And I was thinking what came up for me just after that, and I started thinking about it really for the last while is courage. They seem to go together and I haven't heard much talk about courage in teachings, but it seems to me that in this, in this time of turmoil and uncertainty, of danger, it really takes a lot of courage. And as I thought about it, just continuing with our practice during this time takes a lot of strength and courage. So my talk is, I'm calling my talk, Cultivating and Embodying Courage, the Role of Great Faith and Great Doubt. So the most usual definition of courage is taking action in the presence of fear or danger.

[01:14]

Another way of looking at it is making a decision or taking action where risk is involved. The risk or the fear that comes with it could be real or imagined. It could be something that comes up in our minds. It could be something real. But courage really acts to help us grow because we turn towards rather than away and we learn how to be with the challenges that we face. And every day, you know, we're facing Now, always, always, every minute we're facing all of these things, but we're not always aware of it. And right now there is a kind of heightened awareness, a sense of something, nothing, what, how, what, when, just complete being with that sort of environment.

[02:23]

That's a condition of our lives. So when I look towards Zen practice, maybe the true meaning of courage is not really the absence of fear, but really the ability to be with and come through fear. So When I talked about faith, I talked about faith as a verb, faithing, faithing our practice. And I think courage is also a verb because you're couraging, right? You're couraging, you're engaged in couraging. So you have to practice your bravery and your courage by couraging one act at a time. So it really requires us to embrace, enter, permeate fear with openness and no expectation, no hope, just going along through the fear, through the uncertainty.

[03:36]

And in doing that, we have to, in being in that fear, we really have to do that without aversion to the fear, without aversion to what comes up in the fear. the details of the fear. And no attachment to anything being any different. We just have to be with that. That's the courage of Zen. So it's more than courage and extreme risks. It consists really to a greater degree of acts of everyday courage in the face of a kind of commonly encountered experiences are our way, right? To respond to all of the challenging situations and we're not really discriminating because the feelings that come up, the fear that comes up in these day-to-day situations, it may not be the same degree, but it certainly can be.

[04:43]

And it is something that we pay attention to because if we don't pay attention to it, it turns into anger and it turns into acting in unwholesome ways. A lot of the things we see now are really coming from fear. A lot of actions are coming from fear and people not able to feel that fear and understand that fear. So I wanted to kind of, before I get into the, talking about how faith and doubt help us with fear. I wanted to just be a little bit more granular about the kind of what we mean by courage in a more granular way. So we usually think of physical courage, and we think of extreme physical courage, like firefighters running into the woods.

[05:47]

But what about, What about the physical courage of sitting zazen and feeling extreme pain and discomfort? And yet, you know, taking a break, and then when the clappers clap, going back and facing that physical pain. That takes a kind of couraging. It comes from an underlying desire to practice But it takes couraging to do that. Sometimes it just takes couraging to walk in the door of Berkeley Center. If it's a strange alien place, it doesn't seem very welcoming. Or sometimes courage is joining in. So that physical courage can carry us well.

[06:51]

especially the physical courage of facing old age, sickness and death. That courage of not being able to do the things we could do or suffering with physical disabilities or mental deterioration and still day-to-day doing our life, day-to-day practicing. So then there's social courage. And social courage is also something we don't think about a lot, but it's really familiar to us. It's a kind of social embarrassment or social shame. And it can be shame coming from your own conditioning. So maybe you're, not feeling so good about yourself, and so you're ashamed of how you are, how you look, how you are with other people.

[07:57]

You might be ashamed or fearful of raising your hand and asking a question. You might be afraid you're not going to fit in to a social situation, so you hang back. So facing social courage is being able to enter a social situation with other people. Upright, open, questioning, and letting go of those feelings of insecurity and shame. Another kind of courage is intellectual courage. That's interesting. That's interesting to me. It's the willingness to really engage in challenging ideas to question our thinking, not to try to know everything, being willing to make mistakes. Every time we give a talk, in some case that takes, it takes intellectual courage and it takes a little audacity, you know, what do I know?

