Any other feedback on this? Barbara? I was thinking, when you first began presenting it, how about the good guy, bad guy? How does all that relate to the ? How does it relate to roles? Do you mean like the roles of David Wittgen? Following the rules of a good guy, basically, is what it means to be a good guy. Breaking those rules and doing things that follow the rules of bad guys being bad guys, that's not released. Now, there are certain advantages, thank you, of being a good guy. One of the advantages of being a good guy, one of the virtues of being a good guy, is that it helps you see your attachments. It's one of the advantages of being a good guy.

[01:07]

Being a good guy is somewhat better than being a bad guy. So being a good guy has the virtue of supporting your spiritual opportunities. And being a bad guy has a disadvantage of making it harder for you to see your attachments. If you're a bad guy, we don't usually apply burnout to bad guys. We apply it usually to people who are trying to be helpful. You don't follow that? No. Have you heard of burnout? Who is it usually applied to? People who try to do too much for too long. I guess that would be good guys. Yeah. Too much too long.

[02:10]

Yeah. Right. Trying to be too good. Overworked. Martyrs. Overworked. Yeah. Right. We don't usually apply burn-up to drug addicts. Hmm? What? There's a close, sort of related, like burned out. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know too many, I don't know what, I haven't heard too many stories about professional criminals who say, you know, I just don't do enough crime. I'm not doing enough crime, I'm not, you know, I'm letting people down, you know. They don't feel guilty for not doing enough crime. Whereas the good guys feel guilty for not doing enough good. Sometimes.

[03:12]

And when they do, they start having burnout. Or they feel like they are doing enough, and then when they feel like they are doing enough, they get burnout. Either way. If they claim to either side, they get burnout. Whereas people who don't follow rules aren't measuring whether they're committing enough crimes or not. And because they're not into calculating, they don't notice their attachments. Whereas if you're doing good, you notice that you're getting burned out, and you notice that's because you're attached to your doing good. It's your attachment that's causing the burnout. So when you're doing good, you can see that. Because you're doing good. This should make you happy, right? This should make you feel healthier. You're doing good. Yes, except that you're not relaxed in doing your good.

[04:14]

Therefore, you're miserable. You're a good guy, but you're miserable. How come you're miserable? You're doing a good thing. You wanted to do this because you thought it would make you and other people happy, right? Right. Isn't that what it's for? Yes. Well, what's the problem? Oh, I see. You see the problem. Well, you don't see that when you're doing bad. It's very hard to see. Because you don't do bad to make other people happy. You don't even do it to make yourself happy. You do it because you're not being diligent, you're not doing what you really love. You're being sloppy. You're not paying attention. You can kill people without being careful. You don't have to be careful. You can slug them in a lot of different ways. And it doesn't make that much difference. Do you know what I mean?

[05:15]

You're out of touch with this gangster world, I guess. But anyway, when you're doing bad things, there's not necessarily much rigor to it. Now, some people are rigorous about it, and those gangsters who are rigorous about it, who want to kill in a certain way, they get burned up. Because they think if you do it this way, you'll be happy. So they're actually into being good gangsters. But, you know, that part of it would show them that they would burn out because they're following rules. When you start following rules, then you start to see that the rules, you have rules, and the rules are connected to consequences, and you're doing this thing because of studying the cause and effect. And studying cause and effect, you do that, when you're doing that for some good result, you expect good results, and when you don't get them, you look for the reason as you quietly explore the farthest reaches of these causes and conditions.

[06:19]

Does that sound familiar? As you quietly explore the farthest reaches of these causes and conditions, this is the exact transmission of a verified Buddha. So people who do good are actually, they're being careful to watch, follow the rules, then what happens? Don't follow the rules, then what happens? Do greed, this happens. They're studying this. Doesn't mean they're always good, but they're supposed to be studying cause and effect. In other words, they respect cause and effect. This is the path of goodness. But if they get burnout, then they get to see the reason why I'm burnout is because my study is uptight. So that's the virtue of carefully studying cause and effect, which is associated with good. The people who are practicing good are the people who accept the teaching that what you do has consequences. They don't say, I don't care what I do.

