Last week, one of the Sunday school children saw me sitting Zazen, and she said, I can do it. She crossed her legs and said, now what? Now what? I was very interested in her question, because many of you have the same question. You come here every day to practice Zen, and you ask me, now what? Now what? I don't think I can fully explain this point. It is not a question that can be answered. You should know for yourself. We sit in a formal posture so we can experience something through our bodies. Not by my teaching, but by your physical posture, your physical practice. However, to be able to sit in a particular way and to attain a particular state of mind

[01:08]

is not perfect study. After you have full experience of mind and body, you will be able to express it in other ways as well. Without sticking to a formal posture, you naturally convey your mind to others in various ways. You will have the same state of mind sitting in a chair or standing, walking, or speaking. It is the state of mind in which you do not stick to anything. This is the purpose of our practice. So this is my instruction for tonight. Whatever happens, don't worry, otherwise if you start to worry, you know you must be sticking to something. So, whatever happens, it's all right. And you don't have to worry about accomplishing, as he says, any particular state of mind.

[02:15]

Brown, I think most of you know, I'm not Philip Moffitt. I hope if I offer you a little bit of Zen speak here and there, it's not too confusing for you. Bits and pieces of Zen. You know, I don't know that it's so different than Vipassana. You know, I read a passage at the beginning of the evening here about not sticking to anything. It's not so different than, you know, noting in, out, hot, cold, pain, thinking, you know, and then do you stick to it? You just note it and then you note the next thing. So you know, it's not so different than just Vipassana practice, a little different language. But I'm a little more familiar with teaching Zen than I am teaching Vipassana, and besides that, I have nothing to teach, so there you go. Famous story in Zen, you know, the Zen teacher who one day got up, I think it was Hyakujo,

[03:32]

maybe Pai Chang, anyway, some Chinese teacher, he got up and he said to his monks, all of you gobblers of dregs, did you get that, gobblers of dregs? Zen people sometimes refer to, you know, the teachings of Buddhism as dregs, you know, of other people's life, right? They studied Buddhism and then they left behind some dregs called words or teachings, you know. So all of you gobblers of dregs, if you keep on like this, when will you have today? And nobody said anything. And he said, haven't you heard, there are no teachers of Zen in all of China? And at that point, one monk did stand up and say, but teacher, there's hundreds of monasteries and there's thousands of monks, you know, practicing meditation and studying sutras, and he said, I didn't say there was no Zen, just there are no teachers of Zen.

[04:33]

So he slipped out of that one. But so there are various points of view here, you know. But from that point of view, the teaching is up to you, huh? You study, you're studying your experience finally, right? You know, you have your experience, your life, that's what you're studying. And it's not the point to make your life over in, you know, in terms of some directions you got, as though there was some fundamental problem with your life and you needed to redo it according to some new instructions, do you understand? Anyway, we'll talk more about this. I noticed you were about to take off your sweater, I think I'm getting hot. I need to take off my sweater too, if we're going to, especially if we're going to stand up and, you know, do a little stretching and stuff. Last time I was here, you know, I wore my little Zen jacket, this time I thought I'd

[05:43]

come incognito, you know, more like, I could be a Vipassana teacher now. I don't have my outfit, well, I have my little outfit here, but did I tell you that story last time I was here, about when I was at the teacher's conference at Spirit Rock and we had home groups, this was what, two, three years ago? The Dalai Lama was there briefly, and in my home group was Joseph Goldstein, Shinzen Young, another woman who was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, and then three Tibetan Rinpoches, Dzogchen Rinpoche, Gaelic Rinpoche, and Sogyal Rinpoche. And I'm in a home group with them. So we all sit down together, we introduce ourselves, and then Dzogchen Rinpoche looks across at me and he says, I'm sitting next to Joseph, and he says, so, what's the difference between you and him? And I said, well, our hair's shorter, see, and then we have these little outfits, you

[06:48]

know, and they don't. And he said, no, I'm serious, at which point I wish I'd said, yes, and that's the difference between you and me. But I missed my line at that point, and I got intimidated. I guess if I need to be serious, I don't have anything to say. Maybe you could say something serious at this point, you know? So I got intimidated by, you know, the Rinpoche, sorry. I felt like I'd let down my school. All right, so we're going to stand and stretch a little bit. I forget what we did last time, but we may be doing the same thing or not, I can't remember, but we did a little Qigong, did we do sounding?

[07:48]

That kind of chanting seems, you know, kind of, you know, really pure, and then we get that nice little resonance and, you know, little harmonics here and there, and you know, it's really hard to chant in English, you know, because there's so few syllables that end in a vowel, and the really good sound you get in chanting is when you have a syllable ending with a vowel. So, oh well. Excuse me. Now, I'm curious, but, you know, this morning I gave a lecture at Green Goats. Were any of you there, because, or can I just give my same lecture? It won't be exactly the same because, you know, I don't write it down or anything, but nobody was there this morning, right?

[09:12]

Was it good? Well, it was good this morning. We'll see about tonight. Alright, let's see. Oh, you know, I've got to dress up again. I'm going to give a little talk. Did we talk about this? Some of you might want to know what this is. This is a little Buddhist robe. The miniature kind. So, and then, you know, in case you forget, you get your name on the back or, you know, so you know who you are. Actually, this is my, this is my, what do you call that? You know, like graduation certificate? Diploma, yeah, like the diploma, yeah. So partly, you know, I was, I read you part of this, a little bit of this talk.

