So if you meditate in this way, naturally you practice through it and refrain from evil. Then, that same practice is the practice that you practice when you're feeling yourself and expressing yourself and feel the causes and conditions and the dependent co-arising of your anxiety around yourself. You do the same practice. And the anxiety doesn't take effect, actually. In other words, it doesn't trap you. can become free of it the same practice applied in all these situations of just being present with what's happening watching how it happens from the position of stillness and quietness but again the main point of this workshop is that that position of being yourself is surrounded by dynamic turbulent painful Temptation and anxiety and temptation and driving towards... All that's around there, it's a very dynamic situation.

[01:03]

And given our past karma, we misinterpret it as rather than helping us do our work, as perhaps distracting us from our work. Does this sound familiar? What's your name? Laurie, does that sound familiar? Did you hear somebody talking about that for the last couple of days? Is it sinking in? Karma comes in and instead of... detracts from... What did you just say? What did you say? Well, like anxiety. You start experiencing anxiety instead of having the anxiety be interpreted as something which is going to drive you away from being present.

[02:08]

And all the more, I mean, you feel all the more compelled to stay present. Not stay present in order to But in order to be clearer about what the anxiety is and how it arises, it arises from you being here and being you. In your case, it arises from you being Kathy. Your anxiety does not arise from me being a rep. So when you feel anxiety, you're expressing yourself when you feel anxiety. Then rather than vacate Kathy or make the anxiety into an object which you then could deal with in terms of courage and so on in terms of fear and then courage which temporarily will lay your anxiety i'm there keep being kathy vulnerable kathy vulnerable kathy because of being kathy

[03:09]

Stay there, be with that, and get clearer. And then instead of seeing the anxiety as something that you should do something about, make into fear, or be less yourself, or whatever, see it as saying, all the more now be yourself. Just like Shakyamuni Buddha did. He said, I'm going to sit still. So then Maharaj said, oh, you're going to sit still? The demons said, oh, yeah? Okay, well, take this and take that. And Buddha said, you know, he kind of said, all the more I'm not going to move now. I knew this would happen. Whenever anything holds still, everything else around it stands up and starts moving. If you hold still and be yourself, you're going to be tested by all this stuff, and that's the anxiety, and it's somewhat uncomfortable. And also, if there's any structural inefficiency in yourself, all this stuff will get ripped off. They get pared down. to the more and more essential you, and then the anxiety even builds up more to check out if there's, you know, are there any more subtle structural inconsistencies, and they'll start pulling on those, and pretty soon it'll just be this pure... The essential thing that you can't live without, and then the anxiety will come on that.

[04:26]

And if you can sit there and not meddle with that, it will turn. That's structural. Or like your glasses are probably maybe a structural... Take your glasses away. Or start tugging on your glasses. You feel anxiety about that. Pretty soon I get them off. And then you're a simpler guy. You're down to a more basic Martin without glasses. And I take your money or whatever. And I take your wife and your kids. I don't know. Yeah, I'd give you some wife and kids. Are there any unmarried women here? Good. Wow.

[05:28]

You're a lucky match. Well... I'm very, very, very straight. Even if you're not straight, for Martin's sake, the man needs to experience more anxiety. I mean, really. Well, that's my niche, right? That's the answer. As long as we're getting practical, I wonder if you would speak to, I hate to be a broken record on Marilee, but I'd like to go back to some of what you said this morning in regard to her situation at work, which all of us share in one way or another. You mean Marilee?

[06:30]

Marilee. Marilee. Are Silicon Valley boardies done? To some of the fears that are really reality-testing. Are really what? Reality-testing. Yes. For example, I mean, I'm physically afraid if I'm in certain parts of the film or in the dark. Yes. Now that to me is not about my... It's about my... my stage and state of liberation. But at some other level, it's a very significant reality for me. Now, I have a successful, high-powered job, but really, I think I want to be a Zen Buddhist monk. But I don't dare leave my family to do that, nor am I quite prepared to leave my family to sail around the world.

[07:31]

And each of us, I think, labors with a multitude of similar choices. And I want to give you a couple of examples and work us through them to help us know if we're making decisions that are really within our integrity or are just sort of ego trips. Ego in the... In the sense in which you used it last night, in the sense of personality trips. Is that too confusing, or did I block a stream? It's not too confusing to me, but I'd like to register these two different examples, okay? And then we can talk about how we can walk through them, okay? But actually, you kind of raised three. Two would be enough.

