So I thought the way we might go today, tonight, is I would say a little bit about our process, amongst us, and then we can finish up with Sheila, and then I will say some things about the third precept, Kshanti, and we may or may not get through Kshanti tonight, and then be ready for the fourth precept, virya, with Fran next week. Oh, I was going to bring my Xerox of the whole Trungpa book for you. I do have one. If you remind me, I'll do it. He has a chapter on transmission, which is before the Xeroxed piece, I think. Is that right? Yeah, it's before the Xerox piece, Transmission.

[01:16]

And essentially in Transmission he says that all the teacher does is create the situation and then a certain field or situation is set up and in that interaction the Dharma manifests. And it's said of Buddha that sometimes he didn't say a word or that he never taught. he gave a lot of instruction he spoke a lot of dharma but the the it the mysterious what is it has to be experienced by each of us and so a class like this a group of dharma students we are the Teachers or the leader's role is to set up a situation, sort of prime the pump a bit.

[02:23]

You know, people come in and they're tired and they want something. And just to sit for a little. Then the leader has some responsibility. But really what's happening is setting the scene, setting up the situation. And I thought it was pretty good last week, really, that we went round and everybody had something to say and we heard each other. I used to take, I took quite a number of classes in my days when I was more of a zealot. And I would go all the way over at night to Page Street and take courses from Reb and from Lou Richmond, principally. And both of them just could fill up an hour and a half with wonderful rather mystifying talk, but it was exciting. You know, it was sort of like riding a wave. Can I understand this?

[03:24]

Do I get it? Don't I get it? You know, sort of just, that was the excitement for me about whether I got it or I didn't get it. And in fact, what I remember out of those classes is the bits from the interaction that I had or that other students had. And in a certain way, a special situation was set up there because the teacher was so much a teacher that people were kind of, you'd be nervous to say what you thought, you know, because it might be wrong. There was all that drama that accrued. And that's one way of setting up a situation. But anyway, our connection with each other is really in our process. And so it's good to keep that process clear, I think, as we've been doing, and balanced.

[04:29]

And with that bit of encouragement, we can just begin talking about having a discussion about Sheila. whether we're calling it discipline, or the natural state of mind, or morality, or as the Sanskrit word is translated, peaceful and cool, all those aspects of it. Another aspect of the class is that it does give us all a background for the week, if we allow it to. so that during the week it's there and we may be thinking about our homework and our experience a little bit from the point of view of what we're going to bring to the class. So, did anybody have any thoughts about Sheila or the presets or

[05:42]

Anything else that might possibly be related to the class? Or do we need a little pump priming? Yeah? My own thought is that after it's over, I feel sort of embarrassed that I made, that I revealed a personal problem. It's like, I shouldn't be making admissions of personal problems in my life. It's like it doesn't belong here. Ah, it doesn't belong in the Dharma? I mean, that's the feeling. Rosa! I don't know, why am I burning? Good, good.

[06:51]

Does anyone have, want to respond to that? Well, I just remember that it fit the context of what we were talking about when we were talking about goodness and generosity. So, I didn't feel burdened. These paramitas are really how we get through the sloppy business of our life, the embarrassing business, the suffering. And when one hears another really suffering and trying to put it in the context of the Dharma, that's what the class is surely about. And it is easy to feel embarrassed. I sort of feel like I'm talking too much perhaps.

[07:58]

You know, I'm so filled with pain, so much pain and suffering, that I talk to Mel and I say, you just have to undo it. And just now, finally, we've reached the point where I feel some freedom. I was reading book thinking while I'm reading, and then I go back and I thought, what did I read? I was not able to absorb, concentrate on any of my spiritual readings. I thought, this has been going on for several months, and so now I'm beginning to feel free from that, like some people do.

[09:12]

an attaching negative spirit. So I feel free from it. What do you think happened that brought you that freedom? Well, I think having this place to come to where I feel a sense of support and permission to, even though I'm a This is the place for it. Because I don't really have anyone outside that I could talk to. Well, I could talk to them about it, but I don't get the spiritual support. So Dharma friends helped you find that freedom. Yeah. Well, freedom is very, of course, connected to Sheila, to discipline. Trungpa mentions that, I think.

[10:20]

Yeah. Someone else want to talk about that? flowers, so to speak, into expression.

