We're in the process of creating a new book on Bodhisattva training, particularly the Zen family style of Bodhisattva training. The process of creation has been going on for a long time. Romi, there's a quarter behind you, would you give it to somebody? The structure of this creation, one of the structures is a parable, which is in the Lotus Sutra, in the chapter called Faith and Understanding.

[01:09]

And in that chapter, the parable is basically about a young man or a boy who wanders away from his family and home and wanders for a long time, 50 years. During that time, the longer he wanders, the more destitute and impoverished he becomes. And some translations say, finally, he happened to come to a town. Another translation say, by chance, he came to a town where his father was living.

[02:20]

And he happened to actually walk near where his father, the kind of celestial palace where his father was living. And he sees his father and he's awestruck at the vision of his magnificent father and all of his life, which involves tremendous power and wealth, awesome, majestic power and wealth that his father appears in the midst of. And he's frightened of this and he thinks that this is not a good place for him, so he runs away. And his father sees what's going on and thinks of this kind of provisional expedient means

[03:46]

and he sends some of his servants, some of his attendants, to go to his son. But before they go, they put on destitute, filthy, tattered clothing, not to frighten him. And they catch up with him and they offer him a job of shoveling dung. And he's very happy, not only to give him the job, but he'll get paid for it and food and clothing and housing. And the son's very happy to get this opportunity to shovel dung. And then the story goes on that the son does that dung-shoveling training for a long time and his confidence in his being and his relationship with the great wealth of the family that's employing him,

[04:50]

he gradually becomes able to accept, finally, that that's his original family. And so it's a long training process by which he basically realizes his original home, his original family. And last week I started to talk about the dung-shoveling phase of the process. But then I'd been asked to put a little bit more attention onto the time when he returned home. So I gave some talks about the wandering phase, and then some talk about the beginning of training, which involves shoveling dung.

[05:53]

And today I'd like to address a little bit the situation when he first re-encounters, and he doesn't know it's a re-encounter, when the first time he meets his father after 50 years and sees his father and is awestruck, kind of terrified, mystified, trembling in the meeting of this awesome, mysterious, tremendous family. In the process of wandering around,

[07:15]

trying to find some way to live, it does happen sometimes that people meet something awesome, something, they get a glimmering of something that is inconceivable, unimaginable, ungraspable, incoherent, and frightening. And in the story it doesn't say, and somewhat attractive,

[08:23]

it also doesn't say in the story, yeah, it does say in the story, kind of, that he sees something, you know, he sees precious jewels in abundance, he sees beautiful, precious jewels and treasures and beautiful home decorations and clothing and people. He sees this beauty of this great abundance. He sees beauty, but it most emphasizes that he's afraid of it. And this thought comes up something like this, beauty is the beginning of a terror which we can just barely stand.

[09:51]

Rilke said something like that. So the son saw this beauty of his own family, did not recognize it, but he felt the beginning of a terror which did not destroy him, but he was afraid it would. A terror that this beauty, that this situation would destroy him, and he could stand it enough to take that beauty in and ran away. And then the training opportunity comes because the father, well, actually, first of all, the father sends his attendants to get the son and bring him back,

[11:00]

but they're wearing their beautiful clothes and their beautiful faces and their beautiful bodies, their awesome presence goes to him and they apprehend him to bring him back to his father. And he thinks they're going to kill him, so he faints. And then his father sees, oh, he doesn't understand, so he says, let him go. And they do let him, they wake him up, they revive him and let him go. And he's very happy and he says, he's very joyful, he feels like he's gotten something he didn't have before, like he got a new life. And then as an aspect of this immense wealth, a small, a little tiny bit of the wealth is sent in the form of offering him a job.

[12:02]

And this little tiny sliver of this vast, incoherent, inconceivable, wondrous family, that little sliver he can take. Like I often say, if you give people just a little bit, a lot of people can accept it. But as you give them more and more, fewer and fewer people can accept it. So, yeah, and we have this life. We have this family. And this family is actually a process. Our original family is the process in which we are living.

