Good morning, everyone. Welcome. We are in the middle of a practice period, our first since 2018, and we've been focusing on the Sutra of the Great Awakened Layperson, Vimalakirti, enmeshed in all of the messiness of the world. And, you know, we designated some particular chapters to focus on in the practice period. And I think we've had at least one talk on all of them. And so we can get further into them now. And I'm going to talk today about Chapter 6 in Berman's translation of the Malakirti, The Inconceivable Liberation. I did a talk on this April 9th, but I want to go back over some things and hope to have a discussion. So, yeah, I'll start with some readings from the Malakirti Sutra.

[01:09]

And again, I want to talk today about the inconceivable. and how we practice the inconceivable. So, the bottom of page 50, 50 for anyone following at home, the sutra says that dharma is not an object. And maybe that's enough to say the Dharma is not an object. And our practice is not to be attached or caught by objects. And more than that, not to see any event or expression as an object. So it continues, the Dharma is not an object.

[02:18]

He or she who pursues objects is not interested in the Dharma, in the teaching of awakening, but is interested in objects. The Dharma is without acceptance or rejection. One who holds on to things or lets go of things, is not interested in dharma or practice, but is interested in holding and letting go of objects. A little more. The dharma is not a secure refuge. Those who enjoy a secure refuge are not interested in the dharma, but are interested in secure refuge. The Dharma is without sign. Those whose consciousness pursues signs are not interested in the Dharma, but are interested in signs. So, this is, in some ways, the most important teaching in the Sutra, the most important teaching in Buddhism, that not to hold on to objects,

[03:35]

and actually that there are no such things as objects. We think of things as objects. We think of the world as an object. We tend to think of others as objects. We sometimes think of ourselves as objects. It's built into our language. We think in terms of subject, verb, object, and object. Objects are not objects. So this is one basic teaching of the Malakirti Sutra. So a little more from the Sutra. The Bodhisattva who lives in The inconceivable liberation, which is what this chapter is about, can put the king of mountains, Mount Sumeru, which is so high, so great, so noble, so vast, into a mustard seed.

[04:36]

They can perform this feat without enlarging the mustard seed and without shrinking Mount Sumeru. So our sense of space, our sense of dimensionality, is deeply inculcated in our awareness. And yet, ultimately, there are no objects. To see and understand the putting of the king of mountains, Mount Sumer, into the mustard seed is the discipline of our practice. So, this is Vimalakirti talking to Shariputra, and he says, that is the entrance to the domain of the inconceivable liberation of the bodhisattvas. A little more from the text.

[05:40]

Bodhisattva can pick up with his right hand or maybe you know for those of you left handed you can pick up with your left hand this billion world galactic universe as if it were a potter's wheel and spinning it round throw it beyond universes numerous as the sands in the river Ganges without the living beings therein knowing their motion or its origin, and they can catch it and put it back in its place without the living beings suspecting their coming and going, and yet the whole operation is visible, and is especially visible to those who would be helped or liberated by that. So I want to talk about some words that we commonly use. A bodhisattva in Sanskrit, is an awakening being.

[06:45]

Sattva means being. Bodhi means awakening. And we have this English word, enlightenment, that has penetrated Western Buddhism since, oh, I would say since the Protestant reception of Buddhism in the West. And it's a little bit of a problem. because we can easily think of enlightenment as something that we have to get, or that we have to achieve, or that if we practice long enough and diligently enough, we might realize. It's a funny translation, because it's based on the age of enlightenment in Europe. And that was based on kind of a rationality and reasonableness. In some ways that's antithetical to Buddhist awakening and to the inconceivable.

