Good evening once again. So I'd like to talk with you a bit about enjoyment. I am planning to write another book, it's going to be The Secrets of Enlightened Eating. You know it will be, do you want to eat what you want when you want to eat it? Why not? And of course the secret here, you know since this is The Secrets of Enlightened Eating is knowing for sure, truly, deeply what you really want, when you really want it. Turns out it's not so simple. I did want to say a bit more about the, since I kind of left you with that story about this

[01:01]

Zen teacher who asked his disciple, what are you doing? And the disciple said, I'm not doing anything. Teacher said, well if you're not doing anything, you're just wasting your time. The disciple said, if I was doing something, that would be a waste of time. And the teacher said, so tell me about this not doing anything. And the disciple said, even a thousand sages could not describe it. This is a little different than the subject of enjoyment, so I thought I'd just mention this and then we'll go on to enjoyment. But you know, usually our idea of how to do our life is, have an idea, conceive of something, and then see if you can do what you just conceived. And then you go like, you could conceive before you're going to meditate that I will calm my mind and body. I will have some bliss now, or I will relax and let go of my stress. I will stop thinking.

[02:03]

So you have this idea and then you go and try to make it happen and do what you thought. Why would you want to impose that on reality or on you? Why would you want to coerce yourself into doing something you just happened to think for a moment or two? And then you try to make your body and mind conform to your thought, because you happen to have thought it. Or you heard, oh that's the thing to do if you're going to be spiritual. There was another Zen teacher who said, realizing the mystery is nothing but breaking through to grab an ordinary life. Isn't that good? Nothing but breaking through to grab an ordinary life. So why would you want to limit yourself to doing something or trying to do something that you just happened to think? Why not do the inconceivable? Which is what we do all the time, except for when we get confused by dreaming up something

[03:04]

to do and then trying to limit ourselves to doing what we just dreamed up. This is like thinking that you need a recipe for your life. You should have a recipe, otherwise it will turn out the way it should. If you have a recipe, if you have a good recipe, then it will come out and you follow the recipe and you do what you're told, it will come out right. How well has it worked? I don't know. I never found it worked very well. So instead of that, you could just pick up and look at all the ingredients that you have. You could open the refrigerator and go to the store. You could look at things, smell things, taste things, touch things, and dream up what to do with them. And then if that wasn't working, you could dream up something else to do, and you could let things inspire you. So this is to believe finally, to trust that you could do the inconceivable, have an ordinary

[04:09]

human life, rather than trying to be a Buddha, or some kind of perfect being who always got it right, and was kind, compassionate. And then you try to get yourself to do that. Get a grip. Anyway, so this is somewhat related to enjoyment. So I want to remind you, first of all, that enjoyment in the Buddhist context is one of the five factors of absorption. So if you want to be concentrated or absorbed, you will need enjoyment. You can't do without it. Most of us try to concentrate or be absorbed by efforting. It's very hard to be concentrated and absorbed by efforting. So it's a lot easier if you're enjoying the object of your awareness, or if you're enjoying the activity, then you get absorbed in it. And the effort involved is minimal. So mostly we try to muscle through meditation the way we try to muscle through the rest

[05:14]

of our life. Oh well. And also enjoyment is one of the seven wings of enlightenment. You can't do without it. And what this enjoyment is, is to let your heart connect with the object of awareness. And that you let the sensation or the experience come home to your heart, and you let your heart resonate. So this is different than our usual idea of, I better not let myself be touched because it could hurt. So rather than having any enjoyment, because as soon as there's the possibility of enjoyment, which is, in other words, connection, it's to connect with something. Now is connection going to be something that tells you what to do?

[06:16]

If you're connected, do you get told what to do? Or do you tell others what to do when you're connected? Is connection a support, or is to be connected, do you experience it as a threat? Okay. So connection here, we're talking about the kind of connection where it's a support, there's a connection, and you feel support, and you resonate. And you're one with. So to be one with, you connect at the level of your heart, with your heart, to the object, and you let your heart resonate. Or you could say, you let yourself be moved, you let yourself be touched. Okay. So this is meditation. Can you let yourself be touched by you, your experience, your breath, your sensations, your thoughts, and be moved and touched, to touch and be touched. This is also known as intimacy, or for the Zen teacher, realizing the mystery.

