Yesterday I emphasized wholehearted care of our body postures. I hope that we continue to live by knowing that caring for our body postures. I hope that we offer this care for the welfare of all beings. I hope that we give this life effort to the Buddha Way of living in the welfare of each and every living being.

[01:19]

And the practice of Zen in this lineage is the practice of unsurpassed, complete, authentic enlightenment. It is the practice of helping others. It is the practice of wisdom. It is a meditation practice, movement by movement, that is acceptable from wisdom. And this practice is offered for the sake of others. It is practiced with the belief that it is the practice of the Buddhas, and that Buddhas are this practice, the practice of offering every action of body, speech, and mind for the welfare of the Buddha way.

[03:13]

for the welfare of the way of helping others. And to make this offering it seems good to me or appropriate that we have our feet on the ground since we have feet that would be settled in our body, so that this body, from the settled place, can be offered to help others. This body, settled here, settled here in this body, now that it's settled, it can be offered to the welfare of others. Here it is.

[04:16]

It's for you, all of you. Without being present in the body, offering our life, offering our body to others does not seem to need to be wholehearted. Of course, you might be able to be quite present and still not wish to give your body to others. It seems possible that someone could be quite present and feel like, I don't want to give this body to some others, some people I do not wish to give this body to. There are some beings I do not wish to serve. That seems possible. setting that aside, if you do wish to offer your life, your body, to the Buddha way, then it seems to me best if you'd be completely present and grounded as you make the offer.

[05:34]

And also make the practice of being grounded an offer. This seems to me to be in accord with the practice of the wounds, the practice of enlightenment. I heard a scholar say, a very good scholar said, Without controlling the body, the mind is not subtle. Without relaxing the demands of the body,

[06:46]

The mind is not free to reflect on reality. And when I saw the word control applied to the body, I wanted to comment on that. I want to comment on that, and I would say, Without compassionately caring for the body, without intimately caring for the body, the vine does not set. Actually, the scholar said, without controlling the body, one cannot settle the mind. So I also took out one cannot.

[07:52]

So in the compassionate care of the body, we don't have to have somebody in there compassionately caring for the body. There can just be compassion intimate care of the body, and in that intimate care the body settles and the mind settles. So I also say without dancing with the body, without playing with the body, without studying the body, without learning the body. The body doesn't settle, and the mind doesn't settle.

[08:57]

putting it positively, if we do compassionately care for the body, the mind settles. And then, not necessarily then, and together with that, compassionately caring for the mind, the mind settles. Compassionately caring for the body, the mind settles, and the body settles. And we can continue the practice of being responsible for body and mind, and caring for them so that they are here and ready to be given away to the welfare of others. So I'm proposing that if we intimately care for our body and mind, it will be possible for us to give our body and mind to the Buddha way.

[10:16]

And take one more step, intimately caring for body and mind, is giving the body and mind to the Book of Life. If we still are holding back giving our life to the welfare of others, I would say we're not yet intimate with our body and mind. In intimacy, we naturally donate our life to the welfare of others. because in that intimacy we realize intimacy with others. When the intimacy with ourself is complete, or I would say the standard of whether the intimacy with ourself is complete is that we feel intimate with others. We do not feel intimate with others yet.

[11:28]

We are not completely intimate with ourself. So if there's any aspect of myself that I'm not intimate with, well, then I'm not yet intimate. If I feel like I'm completely intimate with myself and there's some other being I do not feel intimate with, I would say, I'm not yet intimate with myself. The logic here is all others are really my true self. If there's any being I do not feel intimate with or I'm not willing to open to and be devoted to and be completely kind with that I have not been really willing to intimate with myself. So this all comes down to the practice of the buddhas, this intimacy, the practice of bodhisattvas, this intimacy.

[12:33]

Intimacy with body, mind, and self. in Tennessee with bodies and minds of others. And that includes not just human others or animal others, but all beings. And if I look inward and find some unwillingness to be intimate with something, then the practice is to be kind and find the intimate with that resistance to intimacy. To patiently and gently open to the resistance to be open to some being, inwardly or outwardly.