[07:20]

I don't care what happens. This is a psychopath talking, right? I don't care what happens. So what? So what if they hit me over the head with a shovel? I don't care. This is the way psychopaths talk. Does that make sense? They don't care. And of course they do care, on some level they do care, but actually on some level they don't. Now, taking lots of alcohol and help just talk like that. If you take a lot of alcohol, you can do really bad things. When I went, I used to go to San Quentin and I had this sitting group there and I talked to these guys and I couldn't understand. They seemed like perfectly like, just like everybody else I know pretty much. except they had a little bit more energy than most people I knew. And the other thing was, that period, they basically seemed like nice guys with a lot of energy. And when they told me the stories about how they got, what they did to get into San Quentin, every one of them was stoned.

[08:20]

They're all, although there's other conditions, you know, like they wanted more money or something, they all were either drunk or high on some drug when they did the thing. So that's one of the ways you get to be a bad guy, is make yourself so you don't care about cause and effect. And if you get drunk at that time, have you ever been drunk? Have you met anybody that's been drunk? When you're drunk, you don't care so much about cause and effect, right? Like you say, okay, I think I'll just put my hand right over there and that person, you know, I'll just put my hand right over there, I'll just do that. That would be cool. I could do that actually. And you don't care whether that person would feel assaulted or whether their husband would hit you with a bat. You're just going, you know, you're relaxed, right? Get the picture of how this works? Sort of. So...

[09:23]

The advantage of observing cause and effect is that you understand gradually how it works and as you understand how it works, you become more and more free. Doing good goes with studying cause and effect. But if you relax while you're doing the good and relax while you're studying cause and effect, then you learn much better. If you relax while you're doing bad things, like if you relax while you're drunk, you don't learn so well as if you relax while you're sober. Because you can't study the cause and effect so well when you're drunk. So you want to be both sober and relaxed, without getting drunk to be relaxed. Because then, although you're relaxed, you can't see cause and effect. And seeing cause and effect is how you start to realize creativity.

[10:28]

And seeing cause and effect is how you can realize that you and other beings are not separate. That is cause and effect by which we have this sense of separation. And when you understand how the separation is built of cause and effect, you understand it and become free of it. You understand how illusions appear and you stop believing them as real. So good is not just... But again, I said something like following the rules is good, but it's not so much that following the rules is good, it's that following the rules in the sense of watching the rules. You may not follow them, but you're watching to see, okay, I didn't follow that rule. Oh, yeah, I didn't follow that rule. Oh, I didn't follow that rule. Oh, I did follow that rule. I didn't follow... It's more like you're observing. So we say, when you receive your precept, we say, from now on, And even after realizing Buddhahood, will you continue to observe these precepts? So it isn't that you're going to continue to be perfect at them, you haven't even got there yet.

[11:36]

It's that you're going to continue to watch yourself in relationship to the precepts. Are you going to keep observing the precept of not killing? When you see a spider, are you going to keep observing? Okay, I did not kill that spider. Okay, I wanted to kill the spider, but I didn't. Okay, I pushed the spider out of the way. You're observing the precept, observing the cause and effect of your relationship with spiders, cockroaches, and gophers. I did not kill the gopher in my lawn. But I do have gopher harassment things. I have these little beepers that I put in the ground. And they don't work, but they don't kill the gophers. I'm still waiting for the girlfriend to kind of say, this is just a noisy neighborhood. I'm moving to Pittsburgh. So maybe that's not very nice either, but that's what I'm doing.

[12:38]

Maybe I'll give that up. But I'm observing the precept, right? Maybe I'll see that even these beepers are not very nice. It's observing the precepts. Now, if I'm relaxed when I'm observing the precepts, then I will continue to observe the precepts and I won't get burned out because it's joyful and playful to observe the precepts. So I'm out there playing with the gophers in my beepers. But if I get uptight about this, then I will get burned out and I'll stop observing the precepts and be a bad guy, or at least a good guy on vacation. Does that make more sense? Kind of getting it? Yes, what's your name again? Pardon? Yeah, these are different words. Concentration actually is non-involvement. But non-involvement does not mean evacuating the situation. So turning away and touching are both missing the point.

