Is there anything you'd like to discuss? Yes? . I'm designing this community with more of a brute mind for it. And then a little bit of all of it in life. That's what I plan to do. Now, what I will do is, what I'm going to do is go, that's a complex question, but it's like a, it's like a 10, maybe 15. As far as I know, nobody is in charge of what people think Zen is. So what you think Zen is, is one of the ways that people think about what Zen is.

[01:07]

Hmm? Can you say that louder? I didn't exactly hear your question. person then chooses their own way to practice. Yeah. Go ahead. Yes. I don't think it's one. For me, I seek the best for the next.

[02:14]

There are different ways of looking at this point in time. For me, it was like a bolt of lightning. Oh, this is a problem I have. I'm sorry. It's hard for me to talk loud, but I will. So I said that Rep say the best for last for me because this second view of Buddha's enlightenment that you shared was like a bolt of lightning. It It got to the heart, in some ways, of what we talked about with the infant-dent fight and with the face-to-face transmission of all beings, essentially. So I wanted to share that. The other part is that I wanted to tell you that I'm struggling with the concept of pivot, which, for me,

[03:15]

has a little bit of a dualistic connotation. My mind has trouble getting around the pivoting or the oscillation, which is what it implies to me. It suggests, it connotes a going back and forth. and gives it a kind of temporal quality. Whereas many of the other ways that you talked about being with the finite seem to get more to the heart of how it feels to me that there's a simultaneity, both existing together. And our minds, And through the practice, getting to the point where we think is what it is, dissolves that separation we thought to reality.

[04:33]

So I guess I need a little more sense of what you mean by pain. Well, the things that are pivoting are simultaneous, but it's like, it could be like foreground and background. So, the background and the foreground coexist, but sometimes you see the foreground and you don't see the background. Then you see the background, you don't see the foreground. In other words, the background becomes the foreground, so you can see it, but then you don't see the foreground anymore, now it becomes the background. So like the picture of the old woman and the young woman? If you don't see either one, then you can see they're simultaneous, just a blurry picture. But once you see the young woman, you don't see the old woman. But you can't see the young woman without the old woman.

[05:35]

And when you see the old woman, you don't see the young woman. So they're not really two different times, it's just that You look this way, you see that. You look that way, you see that. Or like in a joke, you look at the setup, and then you see the punchline. But when you see the punchline, now you realize the setup, and now it's different. So they're turning on each other, and they're simultaneous, and they're not really two. Because... Yeah, the pattern's there. And then you can look this way and see that. And then you look that way, you see that, and don't see this. This reversibility is part of our life. And they're not really one after another, but you might see it that way. Yes?

[06:43]

You talked about looking at your grandson with that adoration. I call that grand love. You left me with a question. I understand that everyone is looking for compassion, no matter what their actions may look like. Yeah. Just be happy. I think to someone, your behavior is not ready to be changed. Then I look at us as a collective and ask the question, what's ours to do together when there are others who are acting together in an aggressive way? I find out to be a legal work filter for ice breaks. which to me is a way to, it's just observing. It's not getting involved.

[07:49]

It's a way for me to be collective with others, observing when others are being aggressive to my neighbors. And I wonder what your thinking is about The practice you're talking about sounds like a good opportunity for you to practice listening and seeing living beings. It sounds like a good opportunity for you to practice compassionate witnessing. And that is being transmitted to everybody in the situation.

[09:01]

both the people who you're trying to protect and also the people who seem to be aggressing on them. So I don't know whether the so-called aggressors would see you're compassionate before or after the other people would see your compassion. The people who you want to protect, they might not see your compassion either. But it's there. and you're trying to wake up to it and exercise it in that situation. Sounds like a really great opportunity for you and everybody involved. Thank you. But I don't know how it's going to all work out. I don't know if exactly what, you know, all this aggression and violence.

[10:07]

I don't know how it's going to evolve. I'm just trying to bring compassion to it because I feel like I'm being called to respond compassionately. Any other? Yes. Could you come closer, please? Om mani padme hum. That's a mantra for Avalokiteshvara to invite Avalokiteshvara's presence

[11:27]

Yes? Do you have to have an official position to teach Buddhism? No. And so I told a story about an ancient teacher named Master Ma and he was very prolific in working with people who then became fully enlightened with him. He had 139 teachers that he worked with that were born in relationship to him. He's kind of his offspring. And 89 of them had official positions.