[08:33]

You obliquely raised Mary Lee's situation, which is slightly different from your situation of leaving your job to become a traveler around the world. It's a little different from her situation of maybe maintaining her integrity in her situation, not necessarily leaving her situation to do something else. Those are three examples. Right, and I'm talking about the anxiety and fear that we confront. in facing these types. Uh-huh. Okay. And then you sort of raise another general area, and that is decision-making. Okay. Which is, I don't know if we'll get to all of them. And then there's another thing which is outstanding, and that is the issue of, you know, what pathological or neurobiotic anxiety. And I don't know which one is sort of more in the mood of the evening. Decision-making. Decision-making. Decision-making, pure and simple, regardless of which example.

[09:35]

So I'm just going to tell you something radical about my understanding of decision-making. One thing is that, just as I mentioned to you that it is taught, Buddhist psychology is not like truth. It's more like what the Buddhist meditation has a good way to look at your psychological processes in terms of becoming liberated from them. Not so much like we say, this is the way it really is, but rather when they found it helpful to look at it this way, that their motivation has become free of suffering, and by looking at it this way they found it conducive to that. So they say, for example, that all states of consciousness were always... You may find this to be true, too. In other words, you may find it in your experience. But anyway, they find it helpful to say that all states of consciousness involve judgment. We're always... Whatever we're experiencing all day long, this face, this face, this face, this light, this color, this taste, this smell, this touch, whatever we experience as an object of awareness, we always judge it as positive, negative, or neutral.

[10:51]

And neutral sometimes is you can't tell which. We do that all day long. Some people are not aware of this because it's subtle, this kind of thing, but you can get into it. Anyway, these are things we do all day long. That's judgment. Another omnipresent mental function is what's called decision. We're always making decisions. We're making decisions about what to pay attention to and what not to pay attention to. They also make decisions about what to think, what to say, what to do with their body. They're making decisions all the time. People will ask a lot. They ask, how do you make decisions? I've got a decision to make. How do I make it? Again, the radical, my radical response to that is, before you make a decision, you do not make a decision. All the things you do before you make a decision are not decision-making. They're just thinking about the decision.

[11:53]

You haven't made the decision yet. You have not. As soon as you make the decision, that's when it happens. And nothing after it. It's over. And you don't make it until you make it. But that's one radical statement I have to make. And you do make decisions every moment. Some people are thinking about making decisions. Well, learn to discriminate between thinking about making decisions Realize that thinking about making decisions is not decision making. It is thinking about decisions. Now another radical statement I would say is you do not have to think about making decisions before they're made. They happen all the time. You're going to keep making them every moment and you do not have to think about them beforehand. You do not have to deliberate at all about what you decide to do. It's not necessary. It is a habit we have, deliberation.

[12:55]

The other thing is that a lot of times you make decisions, and then the next moment you make another decision, which is the opposite of the decision you just made. Also, you make decisions, and you don't change your decision, but only you made a decision you don't follow. Decision-making does not really have that much to do with anything, except it basically has to do with what you decide. But it's not what you do. Like you said, you decide, for example, let's decide to be nice tomorrow, shall we? Now, you may say, well, I'm not ready to decide it. But you could decide tonight to be nice tomorrow, at least to be nice between 9 and 10. or between 9 and 9.15, or between 9 and 9.05. You could decide that. And say, yeah, it's a reasonable decision. I made it. I'm going to do it. And then you go there and you don't. Decisions do not mean you do what you decide to do.

[14:03]

Doing what you decide to do is another function called resolve, or determination, or steadfastness, or concentration, or mindfulness. A whole bunch of other things come in there without which decisions where you know what half is doing without the other stuff. And yet we're very concerned with making decisions for a couple of reasons. I think one is because we think that making decisions will guide us in some direction. And in fact, that's right, it does. But the thing is, you're making decisions all the time anyway. Yes, it does. How? What really guides you? Is it your decision-making? Well, yes, but then you don't follow through on your decisions. So what is the decisions that are followed by all kinds of resolve and concentration and harmony among personality? Well, yeah, that's more like it. When everything gets lined up with a decision, then a decision starts to be something to do with your direction.

[15:09]

But how do you get everything lined up with your decision? Because it might not be a good decision to line up with everything. Decisions are coming down like this all the time. You don't have time to line... At a certain point, when it gets very clear to you where you want to go, you start to notice that the decisions you're making are not in accord with where you want to go. At that point, again, decision-making does not... starts to become not... to become... something you're careful about because it has consequences. But... It's kind of .