[13:44]

Again it arises in my current consciousness that this situation of a five-day sitting is a great opportunity to look inward and see if there's any resistance to agency with anything. And I guess and I've heard that most of us do find something inwardly or outwardly that we are not yet ready to fully open to. This is the growing edge of our will. dharma practice.

[14:58]

This is a place to be aware and gentle and patient and give up trying to control our resistance to intimacy. And also give up trying to control other people's resistance to intimacy with us and with each other. The theory or the belief is that this kind of practice will encourage the intimacy which is what helps suffering beings. I feel from many of you a keen sense of concern for the suffering of this planet.

[16:11]

This keen sense of suffering, this keen concern, this sharp concern, or this chronic concern for this suffering is a being We just call it for intimacy. And we know this call, we know this suffering being in the realm of our own karmic consciousness. I feel that from the early days of the Indian Buddhist teachers there has been this encouragement to be intimate with our body and mind in order to bring peace and ease to suffering beings.

[17:27]

I've also heard that by devoting ourselves to the practice of intimacy, the skill of practicing intimacy can be deepened in what? Even if one is quite skillful at it, one can still grow in the practice of intimacy and the skill of intimacy. there's no foreseeable end in the growth of this practice and the spreading of this practice, and no foreseeable end of challenges to it.

[18:59]

Always new generations of deluded beings are born who do not know how to be internet with themselves. and require lots of kindness and gentleness and openness and patience and diligence and presence in order to teach them how to be with themselves and with others. The practice of the Buddha is intimacy with all beings. And the Buddhas can speak, and living beings can often speak, and so part of it is a conversation.

[20:11]

An intimate conversation is involved in realizing intimacy. intimacy of bodies, intimacy of voices, intimacy of minds. Thank you. Anyone who would like to come forward or backwards to perform a practice of intimacy here is welcome.

[21:43]

Anyone who wants to sit unmovingly and practice intimacy is welcome here. Can you hear her?

[23:38]

Hello? Hello. How's that? That's better for you. I've been pushing, yes, but when you began this Discourse on Big Things. I began Discourse on Big Things. I got stopped with the purpose. And not only I used it on my life in various ways, but in the way that you were using it, I felt I really don't know if I know anything about it. I've had the same feeling with you that I'm talking about. you know, coming forward with your original days or your authentic self. I felt I don't know what this is.

[24:45]

I didn't feel it. So I've been grappling with this these past months. Grappling with what is it? What is it? Do I know it? In my mind, it was associated with familiarity, you know, knowing what to expect, being comfortable with closeness, that sort of thing. But this seems all that but warm. Yeah. And the more part, I didn't have a white experience in the way that we usually use the word. Yeah, the way I use the word is the edge of the city where there's no attachment, no dwelling, no sticking.

[25:54]

You could, with some people, you could feel very kind of comfortable and feel a lot of warmth. And so it would be that you would be there feeling that warmth, but not be coming to it, and not be wondering if you're going to feel some warmth. You might be wondering if the warmth will last, but the wondering if the warmth will last is similar to warmth, it's just something different. So some people are feeling warmth, some people are wanting to feel warmth, some people are feeling cold, some people are feeling too much warmth, and so on. All these beings, to be intimate with all of them, to be intimate with the cold ones and the warm ones, in yourself and outside yourself. and to be with them with no sense of separation, with no sense of identification or disidentification.

[27:06]

Be totally devoted to them and not dwell in them. That's it. Or, that's more. That's some more. Oh, well, more. But, of course, you might not know what non-dwelling is. But you also might know what non-dwelling is. That's okay to know or not know. Intimacy is not knowing and it's not not knowing. It's being intimate with whichever one is there. It's being open to not knowing anything. Or, in particular, the Buddha way, or intimacy, is openness to not knowing and it's openness to knowing. But it's neither one. It's reality.