[13:43]

So you're like, you circumambulate everything. You stay close And don't do anything. It's easy not to do anything when you're far away. Usually when we get close to something, we start to mess with it. So it's non-involvement. Did I lose you? It's the non-action. You can still take action. Well, it's taking action, but it's not, you know, in this situation, it's not you taking action. Okay? You're close there with the situation, and action more like arises. This is a... Samadhi tunes you into spontaneity. So you taking action, again, is putting yourself outside. It's not really concentration. You're sort of on the outskirts of the world. There's you, there's plus you still. So it's like you stay close to things and don't do anything.

[14:46]

You just stay close. Or like you stay close to your breath. Your breath is kind of like an action. You stay close and don't do anything. As you walk down the street, you stay close and don't do anything. As you sit up, you stay close and don't do anything. As you're talking to somebody, you stay close for the conversation and don't do anything about it. You don't try to steer the conversation. You try to relax with the conversation. You don't get involved with the conversation. You're talking to somebody and you don't get involved in the conversation. then the conversation is a conversation in some way. And not getting involved means you're not trying to make it go this way or that way. You're actually... But if you are trying to get it to go this way and that way, then perhaps you use the conversation as an opportunity to reveal and disclose that you're trying to move the conversation over to be what you think is right. You're trying to move the conversation off the present topic onto a different one.

[15:50]

So when you're talking about something and you notice that you're not relaxed with it but you're trying to get it to be something else, just some seeking, I wish I could get this person to change topics or at least I wish I could get this person to stop talking. You notice that's what's going on, then it might be nice to sort of say, guess what? I just noticed I'm trying to get you to stop talking. And when you say that, you don't say that to try to get him to stop talking, although it works pretty well. It's different than just saying, stop talking. It's more like, I noticed that I was trying to get you to stop talking. You've just told him something about yourself and you've just confessed something. This is more in the mode of relaxation and play. But the samadhi part of the conversation is not trying to do anything. Various things are being done, but that's not the samadhi. Samadhi is staying close to what is happening, the breath, the heartbeat, the various ideas and feelings arising, physical movements, speech, all this stuff is going on.

[17:02]

Now can we be with that in this relaxed way? So that if we can, then gradually the conversation becomes playful and creative and understanding emerges. So it's not that we're not doing something because we can't stop doing things because we're alive. So doing things is going to keep going on all the time. Somebody's going to keep thinking, breathing, digesting, emoting. That's going to keep going on. Now, we're talking about bringing samadhi to this person, which, by the way, is already there. We're trying to bring the samadhi into bloom. turn this person, normal person, to turn this into a samadhi person. So whatever this person is doing, we're going to relax with it. Whatever this person is doing, X, you know, practicing the precepts, studying Buddhism, suffering, experiencing pleasure, having a conversation, whatever they're doing, we're going to bring samadhi to this, we're going to relax with this.

[18:09]

Okay? Which means close and not doing anything. Which means close, but not involved. Because we are close with what's happening, actually. So we just reiterate that. We're close, but no closer. We're not doing anything more. And this is samadhi and this is compassion. And then as we get better and better at that, then The dynamic of the situation starts to be unfolded in the drama of our playfulness, and the creativity starts to emerge, and then understanding arises, and then freedom is realized. It seems strange to me, when speaking about this, to talk about It kind of makes sense to say close, but not involved. Is that your words, close, but not involved? Well, I said close and not doing anything.