[13:11]

Our original home is an inconceivable process. And again, I addressed that some time ago, this process, which is how everything is us, and we are everything. How we include everything, and we are included in everything. This is a relationship, this is a process, and this is the process in which we are living. But this process, of course, is inconceivable. We can't see how we are included in everything, and everything is included in us. However, we can resist that teaching.

[14:12]

We can resist that teaching very easily by feeling that we're not included in something or somebody. I'm not included in him, and also he's not included in me. We can resist it. And that resistance is part of the process of realizing this original family. So again, as when we're little babies, we're somewhat open to this awesome, tremendous, mysterious family. We're somewhat open to it.

[15:15]

And we need a lot of support to get through the day in the face of this actual process of creation, which is our home. We need a lot of compassion in order to live, in order to nurse on the breast, in order to go to sleep in the face of this awesomeness. And then, along with the compassion, we gradually are given various stories to reduce and limit this process

[16:17]

into some conceivable, graspable form, which helps us cope with the inconceivable home that's always not separate from us. And as I mentioned, again, a couple of months ago, because our conceivable home, our conceivable world, our graspable world, is fundamentally ungraspable, inconceivable, because our coherent world is originally incoherent, living in the coherent world we yearn for,

[17:18]

we're hungry for, our inconceivable home, which we are still living in, but which we've covered over as a coping mechanism, along with other beings who we've covered over so we can cope with them, and they've covered us over so they can cope with us. But we yearn for this and we go wandering to find it. But we don't know what we're looking for, so the more we wander, the more destitute and impoverished we become. And finally, we get a glimmer of the beauty again, and again, we might be somewhat attracted to it, because we've been looking for it,

[18:20]

and we might be somewhat frightened of it, because it's so immense, so tremendous, so mysterious. So in some people's, some human stories, people like, you know, they see something beautiful, like I saw a picture of somebody sitting cross-legged, upright, on a tatami mat. And there was a subtitle under the picture which said, In Deepest Thought. And I thought, yeah, deepest thought, when you're in deepest thought, your body is beautiful. When you're in deepest thought, your body is awesome. And mysterious. I didn't feel frightened by the picture of that body sitting.

[19:21]

By the way, that picture, I think, is in the changing room. Is it? Is it in there? So that picture that I saw is in the next room over there. That was in 1954, Life magazine. I didn't feel frightened by that picture. But I think I could feel some, that it was kind of an awesome picture. But I could feel the beauty. The beauty was, I could stand, I could tolerate the fear of my original home. When I saw this picture. I was attracted to the beauty.

[20:31]

And I was involved in a training program at the University of Minnesota to train my thought. But, I got a message that my thought would be trained most deeply if my body was part of it. And if my body was beautiful, that would train my mind to be, my thought to be more and more profound. And that gets into the training again. How do you train your body into beauty, which is training your life into meeting this and realizing this awesome, original home. So we say wander away,

[21:40]

but we only wander away in our dreams. And we say return home, but we never really left. And again, when we return home, we don't necessarily feel like it's home, but we might feel that beauty, which is kind of, I don't, the word teetering doesn't really quite work, but anyway, the beauty, which is in the face, the beauty which is in the face or the beauty which is the face of something so awesome that we tremble and so mysterious and training our body and mind in relationship to these issues

[22:43]

is the process of training. So now I'm wearing a robe and this robe is made of linen. The robe you can see here over my body is made of linen. And I asked Suzuki Roshi's wife to order this robe for me, this cloth, this robe, and she did. And originally this robe was black, black linen. And almost 50 years ago she got this robe for me. I paid for it, but she ordered it from Japan. about, let's see, and about

[23:46]

10 years later I was given some brown robes. So I thought that I would bleach my black robe, my nice black linen robe, I would bleach it. And I did bleach it and it came out the color you see, which you might call what, what color is this? Brown. Brown? Any other ideas? Hmm? Taut. Taut? Taut. Yeah. Anyway, here it is, this is the color, this is the result of my, of my endeavors, which were part of my training, was to, part of my training was to wear these robes and also to change the color of them as part of the training. However, I didn't do a very good job of bleaching it.