[10:28]

I want to tell you about the pure silk and sharp iron. The metaphor for that is, it's a metaphor for practice, practicing Zen, Vipassana, you know, meditation. And the idea is, in this case, Suzuki Roshi says that, you know, we're practicing so to, to be able to express our true nature. This is a kind of technical term, so you could also say we're practicing to, you know, unearth, uncover and express our true character. Or our, our good personality. Or, you know, our character or personality uncovered by ego. You know, because usually, or often, our character or personality, our ego gets in the way. Okay. And in this case, I'm suggesting that ego has to do with, you know, ego is you get to go on thinking the same thoughts.

[11:35]

And having the same feelings that you've always had. And then in the here in America, you know, we call that freedom. And I'm going to make sure that I have the capacity to go on thinking my same thoughts and feeling my same feelings. And nothing's going to get in my way and stop me from doing that. And, and further, of course, I'd rather not have any experience that I haven't had before. Yes, I'd like to have comfort food, food that I've had before. I don't want anything new, thank you. And, you know, experiences that, you know, that I don't really have, I want to have those kind. So, you know, happiness and from the point of view of ego is never having to really experience anything. Does this make sense? I mean, you sit down and you start to meditate and by golly, you start experiencing something, don't you?

[12:40]

And then you say like, why am I here? Whoa, what's happening? I'm having to experience something. Am I sure I want to do this? You know, I'm having to notice like maybe I'm anxious or my muscles ache or I'm a little stiff or there's a little pain or, you know, something is happening usually. Of course, you can always fall asleep and say, I'm not interested in, you know, or you've noticed then how tired you are. And, of course, we, you know, there's a little kind of problem here, isn't there, right? You know, because if you're going to go on experiencing or thinking the same thoughts and feeling the same feelings so you can go on being you, isn't that also kind of a bind? You know, that you would be limited to that. And so then people have the kind of the question like, how can I go on being me but have it all work better? How can I go on thinking my same thoughts, feeling my same feelings, having my same attitude, you know, being me,

[13:43]

but it's all going to work better and be nice and pleasant and enjoyable for change? So this is very similar to, I think of it, very similar to the country and western song, you know, everybody wants to get to heaven but nobody wants to die. Very similar, you see. So how are we going to actually, you know, open up or be able to experience life more fully? We're going to have to, you know, so what the coverings in Buddhism, you see, are thoughts and feelings, right? That we tend to go on having the same thoughts, having the same feelings. Do you understand this? You know, I think about it sometimes just in very simple kinds of terms. You know, just this morning, I mean, these things happen to me every day. And if you're noticing, you know, you'll notice like the things that happen for you in your life

[14:46]

and it just goes to show, doesn't it? But what happened this morning, I reached out and I took something and then when I was coming back and I moved my hand and I knocked over a bottle. I was like, excuse me, but I didn't ask you to fall over. Why are you doing that? And like, I'm sorry, but, you know, I would like you to go out of your way not to fall over so I don't have to go out of my way not to knock you over. You know, would you please be more accommodating? I don't understand like why you can't be a little more helpful and, you know, appreciate the effort that I'm making and, you know, I get into these things. It's just a bottle. But that has to do with, you know, my reality. I think the world isn't helping me enough. You know, it isn't quite, you know, validating me enough, honoring me enough. You know, there's not quite enough adulation and like, oh yes, we will help you. Oh, anyway, I don't know.

[15:49]

But then you can have this not just about things but, you know, people. What are people like? And then what's a good kind of posture or stance for you to go through the world in order to, because there's these people. And then how close can they get? Because, you know, can they be trusted? Who are these people? And if they're anything like me, I don't know if they can be trusted. But, and then, you know, sometimes, you know, it's men or women, right? Like, I know I'm, you know, becoming, as well as the Zen Jets, you know, I'm becoming, maybe you knew this, but I'm becoming a certified change your handwriting guru. And so I look at people's handwriting and then, you know, I may ask, you know, a question, you know. Sometimes I may ask someone, you know, are you interested in relationship?

[16:54]

Basically, because it looks like from the writing, like, maybe they have some issues there. And then, you know, people say things like, yes or no, or as this one woman said, well, with women, sure, but with men, it's impossible. Simple enough, huh? And then, if you start with that thought, that belief, you will find evidence to support your thought. There's just, it's very simple, because any evidence that doesn't support that thought, you just ignore it. Doesn't count. Do you know, and then, I mean, my example of this used to be, and I think I have a little more, you know, kind of self-regard or acceptance or, you know, self-lovability, but it used to be like, nobody really likes me, right?

[17:57]

And then, if somebody seems to like me, well, they just don't really know me. Or they just want something from me. So they're just kind of like doing that to kind of get something from me, so I'll do something for them. Do you understand? So you can twist whatever happens so that it supports your thought. See? So how is it, you know, how do we get to, you see, so how do we do this getting through ego or reducing ego, the thoughts, the habitual, letting go of the habitual thoughts, the habitual feelings, the habitual reactions, and having, you know, our experience habitually, you know, always confirm what we always thought. You see? How can we live, how do we move into some new world? So, this is meditation, you know, and it doesn't happen overnight. But Suzuki Rishi's metaphor in this lecture for pure silk sharp iron is that this is a process over, you know, some time, and his, the metaphor then is, with silk, apparently it's washed over and over again until it becomes really white and really soft.

[19:07]

And iron, when it's very hot, you hit it while it's hot to temper it, and you can't hit it while it's cold, it doesn't help. And so this is the washing over and over again, or the being hit while you're hot, is this metaphor for how we're cleaning, you know, how we're becoming more free of ego in the process of meditation practice. And basically, as far as I can tell, you know, if you keep meditating, you have to let go of certain thoughts and certain feelings, or you can't, you know, maybe you have them for a while, but eventually, like, either it's, it's either I have to acknowledge this and let go of this, or I'm going to, I'm going to have to not meditate anymore. This doesn't seem to be something we do very graciously or easily. Nobody I know has, you know, done meditation practice graciously and easily and happily.

