Practice Like A Fool, Like An Idiot, Like A Fool On The Hill

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so i'm actually asking your help today because on this wonderful day here which feels like a new beginning of spring i have been troubled by an ear worm for
for about almost a year and a half an hour i've been trying to get rid of it all that time and for those of you who'd for those of you who don't know what an ear worm is it's a song that plays over in your head over and over and of
and i thought i had a disease yeah there's a careful i have to tell you about my fight by fatal disease no no it's an ear worm and i just can't get rid of it and
so i thought and and i'm so
that you worm is the fool on the hill by the beatles
so i'm gonna ask you to join joinery and singing that and maybe buy some powerful force
no i was the was thinking that the force of our energy could just dispel the song
and i'm assuming there are a lot of people who were alive in the sixties this was the song from nineteen sixty seven part of the magical mystery tour album for those of you who don't remember so maybe you could you could help me by singing it with me judy where are you in allan people who who
you are musically inclined please i help me
wisdom helps duty want to keep the rhythm
day after
alone on a hill and then with the foolish friend is tough thing for perfectly still
he
to nail him they can see that he's just a fool and he never give an answer but the fool on the hill says the sun going down and the eyes in his head
see the world down
well on his way head in the cloud
and of a thousand voices talking perfectly love
but nobody ever hears him or the sound he appears to make and he never shows his feelings but the fool on the hill sees the sun going down and the eyes
in his head see the world spinning round the and nobody seems to like it vacancy
want to do and he never shows his feelings but a fool on the hill says the sun going down and the
in his head see the world spinning round
and he never look listen listen to them
huh
in the highway and mesolithic and he where are we going judy
our i went anyway and the fool on the hill says this have go in there and the eyes it is head see the world spinning around
so so when i when i had this earworm as as at machine as a ah ha to the end of seven days you know we have to ask a question so i asked sojourn
what is the fool or who is a full what is a fool
our who is a fool and sojourns didn't say anything i made mistakes in any time you ask cause sojourn a question that begins with who or what he says that's a great quote he says the that's that's good or that's it yes that's an answer as then i said what kind of fool am i
alan pointed out that was the song also
and so didn't answer
and i said so you're not going to answer and he said that was very good
so he didn't help me
so i like i'd decided to i wondered about the song a so i checked it out and turns out that it's a it's a real experience that paul mccartney and a friend of his head they were over they were hiked they were taking a walk and a hill above london and they were getting to the
the ocean with a beautiful vista and all of a sudden they turned to their around and there was a man there with of a dazed look kind of a half smile staring ahead and they they were not there were no big trees or buildings this man just seem to appear out of nowhere and then they states they turned around them
walked a little bit more and then they look back and he was gone and there was no evidence of him anywhere now course this was the late sixties when the beatles were into psychedelics and they were also visiting india a lot and so ah
the so you know who knows what condition they were in when they actually had this experience but it was two people had the same vision
ah so a paul mccartney felt that it was kind of a spiritual experience and he can he said he thinks that he was writing about somebody like the maha rishi that they visited in india because the maharaja would giggle and act silly and people called him a fool even though
old and they didn't understand his wisdom so that's that's how that happened so i started thinking about it some more
and i thought of course immediately of the
song of the precious ah mira samadhi or the hook ios am i
that was a written by toshio on toes on yokai or dongsheng the angie in the ninety ninth century and he was the
as many of you know of and the golden age of zen he will he wrote that data that song and he was the father of the chan school and then which then was the zen tradition so and his
and the last two lines of the junior or samadi are like
with practice hidden from function seacrest secretly like a fool like an idiot
just to do this continually is called the host within the host
and i i thought maybe idiot and fool weren't what he meant so i looked at another translation
and the other translation was by cause and it says the the only a change though some of the verbiage is different it's as practice inwardly functioning and secret playing the fool seemingly stupid
if you can persist only persist in this way you will see the lord within the lord
so
obviously
full was used
as a kind of metaphor maybe
but i got very interested in looking at what fool and idiot meant because in this culture it's a pejorative thing you're stupid you're a fool you're an idiot
oh and that cultural overtone for me you know i wonder how that hits and it has a lot of people at first
in that way and because it because it's so so much part of the language and the culture and history so i was kind of interested in that and i i kind of looked it up and found out that the the etymologies is from greek greek
and i think it's a or tests which which means somebody who doesn't vote
apparently there was a lot of judgment about people who don't vote in greece
that didn't help me very much but of at up but as it as the as the as the word started to change from ah that it took from ah the greek to the romans to the
french
it started taking on a different that different term
so it started to become of
synonymous with an ignorant person it meant it was originally meant an ignorant person who doesn't vote but then it started becoming synonymous with an ignorant person
but it still then evolves more
ah in interesting ways the that may be irrelevant it's it evolved into
ah
village idiot
and village idiot with somebody originally who was mentally ill or mentally challenged
but in many of the societies and the cultures of
the early period in europe and and england that person actually was not shunned that person was actually incorporated into cup into community and became somebody who did stuff you know hung around and was accepted and they just had their place and sometimes they were so
special so that was that was actually interesting and then that and then the term
there was another term that evolved through this
journey through cultures
and people's usage called idiot savant
which is in a wise idiot knowing it knowing idiot
and that is where the the the evolution at least in the institutions that were from ought not the attrition but that cultures that were from started happening where
where they were there was this ambiguity about what idiot informant
so it had a much more complex meaning
i'm out like some people who have artistic the autistic disease for example or some other mental health conditions are actually quite smart very bright but they appear to be
not so because of the way they act some other aspect of their personality some people with mental illness who are very depressed might seem like they don't know where they don't are not smart so it is sort of like the hidden nature of this whole idiot fool thing that we could
take for granted the superficial
and label people and have negative thoughts about them