[07:49]

Of course, rationality can be a wonderful tool and that's how we live and that's how we function. So I'm not saying to get rid of reason and rationality, but how do we use it at the service of awakening? So, I've been using awakening as a substitute for enlightenment when I'm reading this or other sutras. This is something that my teacher, Tenshiro Anderson, is also doing. Enlightenment is a kind of problematic translation of bodhi. Bodhi just means awakening. And the Buddha is the one who is awakened. not the enlightened one. In some of the sutras, the Buddha is called the world-honored one, at any rate. But this enlightenment,

[08:51]

I would say mistranslation, as a translator, I think of it as a mistranslation, is common in Western versions of Buddhism. So Thomas Cleary uses it in his translations, in his translation of the Flower Ornament Sutra, which I'm going to be talking about. Robert Thurman uses it in his translation of the Malakirti Sutra. Dale Wright uses it in his commentary. I believe that Burton Watson, some of you are looking at the Burton Watson translation of the Vimalakirti Sutra. I think he just uses Bodhi. I don't think he says enlightenment, but I haven't checked it thoroughly. Also, Etienne Lamotte, which is the fullest and very useful author. academic translation of the sutra actually originally in french but it's been translated into english i think he uses bodhi not enlightenment so to think about it in terms of awakening i think it's very helpful so the word dojo

[10:02]

which is commonly used in martial arts, is the Sino-Japanese translation of Bodhi Mandala, the site of awakening. And, of course, in some of these translations, they say enlightenment, but it's the place where Buddha awakened. And a dojo is actually, you know, so that's actually what our zendo is. It's a bodhi mandala. So the zendo is our place for awakening and for practicing awakening. And your seat, wherever you are now, is a bodhi mandala, a site of awakening, a site where a zazen is happening. And through that, awakening is there. So... So this inconceivable awakening is an important part of the Vimalakirti Sutra.

[11:10]

And I would say that this sutra takes on two strands of Mahayana bodhisattva teaching. One is emptiness teaching. So there are lots of references in the Vimalakirti Sutra to emptiness, which maybe we could say is emptying sin soul. There are no things but only verbs, but we have to use our language. But emptiness teaching is about It can also be translated as relativity, or dependent co-arising, that everything is related to everything else, or every activity, or every being, or every awakening is related to every other awakening. That wherever you are sitting right now, every person, every event, every being you have ever known is part of what is sitting on your seat.

[12:12]

So this emptiness teaching is essential to Amalakirti's teaching. But also, this sutra is about the inconceivable. So, in terms of Mahayana sutras, the Malakirti sutra is kind of a combination of Prajnaparamita sutras, the Perfection of Wisdom sutras that are, in lots of ways, focused on emptiness. chant that in terms of the Heart Sutra, but the Diamond Sutra, and there are many other Prajnaparamita Sutras. And then the Inconceivable Sutras, and I think the most prominent of that is the Avatamsaka Sutra. the flower ornament sutra, which we here at ancient dragon chant. Uh, we have a monthly, uh, event of chanting that. And I would invite you all to attend. That's the first Friday of every month at 7 PM.

[13:17]

So we had it a couple of days ago and we've been going through this. It's a huge sutra, 1500 some pages in Thomas Cleary's translation. But, um, It's particularly about inconceivability. So the inconceivable is about going beyond our usual way of thinking and seeing things, our usual conceptualization, our usual kind of awareness of the world is caught in conceptualization. And maybe this is necessary as children grow up and develop egos and learn to speak and learn to read. So, how to go beyond our usual conceptualizations?

[14:22]

So we are trapped by those. That's the source of delusion, is our usual sense of conceptualizations. And the Vimalakirti Sutra very skillfully goes beyond our usual conceptualization, helps us to see something deeper, helps us to see beyond a world of objects, but to see a world of activity, a world of engagement. a world of relationship and interactions. So I'm going to read just a couple of sentences from this huge flower ornament sutra as a kind of taste of this inconceivable. So... This is in the beginning chapter on the assembly of the beings listening to Buddha in the Sutra. There's various spirits.

[15:24]

There are inner spirits and earth spirits and multi-bodied spirits and directional spirits. This is invoking all of the events in our world that we don't usually think of because it's hard to pin them down as things. Anyway, there's a space spirit, I mean, pure light shining all around us. It's a song that I do all around. At any rate, one of the things he says is, the Buddha body, the body of the Buddha, is like space. Unborn, it clings to nothing. It is ungraspable and without inherent nature. This is seen by the spirit, the wind spirit, good omens. The Buddha for countless eons has expounded all holy paths, destroying barriers for all beings.

