I think I have a bad robe day today. If you can't have a bad hair day because your head is shaved, maybe you have bad robe days. I think it's something that just doesn't fit. I had to put it on twice. Things fall out of your sleeve. I don't know. I'm glad you're all here. I heard from Cheryl by email that she might not feel good, and Matt said he may be getting sick. You know, I thought, come to the Zendo and then, you know, Nicole said yesterday she felt like because we're developing this mutual body, when a person is not there, it's like an arm is missing. So I thought, what if you come to the Zendo, to the lecture, and then the people who are your mouth and your ears or something are missing and you really can't say anything. Plus, I had this really weird dream. I have to tell you, it was so strange. It is affecting my mood right now.

[01:03]

I'm a little goofy. The dream is that I'm dreaming that I'm giving the lecture while I'm taking a nap. And then I wake up But I'm dreaming that I have fallen asleep during the lecture, and I'm waking up in the lecture, and I don't know what to say. I'm totally surprised that I fell asleep during the lecture talking, and then you're all there, and I don't know what to do. It's pretty weird. At first, when I was in bed, I thought, I'm in Zendo giving the lectures in my bed or in my robes. I don't know. Anyway, here I am. And maybe I'm giving too many lectures. I want to continue with something where we sort of left off. And I really enjoyed our seminar discussion talking about unconditional confidence.

[02:12]

how you don't make your practice dependent on results. And I mentioned this phrase from Suzuki Roshi that I really like a lot, ever since I read Then Mind, Beginner's Mind for the first time, not a long time ago, but this phrase, even if the sun were to rise from the west, the bodhisattva only has one way. It is to express his nature and his sincerity, her nature and her sincerity. And I looked up the section and in that Suzuki Roshi says, it's like the bodhisattva having only one way is like being on a railroad track that is beginningless and endless and the train is just going. And he recommends not to look at the tracks, at the track.

[03:22]

Don't look, he said, it may make you dizzy. You may start to feel curious how it's all working, how it comes that the train can be on the track. But don't do it. It may make you dizzy. Someone will take care of it. Buddha will take care of it. That's... It's a wonderful image. He also says, you know, please enjoy the sights from the train, but don't look at the tracks. It reminds me a little bit of, you know, if you... We talked about having, you know, the fruits of practice. There's this and that. There's calmness, make you feel peace, and maybe there's joy. And then at other times there's difficulty that we can't resolve, despair, doubt, uncertainty about our efforts.

[04:27]

These are also sights from the train, right? Please enjoy the sights from the train, but don't look at the tracks. I mean, it's like, what is looking at the tracks? I mean, it's like trying to find explanations for the path, you know, and we have words for it, talk about emptiness. to nature, you know, you can get lost there, you can feel like you, instead of practicing, you have to sort of explain the path to yourself, maybe also to others. And instead, the bodhisattva having only one way, not looking at the tracks, it's like, just do, you just follow the intention that you've set for yourself to follow the breath and using the breath to cultivate presence or holding the turning word present in your circumstances and just returning to it.

[05:31]

It's like you lose, you lose the sense of presence or let's say you get lost in the territory of thinking and instead of looking at the tracks, you just return to the method. Yeah, something like that. I'm reading it this way today, these days. And, you know, it's like, we all have our own karma. And that, you know, this is also, this is a word that we all understand, but do we really understand it? We all have our own our own particularity in how we are limiting ourselves, in how we are relating to the world, in how the world

[06:38]

calls up in us particular types of reactions and conclusions and not others. The complexity of that is mind-boggling. You just don't know where to begin. But this is the intimacy of your own life. This is what you are, because this is happening. Circumstances arise, karma gets activated, and here you are again. This is the song for today. Here I Go Again. It's a song of my youth, Whitesnake. This band that had, you know where they all had hair like this? It's just crazy. I think David Coverdale was the lead singer and at one point he said, I'm just so tired of being in this band, I always have to have this hair. So you've got a God. Here I go again on my own, going down the only road I've ever known. Like a hobo, I was born to walk alone. It's really this way.

[07:40]

Where was I? Oh, yeah, karma. Karma. It's so complex, and it's our particular existence in the world of Meeting the world, being the world. So problems come up. And problems that want to be solved, that need to be solved, that are questions that we need to answer to take the next step. And that's okay. Okay. To feel comfortable with those as the kinds of questions that we need to answer in this particular spot that we're occupying in the world, this being there that we are. And we don't have to compare ourselves to others in those problems.