[24:48]

I used, I think, I don't know, anyway, I didn't do such a good job because as a result of my color-changing activities, the robe, the fabric was, you could say, weakened. And it started to fall apart. And it's still falling apart. I'll show you. Like, see this? See this? See this? See this? And then a couple years ago, and people have been trying to repair it and need one of them for quite a while, so a couple years ago somebody put a new backing on it. So it's got this,

[25:52]

it's become quite a bit heavier robe because it has this backing which is holding it together. Plus the front also needs to be repaired and we, some people might want to do that during work period today. And quite frequently people come and see this robe and they say, what do they say when they see it? They say it's beautiful. And you said it's awesome. They say it's beautiful even though what they're seeing is this robe which is falling apart. This falling apart robe gets people to think, gets people thinking of beauty. The way we're falling apart and becoming the whole universe, just before you're frightened by the way you're falling apart, becoming the whole universe, or just before you can't stand how you're falling apart

[26:53]

to become the whole universe, there's a beauty. Just while you can stand it. And also just while you, at the moment you can still tolerate the way the whole universe is becoming you before you can't stand it anymore, it's beauty. So this robe, for some people, they see it, they see it falling apart. They may not even know that's what they're seeing, but they're seeing a robe that's in an ongoing process, an open-ended process of deterioration and change. This robe is not in the process of being annihilated. This robe will not be annihilated. However, it is a superficial appearance of something that's

[27:57]

invisible. And the interaction makes this visible part constantly change, and people can see the change. Like this side, nobody sees this side, so they can't say that the other side is beautiful. But if you could see this falling apart, then you'd see that this side's beautiful too. But when you can't see that something's falling apart, you're missing something, because some things are falling apart. And they're falling apart not into annihilation, but they're falling into all the parts. And the parts are infinite. Everything's turning into infinite parts all day long. And infinite parts all day long are turning into the thing. This is the home which we return to, and then we train to develop the ability to live in this original home, to tolerate

[28:59]

being a drifting wreckage. As T.S. Eliot said, how can there be an end to a drifting wreckage? There's no end to us, because we're not like a not-wreck that ends and becomes a wreck. We are a wreck. And also, the poem, this, [...] leaky, tumble-down grass hut leaves openings for the moon. Now, I gaze at it, all the while

[30:06]

it was reflected in the teardrops fallen on my sleeves. So this is a homage to the part of the story called By Chance. He, he came to where his family was living. And again, I'm addressing that when he finally came to where his family was living, he ran away from it. He, he, he could stand the fear long enough to see how beautiful his family was, but

[31:07]

pretty soon he couldn't stand it anymore and he ran away from the beauty. He thought the beauty would hurt him, would, would enslave him. So then he got shown something that wasn't quite so beautiful. A dung, dung shoveling, oh actually, dung shovelers who were hiring him to shovel dung, that wasn't so beautiful. In other words, they weren't so terrifying. Is that a principle? What doesn't terrify you is not so beautiful. That's what terrifies you.

[32:09]

Something like that? Like you see somebody and say, well, he's pretty, he's beautiful. She's beautiful. It's beautiful. Okay. And you're not scared of it? Maybe not yet, maybe you're not yet seeing the beauty. The beauty comes when you start to feel the fear, the awesomeness of this. So it could be somebody that you think is cute and suddenly they're not cute anymore. They're, they're becoming mysterious. Looks like you're having a little trouble with that part. Before they, now they're beautiful but they're not yet mysterious, they're not yet

[33:09]

tremendous, they're not yet frightening. I would say that maybe for your consideration, the beauty has not yet come. You call them beautiful but you haven't yet heard, hello, hello, you think I'm beautiful? You think I'm beautiful? Oh, guess what? Well now, I'm starting to get afraid. Like one time I was with my grandson and when he was a little boy I think he thought I was pretty cool, pretty neat guy, he was interested in me. He wasn't, he wasn't kind of like oh, granddaddy is really boring, I want to go do something fun. He actually thought I was kind of beautiful. And he was really interested in me. And I don't know how it came up exactly but but I

