Learning the Buddha way, learning self, and one of the main ways to learn about self is to learn about intention. Intention is also a word that we could use for that is thinking or your vow or a vow or volition. And it is a pattern of relationship. Intention is a pattern of relationship.

[01:04]

It is the pattern of relationship. in every moment of experience. Learning about that is learning the Buddha way. It's learning the path of enlightenment. It's learning the path of peace and harmony. It's the path of opening our eyes to the way we are working together with all beings. The Buddha way is the path of seeing, of learning, of being able to see, finally, that everyone is our close friend. In the chant we just recited, the chant of the ancient teacher, it says, I vow to hear the true Dharma,

[02:11]

and when you vow to hear the true Dharma, you will be able to maintain the Buddha way. You will be able to take care of the Buddha way. You will be able to enter and give up worldly affairs. In other words, give up being distracted from the moment-to-moment work of helping beings awaken to the Buddha way. Awaken to the truth that all beings are close friends. We already know the truth that not all beings are close friends. That's a truth too. We know the truth of war and violence and lack of appreciation of life. The Buddhas can see that everyone is their close friend.

[03:20]

Or rather, when you wake up from the dream, that only some people are your close friends. And I know some people who say they don't have any close friends. People come and say, you know, I don't have any close friends. I have some friends, but no close friends. And I say, may I say something? And they say, okay. And I say, everyone is your close friend. But we can't see them. Part of the true Dharma is everyone is your close friend. And you are everyone's close friend. I vow to hear the true Dharma. Now I'm saying that to you, I'm saying that's the true Dharma, but I'm not saying that these words that are saying that are the true Dharma.

[04:32]

But I'm saying these words in hopes that you will hear, actually hear, that truth. Not from the outside. But then after he says that, he wants to hear the true Dharma. Because when you hear this Dharma, when you actually can hear, everybody you meet, you know, you hear what you're hearing. You meet somebody, you see, oh, there's Rick. Oh, there's Tim. Oh, there's Barbara. At the same time you hear, oh, there is my close friend. And you hear that. You hear that. You hear that. Even someone who's being crooked, you hear, oh, that's my close friend. You hear that. And so you don't get distracted by them being cruel to you and them doing things to harm themselves and others. You see that they're harming themselves. Yes, they are.

[05:35]

Because they're deluded. But you see that this person is your close friend. Very, very close. Matter of fact, there's no separation between you and them. You see that. So then you can help them enter the Buddha way together with you and everybody. The ancestor says, I vow to hear this so that we can together attain the Buddha way. And then he says, however our past although or however our past evil karma has accumulated, And because of this karmic accumulation, we have trouble seeing that some people are our close friends. Or we have trouble seeing that all people are. We have trouble seeing that we're not separate from each other.

[06:38]

So we have this program, which is an antidote to the karmic obstructions to our hearing through Dharma, Maintaining true Dharma and everybody attaining the Buddha way together. And the program is, settle yourself on yourself. Learn about yourself, forget yourself, and be awakened by everybody. By everything. So again, reviewing, settle the self in the self, It's basically tranquility practice. It's devoting part of your lifetime to training your attention in such a way that you become tranquil. Part of the program.

[07:44]

It's not the learning of it away. It's finding your place where you are and basically giving up It's like basically giving up thinking. It's giving up discursive thought. It's giving up wandering thought. It's like coughing, period. It's like scratching your cheek, period. It's like exhaling, period. It's like rubbing your nose, period. And scratching your head, period. and smiling, period. It's a very simple way of just being settled into loving you. Period. Giving up thinking about what's going on. Including that if you're thinking about what's going on, you just think about what's going on with no comment.

[08:50]

You give up wandering thought. Now, one Zen teacher said, settle yourself on the self and forget the self. He's suggesting that from settling yourself on yourself, you can immediately leap into forgetting yourself. Maybe so. And this weekend, I'm emphasizing that between forgetting yourself and settling on yourself, there's a learning about yourself process. But if you can settle in yourself and then forget yourself, I say great. But if you have trouble making that leap, or I should say if that leap doesn't seem to be occurring, then we have a program called learning about yourself, learning about it. And if you learn about it, you will forget it. If you learn about yourself and learn about yourself, you will eventually be given a gift called forgetting yourself.

[09:53]

But if you don't learn about yourself, if you don't learn about yourself, if you don't study yourself, then there will be karmic hindrances, karmic obstacles will appear before you and you won't be able to see the true Dharma or hear the true Dharma. Again, first of all, we need to ongoingly give up thinking. If you just give up your thinking, and give up your thinking, and give up your thinking, you will settle into yourself. If you don't give up thinking, unless you've already settled on yourself, then you can pick up thinking again and use it to study. But if you haven't settled yet, Unless you give up thinking, you might not be able to settle into your place right where you are.

[10:59]

Does that make sense? Does that make sense, Sharon? So part of the practice of settling is basically just give up distracting yourself from your experience right now by thinking about it. Your experience right now is thinking about other experiences that you're not having. Give up that stuff for a while. Give up that stuff. Give up that stuff. Give up that stuff. Give up thinking. [...] And the fruit of that is tranquility, concentration, flexibility, relaxation, buoyancy, alertness, joy. And with that mind, You can start studying your intention. And when you first start studying your intention, when you first start finding it, you think, oh, I got an intention.

[12:07]

That's the way your self looks at first. I got a self that's got an intention to do something to the world. That's the deluded perspective. You're now studying, you're now learning about the self and you're learning about delusion. This is good. I should say, this is appropriate to the Buddha way. You've always got an intention. The intention can be wholesome or unwholesome or indeterminate. In other words, the intention could be difficult to tell whether it's wholesome or unwholesome, skillful or unskillful. But if you always have one, and it's it has a tendency towards beneficial consequences, unbeneficial consequences, advantageous consequences, disadvantageous consequences, or you can't tell, but you've always got an intention. And at first, when you first look at their intention, it looks like the intention, your intention, disconnected from other people's intentions,

[13:18]

And you are also disconnected from other people. You've got a substantial person, an isolated person, who's got an isolated intention. In other words, the relationship you have with the world is you're separate and you've got your own stuff that you use to operate on the world. That's the way it would look to most people when they start to look inside and find out what their intention is. That's the kind of relationship that most unenlightened people have about the world. That I'm here and now I relate to you. And I have intentions regarding you. I want to help you or not help you. I want to go for a walk with you or I don't. I want to practice with you or I don't. But it's me separate from you, with my intention, which is separate from yours. That's the way it looks to me now. And I admit it. And I've heard that this is delusional.