[08:46]

Of course, we do all the time. And it's so tempting. You know, you do that, I do that. It's tempting. I'm thinking, you know, you have a problem. Let's say you have a problem and you really solved it, you know. Then you can say to others, you know, look, this is how you solve this problem. You can't, like, it's not a big deal. Maybe you forget that it took you 10 years to solve it. And then you say, why do you make such a big fuss? It's so easy. Just, you know. You know, happens. Or there's this person and they're stuck in this particular way and what's a problem for them is not a problem for me. And what's a problem for me is not a problem for them. We're in these very particular places and when we compare ourselves to somebody else, it usually just leads to more complications. But it's very tempting. It's hard to just say, well, this is just the spot that I'm in.

[09:57]

Not feel better or worse. I think when you think you can solve another person's problem, you're making a couple of mistakes. The complexity of the particular situation is such that you can never know how they're going to have to solve their problem, even though you have some experience with it. It's really, you can just be wrong most of the time. Because maybe you're not wrong in a general sense, but in terms of the particularity of the kinds of moves that this person has to make to

[11:06]

Solve the problem you don't want to see solve you can do all kinds of way turn away from the problem walk away. Sorry I Need you whatever you just don't know exactly what they have to do because the texture of their karma is unknown But also Sometimes we can't solve a problem because we still need it. I think one of the main reasons why some problems have to stick around is that if you solve them, you wouldn't be ready for the task that's ahead of you. So you'd rather keep your problem so you don't have to continue with what's ahead of you. Does that make sense? It's like it's a little protective mechanism to not let you face You know, you would be maybe too scared. Like you wait in front of, you say, I can't cross this river because you're not ready for the bear on the other side.

[12:14]

That's okay. But if someone says, you know, jump over the river, it's not a big deal, and you jump. So anyway, we have to have confidence in our own problems, too. Solve them in your particular time. Let the circumstances, the time, come together. We have the patience and the trust that they will come together in their own way. I think that's what incubation is. Incubation is It takes time for the alchemy of circumstances and intention that has to come together in particular ways to work. Not in general ways that other people could tell you how. But the bodhisattva is also this person who helps others.

[13:16]

How do you help others? And Suzuki Roshi also seems to have said, I heard from Baker Roshi, I think he said, you can't really help others if you haven't thoroughly helped yourself. How do we, so there's an order there. How do you help yourself first? Just noticing that the room has shifted. Usually there are more people there and now they're all here. How do we help ourselves thoroughly? I'm thinking it's this business of cultivating presence. because I think I've mentioned this before, because the way I understand the bodhisattva helping others these days is it's... So, you know, let's say I am stuck in some kind of pattern that limits my perspective on how to act, and that's my karma, right?

[14:42]

But then I'm meeting a bodhisattva, and this bodhisattva demonstrates how he or she is not stuck in that same pattern. That can give me confidence that you don't have to be stuck in the pattern. I still can feel how I am stuck in the pattern, but here is this demonstration of how you don't have to be stuck in the pattern. And so this bodhisattva becomes a teacher in showing how you can be unstuck in this particular regard. And I think these... So the bodhisattva resonates with my problem. They can feel the kind of stuckness that I'm carrying with me. At the same time, The bodhisattva is free within those particular circumstances.

[15:49]

And I think we are teachers for each other in this way. And situations deliver these free teachings. You notice stuckness and you notice unstuckness. The situation can be the bodhisattva. It just shows you how you don't have to be stuck. It may take time. to find out exactly how it can work. But how we help ourselves is, I think, how we cultivate with the presence hosting, like I said, the feeling or some way of thinking or the presence hosting, you're kind of, you can feel your stuckness and at the same time you can feel the freedom around it. that comes from the host mind of not having to get involved. This is detachment. But the thing I think that I'm interested in today mostly is that we cultivate a self-relationship in this way, this that we can call detachment, but that we're also cultivating that same relationship with others.

[17:09]

How do we cultivate that relationship with others? There is the realm of thinking that is the outfolded receiving the world through the senses and thinking about it. And then when you notice that and you make a decision to cultivate presence through the breath, through turning attention inward to the body, you're folding attention in and then cultivating the field of presence. You can fold the sensorium out again with the thinking, but now it's charged with presence, right? These three steps that I tried to mention and hint at last time we talked about.

