So the English word intimacy is a word that I'm... Is it going? Go ahead. The English word intimacy is a translation of... In Zen, the word intimacy, the trans-character intimacy, they're different ones. But one of them is character, which also means secret or esoteric. And another character, which is used for intimacy, means close. And another character we use for intimacy means also means kindness and refers to the closeness between parents and child.

[01:01]

So a number of Chinese characters appear in Zen literature, which are sometimes translated as intimacy, close, and so on. But they aren't technical terms. They aren't Buddhist technical terms. And yet, those words are often spoken of as sort of the point of the practice. and the way we are with things, which realizes the Buddha way. And one thing to come to mind is that this being intimate with things is a way that ends outflows in relationship to them. So, for example, I mentioned that outflows are the kinds of feeds that are put down in our life when we relate to things in terms of gain and loss.

[02:14]

And I feel myself, maybe you can see this, that if you relate to things in terms of gain and loss, you're undermining or losing intimacy with them. So if you talk to somebody, or like I said this morning, if you pick up a cup, if you even brush your teeth or comb your hair or wash your face with a gaining idea, you're not really like being somewhat intimate with your cup or with your friend or with your face. To wash your face, to live the life of face washing, no sense of gain from it or loss, but to wash your face as an act of intimacy, as a way, as a means, as a way of being with your face,

[03:22]

that will achieve harmony with your face and peace with your face. But again, dealing with your face in terms of gain and loss is not so harmonious or peaceful. You may get into wishing your face was some other way or trying to make your face better and better. and better and better in terms of your face, also better than, maybe better and better than other people's face, to have the nicest face in all the land. The fairest face. You know, that makes you, that makes you stressed, that stresses you, to wash your face that way. But, you know, in Zen, you know, sometimes Zen teachers say to their students, students say, what should I do? A teacher says, wash your face, you know. Brush your teeth, or, Drink your tea. That's a very famous thing to say.

[04:31]

What is Zen? Drink your tea. Wash your face. But to drink your tea, to get something out of it, that's not just drinking your tea. And so I have this little green folder. See it? And this is a folder which somebody gave me, which has my boarding pass. We had my boarding pass in it for a trip from Minneapolis back to San Francisco. I got my boarding pass, you know, on the computer the day before, and they gave it to me in this little green folder. And when I got home, I decided to use this boarding pass as one of my little Dharma file folders.

[05:37]

And so the title on the thing here is, Basic Method, a Basic Zen Method. And then it says here, that little thing says, Intimacy and No Outflows. And I was looking at it just a few minutes ago, and I thought, oh, it's got this, it said REBS boarding pass in the front. And I thought, that's nice. That's so nice to have this boarding pass written on the basic Zen method. But I thought, actually, this is my boarding pass. My boarding pass, basic Zen method. That's how I, so I'll leave it on there. I don't have to green it out. So generally speaking, as you may have noticed, at least if you watch other people, people often are not intimate with their life moment by moment.

[06:47]

People are often into like, oh, what can I gain from this, from that? What can I do now to gain something, to gain some pleasure, gain some money, or gain some time? How can I avoid to lose something? This way of being with our moment-by-moment experience is create outflows and suffering and stress, and it's not intimate. and it doesn't promote peace and harmony. And yet, we are that way often. So we need to, in a sense, we need to learn a way of being that, in a sense, turns that around, that habit, or helps us let go of that habit. And the process of getting over not being intimate with things.

[07:55]

And I've shown some of you this before, but the process that I... There's a little diagram, a little simple outline of the process for ending out flows, or the process for Achieving intimacy, which is again related to letting go of not being intimate, is a process which I outline by writing trust, relax, play, create, understand, Liberate. And you can just go from liberate to harmonize, pacify.

[09:14]

But in some sense, the harmonizing and pacifying in this process actually start already in the play and creating phase. And also, when I first started offering this outline of practice, actually started and relax. So the English word intimacy is a word that I'm... Is it going? Going. The English word intimacy... is a translation of, in Zen, the word intimacy, the trans-character intimacy, the different ones, but they mean, one of them is, one of them is character, which also means secret or esoteric.

[10:48]

And another character which is used for intimacy means close. And another character for intimacy also means kindness and refers to the closeness between parents and child. So a number of Chinese characters appear in Zen literature, which are sometimes translated as intimacy, close, and so on. But they aren't technical terms. They aren't Buddhist technical terms. And yet those words are often spoken of as sort of the point of the practice. And the way we are with things, which realizes the Buddha way. And one thing that comes to mind is that this being intimate with things is a way that ends outflows in relationship to them.

[11:56]

So, for example, I mentioned that outflows are the kinds of feeds that are put down in our life when we relate to things in terms of gain and loss. And I feel myself, maybe you can see this, that if you relate to things in terms of gain and loss, you're undermining or losing intimacy with them. So if you talk to somebody, or like I said this morning, if you pick up a cup, if you even brush your teeth or comb your hair, or wash your face with a gaining idea, you're not really like being so intimate with your cup or with your friend or with your face.

[13:00]

To wash your face, to live the life of face washing, with no sense of gain from it or loss, But to wash your face as an act of intimacy, as a way, as a means, as a way of being with your face, that will achieve harmony with your face and peace with your face. But again, dealing with your face in terms of gain and loss is not so harmonious or peaceful. into wishing your face was some other way. Try and make your face better and better. And better and better in terms of your face, also maybe better and better than other people's face, to have the nicest face in all the land, the fairest face.