[07:24]

And Zen, sometimes enlightenment, intimacy, realizing the mystery, these are not different things, this is about connecting. To touch and be touched, to meet and be met, to see and be seen, to know and be known. Okay. So this is also about presence. In other words, to have any enjoyment in your life, you're going to have to show up, and be present, right? How can you enjoy something when you're not letting anything touch you? How can you be nourished if you don't actually take something in? And trust yourself to sort out what is useful, you know, the nutritive essence, whether it's food, or your experience, or your breath, or somebody you meet, and to trust that your body, your being, can sort out the nutritive essence, and then you'll let go of the rest. This is, whether you're digesting food, or you're digesting experience.

[08:26]

So this quality of enjoyment is the quality of connection, touching, being touched, and it's presence, you know, that you're going to show up, showing up, you don't run, you don't hide. If you hide, how are you going to connect? And you don't run. So, as I was, I don't remember now, but, you know, so this enjoyment, as I was saying at the beginning, you know, like eating what you want when you want, this is not easy, right? Only in a certain way it's really easy. But, in other words, it's necessary,

[09:32]

if you really want to have enjoyment in your life, and that's your wish, or your intention, you know, then this requires, this will require for most of us, commitment. You know, commitment to meeting, being met, seeing, being seen, touching, being touched. You know, that's a commitment to do that. And you say, yes, that's what I want. And I want it with my heart. That's what my heart wants. That's what my being wants and longs for. So, I'm going to go for it. And, if there's pain involved, I will study that, and I'll, you know, I'm going to see what to do about that, how to absorb that, how to be with that. If there's anger involved, I'm going to study that. I'm going to study how to connect with, you know, anger, mine or somebody else's. You know, how to meet things in this kind of space. Meet and be met. See and be seen.

[10:34]

By the way, that same Zen teacher who said, even a thousand sages couldn't say, if I was doing something, that would be a waste of time. Later, when he became a teacher, he was asked about, how do you practice then? How do you understand things? And he said, awkward in a hundred ways, clumsy in a thousand still, I go on. And this also then is related to this enjoyment. You may not feel like you're very good at connecting, being met, meeting. You may feel like you hide a lot, or you're scared, or you're frightened, or you get angry. You feel threatened easily as soon as there's connection. You may feel, you may notice various things. So, what is your aim? So, you come back to your aim, and you keep aiming for connection, for enjoyment. True enjoyment, just resonating with your experience. That your heart resonates with your experience.

[11:39]

And if you aim for that, awkward in a hundred ways, clumsy in a thousand, once in a while you'll hit the target. But if you don't aim for it, then you just sort of sit there, and like, why don't people give me more enjoyment, and they should be taking care of me, and they should be doing this for me, and what's wrong with them anyway, and they're always this, and they're always that, and darn it anyway. And I know, I did it for years. I was waiting for all of you to crack me open. Like Rilke says, you're inside the rock waiting for somebody to crack it open, why not break through, to grab an ordinary life. All right. So, enjoyment. Now, this enjoyment, obviously, you're going to have to distinguish, and this is scary. You can already understand how it's scary

[12:41]

because we're talking about connection and true meeting. Oh, and I did want to tell you a little aside here about this enjoyment and this being present. I don't know if you heard it, but a while back Terry Gross was interviewing this fellow who was talking mostly about the genetics of marijuana plants, and how, of course, since the big crackdown whenever it was, Camp, and Reagan, or Bush, or somebody had the huge crackdown, and since then, you know, the people who grow marijuana have been, they've been working, and busy, and so now, before the crackdown, THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, was 3% of the plant, now it's 20%. You know, and the plants grow in 6 weeks instead of 3 or 4 months, and they mature in artificial light instead of outdoors, and they need way less water, and the buds are 100 times more prolific, or whatever, you know, so much for the crackdown, right? Well,

[13:42]

but the thing that was really interesting to me, finally, was that they've actually, apparently, scientists have now identified the natural analog for THC, what the body naturally produces. You know, that we're naturally producing something like THC. It's not serotonin, it's not endorphins, this is not by exercising, you know, whatever, this is that your body produces this when you practice being present. So, it would be no wonder if you sat here focused on being present and enjoying that after a while you might get stoned. So, this is not far-fetched, this is now scientific, you know, that you could sit here and bliss out, and, you know, and worry less, and, you know, you wouldn't be worried so much about various things,

[14:46]

and, you know, etc. Anyway, it's a thought. By the way, you know, this is not just a Buddhist concept. William Blake said, All of creation will appear infinite and holy, whereas now it appears finite and so corrupt. This will come about by an improvement of sensual enjoyment. But first, we will have to lay to rest the idea that people have bodies separate from their consciousness. When the doors of perception are cleansed, everything will appear as it is. Does that sound like a Buddhist concept? You know, as it is, comma, infinite!