[09:08]

We don't really know anything, so how am I going to give a talk about something without knowing where it's going? without knowing how it's gonna go, without knowing if what I say is quote-unquote correct. So it means for us, I would say, really having a big question mark and really listening with an open mind and a heart to a teaching, letting in something that might be challenging to the way we see things, the way we see the world, the way we've gone around understanding our Zen study and practice for a long time. That's the only way we can move on rather than getting stuck in fixed ideas and fixed thinking, mind getting, thinking too much of itself. And basically the slogan would be,

[10:10]

I could be wrong. I could be wrong and that's okay. The courage to have that not be okay. Then there's moral courage. And moral courage is basically being upright. Having a sense of ethics and morality. Looking into what ethics and morality are, like we study the precepts. and study the karma of cause and effect. So, in BZC we have a set of ethics guidelines. Moral courage is really looking at these ethics guidelines and these precepts and recognizing where our shortcomings might be or

[11:13]

where we are not acting in concert with those, in harmony with those precepts. Being able to, also it means being able to stand forward or step forward when something unwholesome or unkind is happening, when we see precepts being broken, being able to step forward, not necessarily with judgment, but with, with an uprightness and an openness and a compassion for each other, but also reminding ourselves, being able to remind ourselves and others that we do have this set of precepts, that they are part of our practice, that we actually depend on them in many ways. And when we don't, When we don't, when we forget, we have situations that everyone's heard about, about abbots who have been alcoholics or sexually addicted or financially dishonest.

[12:32]

And the sanghas had a hard time. And there was a lot of spiritual bypass just that, well, that, that person who knows all of that, who's so wise, who's so great a teacher. Well, they just have this one little thing. And when that happens and when we don't stand up and we don't have the courage to stand up, great harm can happen, as it has done in many situations. So then another one is emotional courage. And emotional courage is just knowing how to be with our feelings. not being afraid of them. One of the greatest defense mechanisms that most of us use is repression or denial. And when you don't have the courage to look at those feelings and feel those feelings, then nothing changes.

[13:34]

Then you have a storehouse consciousness filled with all of these seeds of suffering from all of these emotions, these emotional situations that you haven't actually been with. So when you completely feel all of these feelings, all the anxiety, all the fears, all the uncertainties, all of the emotional stuff that comes up with that, then you kind of move from certainty about how it is to doubt about how it is, starting to question your own picture of things when you start looking deeply into these feelings. The last kind of courage is spiritual courage. And to me, spiritual courage is kind of, do we grapple with the eternal uncertainty?

[14:38]

Do we grapple with our beliefs? Do we enter the scary parts of spiritual practice to find the deep strength that helps us with all the other kinds of uncertainty or needs for courage? For me, in Zen practice, it means being willing to start off in your Zazen practice start off by letting go of fear in zazen and our whole zazen practice is about being able to be with that fear, to be able to go into the darkness of emptiness because in the darkness of emptiness is where wisdom is born. So we have to have that spiritual courage to enter that space. that space of non-duality and dwell, and then return, and dwell, and then return, but looking with curiosity and being strong enough, having that courage to stay with it, knowing, knowing, somehow knowing that it's safe, knowing that we can't be shaken.

[16:01]

So that's a kind of, what should I call it, kind of a rational way of looking. So I wanted to, the other thing about courage is where it is in the body. Mostly, it's interesting because courage really, people, courage really is in the heart. You know, that tells us something. It's not in some place or the mind. It is, comes from a place of compassion and openness and connectedness. That's how true courage is expressed. That's where we find what we need to be able to be courageous. So I have a great story I found about one of our earliest women ancestors, Upalivana.

[17:08]

She was one of Buddha's two chief nuns in his community. And we recite her name when we recite the names of the women ancestors here. So one day, one day Upalavana went out into the wilderness and she wasn't wearing her priest robes. In one story, in one version of this, she was wearing a flower blouse. I'm not sure how anybody got that, but it's interesting because she's in the wilderness by herself. And Mara attempted to break her concentration. Mara appears and tells her she should be afraid of rogues as a beautiful woman sitting in the wilderness. Upalavana, having understood this is Mara, the evil one, replied in verse, though a hundred thousand rogues just like you might come here.