[14:01]

That stresses you to wash your face that way. But in Zen, sometimes Zen teachers say to their students, the student says, what should I do? The teacher says, wash your face. Brush your teeth or drink your tea. That's a very famous thing to say. The student says, what is Zen? Drink your tea. Wash your face. But to drink your tea to get something out of it, that's not just drinking your tea. And so I have this little green folder.

[15:03]

See it? And this is a folder which somebody gave me, which has my boarding pass. It had my boarding pass in it for a trip from Minneapolis back to San Francisco. I got my boarding pass on the computer the day before, and they gave it to me in this little green folder. When I got home, I decided to use this boarding pass as one of my little dharma. And so the title on the thing here is Basic Method, a Basic Zen Method. And then it says here, that little thing says, Intimacy and No Outflows. And I was looking at it just a few minutes ago, and I thought, oh, it's got this, it says Rev's Vording Pass in the front. And I thought, what? That's enough. It's nice to have the boarding pass written on the basic Zen method, but I thought, actually, this is my boarding pass.

[16:06]

My boarding pass, basic Zen method. That's how I... So I'll leave it on there. Okay. I don't have to green it out. Um... So generally speaking, as you may have noticed, at least if you watch other people, people often are not intimate with their life moment by moment. People are often into like, oh, what can I gain from this, from that? What can I do now to gain something, to gain some pleasure? Gain some money or gain some time. How can I avoid to lose something? This way of being with our moment by moment experience is create outflows and suffering and stress and it's not intimate.

[17:19]

And it doesn't promote peace and harmony. And yet we are that way often. So we need to In a sense, we need to learn a way of being that, in a sense, turns that around, that habit, or helps us let go of that habit. And a process of getting over not being intimate with things And I've shown some of you this before, but the process that I... There's a little diagram, a little simple outline of the process for handing out flows or the process for achieving intimacy, which is, again, related to letting go of not being intimate, is a process which I...

[18:28]

Outline by writing trust, relax, play, create, understand, liberate. And you can just go from liberate to harmonize, pacify. Then sometimes, whoops, got one over here. In a sense, the harmonizing and pacifying in this process actually start already in the play and creating phase.

[19:40]

And also, when I first started offering this outline of practice, I actually started and relaxed. When I first started offering this outline, I said, relax, play, create, understand, and liberate. But then I noticed that people were scared to relax. They thought, relax? Really? I noticed they didn't dare relax. They thought, well, what happened to me if I relax? You can imagine various things might happen to you if you relax, and they might. A lot of things. probably won't happen if you don't relax, right? If you're tense, certain things probably won't happen. And if you relax, some of those things that won't happen when you're tense will very likely will happen, plus a bunch of other stuff might happen.

[20:51]

I often think, you know, this is maybe Too intimate to tell you, but anyway, when I first practiced period at Tassajara Monastery in California, I noticed after about two months that certain parts of my body were loosening up. And I thought perhaps I would have kind of an accident. What do you call it? Gastrointestinal accident. I didn't, but I just sort of feels like, well, there isn't, you know, is there enough holding there? Usually I hold this much, and now I'm holding about half as much. I wonder if that's enough. And I didn't try to hold less. I just noticed that things were looser, just kind of like there was less tension. But anyway, nothing happened, really. It was all right. I didn't need the extra tension. Uptight, you know? You heard the expression uptight. It kind of actually applies down there.

[21:58]

That's where it kind of like often is, uptight. So anyway, I think a lot of people are afraid that they might have little accidents that tend to stop offering incense. You know, you have these incense, these sticks of incense. When you offer them, if you're like a jisha or something, or a tenet, you're offering incense, you think if you don't hold tightly, you might drop the incense. So some people hold it tighter than they have to. When they offer it, they don't know when you let go. If you let go too soon, it'll fall. If you hold on too long, it'll break. There's no way. Come on, let go. So I realized that people had trouble trusting that they can relax. So now I've expanded trust into kind of a process, too. And basically, the trusting phase is basically Basically, compassion. Now, trust means, in some sense, trust means you start by trusting compassion.

[23:12]

So in some sense, the beginning of the process of realizing intimacy in your life is to trust compassion. And the other way is if you practice compassion, I was suggesting you will be able to trust that you can relax. And sometimes if you're not practicing compassion, maybe you shouldn't relax. Because if you're not being kind to people and you relax, then you might say, hey man, whatever. And then you're cruel to people. Well, sometimes that's not so good. You should be tense if you're thinking of being cruel. Because the tension might actually kind of like slow you down in your cruelty. So compassion means, in the traditional presentation of compassion, it means practicing giving, being generous. It means practicing the precepts which support the development of virtue.

[24:17]

It means practicing patience, which are pain and irritations. And with things that happen, it means practicing diligence and it means practicing tranquility or concentration. If you practice these things, then you can relax. If you don't practice precepts, if you don't practice virtue, then sometimes it's not safe to relax. But on the other hand, if you are committed to practice virtue, and you are generous with yourself and are generous with others, and you really accept generously a mind, a big mind, which accepts the way people are, even if they've got problems, on some level you accept them in their problems. You accept yourself and others in your unskillfulness. You're generous in that way.