[14:19]

But hey, I'm tranquil. So I can handle this. I can stand to be a deluded person. Because basically, I'm cool. I'm relaxed. I'm buoyant. I'm concentrated. And I've heard that I should now start studying this. Studying this intention. Once again, I suppose to you that if the intention is good, it's an intention which looks like, from experience and other people looking at it, looks like an intention which might lead to all intentions, according to the Buddha, all intentions have consequence. Not deterministically, but they have consequence. They influence the future. That's the consequence. They all have some influence on the future. They're not the only thing that does, but they do contribute. Those that have positive consequences are what we call skillful intentions.

[15:25]

Those that have negative, harmful, disadvantageous, and disadvantageous means in the world and also spiritually. Those that have disadvantageous consequences are called unskillful intentions. You start studying. You're calm now. You start studying these intentions. You look at your thinking. You look at your vows. And you start to see what kind they are. Now, here's one of the principles of how karma works. How action works. How intention works. It's synonyms, right? Karma and action of the same word. Action is the translation of karma. The definition of karma, the definition of action, is intention. So you're looking at your karma, you're looking at your action, you're looking at your intention.

[16:26]

If you have an unwholesome intention, and you look at it, and you study it, that has a positive evolutionary effect on your intention. Intentions, negative intentions that are observed, evolve towards positive intentions. And also, the observing, the consciousness which is observing, unholds an intention. It also evolves positively. So the vision clears up, and the action becomes more positive. when it's watched. Unwholesome action watched evolves towards wholesome action. Unwholesome actions not watched evolve towards more unwholesomeness. Unskillfulness unwatched tends towards becoming more and more unskillful.

[17:31]

Unskillfulness watched tends to become more skillful. Plus the watching gets darker and more obscured if it's not applied to intention. If you apply your awareness not away from your intention, if you don't watch your intention, if you don't watch what you're up to and point your intention toward things other than to what you're up to, overlooking what you're up to, your vision becomes darker and darker. As you apply your attention to your intention, your attention becomes brighter and clearer, and your intention evolves positively. If you don't turn your intention towards any kind of intention, let's say negative intention or unskillful intention, if you don't, if we don't turn our attention towards our intention, our attention gets darker,

[18:40]

and our intention gets darker. Our intention gets more negative and our ability to see gets diminished. If you have a wholesome intention and you observe it, the wholesome intention evolves even more positively. And the vision, the observation gets clearer. Your ability to observe The state of your cognition evolves positively watching negative karma and positive karma. And your cognition deteriorates, becomes less valid when you don't look at positive or negative karma, plus the positive and negative karma also degenerate unobserved. So a wholesome state unobserved deteriorates. A wholesome state observed appreciates, becomes more wholesome.

[19:47]

But even more important than that the action becomes more wholesome is that the vision becomes more clear. Yes? I have a question in a kind of practical realm. So the way I understand what you're saying, which is really great, is that And I was thinking of an example in the world where... Excuse me, you said things observed. Intention observed. Intention observed. So for some reason what came to my mind was organizations that exist to help people track intentions and what just popped into my mind spontaneously was something like a 12-step program which exists to help people track and and yet for a lot of people, also what went through my mind was that they find that to be a painful process.

[20:51]

So what do you do about how do you work with this in the sense that observing your intention sometimes is unpleasant or painful? I think if you're not used to observing... Great question. What's the answer, folks? I've told you already, what's the answer? What? What? Let's have one at a time. You've already, hopefully, before you start looking at intention, it's okay to look at intention anytime, any place, but before you really get into it, it's good to have already settled yourself on yourself. Otherwise, when you start looking at it, it's so obnoxious. but you find out that you may want to take a vacation back to alcoholism. That's why we first say settle the self on the self. When you're buoyant and relaxed and clear and awake and enthusiastic,

[22:03]

to do this program. Then when you start looking at this obnoxious material called your intention, because at the beginning, it's very coarse and diluted. Me, separate from you, is going to practice with you. I'm going to do these good things for you. Very coarse, very diluted, and there's worse stories than that. So how am I going to watch not only that I have a dualistic attitude towards you and towards the world, which is quite obnoxious, really. I'm separate from you. What an insult to you. Here you are giving me my life and I say, hey, I don't need you. Like a child saying, hey, I don't need you. It's an insult for me to think that I have a life other than what you give to me. And then in addition to that, I could think like, well, I'm not going to help you or something like that. We can have these terrible intentions, terrible views of our relationship with people. So we need to be tranquil and concentrated and relaxed and buoyant and joyful to do this work.

[23:13]

That's why it's very important. Otherwise, it is very difficult to do any kind of 12-step program or anything. And that's why we have our tranquility program, so we can do 12-step programs. So we can look at the grisly details of our own consciousness. And the grisly details of our own consciousness are our intention, which again is how in our mind we see our relationship with the world. That's the problem. if we don't study that the consequences of that way we see the world will cause us to be more blind will deepen our blindness of our relationship but if you study this pattern of relationship which is not true the diluted pattern of relationship which is our intention i'm going to practice exam with you that could sound like a positive

[24:18]

attitude as a positive picture, it tends to lead to pay some results, to good results, but it's still diluted because I'm still thinking of there's me separate from you. But the more I study that, the more my vision will clear up and I'll see, oh my god, there is the me separate from, there isn't the me separate from you. There isn't, my intention is totally given to me by my relationship with you. I didn't have it before I met you. It arose when I met you. What I want to do is totally a gift from the whole universe. But to do that work, you have to keep taking care of yourself. You have to keep basically soothing yourself. And the way you soothe yourself, the way you settle soothingly into being you, of thought.

[25:20]

Give up thinking about your life. Yes, what's your name? Shannon. Shannon. Speaking up on the 12-step program idea, there's an idea in some of those programs that you can use co-dependence, meaning you take too much responsibility for other people. Yes. So how do we reconcile that with the idea that we're all to get it together? What's an appropriate way to think about that idea, the sort of co-dependent idea, which I think has been really helpful to a lot of people, that you can't take responsibility for somebody else's alcoholism, really. So, but how does that square with what you're saying about, you know, you're a part of me and I'm part of you, and this is all stuck together? Good. Okay, so. When, usually, it's Again, you start off by, I'm here, stepping from you over there. And I have intentions, for example, to help you.

[26:22]

Maybe if we have a problem with alcoholism, I want to help you. That's a diluted perspective on this alcohol problem. Now, jumping over to what you can awaken to, what you awaken to is that everybody, all the alcoholics, are coming forward and they give you life. When you see that, you realize that you are responsible for all the alcoholics and they are responsible for you. Before you see that, you think that you're responsible for some things and not responsible for others. And other people are responsible for other things and not for others. Rather than everybody's responsible for everything, and everybody's responsible for everything in a different way. So I'm responsible for all alcoholics, and all alcoholics are responsible for me.