[19:11]

Stay close and do nothing. That's one soundbite. The other one is have no involvement. That's Bouddhidharma. Okay, have no involvement. The idea... Kind of makes sense. It has some sense. But then it kind of gets strange when I think of going and then everything is one. It sounds real close, beyond close. It sounds that way. Well, I have no problem with that saying real close or beyond close. It's fine with me. But in that closeness, there's no problem about doing anything, right? When you realize oneness, you're not going to be doing anything. Can you pull that? Your question. When enlisting to, especially I've never been close,

[20:19]

Actually, I was thinking close but not involved. That was the thought I was having. It's okay, but just keep the language straight. Yeah, your non-action kind of makes it more consistent. But anyway, when I thought of it as close but not involved, it seemed like a little distance. That was my sense of it. But then as you go on, if you practice right and right, things become one. It sounds real close. Closeness precludes oneness? Yeah, that's right. I mean, stay close and do nothing is like an exercise to realize oneness. There's still a little distance there. That's what I, yeah, that was my sense. Yeah. It was a little distant. Right. And when you reach oneness, then there's no issue of doing anything.

[21:22]

Like, just imagine if you were with Buddha and you finally attained oneness, you would not be like necessarily saying, well, should we have a birthday party? You don't have to do anything when you get to oneness. When you're in love, you don't have to do anything. When you're truly in love, that's it. That's really the point. Now, this thing will blossom into something, but at the moment, it itself has nothing to do. But the closeness is more like an instruction which will bear fruit as oneness. Yeah, yeah. which is the same bare-foot as understanding oneness, understanding non-separation. This particular instruction emerged from an interaction I had with someone at Tassajara.

[22:30]

She was a guest there in a workshop I was doing. She told me that another guest came up to her told her that she just lost her husband, and she wanted to talk to her. And this person came to me and said, well, what can I say to her? I don't know what to say. I said, well, you don't have to say anything. Just hold her hand. Huh? Yeah, right. So then I saw her later, and she said, well, I met with her, and I did what you told me. Stay close and do nothing. And I said, that's better than what I said, but that is what I meant, yeah. And that was very helpful. The woman said it was so helpful. She thought, you know, again, this is what people have burnout about. They think, oh, I'm with this person, I'm a grievance counselor, or is it grievance counselor, is that what you say?

[23:32]

Grief. Grief counselor. I'm a grief counselor, here comes this person, this really... Troubled person who just lost her husband. Now what should I do? And then if you think in those terms, you're going to get burned. Because you're getting tense. You think, I've got to do something. Wait a minute. All you've got to do is face this person and relax with them. That will be helpful. You won't be doing anything. The relaxation will be actually helping them. You're just going to give up being the hero or whatever, the fixer. That's pretty scary, but let it go. And then you won't get burnout and you'll be helpful. So that's what that woman did. She didn't do anything. It was helpful. But she was near the person. So that's why you can't just take drugs. I'm going to go see this person. If I take some drugs, I won't do anything. That would be helpful.

[24:35]

No, you have to go there and feel what it's like to be with this unhappy person. Feel it and not try to fix it. Just relax with it. Your feelings and her feelings or his feelings Then you're like bringing samadhi to the meeting. And if you keep working at that, pretty soon you realize how you and she are playing. And actually you realize the creativity of your meeting. And it can go beyond just helping to realization. But usually there's quite a bit of confession of non-relaxation and involvement in doing things. So here I am, I just, like a lot of therapists, they just can't sit there. They have to do something to get them to feel justified in getting paid for this.

[25:38]

I have to do something. I can't just be with the person. So then, yeah, so they have to confess that. So they go to their supervisor and confess and confess and confess that they just keep messing with their clients. But sometimes therapists are sitting with the client, you know, and doing nothing, and just suddenly the roof opens up, the ceiling parts, and the room is just filled with compassion. They don't know where it comes from, but there's just compassion everywhere, and everybody's like benefiting from it. And they didn't do it, the client didn't do it, the ceiling didn't do it, and yet somehow, sometimes you're just open to it. Buddhist compassion isn't waiting. It's just that we're resisting it. Because we, you know, we think we've got to be in control of the goodness factor, the beneficial. It's really tough.

[26:46]

It's really tough, yeah. It's really tough. It's a big change to switch from grasping and seeking to relaxation. Again, what is it? What do you need to let go and just be here now? What do you need? How can we help you? Is there anything you need that would help you today? If you can express it, you know, that probably would be helpful. You can say what you need to be able to relax, to just go and relax right now with the situation. Is there anything that you lack to relax? I could use an extra pillow. An extra pillow? Do we have some extra pillows?