[16:19]

If you make a decision to live in accord with what you want to do, then basically you're living in accord with what you want to do. And if you make a decision to do anything else, you basically admit that you made a mistake, that this is a mistake. This is not what you want to do. Admit that this is a mistake. Do you spend a lot of time making decisions in your mind, and also making decisions about, you know, what to do. Well, actually, you spend all your time doing it, but you spend it very quickly, because you make decisions quickly, in the moment. Then you check out whether it records what you want to do with your life. If it doesn't, you don't follow through on it, or you do, but it Even before you fall through on it, you recognize that the decision is an error. If you recognize it's an error and act on it, then you make two errors and you admit them in your background.

[17:26]

If you don't recognize it and you act on it before you notice it's an error, then you just admit both of them at once in your background. Namely, you always bring yourself back to what you want to do. The decision-making, however, is not under control. It's not under control. It's not under control. How can it be? Because as you're approaching it, it hasn't been made. And when it's made, at the moment it's made, it's over. You cannot prepare to make a decision. Decisions cannot be made beforehand because they don't . And they also don't count afterwards either. They're just an illusion in the moment. They're just a twitch in your attention. That's all they are. They're just a preference in your spectrum of experience. That's it. And you can't prepare for it. You can't control it. And as a result, even people who are very clear about what they want to do... ...contradictory to that. However, if you can learn that decisions happen like this, then you just basically see you're constantly, almost constantly making mistaken decisions.

[18:32]

You're almost constantly deciding to do or thinking of doing things which are not in accordance with what you want to do with your life. You're spending your time distracting yourself by trying to make a good decision, which you can do, but which doesn't take any effort. and you cannot control. When you make a good decision, that's a decision that lines up with what you want to do with your life. You want to go this way, then here comes a decision, I want to go that way. Decision, I'm going to go that way. That happens like that. Before it happens, though, it doesn't count. I'm thinking about going that way, but I haven't really decided. This doesn't count, except in the sense that you've decided to think about it. But when it actually comes time and you decide, I'm going that way, you made the right decision according to your values. That's it. It's over. You couldn't prepare for it. Okay, get ready. Here we go. One, two, three, we're going to decide to go in the right direction. One, two, three, and then you decide to go that way. You can't control it. That's why deliberation finally should be dropped.

[19:34]

Because in fact, you don't deliberate. It doesn't count. ...washes away when you finally make the decision. As you can see, I'm thinking of doing this, thinking of doing that, [...] and finally you do something like that. Never even thought of. One of your considerations, and boom, you know. I'm not going to touch her. [...] I am going to touch her. I am going to touch [...] her. Once in a while, you say, I am going to touch her. I am going to touch her. And you do it. Once in a while, it happens that way. But it wasn't because you said all that stuff or thought all that stuff. The only reason why it was that way was because it was that way. You were not under control. So try to control yourself into making the right decisions.

[20:38]

It is not going to happen. It's not going to happen. I say that to you. That's my experience, myself, watching other people and reading books about people over the centuries. That's what I've come to. We are not under control. We are not controlled beings. However, if you can see You cannot decide this. If you can see what you want to do with your life, if you can see what you're here for, what you want to be here for, and you say, that's what I want, you don't get to decide that. It comes up and shows itself to you and you say, yes, that's not a decision. That just happens to be where you're at. And that's it. So there it is. Now what are you going to do? This is what I want to do it. So then everything lines up with that. Except you're constantly making decisions to do other things. Like I want to be kind to people. Say this nasty thing and that nasty thing and that nasty thing. Take this for yourself, push them away. This is not what I want. These are decisions. Wrong decisions. Wrong decision, wrong decision, wrong decision.

[21:40]

Wrong decision, wrong decision. That's part of walking the path I want to walk is that I notice a lot of times I don't. That's what it's like when you're walking a certain way. You notice most of the time you're not going that way. Drive a ship to Japan. See the time you're pointed to Japan. Maybe never until you get there. You know, going towards Hawaii, now correct over, now towards Alaska. Back to Hawaii. There's a second there when you cross between Hawaii and Alaska that you're pointing toward Japan. But most of the time you're correcting for your errors. Back and forth, back and forth. Once in a while you're on cart, but it's just on your way between one mistake and the other. But you never forget. You don't forget. Okay, where are we going again? Japan. Japan. Japan. That's where we're going. That's right. That's where... Mount Fuji and Zen temples.