[25:18]

You're giving in that way with everything. And then you also practice virtue and patience, and you're diligent about all this, and diligent in things you do, and you're also practicing tranquility. Then you can trust it's okay to relax. When you relax, then it's possible to be playful. Now, I said I wrote play, but I mean also, I don't mean just play like play baseball or play football with a gaining idea. I mean be playful. in playing baseball, rather than, again, playing baseball with the primary agenda of gaining a victory. So if you can play baseball or play chess or play bridge or cook dinner with a playful attitude, that means you're doing these things, but not necessarily to gain something and not trying to avoid loss. but actually to enact compassion in a relaxed way.

[26:25]

And then if you can be that way with things, you start being creative with them. And in the creativity, well, first of all, when you're relaxed with things, does it make sense to you that when you're relaxed with things sometimes, with yourself or your own experience, when you're relaxed with others, sometimes you feel a little closer to them? That make sense? Again, I think of like some people have a glass of wine with somebody. Maybe they feel more relaxed with them. And in Japan, there is a kind of a generalization. But in Japan, Japanese people have a tendency in their daily activity to be a little uptight. They don't tend to be, generally speaking, a population that's not a real relaxed population. They're extremely diligent and industrious people, and they're extremely skillful.

[27:30]

Just compare the different societies. Japanese people are, generally speaking, very skillful. They train their kids to run. And they do. Like a little kid that's teaching how to run, rather than just a kid to run, they're teaching I know this woman, she's a physicist, a nuclear physicist, but she also is a seamstress and a gourmet cook, but she learned that stuff at home. They just teach all the women how to sew and cook, even the ones who are like mathematicians and physicists and engineers. We don't necessarily teach all the kids that stuff. So there's a lot of great things about Japan, but they're not so relaxed. And they don't, generally speaking, go down the street singing. But when they get together and have some drinks, then they start singing and dancing.

[28:35]

And also, even Japanese priests that I've met, they're often quite formal. formal and restrained and kind of uptight and don't tell you sometimes what they're thinking about or what they're feeling, you have to somehow have to start drinking with them sometimes for them to start telling you what's going on. But we all sometimes quite a bit of drinking. So anyway, I'm just saying that drinking makes people relax sometimes, not always. And then they start feeling closer to each other, so then they start to dare to tell each other certain things about what they're feeling and so on. And actually, I'm not prohibiting anything, but I'm actually recommending practicing compassion so you have trust that you can relax rather than needing to drink to relax. And then when you relax, then I would suggest to you that you really can't be playful if you're not relaxed.

[29:41]

But really, you need to relax when you're playful. And then when you start being playful, then you see all kinds of amazing possibilities in situations. And it's one of the possibilities that you see when you start being playful is you start to see that you're not even being playful. That you're not even doing the playful things you're doing. In other words, you start to see how creativity actually works is that you're not the creator and somebody else isn't the creator either. That there's creation all the time And we're totally intimate with it, but nobody's in charge of it. And that's one of the differences between the Buddhist teaching and the teaching of the Bible. And I recently was traveling, and and in the hotel there was a Gideon Bible, and I opened it up instead of reading it. In the beginning they had some kind of like summaries, like, what did the Bible say about X, you know?

[30:48]

What does the Bible say about man's relationship with God? What does the Bible say about man's relationship with God? And I think that the way they describe man's relationship with God is that, basically, God makes man. And also, just the way that they talked about God's relationship with man, or what God was in relationship to humans, I thought, well, if you just replace God by dependent core arising, it's exactly the same. What they call God in the Bible is what the Buddhists would call dependent core arising. But we don't call it a primary cause. we call it the principle of creation. Whereas the Bible anthropomorphizes that and makes the principle of creation into a person, a male, as a matter of fact. In China, actually, they call that principle. This isn't Buddhist.

[31:50]

This is just regular Chinese culture. They call that principle of creation the mother principle. So in Chinese culture, they call, they have this mother principle, which is often translated as creation, creativity. But it actually says mother principle. In Buddhism, we call the mother principle dependent core arising. Everything is a dependent core arising. And by relaxing, by practicing compassion, by wholeheartedly committing to compassion, and then relaxing with what's happening, and start being playful with what's happening, you actually enter into the process which has been going on all along. Of course, creativity has always been going on. It's just a question of entering into it. In other words, creativity is our intimacy. In fact, we are mutually creating each other.

[32:54]

And the principle by which we are mutually creating each other and by which our existence depends on others and they depend on us, that interdependence is creativity, is dependent co-arising. That's what's been going on long, but we can tense up and exile ourself from that process. And reversing by relaxing and being playful we start to slip back into that process and become more intimate with it. Or we rediscover and retrieve and redeem our creativity. But it isn't exactly ours. It's that we are always in it. And then when we're in it, we have a chance then to understand it. But again, the understanding is not so much like, oh, I understand the intimacy, but rather that you are living in intimacy, you're living in such a way that's realizing the intimacy.

[34:13]

That is the understanding. So you're not outside understanding intimacy. Your understanding is that you have realized intimacy. And then you're free. you're free of lack of intimacy, you're free of outflows, you're free of greed, hate and delusion, you're free of unskillfulness, and you're free to interact with other beings in such a way that you can actually harmonize with them and make peace with them. And then, if they're not already in this process, since you have this nice, peaceful, harmonious relationship, you can invite them into the practice of compassion and invite them into the practice of trusting that they can relax and that they can play with you and that you can enter together into creativity and understand it. And then they realize the process too, and then they also can invite others into what they've realized.