[27:23]

But they're also responsible for themselves. Not because they make themselves alcoholics, because I'm actually making an alcoholic. The alcoholic doesn't make herself. She does not make herself. But now that she's made into an alcoholic, she's responsible not for making herself an alcoholic, but she can respond to the situation of being an alcoholic. There's two meanings of responsible. One is that you contribute to the situation, and the other is you can respond to the situation. But we usually feel like if you didn't make the thing happen yourself, you're not responsible. That's the deluded attitude towards it. Which goes with the other side of it, is I am responsible for something because I made it happen. So when people think they're responsible for their own intention, well, they are.

[28:28]

You're responsible, but you didn't make it happen. So we often say that we're not responsible for things that we didn't make happen. But I'm suggesting that you are responsible for all the things which you made happen together with everybody. And also you can respond to every situation that you made together with everybody. So you can't... Every alcoholic that there is, you and I have contributed to their alcoholism. We have supported it. And we can respond to it. So we both have contributed to it, and we have supported it. The person who has not contributed to it is the alcoholic. They have not contributed to it. They did not make themselves. But they're still responsible. And what are they responsible for?

[29:29]

They're responsible for all the people that made them. They're responsible for the whole world. But they're not uniquely responsible for the whole world. I mean, they're uniquely responsible for the whole world, but they're not 100% responsible for the world, but they're not the only one who's responsible for the world. And they also have a responsibility to be an alcoholic at that moment, which is that they could practice tranquility with being an alcoholic. that they could settle into the situation of their addiction problem. At the beginning of the path, everybody is basically addicted in various ways. Everybody's addicted in this sense means addicted to some extreme, some veering away from the perfect balance.

[30:32]

Everybody is. You have to start where you are, and you have to start with your addiction. So for me to think that I make you an alcoholic by myself is wrong. For me to feel like I'm responsible for you being an alcoholic, I say, is correct. And also, you are responsible in the sense that if you're an alcoholic, you can respond to that situation. And the way I recommend you to respond to it is settle into yourself and study yourself. and settle into yourself and settle, settle, settle until, as an alcoholic, you're actually calm and tranquil. Then you can study your alcoholism. You can learn about it. You're still at risk of acting based on your deluded perspective on your life in the form of taking harmful things

[31:38]

You're still at risk. But temporarily, at least, you're calm. Now you can study yourself. Now you can do a 12-step program or whatever. Whatever will bring your intentions. And one of the main intentions is the relationship between you and the drug or the alcohol. You see yourself in relationship to it. And you see yourself in relationship to certain kinds of conduct There's the chemical, and there's the conduct, and there's you. You see a relationship there, and it's a deluded view of the relationship. And as a result of that, there's stress, and there's possible other actions which will follow from this view. The more you study it, the more your vision gets clear, and the more the relationship evolves positively. The responsibility of the alcoholic is that they can do that.

[32:41]

And they can do that with our support. And we will support them when they do it. And when they don't do it, we will also support them not to do it. And if they don't study, we are responsible for them not studying. If people do not study their intentions, you are responsible for that. And so am I. I'm trying to encourage people to study their intentions. But if they don't, I'm responsible. And if they do, I'm responsible. Every good thing you do, I'm responsible for. And everything unskillful you do, I'm responsible for. But not just me. Everybody in this room is responsible for every skillful thing you do and every unskillful thing you do. So in two senses, we all contribute to every skillful thing you do. We all contribute to every unskillful thing you do. And we all can respond to every skillful thing you do and every unskillful thing you do. We're doubly responsible. Without any limit. And everybody else is the same. And there's nothing which we make happen by ourselves.

[33:46]

And there's one thing we don't make happen at all. So I don't make you happen all by myself. Everybody in the universe makes you happen. Right now. And I do too. So I'm responsible for you in two ways. I contributed to your existence and I can respond to your existence. And I don't take that responsibility. I accept that responsibility. I meditate to accept that I am responsible for your existence in two ways. I try to be with that. And again, if I practice tranquility, settling myself in myself, I am able, actually, to some extent, to face that I'm responsible for all of you. No matter how bad your practice is, I'm responsible for it. I can face that if I'm really relaxed. And also, if your practice is, no matter how good it is, I can also face that, that I'm responsible for every good thing you do. I can face that reality.

[34:49]

That can be hard, too. And I can face the teaching that I can respond to you no matter what you do. Is that related at all to your problem? Oh, well, it's not. And the co-dependence is basically, I think, taking too much or too little credit. Yeah, yeah. I think it does help. I was thinking about one of my stepdaughters who is an alcoholic. And we've had to distance ourselves a little bit from her... You've had to what? You've had to what? Sort of distance ourselves from her disgustedness. But at the same time, we know that It arose because of her family, and her city, and her school, and her religion. All those things contributed to her alcoholism. Yes. But we don't want to promote it. You don't want to promote it?

[35:52]

Right. No. You don't want to promote it. You want to promote her. I mean, I don't know if you want to promote it, but I would like to promote her awareness of her own intention. But she's not going to be able probably to be aware of her own intention unless she calms down, way down. So I would want her to get some instruction about how to be tranquil so that she could look at her intention. Because the reason why we're addicted is because we don't see our relationship with the world properly. As long as we feel that we're separate from the world, we're at risk of addictions. Because feeling separate from the world is stressful, is painful, because it's contrary to reality. So all of us, until we actually see our true relationship with the world, we're stressed and at risk of various forms of worldly behaviors which take us away from and distract us from looking at this painful situation.

[36:58]

And the distancing yourself from her, can you use that distancing as an opportunity to look at what is your intention in the distancing? And every time there's any distancing activity going on there, what is the overall pattern of that distancing activity? And do you see yourself as separate from her? And are you studying how you see yourself as separate from them? Because I don't know if you heard yesterday that somebody raised this thing about distancing. I think it was Louise, right? You can distance yourself from somebody and feel separate from them. And you can feel close to somebody and feel separate from them. You can also distance yourself from someone but feel totally not separate. And be close and feel totally not separate. But usually, when you distance yourself from someone, If you look inside, you'll find you feel separate from them.

[38:06]

The separation means that you have a deluded view of your distancing. The more you study the sense of separation from somebody you're distancing, the more you get ready to realize you're not separate. And when you realize that, then the person you're distancing yourself from is a person that's enlightening you and giving you life. So you have this totally different relationship with the distancing now. But we have to study that I'm distancing out and I also admit that I'm distancing myself and being separate from you too. And I'm sorry about that, but I'm deluded. But I'm working on this. And from my present way of working on it, I want some distance with you. And I'm doing that distance actually to help me understand better my relationship with you and to help you better understand your relationship with me. Although I still don't really understand it properly, I guess, because I still see myself as existing separately from them.