[16:28]

The wind spirit sphere of perfect light understands this. It goes on like that. But that's one place where our usual idea of things is... This is actually from the Bodhisattva Samantabhadra, a universal good. And he says, The Buddha in every atom displays infinite great mystic powers. Sitting in each on the enlightenment site, he speaks of past Buddhas, enlightening devas, or awakening devas, I should say. So again, the Buddha in every atom displays infinite great mystic powers, sitting in each, in each atom, on the awakening site.

[17:40]

The Buddha speaks of past Buddhas and awakening devas. All immense eons of past, present, and future, Buddha reveals in every instant. All the events of the formation and decay his inconceivable knowledge comprehends. The congregation of Buddha's children is endlessly vast, but though they are together to fathom Buddha's state, the teachings of the Buddha have no bound. To thoroughly know them all is most difficult. So these are just tastes of the way that this Flower Anima Sutra talks about this reality from the point of view of the Flower Anima Sutra, that there is a Buddha sitting on the Bodhi Mandala on the side of awakening in every single atom. It's kind of wild. But that's how the Flower Ornament Sutra sees the world. And it's all interpenetrated.

[18:42]

It's all interconnected. So hearing this is to loosen at least our attachment to objects. We think of objects as solid objects. It's a piece of paper. It's many things. It's the tree. It's the nitrogen in the soil of the tree. It's the rain that nurtured the tree. It's the logger who took the log to the paper mill and so forth. Each so-called thing is actually a field of activity, a field of awakening that includes everything else. So, back to the Vimalakirti Sutra. Okay. Vimalakirti replied to Shariputra, for the Tathagata and the Bodhisattvas, there is a liberation called inconceivable.

[19:59]

The Bodhisattva, the awakened being, who lives in the inconceivable liberation, can put the king of mountains, Sumeru, which is so high, so great, so noble, and so vast, inside a musket suit. Maybe I read this before. I'll read it again. This Bodhisattva can perform this feat without enlarging the mustard seed and without shrinking from Mount Sumeru, and the deities of the assembly of the four Maharajas, the four great kings, and of the great heavens do not even know where they are. Only those beings who are destined to be disciplined by miracles to put it that way, see and understand the putting of the king of mountains, Atsumaru, into the mustard seed.

[21:03]

That, Reverend Shariputra Malaketi says, is an entrance to the domain of the inconceivable liberation of the Bodhisattvas. So we think in terms of So-called things having a certain dimension, certain size, a certain reality based on their thingness. The Malkirti continues further, Reverend Shariputra, the Bodhisattva who lives in the inconceivable liberation can pour into a single pore of his skin all the waters of the four great oceans without injuring the water animals such as fish, tortoise, crocodiles, frogs, and other creatures. And without the Nagas, Yakshas, Gandharvas, and Asuras, these other superhuman spirits or non-human spirits, even being aware where they are.

[22:14]

And the whole operation is visible without any injury or disturbance to any of the living beings. This is, again, a vision of reality that goes beyond how we usually conceptualize and conceive of the world in reality. The Malakuti continues, such a bodhisattva can pick up with his right hand or with her left hand this billion-world galactic universe as if it were a potter's wheel and spinning it around, throw it beyond universes as numerous as as the sands of the Ganges, without the living beings therein knowing their motion or its origin, and they can catch it and put it back in its place without the living beings suspecting their coming and going, and yet the whole operation is visible. Furthermore, Reverend Shariputra, Malakirti continues, there are beings who become disciplined after an immense period of evolution.

[23:21]

There are also those who are disciplined after a short period of evolution. The bodhisattva who lives in the inconceivable liberation for the sake of disciplining living beings and helping them to awaken, liberating living beings who are disciplined through immeasurable periods of evolution, can make the passing of a week seem like the passing of an eon, and he can make the passing of an eon seem like the passing of a week. For those who are disciplined through a short period of evolution, living beings who are disciplined through an immeasurable period of evolution actually perceive a week to be the passing of an eon. And those disciplined by a short period of evolution actually perceive the eon to be the passing of a week. So this inconceivability or this surpassing our usual conceptualizing operates in time as well as space.