[20:13]

Do you understand? This is a, this is, we're, we're in the, we're engaging with very deep, you know, stuff in our lives, and we're encountering it. And then we find out what is it that we tend to think, you know, what is it we tend to feel, what is our reaction to things. And so, on one hand, you know, we're aiming just to see, can we just sit down and experience things without putting our usual story, or not having our usual reaction to it, can we just see what, what it might be like to just experience and not, and because so much of our reacting to things is in our gestures and in our speech, so even just to sit still and quietly, let alone in a particular posture, or, you know, following your breath, or noting things, or, you know, practicing living kindness,

[21:22]

you know, even just to not be moving and to be quiet. We're not going into our immediate reactive way of handling, you know, the particular situation that's arising. This make sense? So then you have a chance to kind of disconnect things, and it's very, it's very, it's painfully slow. I'm sorry to say. I mean, I've been, I've been meditating for, I started in 1965, you know, and a few weeks ago I was having a transformational body work. Okay, and it became very clear, I even told him, you know, before we started, you know, I don't think I spend much time in my body, I want some help with this, okay, because it's very painful to be in my body, you know, to actually move into my body, it's very painful there. You know, and there's, there's history, there's reasons for this for me, you know, and, you know, my birthday is in March,

[22:26]

and then I was actually born a month premature, so every year at my birthday, I'm back in the incubator. Okay, now, is that a pleasant place to be? And there's some sort of sensibility there that my mother actually then, my mother had cancer. Okay, when I was in the, in utero, okay, so, is she a happy person? Is it a nice place to be? No, this is a place where there's a lot of intense feelings happening, this room is a place where there's a lot of intense feelings, there's a lot of fear, and there's a lot of shame, and there's a lot of anger, and there's a lot of just kind of worry and anxiety, you know, about being alive, and if it's going to work out, and is it okay? And then here I am in the midst of that, and there's a little sort of feeling like,

[23:27]

maybe I'm going to be the miracle child who's going to save her, huh? Because the doctor said, why don't you have an abortion and you'll live longer? And she said, no, I'm going to keep this baby, okay? Anyway, we all have our stories. It's not easy to be in a human body. One of the things that happens when you are in your body, you start to feel things. So, it's often nice to, you know, learn, and you know, as babies we learn to dissociate, you know, to remove ourselves. We learn many skills, you know, as babies. We don't even have to learn them, we just, you know, have the capacity to do them. Maybe later on it's harder to learn those skills, you know, but we all have habitual ways to dissociate or remove ourselves or be, you know, and not quite, you know, exactly here, in this body, in this place, at this time. Huh?

[24:32]

This is not, not easy to actually show up, be present. And it was difficult for every one of us. So, there's some, you know, sensibility here that when you're, that I got out of the womb as soon as I could. It's a painful place to be. I couldn't handle those intense emotions. I'm out of here. I'm getting out of here. I'm getting out of here as soon as I can. And then what happens? I'm in an incubator for three weeks. My mom goes home and my father's letter, you know, to my uncle says, the baby came home the 16th of April. So, my mother had a very good rest. What was happening to the baby is just kind of unremarkable, right? Anyway, we all have a certain history. It's difficult. It's painful to actually, you know, come into your body

[25:34]

and then you start to feel what, you know, it was like to be in your body. And we've, we've, over the years, you know, and especially when we were very young, we learned ways not to be there. Not to be there for what was very painful. So, when you start moving back in, you start to feel what's very painful. Now, this is, this is very interesting because you're also going to have the capacity to be in your body and feel how, you know, spacious and expansive and amazing it is, right? When I first started yoga, which was around, I forget, 1980, it was just amazing. It was like moving, you know, from the hovel down by the swamp into a palatial building with lots of light and space and, you know, and there was all this space and energy and ease within my body.

[26:37]

Before, that had been way stiffer and tight and compressed, you know, and dark in there. And I'm doing the best I can to make it all work. And then, you know, I could be in a sort of larger, airier space, right? But, you know, after a few years of doing yoga, you know, pretty soon, but there were still closets. Pretty soon the closets in this palace started opening up, you know, closets. So I'd start doing yoga and stretching and then pretty soon I'd start kind of, a little kind of crying, you know. And then, oh, I'll just work through this and then I'd be sobbing and I could just, I'll just, and then pretty soon I'd be screaming, you know. Pretty soon I'd be having a full-blown, you know, two-year-old temper tantrum, you know, raging.

[27:38]

So I decided not to do yoga kind of like every day. No, I'm not going to do yoga every day because it's really getting at too much. It's opening up too many places inside too quickly, you know. So we're also studying, you know, like, can we move back in and feel the space? And then, little by little, start to unpack. You know, the Zen saying is, take off the blinders, unpack the saddlebags. You're home. Rather than the sense of, you're still headed someplace. And somehow we tend to have the idea in spiritual practice in a lot of places, you know, like we're still, we're headed someplace, right, where I'm not really going to have to be me. Where I could become somebody else and who I would be finally willing to be.

[28:41]

I could become that person. And then I would be willing to be me once I became this really nice person, this really compassionate person. I could move in then and I could be willing to be me at that time. So, but this is all way more challenging, right. This is, take off the blinders. This is, you know, for the horse. And that old, this is a little bit of a dated metaphor, but, you know, that keep you focused on your goal. Take off the blinders, unpack the saddlebags. You know, here we are. Let's make camp. Let's set up home. Let's be home. And being home is finally, you know, in your body. And at some point, you know, it's in your heart. It's in your stomach. You know, kind of like we did the chanting and then you, you're here. Feel more here when you did that chanting. So, I, you know, I don't know that there's any, you know, in a certain way there's some skills you can learn to do this, but also it's just showing up.