[35:15]

So that's the basic process of liberation. Well, liberation and intimacy. In a sense, intimacy is, in a sense, the same as... Well, intimacy is kind of like... involves all this. But in particular, kind of the center of gravity of intimacy is around the creating and understanding. When you're in the process of your intimacy with your life, which means you're in the process of intimacy with others, but you haven't understood it yet, it hasn't really sunk in. When it actually sinks in, you're kind of like, I think I'm getting, I think I'm understanding what's going on. I mean, I get it. It's wonderful. So not only are you creating, but you're understanding it. And again, I remember one time I was in England and I saw this video of this English painter.

[36:19]

And he said, usually people think if you understand, you can create. But I think it's more the other way around. And I do too, I think. But actually, it's not really the other way around, but it's really a circle. By understanding there's such a teaching as this, you can learn to create. In other words, you sort of need to understand a little bit in order to create. In order to create, you have to be somewhat playful and relaxed. But then once you enter into the intimacy of creativity, then you understand how things are. And when you understand how things are, you're liberated from suffering. It doesn't mean there's no more pain. It's just that you respond to the pain now in this free, kind of noble, joyful way. So that's an outline of the process.

[37:21]

And then the next step, which I'm going to just say now, but then stop before I get into it, is that in order to pull this, in order to actually do this practice, of realizing intimacy, I feel that we also need formality. We need forms. Without form, we can't really realistically do this practice. The forms to realize intimacy, forms and formality, I think, And I use the example quite frequently, even in the last four years anyway, I use the example of my grandson, because he's four years old. And that I learned, I sort of knew this before, but it's like now I just really knew a fresh example of it, that you can love someone, in a sense, really love them, really adore them, really think they're great, and feel very generous towards them,

[38:33]

In other words, feel compassion for them, feel very generous with them, and also be totally committed to be virtuous with them. Never hurt them, never lie to them, never steal from them, never sexually abuse them, never hate them, almost never hate them. Anyway, that you can feel very compassionate and loving towards someone, and yet not be intimate with them. And in a way, I'm not really intimate with my grandson. I mean, I say it's a fact. I am intimate with my grandson, and I am intimate with all beings. But it's possible to love one of these beings that you're intimate with, but not realize the intimacy. And the reason why you don't realize intimacy is because you're not perfectly enlightened. And in order to become perfectly enlightened, you need to use forms, I think, to develop intimacy with things.

[39:37]

And then through that intimacy you become enlightened. So I am now in the process with my grandson. Now he's old enough now so I can start using forms with him. And his mother actually, I think, is pretty intimate with him. Not perfectly, but they have a pretty intimate relationship. And she has been using forms from the get-go. But I haven't had to. I just adored him. I'm just his, you know, love slave. But that doesn't mean you're intimate, to be that way with someone. His mother actually loves him just tremendously, and he loves her. But she uses forms with him, and he goes along with them. They're more intimate than I am with him. She's more intimate with him than I am with him. And I have forms with her by which I realize intimacy with her. So I'm working on that. One of them is the thing about, from early times, quite early, he likes to bite and scratch and pinch and hit and kick me.

[40:47]

Pretty much anything. He likes to kick everybody. But because of me being his love slave, he's been getting by with it for a long time. But now I feel like, for the sake of our relationship, I should ask, we should work something out around this. We're trying to develop some form around this hitting thing. And I'm involving his mother and his grandmother in coming up with a good form in relationship to this thing of the hitting and the kicking and the biting and stuff. In other words, to tell him I don't want to do it anymore. And also when I tell him I don't want to do it, I want him to listen to me. And if he doesn't, then we have some way of dealing with that. We're trying to figure out, whoa. So we say, what are we talking about? What consequences should we have if granddaddy, if you hit granddaddy or bite granddaddy or hit granddaddy, he tells you he doesn't want me to do it, and then you do it again, and he tells you again he doesn't want to do it, and then you do it again, then what should granddaddy do?

[41:54]

We ask him to make some suggestions. And he says, well, he should listen. He said, no, no, you should listen. He said, you should get a teacher. And I said, what should the consequences be for you if you hit granddaddy after he tells you he doesn't want to? Maybe you hit him and you hit him again a third time. What should the consequences be? So then there was the possibility, well, granddaddy might hit you back. And then they said, but not as hard as Granddaddy can hit you, but he might hit you back. You might think it was hard. How would that be? He had trouble handling that, actually. He just kind of got distracted at that point and started getting nervous and started to cry about something else, you know, unrelated. I think he just kind of got scared at the idea of Granddaddy hitting him after he hit Granddaddy repeatedly and after he repeatedly asked to stop but kept doing it. Still, then the granddaddy hitting him was kind of like, what?

[42:58]

I don't want to think about that, actually. So anyway, we didn't come to a conclusion on that yet. Then later, the grandmother said, I think what you should do, if he hits you, after you tell him, warn him twice. If he doesn't, then I think you should just hold him so he can't hit you. So I'm thinking about maybe doing that to tell him, if he hits me a third time after I tell him not to do it, that I'm going to hold him. like this is holding to my body and not let it move. It's one possibility. I'm just saying this is a form to work out and actually maybe get to a point where he would agree on the form. He doesn't have to hit me the third time. But if he wants to try it the third time, then there will be such and such a consequence. And he will know that. And then he will be reminded of that, perhaps on that occasion. And then the consequence will happen. Time out's another possibility. if he would actually stop hitting me and go do time out.