[18:12]

First, this is the default position of the world. You're lost to the world. And then you fold it in. That's our meditation and mindfulness practice. And as this presence is gaining strength and stability, you're outfolding it again. And now you're charging the senses and the thinking with the presence. And you're offering that also to others. I find fascinating presence You know in one way you can think okay. There's two ways of being in the world This is appearance is how you appear to others and the presence is how you appear to yourself? But then I think there's because you could outfold the presence together with with appearances the presence becomes noticeable to others to you can notice other people's presence and I think my cat is totally attentive to this.

[19:15]

You know, I do yoga in this little side room of the cabin, and while I'm moving around, you know, through these postures, the cat sort of starts to get interested. And she says, she always goes, she talks to me like, She has this funny way of, like, she does this kind of thing. I don't know. It's like she speaks. And then when I do the closing postures, which are all still, you know, leaning forward like this, this is, she's done this for the first time, but it's been, I feel very calm inside. all this activity, and then it's folding in, and it's literally folding, right? The cat comes, then she knows she can be closer, and she climbs on my back, and she sits on the back. Then I have to get up again, and she jumps off, and then I go into the zazen posture, and then she goes and she sits on the lap.

[20:17]

And then I lift myself up, you know, with a full lotus, lift myself up. And then she gets really disturbed, like she can't be there anymore. And then the really last posture is to lie down. And then she comes and she sits right on my hara. This is so fascinating. She's clearly reacting to whatever energetic shifts happen in each posture. She's finding a spot to connect with it. So we're doing something similar. I mean, do we have the sensitivity to notice this kind of stuff in the field with each other, how we position ourselves in relationship to somebody else's energy? You can't look at the track. If you look at the track and you try to understand it, you don't know what to do. But if you just feel it, maybe you know what position to take in relationship.

[21:27]

Okay, so presence and... So I think we're... I'm actually thinking that we're folding in each other's presence all the time. It's one way of how I think about relationships. You know, I think you can notice that in children. Their karmic situation is not sort of finished. It was never finished, but anyway, they're open and they're folding in their parents. And they do things like their parents, or they resist what their parents, they think they're free from their parents when they do it the other way, but that's not freedom, right? It's like you have to do it the other, you have to resist it, which is another, it's one way of folding it in. I find that, you know, speaking about children, I think in teenagers, very interesting to observe.

[22:40]

I noticed that in myself when I was a teenager, how you think your parents are so uncool that you're so embarrassed about them, right? They do these things like that. Now they're coming to school and I have to witness how weird and awkward they are. So uncool. But then, it's funny, your friends and other teenagers think they have no problems with their parents. They may even think they're pretty cool. And so your friends are like bodhisattva teachers. They show you how you don't have to be stuck in the resistance toward this thing. Children fold in their parents and married couples fold in each other. And we fold out. We fold each other into ourselves in maybe not so obvious ways, but I think we do.

[23:49]

Sometimes it becomes obvious where you have a short but profound meeting with someone. And that person in that short time has a profound impact on you. It's almost like you folded in that person and they changed a perspective or a worldview or a certain kind of pattern and you come out of the meeting and you feel changed. You haven't lived with them or you haven't spent 90 days of the practice period. It's just one instance, but the meeting was so intimate and so profound that now you carry that person in you for the rest of your life. You never forget that moment because it transformed you. Folding it in. When that person leaves, that person is always with you.

[24:51]

Their presence is never lost. I think every person you really loved is never lost. Even if you separate from them, even if you decide to be angry for some reason, that presence, once folded in, is always there. It's how deeply and how intimately we affect each other. It's, I think, how you know a person, really know a person, because the presence of a person is overshadowed by their limitations that they place on the presence through their karmic self. And when you fold in the presence of the person, you're also folding in the shadow. This is how you know them most intimately. you can think about how they appear and say, well, they do this, and that's their habit.

[25:52]

But when you open up to the presence and to what clouds the presence, what limits it, you know that person, you may not be able to say what it is, but you know, you know. And that knowing opens up ways of responding that cannot be thought. You can't think yourself to. You can just let those responses come from the feeling that you have of that person. And I think every self-limitation that we place on each other, on ourselves, limits... the depth and intimacy and subtlety with which we can feel each other's presence. Comparison, doubt, feeling better or worse. These things get in the way of feeling the other person's presence.