[22:42]

Oh, it's going to be so great. I do not want to go to the Midway Island, actually. That's not where I want to go. I want to go to Japan. I don't forget that. I want happiness, peace, all things. That's what I want. And so I'm making all these decisions... And I cannot decide or control myself to make decisions. Otherwise, you would decide to be kind, and then you would just decide to be kind. And again, and again, and again. Just turn yourself in. Because wouldn't it be easy to control yourself into doing what you wanted to do, what you deeply, deeply believed in? Wouldn't that be easy to do? You just keep making decisions like that. And a lot of them are not that difficult. It's not like, well, should I buy it? You know, 36 one-cent stamps at 136 pence. Complicated stuff like that. It's like being nice. It's like being kind. It's like, how are you today? What can I do for you?

[23:42]

It's that kind of simple stuff that goes with what you want. It's not that complicated most of the time. Once in a while it is, but then the same thing applies. You cannot decide in the complicated situations. But you can just make the wrong decision in complicated decisions. can make the wrong decision and the simple ones. Do you follow me? Anyway, that's what I have to say. So we're out of control? It's not that we're out of control, it's just that we're not in control. The opposite of being, the opposite of being, of not controlling ourselves does not mean we're out of control. We are operating according to very clear, you know, we're getting a lot of support. You people, I mean, what I do here is not just what I plan to do. I'm doing, you people are not controlling me when you sort of are. But you people and everything else control me. I control myself is what I mean. But I'm not out of control.

[24:43]

Aren't I behaving pretty well? I'm relatively speaking to how I could be doing. Very well. Thank you. But it's you that are controlling, not me that is controlling. And I'm not controlling you either. But you're controlling me. All of you are controlling me, in a sense. I'm determined by all of you. You all give me my life, plus all that's beyond you gives me my life. That's the thing, and I'm anxious about that. Ironically, I'm anxious about all the things that give me my life and help me be well behaved. Gretchen? trouble with the decision-making theory sometimes overwhelmed that there are all of these things that I've watched since that some of them are untangled like he could maybe find that a balance between having his family at his job and wanting to sail around the world some of those broad desires the things that I might want

[25:57]

Gretchen? The decision-making, the theories, sometimes it's overwhelming, that there are all of these things that I want to do with my life, and it seems that some of them are unfathomable. Like, he could have maybe found a battle between having a job and wanting to sail around the world. I've had some of those broad desires of things that I might want, one thing that I also want. The opposite. Oh, well, I didn't make myself clear, I guess. I was saying, when you... I forgot to say that that is not a whole bunch of different things. How do you come to that clarity of decision? It's not a decision. It's a revelation. And it comes to you. By asking the question, what is most important? What is the ultimate thing in my life? You ask that question.

[27:03]

You cannot decide that. But you can decide to ask the question. And if you decide to ask the question, as I said, you won't necessarily ask the question. I'm going to decide to ask that question, people might say, and then they don't ask it. But in fact, asking the question is not deciding to ask the question. Asking the question is asking the question. And you ask that question, and I ask you that question now, what is your ultimate concern in this life? When you die, what will have been the most important thing that you accomplished in this lifetime? What did you come here for? That's the question. What did you come here for? And what did you leave here for? What is the most important thing in your life? Then all the, you know, Shipboard romances and, you know, Zen monk trips and all that stuff. Taking care of your family. Taking care of my family. All that stuff will fall into place under this one thing. There is one thing in your life. It may change. It may change.

[28:04]

In its form, it may change its expression, but there's always, in a type of pose to you, there is a most important thing in your life, and it may not be clear to you. When that becomes clear, then I usually find myself, when people tell me what it is, they may be a little bit, but it's usually pretty easy for me to see what goes with that and what doesn't. And it's usually not that difficult for them either. Although they often do things which don't go along with it, and I do too, it's pretty simple once you figure out what it is. And because of what it is to be world famous and to kill a lot of people, then certain things follow from that. And some people are like that, you know. There's a few. But I think everybody in this room basically has the same ultimate thing. In my experience, most people who come to Zen centers, most people who come to my classes, other places, have basically the same one thing. They want, they want supreme, which means they want to be supremely happy, supremely helpful, supremely kind, skillful, and at peace.