[13:09]

Eighty-nine of them had their own monastery. So he produced eighty-nine teachers of monasteries. But forty were unofficial. They were like, in Zen we use the expression, hidden in the city. So there's a lot of examples of enlightened people who are like, they don't have a shingle out. saying, you know, enlightenment here. They're just circulating in the society. And I just, this movie popped in my mind. I think it's called Deliverance. No, it's called Resurrection, I think. It's a movie about a woman who has a near-death experience. I think played by Ellen Burstyn. And as she, but she doesn't die. And as she's in her recovery, she notices her hands are really hot.

[14:14]

And she touches her broken body with her hands and she becomes healed by her own hands. And then she touches some other people and they become healed. So somehow she came, she opened to this, you could say, infinite healing power. So she could heal people one after another by just touching them with her hot hands. And then she became known, and they started having big conventions with her. And lots of people would come, and people would come up one after another, and people would ask her, you know, where did this come from? And she didn't know. She couldn't say, well, Jesus gave it to me. So where did it come from? If you didn't get it from Jesus, where could you get it, you know? Like, she lived in, like, the Bible Belt. So you can get healing powers from Jesus, and then the other alternative is the devil.

[15:20]

So if she wouldn't say she got them from Jesus, and so somebody shot her because they thought she was like the devil, like they used to do with the healers, the female healers in Europe. If they weren't part of the Catholic Church, then they were like witches, right? So anyway, so she got shot, and she recovered. Of course, she recovered from the... She didn't die, and she healed herself. And then she disappeared. She no longer, like, had a shingle out. She hid herself. But in her case, she hid herself in the desert at a gas station. So people would drive up and get their gas, you know, and then they would pay her. And if they were sick, she might pat them on the back or on the head.

[16:23]

And they would drive away. And they didn't say, oh, healer. They're just feeling better maybe down the road away. So she was healing but sort of not officially. That worked better for her. And I know some other healers too that they're doing it but they don't want people to know because they don't want to get shot. So sometimes being official is beneficial and helps people find you. And sometimes institutions around the official institutions protect you and protect the people. But some people feel like it's better for them to be unofficial. Shakyamuni Buddha was unofficial for a few days. Nobody knew where he was or who he was. But then he went public.

[17:24]

But some of Buddha's disciples are not publicly advertised. Yes. Yes. All of your senses are very much involved and very important. So if you look at what, I mean, I was thinking about that standard in the way that would be the work of ages, you know, it's not standard, it's not felt. And I think with all the fear that's coming up, it's, for me at least, it's a good practice to have that, or it's a good time to have that. So if you're, I think the idea of being engulfed with, you know, with the violence and with what's coming up. You know, that's probably your work, and maybe sometimes it's very hard for individuals to go there, even when you have practice, but that's the same for hard practice. You learn how you would like others to do that, and to even to, you know, be a conduit to kind of be able to share that with others.

[18:38]

Sometimes I think, where can I do that? So there's this platform, there's a very profound one to be able to share levers And I'll say to experience that for yourself. So when I think about people that have post-traumatic stress disorder, or you think about people in the military, where there's been assault, and you can have that be a victim to the community, too, where you're physically assaulted. So then the work for that, where do you, or how could you agree Well, I'm... at this point, betting on embracing it as the way.

[19:44]

But we have to be very careful and tender in the embrace around trauma. But by being very careful and patient and generous with the trauma, with the post-trauma stress situation, I think that's the way I'm betting on. But it may be hard to be tender when somebody's in a trauma, you know, they're very stressed by trauma. And then vibrating with that stress, it may be difficult to be tender with it, but it seems like usually that would be appropriate. And occasionally, maybe something else would be appropriate, but it seemed like usually being tender with that would help the person find a way to embrace it, which they couldn't embrace it before, so it's trauma.