[24:32]

And for people who sit Zazen, this may not be so strange. So some periods of Zazen, some of you may feel like it's going on for hours and hours and hours. And maybe if the Doan falls asleep, then it may seem like that. But even if it's the same 30 or 40 minutes in clock time, it may seem like a long time. And then there are sometimes long times that seem to go by like this. So our usual idea, our usual conceptualizing of the dimensions of space and the dimensions of time are frail and faulty. But that doesn't mean we should just stop functioning in terms of our usual way of functioning. But to see that beyond that, There is this inconceivability of our life.

[25:34]

So, yeah, to throw a universe around and catch it in your hand, that's not how we usually see the world. But this is what the Vimalakirti is talking about in terms of inconceivable liberation and inconceivable awakening. So I want to review a couple more things in this chapter and then open it to discussion and questions, because this is a strange way of seeing things. It really is. At some point after engaging in Zazen practice regularly for a good while, it may not seem quite as strange, but still. So... we all experience difficulties in this world, and we tend to blame or kind of attribute this to particular so-called beings.

[26:44]

Well, Kirti says to Mahakashapa, the Maras, the demons or the demonic spirits who are play the devil in the innumerable universes of the ten directions are all bodhisattvas dwelling in the inconceivable liberation who are playing the devil in order to develop living beings through their skill in liberative technique. All the miserable beggars who come to the bodhisattvas of the innumerable universes of the 10 directions to ask for a hand, a foot, an ear, or other kinds of help. These are bodhisattvas, according to this way of thinking, that are helping us to get beyond our usual conceptualizations.

[27:51]

And then I mentioned this when I talked about this chapter last, says to Mahakashapa, who is considered the first ancestor in the Zen lineage, who is one of the historical ten great disciples of the Buddha, just as a glowworm cannot eclipse the light of the sun, so, Mahakashapa, it is not possible without special allowance that an ordinary person and thus attack and deprive a bodhisattva. Reverend Mark Lepeshapa, just as a donkey could not muster an attack on a wild elephant, even so, one who is not himself or herself a bodhisattva cannot harass another bodhisattva. When I first heard this, anyway, it did something to me.

[28:55]

Anyone who can harass or hassle a bodhisattva must be themselves another bodhisattva. The Mahakirti continues, only one who themselves is a bodhisattva can harass another bodhisattva. And only a bodhisattva can... tolerate the harassment of another bodhisattva. Mahakashyapa, such is the introduction to the power of the knowledge of the liberative technique of the bodhisattvas who live in inconceivable liberation. So, just to follow that up a little bit, I want to review a practice that is referred to frequently in the Vimalakirti Sutra. And this is a practice of one of the paramitas, one of the transcendent practices of bodhisattvas called patience.

[30:02]

It's one of the six or one of the ten, depending on which collection you're looking at, that the ultimate practice of patience, kshanti in Sanskrit, is patience. Anupatika Dharmakshanti in Sanskrit. Dharman translates this usually as the tolerance of the birthlessness of things. So Anupatika Dharmakshanti, kshanti is patience. Dharma, in this case, so Dharma is the teaching, Dharma is reality. Dharma is also technically used in early Buddhism to talk about the elements of reality, the dharmas, to put it that way. And there's lists in different schools of the different elements of different dharmas. In reality, a lot of them are kind of mental faculties, wholesome or unwholesome, like jealousy or rage or anger.