[29:11]

and loving love. And people are afraid and feel anxious to say that. They think they're being too greedy or whatever, it's too highfalutin. But so far, that seems to be what everybody wants. Now, not everybody has realized that they want that for other people before themselves. But it gets to that as you work on it for a while. But I really do not believe that somebody wants just a little bit of happiness. Because all human beings have a little bit of happiness, otherwise they wouldn't be here. If a baby doesn't have a little bit of happiness, he'll check out. But, you know, all you have had a little bit of happiness, otherwise you wouldn't be at Zen Center, not to mention you wouldn't be alive. I know some little babies that have a hard time. We have one living here. You saw her. The little girl was pushing on the cart. She was born. Very, had a very hard time.

[30:37]

But she was born a human. Born a human. Human beings came to her and loved her. Human beings walked up to her and said, I'll take her. I'll take that kid and I'll love it. Because she was a human. He said human beings would not take a dog that was born addicted to crack. They wouldn't do it. I don't think. They wouldn't even have been asked to do it. We don't have people walking around asking to take care of sick dogs in a pound. Being a human being, human beings care so much about human beings that they sometimes go and ask other human beings to take care of them when their mother can't. So this addict couldn't take care of the baby. So the relatives of the baby came and passed the people here. They took the baby, and they loved the baby. The baby's had a hard time ever since it was born. Has a hard time. has a lot of trouble, a lot of sickness. She's also HIV.

[31:38]

And she's spastic, you know. And she's mentally retarded. She's got all kinds of problems. But she is loved by quite a few people in a very deep and abiding way, which is extremely pleasurable to her, it looks like. She also likes people to give her airplane ridings. And she likes me to take my shirt off when I do it. She comes, she says, airplane, shirt off, big body. Huh? Yeah, Sabrina. She's not retarded. She's very intelligent. She's very intelligent, but she's retarded in the sense that she's almost three years old and she can't talk very well and she can't walk and things like that. She's way behind schedule and stuff like that. Lightful and lovable.

[32:42]

And so because she's so lovable, she gets a lot of love. Because she's a beautiful human being, people love her. And because of that love, she continues to live. And I'm saying you people would not, unless you're in extremely good health, which is also pretty pleasant. So basically, it's not that pleasant. Unless, the only reason why we keep calling it not that pleasant is if we love everybody else enough, which again is very pleasant. So even if everybody's mean to us and we love everyone, we will continue to go on. So basically, I don't know how I got on this topic, but today That's where it's about, is that we're getting something out of this. We're getting some happiness out of this, and most people do not want just a little bit of it. Most people want through-time, big-time happiness because there's a lot of trouble in the process for most of us. And some people are kind of like, I don't know what. They're being polite or humble or whatever and say, I'd like a little.

[33:45]

But I don't think that's true. I think everybody wants max or optimal happiness. And optimal happiness is, of course, that everybody would be happy because you know that if you're the only person in the block that's happy, they'll still feel anxious. You're the only person in that block. But if everybody in that block and everybody in the city and everybody in the town and everybody in the country and everybody in the world is happy, you know that you won't feel so anxious. because everybody will be in themselves, and everybody will be anxious, and everybody will care about happiness, and everybody will be... And the anxiety will drop away, and we'll all be liberated. That's what I think everybody wants, is they want everybody to be happy, so that they can just really go all out and be happy, and do whatever makes other people happy, because that makes us happy. That's what I think everybody wants. As far as I can tell, it takes some people a while to get there, but it goes along with that. Well, it's often quite clear. And sometimes it's not.

[34:48]

Well, in those cases, let's talk about it. But even in the cases where it's clear, we still don't follow through on it. Right? So then we confess. That's not... I'm sorry. That was an alignment with what I want to do with my life. That was a mistake. I'm sorry. And I'll try to align myself with what goes with my life in the future. And then the next minute, make another mistake. Make another decision to do something that doesn't go with what you think is... you want to do with your life. So there are a few complicated decisions to make in life, I suppose, and I'm willing to help people make those decisions. Like, you know, whether to have a baby or not sometimes. You know, sometimes women come to me, and of course they're coming to me because they're not coming to me because they want somebody to encourage them not to have a baby because they wouldn't need to come to me to have the baby.