[11:53]

So, discipline can be a form. Discipline is not pain, necessarily. It's just focused effort. Yeah, and naturalness really is freedom from one's afflictive habits of mind. And so naturalness actually requires quite a lot of character development. and character development does require discipline.

[13:18]

Changing old habits to new ones. Yeah. Seeing clearly the old and seeing clearly that you just might not change them. But you see, the more you look at them clearly, mindfully, the more they do tend to sort of take a different path. Yeah. Or like transmutation. Yeah. But that same energy that's the bad habit can be put into a new habit, but part of it's the old habit. Yeah. And that brings up the whole question of bossiness. you know, if you see, if you've got some trait, some character trait which you would prefer not to have, are you just going to kind of push it out of the way or are you going to acknowledge that it's there and has its place and be tolerant with it?

[14:30]

I mean, how much, how indulgent do you get and how strength you get. And that really is, that's, that is the, each of these paramitas has its transcendent quality, its skillful means quality. And so it's not a question of just the rule, but it's always a question of how do you apply the rule. with enormous discipline. And this practice involves selfless kindness.

[15:31]

And I think that kind of triggers something in my head here. Because I, for the past few weeks, have been kind of in a turmoil because of certain relatives of mine being problems taking place. And then I started having problems in my personal life. At the same time, Kathleen suggested the phrase, plunging into Buddha's way. I plunged into Buddha's way. And then you said selfless kindness. I thought, maybe I'm just being too I-oriented. And so I started saying, plunging, just plunging into Buddha's way.

[16:37]

And then it made me, I don't know why, but this past weekend I went into my notes again, and the abbot had taught a class in which he gave this poem to study the Buddha. And to forget the self is to be confirmed by the 10,000 dharmas. To be confirmed by the 10,000 dharmas is to free the mind and body of the self and others. And traceless enlightenment continues endlessly. for you.

[17:50]

And the wave is a form, and that comes about by the condition of water and wind. But, you know, just because the wave disappears doesn't mean it's gone forever. It's all part of a whole, whatever you call it. And so I thought, yeah, it's such an insignificant part. So these Thursday evenings do trigger these ideas. It's really wonderful. Oh, thank you. Thank you. That's really nice. The Heart of Understanding is the Prajnaparamita. Yeah. And we do recite that regularly in our worship, I mean, in our services.

[19:24]

So it is potent. Yeah, he uses the metaphor of waves and water throughout that book. That's what I think of when I recite the prajnaparamita. There's waves and water? Yeah, good metaphor. Yes, so it does make quite these translations. You call it discipline, you call it selfless kindness. It's nice to be expansive about the way one looks at it. It's also, it's nice to keep going back to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. He doesn't talk about the parameters. And yet, as I look each week through it, I can always find something that relates to the paramita I'm thinking about.

[20:37]

And it's very likely that somebody else could look through and find another passage that relates to the going paramita. But on page 107 he talks about naturalness, that moment after moment everything comes out from nothingness and this is the true joy of life. This speaks a little bit to what Agnes was, Agnes' discovery. Being natural. For a plant or a stone, to be natural is no problem. But for us, there is some problem, indeed a big problem. To be natural is something which we must work on. We have to use our characters. When what you do just comes out from nothingness, you have quite a new feeling. For instance, when you are hungry, to take some food is naturalness. You feel natural. But when you are expecting too much to have some food is not natural.

[21:40]

You have no new feeling. You have no appreciation for it. The true practice of Zazen is to sit as if drinking water when you are thirsty. The true practice of Zazen is to sit as if drinking water when thirsty. There you have naturalness. It is quite natural for you to take a nap when you are sleeping, but to take a nap just because you are lazy as if it were a privilege of a human being to take a nap is not naturalness. I always had a problem with that. But the naturalness, for me it comes out a lot whenever I have Whenever I find myself and my blood pressure rising or getting angry about something, you know what you're saying, usually it works. It has a lot to do with who I really am and who I think I am or I think someone else thinks I am.

[22:46]

I don't like the way that person reacted. Who is that person to me? what to do, and of course it's all being created right there, but it's becoming a good kind of reminder of that sense of selflessness to say, it's not this construct of my mind or anybody else's mind who has to be the set up there to be honored properly, or to be treated right, and that kind of thing. And once I can recognize that I'm doing that, I mean, it just dissolves. It's really helpful. And that seems more natural. I think, oh, well, and that was just quite a lot of nonsense.