[31:06]

various negative qualities, or like trust and awareness and so forth. Anyway, but in this teaching on Upadika Dharmakshanti, there's the patience of the, Thurman says, birthlessness. We could also say ungraspability or unknowability of events. We cannot fully understand or know how complex, how deep any particular event or so-called thing is. It's beyond actual possibility in terms of reality. The practice is to be patient with that, to tolerate that, to be willing to continue sitting or continue living or continue engaging the world without knowing or grasping or getting a hold of things, so-called things, that

[32:16]

We can't fully, of course, all of you know many, many things. All of you are, you know, many people in the Sangha are very well educated. But to be educated in our usual conceptualization of the world is to think we know or think we can get a hold of or think we can understand how so-called things work. how events happen. And ultimately, what this teaching is saying is that ultimately we cannot in a holdover know things. And I cannot stop my puppy from barking and screaming. So my puppy is a combination of all kinds of events. At any rate, yeah, so this practice of tolerance or patience with the fact of But we cannot totally grasp so-called things or events.

[33:18]

And we can have a pretty good idea. Of course, we always work with the limits of our knowledge about things. But anyway, I'll stop there. And I want to open this up for discussion about any of the so-called things I've talked about. Awakening as a better translation than so-called enlightenment, for example. Or this ungraspability or unknowability of things. How to practice patience with that. How to tolerate this deeper reality that we cannot really get a hold of. of the things that we might want to, you know, fully grasp. So I would like comments, responses, questions about any of this. Or maybe you can help out with people in the Zendo there, in the Bodhi Mandala, the awakening site of Lincoln Square, Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, and also here on Zoom.

[34:22]

So comments, questions, responses, please feel free. Zengyu. Yes, these are very interesting issues to deal with. I remember the very early days of San Francisco Zen Center when we had the old synagogue on Bush Street, where it was actually Suzuki Roshi's residence as well, and we didn't have Goan, so he would run the Sazep periods. And one time in the morning, a two-period morning he came We came and sat, and he started, and then he left the room. And then he came in at the time when the Zazen was supposed to be over and wrestled the papers and then left the room again. Left us all sitting there. We were sitting two periods in a row. That was kind of a shock to our systems, but it definitely felt like a Bodhisattva harassing a Bodhisattva. Anyway, it also made you think about how you felt about time and how attached you were to your sense of time.

[35:30]

But as far as the inconceivable and the unattainable and the ungraspable, My approach to that is vow. If you vow, vow to yourself, vow to the universe to relate, to relate to and to be one with and to acknowledge the unattainable, that gives you a chance to relate with it without having to actually hold on to it or define it or swallow it whole. I think that vows, for me, a re-vow is the most important part of how to relate to the inconceivable. Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes, so the practice of anattarasamyaksambodhi, the practice of patience with this inconceivable dimension of reality, is exactly to vow to be patient.

[36:33]

And sometimes, of course, we get impatient. And the practice of vow is to see it when we do get impatient and to look at that. What's going on? I can't, you know, he shouldn't have rang the bell by now. And so our sense of reality in terms of time and space and how things work, how so-called things work. Yeah, the vow is this. patience with this tolerance of forbearance with this dimension of the inconceivable. So thank you, Sangeet. Other comments or questions? Anyone? Eve does here, Tegan. Great. Hi, Eve. Hi. So, I mean, for me, I think it's about seeing possibilities.

[37:39]

If you see the world as a set of relationships that are changing, then you can see more possibilities. So what came in my head was So there's a couple of lines from Bonson Miller's play, The Price, where the character that my father played, who's a 89-year-old Russian Jewish emigre, he's a furniture salesman and philosopher of life. Gregory Solomon is explaining, there's this table, it's one of those heavy Jacobean tables, and he's explaining to the guy that's selling the furniture why it's hard to sell. And he says, you know, in a world where people see relationships disposable, you know, you sit down at this table, you know you're married, you have to stay married, no more possibilities. And so you've got a problem. I mean, whether, you know, you think disposable relationships are good.

[38:43]

I mean, the thing is, you know, some relationships you do want to keep and build on, but relationships of domination, I think it is a good thing to see those as disposable. And the other thing that came into my mind was my former classmate, David Graber, who unfortunately died in September 2020. So he wrote this book on direct action. He's credited with the slogan about the 99%, but he said it came out of a committee. It wasn't just him. But he said that direct action means the practice of living like you're already free. And that kind of collective liberation I mean, I think that's part of being able to see the world in terms of not as things with immutable boundaries, but as sets of relationships.

