We have this nice word, this nice phrase called Zen meditation. And one way to look at it is sitting upright in the middle of the suffering of all beings. I propose that we already are sitting in the middle of all beings right now, and we always are. However, we might not always be upright. One of the descriptions that the Buddha gave in the first actual scripture was that he found a middle way.

[01:18]

I think he used the word avoids extremes. And the extremes were... One extreme is And again, this is an English translation. Devotion to sense pleasure. And the other extreme is devotion to, in some sense, sense mortification. Or one side would be devotion to self-interest, and then it would be devotion to denying self-interest. Self-interest isn't an extreme, and denying self-interest isn't extreme, it's the devotion to it. One writer on addiction

[02:36]

She discovered an etymology for the word addiction, which I haven't found, except when she said so. And the etymology she said was that addiction was related to the word devotion. But before we get into the addiction, I just want to say that it is possible to... Yeah, to... Certainly, experience sense pleasure without being devoted to it. Just experience sense pleasure. Experience self-affirmation, doing things to take care of yourself, but not like to self-interest.

[03:41]

You just sometimes do something in the interest of yourself. And the same thing, you're not loyal to self-mortification. Sometimes it's the appropriate thing. Or self-denial is sometimes appropriate. That's part of the situation of being upright in the middle of all beings. Another thing that's going on in the middle of all beings is an egocentric attitude. I have an egocentric attitude. Another thing that's going on is a biased perspective. So biased perspectives pop up in the center, and also they pop up around the center.

[04:49]

And biased means, again, it's kind of like leaning. And particularly biased towards the beings who surround me. stories appear in consciousness at the center of all beings that are biased. Biased stories about other people, and also biased stories about me, appear in and around the center where I live. So again, there's egocentric perspectives, biased views, biased stories about what's going on.

[05:52]

They're normal to appear in this central place where we live. It's normal. And hearing about it is... I don't know how often people hear about this. I think all of you have heard about it tonight, but some people have maybe not heard about it, or they hear about it, but they think it doesn't apply to themselves, that they don't have an egocentric point of view, and that what they think about other people is not a biased view. And I'm suggesting that my story about you does not do justice to you. that you're not really encompassed by my view of you, by my story of you.

[06:56]

Not even my story. Any story of you that's appearing in my mind doesn't do justice. Another thing that's going on in this place where we live, or where I live, is that, which is similar to egocentric point of view, is that I take precedence over many of the objects, if not all the objects that surround me. That I see them as at my disposal for my enjoyment. So I could say we, but maybe it's better for me to say I. So I'm not saying that you're that way. You, that you think you take precedence over everything around you, and that you see things around you as at your disposal for your enjoyment.

[08:06]

Also, I want to say again that I think sometimes It helps in this class if I talk quite loudly. So I don't mean to be yelling. I'm speaking loudly because some people have trouble hearing me if I don't. And... May I say again that the way to become free of this egocentric center of the universe, this place where it seems like the self here, and also those other people that I identify with, they're included too,

[09:15]

the individual self and the societal self which I identify with, in order to end this sense of precedence and the biases of my stories about everything that's going on, about myself and about others, the way to become free of that, is by conversation with the others, the other, the others. And one thing I said the last two weeks, I'll say it again now, is that in this center place, Where we live, we are calling.

[10:22]

We are calling. And we are being called. Everything around us is calling us, and we're calling to everything around us. Everything around us is listening to us, and we're listening to everything around us. What I am, actually, is the listening to everything around me. That's what I am. And I am the calling to everything around me. That constitutes me. That constitutes me. I don't constitute myself. My being called constitutes me, and my calling constitutes me. But I'm not my calling. And my being listened to is constituting me.

[11:29]

Enacting this enacts freedom from the egocentric. It enacts freedom from the biases. And for now I would say, without getting rid of the biases, or getting rid of the egocentric point of view. Without, yeah, without getting rid of it. And the word tender comes to my mind. So being tender towards my egocentric point of view and my biases, and being tender toward those who are calling me, comes to mind as part of the process of the conversation.

[12:33]

And again, some words that were used in previous sessions. Coping mechanism. And sometimes coping mechanisms seem to be unskillful, questionable. Sometimes they seem to be addictive. We have people in this room who have a lot of experience with working with addiction and addictive substances. Addictive behaviors could also be seen as behaviors which have a substance to them. So some behaviors have a body chemistry effect that is like a substance.