[15:47]

So, there is a quality about this connecting and resonating whatever it is, you know, the sense of infinite is there. So, this is in taste, touch, sensing, pain, pleasure, there is the possibility of enjoyment. And the Zen teacher Dogen says, Even your thinking was nothing but enlightenment, but you thought and you said, This thinking can't be enlightenment. You were looking somewhere else for enlightenment, so you thought and you said, This thinking can't be enlightenment. So, who said that? Dogen didn't say that. You just made it up, because you said that. So, you decided, Oh, this thinking can't be infinite. But actually, your thinking, the sense of what thinking is can go out infinitely. Now, I'd like to take a few minutes

[16:54]

to differentiate enjoyment and some other reasons why we, I've already suggested a few, why we shy away from enjoyment, and that is that enjoyment seems really close to greed, lust, excitement, and there are some other things that might be a problem. Although, boy, are they delicious sometimes, right? It seems like they're delicious, you know, for a few moments before the water gets too hot and you turn into a red lobster. I'm sorry, I thought of something else there, now it's lost. Oh, darn it, I didn't get to tell you that one. But excitement, to me, is where you, instead of actually relating with the object, you use the object and take in the object

[17:56]

in order to go into this sort of excitement. Where you're not actually connected with the object, at a heart level, you're consuming it, you're taking it in, you're using it to keep the excitement going. So if you eat fast enough, for instance, I was talking with a friend of mine the other day, and he said, one of the problems we have with eating, for instance, is we eat too fast. And part of the eating so fast is you could go right into excitement, and then you wouldn't have to have all the other stuff. You could just have the excitement, and that would cover everything else. The possibility of life, birth, that there's death and life and pain and pleasure and joy and sorrow, and you could just go, the heck with it, I'm going for zzzzzz. And you could, in that sense, if you eat fast enough and enough,

[18:59]

you could eat yourself right into oblivion and not have to experience or be present for anything. Thank you very much for this possibility in my life. So enjoyment is not about eating fast and quickly and excitedly until you reach oblivion. This is not enjoyment. This is excitement and aiming for oblivion where you don't have to experience or connect with anything. So if that's what you're interested in, by all means, up to a point. I wouldn't want to be one of the objects of your usage for going to that oblivion state, but if it's just chocolate or ice cream that you do until oblivion, that's your aim in life. So the question is, what's your intention or aim? But anyway, excitement. And then I also differentiate enjoyment from greed or lust, which is, I'm not really having any satisfaction from this object,

[20:00]

and because I'm not having any satisfaction, it seems like there must be some satisfaction right there if I could just get more of it. In order to get more of it, I need to get rid of what I have. So you keep trying to get more of what you're not really experiencing. That's greed. And that seems fun sometimes, but James Perez described it one time as his son having a strawberry in his mouth, a strawberry in each hand, and crying for more strawberries because he'd taken away the bowl. And James said, you can see the strawberry in his mouth, but rather than tasting that strawberry and the one in this hand, no, it's like more. So it's not experiencing what you have but wanting more of it.

[21:01]

And that's somehow inherently not very satisfying, but again, it seems like it's intense enough that it seems like you could, if you just went for it strongly enough, you could get it. And I heard about the instinctual food movement, by the way, but they say that you can't do instinctual eating with manufactured products. I notice this now and again, but for instance, potato chips or Oreo cookies. I had some Oreo cookies the other day. I was at a friend's, and there were these Oreo cookies, so I ate one, and it's just not satisfying. It's not satisfying, but it seems like it ought to be, so you eat another one. And you can just keep eating these things that aren't really enjoyable and aren't really satisfying, because, well, where is it? It should be there. So it throws off your,

[22:06]

right away it throws off your capacity for enjoyment. The enjoyment isn't there, but it seems like it should be. And then you never, and then it's not like you feel satisfied. And eventually, it's sort of like you feel kind of nauseous and like you don't really feel like experiencing anything, and then, you know, now you're home. Anyway, so this is about, you know, so again, you know, and then to do it, so to have enjoyment, you know, this is, there's a commitment here, and there's like, there's distinguishing enjoyment from other emotional aspects, you know, other emotions, that to actually connect, there's this actually connecting, actually meeting, actually experiencing, actually tasting, touching, knowing, being known, okay? So that's enjoyment. I don't think that happens. With excitement, I think, we use the object.