[27:49]

I think so. That was easy. I imagine a number of people are thinking in air conditioning. That's beyond our means. When you were talking about this early on, you mentioned, you said the word trance. It was somewhere in one and two. And it kind of like... Sometimes people use trance for Samadhi number two. And what happened actually, the reason I'm mentioning it is because when I was sitting the last couple of periods, all of a sudden I saw I was in a trance. Well, then the trance stopped because I saw it. The funny thing was, it had never occurred to me that I could possibly have been in a trance while sitting.

[28:52]

And then to hear you say that Smoky Tube is a trance. Sometimes they use trance for... sometimes John is translated into English as trance. It's a state of absorption in mental one-pointedness. That's samadhi number two. Samadhi number two is to be absorbed in the samadhi quality of our mind. One of the things I noticed was I wasn't very present to it. It was almost like it just was happening. And then by seeing it, Kind of change the whole quality of the whole thing. Yeah. Sometimes people would call it drop into trance without really noticing it much.

[29:54]

It can happen. Or it can be more willful too. It can be more like this training those way of you using focusing on the breath. You're following the breath, you're following the breath. And suddenly, not suddenly, but suddenly or gradually, you're not following the breath anymore. There's just breath. And there's just presence. There's breath and presence. There's not something watching the breath or anything, or anybody forcing himself to pay attention to the breath. There's just breath and there's presence. I mean, there's awareness of the breath, but there's no separation of the awareness. And there's calm. And there's this calm way of being with the experience of breath. And there's relaxation.

[30:55]

And there's not trying to get anything. And then as soon as you start talking about it again, you're back in discursive thought, which is, you know, discursive thought is not relaxed. But you can relax with discursive thought. Usually discursive thought is you're running... Another way of talking about relaxation is not moving among objects. Another way to talk about it. So, like, if I look at Don, and I look at Amy, and I look at Barbara, Those are three different things I can be aware of. But my samadhi way of meeting them is that I don't move from person to person. I'm with my my awareness of them as I look at the different people. So I'm focusing not on the different people but on the same way of being with each of them. So I'm not really moving among the objects. I think I'll switch from Don to Amy.

[31:59]

That might be helpful. Maybe I should stay here for a while, not go to Barbary yet. This is like the usual way we deal with things. stay with this person because, you know, in order to have an effect. And then when the effect's done, then when I'll move to another one to get another, this kind of moving around, this is discursive thought. So the samadhi is like, you do see different people or meet different events, but you're not really like going from one to the other for some effect, which is the discursive thought. You're not like trying to engineer or herd the different people or herd your objects in some direction. Although sometimes hurting is good, Samadhi is giving that up and working on the way you meet everybody the same, rather than be concerned with meeting the different people, not to mention meeting them in different ways.

[33:03]

But usually the reason why we move among objects is because we're meeting them in different ways. Because I meet you in a way that's pleasant for me, I stay with you. Because I meet somebody else in a way that's unpleasant for me, I avoid them. So that creates a sense of... And how we move among objects according to likes and dislikes is discursive thought. Giving that up for a while is developing samadhi. And sometimes that happens, you hardly even notice, you just gave it up. And then you drop into samadhi, or the trance kind of samadhi. And then as soon as you start, like, thinking about it as opposed to other states you've been in, you're back in discursive thought. Okay? And I think a lot of you probably have that experience of just falling into some peaceful... form, peaceful way of being, where you're not trying to get anything out of the situation.

[34:09]

And then you realize that's where you are, and then you try to get a hold of it. Because you compare it to, you compare it and say, oh, this is different. So you're back in discursive thoughts, so you're left. And also you're tensing up. You grasp. So, like I said, grasping of death, so as soon as you grasp It's whatever it is, as soon as you grasp it. Yes. In giving a gift, often I find myself with the inclination to try to get something from the gift I give. Yes. or a prescription or a recommendation that I hear from you is to relax and give him a gift. Yeah, right. Well, that makes gift-giving... That makes gift-giving samadhi practice, which giving is closely related to samadhi.