[18:28]

I stir not a hair. I feel no terror. Even alone, Mara, I don't fear you. I can make myself disappear, or I can enter inside your belly. I can stand between your eyebrows, yet you don't catch a glimpse of me. I am master of my own mind. The bases of power are well-developed. I am freed from every bondage. Therefore, I don't fear you, friend." And then Mara, the evil one, realizing that Upalivana knows her, becomes sad and disappointed and disappears. So this sounds like Buddha under the Bodhi tree with Mara appearing and tempting with all sorts of things. But Mara is kind of a stand-in for our own mind, the Maras of our mind, the fears, the anxieties, the uncertainties.

[19:31]

So one could imagine going out into the wilderness by yourself and meditating and fear arising, fear taking over. There's another story I thought I liked. This is a story about a monk, a Chinese monk, Buko Kokushi, who was an immigrant from China to Japan at a time when, and when he was in, but when he was in China, there were great wars and militias. And, and the Yuan soldiers were going around attacking temples. Now this was in Japan that they were going around attacking temples. And mostly what was happening was all the other priests and monks were fleeing to safety.

[20:35]

They wouldn't stay in their temples. But Buko stayed in his temple. And one day, the soldiers arrived. And he was sitting, meditating when they arrived. And the soldier came up and pulled out his sword. And Buko just sat there. And he recited this. The five skandhas are empty. There is no ground on which to put a stick. How happy it is to find the subject and object empty. But nothing compares with this discovery. Great rarity is the giant sword of Yuan. It is just as if the spring wind is cut off in a flash of lightning. And as in the story with Mara, the soldier with the sword was completely emotionally or psychologically disarmed and physically put down his sword and he became a follower of Buko.

[21:45]

So in these stories, one of which is more of a psychological thing, one of which is maybe you can more think of as physical courage. But they both met these situations with spiritual courage, residing in their beliefs and stood their ground. This is how it is. I'm solid in my practice. Nothing can shake me. So in some teaching of courage or discussion of courage. Courage is interwoven with the three essentials of Zen practice. Great faith, great doubt, and great determination. I don't have time to talk about all of those today.

[22:52]

I probably can get through great faith and great doubt, so I'll call this part one. And then later on when I have another opportunity, I'll talk about great determination. But since I love faith, I'll start with great faith. Because these essential practices are what undergird our courage. So when I talked about faith last time, as I said, I talked about it as a verb. Some of the Zen teaching is that it's trust in the three treasures. I think of it more as practicing the three treasures. Practicing with the teacher. Or we say the Buddha, but the teacher. Trust and trusting is also a verb.

[23:58]

So practicing with a teacher, trust in the Dharma that we study, trust in the Sangha as a container in support of our practice. So great faith believes that without doubt, without doubt, we're all awake, we're all able to awaken, we all have an awakened part of ourselves already, which is there. We are already Buddha. Developing that comes from practicing. Practicing with the three treasures. And the way that it happens is that we just keep at it. I was thinking about you know, when Blake said you started practicing in 1989, that was very humbling because it just seems like I'm still practicing and maybe there's a difference and maybe there's not.

[25:15]

But I entered and I just kept on with practicing the Three Treasures. consistently. The thing that changes over time is the consistency. A lot of us, a lot of I, let me just say I, started off with, I would say, dabbling. Going to this lecture here, that lecture there, reading this book here, that book there, talking to different teachers, exploring. I learned to say things about Buddhism. I could say them. I could say what I heard. But it wasn't until there was a commitment made, some internal commitment made, to be consistent and to really enter.

[26:22]

And that entering was a facing and was based on facing, was based on having a sense, seeing little hints, like the ox peeking around for things and the ox herding pictures, peeking around and gradually with consistent sitting, with starting with a small schedule of sitting and then increasing it trying a Sashin and then entering it deep and then making that a regular part of my practice. Deepening that experiential practice, that is great faith. Great faith in doing that regardless of whether it's convenient, regardless of whether you have things in your life that are important, It's integrating practice in such a way that there is this deeply entering and accepting process and approaching fear that really becomes part of your DNA.