[23:09]

With greed, we try to get rid of the object we have so that we can get more of it without experiencing it. It's very exciting, but it's not very enjoyable, finally. Boy, is it that intense, though. So we get confusions here about what actually is what, you know? So again, when you aim for enjoyment, aim for enjoyment, and aim again if you miss it. Now, the other thing here is, I recently wrote a column, it'll be out in a few months, for the Yoga Journal. They have a column called Eating Wisely. So my column is, if you want to eat wisely, the unacknowledged key to eating wisely is enjoyment. Now, if you think about this, people usually think that eating wisely would be you make wise choices about your food and you follow those wise choices and those are the things you eat. Now, how wise could that be?

[24:10]

You give up your capacity to taste or sense or know for yourself, to discover, to experience, to be interested in this or that, your capacity to play, to observe, to notice, and to discover and realize. You give up all of that and you say, huh, I have no capacity for any of this, I just better do what I'm told. Somebody else somewhere, they figured out the wise choices to make. It's a vegan diet, obviously. You better not be having any dairy or eggs and this is the best diet or whatever it is. It's no fat, no dairy or it's no fat, no meat. As Julia Child says, when she's whipping up the mashed potatoes and she's putting in the butter and she says, oh, I hear that some of you are not eating butter anymore. Well, you can always substitute some whipped cream. Oh, my God! Now, I find several things about,

[25:32]

so, you know, and then, so when we get the idea that somebody else has these wise choices and they've figured out what the wise things are and then we try to follow that. You know, how wise is that? Oh, well, it's a good way to keep yourself a child, you know, doing what you're told by the expert adults out there who have figured these things out. Just do what you're told while pretending that you're making wise choices and you're so grown up. When really you're just spending your time doing what you're told or rebelling against it and then saying, oh, I'm so bad. I still am eating chocolate cake and it's so bad because I'm not doing the wise choices that I was told, you know, to follow. So, I don't see where this is wise. This is just doing what you're told. This is just allowing

[26:32]

somebody's idea out there somewhere and then you take that idea and now, I'm going to coerce myself into following this wise choices and doing this wise thing. How wise is that? To take some idea, some place, and try to coerce yourself into following it. To me, that's not very wise. You've sacrificed your capacity to enjoy, your capacity to discover, your capacity to have an interest, to, you know, to discover things, to realize things, to experience things, to know for yourself, to expand, you know, to have an improvement of your sensual enjoyment. Find the all of creation infinite and holy. You've sacrificed that so you can do the right thing. And, you know, and then who's going to thank you for it anyway? And then you just make yourself small. You know, oh, I can't do it. Oh, I should do it. You make yourself small and like a child. And then even if you can do it, do you feel good? Even if you can do it, you're like, oh, I feel great. I just, I just don't have any interest in anything or, you know, like,

[27:33]

or, you know, then you just come up with something else to coerce yourself with. You know, if you, if that one, if you got yourself to coerce to that, you can just, you can regulate your whole life, you know, and do the right things, you know, make the right choices, the wise choices. You can do all these things. So you don't end up feeling like, you know, large, expansive, you know, buoyant, happy. You feel like you've got to do the next thing. I have a friend who, you know, is a personal trainer. So she, women come to her and say, could I, I need a program for some muscle tone. And she says, and what have you been eating? Oh, I'm on the McDougall diet. You know, I have no, no fat, no meat, no avocado. And, oh, and you don't think that has anything to do with it. Oh, no, no, I feel great. And then she'll say, yes, and you have no muscle tone. Well, get some meat on your bones and then let's talk about muscle tone. You know, like, get some mass, some stuff,