[35:10]

So, just to take it further, then, whether or not I got the thing that I intended to get, I would be indifferent to it because I would relax. Yeah, if you're already on the mode of... By the way, giving something to get something is not giving. Okay? But even if you're doing this, what we call pseudo-giving, which is giving in order to get something, which is really like purchasing something. Right? Even that kind of activity, which is really purchasing something, if you relax with that, then that's samadhi. But it's not giving originally. And it's not stealing either, because you're willing to pay for it in this case. Although sometimes when we think in terms of giving something and getting something, We sometimes don't notice, in that language we sometimes don't notice that we're paying less than it's actually usually... we might be paying less than what's necessary to pay.

[36:13]

So if we go in a store and we see the price of it and we pay less than the price, we know that we're not paying the right amount. Right? So we don't expect them to give us the thing. Whereas in some other cases, we give something to someone, we expect something, but we don't know the price, and then we don't get it. So we don't really notice what the actual price is. point of Samadhi practice is that as you go through these kinds of activities, you relax with them. So then you learn things like, I gave something to get something. In other words, I paid something to get something, and I didn't get it. Maybe it's because I didn't pay enough. Then when you're relaxed and you're in samadhi, then you can say, you know, I gave you this and I wanted you to give me that and you didn't. How come? The person says, I don't know. I said, well, did I not pay you enough? And he said, well, actually, that's right, you didn't.

[37:14]

You need to do this too. And you say, oh, wow. So this is like you start being playful again. See, the playfulness starts to emerge when you bring samadhi to the interaction. Whereas if you tense up with the interaction... Well, you know what happens then, right? Huh? Yes. Yeah. It's really terrible. What we sometimes do, when we give something to someone, we expect it, and then we tense up, or we're tense through the whole process, and then it's really ugly. But if we give something with the expectation of giving it, but we meet that with relaxation, we can say, well, what happened? How come it didn't work? You know? And then they say, well, how come what didn't work? And we tell them, and they say, wow, blah, blah, blah. Then it's okay. Then it's fun. Then this perfectly mundane, greedy thing we were doing can turn into an opportunity for playfulness and enlightenment. So we don't have to stop doing stuff like this.

[38:17]

We just need to bring samadhi to them. And then understanding can evolve. And we're not going to stop doing this stuff anyway, right? We're not going to stop underpaying for things in our relationships, right? Giving a little bit less than what's really needed. We're not going to stop that. We're going to like sometimes give less than what's needed. But if we can be relaxed with it, then we can say, well, that didn't work. What happened? And then the process of liberation kicks in. But see, again, it's not so easy to relax when you're going to, when you're bringing something to someone, right? And trying to get something. It's not so easy to relax, but I say it's possible. And again, relaxation in this case means that you're doing this thing, but you don't take it so seriously. That will help you relax. Or it's the same, another side of relaxation. Here I am, I'm making this offering, I do have some ulterior motive,

[39:21]

I mean, I do. Now, I could just not give anything until I had no ulterior motive, but I do. So I think I'm going to try it. I'm going to do this thing to try to get this thing. I'm going to play this game. And I'm going to see what happens. And here we go. Wow. And yeah, it didn't work. But, you know, I have recourse. I can say, well, what happened? And I can confess what I was up to. I can do all this stuff because I'm relaxed. because there's relaxation and then things can work out in a way far beyond what i was heading i had this little mundane thing happening but this can turn into something much more wonderful than my little negotiation which i was trying to make but i can't you know i can only imagine my own little petty mundane trips I can't think of what would happen or what can happen when we start playing. I can't imagine that. I mean, I can imagine it, but it won't be that.

[40:22]

It's too wonderful, it's too creative, you know. Yeah, unexpected, right. But if I can approach things, I have my own expectations and stuff, and if I can bring relaxation along with my normal expectation mode, then some part of me is not expecting. Some part of me is letting go of my expectations. And then when I get frustrated, even though they were there, I'm not taking them so seriously, so then something else can open up. And this is like, this is samadhi. Big, you know, serious samadhi. Samadhis are kind of a big word, right? It's a big religious word in Buddhism. But I think it's really the gate to... Bodhisattva samadhis are playful. They're not serious. We have enough seriousness. Bodhisattvas have plenty of seriousness. No shortage of seriousness. They're talking about all their... They're aware of universal suffering.