[27:42]

It becomes how it is for you. And just making that commitment and doing that consistently That is really what allows us then to really know ourselves and to develop some confidence about ourselves, to notice that we can do these things, to notice that we do have the ability to have at least moments of awakening. to notice that our emotions aren't kicking us around quite so much. So little by little, we throw ourselves into practice, not with really entering, it's just with that sense of bodhicitta, the desire to awaken, the knowing that we can awaken with all beings, the knowing that all of us are supporting each other, all of us.

[28:46]

In a sangha, our teachers are supporting us, our sangha's supporting us. the Dharma that we study is supporting us. That develops the courage muscle. The courage muscle develops because of the faith we have that no matter what, we have the faith in our wholeness. We have the faith in the knowing We don't have a faith really in it, we just experience. It's while we're faithing there, that very ability to hold everything, the good, the bad and the ugly, that is little by little we develop a kind of courageousness of being able to face more and more and hold more and more.

[29:47]

And also we develop an understanding or a deep understanding of our own consciousnesses, how they work, where are we hung up? And only then can we grow. So if we have faith in our awakening, or we're faithing our awakening, we're faithing our oneness, our universal connection, interconnectivity. We're facing that, we're strong enough, to be able to look at a way our consciousness works and just be with that and in that transformation as possible. Kategiri Roshi said about faith, right faith is not waiting until we understand something and then doing it. Faith is to do something even though our consciousness tells us we don't have faith. Even though we don't have right faith, Right faith is to do something because it's exactly the total manifestation of the ultimate nature of existence.

[30:58]

He went on to say, we have to get out of this small well, even if it's only once. This means we develop the courage to be fully vulnerable. He also says, You cannot discriminate between you and faith, you and zazen. Faith means tranquility and complete tranquility is the source of our existence. Faith in Buddhism is to trust perfect tranquility, imperturbability, which is to trust something greater than just our conceptualization. Tranquility comes up just like spring water from the earth. We already have it underground regardless of whether we're conscious of it or not. So that's very inspiring for me anyway. But just talking about faith is one-sided. There is no just faith and tranquility.

[32:06]

We don't discover Our faithing leads us to have courage to face, to be with things. But in order to grow and to have our courage grow stronger so that we get to the point where we can act from courage, we have to face great doubt. So that's the other side of the coin. There's no great faith without great doubt. In fact, Some people say that the root of great faith activates the great ball of doubt. Because as you're opening, as you're making yourself vulnerable, as you're seeing more, then you confront the inconsistencies of yourself. And you question what you think you know.

[33:10]

You find you're wrong so many times, You have a conception of something or yourself or a person or a situation. And then if you're open to being, to explore that and be open to that when it comes up, you start to find great doubt. But there's also great doubt that just comes up about yourself. This is hard. I don't understand it. I never will. You doubt yourself. You doubt whether or not you really can do this. Are you strong enough? Are you smart enough? Do you have enough commitment? Or just feeling that you're caught by your fears. You're feeling doubt in your own ability to be courageous. So it really means

[34:12]

being able to have questions about that and to take it beyond the fear, beyond the uncertainty of doubt. Another kind of analogy that's used is looking bravely at ourselves, cracking open the nut of self. Sometimes we talk about peeling away the layers of our ego. That's tough, that's tough job. That's scary, that can be scary. How do we do that? How do we do that? Is it dramatic? Do we have to courage our way through it because it's gonna be dramatic? Or is it just using mindfulness and just noticing? And often just noticing and entering in and being with.

[35:14]

Things dissolve. They just don't have the power anymore. Just by stepping forward, looking it in the eye, looking at that doubt and fear in the eye, letting that doubt and fear come in, welcoming that doubt and fear as a natural part of our humanity. Hi, doubt and fear, you're back again. Being one with it. letting it be one rather than shoved into some corner of your storehouse consciousness and not wanting to look at it. There's a quote there apparently not only Buddhists but Christian meditators and entering contemplation practice have some of the same experiences. There's a quote by St.

