Bumblebees Can't Fly

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good morning everybody and welcome to berkeley's etc
today speaker is david weinberg a long long long time practitioner
the on e davis darvish practice at san francisco zen center and helped get a practice positions over there eating a treasure and he worked over to the east and practice a number of years ago and began practicing with search roshi and recently retired from three
year tenure ship of treasury here take care that btc finances david i received a transmission from david weinberg i mean david
stephen white dresser i see if my travels i guess why
who is also a sq of searching roche's
ah for his career and livelihood david run stress care which is a mindfulness based stress reduction
methodology that here is a the east bay as well as contra costa
based on john cabot since work and i even added quite a while so if any stress arises in your practice not take care of it's awesome you see david m it another day thank you very much to thank you russ

and the name of my talk think and write this down
is
bumblebees can't fly
ah
why hello first why thank you to realize them to be here the see audio
it's more eye contact and there used to be nice for the person who's sitting up here
i appreciate that
yeah lol movies can't fly
when i was a kid my dad told me that bumblebees can't fly
my head was a pilot and aeronautical engineer and he said that engineers and analyzed the wing structure and musculature of bumblebees and determined that they can't fly
however bumblebees do not know this
so they fly as they have for
thirty million years
ah and you can check out many interesting facts about bumblebees
www that bumblebee that work
it says on the website that they can fly
but their bombers
there really a very good at a time when you fly
ah so this was a joke that we enjoyed my as a kid and
now and then i reflect on a joke and see more than one dimension to it
ah
i'm not talk a bit about flying in fact i'm going to talk quite a bit about fly
and
here we go so my dad took me after my first airplane ride
in his markup when i was five months old
he hand sewed
a as a little cloth helmet for me with a powder puffs sewn into cover my ears
and put me next hammer see monkey the market was a little sport airplane was the
cockpit was about this way so if you if you have to adults in there you are just right up against each other and it had dual controls you can train people and evidence control stick on each side so
so he took me up for my first ride in a climb very very very slowly and i'm descended very very slowly take it to take care of my years and
i don't know there was on that first rounder a subsequent one but
i was sitting next to her mom
i ride and were flying along the airplane was all trimmed out and so and all of a sudden the airplane a pitched forward
and my debts of his heart just went right up his in his mouth is a he could imagine a hunk of the a horizontal stabilizer breaking loose and falling off or something like that kind of thing that goes to his mind of a pilot wants something unexplained like that happens but
he know reaching the airplane got everything squared away
and
flying long and again had happened
but he saw at the corner of his i
then i had my foot resting against stiff of control sticks
babies in elective flex their push yourself
it scared the hell out of the first day
when i was ten
i began flight training with my dad
and by the time i was twelve he deemed that i was
a profession to fly so
the faa wouldn't allow this because of my because of my age
later i did so
and got a private pilot's license and flow around upstate new york
from rural airports and airfields in our fifty horsepower piper cub
like my father i was a natural stick and rudder pilot
then i stopped flying for fifty for fifteen years for various reasons
last summer i renewed my license was still there on records and the f am the maze
and resumed flight instruction
some things have changed and fly with some things have changed still to say
my new flight instructor it is named mike
and he's a very exacting and good hearted man
like my father he's pretty tightly wrapped
so really learning to fly is uncovering some
very traumas that originated in life
earlier train
the differences that i can talk and like about these things
he's also working on himself
is sixty years old he has a seven year old daughter
and he doesn't want to get in her way
so for a man whose tightly wrapped in controlling has he must be
he's a
to stay out of your way i think my any of you who are parents appreciate with then select
so the challenge for both of us really is to be rigorous which both parenting and flying require
a and flexible
flying and the parenting her life and death activities so requires a canada
i approached the really includes both rigor and flexibility openness
fine shares many of the
a characteristics of zen practice
rager for example
adherence to established forms
chaga ricochet said in the zen tradition the basis of discipline is accuracy
zen is very black and white he said
the same is true fly
the pilot is always working to achieve perfection
good enough is not good enough
as a policy good enough leads to cumulative errors that can kill
so flight training begins with purse precise instruction
five scrupulously
naturally at the beginning this precision is mediated by conceptual knowledge
aerodynamics and meteorology in rules of the air as well as discursive thinking
if this than that
eventually the discriminating mine must be sufficiently at ease to work harmoniously with body sensations
and really a wide appreciation of the the total situation
any self consciousness and he strained in of goals interrupts the flow
ultimately the best safest flying is a indoor activity
the pilot the aircraft the actions called flying the air mass the ground
other aircraft the rules of communication conduct
all one undivided flow
many accomplished athletes and musicians and zen practitioners know this territory
the grove the sound
the down the chain uses the paradoxical terminology
the action of no action
way we'll wait
this doesn't mean no action a static state and it doesn't mean dualistic action as we usually concealed with an agent and action an object of an action all this happening in an environment and so on each one itself suffers
shunt entity
or a process independent of the others so it's not that either
it doesn't mean some lukewarm averaging of the to either
rather it is action from emptiness
no hard and fast separation among conceptually distinguishable things the dermis
nothing is done and yet nothing remains under
the like to say
nothing is done as a separate
distinguishable activity or everything is accomplished
the action of no action is characterized as soft and yielding by the das
we might call it i might call it anyway
appropriately responses
this suggests that even a small action
in the right circumstances can have powerful effects
moreover one should deal with a small problems promptly before they become big problems
when fly if i savage my neighbors from checklists or headings
where altitude airspeed mike points out these discrepancies unless he can see that i'm
making prompt corrections
any problem unnoticed
ah can become a big problem in the fly in airplanes
flying is responding continuously to hundreds of variables to get the results you want