[34:15]

I think maybe he told me that he wasn't afraid of me or something like that. So I was beautiful to him but not the kind of beauty that was like starting to be a little frightening. So I just started to change the way I was talking slightly. So rather than saying look at the look at the beautiful maple trees, I said look at the beautiful maple trees, don't you think the leaves are lovely? He said stop it, granddaddy. Why did you do that? I don't know. I don't know. But anyway, he he he was kind of telling me

[35:16]

you know, that basically things are pretty good and he had everything under control. And he was okay. So I thought well maybe I'll change my voice a little bit and see what he thinks of that. I didn't think necessarily he would become intolerant of it. I thought he could have just thought oh, this is cool, you changed your voice. But he said no, no, his world was his world was starting to fall apart by my voice changing. Suddenly the granddaddy that was there disappeared, not disappeared, but changed into another granddaddy and then he told the new granddaddy to go back to the old granddaddy and I went along with it. But I don't know why that all happened. But I did think it was rather interesting to say the least. See the children they're kind of awake so you change your voice and suddenly the doors open on vastness.

[36:17]

Adults usually are not that easily tipped off to the vastness. But just a little change in the timber of the voice opens the door for the children. They've been using these techniques to hold that stuff at bay that they learned. But they're not so rigid, they're not so sunk into these techniques so it doesn't take so much to open the door again to make the hut leak and let the moon in is sometimes easier for them. But then they have these techniques which are stop that granddaddy so I can put so the world can come back together and we can close up the leaks and shut out the moon. So, maybe that's

[37:19]

maybe that's enough on that topic for the time being to satisfy the needs of the chapter called Returning Home which will be inserted back before last week's talk I suppose. And when I said my grandson he has a younger cousin a younger boy cousin who accidentally died two weeks ago. So now someone asked me this morning how are you? And I say I'm full of life and death. Well

[38:26]

his family are dealing with yeah they're dealing with a beauty which is the beginning of a terror that they can barely tolerate at the same time they're grieving the the life of this beautiful boy. And once again he was a beautiful boy but

[39:27]

the real beauty of him is not you know is terrifying. The superficial beauty which is like kind of solid and coherent that was there but the desire which is another beauty which we can barely stand which is there too. And that applies to all of us. Yes? The why to say Grandpa please stop is for me I remember a lot when beauty came up or when I was around something very delicate I became afraid

[40:29]

I would break that I would be the cause of this destruction. that to me was more frightening than like a monster or something. And I still have that but I certainly remember it as a dream. Yeah, it's like you might break it it might break you or it might get broken and all this stuff is working together. It might break you and then what about that? You might break it then what about that? All these possibilities

[41:29]

are present all the time and we have developed patterns to wall all that to wall that over temporarily. This is a temporary walling over. So our temporary home so we make a temporary wall over our to cover our real home but then we unit for our real home which we temporarily walled off and then we're temporarily impoverished by walling off our original home and we wander around in our poverty looking for our original home but we usually are looking through other walled off homes or walled in homes but our original home is not walled in or walled off. So it's a very delicate dynamic

[42:31]

life and the process of realizing it is a delicate dynamic process and there's training methods to promote us being able to deal with a drifting wreckage and the moon that's penetrating it and also for us to deal with the moon that's penetrated by our wreckage. Yes? Yes? Is it still really terrifying if we come in contact with that that is impermanent and that maybe we want to hold on knowing that it's temporary and constantly

[43:33]

changing is part of it terrifying? Is that part of it? Well basically yes. So I think what again this is very this is delicate so look at it look at it when you start to feel the terror some terror or some awe about anything and you actually can you can actually accept and it's often that something that's going to change something's just starting to change or you're you open to the possibility that this thing is is not what you think it is and as you open to that you also feel a little some terror and then you're able to be with that terror and then the reward of being

[44:34]

with the terror that comes with the way this thing is that it's both it's both this way plus it's also not this way it's both here this way and it's kind of on the verge of changing or it's in it's in danger or it's at risk of being wrecked as you open to the possibility of some form of life being wrecked it's natural to feel some awe and when you can stand that awe you get this thing called beauty it's very subtle though even the even the subtlety of it is awesome we can barely stand the subtlety is also beautiful but it's not beautiful if there's no awe if there's no terror if there's no trembling