[28:11]

It's the reality that the brain speaks. And I don't know what it is, But then, let me let you know what it is. But that's the knowing and not knowing. I'm not it. But being open to the both knowing and not knowing facilitates it. But the openness isn't all of it either. It isn't just the openness to the way we're into it. It isn't the way we're into it, too. But without the openness to it, we miss it. And without the openness to our present life situation, our present discomfort, our present warmth, without openness to it, somehow we seem to be able to miss it. We seem to be able to miss our life.

[29:17]

Of course we can't. So missing our life is experiencing suffering. So this is why being self is so crucial. If you're going to be open, you need to be self. Yeah. Some people are quite open, you know, as long as they're not here. Yeah. When they're out of town, they're open to us. But when we're here, it's like, oh, wait a minute. So... It's for the openness to actually work. It needs to function in a concrete, challenging moment. And of course, that's where it's hard to practice. That's where it's efficacious. That's where it facilitates helping beings, because that's where people are having trouble.

[30:20]

People are having trouble. They open here. So let's, like, come here. And then notice, oh, now it's harder to open. The other thing that I noticed in relation to this, Can you hear her? A little louder. Okay. Okay. In terms of becoming intimate with myself, which I think is a primary, I think I think in my case, as I said probably many others, my self-knowledge comes whenever what I have.

[31:41]

It often comes through this pop-up posing of posing. It's Opposition. What comes through opposition? Finding something. You don't necessarily like them or want to be intimate with them. You have to have some others who oppose you. You also need others who agree with you. You need all kinds of others, the agreeable and disagreeable, because there are agreeable and disagreeable others. And there are all varieties of other beings. And it's not exactly especially those who oppose you, but just that those are the ones we might think we didn't need.

[32:42]

I don't need this. I need you to act like this. And if you can extend that a bit further into a desire, into certainly what's happening in the world around you. I have had a lot of trouble with that. I go for various degrees. it's the destruction and the cruelty. And recently, I sometimes watch Dr. Newt Ritz's way of seeing faces in those situations. And I saw one called Truth on the Ground, which covered a lot of subjects, but it was about the young people going into the armed forces and going to this particular war in Iran.

[33:54]

And the first part of the film portrayed the talk to become words. And it was fast recovering to the brutality the psychological version of it, there were no witness anymore. There was no one that they, in other words, any one of the people that seemed doubtful was a potential victim, and they were not protected by sex or age or age. children or whatever, if they seemed to be a threat because civilians often get involved in this, these people, these young people were being taught that they had to go, had to kill these people, that it was right to do so, that it was necessary to do so. So when I'm And this is something, one instance, and, you know, so many right now.

[34:59]

And when I come up against something like that, everything just kind of, I don't know, I just, you know, I want to step out of this. Right. But what I'm beginning to get from it is that If I can sit with that movement of evoke and revulsion, if I can sit with these things and in a If there are these things that oppose, that our position will pick everything up. If you're intimate with these things, it's possible for you to realize intimacy and transmit the intimacy to people who you feel are opposed to you or to people who are doing things which you oppose.

[36:12]

So if they're teaching children to be cruel, for the sake of the welfare of the people, keeps these people to be cruel in order to help people, in order to protect the United States, doesn't keep our children to be cruel, to be aggressive. When you see that kind of thing, can you lead it with intimacy? If you can lead it with intimacy, that intimacy can transform a situation. If you are not able to be intimate with your revulsion towards cruelty, you just join the cruelty. Your revulsion just ends. But if you can bring intimacy with yourself and intimacy with them to the situation, the mind which is creating this glorious group, it could transform towards fitness and kindness and giving up violence.

[37:26]

And then where do you feel this intimacy? I have to understand and feel it myself, that I could be that person, I could... Open to the revulsion you feel toward the violence, which would include it to the revulsion to some violence in you somehow. Eventually you have to see if you could get intimate with and not dwell in violence. Although if we dwell in wireless, opposed or for, we're not. So in fact, this is a great challenge. And I think it's OK to expose yourself to challenges by watching documentaries and reading this paper. But don't do it more than you can Remember what you're doing by watching these things is to test your heart to see if it is still the intimate and present and grounded when you're open to these things.

