bahiya of the bark cloth. In the scene, just the scene. In the herd, just the herd. In the cognized, just the cognized. Or as we say in Zen again and again, just this is it. That's all. Just this. So simple. Maybe that's the problem. Too simple. So once the mental elaborations have ended, or at least slowed down enough so we can begin to see the world as it truly is, you know, just a big old pond that's not bothered in the least by frogs or poets or the sounds that those beings are persistently making, and in the very best of times, you know, neither are we.

[43:56]

It's just moo. Just fine. as Reb was saying a few years ago, thank you very much. I have no complaints. Whatever we said to him, thank you very much. I have no complaints. I was like, are you all right? Apparently, yeah, thank you very much. I have no complaints. Okay, well, thank you very much. I have no complaints. Well, I might. I don't. I couldn't. I'm potentized for complaining, but I won't. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[44:47]

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