[45:34]

so we need to train to be still with the trembling so we can tolerate that trembling that fear and it's not to get to beauty it's to be with reality which has a beautiful aspect that's closely related to the fear yes? okay, so you're saying beauty breaks down the barriers that's one that's one way to put it the other way is beauty is feeling the vulnerability feeling the beginning of the vulnerability not kind of like a few minutes ago

[46:37]

the beginning of the vulnerability and vulnerability is somewhat frightening the universe is going to gobble you up that's part of reality the universe consumes you it includes you but also you gobbling the universe up that might be also that that vulnerability comes with this awe and if we can beauty is the beginning of that awe maybe and to be we need to train not need to train we have the opportunity to train with taking care of things so that they show us the vulnerability of them and us us and them and then the training helps us like not run away from this vulnerability

[47:37]

this awe this beauty but it's not to get the beauty it's to open to the moon which just happens to be beautiful if you realize that the moon is on the verge always of breaking not being annihilated changing the moon is can be very painful to look at when you actually open to the impermanence of the moon not to mention the impermanence of your body so yeah yes that looking at another being and that being looking at you

[48:37]

and there and there and you know this like just a message of a feeling you know of awe beauty and the terrifying part is that you disappear or that you might disappear yeah if you've already disappeared it's not terrifying anymore it's when you're it's when you're at risk of disappearing or changing is quite similar to disappearing but after you actually disappear after you're not who you are anymore you're not afraid of not being who you aren't anymore and I think love is a perfectly good word for your love is a perfectly good alternative word for your original home love is a perfectly good word for the way you include the whole universe and the whole universe is included in you you can use the word love for that

[49:38]

and the way that is there's no way to hold on to self or other in that process and as you open to it as you're as the way you wall off that love gets a crack in it and then you you deal with how you feel with that crack it's beautiful but not your idea of beauty because your idea of beauty also just cracked yes I really appreciate that you have that ability to stop that moment because that is the first moment that you actually recognize that moment

[50:40]

that you feel that it is there he had a chance to see that he he had a chance to see how fragile he was that his grandfather just changing the tone of his voice could be almost intolerable and that he could tell me to stop it and I would and that he would and so then I I hear Paul speak of his saying Judy stop stop but I'm not always as skillful and I'll go honey no come along look at the moon you know but that's not holding that little moment where that terror exists yeah and the baby doesn't doesn't know how to say stop mommy I shouldn't say they don't know how but they're learning how to stop mommy sometimes mommy is is is frightening them because mommy

[51:40]

is so interested in them they need a break from that also I told you the story before also about I was looking at him when he was older this is the story I just told you I think he was younger maybe maybe he was three or four later when he was about six or seven he was eating breakfast and I was looking at him eating breakfast the moon was shining on him and you know the the drifting record the tumble down house was letting that moon in and it was like he and he sort of started furrowing his brow and twisting his mouth and then he said to me would you please stop staring at me so he had learned he could feel it it was too much and he'd also learned how to ask people to give him some space from this from this this intensity

[52:43]

this this mutual inclusion and so when he said and so when he said it to me would you stop staring at me I said okay and I looked at the ceiling and then after that after a little bit of that he was able to start talking to me again and by and by poignant coincidence what he said was do you think Gabe has difficulty accepting instruction in other words do you think my cousin the one who has just died do you think he has difficulty accepting instruction that was just happened to be what he started to reengage in conversation with me about so he had learned how to ask for the space he needs when the when the when

[53:44]

when the beauty comes when the terror comes and it's beautiful you know it's beautiful that your grandfather loves you but it also at a certain point is too it's too terrifying so you need to be able to say can we have a break from this would you stop staring at me and I did I didn't if it makes it really hard on the person if you keep staring at it when they ask you to stop they need to learn how to ask for you to stop and then you need to like give them that space yes it makes you sad