[36:16]

Teresa of Avila once, and it is of great importance when we begin to practice contemplation not to let ourselves be frightened by our own thoughts. No matter what they are, they are our thoughts. They are our minds, which means they are us. We cannot deal with them as long as we refuse to acknowledge them. Can we question them? And are we ready to give up everything we know? It makes me think of Uchiyama Roshi's opening the hand of thought. You know, I always think of myself when I, one of the characteristic, family characteristic in our family is when you have anxiety, you squeeze your hands together, you know, and you find all of a sudden, you don't even know you're doing it. That, so, a physical feeling of that tightness, getting in touch with your body and how the body is responding.

[37:19]

Something's off, I don't understand what's off. That understanding, having this image of opening the hand of thought was really very inspiring for me. I literally practice opening my hands. And that literal action of opening my hands, you could say that's couraging, right? That's couraging. I hold my hands tight together from when I was very young to be secure somehow if I held on to myself in some way. So opening the hands and letting it in, opening, widening the mind, opening the mind wider and wider until it contains everything. And for me, the actual act of opening my hands, as some people might hold that protectiveness somewhere else in their body, tight shoulders or a tight neck or something like that.

[38:29]

And then you just, that's why we go to massage, right? We find our tense spots and using those as a guide and being with those, being in your body, being completely in your body and sensing, sensing that fear, sensing that denial, that aversion to being with whatever you're being with. So this, I wanna just distinguish that when I'm talking about doubt, it isn't intellectual doubt. That's kind of, it's not that we, most of us don't mind learning something new or having questions about a quote unquote mental construction or mental formation.

[39:31]

It's when we incorporate something into who we are and make it part of ourself, that's when That's when we get threatened. We get threatened from what is really part of who we are, our worldview. Someone is breaking up our world or saying something to me that makes me feel uncertain or uncomfortable. So practicing with this, being with it, It is encouraging. I also found it interesting. I just love this because it's so Rinzai. So in a Rinzai commentary by E.K. Osho on the first case of the gateless gate, he says, concentrate your whole self with its 360 bones and 84,000 pores into mood.

[40:33]

making your whole body a solid lump of doubt. Keep digging in it day and night without pause. Don't mistake it for nothingness, being or non-being. It must be like a red hot iron ball that you swallowed, which you will try to vomit out but can't. You must extinguish all the thoughts and feelings that you have cherished until the present. After a period of such efforts, moo will bear fruit. And inside and out, you will naturally become one. You will become like a dumb man who has a bad dream. You will know yourself and for yourself only. Then the understanding will suddenly break open, astonish the heavens and shake the earth." Well, you know, when I read that, I actually did think about going to Tassajara and sitting Tangario. When you go to Tassajara for the first time, You have to spend five days in the Zendo with nothing going, nothing, no talks, no work period.

[41:44]

You can have meals, but basically you start at 4.30 in the morning and you finish at nine at night, something like that. And you're just there for five days. And it seems like you experience every bone and every pore And all the things, you get tired, more and more tired, and all of these visions come, and all of these fears come, and all of these emotions. Mara visits you regularly. And somehow, you need a lot of faith and a lot of courage to get through that. Not everybody does. There are usually a couple people in a practice period that leave really early, right? Right in the middle of that, that's just more than they can take. But it takes that, it takes faithing and courage. And that's the courage we're talking about. So I wanted to end by reading a poem that I wrote.

[42:55]

And I really can't even believe that I wrote it in 1992. I just was really like, Time, what happened to it? And it was, I had been having, experiencing in Zazen, a sense of falling. The first Sashin I ever did was with Yvonne Rand and Blanche Hartman, both of whom are dead now, and Yvonne just died recently. It was a woman's Sashin. I sat there and I literally felt like I was dying. I was falling, I felt nauseous. I thought, I'm never gonna get through this session. And I went to talk to Yvonne and she said, oh yeah, that's right, that happens sometimes. So, but it didn't go away.