[44:00]

So time out's another possibility, which would be some consequence, anyway, that we know about. So. You don't have to be somebody's grandfather or somebody's husband, necessarily, or wife in order to work on this. But one of the main places that I work on this, actually, is in Zen training, to have forms in Zen training to develop intimacy. And in also forms to test

[45:05]

to test relaxation, forms to test playfulness, forms to test creativity. So like in this workshop, in this retreat, we're working with forms. And then we can test the relaxation level around the forms. So last night when I vowed and you didn't, then I could test the relaxation around that form of me vowing And you're not bowing. OK? It's simple. I'm relaxed about that. Where I get up tight, I bow it all by myself. And then various things like that, that's an example. One of the key factors in intimacy, which is also one of the key factors Yeah, one of the key factors in intimacy and one of the key factors, one of the key forms, one of the key factors in intimacy and one of the key forms in intimacy, in realizing and testing it, realizing it and verifying it, is the factor of, I'll put it negatively, not being unilateral.

[46:32]

Not being unilateral. could be also translated to or transformed into being bilateral. In a bilateral relationship, in a relationship with somebody else, being bilateral could be a way to develop intimacy and also to test the intimacy. Have you ever heard of a bilateral relationship where people are acting unilaterally? Huh? Yeah. For example, the United States has a bilateral relationship with Iraq. The United States has a bilateral relationship with every other individual country on the planet, doesn't it? But it sometimes acts unilaterally. You have a bilateral relationship with every lover that you ever have, of course, but sometimes lovers act unilaterally towards each other.

[47:39]

You ever heard of that? It's amazing, isn't it? That a bilateral relationship has people involved in it, one or more of which are acting unilaterally. Supposedly, now this is not a bilateral relationship where you're intimate. This is a bilateral relationship where you're not intimate when you're acting unilaterally. Would you give an example of bilaterality? An example, you and me, is a bilateral thing. You're one line, I'm the other line, and we're talking to each other right now. Unilaterally would be that I would do something without regard to you. I mean, even towards you, without really regarding you, without really respecting you. You know, like I would do something for you that I thought was good maybe, but I don't want to hear from you about whether you think so or not. Okay. That's a unilateral approach to a bilateral relationship. I see myself in relationship to you.

[48:41]

I see you in relationship to me. You're one of my best friends. But I don't talk to you about what you think about our relationship. I just tell you what it is. All relationships between two people are bilateral. They have two sides. Lateral, does lateral mean... What does lateral mean? It means lateral, right? Side, right? A lateral pass is a side pass, right? So a bilateral relationship means two sides, doesn't it? So our relationship has two sides. You get to be one side. You're the Bob side, and I'm the Reb side. Now, we can play with that. We can relax, and you can be Reb, and I can be Bob. That's possible, right? We can try that. Just playfully. We don't really take it that seriously, right? That you're Reb and I'm Bob, right? I don't. You don't. But usually people have a tendency to take, you know, a tendency to take this seriously that you're Bob and I'm Reb.

[49:46]

They would take that seriously. But if you relax, you know, not necessarily getting really drunk, but if you relax... He's kind of like, well, you know, I could not take the Reb side so seriously. I could try the Bob side for a little while. OK, so like on one side of the relationship, you have Reb's nose. On the other side of the relationship, you have Bob's nose, right? So can I put Reb's finger in Bob's nose? Well, you know, unilaterally, I think, well, yeah, sure I can. But philaterally, I probably should talk to Bob about it. See how he feels. And I feel like I'm relaxed about this two-side business. I can switch sides. But can the other side switch sides? Well, check. Intimacy is not unilateral practice. It's not practicing according to your own decisions.

[50:52]

Intimacy is practicing bilaterally, but if it's more than two people, then it's multilaterally. Lots of different sides. And you don't just think that. You enact it with forms. And also, since it's a bilateral situation, I would say you can be in on the form. You can decide whether you sign up for the forms, and you can decide Yeah, you can decide about how you're going to work with the forms. You can do that. Yes? What's your name? It's my name's Nan. Nan? Yeah. I know. Kind of like Bob, except... You're kind of like Bob? Yeah. Except your name. Oh, yeah. It's like that. We can... Oh, it's my mom. Mom, yeah. And my question is about being in a leadership role in a bilateral relationship. Yeah. Whether you're a mom, a teacher, a boss, when the boat is sinking, you don't want to stop and discuss.

[52:01]

And how do you, how does that work in a way? Well, that's why it's good to have the understanding before the boat sinks. Or with a four-year-old who's fighting. Yeah. That's not a situation I would enter into a discussion. But does it? Well, you don't have to necessarily have a discussion. You don't have to. You can just do something other than that. But I'm just saying, for example, in my case, when he was biting me for four years, I could just let him bite me. I'm kind of a love slave. I'm a love slave, plus I'm kind of like a martial artist, too. I can handle other beasts. But it's not necessarily good for him to do that. But even if it was good for him, Still, I might want to be intimate with them. So if you wanted to prevent people from biting you, if that's your known agenda, fine. Go ahead. Do whatever you want to do. It's difficult to develop trust of the bite. No, I'm not asking you to trust biting.