[20:54]

It was too intense. It was too horrible. It was too cruel. It was too, yeah, just too terrible to embrace, and almost no one could embrace it. But if you can embrace it, then it's not so traumatic. But now we got the stress related to it, so can we help each other embrace basically all things? But we have to be very tender in order to embrace anything, really, but particularly in embracing extreme, extremely fragile situations. But everybody's fragile, so everybody's calling for tenderness. It's just that some people, in a way, seem more fragile than most, so then they maybe need even more of this tenderness. Yes?

[22:03]

Redundant scenes? Redundant themes? Well, you say the Buddhist thing, right? That relates to the, you know... I'm just saying there's not a Buddhist thing. There's just my thing and his thing and, you know... So do you want to know what I think? Yes, so what I think is that redundant themes are basically themes that have not been heard yet. Heard. They've been calling. And we're kind of like, later. And then they call again, later. And they call again and say, well, I'm listening. They say, not really. When you fully listen to it, I think usually things that are calling repetitively have not, they don't feel heard. Fully.

[23:27]

Okay. And you can sometimes postpone the hearing. Like if a child's calling for help and you're pouring hot soup or talking to somebody else, you can say, you don't have to say, I hear you. You can just say, I'm listening and I need 10 more minutes. I'll come back and then come back. And once they feel... You didn't really hear them fully, but you heard them enough to maybe tell them that later you'll hear them. And then tell the adults, just a second, I'm listening to this child, and try to do it completely. This person was next, I think. Yes? Yes? I would say both.

[24:52]

Both. Because you're a self and you're others. And also listening is not the same as hearing. So I feel like I'm listening but I'm not saying I'm hearing you. But I am listening. And then sometimes you listen and you listen and your listening becomes more wholehearted. And then you hear something that you didn't hear before, even though you were listening. You didn't hear it. So now I see what you're saying. Or now I hear the sound within that sound. So a basic kind of like proposal is that if we listen wholeheartedly, we not only hear the sound that we're listening to, but we hear the truth too. because the truth is in all sounds, but if we don't listen to the sounds wholeheartedly, we just hear the surface of the sound, but we don't hear the depth of the sound.

[26:12]

And if we don't hear the depth of the sound, we don't realize how the surface of the sound and the depth of the sound are working together. So all sounds that we actually hear are like we usually hear the surface of a much bigger sound, of a profound sound. But we can't hear the profound sound with our ear. But if we wholeheartedly listen with our ears, sort of our wisdom ears open to the profound sound and then we open to how the profound and the superficial sounds are together. And they can switch. So suddenly you can hear what used to be the profound is now superficial and what used to be superficial is now profound and now you can't hear it. So we have this expression, when you see colors and hear sounds fully engaging your whole body and mind, it's not like the form reflected in the mirror or like the moon reflected in the water.

[27:33]

When one side is illuminated, the other side is darker. So usually when we have a form reflected in a mirror, we think we can see the form reflected in the mirror. But that's the way things are when you're not wholeheartedly experiencing the thing. When you wholeheartedly experience it, if you see one side, the other side you don't see. So like if you wholeheartedly listen to yourself, and the other, if one side, if the self is illuminated, there's no other. If the other is illuminated, there's no self. That's the way it is when you're wholehearted. Usually we're half-hearted, so we see two things at once. But neither fully. When you see fully, you don't see the background. When you see the background, you don't see the foreground.

[28:39]

Yes? Do I? I don't consider myself enlightened, no. Pardon? I don't consider myself on a path. Do I want to be on a path? Yes. What path do I want to be on? I want to be on the path of face-to-face transmission. Am I on the path of face-to-face transmission? I don't know. Do I believe that all of us are on the path of face-to-face transmission? Yes I do. But, you know, on the path of face-to-face transmission, you can find me and you can't find me.

[29:55]

I'm here and I'm not here. So I don't really know what to do with myself. If I'm into finding myself, I'm sort of like over on the superficial side. If I fully engage that superficial side, then there's no here or there in between. So where am I? So this considering myself is kind of elusive. David? A brief comment about monastic practice? A brief comment about monastic practice? Yeah, in this world, but not.