[13:55]

And one definition of addiction is to be It's a brain disorder which involves being engaged with substances that are intrinsically rewarding and reinforcing. Not all coping mechanisms are intrinsically rewarding Sometimes we try coping mechanisms and we don't feel rewarded right away. But they were a coping mechanism. But some coping mechanisms are, generally speaking, maybe almost always, rewarding.

[15:11]

Like, I think there are certain substances which, when we ingest them, or when some people ingest them, they're consistently pleasureful. And, if not, increasing the dosage, it is. And, not only that, but it tends to make you want to do it again. So that's an addictive coping mechanism. One coping mechanism for having an addiction is to use the substance that I'm addicted to. So addictions are a subset of the coping mechanisms. And some coping mechanisms might seem actually quite skillful. Like for example, if you have egocentric consciousness, and you put yourself in the preferred position, and you see things as there for your enjoyment, you might feel some stress.

[16:29]

And you might A wish you might aspire to deal with the stress by practicing generosity, by being gracious towards it, by saying thank you to it, by seeing it, and even seeing it as an opportunity for being gracious. Some stress coming because of your egocentric situation. some stress coming from your biased view of others, which doesn't do them justice. You're stressed because your mind and body are not doing justice to the people you're meeting. Not doing justice to the people I'm meeting is stressful for me. And maybe for them. And they might cope with the stress they feel,

[17:34]

in my presence of not doing justice to them, they might deal with it, they might cope with it by being generous towards me. And I might do the same. I can see my mind is not doing justice to somebody, I feel stress, and I'm generous towards it. That's a coping mechanism. Like Charlie said last week, is Zazen like a coping mechanism? You could see it that way. It's a way to cope with suffering. But it's kind of skillful. Generosity is kind of a skillful coping mechanism. I propose that. Then also there's being careful of what you're thinking. Think, yeah, you're going to keep thinking, but think carefully. Think tenderly. Think gently. Speak, even though loud, speak gently, carefully, as a coping mechanism for having a stressful position in this universe due to ignorance, which comes naturally.

[19:01]

And then be patient. with the stresses that we're trying to cope with. Try to experience them in the present. So it's being present is a coping mechanism, can be seen as a coping mechanism for the stress of my biased, unjust way of relating to people. However, These practices are moving towards a just relationship. My view may still be biased, which is not doing justice to them, but my behavior is starting to do justice. That person does not understand me, but they treat me well. They're careful of me, and part of the reason they're careful of me is because they know they don't know who I am.

[20:04]

They do have an idea, but they're careful of this idea they have about me, and the me they have idea of. They still have an idea of me, but they're careful of that idea. They're not mean to it, they're kind to the idea they have of me. And they're trying to not relegate me to that idea. They're careful to not relegate me to their view of me. But not by denying that they have a view of me, or affirming that their view... Affirming that they had a view, but not affirming that their view is me. This is part of being careful. it starts to be doing justice to people. And being patient is part of coping with the pain of our deluded view of ourself and others.

[21:16]

And then, And then be diligent. Be diligent about what? Be diligent about taking care of the situation, of having such a... Such a... I don't know what to say... infinite relationship. Be diligent and thorough and careful, energetic in relating to everything around you and everything within you. And then practice being calm and relaxed and open to all this. And then there is the possibility of freedom from the situation without... Yeah, with respecting it. Maybe there's some demeaning going on along the way,

[22:28]

Now we've come to a place where by thoroughly respecting this trap that we're in, we become free of it. And we have a relationship with something that we can't see, which is the way everybody is, way, way, way beyond our idea of them. And that's more than just freedom from our enclosed, entrapped view of ourself and others. It's inconceivably greater happiness or joy than just being free. It comes with the freedom.

[23:34]

Now we're free of that which made us unable to receive our relationship with everybody. And with that freedom now we can enjoy it and receive all the capacities of our actual relationship with everybody, including ourself, that we used to have, and still do have, a narrow view of. But now our narrative isn't enclosing us so we can receive the actuality of our relationships. And one other thing I wanted to bring up was this idea of enabling. Enabling, another word just come to my mind, is colluding. And etymologically, colluding means co-play, playing along.