[54:47]

that it needs training it does it does it does happen organically it does however part of the organic process is that some people ask for it and don't get it that's really sad some people say would you give me a break and the person doesn't give him a break they don't respect the person's request and they keep bearing they keep shining the light on him and but with training we can learn how to deal with that but we do need training and some people the way they train us is they look at us it gets to be too intense we say can I have a break they say okay and then and then they're willing to interact again and then you stare at them again and they say I need a break you know

[55:47]

or let's not talk about this or don't change the tone of your voice this is the part and in this case in a way the grandfather is training the grandson by letting the grandson tell him to give him a break and giving the grandson a break teaching the grandson he can he can do that so in that way the grandson can explore this this this radiance this love this moonlight by seeing , oh the moonlight's coming it's getting too intense I need a break okay I get a break okay if it comes again I think I'll be able to also when it gets to be too much I'll be able to say this is enough give me a break in this way you gradually open to the fact that this moonlight's shining through us all the time but we need to take breaks from the moonlight in order to gradually open to it more and more

[56:49]

and getting breaks means we have to have a trainer who says you can take a break from this one time again some of you heard this story it might be being upright Mr. Zigguratji sent me to Tatsahara well he didn't send me to Tatsahara I wanted to go to Tatsahara and he he wanted me to learn how to chant do Buddhist traditional Buddhist chanting he wanted me to learn that and there was a teacher coming to Tatsahara to lead the practice period who taught this kind of chanting so I yeah so I and I was assigned to be one of the people to be trained by him in this chanting and I learned it and then after the practice period was over Suzuki Rishi came down to Tatsahara and asked me to show him what I learned so then I I chanted for him

[57:54]

he listened to me chant so while I was chanting he was like looking at me I didn't particularly feel he was adoring me but he was definitely giving me his full attention and of course this is what I came to Zen Center for was to get this attention to get this teacher to look at me practice and he was giving it to me and I didn't say would you stop staring at me but it was kind of like he was my grandfather looking at me with all this in a way adoration of my young monk effort because I had learned I had learned this chanting you know I had learned it and he actually said to me you know when Tatsagami Roshi the teacher when he chants that way it's really nice but he's an old man from you know rural Japan

[58:54]

and you've copied him exactly so for you you shouldn't chant exactly like him but I had learned in a way to chant exactly like this old Japanese priest which I think Sugerishi appreciated I made that effort that here's this young American priest sounding like an old Japanese priest so what he did was he sort of ironed my chanting he ironed the little eccentricities of the chanting that I learned by taking by he gave me instruction how to smooth it out so I didn't have all the exact same qualities as this old priest he was giving me a lot of attention a lot of I could say love and it was really hard for me to take it even though this is what I came for this is what we're here for and yet when we get it it's too much so we need to be able to say stop Granddaddy but I didn't say stop Sugerishi

[59:56]

I said thank you so much I don't want to take any more of your time and he said it's okay but I could say that you know I could feel that I was this light was just it was it was beautiful I knew I was I was receiving this kindness from this teacher he had other things he could be doing with his life he was spending his life listening to this young priest chant and giving him feedback and he couldn't have given me that feedback if I had not made an effort of learning all these chants in Japanese Aogi Koi Negawa Kuwa Shinji Fushite Shokan Otare Tamae Jorai Maka Hanya Hara I learned that

[60:58]

in Japanese and I could didn't have to look at it I could I'd memorize and learn how to do that chant so he could come in and watch me and give me all that love and yeah and I don't want to take anymore of your time in other words let me get out of this room no, it's okay you can stay but being able to say that you know makes a little space you know let me out of here I hear you want to leave but actually why don't you stay a little longer okay let me out of here okay, okay I hear you so that's the training it's how to how to like show yourself to somebody so they can look at you and then when it gets to be too much say can we take a little break now and they say okay are you ready to start again can I turn the light back on