[39:12]

And so I notice that I don't feel really comfortable with distancing or not distancing. Either way, I don't feel quite comfortable yet, because I haven't yet entered the Buddha way. The entry is when you forget yourself. The learning sets up the entry. Sharon? I was just thinking about the 12 steps. The very first step, get subtly on yourself. How convenient. Existing where you are and who you are. And then the second and third are really about being that we're not separate, that we're a part of something greater than ourselves. And I think that's why program posts so many people, that you really get those first three steps. And again, settling yourself on yourself and accepting yourself, I just like to stress that that's an ongoing practice. It isn't, OK, I accept I'm an alcoholic. It's that you accept it, and the next moment, you don't then sort of distract yourself from it.

[40:18]

You find a way to not use your thinking to distract yourself from where you're at. So you've got this problem. But even while you have this problem, it's OK to, Relax with it. That's a big difficulty for people. How can you relax when you have a problem? Well, you can relax when you have a problem when you're looking at it. If you've got a problem and you don't look at it, then it's hard to relax with it. But if you've got a problem and you're facing it, then it's fine to relax. And then when you relax, then you can start playing with your problem. You can start playing with alcoholism. Because you've faced it and relaxed with it. You've relaxed with the problem, the big problem. You've accepted it. And accepting it means you accept that it's painful. And you've accepted it so regularly and over and over and over that now you've relaxed with it.

[41:27]

And now you can play with it. Play with alcoholism? Yes. When you play with it, then you can start to see new possibilities of your relationship with it and the world. And then you understand that you had the whole thing backwards all the time. And then you'll be free. Joe? Joe? As we settle ourself on ourself, and then we begin to observe Judgment is part of the pattern of intention. So, again, intention is your intention. Every moment, your intention is the pattern of relationship in your consciousness. Your world is your consciousness. The way you see the world is the way you see yourself in relationship to the world. And enlightenment is one way to see your relationship to the world, and delusion is another way to see your relationship to the world.

[42:29]

Most of us see ourselves... in relationship to the world, and they're deluded with it. Namely, I'm here relating to the world, rather than the world's here, and then there's me. I'm totally included already. Great, I'm a success. I'm a successful cosmic party. Part of the pattern of my relationship with the world is a bunch of judgments. This world is painful. This world is pleasurable. That's a judgment. That's an evaluation. This person is my friend. This person is not my friend. That's a judgment. That's part of your intention. But even if a bunch of people walk in a room and they're wearing a little sign in their forehead called, I am Joe's enemy. And you say, are you really Joe's enemy? And they say, totally. I'm totally opposed to Joe. I just, you know, I want to do the worst possible thing to him that I can come up with.

[43:33]

So they come into the room. Okay? So you have a relationship with them. Right? So what kind of relationship? The relationship that you might have is, hey, these people are giving me my life. So you can have an enlightened view of your relationship with your enemies. Also, your people come in and say, we're Joe's friends. You say, okay. They say they're my friends, so I judge them as my friends. There's a judgment. They are my friends. But I'm separate from my friends. These are my friends, but I'm separate. I'm over here existing separate from them. And I have my intentions. My intentions aren't their intentions. And they didn't make my intentions. This is diluted as to towards these people who are judged as friends or excellent Zen students or beautiful people. So there's judgment. They're part of the pattern of relationship.

[44:34]

Judgment, that's a mountain. That's a valley. That's a judgment, you could say. If it's a good person, it's a bad person. A struggle person, that's good. That's part of the pattern. Now, now you see the pattern? Now, what kind of pattern is that? How do you fit into the pattern? Look at that. And even if the judgments are really positive, if you're separate from the things of the world, you'll notice there's pain and fear When you meet the beautiful people, when you meet your friend, if you feel separate from them, you're scared that they're going to go away. You're scared that they're not going to like you. If you feel separate from them. If you feel separate, there's fear in the field. That's a nice bumper sticker. When you get over separation, there's no fear. When you see the separation, you cannot be found. There's no fear. But in either case, in an enlightened field or a deluded field, there can be plenty of judgment.

[45:38]

No matter what it is, if you settle with it and study it, you'll forget it, and then it will become enlightened. No matter what. But if you don't study it, Then the lights get turned way down. And the patterns get more and more grisly and unskillful. And the awareness of them gets darker and darker. Get the picture? So the thing is, start calming down and start studying those patterns which have judgments in them. Yes, definitely. Does that make sense, Joe? It makes sense, yes. Is there any more questions about it? No, it's like a lot of things. I understand the part of it, but I think the other part is going to have to come through osmosis. Osmosis proctocin.

[46:42]

Yes, Dave? Is your name Dave? Yes, it is. Smith? One of the things that struck me about what you were saying was sort of a side effect, I guess, that idea of being able to settle in on yourself resulting in a playfulness, a willingness to accept the world as it is. No, it's more like the settling is more like willing to accept the world as it is. And then as a result of that, you can start to become playful, even with alcoholism. That's why I think the Dalai Lama says, my friends, my enemies. Yeah. And not just the Dalai Lama. Jewish people and Christians say that too. That's a spiritual teaching. Your enemies are your, you love your enemies. That's like, yeah, sure.

[47:44]

The Buddha did not teach hate people. The Buddha said, That when you go around thinking, oh, that's my enemy, and they hurt me, and so on and so forth, then you're miserable. Buddha taught that. But when you go around saying, this is my friend, this is my best friend, this is my dear friend, then you're happy. But it's not just saying that, but seeing that. I'm thinking about this phrase, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. Yeah. And I can... Can't even lead it to water. Well, I can believe in a universe where you've got horses that don't want to be led and don't want to drink. Yeah, I didn't know it was like that. I can believe in a universe that's born in a moment that speaks like that. And then a universe in another moment where the horses are drinking.

[48:51]

So, I don't understand what happens when a horse decides to drink or anything makes a decision. You don't understand what happens when the horse decides to drink? I guess it's a question about what we consider self-determination. You know, you usually say, well, I made a decision and then something happens. Yeah, so self-determination is, in a sense, anti-dynamic. You're not self-determined. You're determined by the whole world. You don't determine yourself. You're the one person who doesn't... You determine me, but you don't determine yourself. I determine you, you don't determine you. And not just me, all of us determine you. And sometimes we determine you as a person who drinks the Dharma, and sometimes we determine you as a person who doesn't drink the Dharma. And the Buddha, you know, in the Lotus Scripture, the Buddha uses the example of a doctor who's got these kids, and these kids get sick, and he makes up this nice medicinal concoction for them, and he says, here's some medicine for you.