[24:37]

Lude, as in play. There's collaborate, which means to co-labor. And then there's collude, which means to play along. When we actually understand, I should say, When we actually learn to be playful with our colluding, we will actually become free of the ignorance of our playing. And we'll be playing, and it will be wonderful and creative. So this thing about enabling... Like, now we have... I can... Using examples of my granddaughter are sometimes easy for people, but this is a painful one. She is... I don't know if she is, but she has been exposed to the substances that happen to her body

[25:53]

And there were these particular things which she wanted to watch, which were actually ads for various products. They weren't like shows or cartoons. They were actually ads for things that she didn't buy. And the ads were like showing these things and actually showing them being taken out of the boxes and taking the wrappers off and putting them together. The pictures don't show people's faces, they show their hands and this voice. And it's hypnotic for kids. Maybe for some adults too. And she would choose that, and she would put herself into this state by watching these basically commercials made for kids. And yeah, so she was allowed to watch a little bit of them, but they were so obviously just immediately rewarding and conducive to repeat.

[27:22]

She would watch ad after ad if she was allowed to. So, if you let her watch them, are you enabling her? I guess you could say, in any way, you're supporting her to watch more if you let her watch more. And again, how do you help a kid who's basically entranced? It's quite difficult. It seems like she needs to either get away from it, or somebody needs to turn it off. Now, one thing that's really helpful is if you bring in certain people, they don't know how to operate the technology, and they will accidentally turn it off.

[28:29]

And then they can't get it back on. Grandparents, really. Without oppressing the child, they release the child from the addictive material, which again, you can see it's actually in their nervous system, the chemistry in their nervous system is being modified by this thing. And I told a story about one time with my daughter, where I... I think I gave her an ultimatum at one point, when she was 19. And she was old enough to understand two terms, tough love and hard line.

[29:30]

And she interpreted... She said, I like tough love, I don't like hard line. And she said I was in tough love with her on that occasion. I gave her an ultimatum, and she listened to it, and when I gave it to her, the ultimatum, many of you probably heard, the ultimatum was, if you don't get a job, by the end of the week, I want you to move out of the house. You heard that one before? So she was 19. She's a very strong, intelligent woman. She wants to get a job, and she goes through the whole summer and doesn't get a job. It's now end of the summer, and I'm leaving town. And her mother doesn't want her to be in the house unemployed.

[30:35]

force of nature. Do not leave me alone in the house with her. I say, OK. And we agree. We're going to tell her that we would like her to move out of the house in a week if she doesn't get a job. Again, she spent the whole summer, the beginning of the summer, she said, I'm going to get a job. She came back from New York and she said, I'm going to hit the ground running and get a job. But she didn't. What she did though, a lot of energy, she would stay up late at night in various energetic activities, and then she would get up around noon. And then she would, maybe sometime in the afternoon, make some employment explorations. If you had a business, and that girl came in and wanted to work at your place, you'd hire her.

[31:52]

But if she came in and said, you don't want to hire me, do you? You might not, even though you still might hire her. Anyway, she didn't get a job, and we made this agreement, her mother and I, to present this idea to her. And I said to her, your mother and I have... We want you to do something. We want you to get a job or move out in a week." And her mother said, I don't agree anymore. I said, okay, you're father. And the key thing in this story is that when I told her this, I looked her in the eye and I didn't look away. And to look in the eye of someone that you really love, and to tell them something which they might not like to hear, is something you might not have an easy time doing.

[33:05]

You might want to tell them and look away, or look away and have somebody else tell them. But I really stayed there with them when I delivered it. And there's a possibility that when you deliver the message, you see that the message is not right. Something about the face tells you it's off. It's not... I changed my mind. I didn't see it right. So you can still... That's what you call tough love. Tough love is not hard line. Hard line is... Tough love is giving restrictions to the person's welfare. Hard line... So, tough love, you give the person some restriction, like move out in a week, but you're ready to compromise. You might compromise.