but underneath if you look if you're open to actually seeing somebody who is different than you might actually learn that they are not in fact what you think and in fact they're smart right and this this actually hit home for me when i was kind of
ah of thinking about this because i have a son who have had severe learning challenges and we didn't really know until he was in the second grade
did he had
i want to use the terms right
a bunch of labels about his worrying
because he would
but he couldn't read but initially he fooled everybody because he memorized everything he heard
so he would just memorize what books you read him and then the book's got more complicated could memorize that anymore or he'd watched a television show about something that scientific and memorize all the things that about it so he's very to he was actually had was very good with memory and remembering and using his hearing but he was he was considered
when school and then finally
they agreed to have test him and he was tested and he had particular or learning problems and then we had something to work with in terms of
of his learning how to read were learning how to use different techniques for learning for learning and and exposing him to that but he was released i mean it was really smart at of and he could hear anything once and he would remember it
ah so but he he's he had a whole life full of shame because of being in the having to go to the learning center everyday that was that was a shameful thing not being
whatever but he would have that he was just amazing he could put anything together you know if you he for a very early on if anything broke he could figure out how to put it together if you've got something new that headpieces secret he could fit figure out how to put the pieces together so there just that's again a situation
where and how many people you know get labeled
somehow intellectually inferior and school and and or and kind of slip by and then
some people remain illiterate and get through school because nobody noticed and nobody you know they got label there's something and somehow dismissed as dumb
so that that whole idea of the idiot full thing being some kind of covering
on the other way the and culturally
this is this has been used was is in it that the idiot became
a court a court jester figure kind of us the and that's another thing i noticed with my son actually he use humor to deflect his feelings of inadequacy but the court jester with somebody who actually played the fool
and they were actually very active politically in the court in the courts in europe and stuff and they they actually often have played a role in kind of checking out what was happening with the king and telling the king things the king didn't didn't want to hear and they were actually quite wise but they
again put on a covering
oh a covering to to to pretend to be something in order to get something so it's very interesting to me all this sounds at all this gonna cultural history and in japan
the japanese priests attic actually coined a were back of a fool also
and that was that that was a pejorative a pejorative kind of
kind of term
so
the other end the other person who
who talked a lot who who i think it was interesting is
out of all of this when call it carl young the psychoanalyst so
i was developing his archetypes one of the arc types ah was trickster
and that included clown idiot for
and when he talked about it he talked about
the a trickster he talked about an old chinese story which which people in zen actually tell about it that from an from a novel for the journey a journey the west when a monk was was traveling
traveling from ah
china to india to get the sutras the mahayana sutras to bring back so they could be translated he needed some people to help him one of the people was a pig who was the art type for an idiot
who was totally live by his senses
i was deceiving deceptive sexually inappropriate and whatever and he had this kind of ah
fools you know hero's journey type experience in turn and manifested then as transformed into a man through the through the association with this noble task and his association with the monk
so so this this is the trickster this trickster fool
is somebody who
has this can more from ah somebody who is initially like the definition of fool the negative definition of fool to a wise
to a wise person who can be a monk
so there's this possibility to to transform the fool and the idiot or are also transformative
beings
so so that all the simplistic of ways of looking at them so i've i've just found this
i'm quite interesting as i'm working my way through getting letting go with a fool in the idiot and my responses to fool an idiot as
somehow pejorative or why in the world did he did they say that and and so forth i realized i had a lot of assumptions
and had some underlying deep resistance
or trouble with it that's why i was holding onto
holding onto this as a as a as a something that i couldn't i shall be released
so
so so so but it's so it seems that
but it seems that by the time them towson got hold of it
he was of he was really
we using it to actually challenge people with the words
to do what he wanted them to do which was to let go of
names and judgments
he wanted them to to to
no embraced fool and the idiot rather than push away is a fool and the idiot
i'm so so
so that so he kind of
he kind of use the full and the idiot as a way to talk about how do we
how do we at how do we cultivate emptiness
and how do we cultivate this practice
even though it's kind of counterintuitive
so i am
as so suzuki roshi and then my beginner's mind a says
when you study buddhism you should have a a general cleaning of your mind
so you have to clean yourself out of your attitudes
clean air act clean away your attitudes of would everything is
i'm particularly your judgments and your preconceived notions
and from not always so realize they don't i didn't bring my glasses but i think i can see if i just put it over here
i am i be okay but i can if you have my can see if they work i had cataract surgery so i i don't use glasses that much anymore i forget that i need them at at all
ah so
so in not always so suzuki roshi says and letters from emptiness all descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness yet we attached to the descriptions and think that their reality this is a mistake
safe of a civil works i can see but it's nice to see better
ah
many buddhists make this mistake that is why they were attached to written scriptures or buddha's words they thought his words with the most valuable thing and that the way to preserve the teaching was to remember what the buddha said but what buddha said was just a letter from the world of a
emptiness just a suggestion or some help from him this is the nature of buddha's words to understand the were buddha's words we cannot rely on our usual thinking if you want to read a letter from the buddha's world it is necessary to understand the buddhist world to empty water from a cup does not mean to drink it up to him
he means to have direct pure experience without relying on form or color of being so our experiences empty of our preconceived ideas are ideas have been our idea of big or small round or square round or square big or small don't belong to reality
the but are simply ideas that that is to empty what that is to empty water we have no idea of water even though we see it
when we have analyze our experience we have ideas of time and space big or small heavy or light a scale of some kind of necessary and with various scales and our mind we experienced things
when we empty we empty ideas a big or small good or bad from our experience because the measurement that we use usually is based on self when we say good or bad the scale as yourself the scale is not always the same each person has a scale that is different so i don't say that the scale is always wrong
but we are liable to use our selfish scale when we analyze or when we have an idea about something