[61:59]

a little bit longer okay how about now okay turn the lights on okay here we go again so it's sad in the sense that we're sad that not that some people are not in this training however part of the story is that we are in this training we are in the training and the part the part of the training includes the fact before we start training and we have to wander quite a long time and get into kind of big trouble sometimes before we're okay I'll do the training and then once the training starts we also have some but we are we all are going to enter training after we've wandered around long enough after we've become destitute and impoverished enough we will enter the training

[63:01]

which will be intense that dung has a strong odor and our back hurts sometimes from shoveling it and so on that training is hard but we're we're up for it because we know what it's like just to wander unemployed so there is sadness and part of the process is sadness and sadness is part of what helps us adjust to the process but the chapter is called Faith and Understanding the faith is the faith that we're in this process and we will eventually understand this but there's going to be sadness and destitution off and on in the process and then once we formally enter training it's going to be really intense sometimes and then we're going to need breaks yes I've seen people

[64:05]

people that actually get a lot of attention and they love it yeah you can call them celebrities sometimes and do you say that they have completely accepted the moment or has this or has this gone awry and it's actually completely dark well so let's say you have a celebrity okay who has gotten a lot of attention and so now the training opportunity might be that they meet somebody who for some reason even though they're a celebrity somebody they appreciate somebody who maybe they see of see even though they're celebrities they still might see someone

[65:05]

as their teacher or their grandmother or their grandfather and their and their grandfather might say to them I'm sure that all this celebrity isn't going to make you arrogant and then maybe that form of training they can accept it isn't that the training is always like beautiful it isn't that the training always like opens the door so much that you can that you really feel terror but then after saying I'm sure you won't become arrogant about your celebrity then a few minutes later the door might open a little bit more and say is he saying that is he kind of indirectly

[66:06]

saying that I'm arrogant and now you start to feel more vulnerable and then maybe you go back and say were you saying that I were you kind of indirectly and easily you know saying you know and when you ask the question maybe and the teacher might say oh no or the teacher might say oh no I wasn't saying that to you you're not arrogant and now we start we start to feel even though we're a celebrity we feel terrified it could go like that for a celebrity because celebrities it's possible that a celebrity might become arrogant right so you can be a celebrity and maybe it's possible to be a celebrity but not be arrogant isn't that possible

[67:06]

yes but also possible to be arrogant so then somebody can like tug a little bit on the fabric that we're putting between ourselves and our life and say would you like me to pull that fabric open a little bit and we say hmm I don't know nice of you to ask and then you walk away and the fabric just kind of starts to rip like this starts to come apart and then you start to look at it and so it can go like that so that another example is kind of related to this is Susie Gracie gave me a piece of paper one time it's a used envelope do you know about this used envelope somebody probably knows about the used envelope don't they anyway now you know there was a used envelope and it said on it Reverend Suzuki

[68:07]

it's one of somebody gave him this envelope and he used it as scratch paper and he wrote on there I think five vertical lines how many of you have heard this story okay it's probably in being upright but anyway five vertical lines and so four of them were kind of at the same height and one stood up above the others one of those vertical lines was a celebrity he didn't say that but I'm saying that to you one of the vertical lines stood up among the others and Susie Gracie said we don't have that one we don't have that

[69:07]

celebrity thing sticking up among among all of our abilities we don't have this one and in other words either you should bring all the other ones up to that level which I think the way you should bring the other ones up to that level isn't that you should push that one down like for example if you're a good chanter if you've trained at chanting it isn't that you should stop being well trained at chanting which I trained which I trained you at along with you had two teachers teaching at it isn't that you don't know how to chant anymore but you should bring some other things up to that level so then your skill won't stand out and then he wrote an example of something another one of the arrows that should be lifted up the same height in Chinese and then he translated and said this monastic regulation means not visiting other people's rooms not visiting

[70:08]

other people's rooms it's a monastic guideline so again if you're a celebrity your teacher might say well you find that you're a celebrity but you should also take care of your kids or deal with your spouse with the same level of devotion and skill as you do as you do your baseball or your acting or your piano you should bring these other things up it isn't that you shouldn't be good at these things you're famous for you should be working on these other aspects of your life so it's not that you're just good at one thing and a whole bunch of other things in your life you're not taking care of it's fine that you're good at this bring the other stuff up and the other this is in the light bring the stuff that's in the dark up to the same level so he pointed out something I could work on and he also said