[43:56]

I used to sit in the morning Every morning when I couldn't go to, when I had my kids and had a hard time getting to morning saza, and I'd sit every morning at home. And I would feel that, that not all the time, not every time I sat or I never would have made it, but I'd feel it. And then one morning something happened. So that's what this poem is. It's, I called it another, I really found it. It wasn't, I couldn't open it in word. because it, so I had to open it in text edit because it was so old. So I remembered it, but I clearly hadn't looked at it for a long time. So another visit to the Green Dragon's Cave, it's called. I am trapped as in an elevator descending into the darkness within the confines of this cage. I'm powerless to alter the course. Stony, moist glistening walls surround me.

[45:00]

Terror grips my heart. I descend deeper and deeper in an inexorable progression. I'm completely alone in this, no other way. Tears begin to flow, more sadness than fear. Another pilgrimage into the green dragon's cave. Is it better to live but one day in the sun or to dwell in eternal moonlight? Enveloped in darkness, the downward movement ceases. No longer caged, I drift into a beckoning warmth. A vision of a female figure hovering just above the water in flowing robes, the essence of tranquility and bliss. Is the choice to remain here to dwell in the cave in quiet meditation, weightless, afloat and float in the colorless sea, or to choose to come alive again with renewed awareness, face the suffering I've died to avoid. I was pretty surprised by that.

[46:03]

But it just fits going through a great doubt and going through a great doubt of feeling you're going to die. You're just losing it and then somehow staying with it. So just the last thing I'm just going to say is, so practicing the great doubt requires we step forward in the face of our fears and dwell in the reality of the challenges. Dogen says, one who does not step forward cannot accept the Buddhist teaching. To step forward, we have to let go of ego and fixed ideas. We have to courageously leave home, which means the comfort of a fixed self and all that we carry with it. We have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable. So, questions and I'm happy to hear your experiences of great faith or great doubt or any questions.

[47:05]

Please everybody feel free and don't let your lack of social, summon up your social courage. Zanga, I invite you to raise your virtual hand. You can also type a question in the chat. Please put the word question and then type the question. I'll try to get to you. I'd first like to call upon Peter Overton to lower his blue hand and ask a question. He's not unmiked. Peter, can you unmike yourself? Yes.

[48:06]

I'm going to figure out the blue hand thing later. Yeah, don't worry about that. Thank you very much for speaking about that and showing us all the ways in which courage is necessary in the face of just everyday life. I thought it struck me from the beginning of your talk that the word courage, I believe I'm correct about this, but the word courage, its meaning points to the heart. Yeah. So, I've been really thinking about how showing up wholeheartedly, with an open heart, is actually the doorway to being able to act with courage. and openness and trust that you can adapt to whatever shows up, or adapt and respond to whatever shows up. But that piece of bringing your whole heart to the situation in front of you, and so on, is really crucial.

[49:14]

So thank you very much for that. I'd be happy to hear your comments. Well, yes. I mean, it was interesting to me. As I said, it was interesting to me because when, you know, I was thinking about the tin man who needed a heart or whatever, but the openness has to come from that place where compassion dwells. And we have to really get that in order to be skillful in responding. I think we have to be open to the interconnectedness of people and the conditioned way that people act and be sympathetic with that and empathetic with that. And when we act from the heart, there's, you know, we can act courageously, but with a certain, with it doesn't feel like a harsh response, feels like a,

[50:27]

loving response. And at least in my worldview, angry responses or angry courage doesn't always do it. And certainly from a Zen perspective, the kinds of things we have to encounter ourselves, that open-hearted way of coming forward, stepping forward in the face of various kinds of challenges. is really critical. Thank you. I'd like to invite Kelsey Byrne-Cherland to ask a question. Hi, Jerry. Thanks so much for your talk. noticed while you were talking that I was feeling very encouraged. And I was just curious if you had any thoughts or kind of dug into sort of the like transitional properties of courage and by seeing others courage, how we sort of feel encouraged ourselves.