[38:35]

If you can, then you can contribute in those agreements. Somebody's obviously going into situations of war and teach others as to advance. They just react and can shoot you. Somebody's office can go into bars and opium dens and things like that and wake people up. That's very nice territory. But we always have to deal with our inner thing. And that's also often very difficult. There are two aspects to what I'm about to bring up.

[40:30]

There are two aspects. You hear back there? Is that okay now? So there are two aspects to what I'd like to bring up. One is how over the years we've been talking about this over time and how I've been working with the word and you can see or how I translated it myself is into me seeing. Seeing that turning the light around, using intimacy in that way. And today I think you said that if there's someone that you cannot feel open to, then you're not willing to be intimate, and I, so the two things are, one, how I kind of, that turn on the word that I'm using, if you have a comment about that, and I feel that, that's a thought, when it's not so much that I'm unwilling, but actually I can't really see what it is that's being activated.

[41:48]

I mean, it's not that I'm unwilling, it's just that I'm not there because I can't see yet what is an unresolved, maybe you'll say unresolved complex. No, I agree. I think you're playing with the words, could I? I encourage you to do that. Intimacy. And also, I think that intimacy is reality. So when I say, when you feel like you don't want to interview somebody, you don't want to open to them, I would have said that that's not intimacy. I would have just said that's how you feel. You feel like you don't want to be open to someone. But in fact, as you said, you just can't see how you do want to be open to them. In fact, you do want to be intimate. In fact, you are. In fact, you do want reality. But sometimes you can't feel. Sometimes you like a different reality from this one. So it's not that that's not intimacy, that's just something that's intimate.

[42:58]

So I'm not going to say, this isn't intimacy, that's not intimacy. I'm saying all of those, this is a vast, are things that are intimate with. And if you don't feel open, then you're intimate with that. And you can't get a hold of intimacy. I guess I might have gotten stopped and not heard the whole thing because I heard what I thought I heard was that, oh, maybe I'm unwilling. But I don't really feel unwilling. I just feel unable. I'm not saying you are unwilling or that you are unable, but you might feel unwilling. Yes. You might feel, I want to be with this person. I want to be with this person. You might feel that way. I mean, when I feel unable, when I feel those feelings, those are just feelings, and those are feelings you're getting to know.

[44:01]

So that was how we were kind of turning the light around, to use that as a probing. Or you might feel like, I am willing to get this person. That's not the intimacy, that's just behind the wheel. And then they get to know what that is. So, you know, cling to it. I am willing to do it. I'm willing to be intimate with you, but you're not willing to be intimate with me. Not to cling to it, but to be open to this. That's the language that's being offered to it. This speech is not my current offering to the Buddha way. That's my reminder. This inability is my offering to the Buddha way. to make intimacy with beings. But in fact, all the time, intimacy is really what's going on. The way it is going on, it's a question of how to train ourselves to open it up. Okay. Can everyone hear me?

[46:06]

I would like to understand a little more fully the practice of non-dwelling and discerning if there even is a distinction between detachment and non-attachment. Detachment. Well, how about no attachment? No attachment? Detachment and non-attachment could be this kind of a change. But no attachment is a little bit different from non-attachment. How so? Well, like, if there's some attachment, So it actually seems really, I mean, they want it. Like when you see a little baby holding on to her caregiver, it seems so they can go up to the substitute.

[47:20]

You know? It's a great attachment. It's good that they can do that. If they can't do that, they can't squeeze their little hands, they probably won't be able to live and grow up and carry on. So it's kind of a good thing. That's not non-attachment. It's attachment. So non-attachment is not non-attachment. So I think you could give detachment and non-attachment as symptoms. But understand that they don't mean that there's no attachment. They mean that no matter what's going on, including attachments, We're going to keep moving. We are coming to it. We're open to it. We're nonviolent. We don't try to control it. All that goes with and towards all the attachments that are going on in the sentient ocean.