[29:51]

It's coming back, you know, again and again and sitting down and, and doing what you can to be here, be at home, make yourself at home in your own being. And so, as much as anything, that's your willingness to make yourself at home in your own being, your courage to make yourself at home in your own being, you know, and the kindness to take care of or tend to your own being, you know. All of my Japanese Zen teachers used to say, you know, we practice following the breath or counting the breath or noting the breath. In order to be really kind or to really take care of the breath. To take care of. Right? Do you understand? So, that's different than the sort of concept of, Wendell Berry made the, in Southern America, talked about the difference between the mind of exploitation and the mind of nurturing.

[30:53]

And that our usual tendency is more, we have both tendencies, you know. The exploited mind is, what can I get out of this? And the nurturing mind is, how do I take care of this? So, as you meditate over time, you know, we're developing more and more the nurturing mind rather than the exploited mind. And you become less and less interested in what do I get out of meditation as, you know, how can I take care of my being? You know, how can I take care of my breath and take care of the moment? Take care of myself. And not go into, you know, my various attacks on myself and so forth. Does it make sense? So, I started to tell you, you know, I had this bodywork session and I, it's kind of embarrassing, you know. Here I am a Zen teacher and, but I don't spend a lot of time in my body. And partly it's embarrassing because, I mean, you know, I was just reading recently, like maybe you saw the stories, the, or you know, you've seen Dan Coleman's new book, Destructive Emotions.

[32:05]

And he talks about these Tibetan monks who, you know, have had 28 or 30 years or more of training as Tibetan Buddhist monks. The two of them who were in all of these studies were born actually, they're Europeans, but they've done years of Tibetan Buddhist training. And you see, I just don't think as, you know, and for me as a Zen person, I don't think I could compete. And I can barely get in my body, let alone produce these, you know, various meditations. But it was very touching, you know, for me to read about that. And, you know, because they had these Tibetan monks, they tested them at this laboratory at the University of Wisconsin. I forget the name of the person who's the head of that laboratory, but I think he's a Buddhist. But they're just now, people are just now starting to study consciousness scientifically. Because the general idea has been, there's a kind of just base level of consciousness.

[33:12]

And of course, you know, and this is base level, and then stuff can go wrong with it. You know, so you could have abnormal consciousness, but there hasn't been the idea that you could actually develop consciousness. That hasn't been, you know, particularly acknowledged scientifically, that there's such a thing as developed consciousness. Because, you know, we're all the same. And what? Somebody has a more developed consciousness than me? No, wait a minute. You know, and, you know, by what measure? And, you know, and etc. By what measure? You know, there's a certain kind of way in which consciousness which is not developed feels very threatened by consciousness that is developed. Because I want to go on thinking what I've always thought and feeling what I've always felt, and you're not going to stop me. I don't care whether you're developed or not. Okay, so, and, but anyway, they were, they studied these two monks and they put them in a, what's called a functional MRI, so they can right away see the brain waves.

[34:26]

Or brains, some kind of brain scan. And these two, they would, they did six different kinds of meditation, you know. They did meditation on compassion, a visualization, mental one-pointedness, meditation on vast space, compassion, fearlessness, fearlessness was one of them, and then there was a sixth. So, and they would have this, they would have him, you know, on signal, do the meditation. So on cue, his brain waves would change. And he would do the meditation for 90 seconds and then switch it off. And they said for most people, there's no difference, they cannot see much of a difference in brain pattern except between awake and asleep. So that's what we're talking about is baseline. And here's somebody that could do six different, produce six different brain waves, you know, for six different meditations on cue.

[35:35]

Turning it on, turning it off, under, you know, a laboratory setting. You know, for hours at a time. You know, and he's in some machine, you know, for the meditation on one-pointedness, he concentrated on the rivet in the, you know, above him in the MRI. And one of the things they pointed out, which was that during, when he was doing the meditation on compassion, apparently the left prefrontal part of his brain was especially active. So then actually this is one of the few things that they know from other scientific studies, that when the left prefrontal is especially active, person tends to be happy, friendly, feel buoyant, cheerful, good-natured. When the right prefrontal is more active, person tends to be agitated, anxious, worried, scared. And if it's habitual and keeps up, they're likely to have a clinical depression. So in other words, when you do the compassion meditation, you're the first beneficiary.

[36:44]

You actually, when you generate compassion for others, you become happy. And so this is obviously a different sort of strategy or way of going about something, rather than how do I, you know, how am I going to get, you know, something out of this? And how do I get these people to do what I want? And, you know, how do I, you know, get what I want from them? And so forth, you see. It's a different sort of sensibility. So it's just now getting, becoming acknowledged, you know, and starting to get into, you know, scientific literature. Anyway, I was very touched by that. So this is now, so there's these two ideas. One is that you could let go of, or, you know, and generally speaking, piece by piece, self, let go of self, which is your habitual thoughts, your habitual feelings, and not right away put those thoughts and feelings on whatever's happening.

[37:49]

It just goes to show those things don't help me enough, you know. People don't actually like me. People can't be trusted. This, you know, is that, you know. And, or, this is so sad. This is so scary. This is so depressing. Because, but, what is it that's so sad or so scary or so depressing? It's just, you know, it's just like, well, something today happened that triggers feelings. Feelings are almost always old. Almost always, you know, from our past, you know, memory. Something that was touched by today's events. And, you know, the little closet spilled open and something popped, and, you know, the emotion popped out. And then, you know, in the sort of simple vernacular, you know, Thich Nhat Hanh says, we all, you know, nobody makes you angry. You have the seeds of anger in you. Somebody else waters them, they flower.