the most critical moments in fly
olive an engine failure and thunderstorms
i call
moments that are called landing the airplane
here comes of zen moment
vices this is a quote from my flat and struck
we don't land the airplane as some special separate activity
we just fly
we don't land the airplane has some special separate activity
we just fly
sounds like somebody else you know
couple of people might say such things
mike is a closet zen gov
ah
if you'll indulge me out i want to describe landing
specifically the wonder of landing
i have a prop here
i have a hard time figuring out for to do with this thing's still but
elaine's with the an airplane
a propeller yeah feller and the wings are here and here's a anyway this is an airplane and the meal board in front of means the runaway
so some of you may fly or the pilots and well but for those of you who art
when you fly pattern around the airport i fly from oakland airport and if i'm flying from runway to seven right is less railway
there's the runway and then it's a right pattern so that means you do right turns around the runway so in
here here's the airplane
about two thirds of a mile from the runway and
this pilot is on the downwind leg the wind's blowing this way in the airplanes gonna live like this into the wind
the they your plane is here
and the i'm going through a checklist
sound design sufficient gas
the under carriage is in place it's always in place this airplane doesn't retract scared the under carriage the mixtures rich the prior was locked
the propeller the preparers two thousand rpm
ah seatbelts are fastened switches appear a right
the systems engine systems
the oil temperature oil pressure and either is charging
the brakes are from all this inc
that's it
the from emory
flying of the meanwhile
the air traffic controllers talking to you through the of your earphones and so is my instructor if i'm not exactly on coarser altitude or something i'm watching the altitude of course distance from the arab looking for traffic outside this is a
room service
and
flying down wind and eighty miles an hour
and a can adjacent to the end of the runway two thirds of my away way and throttled comes back every carburetor air heat on and execute a trim for seventy miles an hour so the airplanes gonna begin to sink and you do execute a medium
right
turn looking for traffic up when and this is the
this is the wonder i don't think i can communicate it off it's tough to say that it's a wonder at the corner of your i just a glance is the end of the runaway still to ninety degree turns away from landing from being lined up with the runway and somehow
the human body and mind with all the rest of this going on knows whether you're too high to low but it's a knowing that isn't even it's not even a
his conceptual understanding it's a it's like a feeling in your chest and abdomen and let the worth the read height or we're not we're going to be high or low and of course there are many ways to respond in this anyway there's this turn
i'm on another ninety degree turn and little ponds the end of the
but quarter of a mile from near the runway three hundred feet
so i'm time i want
then you land
that moment of for me that the set up being able to just glance out instead it's over the right shoulder the end of their own way because you make that turns past the and to the runway otherwise will be halfway
way up the right way that glancing over the shoulder and knowing where he where is it is just a it's a wonder it's uncanny how that can happen
of course of happens over and over again every time someone lands and airplay