[28:39]

you know, and then we'll work with it. But we're all into this, you know, this is America. This is America. This is an anti-pleasure, you know, coercive domination culture where we're going to tell you what to do. And this is science. And by golly, you know, if you study for yourself what is enjoyable, what is not enjoyable, what is pleasure, what is not pleasure, you know, what is interesting, what is not interesting, what is, you know, what you're discovering, what is, you know, what you're not noticing, when you do all of this, you know, that's, you know, that's science. What do you think scientists are supposed to be doing? They're supposed to be observing. What's what? But, you know, we don't call that science, but all of that science that you could be doing is otherwise known as enjoyment. But it's not what scientists call science because it's not repeatable. And we don't allow enjoyment or unconsciousness, you know, in our vocabulary. And besides that,

[29:42]

you know, whatever you figure out, it's just anecdotal. And it's not going to help us sell things to other people that have been disempowered and want to make wise choices and, you know, need us to fix them when something goes wrong and now we're going to sell them something that's going to fix them because this is scientific. You need to buy it. And all these, you know, with drugs that have all these side effects, they're not side effects, you know. They're other effects. So you could actually, like, own your life. You could actually have your life. You could actually sense, smell, taste, touch, see, you know, delight, enjoy, pleasure. You could know and find out for yourself what's what. Rather than thinking

[30:42]

all these choices are made somewhere else by somebody else that I need to follow because what do I know about how to eat or how to live or how to be or how to think or how to feel? What do I know about any of that? You know, and is there some way to get it right? You know, whose recipe do I follow in order to get it right? Be the kind of person I should be. So this is about coming back home, you know, and that you could, to your heart. It's your own heart, you know, and that you could learn to live from your heart and with your heart,

[31:43]

knowing your heart, trusting your capacity to find or aim for, you know, enjoyment, enjoying meeting, connecting, and how to have real connection in your life. And connection is where there's sustenance, there's source, there's the infinite, there's nourishment, you know, there's intimacy. It's where everything is. When we're not, you know, maintaining our disconnected, disembodied, you know, state of a mind that's somewhere at the, you know, consciousness that's somewhere around the, over the top of the neck, doesn't really have a body, and then likes to decide, you need to not eat any fat. And then you try to tell that, but why, why wouldn't you let your body figure out something? You could liberate your body

[32:45]

to enjoy what it, you know, Mary Oliver says that, you know, let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. This is not just Buddhist. You know, Ah. So, in fact, then, you know, to have wisdom, to have any wisdom, or wisdom in the Buddhist sense is the capacity to discriminate this from that, what's enjoyable, what's not enjoyable, what's pleasurable, what's not pleasurable, what's kindness, what's not kindness. You know, what do I want, what do I not want? And how, and to actually be able to notice, and, and what your body, what your being truly longs for, what it, you know, doesn't long for. Could you study that and know that?

[33:45]

So, wisdom is this capacity to discriminate, and wisdom is based on, it's actually a very scientific sort of idea, wisdom must be based on, that capacity to discriminate must be based on being open-minded, receptive, studying, investigating, observing, noticing, and then, with that open-mindedness and experiencing things, you could know and decide and be able to discriminate for yourself. Our usual idea of wisdom, which eating wisely implies that there's a plan somewhere, these are the wise choices that you could make. More fiber, less fat. If you stick to something like that, that is the antithesis of wisdom, because wisdom

[34:53]

does not stick to something, not even the truth, because if you stuck to it, now you've limited your capacity to investigate the open-minded and find out what's what, because you're busy sticking to something that you think is the thing to do. It's the wise choice to make, so I'm going to stick to it. I don't care what other people are doing. I'm not open to it. I already know. I've got it right. So when we're talking about enjoyment here, we're not talking about you would never be open to what somebody else suggests. You could try out any number of plans and you could see for yourself. You could try eating five times a day for a week. You can try different things, and you're studying, does it work, does it not work? And actually, there was a wonderful letter in the Sun Magazine last October. A woman said, here there is in America, this is whatever it is, $30 billion a year industry

[35:57]

to help people lose weight or to these various programs and products and what have you, right? So how many studies have been done about people who have lost weight and kept it off? Nobody does the studies because when was the last time it worked? So this woman and her associate decided they would study people who had lost weight and kept it off for five years or more, 25 pounds or more and kept it off for five years or more. What did they do? How did they do it? So she found out that they had one thing in common. Isn't this great? They had one thing in common, they each figured out for themselves how to do it. She wrote a book about it, about how all these people figured it out for themselves. She can't get a publisher. She'd been turned down by 13 New York publishers who said, write a book about dieting, nobody's