[41:28]

Now they're willing to go in there and play in this realm of suffering. So isn't it like what I can't imagine, I also doesn't get to experience? Isn't that where it's like you'd rather know your Bodhisattva than be a Bodhisattva? You don't get to experience, but there is an experience, a big, wonderful experience, but you're sort of like a little bit out of it. So that's part of what you have to sort of like tell yourself. You're going to be kind of on the sidelines of this thing. It's going to be fine. You're not going to get hurt. You're not going to get degraded or demoted, but you're not going to be able to understand this thing because it's not like a thing for a self to really play with. This is like true interdependence and you don't get that. So you just have to understand we're switching media now and it won't hurt you and actually it'll be better for you in the end, actually.

[42:35]

But yeah, the self doesn't really get to... This is now a self thing. But it's a person thing. A person can be this way. It's just not a self-person. The isolated person can't participate here. But it can interfere. That's why I say, what do you need to be able to relax? What do you need to tell yourself so your self will let you relax? So your isolated self won't freak out and say all kinds of tricky, nasty things to you while you're trying to relax. How can we kind of like... you know, bargain with this side of ourself, this small self, to get it to, like, relax along the sidelines. So you didn't do that? Yeah. That's part of what you say. What do you lack to be able to relax? It's the small self that's scared to relax. Because it kind of knows, number one, it might get left out.

[43:39]

It's certainly not going to be like the mate. It's not the prime mover in this. But it's important in that there has to be an allowance for it to be let go of. So once it's let go of or forgotten, then this wonderful stuff can happen. So like Dogen says, to study Buddha way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self. So we have to recognize we've got a self here that has some reservation about samadhi. Now, if the self can be like in charge of the samadhi and do the samadhi, then the self says, okay, I'm going to do samadhi now. I'm going to be a great meditator. But it doesn't work that way. I notice it doesn't work. When you've got the self in the samadhi seat, it's antithetical to samadhi. The self has to go, just rest. And the self says, well, I can't rest. How can I rest and make this big samadhi effort? Right. So relax. The self says, I can't relax. What will happen? I'll lose control. Yeah, right. So somehow we have to get the self to, like, relax, and then samadhi can happen.

[44:43]

But it's hard to get it relaxed. That's why I say, what do you need to relax? What will make you feel like you can relax? The self sometimes can say, you know, well, if I knew that everybody loved me, I could just sit here and be loved by the whole universe, then I could, like, not be in charge of the process. I'd be okay, man. Or what, you know? And also, what else? If you let us forget you for a little while, then everything that happens will be kind of like confirm you. If we can forget you for a while, then everything will support you. If we can forget you for a while, everything will support you and sustain you and love you. You don't feel that now, and your price to realizing that will be if you let us let go of you for a little while. And if the self feels like, okay, then you let go of it and it does get paid back greatly. But it doesn't exactly feel it because it's more like, it's like a new self that's born.

[45:49]

It's a self that's born now interdependently. But that interdependent self is very good at taking care of the independent self. So the interdependent self that's born in that situation can, again, be all kinds of skillful messages to the... to the independent self. You can think of all kinds of ways to soothe it. And so we do need to soothe it. We do need to adjust to it, accommodate to it, pacify it. We do. We do means the person does, and the person, the interdependent person does have to do this. The interdependent person uses all kinds of skills to help this self adjust to the process of relaxation. Well, should we follow the schedule somewhat?

[46:58]

Why not? Why not? Why not? And so we maybe go back to sleep a little bit more before dinner. All right? Well, maybe it would be good to actually... How many of you... Maybe it would be good to end our session by reading Doda's description of this one of his inconceivable samadhis. Do you want to just recite before we go back? And this relates to the self, you know. This is a samadhi where you see how you're giving the self, where there's a witnessing of the reception of the self, of the self's giving, and then how the self that's been given, how that given self, the interdependent self, functions. That's what the samadhi is.