an airplane flies in the air
and a all it knows this year
when it's fly
and then there is a fraction of a second when it suddenly knows the ground
and is on ground and that's another just extraordinary critical moment
airplanes flying in the air and if the wind is blowing across the runway an airplane is the trimmed properly the airplane is moving with the air mass and if it touches down on the runway the tires squeal you can blow a tire easily blow it off the right and can do a grab any number of things can happen probably by little air
claim probably wouldn't kill you but it can make a mess of the airplane so there's that that incredible transition from ear
you know a creature
of the air and then a creature with the ground and happens
in a want
and it gets a little bit the landing interesting
just have the alone my sister
that's a little mysterious you know how this can happen
dogan says
the sky is fast straight into the heavens
a bird flies just like a bird
how does the bird life he kind of begs the question
the poem is concerned with the vast sky straight into the heavens
that wine signals
the realm of sadness
the wholeness of bird flight sky with no separation among these
mt phenomena
and yeah
each phenomena as this
as for a dog in elucidates undivided activity he says life is like riding in an airplane
you feel the tax check the airframe start the engine and take off
although you steer with a stick and rudder the airplane gives you a ride
let me ride in the airplane and are writing makes the airplane what it is
the sky the earth and the shore are all the airplanes world
pilot airplane flying sky
radically interdependence and indivisible
active and still

another significant aspect of non dual action is it's lack of willful intention
by that i mean intention serving a narrow interests of the of the agent as there is no awareness of the self existing agent distinct from his or her ex you're also has no self referencing intention
no separate itself no separate intention
so in these magical moment stuff
landy
ah it's what it's like lexus
when piloting if i think about myself and how i'm doing
and impose a plan for getting it right so that be a good pilot
it immediately goes off
the little ball floating in kerosene swings to the side was a little very simple instrument it was maybe the first instrument because back to the teens or twice little ball and it just tells you live in the airplanes
skating to one side or another when you're in a turn in a coordinated turn the little ball like the level just stays right in the center
so it swings to the side
step on the ball is the right response
any more than that is too much
am i a good pilot
something else if i asked such a question if i become involved in that kind of mentation something else invariably goes wrong
loss of heading or altitude a ms checklist item
a garbled radio transmission whatever
division of attention is a whole market flying
fluid subtle a comprehensive awareness
without the imposition of a self conscious intention
without the imposition of such intention anxiety but results doesn't happen
anxiety invariably hinders flying
it narrows attention it makes sense french
search ones as normal mind is the way
free from self consciousness
from superimposed intentions schemes and plans
normal mind is how to fly an airplane
what about thinking
you'd think you have to think the flash for it
there is thinking that is self conscious and there is thinking that's completely involved with action with the natural flow
non dual thinking is what is required for dharma combat and for flying
where responses are need need to be immediate and appropriate
is that random or arbitrary
nando thinking the self conscious controls that usually direct linking a relaxed
and they don't interfere
still there are plans and desires and thinking and intentions some lofty some that in the human world
to pretend that we can be utterly intention free would be seriously unrealistic
how can we navigate the whole territory of duality and non-duality
the heart sutra tells us straight out
that form does not differ from emptiness emptiness is no other than four
the duality of form and emptiness is itself one more duality to be transcended
this is true to duality

the sixth ancestor says that wisdom is to see and know all things free from natasha
to see and know all things free from attachment

this is that
the challenge
the dharma name i was given a long time ago
is them
observe ocean
ah no indication know mark
so too

to see and know all things
and if the no marks and then there's nothing to attach to
how we hold our perceptions and plants than is the key we have presumptions and plans
the standard of safety and flying an airplane wanting to get from one place to another
the question is how the hold these things in awareness and open fluid awareness that doesn't stick to one thing or another in the mind scope is wisdom
free from attachment includes freedom from cleaning to what is pleasant as well as freedom from aversion to what is unpleasant
of course nine attachment
is not a quiet quiet as healing
it's really the ground of full engagement with the world
the tao te ching says whenever you let go of all intentions you will see the wonder
whenever you have intentions you will see forms
again wherever he let go of all intentions you will see the wonder
whenever you have intentions you will see forms
there's no hierarchy established between these two
most of his probably want to see the wonder
but forms put bread on the table and airplanes were they need to be
finally than what is important is to nurture a capacity to see the world both ways to move freely back and forth between forms and wonder
the true wonder is the whole works held three me and enjoy to the
the force
have you fly