[37:04]

going to buy a book that says you need to figure this out for yourself because people want to be told what to do, the right thing to do, the best thing to do, the only thing to do, the thing that's going to work, the thing that's going to make all your difference and you just need to follow my plan and do what I say and you'll be fine. Do you think that if you try to do that, you're not going to feel like, after a while, like a little resentful? Damn it, I've just been doing everything I can to please these people and to do what I'm told and what do they care about me and are they interested in me and you get resentful, you get angry, you're sad and you're also feeling resentful because somebody took away all your choice, all your capacity to choose, somebody took that away from you. Who did that? You gave it up, you gave it over to the plan, you said, I have no capacity to choose, I'm

[38:07]

not going to choose and of course later you feel resentful. I have no choice. And then something in you that longs for pleasure goes, ha, I have a chance, she's a little tired, he's a little upset, he's distracted, I'm going for it, whoom. This is the way our life works. So we keep trying to do these plans, you see, this is where it's related to, if you aren't doing anything, you're wasting your time, no, if I was doing something, if I had some plan in mind that I was regulating with myself, that would be a waste of time, that would be how to waste time because I would have a plan, I would tell myself, I need to this, I shouldn't that, I have to this, I can't that and then after a while something in me sneaks out for the goodies or it sneaks out to be angry and then it says, I'm so mad at

[39:08]

you when actually I'm mad at myself for having given up my choice, you know, and disempowered myself, that could really make you mad, it makes me mad when I disempower myself and then I like to, you know, then you turn it on others. But the anger is finally like, I disempowered myself, I said I have no choice. And it's the same thing, you know, with feelings, you know, when you say, your depression makes me so angry, oh you had no choice about what to feel, no, your depression makes me angry, I have no, you know, I'm not responsible for that at all, it's all up to you, your behavior determines my feelings, you know, your feelings determine my feelings, so you need to shape up your feelings, you need to get them together there so that I feel better. Now, if I disempowered myself that way and I say, you make me this, you make me that, you know, I'm a complete victim of the universe, you think I'm going to be happy?

[40:12]

I'm angry that I'm so disempowered and I have no choice and I'm completely a victim of everything and I can't say anything and I can't do anything and I have no impact and I have no choice and I have no capacity and, you know, nothing, I'm just, you know, at the mercy of life. So, you know, Buddhism is very radical, but, you know, on the other hand, it's just like, grow up, but, you know, that's radical, really growing up is radical, that would mean you would study for yourself and know for yourself what to do and make choices and not just try to do the wise thing that somebody else figured out and impose that on yourself so that you could remain a child doing what you're told, which is the best thing. And to take responsibility for your choices means you could make a good choice, a bad choice, but you take responsibility for your choices and you could choose, you could make another

[41:16]

choice then. Doing this plan didn't work, doing that plan doesn't work, I'm going to figure it out for myself. We all have that capacity, why would we give it away, why would we abandon ourselves? Well it's to get it right, you know, it's to be good, so realizing the mystery is nothing but breaking through to grab an ordinary life or another Zen teacher, is it time for me to stop? I see some people getting up and walking out, you know, well, maybe it's time to stop. But another Zen teacher, yeah, I could make my own decision, yeah. Thank you, but it's nice to have your support, you see, you know, see how helpful it is somebody gives you permission, somebody gives you permission to make your own choice, you know, to know, to choose for yourself, so I give you permission, I'm going to, you know, if

[42:20]

you want to leave, leave. Don't blame it on me. I was about finished anyway. I shared a nice time in that meditation that we did together, you know, did you have a good time? Yeah, how was meditation for you? I had a great time. I did something I don't usually do, you know, I actually, and it was debatable because, you know, I was encouraging you to enjoy yourself and then I thought, and then, you know, what I was doing for enjoyment was something I don't usually do in meditation, but so I started dreaming up things to do in meditation that I had never done before, so the first thing

[43:22]

I did was I'm going to, I'm going to let myself be touched by your blessedness, the blessedness of each of you in this room, I'm going to let the blessedness of each of you touch me and support me and nourish me, I'm going to let that come in, and we each have that, you know, blessedness, and often we're put off, of course, by, it's tucked away, that blessedness, and we don't often show it, you know, to one another, but I decided whether you are conscious of it or not, I'll let your blessedness come to me, touch me, so that was really nice, and then I thought, why don't we go, why don't we take this blessedness and we'll go to a place where we have choice and it's very still and very quiet where we can choose, so I went