[51:42]

Yeah, absolutely. I think that's that's like we're talking about faith in the sangha. you know, great faith in the Sangha. That is possible, you know, that you see other people, and you're with other people, and you're supported by them, and you see change in people. You know, you get to know people very intimately in the Sangha, especially when we sit in the Zen Dojo day after day and do the long sessions. You don't even have to ask, you don't have to ask them too much. You start to get to know them, and see everybody, and watch everybody develop even just within a session, but also just going forward in life. So you start to see people have that strength, that spiritual strength, spiritual courage, particularly, but it manifests in the other forms of courage too.

[52:47]

But yeah, it's very inspirational and supportive to have people around you who are in the same container. I always think of us as in Noah's Ark together, somehow surviving the waves and not knowing where we're gonna land, but we can do it with each other's support. I'd like to invite Heiko to unmute himself and ask a question. Thank you. Jerry, I wanted to revisit the very last line of your poem. It seemed to have more meaning in my mind. And the line, if you could look at it, said something like, the things I've died to avoid or died trying to avoid. And it seemed to me to encapsulate the freedom that we get by encouraging into the things that we avoid.

[53:50]

But if you could read that again, please. I'll just read the last the last verse, I guess, is is the choice to remain here, to dwell in the temple cave and quiet meditation, weightless and afloat in the colorless sea, or to choose to come alive again with renewed awareness, face the suffering I have died to avoid. Right. So in avoiding suffering, it suggests that we die. Uh, and if that was your point, uh, and even if it wasn't, uh, yes, I wanted to, yeah. So if you would talk a little bit more about what dying and, uh, how we save ourselves in that moment. Well, we don't, we don't save ourselves because when we die, it means like we give up, we give up, um, ourselves. We become selfless and that feeling of selfless feels like dying.

[54:56]

Everything we hold on to, every way we identify, we identify our self and our self is gone. When we experience the walls and the barriers falling away and it feels It physically feels like dying or dropping down into nothingness. And it's that state of being in emptiness without a self, with a self that's just part of the big picture, but not the self that we hold on to. It's not the ego self at all. That's a powerful thing. And that really is a death. It's a kind of death. Yeah. So that's dying to life. And I was, uh, struck by dying to the death of my own mind covering where the mind covering is a death of its own.

[55:59]

And the dropping of that is a life of its own. So we've gone through, uh, And I suppose we're still dropping. Thank you, Jerry. Exactly. I mean, it's funny, as I said, it's as real to me now as it was then. Because I think Rev Anderson said, I said this before, he used to say that science tells us that we only are aware of 5% of our subconscious. And if you practice for 30 years, at the time he was practicing, I think I have, now I understand 7.5% of my subconscious. So there's all kinds of stuff there that's us that we may not even see, that we don't have a clue about. So the surprises and the letting go is endless. As our last question, a quick question and a quick answer, Karen Sonheiman, I invite you to unmute yourself and ask a quick question.

[57:02]

Hi. I'm not Karen Sonheiman. I'm Nancy Su, but I'm with Karen at the moment. Thank you so much, Jerry. You've actually encouraged and are encouraging me to ask a question. I'm usually one who doesn't. Mara usually visits me regularly. of not wanting to be so vulnerable. But I really took in what you said so deeply that I decided to raise my hand. So thank you. Well, great. Yeah. The question I have is about, in addition to couraging and facing, how does right effort also fit into what you've been speaking about today? Well, it speaks it very much so. And in fact, that's like the next talk that I said, I didn't have time for today, but yes, it very much, it comes out of there. You know, how do we, when we kind of, when we have a deeper understanding and we're acting in a more interconnected way with the ego, not leap, not dragging us around and the, and,

[58:11]

And an openness, that openness to see possibility. So to find a more appropriate response, a more skillful response, because we have more information. We have a deeper understanding. So the action that's necessary comes out of, first of all, the immersion in not knowing. And then the openness of the field, of possibility. So the field opens and then we kind of intuitively start to be able to respond in that way. So a definitely right effort is just born of a greater wisdom, the wisdom that comes from this effort. And does that also include like dropping the self in that moment?