[53:06]

No, but what I'm saying is that... Okay, go ahead. My question is, how do you handle, in a compassionate way, situations where... And as a woman, this is sometimes difficult, where somebody really does have to stand up and say, this is what we're doing now, and this is the way we're doing, and without second-guessing yourself and doing it in a compassionate, skillful way. And recognizing when that's necessary. Recognizing what? When it's necessary. Well, in what sense is there? To stand up for yourself and be compassionate? Well, to, for instance, to know that it's... Gosh, word scare. But neither anyway. That, um... Well, for instance, I see within, I know that had I had someone to look to, and I usually, in Zendo, because I'm new at this, look to whoever I presume to be the senior person and follow the lead.

[54:16]

I look for the leader. And yesterday evening, I was looking to see if to find out when you're supposed to file, when you're not, and I didn't see, so I was frozen. But I had this hunch, okay, so, and that's a situation where nobody's life is at stake or nothing horrible will happen if you don't assume the leadership role. But I was too timid to do anything about it. Should I help? How do you know? Could we parenthesize that example, the one you just gave? Okay. And just go back to the situation where you said there's some situations where you feel like you have to stand up and be compassionate. Remember that example? Yeah. And you said, isn't that necessary sometimes? No, that wasn't my question. For better or for worse, someone has to say... Don't run in the street. Yeah. Don't fight your neighbor. Somebody has to say, don't run in the street.

[55:17]

OK? I agree. When a child's running in the street, you have to either say, don't run in the street, or you have to go gather up a little body and pull it off the street. Somebody needs to do that. Otherwise, especially if a truck's coming, somebody needs to do that. And if you're nearby, maybe you're the one who should do it. OK? That compassion means you see the kid, you're generous with the kid, you accept that the kid is moving towards the street. You're patient with the pain you feel about that kid moving towards the street. But you do feel pain at the thought of this child being hurt. You're diligent about protecting this child. You're concentrated. And you're also virtuous. And you go and pick the kid up and pull him on the street. And that's practicing compassion. And that's standing up for no harm coming to this kid.

[56:21]

Well, with a four-year-old on the street, it seems, what about a 16-year-old? He starts way up. Yes. Don't go with the people. I know that drinking beer, you may not go to that party. Okay, so you think it's a harder example? Fine, you can take the harder example and take the easy example, okay? Take both of them, all right? In both cases, you want to protect those two beings, right? And I'm saying intimacy, actually, is all about protecting that being. But it's also about protecting you. Now, in both cases, there's a step we didn't take yet. And that's this step. The trusting that you can relax. That's the thing I'm here to talk to you about. Of course you want to protect the teenager who's about to go out with some people who you suspect are going to do some unfortunate and unsuitable behaviors.

[57:31]

You want to protect them from that. Just like you want to protect a four-year-old from unskillful harmful behaviors of going in the street. Of course. But in both cases, what I'm saying, in addition to the usual, of course you want to protect them. I'm talking about whether you think it's life and death or not. Still, don't skip over the life and death issues. I guess this is part of the deal. It's sort of what you brought up. Don't skip over the life and death issues Use those opportunities, too, to develop intimacy. Don't just develop intimacy when you think there's no danger. Work on intimacy all the time. But in your life and death examples, I think part of what you're suggesting a lot of people do is you can't develop intimacy in these life and death situations. That's why I said it'd be nice if you had it before, but don't skip over it now. move into the intimacy process, even in a life and death situation, if you can.

[58:36]

If you can, then you do your best. Now, when a child running into the street, you can try to protect that child in a non-intimate way, meaning unilaterally. You pull the kid onto the street. That's not intimate, but you may feel like, please forgive me. I don't know how to be intimate with this situation. And you do it unilateral. It's a bilateral relationship where you're not doing it with the person. You're doing it unilaterally. You're pulling the kid out of the street. It's not intimate. You love that kid, but it's not necessarily moving your kid. But you love this kid, but that's not intimate for you to pull the kid out of the street. That's an enactment of one-sidedness, and that's not recognizing creativity. And it's not liberation. So if you live that way all day long, you're going to get simply, every time you do that with the kid in the street, you have an outflow. If you do that many times a day, you will burn out.

[59:40]

Because every time you do that with somebody, you slap reality in the face, or you slap yourself in the face by acting unilaterally. You may say, well, I had to. Okay, fine. Of course you had to pull a kid out of the street, but you did not have to do it the way you did it. You could have done it this way. You could have relaxed when you did it. And if you'd relaxed when you did it and been playful when you did it and been creative when you did it and understood when you did it and were liberated when you did it, then you would have harmonized when you did it. And then you can do this over and over. You can save kid after kid in a harmonious way. But if you do this only over on the side of just protecting the kid to get the kid out in the street or stop the teenager from going out, You will get into a war with a teenager. The teenager will fight back because you're not being harmonious with the teenager. You're being unilateral. Healthy teenagers do not go for unilateral adults.