[44:29]

there, and I assumed, I was assuming that you were all coming along with me since I had already connected with you, you know, so I thought, let's go to this stillness and quiet, and then, and then I decided to go to, oh, to deepen that, I thought that would, you know, this is all for my enjoyment, so I thought we could deepen that and, and go to where it's even more still and more quiet, and where we know our blessedness, and we have that kind of, we're kind of, there's a kind of humming, you know, in that stillness, sometimes it sounds like the bed, but, and then I thought, oh, tonight, tonight, why don't we do the,

[45:32]

the jewel mirror samadhi, I don't even know what the jewel mirror samadhi is, but it sounds so nice, because the jewel mirror, you know, it seems like seeing and being seen, you know, knowing and being known, connecting, and a kind of clarity and, kind of clarity and, and brilliance to the jewel mirror samadhi, which is also our nature, you know, and our capacity to reflect, so I thought, oh, let's go there, let's visit, and after we'd been in the jewel mirror samadhi for a while, I thought, well, why don't we go to vastness, let's just, we'll just all go to vastness, let's just all be vast, and each of us can include, be vast enough to include everybody else in the room, so I was doing that, you know,

[46:35]

I don't know what you were up to, but, but that was very enjoyable for me, so, you know, thank you for that. Oh, I started to tell you then about the Zen teacher who said, see with your eyes, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue, nothing in the universe is hidden, nothing is hidden, what else would you have me say, nothing in the universe is hidden, and what else we'd have him say is, how do I get it right, you know, how can I have, you know, a better conception of what to do, but this is shifting to, you know, go ahead, this is

[47:38]

inconceivable, what to do, it's inconceivable, you know, I was doing, some of you, apparently Nina Weiss was just here recently, I did a workshop with her six weeks one time, and one of the first things I did, we were doing a minute or two of just movements, so I did a lot of movements, you know, for a minute or two, and then she says, okay, thank you, and that was nice, and would you like some feedback, and yeah, she said, well, that was nice, but, you know, it seemed like everything you did had some meaning, she said, did you want to limit yourself just to doing things that had meaning, so mostly, you know, we're always limiting ourselves, rather than, like, you know, actually meeting, actually seeing with our eyes, smelling with our nose, tasting with our tongue, feeling our feelings, thinking our thoughts, you know, being present, and showing up, and connecting, then, with the object, that's enjoyment, connecting, resonating with, and mostly, we're busy doing, you know,

[48:44]

something other than that, and you wouldn't have to limit yourself to what's meaningful or, you know, important. Suzuki Roshi, in one of his lectures, he said, Zen, you know, some of you think that in Zen, if it's Zen, you know, you'd have to draw a perfectly, a perfect line, you know, with power and integrity, and you can learn to do that, but he said, Zen is just to draw a line, any line, the way a child draws a line, you know, enjoying it, and he says, if you're not ready to draw a line, any line, and just to play like that, you're not ready to practice Zen. I don't know, you know, at the time, I missed that, so now, I read it in the transcripts years later, you know, oh, that's what he was trying to tell us.

[49:47]

Do you know the, I like the poem by, now, I can't remember his name, it's Walcott, Derek Walcott, do you know the poem, one day, you will, with elation, greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror, each will smile at the other's greeting, saying, sit here, eat, you will love again the stranger who was yourself, give back your heart to yourself, to the stranger who's loved you all your life, whom you've ignored for another who knows you by heart, take down the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your image back from the mirror, and sit, and feast, feast on your life. Thank you for being here this evening, wish you all, you know, many blessings in your

[51:52]

life, let your heart come home to your heart, thank you. Oh, could we do a, I'd love to do with you, this is a great group, but you know, ho, ho, ho, and you just, you let this resonate for a while, I'm gonna hit the bell, and then, we'll do it for like a minute, and you just, whatever, you let the sound of the room, you know, resonate through your being, you know, so your whole body resonates with the sound of ho, and then, you make the sound, and join into the sound, so we'll all blend into ho, and then you can share this, whatever it is, the blessing of this sound, or the forgiveness, or the warmth, or compassion, with whoever you'd like, with yourself, and then, people in the room, people outside the room, wherever.

[52:38]

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