[50:04]

And he says, the sober kids, take the medicine and become well. But some kids are so intoxicated that they can't take the medicine. So then the Buddha, like, goes away, on a trip, he sends, not Buddha, it's an analogy to Buddha, but the doctor goes away and sends word back to the other kids who didn't take the medicine. He says, he sends word back that he died. And these are his children, right? It's a doctor and these are his own children. So then they hear that their father or mother has died and they're grief-stricken. And by grieving, they become sober. There's a thing in Buddhism about grieving sobering us up. Sadness sobers. It makes you able to come to the present. And sadness is part of also settling yourself on the self usually. I'll put that in parentheses and come back to the story.

[51:05]

So then in their soberness, they take the medicine. And as soon as they take the medicine, their father, their mother, their doctor reappears to them. And the Buddha used that analogy because it's in a chapter where the Buddha doesn't really go away or come. Shakyamuni Buddha didn't really come. I mean, Shakyamuni Buddha came, but the Buddha didn't really come. Because Buddhas don't really come or go. They're always here. But it helps people for them to come sometimes, because people are into coming and going. So they come. And people say, oh, there's the Buddha. Which they couldn't see because they're into coming and going. So the Buddha that doesn't come, they can't see that one. They say, okay, you can't see a Buddha that doesn't come? We'll give you a Buddha that comes. You can see that, right? Oh, yeah. Thank you, Buddha. Hi. But some people won't even take the medicine when the Buddha comes. So when the Buddha goes. But as soon as the Buddha goes and you take the Buddha's medicine, the Buddha's there again. But you're not in control of when you take the medicine.

[52:13]

That's why this Because we're doing this together, and somehow somebody has to tell us, take the medicine. And we hear it, and we say, well, maybe later. And then they say, well, OK, you're not going to take it? No, I'm too busy right now. OK, well, I'm going away. Bye-bye. In fact, I'm dead. Oh, darn it. Darn, darn, darn, darn, darn. OK, look, I'll take that medicine you left me. Since you're not around to play with anymore, I'll take the medicine. So did the Buddha make them take the medicine? Not really, because they made the Buddha give them the medicine. The Buddha can't even give the medicine to people on her own. The people make the Buddha who gives them the medicine. The people make the Buddhas, and the Buddhas make the people Buddhas. But they can't do it by themselves. You can't lead the horse to water by yourself. You can't take the horse to drink by yourself.

[53:14]

But still, we can work together and drink the water. It can happen. But it's not going to happen by me leading you to the water or me getting you to drink the water or you leading yourself to the water or you leading me to the water. That's not the way it works. However, seeing it that way, which we do, and studying that, Studying that way of you leading people to the water, or Buddha getting you to understand, studying that diluted pattern, you will forget it. And then you will see how things work. And when you see how things work, you have just drank the water. But you have to see yourself not drinking. And again, you can't control yourself into studying yourself and learning about yourself not drinking, either. And I can't control you into that either, and I can't control myself into it either. If someone asks me, what am I working on?

[54:16]

And what I'm working on is what I'm talking to you about right now. I'm working on the very thing I'm talking to you about. I'm studying my intention. And I also practice tranquility so that I can find studying my intention palatable. But I don't... And to some extent, a little bit at least, I do sometimes think that I'm studying my intention. Or there's my intention. Rather than there is an awareness. Not that I'm doing the awareness, but there's an awareness here. Not me having an awareness here, but there's an awareness here. There is an awareness here. I don't make it. All of you make this awareness. And it's an awareness which has within it pattern of relationship. And there's an awareness of a teaching which says turning this awareness toward the pattern of relationship illuminates the pattern of relationship as to its delusion.

[55:24]

And the more the delusion is eliminated, the more it's basically leaked beyond into another pattern of relationship, which is where I see, or where there's a vision. of how all things are coming forth to confirm each of us. So if I tell myself I made a decision, it's not really accurate, but I recognize that something changed. Say again? If I say I made a decision, it's not really accurate, but something changed and I recognized it. I didn't see the change. Oh, I see. Oh, in one moment there wasn't a decision, and then there was a decision. Oh, yeah. So it's a little bit true, but another way to say it was, a decision had just arisen. A decision had arisen. There's a decision. That's another way to put it.

[56:27]

Another way to put it is, I made a decision, and then there's an awareness of the deluded way of talking. And the awareness that that's a deluded way of talking, that I make a decision, that's the key factor. And again, in order to be watching all the time, this deluded way of seeing our life, that I'm making decisions, the ability to watch that and see that that's the way you see your relationship with this thing in the world called a decision. It depends on if you're somewhat calm and relaxed. Because it's not that pretty to see that you're deluded. And even if you don't see it as delusion, if you just think, oh, I made the decision, there's some loneliness there. There's some isolation. There's some pain that you have to make the decision. You made the decision by yourself.

[57:28]

It's somewhat painful. And when it's time for people to make decisions, that's oftentimes when they feel most in pain because they think, oh, I have to make this decision by myself. That's when they come to me and say, I have to make this decision. And they're distraught because they think they have to make the decision. And so they're like, I can't make them drink the water all the time, but they are kind of like sitting horses, sitting ducks. Because they're very open to the teaching, which is the pain you feel right now is because you have this delusion that you have to do this by yourself. Not only do you not have to do it by yourself, but you cannot do it by yourself. And you never did do it by yourself, and you won't do it by yourself. But because they're in so much pain, they're starting to sober up. They're starting to sober up because of their intoxication with their own power that they could make a decision by themselves.

[58:31]

So we're intoxicated and grandiose to think that we could do anything like a decision by ourselves. And we're in pain about it. When we start to realize the pain, we start to open to the darkness. Yeah? I can't give you enough. I wanted to ask, if I have a medical condition and I need to go to a doctor, I have to decide, this is my condition, I have to decide if I want to go to see a doctor. Yeah, that's what you said. Yeah. That's your perspective. But in my physical body, my perspective is that I have this condition. Well, you have a condition, but also... you said that you have to decide that it's your condition. You said that too. So that's the way you see yourself in relationship to the decision, to the condition. In other words, that's your intention at that moment.

[59:36]

You just told me about the way you see your relationship with your condition. Okay? That's an example of an intention you just told me about. So let's say I have a vision problem and all of a sudden it becomes acute and I can't see, let's say. Okay. So then that's my condition. Yeah, you have a condition called not blindness. Blindness. Okay. So then I want to do something about it. Before you want to do something about it, before that you already have this intention. Before you think of doing something about it. And the intention is that you think that you are separate from that condition. Already you think that way. You see that relationship of me and my vision problem. Based on that, then you want to do something about it to maybe get some help to help you with your vision.