so when i when i think about letting go of ideas as the pediatrician i was a pediatrician and a mother
when i think about this i always i always try for myself to remember how how children experienced things
it was so always fascinating to me to watch children experience like a fool like an idiot they they are they have no idea what something is when they encounter it so they kick it they grab it they eat it
they shove it in an orifice they they do all kinds of things that don't make any sense because they just don't know what it is and they learn what it is by the experience unless we as parents i see the solo time paris treaded
over educate without giving their kid a chance to like discover
you know you can eat things that are not edible
there aren't poison and then learn that they taste bad you know whatever but
but it's it's really to me watching them explore and the wonder that they have i'll never get over watching my son
makes
footprints with water and he just like he was playing with a hose and then all of a sudden he realized his feet the his favorite he started walking and then he noticed these footprints and it was as magical thing for him and then you went back and he like he just did it like for fifteen minutes is making
footprints and he discovered i was a wonderful discover he had joy really joy
in this simple thing that we don't even notice
so this kind of openness and joy and letting go of what you know why do a stupid thing like that has no purpose
it's not to gain anything it's just a direct experience of foot in water foot on pavement
well you know
and we miss i think i think we
you know we the minute we start naming and having opinion ah
you know we start losing that we no longer just pick up something to eat and wonder you know i put we can do it i've i've been to these be in the old days these beings were that you would have out your eyes covered and people would give you things to eat that was a more of an exercise in trust than anything else but
but they were you know things would taste really great and then you'd have to say what it was what you are reading
and you know you've discovered the tastes of things and you've actually tasted them
you know how will you eat something in the the first piece is really great and then pretty soon by the by the tenth bite you're just eating could just started eating that's why we too much cake because we you know the first couple of bites are just great but by the end we're actually not tasting it were remembering the taste that we had so anyway
and then we this that's that's my dietary advice
so in the in the in the junior samadi it says like a newborn child
it is fully endowed with pfizer's as aspects no got no got going no coming know arising know abiding bama valois is anything said or not
in the end it says nothing the words are not yet right
so yeah the words are not right that and the words are never right there just pointing and whatever so when a kid says all these noises and points to things they know what it means
we just don't but we make 'em uses a different word
our word and then they start naming and they're they're gone
so him
i i was been one thing that we've been reading a book called the heartwood of the bodhi tree by booted us at biko the buddhist teachings on voidness
which i've really been enjoying i'd never read it actually as something sojourn like a book sojourn likes and recommends to people and and kennedy gave me gave it to me because i told her i'd never read it
so in that book
ah it's really all about empty this ah and but but but i thought was interesting the way that he ah
that he talked about it
alum
in the sense that he says maybe i'll maybe a reader from the book