[36:01]

But they come to me about getting encouragement to have the baby, usually. So I usually encourage them to have it. But then if they say, well, I'm willing to have it, but then the baby might have these problems, you know, and then it gets more complicated. And we try to find out more information. Well, what is the likelihood of the baby having these problems? And what would the baby's likelihood be? And could you give a baby who has these problems enough love to make it worthwhile for them? And so we get into it. That's complicated. But basically, the orientation is primarily toward what's best for this baby. Now, can this baby possibly have a good life? If not, well, And how come not? But again, I don't think I would encourage somebody to have a baby, say, you take care of the baby and you give the baby a good life. If I'm saying that, talking like that, then I should be on the team. I mean, I should be part of this life possible. I should be supporting the baby and making it work well, too, if I'm talking like that, right?

[37:04]

So that's the way I have to be. I have to be one, too, if I'm talking like that. if somebody's not sure that they can take care of the baby. So in fact, I'd say, well, if you don't think you can do it, well, give it to me. I'll take care of it. And you can have it back later. So far, nobody's done that. But then I don't have a lot of crackheads coming to me either. They might say, yeah, and I don't want it back later either. that I might have. But anyway, in this case, we just have one little baby like that at Green Gulch. And the mother wasn't the one who came and asked us anyway. So any problems with that? We need to talk about practical example.

[38:11]

OK. Now, see, I'm already a Zen monk. So I decided to be a Zen monk, and so I married a Zen monk. Whereas when you got married, your wife thought she was marrying a doctor, right? She didn't see the Zen monk hidden behind a stethoscope. So now the question is, I guess the question would be, Does being a Zen monk, the reason why you became a doctor, was that in line with your ultimate concern in life? Yeah. And now, would changing your lifestyle be in line with your ultimate concern in life? That's the question. Would it be? And certainly, it concerns your family. You want the best for them too, right? So you'd have to talk to them about it. Would they be on the team? Would they support it? Would they support you to make a change in your lifestyle?

[39:14]

Would they support the changes in their life that would go with that? That's the question. So that's when it gets complicated, is when other people are affected, and what do they think? So we talked to them about it. The decision is basically to go this path. Now, what goes with that? Certainly talking to your friends about what goes with it is part of what goes with it. It doesn't always mean that they're pleased with you, even in the end. But it does mean that you open your heart and listen to what they have to say. Sometimes you open your heart, listen to what they say, and they support you. Sometimes they don't. But it doesn't mean it's wrong that they don't support you. But it does mean that you really listen to them and you really go with them. You take their disagreement with you. and you feel like you're taking care of them. In my position, sometimes I'm training people in terms of studying Buddhism. And in that case, they talk to me about their decisions that they make.

[40:17]

And they sometimes say, well, I'm going to do this. I'm not even going to do this. I'm thinking of doing this. What do you think? And I sometimes say, no, I don't think so. I mean, no means I don't agree. But that doesn't mean they can't do it. But it means that they have to live with the fact that I didn't agree. No, this doesn't go with what I think you want to do. That's what that means. I don't see this as going with what you say. I see it as inconsistent with what you tell me you want your life to be. That's what no means for me. But still, they might not see it that way. And we may go back and forth, and they may say, yeah, there's still a way to do it. And I might change my mind. Or I might not. But it's much different for them to have said this to me and be living with my disagreement than to not even bring it up. They feel anxiety, you see. And that's inspirational.

[41:19]

Because they're really asserting themselves. And if I don't disagree with them sometimes, and I don't disagree just to cause it, but in fact if they don't elicit disagreement from me, they can't feel themselves as clearly as when I do disagree with them and they feel that anxiety and feel their position is not just like doing what I want. They have their own position. And it may come to that, you know, in certain areas of our lives, that not necessarily with our teacher, but with our family, we may have to disagree. for the sake of liberation, which we dedicate to their welfare. So that's when it gets difficult and complicated. But not necessarily in these situations, it's not necessarily that you make the wrong decision. But the decision that you make In these cases, the decision you make, although not wrong, is painful.

[42:30]

The right decision does not mean that it's comfortable. Most of the wrong decisions are very comfortable. When you make them, they're very comfortable. Oh, oh, veer off that way, veer off that way. Very easy, very natural, very comfortable. Some of these... Some of the decisions where you make the right decision, it's very painful. You stay on the beam, and it's not a mistake, and it's uncomfortable. And now that by yourself, you bring a whole bunch of other people in on it to accentuate your self-expression and to feel the anxiety of their varied agreements and disagreements. So everybody's in on it, even though not everybody has the same view or opinion. Because you feel the totality of the world converging on this decision. And it feels in alignment with what life is really like.