[48:00]

Everybody have one? Okay. So literally this is the, this is called the self-ji, and ju means receiving, and ju means functioning or employing. But sometimes the two characters are combined. The receiving and employing are combined. When you combine receiving and employing, it means enjoyment or fulfilled. So the usual self that's not received, the usual self that we've already got, is the self-unenjoyment. The self you've already got is a self you don't enjoy very much. It's a burden. You have to carry it around. You've already got it. It's pushing you down toward death. The self you receive and employ, that is an enjoyable and fulfilling self.

[49:12]

So this is the samadhi about the enjoyable way to have a self. And the enjoyable or fulfilling way to have a self is to each moment receive it and then see that received self employed. Received and employed. This being absorbed in this is being absorbed in self-fulfillment and self-enjoyment. Now all ancestors and all Buddhas who uphold Buddhadharma have made it the true path of enlightenment to sit right at the seat of this self-fulfilled Messiah. Those who attain enlightenment indeed have a chance to call it this way. In the same way, your brothers, teachers, and disciples, personally transmit this testimony to the essence of the teaching, and the authentic tradition of our teaching is directly transmitted. It is the unsurpassable of the unsurpassable.

[50:17]

For the first time we need a master without engaging in his self-suffering. I am enchanted with his name. Repentance reads through Jesus. You should just as quietly sit in the struggle of a body and mind. Even for a moment, he expressed that we are the seal in three actions. I said, what brand is mine? But behold, from up in the world, he comes to the seal, and begins to act as if he were the seal. He acts as if he were the seal. He acts as if he were the seal. He acts as if he were the seal. All beings in the ten directions and systems, including the three order realms, analyze the ten-kilobit mind, realize the state of pre-intersection, and manifest the original face.

[51:20]

At this time, the power of the Flames of the Real Life is coming to me. The Real Life is coming to me. And it's setting my mind on the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is coming. At this moment, you turn your eyes to the house of your great grandmother, and expound the profound wisdom of what is in her condition. At this point, we are giving mercy and respect to you, and we ask you to read conceitfully. We acknowledge the fact that none of the steps that you are up or waiting by are mine. I love that there is a pile of us who pass and realize it's actually really fun. Most of the ways that we live actually, and even more in blackness, but this is so good, it's happening to us everywhere. Because everyone's got the opportunity, one way or the other, and variously uplifted beyond the window of the dark.

[52:21]

It's also very fast. creation with acidity, those who receive the benefit of drinking that water and cause us to lay down, are inconsistently outliving with his kindness, sending him to the people, and clearing himself from the ages of sorrows. Those who receive these water and fire benefits, Because of this, all of us who live with you, speak with you, will obtain endlessly the virtue and will ungrow widely inside and outside the entire universe. The end of something that is unthinkable on the name of the God. All that exists in the world does not appear in every association. Because it does not exist in the world, it exists in every association. It might exist in every association, but it appears as it appears to a part of it.

[53:27]

Thank you very much. and endless names found in conceivable profanity. Grass, trees, and walls bring forth the teaching for all beings. Come on, let me be one of those sages. And may the Lord take this number for the sake of grass, trees, and walls. Thus the realm of self-awakening and waking up is inevitably both a mark of realization and a mark of learning. And the realization, though, is not the simplest decision for a moment. It's basically said that there's always only one person and not one man.

[54:50]

And it was accepted to be a chorus of all things, of what resonates to all time. teaching them the story. The issue I'd like to start with is you've got to get involved with some practice. You need to get involved with some representation. This is not a new practice. It's not sitting. It's like, can I just try to get into this? It's not wearing out. It's just a video. Can I do this? Can I do that? The purpose of things or a manifest of ritual practice on the original face is impossible to measure. No, maybe you can involve widows and integrations as in what is the status of the energies. It is so interesting that when widows exist, child integrations are one existing side of it. So this is Samadhi number four.

[56:00]

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