ah
the first is a characteristic of or fundamental nature of all things physical and mental the first meeting points out that all words all things are void of self and that voidness is inherent in all things even the study of the dharma
and nirvana even a speck of dust
the second application points to the quality of mind when is attached to anything when our mind is not as not attaching it is called voidness so he took the he talks to it basically
basically the idea that
of emptiness is out there all the time
all thing all dharmas are preaching emptiness every time all the time but we know what we miss it because so so so the so that our job is really to cultivate a mind that open and free and can actually experience it even though we say everything is empty even though we read
it and we intellectually understand it we miss it
we we visit unless that mind the unless we really are transforming our consciousness so that when we take things in like a fool or an idiot
we actually are cultivating being a fool and or an idiot because the fall and or an idiot is like a child hood it's experiences things a new or gives things that chance i would say give everybody a chance
give things a chance to be what they are give things that chance to manifest authentically rather than nail and then labeling and judging and naming right away and that is really hard that has to be a conscious effort i has to be a continuous effort
so i had
i had a of interesting i have several
personal kind of ways derived that i got this in different ways chris i forget it all the time so i have to keep getting it
but i i used to go to green gulch
for practice intensive
and i actually had lots of experiences there because i was it was it was always new to me and i was leaving my home temple going away for three weeks i knew this for quite a few years and it was would be different people different settings so i was primed to be open resident close but one
year i had just a terrible experience i thought that all these people
we're stupid and annoying and
the irritated me they were showing off they were good i mean ahead so many judgments and i had just a terrible three week period
and i i thought check some of these people were there before and ever noticed how awful they were
and
so i i had a chance to reflect on that after i left and i thought hmmm
who who who you when you were there
and i've been going through somewhat of a you know challenging personal period and some difficulties and i thought i wonder you know so the next year's i was thinking i would never go again next year i said okay i'm going with new with new eyes i'm going to go there and i
i'm going to meet each person try to actually seek out the people who bothered me the most you don't have dinner with them and have a conversation with them or walk with him and i did and it was this amazing there were all these nice people
it was really quite the oh quite amazing to practice that way
i you know it it just i said all of us what they mean
it was it was really amazing because we are so many perceval we're all so many beings right we we all are arising differently all the time i mean i can be you know
lots of different beings
some of them are nice said really great at some of them are not so pleasant know or irritable or selfish or whatever so depending on what day or what circumstance you could meet be in and have a very nice interaction and another in if you if you make if you meet me and another situation you might not thing
that's a great
but that none of none of those are me you know i'm just as me changing person all the time and and arising and in various ways and you and why why not give me a chance why don't i give you a chance you know rather than we get pigeon
cold and we tend to do that
and know that think about a fool or an idiot just meet you for the first time all the time
that's not a bad idea
i remember that was another one of these be and things they went to that where we had to look at each other
directly and stare in each other's eyes and i don't know if any have you done this exercise and then you you you try to go all the people who are live a when these things used to it and then you you were dumb you would you'd have to be near they would have to you have to mirror
the other person's movements and something magical happened when you did that
the you weren't one person
so these these are not abstract is what i'm saying this is practicing like a fool like an idiot is not some abstract thing it's the thing that actually you can actually practice at least least for me i mean i tried to take it to a way that make that i can practice it
and and
yeah so
another another thing i remembered a maybe are many of you here where she sows at one time or another and you have to clean the bathroom for six weeks
and you know i thought i was fine you know saying yes to everything i was seen i've been here for a long time course oh you know i say yes they say yes then think oh i have to clean the bathroom every time there's the opportunity for the next six weeks that was very interesting again because if you
you if you just do it because that's what you're asked to that's what's expected that's just how it is ultimately the judgments start falling away and you pretty soon i was kind of interested in really cleaning the bathrooms well and like okay but no-one's ever claimed that shelf
i'm gonna clean this corner i'm going to really clean it well and it's it just was how it was and it was okay so any a version that i had and i still feel that were made a kind of got rid of that aversion i mean maybe if it was a really dirty bathroom i might still bed feeling but here you know at any rate i don't feel that aversion
anymore it's like okay you clean the bathroom today okay but i did but so i think i think we have lots of opportunities to work through these judgments and be an idiot
an idiot you know somebody who just says yes when the work leader assigned to you something in
i'm sorry john but i know i say i have a back problem but
that's true
but but but we can we can practice with our versions and we can practice with our opinions and our attitudes all the time
andrey and remind ourselves that dumb
that every time we make a judgment were want were walking away from
being present fully present we've got where it were we're making were bit were becoming self referential
we're focusing inside in this bundle here and not really focusing and with a broad lunch debt that we hope to that we aim to that we out to
ah
i
they say there's anything else
there were a couple of other