[34:07]

I told you last week about the pacifier, right? So, the restriction was, let's stop using the pacifier. And she says, I don't want to. And I said, okay. So anyway, in this case, I looked her right in the eye, and I said it, and she... She looked back at me, and she didn't give me no indication that what I was asking was inappropriate. She wasn't happy to hear it, And she said, well, what if I don't get a job? If I move up, then what? And he said, I have confidence in you that you'll be able to take care of yourself well. Anyway, the next morning she got a job.

[35:08]

In an hour. This conversation happened like at 8 or 9 at night, and she went to bed that night around 8 or 9 or 10. And she got up before noon, way before noon, like at 7.30. When I came back from meditation, she was up, and she said, Are you going to San Francisco today? I said, Yes. She said, Can I have a ride? I said, Yes. She didn't say, Can I have a ride to get a job. And she even asked me, she came out with two sweaters, and she said, which one do you think I should wear? She never asked me that. And she also asked me about the shoes. And we went in, and I went to this place where I go swimming, I went swimming, and she went off, and I came back, she had had a job.

[36:09]

When I got out of the water and took my shower, she already had a job. Which I know she can do. But she wasn't doing it. And so... Was I enabling her all summer before that? So I thought, what is enabling? I thought, enabling is not listening. Enabling is not observing carefully. If somebody's doing something unskillful, you're right there. You're not stopping them from doing it, but you're not enabling them, because you're bringing awareness. You're contributing awareness to whatever they're doing. And they see it. They're calling for it.

[37:10]

They're calling for somebody to be compassionate to them, no matter what they're doing. But if they're doing something unskillful, They have to see it. And how are they going to see it? They're going to see it by looking at themselves the way you're looking at them. So, again, telling somebody to stop something and look away when you say it, or telling somebody and not listening to what they say back to you, that actually is enabling. Maybe not that particular thing, but it's enabling something unwholesome. What's enabling unwholesomeness is a lack of compassion. The authority is to participate in the natural behavior and at the same time structure it so that there are parameters around it.

[38:45]

Yes, but when you were saying that I thought... She's using the example of last week I talked about this girl who told me that she swam for three hours after school every day through high school. And that was her coping mechanism, which doesn't seem that unwholesome. But maybe it was a little unwholesome. I don't know. It wasn't necessarily, I'm going to call it, consistently rewarding. Swimming, especially if you swim for three hours, it's not intrinsically rewarding. So it's not, and it doesn't, swimming three and a half hours for most people doesn't make them want to do it again the next day, soon, or even later tonight. Well, it's not unlike your daughter not getting a job for eight weeks when their intention was to get a job. Yeah. And sometimes it's, I'm this in need, and

[39:49]

Yeah, so I set a parameter so that I could meet her. Somehow it came up that now the situation had given me this one week. And I could use that one week to fully meet her finally. Before that, we weren't ready to give her that. Somehow, we were dealing with the situation, but we couldn't find something to offer her, to meet her on. But that was part of the condition that led to that moment of suggesting this thing. And also, again, as I would say, if she hadn't got a job, I don't know what would have happened. It would have been the end of the week, and I would have said, well, it's the end of the week, I want you to move out.

[41:12]

And she might have said, well, I'm not going to. And then something else would have come in. But we were working with that. That was the thing we were working with. And it was something that was very difficult for me to offer to her and stay present for as I offered. But I felt good, not so much good offering it, but I felt good that I was responsible to this thought that came up in my mind, and I delivered it in a responsible way. And again, part of this is about helping ourselves and others We sometimes say, take responsibility, but I would say, accept responsibility for the actions. So I had this action to give to her, and I was really trying to accept the responsibility for the consequences.

[42:14]

And I didn't really want to see what they were, but I realized it was my responsibility to watch the consequences. And she was watching me watch. She saw that I saw, and I think that was... So she could stay there with me. And I needed a form, a restraint, in order to put that between us, for us to both listen to each other and watch each other. But sometimes it takes a while to find something like that, that you can really meet somebody. For yourself, yeah. But I'm saying we should do it with ourselves, but we can't do it with ourselves without a conversation with the other.

[43:14]

We need to do it with ourselves, but we need others to help us do it with ourselves. And we need ourself to do it with others, of course. Our inner work requires a conversation with others. We need to be called into question. I need others to call me, not just me call me into question. I need you to call me into question. And you need others to call you into question in order to actually engage with yourself around your own responsibility. And we can accept responsibility for the consequences of our action, but we need to be in dialogue with others in order to do it fully. We do accept responsibility for the consequences of our action.