[60:44]

They hate them. And it's more important for them to fight you than to go out. But going out is just a way to fight you. What they really want More than anything, just like everybody else, is intimacy. That's what they want. That's what human beings want. If you're unilateral with people when they're in danger, it's understandable that you are. But the reason why you're unilateral when they're in danger is because you're unilateral with them and they're not in danger. You develop this habit in your relationship to being unilateral. Unilateral means you're not relaxing. If you relax, the unilateralness drops away and you're open to the bilateralness of it. And then you can't control your teenagers anyway. You think you can control a four-year-old, but you can't. But you think you can. It's false. It's false. You can't control them. Intimacy is really what controls things.

[61:46]

But teenagers are out to prove that you can't control them. And they're saying, basically, if you don't give me If you don't do things bilateral with me, you're going to feel sorry. I'm going to punish you for that. I'm going to unilaterally get back at you for being unilateral. I'm not going to be bilateral with you about the consequences for you of being unilateral with me. If you're unilateral with me, I'm going to be unilateral with you. In other words, if you're not going to be intimate with me, I'm not going to be intimate with you. I'm going to lie to you. We're going to not practice compassion with you. if you're not creative with them. So again, in these life and death situations, all of them all, you'll be more skillful if you're relaxed. So if you're relaxed, if you're like walking around practicing relaxation all the time, then when the shit hits the fan, you're ready. You've been training for this kind of situation to save this person's life and to save it in a relaxed way.

[62:55]

And also, when the kid's about to do something really unskillful, to come back in a skillful way, which is not unilateral. And you can have a discussion. Right when they're going out, right when they're going in the street, you can have a discussion. And the discussion could be in the form of, no, or stop. But you don't see that as unilateral. You see that as bilateral. Namely, I'm saying stop. Now what are you going to do? And what they might do is stop, but they might not. But you're ready for that, because you wouldn't like being bilateral about that. You'd be creative and playful when you said that. And sometimes they say stop, and they stop. Sometimes you say stop, and they run right on the street faster. I had this big, this large dog one time, named Eric.

[64:00]

He had 95 pounds. He was a beautiful Doberman Pinscher, and he was very sensitive. And if he was about to go on the street, and we yelled at him in a harsh tone, he would run faster into the street. What you had to do with Eric was you had to say, Eric! Eric! His fears would perk up, and he'd come running at you. But if you were harsh with him when he was about to do something dangerous, or if he's about to become dangerous, if you would be harsh with him, he would freak. And he would do very likely the thing you were very worried he would do, plus more so. So you had to learn that. But you had to learn by mistakes that when you act out of tension to protect him, it doesn't work because he's a living being and he has all these reactions. Yes. You talked about trying to develop a form to deal with your grandson.

[65:05]

Yes. Can you talk a little bit about what forms might be available to man for those kinds of powers? For the teenage problem, for example? My question, and what you're saying is very useful, but it was more about recognizing within a five-letter relationship, there might be a differential of power. Yes, right, okay. And that There is just in a student-teacher relationship, one is giving the grade, the other is receiving it, for instance. But to act in a skillful way that recognizes that and yet is still compassionate. It's right here on my note. It says disciple-student-teacher relationship. Forms of training, bilateral. Student-teacher relationship, bilateral. Many teachers have unilateral relationships with their students.

[66:11]

They give the grades, but giving the grades does not have to be unilateral. You don't have to see it that way. You can make it a bilateral event with the student. It may take more work. to do that, but you can develop it. And you can give a grade that emerges from a bilateral relationship where both sides of the relationship feel that they were in a bilateral relationship and they were both being bilateral. In a student-teacher relationship. And you can say it's a difference in power, okay? You can say that, but guess what? When you're moving towards intimacy, you give up your power. And if you've got power, then you've got some power to give up. When you get married, in the old Christian marriage ceremony, they used to say, I plight thee my troth.

[67:14]

Troth is truth. I put my troth, my truth, in plight to thee. They'd say, well, I don't want to marry my students. Fine. You don't have to marry your students, but that means pretty much you don't want to be intimate with your students. Student-teacher relationships can be like a marriage where they both make a vow to each other. I vow to be the teacher. I vow to be the student. I vow to be bilateral with you. I vow to be bilateral with you. It's not exactly the same. It's not the same, but it's not the same, but they're not separate. The teacher has no life separate from the student. It is a bilateral event. It's a two-sided affair. But if you don't set up forms to enact that, then they're easy to be understood as bilateral.

[68:22]

I mean, unilateral. So for example, Here's an example of... In this retreat, I'm not suggesting this necessarily, I'm just showing this could be an example. During this retreat so far, I've been sitting in the zendo, and people come and go out of the zendo. But when you leave the zendo, do you think that's unilateral? Or is that a bilateral thing you're doing? What's your understanding with me? Do you think I know where you're going? Did you have an understanding you're going to tell me where you're going to go? We don't yet. But we could have the understanding that if I'm sitting in the meditation hall and you're going to leave, that you would make an attempt or you would have the idea that unless you... Then you have the idea that you would want me to know

[69:25]

about the reason for you thinking that would be a good idea for you to leave the room. And even if you were sure that I knew why you were leaving the room, you still might check to see if I did, or come and tell me why you're leaving the room. So you leave the room, it's not bilateral. It's not unilateral. It's a bilateral thing. You come and tell me. When you tell me, I could say something about that because you told me. Now, I could also say something about it if you didn't tell me, but I might not if we don't have an understanding that we're actually sitting there and doing that practice together, that we have that kind of relationship. So earlier this morning, Laurie had kind of, I don't know what, maybe she kind of fainted in a way. What would you call it? Almost like fainting. Yeah, she kind of like fainted. You're fainting. You're fainting. And then it looked like what we call fainting.