[60:38]

And then again, you think, I'm going to get help with this problem. And the help I'm going to get and the problem are separate from me. So I'm saying if you study those kinds of patterns, while you go ahead, I guess, and go to the doctor to try to get some help, you don't just go to the doctor, you notice step by step what your intention is, hopefully. And you notice step by step, I think I have to decide what my condition is and I have to decide what to do about it. That's the usual perspective of people. And what I'm saying is, if you don't notice that. If you don't notice that it's not really that you're separate from your condition, but rather that's the way you see your relationship with it. And that's your intention. That's the activity of your consciousness at that moment. And I say, if you study that, your vision will, interesting example, but your observing abilities will get clearer.

[61:47]

And also, Your intentions will get more and more stressful. I think maybe you need to go a little further with this. What did you say? I think I understand that being involved with everybody else, I understand that this vision is my vision. of my understanding. I understand that this is not my body and this is not my vision, but I'm not there yet. So I'm just like, this is my work in progress to see that this eyeball and vision is my perspective of my eyeball and vision. And maybe this isn't very clear, but then I get it somewhere that this body isn't. I'm not being very clear. So I need to just work, look at it. Exactly. You're not very clear. And the more you look at this situation, the clearer you'll get.

[62:50]

Plus, also, the situation will evolve positively. And also, as the situation evolves positively, the vision gets better. And as the vision gets better and it turns towards the situation, the vision, using your vision, even your not very clear vision, turns towards the pattern of your relationships the relationship between you as a person and all the things that make you, even a not very clear observation of it still is beneficial. And partly because you just said, I'm not very clear. You started to look at the relationship between you and your body and your sense organs. You started to look at that. And you saw some relationship there, but you weren't very clear. But you noticed that you weren't clear.

[63:50]

And noticing that you're not clear when you're looking at yourself in relationship to the world is very beneficial. And again, you need to be settled in order to continue such difficult work, because it's not easy to repeatedly notice that you're not clear. It's not that much fun to see that you're not clear. Number one, you're not clear. And number two, with the situation, it's not clear that it looks like a mess. This is not that much. That's why we need to also practice tranquility so we can stand and study a messy situation, a situation which might be messy, plus that we can't see clearly. But looking at a situation with unclear vision, unclear awareness, and it looks kind of unskillful, makes the situation become more skillful and makes the vision get clearer. And when the vision gets clearer, the situation gets more skillful. And when the situation becomes more skillful, the vision gets clearer.

[64:55]

Until you get to a point where the whole basic pattern of the world basically is forgotten. The basic pattern of you separate from the world is forgotten. And a whole new pattern asserted self, which was there all the time, but because of karmic hindrance, we couldn't see. And karmic hindrance comes from not observing karma. The inability to see correctly our relationship with the world comes from not studying the way we see our relationship with the world. Like you're with somebody in the car, You're seeing yourself in relationship to them. If you don't observe that, you do see yourself in relationship to them. You do. And that's your intention. If you don't study that, you get a little bit more blind.

[65:58]

And when you get blind, the unwholesome gets stronger, and the wholesome gets weaker. When you study a relationship, the wholesome gets stronger and the unwholesome gets weaker. Plus, when the wholesome gets stronger, the vision gets better. When the vision gets better, the wholesome gets stronger. See how it works? The main thing is settle and study. Settle and learn. Settle and observe. And what? Observe yourself. Observe your intentions. concrete and systematic way you're studying your attention? For example, would precept practice be one way? Yeah, precept practice. So for example, you have these precepts, right? And then you have the intention. You notice, hey, I see an intention. I see an intention.

[67:04]

What's an intention? What's an intention? Tell me. It's a definition of action. So what's an action? Action is action. The definition of action is intention. What's intention? What? That's an example of intention, but what is intention? What? It's a relationship. So it's the inner thought. Every familiar thought has a pattern of relationship in it. When I look at Kirsten, I see a relationship there. And that relationship is my intention with her. She's my daughter. I'm devoted to her. That's an intention. I want to help her. Or she's my enemy and I want to avoid her. That's the intention of the moment. You see? Every moment there's an intention. And then I hear about the Buddhist precepts. The room's got Buddhists in it or whatever's in it.

[68:06]

And part of what's in here is the Ten Commandments and the Bodhisattva precepts. I hear about them. So they're in the pattern, too. And these precepts are about patterns of relationship. So now I see that there's a relationship between me and these precepts. I would like to practice these precepts. That's a deluded approach, but it's a wholesome thing. I would like to practice these dirty thoughts of precepts. I would like to practice them with you. So I say, OK, that's wholesome, but it's deluded. OK, fine. Now, let's look at them. One of them is praising myself at the expense of others. So the precept reminds me that there's a pattern of relationship which is an intention. Namely, I'm better than you. That's a pattern of relationship. See it? I'm better than you. I know more about something than you do. I'm more right than you are. I'm right, you're wrong.

[69:10]

That's a pattern of relationship. It's also something that's pointed out by the precepts of saying, watch out for that pattern of relationship. Look for that one. You say, oh, there's that pattern. Oh, I'm better than you. I see that. There it is. Oh, that's like an unhealthy thing there. That's like a thing to get over. And that's connected to me being separate from you. Then you start to see that the thing about feeling better than other people is another dimension of I'm separate from people. When I see that you give me my life, I don't think I'm better than you. Also, I don't think you're better than me. I just give you my life. That's not better and worse. Better and worse goes with me and you separate. Or that I would slander others.

[70:12]

That goes with me and you separate. Or that I would be possessive of you. That's another bodhisattva perception. Not being possessive of dharma. Here's dharma. Got the dharma. Here's the dharma. Here's the dharma teaching. There's a perception of not being possessive of that. Or people. Or, you know, people you love. Not being possessive of them. So you've got a relationship. I'm separate from you, therefore I want to possess you if you're hot stuff. But if I don't... And so there's a precept for me called not being possessive of you, which is a precept to help me become aware of my tendency to feel separate from you. And when I feel separate from you, I want you. I want to have you. Hold you. Keep you. Because I feel accepted. There's a precept that says don't do that. Don't be possessive of people. Or I shouldn't say, doesn't say don't be possessive, it says there is a state of not being possessive of people.

[71:17]

Get with that. But that goes with people are giving you life. You don't have to be possessive or give you life. And so on. All those precepts are pointing out patterns of relationship between yourself and the world. And they all show you. And they're not observed. And you don't feel them according to those precepts. They highlight your sense that you're separate from people and separate from trees and separate from whatever. So as precepts articulate, main point in relationship where you see your relationship dualistically or dilutedly. And then when you see your relationship non-dualistically, or when you see all things are coming forth to realize you, then the precepts are there. Boom, boom, boom, boom. Then the precepts totally characterize your intention. So when there's separation, your intention is going to be against those precepts.