[44:15]

We can do that. And we do it in conversation. We do question ourselves, but the questioning becomes genuine when others are involved. Yes? You said you told her if you don't get the job, I'm confident you'll be able to take care of yourself. Were you? I was. I mean, did you really work out for her that well? Fortunately, I had seen her do some stuff when she wanted to do them. I've seen her, when she wants to do something, it's just amazing when her energy comes together. She's got energy and intelligence, and she's got a lot going. And to take her... At 19? This girl was all over the face of Manhattan.

[45:19]

I mean, Manhattan survived her. She's not a mean person at all. She's very sensitive and feeling. But she's really strong, too. And she was in Manhattan, and she was with everything. She knows how to take care of herself. But she does it half-heartedly, unless she wants to do it wholeheartedly. And when she does it half-heartedly, of course, just like us, she's not happy. She's somewhat miserable, because she's not engaging her great life in the thing, because she doesn't really want to do it. She doesn't see that she wants to do it. But I saw her do some stuff when she wanted to do it. Well, just like that simple example, I say,

[46:24]

Your mom wants you to stop using the pacifier, and she says, I don't want to. You help him go to sleep. That was like, that was right on the mark. It was just like a perfectly intelligent, you know, clear argument, which sold me right away. She's capable of doing stuff like that. I guess I'm asking, you know, if... Pardon? in that situation, am I talking myself into that they'll be fine? Or is it possible to have realistic fears that maybe they won't be fine? I think it's perfectly... No problem of having... The fears don't even have to be realistic. You can be just plain afraid that it won't be fine. There's no problem with that. But at the same time, I think she probably would be. What do you mean there's no problem with that?

[47:27]

Why is that not a problem? If it's your kid, and you're afraid they won't be fine, why is that not a problem? I can be afraid... Every time she gets in a car, I can be afraid that she's going to have an accident. And at the same time, I can have some confidence that she's a good driver. And if she moved out, Again, we don't know what would happen, but she's got a lot of friends, and she can go stay with a lot of... She's 19, she can stay at their parents' house. She's got a lot of friends, plus all their parents. She can find a place to stay. Plus, she can also get a job. And she did. However, she still had not found what she really wanted to do. And I couldn't find that for her. I could tell her that until she... I can tell her, and she knows... Now she knows, I can tell her that I see what she can do and how happy she is when she finds something that she really wants to do, and then she gives herself to it completely.

[48:41]

I can tell her, I've seen you when you found something that you really wanted to do wholeheartedly, and I saw how perfectly happy you were at that moment. And now you have lost that. You don't see anything like that. So you're not engaging your energy. And your energy is just calling and calling for compassion. And you will someday see what you want to do. And it wasn't very long before she saw what she wanted to do. She got pregnant. And she wanted to take care of this person. And she did. And it was really difficult. But she totally did it. She found her work. And then that spread to everything else she does, and still that way. And we had to be with her as she was finding

[49:44]

what she wanted to do, and then acting in accord with that, which means when you find what you want to do, then you don't do it half-heartedly, because you want to do it. But it was painful to go through that period until she found it, and then watch her gradually do what you do when you find out what you want to do, to find how to fully engage it. It's to fully engage. So simple. And nothing could be harder than fully engaging. Fully engaged means you do the full scale of the challenge, of the work. You do the work completely. And you get there,

[50:52]

in conversation with others, because you could overwork, which is not fully. Of course, underworking is not fully, but overworking is not fully. Full is like you get full and you stop, but that's enough. You don't overdo it just to make sure. You're not into making sure, you're into fully engaging. When you're fully engaged, you're not trying to make sure. And you find that in conversation. We find that in conversation. With everything that's around us. It's our self-fulfillment. Everything around us is what fulfills us.

[51:56]

We're not just this enclosure. We're everything that's around us. We're a self and we're otherwise. That's our life. I wonder if you could say something about When you're in conversation, this intimate conversation with someone who is mentally ill and maybe needs some taking care of because of their... Maybe he needs some engagement? Yeah. Yeah. Not maybe. People who are mentally ill also need the same thing. Everybody needs it. So what are you talking about? Well, I guess I'm thinking about how all this connects to what we were talking about last week, when we were talking about enabling and talking about your granddaughter and her pacifier, and how eventually she said, you know, I don't want the pacifier anymore, I don't need it anymore.