[23:51]

It was just something that I was making up. And then, than the other person that I'm dealing with. I mean, it's very recognizable that I've given up some kind of thing that I was hanging on to. Because, yeah, I'm obviously more relaxed. Because I'm just right back to, what are we doing? You know, we're just doing this project, or we're doing this discussion about plans or something. And so your naturalness communicates. Yeah, yeah. Well actually what you say is really leading into the next paramita and none of them are separate patients, Ashanti. But it's, I mean they're all, it's all practicing. It does all interweave. It does interweave, yeah, yeah. And our naturalness is very apparent.

[24:53]

Well, we haven't talked about the precepts. It just seemed too much to begin listing precepts. But we do have them as our guidelines, the Ten Precepts, the Ten Grave Precepts. And it's also noticeable that they're framed on both sides by the Three Refuges and then the Three Pure Precepts. So it's not as if there's 10 rules, so to speak. The rule aspect is kind of broadened by the refuges first, that these rules are being followed essentially for the benefit of all beings, and then the three pure precepts at the end. The self, the I, the me quality that Agnes was referring to is put in this very big background frame.

[26:07]

So, why don't we go on to Kshanti, to patience and talk about that aspect. Some years ago I came across this Sanskrit technical term that kind of stuck in my mind. Anupatika dharmakashanti and what that translates into is the anu is paticha is the paticha samupada the dependent origination or origination and anupaticha means no origination so it means the non-originating Being accepting, being patient of the unborn dharmas.

[27:37]

Being tolerant of the fact that dharmas don't come and they don't go. So, suffering the unborn nature of all dharmas. That is, just being there. with the continual coming and going and coming and going of the dharmas and that there's no place, there's no one view, there's no one place to abide. Fran discovered this book which has just come out It's Thich Nhat Hanh's commentary on, I think, part of the Diamond Sutra. I don't think it's the whole Diamond Sutra, but part of it. And it's a really, it's a nice book. He takes the Diamond Sutra, some lines of it, a few lines like this, and then there's double or triple that amount of commentary.

[28:51]

And it makes the point again and again, which we'll get to in the Prajna Paramita class, but it makes the point again and again that there is no refuge point, that the Bodhisattva does not stand on emptiness and doesn't stand on non-emptiness. There's just no point of view anywhere. There's no point of view at all except, of course, beginner's mind. That's our, that is our refuge, is just coming back continually to that beginner's mind and beginning again. And that is this kind, that's the transcendent aspect of this patience. that all dharmas are equal. And that's a very hard one to really register that all dharmas are equal because there's so many dharmas that come up in front of us that we either like or dislike.

[30:10]

It is not our instinct to let an unpleasant and aversive dharma arise and to just be with it respectfully. That takes a lot of character. And of course that's the only way really to meet it is to just let it come up and be there with it and see its beginning and its middle and its end and let it go at its own pace. So this patience is accepting that kind of equality of our experience and it is encouraging us neither to hurry nor to wait. Really there's nothing to hurry for and there's nothing to wait for. I think Trungpa says that patience is never having to wait for anything.

[31:24]

How much of our time do we spend waiting for something to happen, waiting for the moment to occur? So there are many wonderful ways to practice patience. And then it strikes me as you're speaking that the naturalness comes out like when you least expect it, when you're not waiting or, you know, you notice it afterwards or it seems like it's not calculated when you've been natural. Does that make sense? Yeah. The experience I had last week, I had a very bad bicycle accident, and I was riding by a vehicle at the exact moment that someone opened their door, and I went flying off my bike into the middle of the road, landed on the ground, and was in quite a bit of pain.

[32:33]

I'm often, by the way, really annoyed by motorists' lack of thoughtfulness around bicyclists. But before I even turned to look at the guy, I started to get up and I said, you know, what you just did is a really easy thing to do. And then I turned around and looked at him, and he happened to have been from Zen Center. Someone that I had never met, actually. And I put my hand out and introduced myself and she was there. Bleeding. But what I want to say about that is that I really surprised myself. It wasn't a calculated reaction. It just sort of came out of me because there was this real recognition that it was really obvious that he was careless. There was no point to point that out or there was no reason to fly off the handle or whatever.