[38:55]

Now, how do you relate to those seeds that have flowered? You know, if you relate to them with mindfulness, you do not recreate the same seeds of anger the same way as if you actually go into your anger and react in your angry way, and now you recreate the seeds which have a chance to be watered the next time around. So, we have a chance to kind of discontinue the reactive quality of feelings, you know, the way that they keep coming up, and our same thinking, we have a chance to discontinue that. So, that's one kind of, and that's, you know, this washing the silk over and over again, tempering the iron, becoming sharp, focused. And then, on the other hand, there's, we can actually generate or develop, cultivate consciousness. So, we actually develop capacities. And this is something that I'm, you know, I'm just finding out about, or I'm just starting to think about even. I have no idea if I have any capacity with any of this stuff or not.

[39:58]

Because in Zen, like, we don't do this stuff. In Zen, we just sit. So, you know, I tend to feel fairly compassionate a lot of the time, but we don't do, like, compassion meditation. We don't do meditation on fearlessness. I feel like maybe I'm in a retard school. We don't do visualization, you know. We don't do, you know, mental one-pointedness. Well, occasionally, we sort of do a little kind of mental one-pointedness, but it's not a big emphasis. So, this is very interesting to me and very kind of inspiring that, you know, this can be, that this, people can do this. We can all do this. We can develop ourselves. The other things, by the way, there was a couple other things that they took these monks to San Francisco. And, you know, Peter Ekman, I think it's Peter Ekman, does the lab, and he's been studying facial expressions, you know, for 15, 18, 20 years. And he's found out that emotional responses in facial expressions are the same every culture around the world.

[41:08]

You know, that emotions are human, that it has nothing to do with culture, and that people, you know, cross-culturally can recognize emotion. You can show somebody in New Guinea, or Japan, or Korea, or Africa, face of somebody who's angry, and they say, yeah, he's angry. People recognize, and what he's done is, so he's identified which muscles are doing which facial expression. And over the years, he and his associate have actually gone and had electrical stimulation of certain muscles in their face so they can do all the expressions. Because sometimes we don't necessarily, we haven't, we've never, we don't do those feelings usually, so we don't necessarily have the capacity to do the right, you know, to do a sneer, or whatever it is. And he's tested now, and so what he, he has pictures of people, and he shows the pictures just for an instant, because a lot of the facial expressions are, people cannot completely control their facial expressions.

[42:10]

So although mostly they can, you know, you could walk into the airport or wherever and be impassive, occasionally there'd just be a, you know, there'd be a 30th of a second or something, and if you blinked you'd miss it, you know, of the expression crossing somebody's face. It shows like what's actually going on with them. So he's trained, you know, like the, and he's studied over 5,000 people, taking his test, and he flashes the picture and then you say what the emotion is that the person's feeling. And the people who score highest are secret service agents. And, you know, maybe the Dalai Lama's bodyguards. I don't know, he hasn't tested the Dalai Lama's bodyguards, but anyway, these two, these two Tibetan trained monks scored higher than any of the 5,000 people he's tested. And they haven't been trained to distinguish facial emotions, they're just, you know, empathetic.

[43:16]

They just have, you know, they just feel something right away, they're able to feel what's happening, to sense what's going on. And what is that? That's because they're not going into their usual, their habitual thinking, their habitual feeling, and that's not sort of between them and, you know, the experience, and filtering everything. They can just see it, experience it, meet it, be with it. And then the other thing they did, which was really astounding, but they took them over to Berkeley. There's a lab where they studied the startle reflex. And the startle reflex, if they actually shoot up a gun, and even if they're used to shooting guns, will startle. You know, after the sound, there's a certain duration of time, a half a second or a tenth of a second, whatever it is, and then their face goes through a particular expression of being startled. And then there's also a change in the heart rate, the pulse, the blood pressure, perspiration, in response.

[44:24]

And this one of the monks, they fired up the gun, his face did not move. And they couldn't believe it because they had never seen this, they did not think it was possible. The internal things all changed, his blood pressure changed, his pulse changed. And this was while he was doing the meditation in a vast space, infinite space. So the sound is, you know, like what, a hundred miles away or a thousand miles away, just disappearing in vast space. Very astounding. And then the Dalai Lama said things like, well, you know, it's very good that he can do these yogic feats, but that's not really why we're doing Buddhism. You know, it's just so we can deal with our emotions, you know, so they don't become destructive. So we know how to be with our strong feelings, afflictive, strong, intense feelings, without them becoming destructive.

[45:32]

We develop that capacity. And it doesn't necessarily mean like we eliminate them, but we're aware of them. In other words, there's a certain, from that point of view, enlightenment is realizing how deluded you are. You know, being awakened is realizing over and over again how strongly you feel things, how confused you are, how you get involved, and you're thinking it's noticing how these things come up. Okay. Okay.

[47:00]

Okay. You know, in other words, metaphorically, you know, that you just sit with them. And you're not going into, you know, behaviors around it. So I'm finding all this quite encouraging, you know, and I'm deciding to continue being a Buddhist. So I also hope that this is encouraging for you, that, you know, that you might want to continue studying, you know, meditating, etc.