[30:57]

One thing I would say is that in monasteries you can work on things that you might not be able to work on if you weren't in a monastery. And if you're not in a monastery, you can work on things that you can't work on in a monastery. So it's, again, it's kind of like a foreground-background kind of thing. You can see what it feels like to be trapped Voluntarily. And then you can see what you do when you feel trapped. Do you make your peace with it or do you fight it? Do you try to entertain yourself in this kind of situation where there's no entertainments? In the old days, before people had an entertainment unit in their pocket, when we went to the monastery we had almost no ability to have any much entertainment except what we tried to generate in our own mind.

[32:30]

Some people would think about sex when they're sitting, right? And just really entertain themselves with these sexy stories. Or some people would think of robbing banks or having babies or constructing new buildings at the monastery. And now that we have these entertainment units, people cannot use them at the monastery. They're not allowed to bring them in. And it's different. It's different. So now the only home entertainment system you have is your own mind and body. Are you going to use it to entertain yourself? Or are you just going to let boredom be boredom? Are you going to let the wall be a wall? If you let the wall be a wall, you'll wake up to face-to-face transmission with the wall.

[33:37]

It's hard to let a wall be a wall hour after hour, day after day, month after month. Like I mentioned yesterday that the floor of the city center, Zendo, is now wood. It's made from an old basketball court floor. But before the wood floor, there was a linoleum. It's probably still there underneath. And the linoleum is black and white swirls. And if you're looking at the floor, you could see lots of dramas going on there. Even if you weren't trying, your mind starts to relax, you start to see all this stuff happening. And then you can see if you try to play with those images and actually create quite a fun scene, or just let the drama go,

[34:49]

And then when it stops, let it stop. You can see. And even on the wall, which is kind of like stucco, you can see all these faces and stuff jumping around. So what do you, are you, you know, it doesn't mean that you won't be able to see that stuff, but are you actually trying to get some entertainment out of the wall? Out of the floor? And you can see, yeah, I am. I'm trying to entertain myself. And then just let the drama be. And then the floor actually starts talking to you and telling you secrets of the floor. And the same if you look at people and stop trying to make them entertaining, they start telling you secrets too without saying a word. But if you try to get secrets out of the floor or out of people, that's suffering.

[35:57]

And if you can leave a wall alone and still be attentive to the wall without trying to get anything, then you can turn to people and maybe do the same with them. When people look at a wall, they don't so often think, what am I doing for the wall? Am I helping the wall? Am I being good friend of the wall? Should I do something other than just look at it? But when people look at people, they start asking those questions, which is not just letting them be. So facing the wall and not getting into these stories, but just letting it be, then when you look at people, you can let people be. And that's very helpful, but it's because you're giving up all your stories. Am I being a good friend? Am I being a good healer? Am I being a good priest?

[37:04]

Am I being a good father? Am I being a good mother? It doesn't mean to eliminate those questions, it just means let those questions be. Let the wall be, let the questions be, let people be, let yourself be. Face-to-face transmission, let it be, let it in. What's the appeal of entertainment? Would it be the emotional hits of all those emotions? In particular, I'm curious, it seems like a lot of my animal emotional and

[38:07]

Yeah, and also in an entertainment world. animal entertainment. So I read this study about people thinking about, people thinking about means nervous systems thinking about something that would be fun and thinking about something that would be not fun. Like thinking about your home sports team winning a game. or even winning a championship, and then thinking about your home team losing. So the nervous system thinks, oh, losing would be painful and winning would be fun.

[39:20]

But they found out that that if people thought something would be this fun, this much fun, actually it was more like this much fun. Things that seemed to be fun were almost never as fun as you thought they would be. Like thinking of an ice cream cone and then eating it, it is a little bit fun often. But it's not as fun as you thought it would be. and if the amount of fun it was was the amount you thought it would be you probably would not go to the store you probably would not buy the ice cream cone but also you probably wouldn't go to the store and also if things that you don't think would be fun were and also the things that were supposed to be painful were not as painful as the people thought it would be. Generally speaking, their estimation of entertainment or fun things and unentertaining things, painful things, the actual experience was much less than they thought it would be, in both cases, plus a week later,