[53:17]

She didn't have to say that. She just didn't ask for it anymore. She got over it. She was weaned without anybody weaning her. And I guess, to me, that story, to some extent, rests on the fact that she was developing her self-awareness in a sort of healthy way, and Sometimes when someone is really mentally ill, their self-awareness doesn't develop in that way. Right. I mean, right. But look at the daughter's example. If she said, I don't want to stop. Okay? She could have got a response that wouldn't have helped her find the way of giving it up on her own.

[54:18]

I could have forced her. I could have said, no, you have to. I won't give it to you. And I think that would have made it more difficult for her to find her way. So... It takes two people to have a crazy person. So you have one person who's called mentally ill, which one way to talk about mentally ill is this person can't find anybody to have a conversation with. Nobody's having a conversation, nobody's engaging this person. So I'm engaging her and I'm saying, how about giving up the pacifier? She says no, I say okay. Then she says, it's broken, go get another one. That's what she says to me and I say, well no, And she says, yeah, yeah. And I say, but it's nighttime.

[55:21]

And we're out in the woods. But tomorrow morning... She had a conversation. The healthy thing was the conversation. She wasn't sitting over there healthy on her own. She wasn't learning about her own development by herself. She was doing it in conversation with her father, and with the pacifier, and with her mother. And so a mentally ill person is somebody who somehow is having trouble finding somebody to have a conversation with. Their mentally ill means a lot of people are saying, we don't know how to talk to this person. But when people start talking to this person, now they're starting to find their way, but not by themselves. It's because somebody can talk to them. And that person we've been talking to isn't finding it by themselves, they're finding it by that person showing them what they need to listen to. So we make the... In some sense, we enable the mental illness, you could say, or anyway, we're responsible for it, when we can't find a way to converse with it.

[56:36]

And when I can't find a way to converse with somebody, that's somebody who you can say, oh, they're mentally ill. I think it'd be good if I'm called into question by that. How come you can't find a way to talk to that person? Well, I don't know, but I appreciate the question. So mentally ill, I think, is what we start saying when we're having trouble having a conversation. And then somebody comes along who is, I don't know what, really skillful at what? At listening to people, and at calling to people, and they have a conversation, and the person somehow becomes well. But, you know, the story I have in the back of my mind is a story of somebody who was able to have a conversation with somebody, And nobody else could. Many other people gave up.

[57:41]

And this person also said, and this person says, if you won't converse with me about my world, my strange world, then I won't talk to you at all. So, this person, part of their mental illness was they demanded that people buy into their unusual story in order to talk to them. But that's not a conversation. Are you following that? They said, this is my world. And everybody said, well, that's not our world. And they say, well, if you don't buy into it, I'm not going to talk to you. In other words, I'm not going to do what will free me of my illness, which is my world, but also that I won't talk to anybody unless they accept it. Somebody found a way to not accept his world and yet to listen to him and find a way to talk to him. The part about not conversing anymore was over. Now the conversation started. But it's hard to have conversations with people when they're really very, very stressed and very, very frightened and very, very holding on to their world and won't come out.

[58:58]

It's very hard to talk to them. But in a way, that's what we're being asked to do. We're being asked to have a conversation And a lot of us can say... A lot of us are having trouble having a conversation with this person. It would be nice to find somebody who could do it. And if we don't find somebody, then... I think I... It would be good for me to accept the consequences I couldn't have a conversation with the person, and I couldn't find anybody who would. And I think I want to accept the consequences of that, and I think I would feel a lot of pain in failing in that way. Could I see... Please talk to me.

[60:04]

Please talk to me. Yeah, I'm just not sure about everything you're saying. I think... Thank you. Yeah. I think... The person I have in mind, a lot of people are talking with this person. Yes. And listening with a lot of compassion. And the person doesn't really want care, but needs care.