let me say okay i'm gonna
i wanted to read something i don't know what if how many of you
read this is a favorite used to be a favorite around here a book called cultivating the empty field by master hung sure ah the silent illumination
he talks about the backwards step and the upright cauldron
with the depths clear utterly silent thoroughly eliminate the source empty and spirited vast and bright even though you have lucidly scrutinized your image and no shadow or echo meets it searching through you say that you still have distinguished between the merits of one hundred i
the undertakings when you must take a backward
then you must take a backward step and directly reach the middle of the circle from where light issues forth
outstanding an independent still you must abandon protects from merit carefully discern that naming and genders beings and that these rise and fall with intricacy when you can share yourself when you can manage affairs and you have the pure seal that stamps the ten thousand
and forms traveling the world beating conditions the self joyfully enters somebody in oldham and delusions and accepts his function which is to empty out the self so as not to be full of itself the empty valley receives the clouds the cold stream cleanses the moon
not departing not remaining far behind all changes you can give teachings without attainment or expectation everything everywhere comes back to gold the old and ground not a hair has been shifted bent or raised up despite a hundred ugliness
mrs where thousand stupidities the upright cauldron is naturally bennett beneficent
the inefficient yes
judges jews answers wash out your bowl and drink your tea do not require making arrangements from the beginning they have always been perfectly apparent thoroughly observe each thing with a whole i
thoroughly observing each thing with the whole i is a patch robed monks spontaneous conduct
and
just gonna do this isn't have questions and then has just something that relates to the full on the hill more directly standing solitary like a ditch steep cliff wide open and accessible
spirited and independent clear and bright all this does all this does not slightly involved external conditions such activity is called the single bright occasion which arrives right along with the ten thousand and forms that emerge and are extinguished let everything entirely fall away
yea and put it all together without any extraneous conditions this is referred to as the occasion of solitary glorious selfishness
solitary glorious unselfishness with nappy nice but it can be it can be how it is and
and that's what we're all here practicing like fools staring at walls or day
in the dark coming for long sessions you have to be a fool and entity and to do that
so ah thank you for singing with me and you have questions paco
a fool than
i raise my own
three free spaces whereas i alone have a purpose and quite ways
that speak a little bit about how purpose
references
well gaining purpose gain like gaining idea yeah i want to be
i want i want to get something i wanna know something i want to be something
tape makes us self referential
buddha in the in their heartland part under the bodhi tree the central idea is that
the the greatest spiritual sickness as me and mine so any to anything that self referential and yet we can't be we we you know there are certain into instinctual things we were born with right we have to eat we have to get things we have to be warm we have to to survive right those are our base
basic instincts that we all come in with those basic instincts
and they keep on
recurring but so it's not about totally letting go of them but making them but but being aware of them and working you know being aware of them
and moving it through them
yeah but not holding onto them
luminous heart