[71:10]

in his very gentle way with me I don't want to tell you to do this and I said but you want me to right and he said mm-hmm so yeah I think some of us do get good at something and we get some celebrity and that's fine and then the teacher will come and say it's great that you're so good at this but what about the other stuff and and then that's kind of that can be kind of well I can't do all I can't bring everything up to this level oh I see oh okay that's too much to ask I'm sorry I brought it up or there could be another response like would you please consider making your whole life skillful

[72:10]

rather than just two or three things skillful would you consider that well that's kind of an awesome invitation that's kind of overwhelming to make everything you do on the level of what you're best at which you know that some things you're not as some things you do are not as good as some other things you do and there might be quite a few of those things you're quite good at like some people are quite good at typing but they're not very good at handwriting would you please make your handwriting bring it up to the same level as your typing whoa that's a lot to ask you're quite attentive to the children would you be more could you be equally attentive to the adults oh or vice versa in other words non-stop practice oh wow and then there's the beauty when somebody asks you

[73:11]

to practice 24 hours a day and you and you feel kind of terrified of this whole new life there's beauty there and if you can stand if you can stand how awesome it would be to not miss a beat there's that beauty and the beauty isn't just to get the beauty it's to say it's to say oh yeah this is a crucial place to practice yeah so this is about you know developing intimacy with our original home and

[74:14]

now once we've gotten a little bit of contact with it we need to train having more contact in a pattern that we can sustain and most of us cannot go from coming back home and then just flat out facing that home non-stop we can't do that that's unreasonable but we're working in that direction to actually be able to accept our actual life all day long it's a long training process and we're in it yeah we're in it and it's so wonderful that we're in it isn't it let's see Jared it's about training to be able well it's about training to be able to accept our actual life yes and

[75:16]

we need training to do it because again when we're little kids we it's overwhelming we can't deal with it and when we grow up we get glimmers of it and in one way it's beautiful and in another way it's like too much so we need training of how to deal with this something that's beyond way beyond too much it's not just a little bit too much it's inconceivably too it's also too little it's inconceivably too much or too little it's just it's just it's the total relationship between ourselves and all other beings and all other beings in us that's what we're training to open up to and that's our actual life but we need training to do that we need to be able to say would you stop staring at me universe and the universe say okay when can I come back just like I often tell people well just ask so and so if you could mention something ask your spouse

[76:17]

or your parents if you could mention something that you'd like to talk to them about you go over to them and say could I mention something I'd like to talk to you about and they say no or I'm not not no in other words they're not ready to deal with this thing they kind of feel you're going to dump this huge light on them no could I come back and check with you again yeah come back and check then you come back and check and they say okay and then you tell them and they you know and they feel terror what you're telling them about and yeah and they yeah and then they need a break so we're in this process yes I don't generally feel that I'm

[77:20]

shining a light but I aspire to the light and there's a poem that is encouraging and I'm wondering if it reflects this acceptance and it begins windless weightless there in the water midnight water there in the night water and boat bathed

[78:23]

in the night could you hear her? no and it's not bathed it's swamped because it could be bathed in the it's it's swamped means it's like it's it's in the water so the moonlight's shining on the water that it's in so it's not just bathed by the moon it's bathed by the water that the moon's bathing in windless weightless there in the midnight water an abandoned boat swamped in moonlight swamped in water which is reflecting moonlight yeah this is about that however you said that you aspire to receive the light and that you don't think you're giving it do you aspire to let it come from you too?

[79:26]

okay it's it's a two-way radiation you're illuminating the universe the universe is illuminating you so it's good to be find the place the training to be in the windless waveless place at midnight for this negotiation to be realized between you and the moon and the water and yeah so we need we have this wonderful training program to be able to be there at midnight in that place of of reflection of communication of illumination I think I mentioned

[80:32]

a couple weeks ago the light is invisible you can only see it reflected but we can see it reflected and everything reflects it thank you for creating this book

[81:05]

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