[70:29]

She bent forward and she started quivering. And then we came over and she laid down. I guess she thought she was OK, so she tried to stand up. But she looked funny to me. And so I said, why don't you lie down again? And she did. And then I sat next to her for a while and listened to her breathe. And then she turned to me and she said, Something like, I think I'll go rest. So I walked with her out of the room, and she seemed to be okay, so she went and rested. She didn't exactly come over to me and say, I'm thinking of leaving the room. She didn't come over to me and say, I think I'm going to faint. But even so, there was something about the way she was that I felt invited to interact with her. So I went over there, and then we did start doing it together. No big deal, but we did it together. So she left the room in a kind of bilateral way. That's my impression.

[71:31]

I don't think, I don't know, how did you feel about it? I agree. I felt it was like, you know, she didn't mess with me too much, but also I felt like, you know, I could play there and check out the scene myself, and then if I needed help, you would be there. That's kind of how I felt about it. But some people might feel like, hey, I'm not feeling well, and I'm not going to talk to anybody about it. This is my business. I'm the sick one. I don't have to talk to other people. I don't have to talk to the teacher in the room. But you might also feel like, I'd be happy to talk to the teacher, but I can't get across to the other side of the room to talk to the teacher. I just can't get her over there to say, you know, I'm feeling sick. I think I need to leave. But in this case, the teacher came over and sat right next to her so she could say, blah, blah. And then, but she didn't say, and she didn't say, I think I'm going to go rest, and don't come with me. She didn't say that. So I thought, well, you know, I don't know if she's going to make it across the room, because she stood up before and started to shake.

[72:36]

And, you know, were you aware of that, that you kind of stood up? Yes. Yeah, and then you couldn't stand up anymore? No. And I had to kind of like say, I know she said I kind of had to. I thought it would be good for me to suggest to her to go down, to sit down, because I wasn't sure she was going to. But it looked like she was going to go down anyway, eventually. So why not do it? Let's do it together. So she did it. And everything, you know. But when she got up to leave, I didn't say, may I come with you? But I could have. I could have said, may I escort you? If I had... She might have said, OK. Or she might have said, I don't want you to escort me. And then I might have said, well, is that a bilateral decision or unilateral decision? And you might have said, good point. But I actually don't want you to go with me. And I might have said, OK. We might have made the decision for her to walk out by herself together. But as it was, we did go out together, and we kind of decided together that we'd go out together.

[73:44]

She didn't tell me not to. I guess it was okay with her that I did. Yeah, that's great. Yeah. Now, some other people have left the Zen Do. So I thought, partly because of what I'm talking to you about, I thought, well, this is a good example. We don't necessarily have to do it, but I can at least bring it up to you that if you leave the Zen Do, if I'm sitting here and you're going to leave the Zen Do... You might just tell me what you're leaving for. And it might be a little inconvenient. Like I said, I'm going to go to the kitchen. But just to experience what it's like to do it together is an example of the kinds of forms that create intimacy and test intimacy. To go and tell somebody when you're leaving a room where you're going does not necessarily make intimacy. But what it does, it tests it to see if you've got it. Because if you feel intimate with somebody, you don't mind going and telling them where you're going.

[74:47]

Yeah, you don't. But if you're not intimate with somebody, You don't want to go tell them that you have to go vomit or that you feel like you're going to poop in your pants or that you're going to throw up or that you're going to fall over or that you're scared. You don't want to tell somebody you're not intimate with, right? So you say, I don't have to talk to somebody else about why I'm leaving the room. I'm a big girl. I'm a big boy. I can get out of this room by myself. I don't need any bilateral activity to get out of this room. And I would say again, fine, fine. You don't have to be intimate. You can suffer. It's all right. We're not going to, like, make you be enlightened. We're not going to force you to understand and liberate beings and achieve peace and harmony in this world. We're not going to do that. We're going to be relaxed with you not wanting to communicate.

[75:47]

We're going to relax with you being uptight and scared and not trusting that you can talk. We're going to relax with that. That's going to be our response. us being the representatives of intimacy and the Buddha way. But if you want to know how to join the club, the Buddha club, this is how to join. You need forms. You can say, well, I'd like to be intimate, but I don't want to talk to you about why I'm leaving the room. Well, you don't have to, but what forms are you going to use? So, you know, Catherine's testing out the priest training program at Greenville with me. And she's doing these very same things. It's not entirely easy to talk to somebody about what you're doing with your life all the time. Sometimes it's a little funny to be discussing certain things with so-called teacher. Like getting a muffler, right? That was a recent one.

[76:48]

She was going to get a muffler in her car. She talked to me about it. Well, I'm a grown woman, to say the least. I don't have to talk to some old fogey about getting a muffler in my car. I don't have to do that. No, you don't have to do that. None of you have to talk to me about getting a muffler, right? You don't have to do that. Well, what do you have to talk to me about? Going to the movies. Also going to the movies? You don't have to talk to me about going to the movies, do you? No, you don't have to. But what points are you going to use to test to see if you can stand to do something bilaterally with me? In other words, what are you going to use to test to see if you're up to be intimate with me, this person? I'm just one person to test about. What are you going to use?

[77:34]

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