[48:31]

See what you can find out. So I've probably talked enough. Do you have some interests or questions or comments on things I've been bringing up tonight? Yes. What is a meditation on fearlessness? Well, this is what I mean. You see, I'm just the Zen school. But apparently you generate, there's some way in which you, instructions you follow where you generate fearlessness. You generate the nature of something? No, but a kind of, I don't know. I don't know anyway. I just, you know, I'm not a Tibetan Buddhist. But apparently there's a way in which you're generating, maybe, you know, you could say it's something like steadfastness or, you know. But anyway, it's called the meditation on fearlessness. Yeah. And what kind of body work did you do? Did it help?

[49:38]

But, you know, he was doing things like, you know, pretty early on he was, you know, kind of, he said, you're awfully tight in here, you know. And this is like this and that's like that. You know, let me just, you know, I'm just going to work on this a little bit. And so I'm starting to breathe a little deeply, you know, and he's saying, and he kind of stops and he's kind of shaking his head. You know, that's, the energy is just moving from, you know, here up to here. You know, I'm going to have to open up your throat so we can just kind of release some of this stuff. So then he puts on some little rubber gloves, you know, the next thing I know, he says, you know, you need to, you know, like, this is a good one where we make eye contact, you know. And like, so like we're really together on this, you know, and, you know, we can trust one another. And he sticks his finger down my throat so I can gag and apparently this opens up your throat. So he did this a couple of times and, and so then it was more like I was a little more crying rather than just. It wasn't stuck in my throat anymore. And he said, you know, I think your jaw is still a little too tight.

[51:11]

So then he sticks his finger in my, you know, mouth and he's doing this cranial sacral, you know, hands in your mouth, you know, release your jaw thing. I mean, which, you know, I have some friends who do that stuff. So I said, have you ever had this done before? I said, no. I haven't. I've had a fair amount of, you know, cranial sacral, various things, you know, network chiropractory. Odds and ends of stuff, you know, and I've had a lot of what people call, who study it, who I studied with call integrated awareness. I call it mindfulness touch. And then he managed to like, you know, and then somehow he managed like, so this stuff just seemed to come out and then it seemed like, like it seemed to be like come out and there seemed to be an end to it, which was kind of unusual because I've sometimes get body work and I start crying and crying and, you know, and then the person doesn't know what to do. Like, do I try to get him to stop? Do I help him do more of this? Anyway, so he, from his point of view or what he was describing to me is draining off these different chambers, you know, of, you know, where you've got this stuff stored up.

[52:24]

And he said, don't worry, you know, I'm going to put this stuff on the shelf for you. I've got a really nice shelf because if I don't put it on the shelf, you know, it may hang around and, you know, and get you again, you know, so I'm going to put it on the shelf for you. So, oh, thank you. Anyway, we had a good time and it was kind of like a shamanic journey. And then after a while, you know, finally he does, he does a kind of form of kinesiology, you know, where it's muscle testing and, you know, let's, let's figure out what's happening with you. And when did this start? You know, is this birth? Is this in utero? Is this at conception? Is this past life? You know, and he's testing my arm and, you know, asking me these questions and we're getting some answers, which, you know, I've been meaning to write him or email him and find out. What did you find out? Because I couldn't keep track. I mean, it was in this altered state. And at one point he said, who are you? I said, I'm Ed. And he said, how old are you? And I couldn't remember. I said, 72.

[53:26]

And he said, what's your favorite color? And I said, blue. And then a while later he said, who are you? And I said, Ed. And he said, how old are you? And I said, oh, I'm 22. And what's your favorite color? And I thought, blue. And then I thought, is it another color? Is it blue? And then, and then I started laughing. The first time he'd asked me when it was, and I said, it's blue. And I started crying. And then the next time he asked me, and I said, yeah, it's blue. And I started laughing. So it was really, it was a very unusual kind of thing, you know, this, you know, some people out there are very skillful at what they do. I feel like this person is very skillful about what he does. You know, I don't know what kind of a husband he is or father or anything, you know. Guy's good at this, at this stuff, taking you on a little shamanic journey. And later on, and he said, you know, you've been doing good, like you just dropped 50 years there. But we were working all these things that I was telling you about, you know, so it's kind of fresh in my mind, you know, moving back in and being at home.

[54:42]

And then, so I'm, I'm practicing, you know, like just reminding myself when I start to get anxious and go into my anxiety thing, I belong here. I'm at home, I'm at home in this body, in this place, at this time, I belong here. And that's what I'm working on. And partly that's, I remind myself and partly like, I'm going to make myself at home, I'm making myself at home, making myself at home, belonging here. But these are stuff I've been working at ever since I started practicing, you know, Buddhism. I'd like to just feel like it's okay for me to be here, for me to be me. That's simple enough. But, you know, we have different language for this, different people. So, it was pretty interesting. And, but that's an example also of doing something where, it did seem like we got to a place where I could experience something beyond my habitual reactions to things, my habitual anxiety and terror, dread.

[55:58]

And anxiety, terror, dread, it's not just what's going on in the world, which is all very real in a certain sense. But, practically speaking, here I am, nothing's happening. Nothing's actually happening here, now. So should I make up some story about the future? And a lot of that is, as far as I can tell is, you know, when you were little, you weren't good enough. I wasn't good enough to keep my mother alive. She went ahead and died. So I wasn't good enough. And when you weren't good enough, and that's shameful, and then when you project that into the future, if you're not good enough, something terrible will happen. So you can generate that in the future and then have dread and anxiety because you're not good enough. You weren't good enough, you aren't good enough, you won't be good enough. And that, again, is habitual. That's all just habitual, the way we've done it.

[57:03]

So is there some way to... And, you know, he said to me, you know, some people, you know, you've done a lot of work on this stuff because you're ready for, you know, some of this, I have to, he said, sometimes I have to do sessions, you know, many, many sessions with people so they sort of get to these things. So I don't... But the kind of body work, finally, that I've had the most of over the last several years, I kind of stopped doing body work for the same reason I stopped doing yoga. It was too upsetting to be touched. And the really strange thing is to notice, is for me to find out that actually agreeing to be in my body is so upsetting. You know, that there's a kind of pain there to that. And, of course, it makes all the sense in the world.