[43:34]

Namely, as long as there's a person here, it's painful no matter what you do. Prior to settling into that are these kinds of decisions where it's clearly irresponsible and not in line with what you do. So then you Just admit you made a mistake. That's all you have to do on that one. The right decisions, though, you don't admit you made a mistake because you didn't so far. But you feel the pain of the decision rather than the pain of the error. You feel the pain of being yourself. And we have to feel that pain in order to be liberated from ourself. But the hard thing for that stuff. So in these examples that you picked out, one example you picked, in your situation at work, to be present with that pain is really the key point. That's really the key point.

[44:36]

Like I told the story about one night, for various reasons, my daughter called up and wanted me to come and give her a ride someplace. She had done various irresponsible things to lead me to the position of her asking me for a ride and me saying, no, you get home on your own. She had put her parents through various, you know, running around the Bay Area during the day. And then finally, after we got home, she calls us and asks to come pick her up. So I said, you can walk home from... Oh, perfect. Walk home from Larkspur. [...] When I reviewed that situation, you know, I felt like I had to draw a line.

[45:51]

And she now, what do you call it? My daughter doesn't like tough love, but she likes a hard line. In other words, I draw lines. I say, no, I'm not going any farther. I draw lines. I say, you can't live here anymore without getting a job. You have one more week to get a job. She works with those limits. And then, you know, that's the thing so far. So hard line is, I say... If you don't get a job in a week, move out. Well, not even move out. If you don't get a job in a week, I want you to move out. But I want you to move out if you don't. If you do get a job, I don't necessarily want you to move out. But if you don't get a job after like six months now, of this thing. I want you to move out.

[46:53]

That's what I want. That's what your dad wants you to do. Live with it. That's what she calls hard lines. I've done a few others, like I did on telephone that night. I said, no, I do not want. I said, no, I didn't say, I didn't say, no, I won't. I said, I do not want to give you a ride. And actually, she knew when she got on the phone because she called her mother into the phone. She said, your father wants to talk to you. She said, Right. So as soon as they picked up the phone, she said, what do you want? She said, what do you want me to do? Either what do you want or what do you want me to do? That was her question. And I said, I want you to get home on your own. So she already was set up that way. In those two cases, those are two hard lines. And I haven't told you a couple of them yet, OK? Anyway, Taya doesn't like it, so it's not really relevant. I know, but it's not relevant because Tate doesn't like it. Somebody tell her. Just kidding.

[47:54]

Somebody tell her where tough love is. You know, unacceptable behavior where the parent has to draw the line and say, I'm sorry, your turn is pretty much the same as tough love. And they say, you no longer can be in the house. And it's causing havoc. Parents usually... That's what I do. But Tay has got another word for tough love. You have to ask Tay what she means by tough love. There's another variety that she doesn't like. And so I'll tell you about that, okay? But in these two examples, the one where I said you have to get a job in a week or move out, or I want you to move out. The other case, I'm not going to pick you up. The difference between those two cases was, in the first one, when she said, what do you want? I couldn't stand the anxiety.

[48:55]

I couldn't be there. I said, I was looking the other way. I couldn't look into the light of that person. I couldn't look into the light of the telephone, of that voice, of that voice of that person that I that I love so much, I couldn't face that and stay there and answer in that place. I couldn't. I checked out of that place. And that's the problem. The second case, I stayed in there. And I stayed present. And I said, if you don't get a job in a week, I want you to move out. That was the difference. The first one worked out. The second one worked spectacularly. But the first one worked out too. But the difference was I blinked. I hesitated. I chickened out in the first one. Just for a second, but that's long enough. Would you say that the first one, by having her get home on her own, would be a hard line?

[50:08]

And the second one that you had, where you told her, there's no other options, this or that, would be tough love? No, I thought they were both hard lines. I thought they were the same. I thought they were both tough love, from my interpretation of what it is. How did she get home? She called back in a few minutes and she said, is it okay if I stay at Susan's house? So her friend had given her a ride to the place where she was supposed to meet us. Didn't show up. We waited for 45 minutes. We waited for 45 minutes after she'd done various other things during the day of not showing up for various other things. And then finally we made that agreement that she'd be there, and then she was 45 minutes late, so we left. What would happen when we got home? We'd get a telephone call from her an hour or so later, and then she'd be asking us for a ride home. She had the gall to do that, right?