[39:47]

It does give you possibilities for freedom and for collective liberation. And in a book that he published posthumously, The Dawn of Everything, you know, he has a somewhat different version of the Enlightenment from, you know, what you've said. He talks about the Enlightenment as also coming out of the clash of European and Native American cultures and the insights that related from that that led people to see, you know, the possibility of a less hierarchical kind of society. And the view of human history that he and his colleague proposed in the book is about possibilities and seeing possibilities and seeing artistry as a set of choices you can make. Thank you very much, Eve. I'm sorry, was there someone else about to speak?

[40:49]

I'll just respond. Thank you, Eve. Yeah. In a world of inconceivable liberation, where things are events rather than objects, this opens up possibilities. So that's a really helpful way to look at all this, I believe. Thank you. Yes. So in a world that is flexible and not set in fixed boundaries in space or time, more is possible. And so this brings up imagination, which is an important part of Buddhist practice, I believe, to be able to see the world in a grain of sand, as has been said, or to see that there are Buddhas sitting under the tree of awakening in every single atom. To start to see that way opens up many more possibilities to how to

[41:53]

function and practice and relate in our life. And you mentioned David Graeber, who you knew. I have his book over here, The Dawn of Everything. It's almost as thick as Cleary's Flower Ornament Sutra, and I hope to read it after I finish rereading the Flower Ornament Sutra. So thank you very much, Eve. Yes, possibilities. Possibilities. Other comments, questions, responses? Hi, good morning, everyone. It's Nicholas. Hey, Nicholas. I had two things I thought of saying. So one is that you were talking about the throwing around of universes. And sometimes that can seem like, oh, that's so inconceivable in and of itself, right?

[42:57]

But then I thought, you know, really we're doing that on a microscopic level here in this realm on a moment-to-moment daily basis. We are disrupting the universe of tiny microscopic things all the time. We're throwing them around, you know, every day. And so just thinking of it that way kind of both are – extremely you know they're invisible to me to most people but nevertheless um it's kind of a fact um that we do that the other thing that i've been thinking about the last two talks was um there was a teacher in india deepama a woman who attained a high level of enlightenment, for lack of a better word, and was sought after by a lot of Western students.

[44:07]

And she made a comment once that really stuck with me, and I think about it a lot when we study this sutra, and it has something to do with the she talked about the The quicksand of somethingness, the quicksand of identity, the quicksand of somethingness versus the firm ground of emptiness. And sometimes I think that quote kind of encapsulates this sutra on some level. Taking refuge in the firm ground of emptiness, I guess. So, thoughts? Thank you. Thank you, Nicholas. Yeah. From our usual perspective of seeing the world as fixed, bounded,

[45:12]

objects in space and time see hearing about this inconceivable liberation might feel like quicksand you know how do we how do we step on the on the earth when we when we know that it's actually not some solid thing but this uh active interactive a living event with I remember Wendy Johnson, the Green Gulch Gardener, talking about a block, a square foot of soil containing, and depending on where the soil is from, more or less, but millions of beings. Some microscopic, some as big as worms. So our sense of the usual dimension is, you know, we feel like we need to function based on that. And all kinds of things have been built based on rationality. We build big buildings.

[46:14]

We build institutions. But in reality, actually, the structure of things is flexible. So one way to think about this is, might be to think about structure. We know, we believe that the structure of an atom, where there are all these Buddhas awakening, is a nucleus and then electrons and other particles whirling around it. Similarly, we believe and understand that the structure of our solar system is The Earth, no, the Sun, excuse me. The Sun doesn't go around the Earth. They used to believe that. But now we believe that the Sun is in the center, and the Earth and all these other planets, Venus and Neptune and Mars and Jupiter and all them, are rotating around it. And I believe the latest astrophysics science is that

[47:16]

The galaxy that we live in has a core center, and there are these whirling solar systems around it, and so forth. And maybe the universe is composed of galaxies whirling around some center. So anyway, there's a way to see that the structure of reality, and we can do the same thing in terms of time as I just did in terms of space, has a particular structure that... goes beyond our usual conceptualization. So anyway, that's just a thought I had based on what you said, Nicholas. Other comments or reflections or questions, responses, please feel free. Can I call on myself? Please. This has me thinking actually about Improv, I've performed that for a long time. And we don't perform with props.