[33:44]

And it's a rare moment. I mean, it doesn't happen often that that kind of response comes out, but to observe it is really nice because it gives a little insight of, it seems to me, what you're talking about. Naturalness. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, all the nasty things that could have been there were not. Yeah. And you just, yeah, that's very old. No, actually I wasn't. I ride way over to the Oakland Hills a lot and I always wear a helmet and when I'm going back Yeah, it is nice when naturalness just comes out. It's a little reward for me.

[34:56]

I live with my mother and a lot of the time I'm pretty irritated. But it does sometimes, just somehow, just all the awful remarks that get up to about here, just don't make it. I'm so grateful. So then that's somehow related to the discipline of the practice, too. I guess, I mean, when you said that they're all interrelated, you didn't see that. Yeah, right, right, right. The discipline, the character development does come to one's rescue. But you had more than that, you know, it was like discipline and also patience and also energy, because you got up off the ground, you know, to do something. And he talks about that. That's right. You know, you didn't just lay there and not swear at him.

[35:59]

You got up and you couldn't let him. And that's true. She went off her hand, you know. Yeah, it was generous too. Yeah, we could go down the whole list, I'm sure. Or you could have laid there and gotten witnesses and filed lawsuits. Well, yeah, but it never wasted. You know, the point is none of it was calculated and it seemed like a real gift to be able to look back on it and say, oh, this is how the practice feeds me, you know, to really observe that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a nice story. Well, do you think that before you started, before you encountered Buddhism, just your personality, the way it was just growing up, that you would have had a different reaction? Oh, I've led a terribly arrogant life.

[37:02]

Yeah, the practice is really whittling away at that. So you were kind of self-righteous? Yeah, I think so. But the thing is, it really is, it's that thing of like, I can be you and you can be me. It's a very easy thing to do. And it just, you know, but so the experience really impresses that upon you, you know. That's what we need to do more of is, oh, I can be you and you can be me. Well, yeah, and that means letting go of a whole lot of stuff. And that there's all this stuff covering up the naturalness, all this kind of protective stuff. And it's really hard. It's very hard. It's very, very hard. And it's very hard when you've just been struck by a car door, and it's your body that's hurting, to realize that this wasn't

[38:09]

Yeah. Kind of like the empty boat. Yeah, I was thinking about that too. Yes, I thought of it, yeah. No, but we're never very Well, the book, Every Day Zen, she has quite a nice chapter in there on the fact that there's no person rowing the boat. It may bump into you when you're out in your boat and it may knock you over, but if there's nobody in there, you can't really get angry at a boat. It's just a metaphor for everything's an empty boat. I just think that there's nobody in it that was rowing toward you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that leads... There are a lot of ways of practicing patience.

[39:18]

So we've... One way is watching the impatience and the hurrying and the waiting and all that business. And then another very traditional aspect of patience is as an antidote to anger. just what Adana is saying, that when you begin, that our first response to anger is to assign some, assign it to somebody else, somebody in the boat out there. And the word, the ideograph in Chinese for forgiveness or for Kshanti, for patience, is a sword over the heart. So, I understand that as when anger arises, one doesn't look out there for relief, but one looks inside.

[40:31]

Or is it wisdom covering emotion? Or tempering it. Yeah? How would you proceed with that? The sword of wisdom covering the heart of emotion. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. What do you mean by covering? Well, maybe that's the way they describe it. Or tempering. Well, I would say tempering. Because the sword isn't cutting it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Right. What do the authorities say it means? Well, it's almost always translated as patience. I mean, why do they... What does somebody else say about why there should be a sword by a heart? Over... across a heart? I don't know. I never... I just came across that reference once. I think it was Aiken Roshi. Uh-huh.

[41:36]

I forget what he said. What he said. It's protecting your heart. It's a very carol kind of thing. Yeah. But that has that protecting quality that we try to get away from, that protection of self and ego. To me that's almost sort of paradoxical, kind of protection from what? I mean, from the opening up process that we supposedly practice. Uh-huh. the picture in my mind. Well, to follow up with the Patience as an Antidote to Anger, another great book is this Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life by Shantideva, and he has And in fact, he deals with several, not all of the parameters, but several of them in quite a practical sort of way.

[42:50]

So thinking about patience as an antidote to anger, hence, Well, hence everything is governed by other factors, which in turn are governed by others. And in this way, nothing governs itself. Having understood this, I should not become angry with phenomena that are like apparitions. So when seeing an enemy or even a friend committing an improper action, by thinking that such things arise from conditions, I will remain in a happy frame of mind. Even if it were the nature of the childish to cause harm to other beings, it would still be incorrect to be angry with them, for this would be like begrudging fire for having the nature to burn.