[61:08]

What I heard you say was the person is getting care. And people are caring about the person. And the person's crying out and saying, I don't want you to care. In some ways, in some of the ways this person is behaving. So that's a common cry. I don't want care. I don't want you to care about me. Stop caring about me. You care about me too much. Leave me alone. That's a common call. And this person has people around him or her who care about him, even though he seems to be saying, I don't really want this. Is that what you're saying? That sounds like mental illness. But the situation you're talking about sounds good. It sounds like this isn't meth medicine. It's that a person who says, I don't want your care, is being listened to. And are the people listening to and respecting him? Is it a him?

[62:10]

Are they respecting his... What are you saying? Yeah, I think they are. Yeah, it sounds good to me. So, can you tell me a problem? It sounds like somebody is calling for help, and one of the ways they call is to say, I don't want it. And people are listening to his calls. That sounds good. Where's the problem? I mean, where to start? I think this person engages in a lot of destructive behavior, including addiction to substances, including harmful behavior to other people. Yeah, so how to both listen to that, I don't want to be taken care of and take care of everyone in this situation.

[63:14]

But it sounds like that's going on. Isn't everybody taking care of everybody? Aren't people expressing to him what they want him to do? Aren't people telling him, I want you to do X or Y? They're giving him some opportunities that he isn't taking. Yeah. But they're offering him opportunities. When you offer opportunities in a compassionate way, you don't offer them to get the control of the person. It sounds like he's trying to get in control of things. That's what sounds like what he's trying to do. Yeah, and so the question is when that person, though, has no ability to have control over anything. Yes, and also I have no ability to control him. So in that way, we're equal. Neither one of us can control the other one.

[64:18]

Okay, but people can create parameters for each other. Yeah, like you might say to him, if you don't do such and such at such and such a time, I want you to do such and such. You might say that to him. And you might say it to him, And you look him right in the eye when you say it. And you don't know how that's gonna go, but you have something to offer to him. So it sounds like there's opportunities. I think there are, but I feel like the examples you give still... are still somehow depending on reason and logic and people being reasonable. And in fact, that's a word I feel like I've heard you use. It's like, oh, that's a reasonable response, or that's a reasonable... And that doesn't feel like it's really in play in this situation. Okay, so... If... Right now, I don't know if what I'm saying to you is reasonable.

[65:27]

That sentence, I don't know if that was a reasonable sentence. I didn't really reason that out, I just said it to you. So I don't feel like I'm saying that what I'm saying to you has to be reasonable. And I told you that to me it sounded like, from what you're saying, he's giving a lot of help. But I'm not saying all the help he's getting is reasonable. I'm not saying it's necessarily reasonable that all these people care about him. Some people might say, it's unreasonable that you people are giving him all this love. Some might say that. I didn't think it was reasonable. I thought he was fortunate to have people that care about him. But I just feel like, from what you're saying, that you and his other friends are doing what you can do for now, And he maybe has to keep doing unskillful-harmful things to himself and others until he starts to see what he's doing.

[66:36]

And how is he going to see what he's doing unless people are doing what you're saying? And it seems like what you're saying will wake him up to see what he's doing. So far, I don't hear anything in what you're saying that doesn't seem appropriate to his situation. Do you? Do you see something that's going on here that's not helpful for him? No, I just don't know that I share your confidence that there's the... the same mechanism for waking up. Which mechanism do you think wakes people up? I think the one we're talking about, but I think that the seeing the self... For all of us it's really distorted, but I think for some people

[67:48]

There's more extremity in that distortion. Yeah. Maybe so. But what work do they need to do? And are they doing any different kind of work than what you would need to do with yours? I don't think so, but I don't think anyone knows who is capable of what. and whether that work... You know, we don't expect people who are really sick to climb mountains, like physically ill. Right. I wouldn't expect somebody who is sick to climb a mountain, right? I'm not quite getting what the... It seems like... It seems like what we all need to learn, he needs to learn, and if we are doing our own work, then that work can be transmitted to someone else.

[69:10]

But it doesn't mean it'll be transmitted quickly. But I don't think that it's... And again, he's showing you... What is he showing you? He's showing you something that's making you question yourself, right? And if you accept that, then he has a chance to question himself. Somehow people have to help him start questioning himself. Just like he's helping you question yourself. He has an egocentric point of view, right? But he doesn't seem to be working at looking at it and questioning it. If you're working at it and questioning it, then it gets transmitted to him. It's not necessarily that he would be seeing the same things you're seeing, but it's basically the same work.