[48:23]

Basically, it's just a couple chairs on stage. And we do a thing that we call object work, which is that we try to play with an object that's not there, but in a way that the audience would believe it's there or whatever. But there's actually like a lot of fun to be had with, you know, I can remember a lot of shows where I was like playing basketball and I'm like a very okay basketball player, but I can't like spin a basketball on my finger or anything, but I would do that on stage, um, because it was fun to do. And, you know, and it just occurs to me that no one in the audience would ever say like, I don't believe that, you know, instead people, the more we played with sort of the objects we created, et cetera. And the more we as a group sort of believed it, um, the audience would sort of follow along um and you know and the outcome more often than not was like laughter it's that kind of play and what you were talking about imagination and there's this kind of a faith to it or you know if you can kind of conjure belief and bring other people along in that way um

[49:40]

it can be a lot of fun, that sort of flexibility and improvisation and play. So I don't know, that's how I'm connecting what you've been talking about today with my own experience. Thank you very much, Beau. Yes, very, very important. Play is an important aspect or maybe the center of our practice. And study, particularly Dharma study, you know, to read one of these sutras, or especially to read Dogen, or when we hear a koan, the point isn't to get some understanding of it. You know, that's making it into an object. Oh yeah, I can understand why Yunmen said everyday mind, or, well, I was mixing up koans, it doesn't matter, to play with them. To read Dogen is to enter this field of play where what he's doing is playing with these old teaching stories and elaborating on them in various ways and associating with other stories and other aspects of reality.

[50:50]

So the practice of patience with the ungraspability of things is to actually play with these events and, and the stories and with, you know, teachings. So it's not, you know, it's a, it is possible to get some, you know, quote unquote, rational understanding of some of these teachings, but the point isn't to get, to gain some understanding so that you can get ahold of it. It's ungraspable. How do you play with it? How do you riff on, uh, What Dogen is saying, or what Cohen is saying, or what Malakirti is saying. So yes, thank you. Playfulness is very important. Thank you, Paul. So, other responses? Eve has a follow-up, I think. Yeah, somebody wrote about that. Stephen Nosmanovich, he's an improvisational musician, and he's written two books about play and creativity.

[51:58]

And he's also practicing Tibetan Buddhist. And so he brings those ideas. perceptions together. And he's a student of, was a student of Gregory Bateson's. And he did his dissertation on William Blake. You know, he quoted a little while ago, it was the world of, you know, Graham Sands. I think I recommend his books. And his music. Yes, and music is a great way to see this. I particularly like jazz, and that's kind of improv music, and it's not like everything is... This is not to denigrate any other kind of music, but in jazz it's not that all the notes are laid out and it's choreographed and so forth. It's different fine musicians... playing together, playing with each other, playing with a theme and then elaborating on it.

[53:05]

So yes, thank you. Other questions, comments, responses? I think it must be that hearing about this inconceivable awakening, hearing about inconceivability, must be unsettling on some level. Does anybody feel some difficulty or unsettledness at hearing about all this? This is really a very radical, revolutionary kind of way of appreciating the reality in the world. But it's not what we were taught in school, or for most of us.

[54:12]

I find it very relieving. Not unsettling at all, but just a relief. Yes, it can be a relief to hear that we don't have to hold on tightly to everything and have everything under control. Letting go of our sense of control is awakening. That doesn't mean that there are not things that we do control. Of course, we manage all of the affairs of our world and our life, but to feel like we need to control everything, this is such a problem in our world where you have all these powerful billionaires who want to have more and more control over everything and get more and more power. You know, this is a big problem in the human world.