and yes we have time for some comments or questions or be bottles
an interesting and i sure enjoyed the metaphor
the telling of the
that's president
the higher
and struck by you're looking over your right shoulder and see the right way i'm just sort of automatically or physically of us mysteriously levy there but i'm also struck you that just doesn't happen
you have a lot of training to go through yeah to to be able to have that feeling if i were to fly a pair and somebody gave me the controls i nothing out there experience few
a fair fight with product crash by path
so you know just like positions
who have that feeling of the totally free from reality and they're just doing or athletes i think
it takes training to do that in exchange for as yesterday it's well let's be personal life i guess yes
if not have that separation so
can you talk org yeah
well exactly
and
ah part of the wonder is just that if it takes training it takes doing something over and over again
and the the process by wish doing it over and over again finally is
an editor what we're used to integrated absorbed in the body mind
is itself mysterious it's not like working out an equation you know
no i don't mean any disparagement but working on equations but it not step step step than step mrs more like it begins like that like this is exactly how you do it do it this way not that way
why not this way do it exactly this way and then you'd you do your best to do that
and then somewhere along the lines somehow
it becomes
part of you and and that somehow that transition to that absorption i don't know how that happens
it's it's maybe not so different from writing a kid riding a bicycle you know you you help your kid and gives meaning in iran
this is after you take the training wheels off which are utterly useless and the indicated in applications you tell him hey and student if you lean you the right is due to the right and good does it you know and then finally
there's still a who can explain that
family
yeah see that the work you're describing flying is a work visa other things for you are
the most difficult things in life is to be york giraffe easily
yes when you familiarise us is iraq yeah
and yet he was i'm currently expect suppose experience experienced despite numerous i think so
yeah of course
the actually and in emphasize that the flying is completely involved with other human beings for example there's my instructor sitting right behind me i fly at ten am airplane i sit in front he sits behind me to see or right by my hips
he's talking to me all the time and there's traffic there's airplanes i can tell you how much airplane traffic there is in the in the bay area and all those people want to live
what only everywhere they want to land and not be hit by other airplanes
ah so in essence it is m
guerin you know he was he was very much isn't other people is his fellow pilots and and also the pilots he was trying to kill
thank you for your talk
i'm curious about the perfection and good enough to hear about securities that the attribute occurred to him you're okay as you are he's perfect as you are and you can use somehow yes you are some improvement yes i could you speak a little bit about this perfection that pupils dry
five for and it being so they get out of in a way of being a good enough which is actually perfect
ah yeah
perfectionism actually gets in the way
in that is
striving for perfect in a kind of reflects self reflecting way is is extra
it gets in the way
ah
good enough and in the way i was using it means well i was i was at around seventy two miles and i have the sun fixture victory with sessions at and were coming in for final and seventy two miles an hour
not not seventy that's not good enough because those two miles an hour make it in a difference in how the airplane performs and not so
seventy miles an hour that doesn't mean you can always get it at seventy miles an hour but that's the the intention is to be again and again with a kind of
a relaxed open unself conscious attitude seventy miles an hour
not seventy two that's good enough
think i'm a little carries more about mike
come from
you have to really trust him has it ever does he let you start to make mistakes and then bring it back or does he write on you immediately if you see something when he is anxious which is something his working with its any put yourself in the puzzle
vision of a flight instructor this old things and critical with who've done by landings right
even if i weren't in the airplane is still there's landing near reapply he has a student pilot let alone any an old guy and even though i knew how to fly fifty years ago
he's responsible for me and
he has the let things develop
and let me develop and the only way he can do that is to let me do what i can do which includes a certain deviation from what he might do what might be in his my perfection
but at some point he has to step in and he steps in if he deems the situation dangerous
or he sees that i'm not making a correction
if i if something gets off and he can see that i'm making a correction then it's fine he he stays out of the picture but that's a dialogue between him and made it goes up and if you ever disagree with my you know with mike
know sometimes i say mike don't do have
and here
he respects that and sometimes he says a had can't come in then crosswind landings
i won't go into the details but landing with a in iowa a ten or twelve not cross wind
with gus rolling wind and some things can go wrong very very suddenly and what i'm learning those
practicing them sometimes he comes in because otherwise we'd be skittering along the runway
yes thank you so much for your targets exactly what i need to hear the example is perfect and and as are still having intervals starting out how to let the anxiety and the
extra this of protectionism though while still meeting to exactly seventy miles to now yeah well
here's how i understand that
we say letting go and as praise we as let it go you know let the scarlet that go
a letting goes like calif relaxing if i say relax not come out in the last
you can't do it if you say if you give that let go let go of course everything gets tiger so
i think more what's involved is is a kind of spaciousness of the mind a kind of true relaxing a body and mind so the
anxiety and