[72:18]

And so again, here it says, by confessing and repenting your lack of faith and practice before the Buddha's views, melt away the root of transgression by the power of admitting I see myself as separate, therefore I see myself as better than you or worse than you, therefore I think I'm taking things from you, and so on. By confessing that and confessing that, you will forget that way of seeing things. Okay? So precepts are one of the main teachings to bring to bear about your intention. Does that make perfect sense? Eddie? Are there other methods as well? Yeah, there's innumerable methods. But I think you got enough on this question. Is there intention when you're in accord? Is there intention what? Is there intention when you are in accord or when there's not? It seems like having an intention

[73:20]

He just said, is there an intention when you're in accord? Being in accord is your intention. When you see yourself not in accord with someone, that's your relationship with them. That's the way you see it. When you see yourself as not in accord. When you see yourself as in accord, that's your intention. So the Buddha sees herself in accord with everybody. That's the Buddha's intention, being in accord with everybody. So they're still seeing a self and everybody. Yes, they're still seeing a self and everybody, and they see that the self is everybody. They see the self not something in addition to everybody, separate from everybody. They see the self as nothing but everybody. You are nothing but the universe. It isn't the universe and you. It's the universe is you. The universe is you, like this.

[74:32]

The universe isn't you, like this. The universe is you like Brian, not you like Carter. But each of you are your relationship with the universe, or the universe manifested as you. And that's the way Buddha sees things. And you're totally in accord with the universe in Buddha's vision. And you can see that the universe is filled with people who do not get this. Because of karmic instructions, people don't see this. And what do karmic instructions come from? They come from not observing the pattern of relationship. If you don't pay attention to your intention, you will become blind. And we have not paid attention to our intention quite a few times. Right? There's been quite a few moments in the last few decades when each of us have missed a few chances to observe our intention.

[75:38]

Every time you miss a chance to observe your intention, a little darkness comes into your consciousness. And if you did quite a few of those, then it's going to be pretty hard for you to see your actual relationship with people. And it's going to look like people are like, oh, they're separate from you. And some of them might even be unfriendly. But if you study your intention thoroughly, you will see that even the people who say they don't like you, who say, yeah, I am totally unfriendly to you, totally, that those people are giving you life as much as those who are really totally devoted to you. Like my wife says, You have just the students you deserve. Some of them. A few of the students are really nice.

[76:38]

So then it's really easy. Oh yeah, they give me life. They give me rice. They give me love. It's easy to see, yeah, of course they're giving you life. But we want to see that everybody gives us life. But we can't see that unless we start studying our intention. Because every moment we miss our intention, we get blind to that truth. A little bit. Life won't get totally turned off by missing one moment of consciousness. But they get turned on by studying many, many, many. study millions and millions of moments of unconsciousness, millions and millions of moments of intention, and you will see a new relationship with the world, which will be a new intention called being perfectly in accord with all things. And also, when you're perfectly in accord with someone who does not understand, you feel pain.

[77:51]

And that makes sense, that you feel pain with someone you love He doesn't understand and he suffers. So when Buddha looks at us and sees that we don't understand, Buddha feels pain because we feel pain because we don't understand. But that's perfectly in accord with Buddha. Buddha has compassion. And Buddha is happy to suffer due to our pain. Buddha is happy to feel pain due to our suffering. Buddha is happy to do that. This may not relate to what we're talking about right now, but I think something that's sticking with me is that I've heard that Buddhas are done with karma. You heard Buddha was done with karma. That they don't generate karma. They generate karma consequences. Yeah. And so the notion that Buddha would have, that a fully enlightened person in a court would have... The activity... The word karma means... Buddhas do have volition, though.

[78:57]

Buddhists do have volition. The volition of the Buddha is, I want everybody to, I want everybody to, Buddhists want, Buddhists intend that people will open to Buddhist wisdom. Buddhists want, Buddhists desire, they intend, okay? What do they intend? To demonstrate to people Buddhist wisdom. Buddhists want, Buddhists intend that people will wake up to Buddhist wisdom. Buddhists want, Buddhists intend that people enter Buddhist history. They want it. That's their intention. That's all they are, is that intention. And sentient beings are nothing more than their intention, too. We don't always want that same thing that Buddhists want. And the consequence of Buddhists wanting that is that they teach. And the consequence of it is that we listen sometimes. And we listen and we listen and we listen and we listen because they put on a good show sometimes. And then finally, the consequences we hear.

[79:58]

And then the Buddhas have been successful. So Buddhas do have consequences. It's just that they don't do the kind of karma that has common consequences in the sense of creating obstructions. So in some scriptures, Buddha said that, for example, right action, right thought, right intention, right action, right livelihood, right speech, all those things. You go through the list one time and he says, there's a kind of mundane right action or mundane right speech. And that kind of right action has meritorious consequences. And the consequences, he said, mature on the side of attachment. In other words, when we do some good thing or speak skillfully, there are meritorious, beneficial consequences of that meritorious, of that skillful speaking, of that right speech, of that kind speech.

[81:04]

There's good consequences. And those consequences mature on the side of the attachment. Namely, when we act and we speak skillfully in a mundane way, we speak from a point of attachment. Namely, I speak skillfully. I want to speak skillfully as skillful. I want to tell the truth with a skillful intention. But if I still think that I'm doing this separate from you, it still has merit. And the merit matures. And where does it mature? It matures back to the place where I think it happened. Namely, I think I did it. So the merit matures back here at the point of attachment. And part of what's good about that One of the merits of this is that that will help me look at my intention more. When you have super mundane or the Aryan right view or right speech or right action, he doesn't say that it's meritorious anymore.

[82:12]

And he doesn't say that it matures. Maybe he says meritorious, but he doesn't say that it matures on the side of attachment because there's no point of attachment. then the merit of this kind of right action that's not coming from me doing it, it doesn't come back to me. It goes to the entire universe. But when you see yourself as doing good things or wanting to do good things, that is to want to do good things, to want to tell the truth, to want to be kind, those are meritorious intentions. But if you think you do it, then the merit will come back to you. Because that's the way you see it. But the more merit comes back to you, the more you'll be ready to give up that point of view. And then do the same thing, but not from the point of real attachment. But just do this. But just the action happens. It's like the decision occurs. The right speech occurs. But in that I do the right speech. So then the right speech is good. The kind speech is good. But the results of it, it has results too. The results don't come back here.