[43:51]

It's rather interesting. Previously, I must have caused similar harm to other sentient beings. Therefore, it is right for this harm to be returned to me, who is the cause of injuries to others. If in blind attachment I cling to this suffering abscess of a human form, which cannot bear to be touched, with whom should I be angry when it is hurt? It is the fault of the childish that they are hurt, for although they do not wish to suffer, they are greatly attached to its causes, so why should they be angry with others? Just like the guardians of the hell worlds and the forest of razor-sharp leaves, so is this suffering produced by my actions. With whom, therefore, should I be angry?"

[44:54]

Well, and it goes on and on and on with kind of with taking apart, taking the anger apart. What do you think about that? Well, I think that It is possible to be, if patience is the absence, if real patience is the absence of anger, then one would not allow oneself to be abused, because to allow oneself to be abused has a quality of anger in it. So,

[45:57]

if one is truly patient again, one is also keeping one's boundaries. That's really tricky. Well, it is tricky. You know, the Dalai Lama, I heard him say that there's been a genocide in Tibet 14 million people killed, more than that. I can't remember the number. But he used the word genocide. And that the people who were not Buddhists suffered terribly from the hands of the Chinese, whom they regarded as enemy. But the Buddhists did not, do not believe that the Chinese are their enemies. And so the Buddhists have not suffered. He said that. And then the whole question comes up about what do you do when people are attacking you?

[47:07]

Do you fight back? Do you try to get them out of your country? And that's where some ambiguity does indeed arise. But how can we receive bad intention or harm coming to us without making the construct of enemy? I think that's what it's really about. How can we deal skillfully with negativity without imagining enemy? and also being patient at the same time as being angry.

[48:09]

Well, Ussi Linanda would say that's impossible, but it might be possible. So like that. So I think you can be angry at all the other kinds of things that we do, but also at the same time be patient. Not be drawing hard and fast conclusions even though you're caught up in Right. Right. And keeping a wide view, even as the emotion is rising. Right. As one gets older, one can actually do that. A little. Yeah. It gets harder. Yeah. But I've got this very, very tricky point, because I remember working on this for several years. I used to do it a lot. I was on the practice committee a lot, and we would have these endless meetings and we would go through the same thing.

[49:13]

Rob is so good at that! I know, every time I come to the practice committee for years, every time I come to a meeting, it's like going to a movie and saying, this is where I came from. I've already seen this movie. There's no choice. I mean, you either have to leave such a committee or you have to learn to practice patience. Some people manage to go to sleep or some people manage to get into every little thing. But you have to have some kind of place and you really have to kind of work with it, especially if you're the kind of person like I am that would like to see things get done. And that's not what any of this is about. And I remember the first few years, I would just be sort of tied in a knot and just exhausted. And little by little, I would sort of relax into it and be able to observe what was going on and let the feelings arise and not have to say something, not have to act, not have to leave.

[50:24]

And then there was a turning point where good at. And what I would find is that I would be able to see what was going on and be very tolerant of it and see all the good stuff. And maybe four or five hours later, with it or something, because I wasn't allowing, it was more comfortable not to allow the negative feelings to really be conscious. And that gave me the feeling that I was doing really well with it, and I could get a lot more done and communicate, and it felt like, at the time, like it was really

[51:29]

And I find myself going through this kind of cycle, the five yearly cycle of it, being very irritable with things, and irritable with myself about, you know, it's tiresome. It's kind of embarrassing having all this conflict of emotions coming in. And then sort of transcending them and finding, you know, the stuff is, the components are all still there. They're variously rearranged, but they're all there. Kind of like your friend, the Chinese guy, so you still have great anger, division, but I can see them coming. Yeah. Yeah.

[52:38]

Yeah. Well, we do have this great training ground at the BZC called the Practice Committee. It's for all the volunteers. It turns off in February, right? But it's only an hour, right? Or is it an hour and a half? Forty-five. Oh, it's only 45 minutes. It's sufficient. It's 45 minutes. It's sufficient. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. So the transcendent person would be able to keep all those dharmas in touch with all those dharmas and be perfectly equal and allow them to rise and fall. No headache and no fatigue. Even Ron gets tired. Ron is so patient. So is there room in that for expression of anger? Oh, it happens. Room in what?