self concern and so on
have some place to be but they're not running the show
if the mind is small and contracted
then those things have a way of day their influences outsized doesn't make sense
so this is in a way it's capacity it's another doing exactly
what did you also say that that if you're really focused on on aim at seventy miles an hour you don't have room to think about analyze clever you would ever really joked
seventy miles an hour let alone direction crosswind air traffic control your instructor who you knows looking over your shoulder the ball is it in the center of ice skating
yes it's a very good training in that's why the term it's kind of a paradox but division of attention division of attention means one pointed
concentration is just the a big point
yes yes thank you for your talk a bit i wonder if you speak up perfection i wonder if this is a language issued you're talking about accuracy it seems to me i think accuracy is good and the and another i have a question and that is
when your fly
are you aware of what you're doing with your breath
yes and what can you talk about them sometimes i'm holding it
has other at other times it's a the the question of the awareness of breath awareness as body
a sort of total sense of how how am i as an organism in the midst of this
hugely complicated activity is it it's is crucial so referencing the breath is very helpful am i am i appeal for my breathing of here a here you know or am i bringing down here and it it seems to me like this is a
on one level this is a very intuitive activity and so you can i didn't know how many times you been flying since on but i would guess i i didn't i've never been a pilot or been instructed but i would guess you develop a number of experience is so you'll come
to learn with the help of the instructor about what to do in a crosswind and somehow skipped internalize it it a yes eventually if it has to give internalized because there's so much happening so fast there's innocents
there's no time to there's no time to think conceptually oh this is happening so and here's another factor so here's how it had it has to be in your body so if you're landing in a crosswind
what's coming in from the side and the airplane you have to be centered on the runway and the airplane has to be lined up with the runway and then you you hurry up
some air emotion like this is called air pockets you know not really aircraft airplane drops
power it just it had it happens in
maybe two tenths of the second does not thinking oh the airplanes dropping i have to add power by then youth hit the ground and bounced
sure yeah i think i get can
well it seems like you have to have your on my list
it seems that you have to have a tremendous amount of faith and desk for his part of practice to i mean you can get get in that airplane
phylicia place unless there's some very deep
kind of connection or understanding that allows you to watch yourself in that situation i only have that connection
that
i can really
i already have that you remember
sometime next summer
with with no across with
yes or yeah
i think in a flying this
pilots on the commercial for know they called a sort of a heroic narrative where how that's felt it wrong and since nineteen seventies airline industries subjective seen something called
resource management
it wasn't until they actually saw themselves as part of the saga of an airplane which included copilots flemington says andrew
did crashes start to diminish yeah they found that most of the crisis has the pilot error and that they were so they were trained just like you are trade as a solo practitioner maastricht and felt like they could do no wrong yeah
i never listen to the saga which is a air until they saw themselves as part of the saga did
safety
yes so
yeah and one of the principles of flying solo and otherwise
it's a funny turn it's called a sterile cockpit
and it means absolutely nothing is happening in the cockpit except y
there's no no chatter no no
no it's stuff lying around it's a completely for is that sterile of course it's completely
configured in human terms and physically for fly and you're you're certainly right
in in of the airplane now the co-pilot is going over the checklist michael pilot is is here i have been my own co-pilot i have to know my own checklist fortunately my airplane
you know well while still and covered with cloth and it has one hundred horsepower engine then it goes you one hundred miles an hour and side instead of landing at one hundred and twenty miles now so it's a little simpler proposition
am
yes hi katie says you katie yes yes sir
ah
when you were discussing perfectionism i was thinking of my own as protection on yeah i read i can't really interesting which was from fantasies of production and and i seem very clearly how
when i'm anxious about something about how i'm going to be challenged or he can fight not measure up in some way it's wonderful for intelligent seo action that i'm gonna do it's just going to be
hey yeah and take care of it yes course the devil is in details and execution and then it just ah ha ha ha i was wondering
if you've encountered that and how well you know i think it's wonderful to have fantasies of perfection they're enjoyable and so i met there's a kind of neighbouring fantasy which is actually fly in your mind i think tennis players to play tennis in their minds
were you one goes over and over the sequence of actions and the and all the images the like that you know looking over the right shoulder
the pattern of your eye moving across the instruments in the in the cockpit of feeling as the
the control stick
in your hand trimming for pressure i mean there
that means that hundreds of little details that can be
if you will have lived out in a fantasy life and enjoyed
which lead to
leading the direction of there isn't a profession that's a that's an ideal
but to great accuracy
and which don't constitute perfectionism perfectionism is is kind of disease right it's the fantasy that you could actually be perfect and it has right behind it the judgment of what you're gonna do to yourself or somebody else's can do to you if you aren't perfect so that's not what's going on here
that gets in the way the fantasy of perfectionism is a
well it can be a killer
oh time to add
thank you very much here the team