[55:14]

David has a comment here in the Zendo. Yeah. For me, the problem of inconsistability isn't a problem at all. That should be counterintuitive, but... We look at the world like it's a box. There's an outline. And everything in the world is contained there. And if we can look outside the box, if we look outside the box, that's the inconceivable. What are we normally putting limits on when there are no limits? Yeah. And I think that's the key, is how can we step out of the box? How can we step out of the box? Thank you, David. Yeah, so to go beyond

[56:18]

what we consider the limitations of reality in our world and our life, to be able to think freshly, to be able to see freshly, to be able to see possibilities, as Eve was saying. Thank you. I think Zeng Yu had his hand up. Yes, for me anyway, it gives you the opportunity to say, to embrace and to be comfortable with the concept of every day is a good day. Every day is the perfect day because it's perfectly the way it is. So it allows you to have that confidence in the great karmic mix of things. Yes, things as it is. How do we appreciate and play with and act in the world as it is?

[57:22]

And I would add including all of the difficulties and the cruelty and the things we wish to change. And so part of the Malakirti Sutra is about skillfulness and liberative technique. So how do we develop that? playfulness, a fresh way of seeing events such that we can Step outside what we think of as our usual limitations. This is, you know, a lifetime practice. This is complicated. And, you know, it's stepping into the unknown, going beyond our usual boxes, as David Weiner was saying. Anyway, thank you all. Great discussion. We have time for one or two more comments, if anyone has something. David, just one quick follow-up.

[58:33]

This is the old saying, you know, I wouldn't believe it if I didn't see it. And actually, we should really turn that around and that we wouldn't see it if we didn't believe it. And that's how we trap ourselves. We trap ourselves in our beliefs and we can't see it. I'll see it when I believe it. Just as recently, not too long ago, actually now it's about a year ago, actually, I was in the Bronx, Montana, with my daughter, and we're walking, and all of a sudden I had to stop. And I could hear the trees talking to each other. Now, maybe that was my imagination, maybe not, but I really had the sense that that the trees were communicating to each other. And if I were all the other people walking by, and the trees are communicating, but they're not aware of it.

[59:41]

How are we, again, putting ourselves in a box and limiting our perspective, limiting what we see? And so it's not a matter of, belief, but a matter of openness. Well, when I get impatient, I get impatient when people don't see that. And that's when I'm not very skillful. I mean, I get frustrated sometimes with my students when they insist on seeing what they're doing in terms of things and, and putting them in boxes and my qualities. And then, yeah. So I don't, sometimes I don't know what to do with that in patients. Good. Thank you. Yes, yes, yes. So the practice is to develop patients with all of this. And again,

[60:41]

And tolerance and forbearance is another translation of kshanti. And so, yes, to be patient with people who are missing it. And, of course, with the times when we're missing it. So patience with ourselves as well. That's the practice of this. And that's a difficult practice. And we develop that practice. We develop our practice. practice of patience by noticing how we get impatient when we get impatient. So that's good, keep studying your own impatience. But I want to go back to what David was saying. We know now, according to modern science, that trees do talk to each other. maybe not in English. Learning different languages can be very liberating to our usual conventional way of seeing things. But we know that through the mycorrhizal networks under the ground that trees in a forest, forest is a living being, and different trees in the forest communicate with each other.

[61:53]

They send warnings when there's They send nutrition to other trees, not even trees of the same species. So they, you know, this is actually what science has shown now. And so, you know, maybe David, why don't you were just plugging into that? And yeah. So the world, the universe, is not some dead thing, the way we often think of it. And this is exactly what the Malakirti Sutra is talking about. Any last comments or questions? If anybody feels like this is nonsense, please express that. But anything, anybody has to offer. Last call. And I'm tempted to call on Nathan, who I know has many insights all the time.

[63:08]

Any response to any of this, Nathan? Good morning. Yeah, I can say something. I liked that paraphrase of Deepa Ma that was mentioned, the quicksand of somethingness versus the firm ground of emptiness. And I was thinking about that. I don't really have a coherent conclusion yet, but I was thinking about that. how the reality that is empty of our representations is like a firm ground and our representations are like this shifting quicksand. That's what I was thinking about. Thank you.

[64:11]

That's great.

[64:12]

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