[53:39]

What you were just saying about the rise and fall. Sure. They don't talk about that in sutras much, expression of anger. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, now, it's funny, I'm remembering Usilananda a lot tonight. Usilananda says that when anger rises, if you get angry and express it, you're creating more karma. On the other hand, if anger arises and you repress it, and you don't acknowledge it, you're in for a headache or something like that. So the solution is somehow to be skillful with the anger. To let it arise and to not act on it. To see it clearly but don't act on it. If you act on it, you're creating results later.

[54:42]

So can you see it and give it enough expression? That's the problem. Somehow we think that, oh, if I don't express the anger, I keep it. I'm stuck with it. If I don't express it, I think it's something in our psychological pop culture, maybe. I think it's left over. It's kind of what a teacher of mine used to call 60s damage. 60s damage? Yeah. That there was this notion that everything had to be expressed and everything had to be gotten out. that all afflictive emotions were somehow toxic and needed to be purged. They really did each other a lot of damage with that kind of stuff. And I think that this is where Joko's concept of being a bigger container is helpful. That what practice does is to help us learn to allow more stuff

[55:52]

to arise, and the big mind includes everything. So if you include everything, you've got to stretch. And it's like stretching. If you exercise, you know, it hurts until you get more wounded. It seems to me that there must be some situations where acting out on that anchor It's justified. Oh yes. Gestalt therapy. Oh, sure. Skillful means. The Bodhisattva always uses skillful means to deal with whatever is coming up. So sometimes it definitely is the right thing to use anger. You know, if you have children, you're a pretty weird and constricted parent if you're never angry. But one tries to be skillful So if you're very angry with somebody, it's probably not the right moment to confront them. Probably. But you let the anger be there and you figure out what you're going to do and then do it.

[57:02]

I'm just thinking, if I may, another moment. I don't remember getting as angry as I did last week. One was a Wednesday night. If I hadn't acted out on that anger and insisted that she leave that evening, she was on drugs. I couldn't handle it anymore. She would have continued staying. Yeah, well then that was skillful use of anger. Sometimes you do need to be angry and use it for sure. Otherwise you just get used by it. You've still been angry. Yeah, or she'd still be there. She would have used you. A bodhisattva does protect themselves. It's not a doormat. Well, I reached that point where I refused to be a doormat. And I insisted she leave that very evening. Yeah. Well, good. Then she's going to report me to the police.

[58:03]

Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel okay about that kind of anger? Yeah, no, I do. Yeah, yeah. A drug addict. I don't know, she was on her way, but the police had a warrant for her arrest. Traffic violations, many of them. Oh, I do feel bad about that. Well, another way of... you know we do, we are so uncomfortable about anger that you can be angry with somebody and sort of push it aside most of the way and then it comes back you know you're in an irritable mood and you're half angry and then you divert yourself and then you come back and so on but if you can in fact really allow that anger and the irritation to come forward and really feel it in your body and be with it in your body for some minutes it will shift that gets back to the all dharmas are equal bit that all dharmas really want to be acknowledged and

[59:27]

We don't like that. We don't do it. But when we do it, we are almost always, I think, always rewarded if we're not hurting somebody else. People must have had some experience. Yes? Well, there seems to be an important distinction between reacting and responding around anger. Certainly the culture teaches us to react, It seems to me the practice teaches us to learn to respond. When you're angry, it's not necessarily that that has to come out of your mouth, but your response to the situation is oftentimes more important, or more instructive. You mean the thought process coming in? Or do you mean feeling? I don't think I mean either.

[60:34]

I think I... It's something about like, to be with difficulty, like anger presents itself as difficulty in my body. I mean, tension. And to be with that, and then when it changes, somehow there's a... a recognition of what, you know, of how to respond. Instead of, if I react, I don't even recognize what's going on in my body. Do you know what I mean? It happens too quickly. Does that make sense? That would be kind of like getting hit by the car door, you know, and just, you know, starting to swear, you know, without any gap. I feel like what you're saying, I can relate to that. If I had reacted, I would have called my niece the names that she was calling me.