[40:33]

the people who had the fun experience and the people who had the not fun experience, there was almost no sign. Like the week later of the school that lost the championship and the school that won the championship, there was not much sign. But part of the theory here is that our nervous system makes things more horrible and more entertaining than they actually are to get us moving. The nervous system is very much about getting us moving, especially when we're young. to get us moving. Children who had an accurate sense of how much fun things would be and how terrible things would be wouldn't get enough exercise. So I often use the example of my grandson when he was little. He said, granddaddy, I just thought of this thing that would be so much fun. I said, what? He said, we could take all my toys downstairs into the garage and put them in a tub and fill it with water. And I thought, yeah, that might be fun.

[41:37]

But I didn't think it would be as fun as he thought it would be. And I did not say to him, you know, it's not going to be as fun as you think it's going to be. It's not going to be that much fun. I did not say that. I just helped him carry the animals. So I got all the animals and carried them down. And then I put him in the tub and I went to get the hose and he said, granddaddy, you know what would really be fun? And he thought of another thing. Before he even got the water in, he thought of something else that would be fun. So we never even did that thing because he thought of something else that would be even more fun. This is normal nervous system activity. Now if he had actually, let me fill the the tub and not gone on to something else, then he might have said, even at that age, you might have said, well, that was kind of disappointing. It was a little bit fun, but I thought it was going to be really fun.

[42:41]

Which reminds me, when I was a kid, I had some painted wooden toys and I also had some painted wooden furniture. And I used to like to bite those toys. Like some people bite pencils, you know, the painted pencils, if you bite them, not only do you get to feel the teeth squeezing down on the wood, but that crinkly thing when the teeth break through, it's usually enamel paint, it goes crinkle, crinkle. It's kind of an interesting experience. And then to bite something bigger like a chair, or I don't know what, some good-sized toy. Just get your teeth on there and squeeze on there and dent it and then break through the paint. Now, as you can see, I probably have lead poisoning. That's why I'm kind of strange. But I remember when I did that and I bit through, which felt good, then I felt sad because I had just dented my lovely toy.

[43:54]

So now that was another additional, you know, now we have this bittersweet quality. So biting through, cracking the paint, and then, oh, this is nervous system stuff. So I'm not talking about stopping any of this. I'm talking about paying attention and noticing, oh, we think this is going to be fun. And then, oh, it's like that. Hmm. And not to stop myself, but to attend the journey into this activity, which I think is going to be really fun. Not to stop it, but to attend to it with compassion. And at a certain point you maybe stop doing certain things because you see that it's addictive, that you're actually in a pattern of addiction, and it's actually like kind of a distraction.

[44:56]

But in the meantime, this stuff is calling for compassion. Yeah. That boy asked me to help him. He wanted me to help him. He was calling for my help, and I helped him. Yes. Can you speak a bit about attachment, being attached to the profound? Yeah. So that's why I said, don't esteem or despise the profound. Become intimate with it. So, yeah, so when the profound opens up, well, you're not necessarily esteeming or despising it, maybe you're just starting to open to it.

[46:03]

And so now you've opened to, like, for example, not being able to, your self hasn't been eliminated, you just can't find it anymore. And so you might become awestruck or even frightened at the mystery of the realm where you're not here or there or in between. You might be awestruck and mystified by the end of suffering, which you can't get a hold of. You can't keep the end of suffering. You can't get rid of it. So now you're in the realm where you were kind of everything's the same and you don't know who's who and stuff like that. And yeah, so can you let that be?

[47:08]

Can you let the awe be? Can you let the mystery be? Can you let the trembling that you might feel in the presence of this profundity, can you let it be? Or do you try to make it finite again, which is okay, but then you've just made it finite again. And then if you treat that properly, you open to the infinite again. So the infinite allows you to make the finite, and the finite allows you to open to the infinite. And if you get attached to the infinite, At that time it would be good to go talk to somebody who is working with the relationship between these two. It can help you not get attached to it.

[48:13]

It can point out to you that you have become attached, and then help you let your attachment be, and then you can be without attachment to it, which is impossible. but you can then see that it's impossible and let it be. Thank you very much for coming to the meeting.

[48:40]

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