[59:15]

Absolutely. Well, yes. I mean, you know, if you're doing selfless effort and that's, if it feels selfless, no, you're coming from a place that is including everything and everyone. And so your separate separateness is not what's, what's leading you. It's your interconnectedness is leading you. And that actually feels very good. to be able to do it. Blake, there are a couple of people who are raising their hands that don't always raise their hands, and I would like to give them a chance if that's okay. That is okay with me. Yes, let's do that. Okay. Thank you, the voice from nowhere. So, Philip, Sherard, please unmute yourself and ask a question. Does that work?

[60:17]

Am I unmuted? Okay. Jerry, I want to thank you very much for your talk. I tried to just talk about, in the dokasan yesterday with Soljin about self-doubt, and he tried to get me to address it in terms of understanding how much I, quote unquote, have accomplished in my life and lifetime. Zen and Zen practice, but it really didn't address it. And what you've addressed in terms of finding courage, I find very, very helpful. And it's another tool that I can use in terms of understanding myself. The transition from delusion and self-doubt, I'm trying to navigate that.

[61:22]

Yeah. It's difficult. I can't really get a handle on it, but you've given me some tools and I thank you very much for your talk. Okay. Well, I just tell you, I'm glad that you feel that you have some things to do, but really getting used to But the real challenge is just really, really being with that, really, really being with that. As a doctor, you are trained, you were trained to know everything. If patients ask you, you're not going to say, gee, I don't know, it's kind of empty. And I really don't know. There's no real answer. No, you couldn't live like that. So you're trained yourself to be competent, to appear competent, to come forward as competent, and to have a belief in yourself.

[62:23]

That's part of the training. So what Zen is, I always say my training was to learn not to be a dog. In certain ways, you have to unlearn that. You're not the authority. You're not the one who knows. And that's a humbling thing, and it's also essential. So I'm really glad you're there right now. It's a great place to be. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Simba. Gary, good morning. Hi. Thank you for your talk. For me, it was very relevant and timely. One thing that I've been struggling with myself, with my practice, has been with accepting. And what I mean by accepting is when I'm sitting, whether I'm having pain in my legs, or even if it's with concentration, has been just to accept things as they are.

[63:31]

And so your talk today was actually relevant because this morning I woke up reflecting on some of the challenges I've been facing with my practice. And one of the thoughts that I had in my head is I realized that today I was one day older in terms of my physical body, and also my thoughts were also one day older. However, looking on the other side, you also realize that that oldness or that death that I experienced with my body or my thoughts or my spirit, there was also a birth of new thoughts as well as a birth of new cells as well as my spirit. So it helped me sort of see the other side of the coin in terms of understanding the life and death. And for me, my challenge has been accepting death or accepting the daily death or the daily that I face.

[64:33]

I struggle a lot because I try to seek and crave life or rebirth. So, your talk was very, very relevant and helpful in helping me understand much more clearly why it's important to accept death as well as life as well. So, I'd love if you could please share a little bit about that acceptance of death, I know you alluded to it a little bit earlier, or just to shed a little bit of light around that. Yeah, I think we think about the quote-unquote great death, right, the final death, and we don't know what happens after that. But death comes, in a way, death comes over and over, right? That's what you're finding. that we are a certain being, but it's not a fixed being. So that being that we were, maybe you can remember it, but now being open and questioning and growing because of the courage to face all of that, you actually grow into another being.

[65:46]

And then that being, runs into a wall. So it's not a one-time, it's this feeling of, it's a feeling of, and permanence is basically birth and death in every moment, right? So we say that, but how do we live it? How do we live it day to day? How do we live it month to month? And that's what you're talking about, grappling with. And the thing to do with that is courage it. Just, okay, this is what's going on today. I'm feeling like that person that I was is being challenged. That person I thought I was. but it was just delusion.

[66:50]

So now I see something else. That's just, it's the way that we practice going forward with our lives. We birth and death all the time.

[67:06]

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