[70:19]

And if he's in a more extreme situation, then it's going to take probably much longer before he starts doing the work that you're doing. He could maybe make you wonder how you could maybe understand a more extreme situation than you're in, and how you might deal with that. That might be something you could do. Yes? But isn't it also true that not everybody's reachable? And so I think when we talk about enabling, sometimes it's that somebody keeps working at trying to reach somebody, and by virtue of the fact that you keep trying to reach this person that, for whatever reason, you're not succeeding, then you just continue this cycle of letting

[71:35]

continue their behavior, whether it's towards you or... I'm not expressing my thought very well, but not everybody is going to engage when you offer what she's describing. You may not be reachable. Well, not everybody is going to engage when Today, I offer an engagement and people pass on it. So you say, well, see, they didn't engage. I said, right. But it depends on the situation, right? It depends on the situation. Right. So if you're, as a teacher, you're offering something to people and maybe they're not ready to hear you or ready to accept your gift, then I can see how, as a teacher, of Mustafa as a Buddha, it makes sense to continue to engage.

[72:48]

But, if you're doing that... Wow, I've already stunned myself. That just, you know, normal average Carmen. If I'm engaging with somebody that is being abused, that's unskillful, or because they're addicted, or whatever it is. And I'm trying my hardest, I'm engaging as fully as I know how to be compassionate with this person, to help them. But they're being abusive to me, and it just keeps happening, and it keeps happening. At some point, it seems to me, the healthy thing for me to do is to say, I'm done. Right? Well, like with my daughter, right? I think this question has come up a lot on this topic over the weeks. It's like, at what point do you say, I'm enabling this person to keep hurting me, or I'm enabling them to be stuck in their addiction because I'm showing them compassion in their lifestyle.

[73:55]

Your daughter, if you hadn't sent her, you'd have to get a job. It might have gone on another year without, you know, changing her behavior. Right? So at some point you have to. You can say at some point you're going to have to, or you can say at some point you do. You can say have to, or at some point you do. So the time came to offer her that. And I wouldn't say exactly she was abusing us, but you could say that, I guess, that she was abusing her parents by the situation. But we were participating in it. She wasn't doing it by herself. And at a certain point we could say this to her. And before that we couldn't. Somehow we couldn't say it. We couldn't think of it. It wasn't there. And then we did say it. But part of being able to say it is that the conditions have come together And getting to that point might be... Yeah, I would say it's promoted by being compassionate along the way, and then suddenly you see this opportunity to say this thing, and it works.

[75:14]

And... So, not reachable... I guess I am confident that But not today, not tonight, not in this class tonight. We're having a hard time tonight. I'm not reaching you tonight. But, just a second. You can't reach me. But really, what I'm saying to you is that really we are reaching each other. But we live in an egocentric world, and we can't see it. Because the way we're reaching each other is not reached by our vision. Our vision is not adequate to see how we're reaching each other. And these dramas we're doing with each other are means by which we're going to understand that we're already reaching each other.

[76:18]

There are ways of realizing reality. which is that we are reaching each other and people are reachable. But the way that they're reachable and that they're reaching is not within our egoistic enclosure. However, by practicing compassion in our egoistic enclosure, where we don't feel like we're reaching each other and helping each other, offers an opportunity sometimes to give something where you can actually verify in the consciousness that some turning happened, some awakening happened. To what? To what was already going on. In the meantime, we do not see it. But being compassionate to not seeing it is the path to seeing it. And when we see it, we won't see it with our eyes, but we'll realize it.

[77:19]

And a time comes to say, hands in the face, or salute, or stay away. Those gestures can be appropriate sometimes. But also, this gesture can be appropriate sometimes. You can do this and it doesn't work. You can do this and it doesn't work. This is not time for this or this. And then suddenly it is time for this. And because we're willing to be there in this miserable situation, and wholeheartedly engage it, and things aren't improving, we'll be there for the revelation of the thing which seems to be transformative. But it's really transformative in waking up to reality which was there before, which we couldn't see. It's a hard night at the yoga room.

[78:20]

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