[58:04]

You know, the reason you wouldn't do, you know, pain, pain is what you, you know, you move away from. So there's a, you, that's, there's a kind of, in Buddhism it's called vow sometimes, but you also call that commitment or courage. Or you call it steadfastness, you know, it's a kind of determination. Determination is another word used in Buddhism, you know. I am determined to be at home in my body, you know, to be in, to be here, to be present. I'm determined to do that. So, and that, otherwise, these things don't just happen. They don't just sort of sit here and meditate and end up being in your body. There, at some point it's a decision, you know. Being asleep or awake in meditation is a decision. I did for years, I did, I would rather be depressed than angry. That's, and that's not a new, that's not a conscious decision, but that's a very, that's an old decision that I'm still doing, you know, that I did for many years.

[59:08]

Rather than get angry, I would rather be depressed. And I will do, I will, I will do, I will commit, I'm committed to being depressed, you know, rather than getting angry. That's a, you know, I mean, so we have these, when, you know, that's a decision I made, you know, you know, a long time ago, I don't know when. And so we're, this, this is, this is all the stuff we're working with, you know. When you start, you know, coming to meditation and, you know, what's going on in your life and how do you react to things and, and we're finding out all the ways in which we, you know, we tend to do certain things. You know, we tend to go to sadness or disappointment or avoid certain things. I would rather, you know, in a sense, you know, at some point it's rather, I would rather die than feel that angry ever again. And then short of dying, you can be depressed. And, you know, the, the other side of that is, I don't see how I can live if I'm feeling something this intensely.

[60:14]

It feels like I'm going to die if I feel something this intensely. And, but, you know, that's me. I, I feel things very intensely. Not everybody does. Thank goodness. Is that a help, what I just said? Anyway, there you have it. Something else? Yes. If you don't mind me asking this. We'll see, won't we? Well, I was wondering, given what you said earlier about, you know, evidence and basing your beliefs on evidence that's there, and some that you choose to ignore. How do you authenticate the kind of experience that you had at birth? Oh, I, there's no way to authenticate that. Well, but how, how do you know that this is, I mean, a lot of what, what has happened is what people, other people have told you.

[61:19]

I mean, I'm just wondering what the experience was of that knowing, that let you know personally that it was authentic. I'm not challenging the authenticity. Um, no, I, you know, this is not, this is not about knowing or authenticity. Uh, and this is more like, um, uh, you know, for many years I had no story. You know, people say, why are you so sad? I don't know. Because, you know, the first thing you do is you say, well, I'm so sad because it's raining. I'm so sad because, you know, my partner did this or didn't do that. Or I'm sad because of the situation of the world. I'm sad because of all the pollution, you know, and so there's actually no reason for feelings that you can finally locate. We have the idea that there are reasons for why we feel something and then we can control those things and consequently control our feelings.

[62:23]

So it's kind of empowering, you know, for a child or for some of us to think that, you know, I'm sad because I got fired from my job. So if I get another job, I could be happy. Or if I wasn't fired, I wouldn't be sad. So we're trying to control the things that we make up the story about why we're feeling that way. But we just made up a story. So for many years, though, I didn't have a story. So then people started suggesting to me stories. Well, okay, that's a pretty good one. And so then that's another kind of work I've done actually in the last few years. Fascinating. I've done quite a lot actually with a fellow who originally studied, lived in a Gurjeev community in upstate New York for four years.

[63:24]

Twelve years or something. And when he was 30, he went off, decided to leave and he went to school and he became a therapist. He said, oh, I practiced traditional psychotherapy for maybe a week or so. And then he said, I started doing what I wanted to do. So what he does is you talk to him and then you lie down and then he says, tell me what's going on in your body. Oh, the back of my neck is aching. So then he'll say, I'm going to say something and you just repeat after me and don't worry about whether it's true or not. We'll just see how your body reacts to it. So he's made up a lot of these stories. And then, you know, there's a certain reaction of my body. And by golly, some of these stories, I just, he would start saying these things and my body starts going. It just, it's reacting. It's not like, and then some of the things it's reacting to are like stories about my grandparents. Oh, I didn't even know. And then somehow it's in my body, you know, and he's making up these stories.

[64:27]

Or I don't know where he's, where is he getting these stories, you see? And partly this is stuff I've told him and then, you know, but somehow when he says it and then I'm repeating the story. You know, this is, so if the back of my neck is aching, he says, this little boy felt very scared being left at the orphanage when he was three. And I'm repeating that. He's just saying that this is a little boy who was very scared, who was very scared to be left, to be left at the orphanage, you know, at three years old. And so I'm repeating these things. And then after a little bit, I say, now what's happening in your body? And so then, you know, well, my low back is aching or my legs suddenly get, they're really tight. They're really completely stiff. They feel paralyzed. And, you know, and then he'd say a story about that. And it goes on and on. And at some point it's like, well, I'm asking my body to let go of this, or these are my mother's feelings and I can let go of them. And then, you know, and then somehow it all just seems to drop away.