[27:00]

Because you've kind of closed the field there. And now you're perceiving more through the territory of thinking than through the territory of presence. And there's less folding in happening. You know that folding in I think is also a willingness and the necessity here is a willingness to feel the other person's limitations and their suffering. Because when you open up to that presence, that comes with the package. Can you host not only whatever happens in your own life as your own karmic situation, but now, that's what I'm adding to the discussion, can you host the karmic situation that comes with the presence of another person just in the same way, whatever it is,

[28:04]

hosting it without trying to do something about it. Because as I said, you wouldn't know what to tell them anyway. Yes, generally, but the particularity is hard. They're going to be on their own. But in hosting it, they're not alone. We're not alone when somebody else comes and hosts our karmic situation. And when another person comes and they're able to host our karmic situation we are encouraged that we have that ability ourselves to host the karmic situation with this presence. I think this is the most basic and most profound way that human beings can be there for each other. How do we practice this?

[29:17]

We can think about it in the way I'm suggesting, or you can think about it in your own way. But I think one way that we practice it every day is ritual. this shared presence field and the ritual. The shorthand definition that I have come up with and that I continue to refine in my own thinking slowly, because I don't know, it's hard to think about these things in a meaningful way, but the shorthand definition I have come up with is that the ritual is a transformative action of body, speech, and mind, that transforms a space that separates into a space that connects. In these rituals, the way we do them, but I think when you look in ordinary actions and circumstances and you see those as rituals, which I will discuss in a moment, then

[30:26]

you can see how they're structured by a pulse of stillness and activity. And the stillness is, the moments of stillness are the moments where what I'm calling presence now in these talks, where the present, where the folding in and the cultivating of presence happens, in the moments of stillness. And when you're with others and the stillness happens together, each person folds into their own presence. And by folding into their own presence, there is an openness to fold in the other person's presence that is also in the space. And then this mutual enfolding can happen just by being, just by joining the stillness together.

[31:29]

And presence is both receptive and active. It radiates out into the space and it also is receptive for what radiates into the space. So you're taking in what's coming from others and you're radiating back what you're enfolding. And so it's a real complex field. And it's charged with everything that we are. And it's all present and not yet articulated. waiting to be expressed. And then in the moments of activity, in the ritual, I mean, something gets expressed. And the way I'm thinking about it is that the gesture that we choose in such a ritualistic space has to be tuned to the mutual field of presence. And if it is not tuned, it kind of sticks out. It's like... And everyone can notice it.

[32:38]

If you've tuned into this subtlety of the receptivity of presence, you notice how it kind of sticks out. It's scary. It's like the tone of voice is not quite right, the pace of the gesture. the way, the kind of rushedness in your behavior, it all sticks out. And This happens all the time. It happens all the time to me. But when you don't switch to thinking and say, oh, God, it really feels awkward, not right, I'm a bad practitioner. But if you stay with the presence, that's teaching you to fit in with the field. So it's not about, again, I don't want to talk about results so that we're good ritual field surfers. I'm saying use the field to study your patterns. And see if you can find openings to transform them, a transformative act of body, speech and mind that changes space, that separates into space that connects.

[33:49]

And we can just use that as the situation as the teacher. Not think like, oh, I'm such a klutz, I should be better. That stops the process. I'm such a klutz all the time. But, you know, how do you open up, you know, be self-accepting, gentle with these problems and let the field help you find new ways? This ritual field is doing that all the time. One standard example that Roshi has brought up many times, but I think is helpful, is when, as a doan, you ring the bell, you ring the bell in others' people, in other people's minds. you're so close, you're ringing it in their mind. And so it's almost like when you have that feeling, and when you have the feeling how other people do things in your mind, it can be a little jolting, you know. But so you do it.

[34:51]

And I'm not saying it has to be super gentle because when you do it extra gentle it feels like you're making an effort to making it really gentle. It's just there's some pacing to it that can feel just like fitting in with the moment. And sometimes more energetic and sometimes more gentle. That's fine. So to cultivate this sensitivity through the pulse of stillness and activity is each gesture is that way, each appearance of our bodies in the shared mutual field of in the shared field of mutually enfolded presence is is guided by by that sort of sensitivity Sometimes that field needs a push.

[36:00]

Sometimes that field needs room. I can't think about it. As Suzuki Roshi says, you know, don't look at the tracks. Someone will take care of it. Buddha will take care of it. Thank you very much.

[36:23]

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