[51:10]

But I told her mother what she called it. I said, I say what you called it, I don't want to get up now. I also don't want to wait out there until she comes for like two hours. So I said, I don't want to go pick her up. She said, well, when she called, you talk to her. You tell her that. So I did. At that time, she was 17. How old was she since the job? She got the job when she was almost 19. I do all lines with her all the time. Like, the most recent one was, I'll give you that money for your, you know, your travel expenses to school when you make it a problem that your boyfriend crashed. So she got, she set up the appointment April 1st. Huh?

[52:21]

April 1st, the car's going to be fixed. Got the appointment. The next morning, very efficiently, she had a little piece of paper out there explaining how much money she needed. She's very quick with that. I organized, Paul added up, you know, please let me check for this amount. So I did. The day after she made the appointment, she was getting the money. So anyway, that was another line. She responded very well to them. But still, to be present there at the time of drawing, it's very hard. Because this person there means a lot to you and they're bearing down on you very heavy, right? It's kind of like, can you be there? Can you be present in how you feel when this person which represents so much, it's almost the whole universe, is like bearing down on you with their whole energy to get you to do what they want. And how are you going to be yourself there? That's anxiety. It's not yet fear. I'll just tell you one more thing about this is that My wife told me a horror story.

[53:22]

So then you get into the fear, right? But the anxiety is like, nothing's happening, you know, I'm just talking to a person on the telephone, your daughter's sitting in front of you, and you feel, before you even say, before my mouth opens and I talk about, you know, move out, and you know, you're going to be like in the street, you know, that's fear. But before that, there's just this thing, there's this other person who is like, you know, 500 people in your face. And can you be there? And if you are, you feel this. That's the anxiety. See the difference? Then when you say, then the words come out of my mouth. I'm there, you know, and I'm facing this. This is me. I'm there. Somebody's here, kid. It's your dad, and he's saying, I want you to move out if you don't get a job in a week. You're there. You're saying that. You're facing that, okay? That's anxiety. Then she says, well, where? You know, what's going to happen to me, your baby, you know? Where am I going to live?

[54:25]

Will you suggest where I'm going to live? Then you get interfered. You start talking about that. But I said, that's the point, is that I'm not going to figure this out for you. That's the point. It's not like, move out and then I'm going to go get your apartment now. Aren't you afraid that in the future, since there you had a confrontation? What? You had a confrontation there. Yes. And you won. I won? No, I didn't win. Well, no, as far as he's concerned. You know, as far as he's concerned, you won. No, no, no. Well, aren't you afraid that it was led from that confrontation? You will have that karmic future? I don't know. I will have that hunger if what I did was what I think would be unhelpful to her. If I did anything unhelpful to her, then I believe I will get trouble for that. In the first example, the thing I did wrong that was not good, which I got in some trouble for, at least for a few seconds there, the horror of what might happen to her, was immediate retribution for me not having the courage to face

[55:38]

I felt talking to her. That was my error. The second time, I was almost perfect. And then the next morning, we got up in the morning. She almost never gets up in the morning. At 9 o'clock, I said, wait. She said, yes. She got out of bed. I said, you want to go look for a job? She said, yes. I said, I'm going to San Francisco. You want me to give you a ride so you can look for a job? She said, yes. She almost never talks like that. And she wasn't, like, beaten down. She was, like, cheerful. She's almost never cheerful in the morning. And then she even asked me what she was wearing. She said, do you like this sweater? She almost never asked me to consult her, so. Then we went in, and I was swimming, and she took my car to go, I didn't know what she was going to do, you know, show her boyfriend around, give her the other sweater. She didn't say she was going to look for a job.

[56:43]

When I got out of the water, she was sitting in the waiting room where I go swimming, their leg popping up and down saying, well, I got a job. So then we drove off, and she said, do you think that I got this job because of what you said last night? And I said, I don't know. the politically correct answer so the second one I felt pretty good I was almost completely anxiety of this person the first one I turned away for a little bit and in that turning away she might have got hurt because my wisdom was not present and I might have said I might have said no without being present and she might have got hurt because of that I did want to draw a line. It might have been the wrong line because it wasn't there.

[57:44]

The line you draw like this might be the wrong one. It could be a big problem. The second time I drew it, I almost, I drew it together, you know, and she went. So the second one worked really well. And so I probably, and I did get in, I got in big trouble for that for the time between the two of our phone calls. So, shall we adjourn? Last night, some people did your homework. I hope you can sleep through the night. And I hope you can also sleep. Let's meet tomorrow at 9 o'clock. Do you know where the yurt is? The yurt? The yurt is

[58:37]

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