[65:31]

So it seems to have a kind of tentative reality that you're creating and then you can let go of it. But until you take it on fully, I haven't been able to let go of those things. So that's another kind of work that I've done, which is very useful for me. People in Zen aren't interested in this stuff, you know, it's too psychological. Vipassana people are way more, you know, there's way more of a crossover in Vipassana between Vipassana psychology and therapy and all that stuff. You know, because so many of the Vipassana teachers are therapists and what have you. Can I put hot tea in this? Or do you think I should have another cup? But anyway, so it's not that you can know, it's more like a guess. And then it's something that, it's just kind of tentative. Anyway, but no, we can't exactly know. I don't think, but, and it turns out that, you know, as far as that goes, that guessing, you know, it's sort of like, so if,

[66:34]

if somebody says to me, well, what is this about? And I say, I don't know. And then they may say, and then if they say, I don't know what it's about. Well, do you have any guesses? So, so then, well, if you don't know what happened, well, why don't you make up a story? And then if you make up a story, well, why do you make up that one rather than another one? So anyway, it's, you know, it's just, it's just play. I mean, I don't have anything better to do with my life. I mean, I have things to do, you know, you know, writing cookbooks and what have you, or, you know, editing Zen lectures. But, you know, other than that, you know, got to earn a living, but, you know, eat something, but I find all this stuff really fascinating. But no, it's not about, you know, actually knowing exactly. It's more like a story or a guess or, you know, and let's try this on and see, and see.

[67:37]

Yeah. Can you say something about the body work you're going to do in your workshop? Oh, the workshop that I'm doing is what I call Mindfulness Touch. And so that's very much like meditation where you, and I actually did this recently at a Vipassana, a little Vipassana retreat in Southern California. We, at the end of our two days, we spent a while doing this and people enjoyed it. But what this is, is just to easily, we'll practice touching someone and not doing anything and just receiving them. So most touch implicitly is, you know, go over there, come over here, calm down, straighten up. I love you. Did you know that? That's supposed to make a difference. And so it's mostly, most touch is you're communicating something from you to them, rather than actually just sensing who is this, what's going on here. So we'll just practice touching and primarily touching someone else's shoulders from behind.

[68:41]

And then receiving the person. So it's very much like meditation. And so there's all the sensations which you can break down into like the four elements, you know. There's some sense of solidity, fluidity, space, heat, cold. And maybe you sort of sense some tension or stress or it softens or it doesn't. And you're seeing if you can just let it be whatever it is, rather than going to. And then later on, after we've established that we can do that, then we do little fun things like on purpose. Why don't you see if you could find something wrong with them that needs fixing. And fix it for them and see if you can help them out here. And then people right away go. People right away get stiff.

[69:46]

A lot of tension there all of a sudden. And before, when you're just receiving somebody, after a while you just feel like you can't tell where your hands stop and the shoulders begin. And somebody's hands feel warm and they say, no, my hands aren't warm, it's your shoulders that are warm. And there's just this flow and the complete merging. And then, okay, I'll fix you. Suddenly a little armor there, a little separation. No, you don't. And then we see if we can overcome their resistance, because it's for their own good. So we get to do various fun things. And we spend a day with this, we do odds and ends of fun things. I think of this being fun things now. And we also do, for instance, you're touching somebody.

[70:48]

Well, if you're actually going to touch them, well, why don't we... Oh, and then I also have the person who's being touched. Why don't you make sure that the person touching you does not experience anything that might upset them? How many of us are doing this? You know, I'm seeing if I can get through the world and not do anything that upsets anybody. So how do you do that? So you can find out how to do that. Because you've been sitting here and relaxing and not worrying about whether anything that's happening is upsetting the person who's touching you. But once you're here, do that. How do you do that? Well, again, you armor yourself. You know, in order to have them... in order to have them to be on this... to be sure that they're not going to experience anything that would be upsetting. Basically, you see if they could not experience anything. So you armor yourself. You armor yourself.

[71:49]

And again, so you... And you do this very structurally. You know, you do it in your shoulders. You do it at the edge of your body. You create a wall between you and the person who's touching you. And it's called, you know, armor. And so then... And then, just to be on the safe side, they don't... they're not going to experience anything that's going on with you, except that you're armored. And of course, that might disturb them. But, you know, aside from that, you know, they're not going to experience anything that could be disturbing. Like some kind of painful feeling you might have, or, you know, thought, or, you know, you know, your... whatever, you know, your pain, your hurt. They're not... so... But once you've had a chance to do that, then we go to... at some point we go to... Okay, we can relax that. And then, you know, those of you who are touching, you're like, let's go ahead and just touch someone's deep pain and their hurt. What's most painful in their life? Let's just go ahead and touch it. And that is just... that is just astounding.

[72:51]

You know, the sense in the room just... You know, the room just goes right to awe. It's just awesome, finally, when you just agree to touch someone's deep wound, their pain, and the person being touched agrees to have that touched. Because they've just done that. Partly because they've just done the... I'm not going to let them feel anything. And now when we let go of that, why don't we just, you know, let it be touched. And let's just go ahead and touch what is really painful, really hurtful in our life. And we'll just be present with it. So it's really very analogous to meditation and, you know... But then you can also... Then you can also do, you know... There are just so many things, you see. Because then we can also do... I usually wait until after we've touched someone's pain. You know, we touch your blessedness. Because the wound and the blessedness are the same thing.

[73:53]

And if you can't touch your pain, you can't touch your blessedness. So, after we've touched the wound, let's go ahead and appreciate, you know, the preciousness of a human being. Because the preciousness of a human being is beyond good and bad, right and wrong, who you are, who you think you are. You know, it's beyond all that. So we can just go ahead and touch it. What is blessed or sacred or precious about human life? The person we're touching. And that connection. So, anyway, I enjoy doing that a lot. And once in a while I have a workshop, and we'll see what happens. Thank you for bringing it up. It's a little... A couple of minutes after eight. Can we sit quietly for a minute or two? We did get an email...

[74:52]

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