[61:42]

Yeah, she was calling me all kinds of obscene names. And instead, I responded by asking her to leave. You saw the situation as it was and you did what you needed to do. But when I asked her to leave, it was in anger. But I didn't retaliate by calling her the obscenity she's calling me. So patience is our response to suffering and whether we are allowing ourselves to be a victim of our suffering or whether we are taking the suffering that is coming our way as a teaching so suffering is after all the first noble truth we don't get anywhere without it and from one point of view all Buddhism is just a big teaching about suffering

[62:54]

not personalizing suffering. And there's even something about accepting the the difficulties and the harassments of life that has a kind of aesthetic edge. Basho, particularly in this book, The Narrow Road to the Deep North and Other Sketches, it's a series of prose and poetry accounts of incredibly aesthetic, rather romantic and solitary, I'm sure he was hikes around Japan. And there's always this little melancholic cast, like, the changeable sky of the northern districts prevented me from seeing the full moon of autumn.

[64:13]

Well, he invented haiku, didn't he? No, no, he was part of a haiku club I don't quite know when it was No, it was he was very much It was very much a tradition and the purpose of these hikes was to go to Inspiring places and to write haikus and to have little competitions Or And we wonder why we have children of ego. Right. Yeah, that's a very beautiful use of ego. All night long I listened to the autumn wind howling on the hill at the back of the temple. And then the most wonderful He talks about, he was, darkness overtook me while I was climbing a huge mountain. I put up at a gatekeeper's house, which I was very lucky to find in such a lonely place.

[65:16]

A storm came upon us and I was held up for three days. And he writes his haiku. Bitten by fleas and lice, I slept in a bed, a horse urinating all the time, close to my pillow. Do you remember that, um, Narada can, read that poem. But then he also read this other one that I did, it's just stuck in my head, that shows him with sort of such good humor. The one's about... I am sorry you are so small, but Please do practice your jumping, oh fleas of the house. Yeah, very good. Much of Akin Roshi's discussion about patience is about fleas. It reminds me of the old days at Tassajara. They figured out what to do about the flies.

[66:18]

We used to sit in the lot in the summer And there would be all these flies. And the guys would shave their heads. And sitting Tangario next to this guy, shaved head, and it was all black. All black. And this guy did not look so bad. It was just, I mean, it was just... Well, you know, they would put out garbage and stuff for the flies outside the Zindo, and before Zazen, for each period of Zazen, we'd get about six people with dish towels, and we'd flap them and herd the flies, it's called herding the flies out of the Zindo. And they still don't use chemicals, but they have more and better ways to make organic fly traps. Yes, I know they have those. I mean, it doesn't control them completely, but it's not... I mean, it's a hundred thousand times better than it was when I figured that out.

[67:30]

It was really a way to practice patience. Well, maybe some people could, especially people who haven't shared anything, can say something about their practice of patience or character development. It's very good to hear other people's practices. I've been really finding about the precepts. I've been thinking about, I took like four precepts last winter, And the first one was, no killing, right? And I think, oh, that's no problem, you know. Who am I going to kill? Recently, I have been feeling so homicidal. And that thought comes up in my head, well, I took a precept against killing, so.

[68:31]

And then it goes into patience. It's like, OK, well, this will go. But it's kind of... I was with some women who became nuns, and they were saying how this was such a great protection, because they had taken precepts, and how the precepts were such a protection. Was this in Nepal? Uh-huh. And it really is kind of... I was thinking of that when you were talking about it. It is a protection. So when I get really angry, I can go, OK, I took a precept. I can't really think anything else than that. If I'm really angry, there's no... It's really hard to think.

[69:35]

And so, how does the precept function as a protection? It's just, I can say to myself, well I took this precept and so I don't want to break this precept. It's like, other than that, it's like really simple. Yeah. You mean, so in the first flush of emotion, you also remember that you have the protection of the precept. Right. Right. Right. It's like you made a commitment. Yeah, yeah, I made a commitment. To not kill. Right. So if a fly bothers you, you just... Or a person bothers me. Or... I mean, I don't... I really feel that when I'm really angry. It's like it doesn't... it seems perfectly logical to try and kill somebody. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Watch that woman, she works with newborn babies. It's nice to think of it as a protection.

[70:46]

I hadn't, that part, I hadn't thought of that. And it's like with the sword across the heart. The protection. I mean, when you said that sort of, that's, to me, that was a very, I could really see that. kill someone. I do. I mean, for myself. It's voodoo. I think voodoo is real, you know. I mean, I really think it's real. So, for myself, I extend it to that. So you are saving interior beings as well as exterior beings.