[83:14]

They go everywhere. So that's the real difference. OK. Yes? You said something yesterday. We were talking about separation and distance. And you said that the forms that are set up in our practice provide distance so that we can examine if we believe there's separation. Right. Could you talk a little more about that? For example, we have there's a distance between your seat and your neighbor. Have you noticed? In a crowded center like this, it's not very much, but there is a distance. Have you noticed? There's a distance between your shoulder and your neighbor's shoulder. Right? It's one distance. Another distance is, there's a distance between your arm and the belt.

[84:17]

And there's a distance, in a sense, between hitting the bell one way and hitting the bell another way. Like this. It's the way of hitting the bell. It sounds really irritating. There's another way of hitting the bell. It sounds just totally lovely. There's kind of a distance between those two kinds of hitting the bell. Or when the attendant offers me incense, there's a distance between us. His body is a certain distance from mine. If he comes too close, he'll get some feedback. If he's too far away, he'll get some feedback. If he's too far away, the feedback he might get would be, would you please come over here? I can't reach you. If he gets too close, I would say, would you back away? You have bad breath. Whatever, you know. Those distances would be opportunities. So you sit in your neighborhood, you have a distance between your shoulder and their shoulder. But it isn't just distance. It's a sense, you feel stepped from them as an adult. And if you move closer to them, you're closer to them, at a certain point they might say to you, you know, you're kind of like sitting on my seat now.

[85:27]

You really want to be over here, you know, sort of kind of on top of me? And you might say, oh, okay, and go back. And you can tell in that interaction whether you felt separate from them. It's possible to get a little too close and someone says, you back off. And you finally feel like, oh my god, they pushed me away, but I didn't just stop. When they pushed me away, I was born. That being pushed away, then asserting that distance gave me life. But for most people, when somebody asserts their distance with you, it helps you become aware that you feel separate. Or when you hit the bell a certain way and the teacher comes over and says, try it this way. This is the way we usually do it. Usually you feel like, oh, I did it wrong.

[86:33]

And now the teacher who's separate from me is correcting me. And this is really uncomfortable. But if I didn't see the teacher as separate from me, if I saw, which sometimes we do see, I hit the bell, the teacher comes over, this is my life. It isn't like the separate teacher's coming over here correcting me separate from the teacher, separate from the correct form. It's like, this is what I'm here for, is to realize this interdependence. So the forms show us the sense of separation, and we see the separation over and over through Zen training or whatever kind of training, you finally realize but there isn't any, through using distances and the difference between one way of doing things and another. If it's a little uncomfortable, that's why we have to be tranquil so that somebody comes over to us and points something out and we feel separate and we feel pain.

[87:35]

So it's good to be somewhat tranquil so we can absorb the pain of separation from our dear, dear friend, our teacher who's coming over and saying, to this little place, which we can translate into a lot of terrible things, especially if people have a whole history that comes into view of times in the past when we felt separate from people and isolated from people. And now this is like bringing that whole thing up again. We feel terrible. But it isn't like we're terrible. It's because of the way we see the world. I appreciate your continual offering of gifts of questions, but I wonder if the people who aren't asking questions are getting pooped and would like to lie down or suck their thumb or something. Are you OK with another question?

[88:38]

What do you say? Does anybody want to sort of have enough of this? I mean, probably. Want to put a stop to this? Another question? What's the word? No? Yes? OK. One more? OK. Barbara? It's got to be good. I was wondering if you were thinking about the poems that we were reading and the example of the river, the boat on the river in the swamp. Yes. and the intention of your lectures. To a listener who is, like myself, heavily still leaning towards mind and understanding of the mind, which is a lot of times the kind of obstacle to the practice, the example of the shore and the boat

[89:47]

can be quickly overlooked and not really delved into, because before we really want to study the relationship between the boat and the shore, there's an immediate thought. For me, for example, well, everybody knows that the shore doesn't move, so I don't even have to study that one. It's just located. But if there were two cars, for example, you know how you're stuck in the traffic, and you kind of delve off a little bit, and you prefer living instead, seeing there is something, movement, and then it's like, Am I rolling? Did my foot get loose and I'm moving or this guy is moving? So there's that moment of panic and then I really wake up to the moment, to the moment I have to check whether my foot is where it is on the gas pedal or whether it's on a brake. What am I doing right at the moment? I have to actually examine the reality right there. So there is no time for thinking. In fact, I don't want to think because neither of the cards, I cannot rely on thought to identify the situation, to judge it.

[90:56]

So immediately I have to catapult it into practice, into studying the moment. And as I was thinking about all these words that are being thrown at us in the form of lectures, I think you're trying to inspire us to study the moment, rather than try to come up with answers about what's this, what's that, because that is the... That's right. I'm trying to... I'm trying to inspire you to study the moment. That's right. Because other than that, I see that it can be... Are you doing that by the way? Are you doing that now? Yes. I was just, you know, the mind likes to kind of hope to find immediate answers to anything, and somehow I'm going to get it to... interconnectedness, it's me being given life by something else, but until I really feel it in my own self, until I really find out from my own practice, it's really a false truth.

[91:58]

It's kind of a temporal threat that maybe is the purpose, but at the same time it is an obstacle to the practice itself. Could be. The possibility of the practice could be an But you're not free. But you're not. So we don't want to let the possibility of freedom distract us from noticing that right now we don't feel free. Right. And I was hearing this reluctance of this feeling that, you know, there's so many words and people trying to say there's this kind of a feeling of... And noticing a feeling of resistance, noticing the reluctance, If you're reluctant. Attending to your current intention.

[92:59]

That you notice that there's you and a sense of reluctance in relationship to the world. That's a moment. Okay, now what's the next one? And what's the next one? And again, that work, you need kind of like a nice fuel for that work. And part of the fuel for that work is the intention to do it, which should also be observed. Another part of the fuel is that you're tranquil. You need to practice also sometimes when you're not really studying your attention, because giving up thought, and relaxing and resting. You need rest and relaxation. And then you can study each moment. So part of the practice is not studying, but just settling. Once you're settled and relaxed, and study what's going on, not what you'd like to have go on. If you'd like to have the enlightenment going on, don't study that. Study the little delusion that's going on.

[94:04]

The little tiny delusion. Not even that exciting, not even the above average delusion. Not even the worst delusion on the block. Just kind of a neat, not even the best delusion, just kind of an ordinary deluded thing. Study that. And this. And study this. Find your place at this place. Find this place. Find this place. Find this place. And the action of finding this place accordingly manifests the truth. Don't get into the truth. Don't get into big fancy truth. Get into the action of finding this place. This state. this place, that way of relating to this place, of keep coming back to this place, then the practice will work. Come back to this place. Then the practice will work.

[95:05]

And it will realize the big fancy truth. Is that enough for this morning? We believe and we pray that every being can be like us, with the true character of God's way.

[95:33]

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