it said

expression of

a nice day
wonderful child life
yeah
before
this is now you're open when you when you're full you're totally open for what the opportunities are an interested in open as opposed to
ah just conditioned to be afraid or whatever here
linda
as the foolish
states
about

our
stories tall
cowardice three stories tall

and he says
around with the first floor just
had
that could get you into some trouble
yeah well that was the third floor
i was really
in the true sense and the traditional sense cause we can enjoy it
get some wonder
yeah
yeah
well if some fools we used in that sense where where it's kind of a gesture fool type of thing where ah
it like a comedy
more like a comedy
as opposed to and and a caricature
kind event than a real person
that's for know okay yeah cause i e cause we can get in trouble
wes
judgments if we can get caught on them but yeah judy
two
others
bernie glassman
founded on it
the clowns
supply
seriously
that teaching
you

dusty of scary thing as
the idiot
jesus christ
in both those situations and particularly on video
you too
her name's they go down to a refugee camp
the children there
clowning around
teaching
better foolishness
you
stream industry
the quality of forbearance and also engage
no as we say engage
so i was just wondering
as a foolish

this
not to practice of bearing witness
it also
i think as long i mean to me it's it's so
the bearing witness is the foundation where the place you come from
and and having an end coming from a place of understanding of complete understanding and wonder
and understand the nature of reality than you're making you're using skillful means
you're more likely to use skillful means so the means particular means in particular circumstances
ah might they they might seem funny just like the court jester who was used by a diplomats to you know to to get to the king who was making getting ready to make a very dangerous decision and having the message com au or or something like that the fools
see somebody
doing something but instead of confronting them the skillful means exempted the that the judgment of i need to do something here
not coming with a lot of judgment but coming with
how what is this most skillful thing
and and having you may be a skillful means for saying something that maybe somebody can hear that way which they wouldn't be able to hear some other way
we're singing it
yeah
and
thank you very much
with rice
psychiatry
why
judgments
support
the
judgments descriptions
based on their description
science was
there's an industry out there
this
of
he thought putting people can't concretizing
ah
l
easy
yeah
yeah
yeah

ah vienna jersey
would you read the doctor
yeah
with practice hidden phone function safe secretly like a fool like an idiot
just to do this continuously is called the host within the host
and then the other one was
a practice inwardly functioning and secret playing the fool seemingly of stupid
if you can only persist in this way you will see the lord with my lord
the lord within the lord can
character of a good for five
interesting
the world from one
when everybody's getting conscripted
making such goofy responses to what's going on that he's not sent to the front lines
so instead of being a pastor for to go
hey this
he said that an assistant from the well the officers
what the essential
yeah
it's never really yeah you know like he never says on
do and i think there's that ambiguity
things like you can be doing this in very good ego egoistic old way like i'm gonna throw them
right or you could really be that dumb
but it functions using they'll come as the same camp
so now yeah against go home well if it's not really skillful means if you're just being yourself right i mean it may be
it may be but you know week this this that's a slippery slope i'm just being myself i'm being what i'm i'm i'm living my own truth there's a good one don't know that's another talk
i where we're done now think anybody else has a question they can talk to me outside