[71:47]

Well, No, I mean, well, I sort of feel like if I... No, I mean, I feel like those thoughts of that I really want to kill this person can be very destructive. Not only to myself, but to that other person. No, well, certainly not going to do it any good. Yeah, I mean, you know, that whole idea of putting a curse on someone, you know, which kind of goes into the negative aspect of voodoo. I mean, that's very powerful. Agnes, what do you think about the question you asked? Does Buddhism recognize psychic phenomena?

[73:11]

Not really. Well, yeah it does. But it also recognizes the karma created by the slightly changing mind. Right, right, right. But I don't mean karma, I mean psychic... Siddhi. Those are siddhi powers. What do you just call it? S-I-D-D-H-I or sometimes S-I-D-D-I. Siddhi powers. But not to give it any significance, importance, When one meditates many, many years, many incarnations, you develop those powers. But it's not wise for us to try and develop them. I certainly find it useful if I'm irritated with someone and notice it and they're in the room to just say, may you be well, happy and peaceful several times.

[74:17]

And that really does change my state of mind. It's amazing how what a primitive, you know, a simple thing like that can do. I find it the same, my breath is your breath, your breath is my breath. I got that from, who's the fellow who does the mediation here? Oh, Larry, Sherry? Larry, he said, my life is your life, in a lecture once. And I just started using it. I first started using it in the dorm at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship where people were snoring in. I said, your breath is mine. Just really, instead of trying to push the snoring away, just sort of trying to increase it. How did it work? It was helpful. Did you get any sleep?

[75:18]

Yeah, eventually I did. So we all developed our own mantra. Mindless Lord have mercy. I thought about that. That was so helpful the other night. So you can just put yourself back in the pillow.

[76:54]

Partially. Partially. Enough to remind. You know, that's sort of what Darlene Cohen says about physical pain. You know, she's an arthritic and long time Zen student. Even, I mean, in extreme cases of physical pain, there is some place in your body where you don't hurt, whether it's your big toe or your earlobe or whatever. And so, put your attention to that place where it doesn't hurt. And that works? It works for me. Sometimes. Yeah, it does work. As to how perfect it works, well, that's, you know... So it's just getting the wider, again, stretching to get the wider... Well, as I look at it, I mean, is the use it or lose it axiom, theorem, with the negative things, have some of it, in other words, greed or anger,

[78:16]

Don't use it. Lose it. On the positive side. Compassion. Have some. Use it. Getting more of it. Do you think that works more for you than going into the pain like the Vipassana Salman is telling us? Yes. If we hurt, go into those legs that hurt so much and see it so clearly. This Bodhisattva's experience is opposite to that. It's opposite. I prefer the Darlene Cohen method to the Vipassana. Which method are you going to use?

[79:20]

I mean, when you were talking about thinking about Zazen, do you actually then, like, breathe through the Giri? No, I should though. But no, I don't. I can't use a big muster. That's the embodiment of the world, that it's much harder to breathe. But yeah, I could. I mean, that would be better, actually, to really just... Well, I don't know if it would be better. I mean, it sounds useful to think that way, but... When I'm nervous, I do that. I breathe. Josh gave me that advice when he was about 10, when I was supposed to... getting lost, I get lost easily and I get really frustrated and kind of get very upset with me. I get rattled in the car and he'd say, now mom, why don't you just pretend you're in the Zen though?

[80:21]

I'm like, really? That's good. Who asked you? Why don't you pretend you're in the Zen? Well, maybe we have done enough for tonight. And now Fran will consult her books. Energy, meditation and wisdom coming up. So, how are we going to prepare ourselves for energy? My energy and patience are really very connected. All the things we've been talking about really take a lot of effort. So, I think we'll be talking about effort.

[81:28]

Right effort, of course, is very hard. Tricky. Tricky business. So, if you want to think about something, you might think about The wonderful koan, Ordinary Mind is the Way. I'm sure you know that koan. Somebody asks, Joshua, I think it is, Joshua asks Nansen, what is the way? And he says, ordinary mind is the way. So should I try for it or not? And the teacher says, well, the more you try for it, the farther you get away from it. And he says, well, then what the hell am I supposed to do? How can I do anything? And then he says something really helpful, like, The way is beyond trying and not trying. But I think that's what we're always dealing with in Zazen and application.

[82:35]

Yeah, that's very related to patience. so we can watch our efforts and our energies.

[82:46]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