[48:27]

Lots of gripping and squeezing going on. It's kind of life. Right? Like hearts, heart muscles, they squeeze, and then when they squeeze, they evacuate the chamber, the blood, and then they relax, and they squeeze. So the squeezing is part of life. The rasping, cleaning, the attaching is normal. Now, of course, it's how you develop non-attaching and non-ruling with this ocean of cleaning and relaxing. And it, like Cedric said, non-attaching does not mean not attaching. It means studying everything. No matter what happens, give it your calm, kind, uncontrolled attention. And that will lead to non-attachment or not at all.

[49:31]

And in that realm, we realize and see that intimacy is the truth. And if it becomes difficult to just study something as opposed to, for instance, controlling it, or... Don't start controlling it. and watch the controlling in a loving, uncontrolling way. They say, I can't resist trying to control that. I just can't resist. I just got to control that. When you start doing that, I just got to try to control you. But when I start doing that, I just have to try to suppress myself. I just have to. I can't help. That happens to call with love.

[50:34]

So you can't give up that kind of game at all, no? But can you give up? Can you give up and just be kind towards that powerful habit? The person might say yes. So a lot of people say, you know, I frequently hear this, I cannot open this situation, that situation. Can you open it that you can't open? Yes. So we'll find some place to get a foothold in the practice of compassion. And if you practice compassion in this case, well, practice it there. If you can't do it over there, practice compassion towards your inability to do it there. Be patient with places you can't reach yet, and you will eventually reach them, is the prediction. So you're suggesting then to simply be patient and not dwell in analysis of, wow, why can I not control, or why can I not give up trying to control that particular situation?

[51:46]

We said not to dwell in analysis, and I agree, don't dwell in analysis. But not dwelling in analysis doesn't mean you don't analyze. OK. I was doing a workshop in a few weeks where I would propose Shakyamuni Buya was a psychoanalyst. He was a psychoanalyst that did well in psychoanalysis. But he psychoanalyzed himself, and everybody he met he psychoanalyzed. But he didn't do well in anything. He was so eaten with the process he had no point to get a hold of anything. So in one sense, we're in a world where essentially data is grasping And there's analysis. So how can we train the situation so it won't stick to it, so it can flow with a joint process of liberation right in the midst of loss and cleaning and analysis and cycles?

[52:47]

How can we do that? That's the Bodhisattva's great question. The word is, how can we do it the way it happened? How can we dance with all different kinds of partners and teach them how to dance with us? And learn from them. How can we let them teach us how to dance with them? And if it cleans up, it can't go with the dance instruction. Or if we offer a dance instruction and that person refuses it, how can we be patient and kind to that and then turn that into an unexpected dance move? Necroposition. Thank you.

[53:52]

Thank you. I have a question about your beginning when you talked about volume line and what

[55:56]

It just happened to me when I listened to it, which does not happen so often when you talk, that I felt like, oops, yeah, I have some resistance against this strong distinction which I've made between all your care for the body and that is necessary for our global mind. And I felt that this was totally different to me than the usual teachings. or my practice of not going into the, yeah. I wonder what it is like, body that is not mind. But I think it's part of the self that most people, I think most of them have the easiest time, they come to where

[57:04]

Body, most people do not actually, they cannot cognize, they're not aware of actually their body. They're aware of the mental version of their body, which is based on the body. So I say body, but really what I'm directing a person's attention to is their mind. ideas of our body. Like, for example, bodies are not actually, you know, like... Like, the way we see our body is just a human way of seeing our body. It's not the way our body really is, it's just a human way of seeing it. But other animals see our body differently. So, when I say body, I'm just actually using that as a way to help people study their counter-consciousness. People have bodies, but they can't see their body.

[58:08]

They're looking at their body through their counter-consciousness. But if you ask people to look at their karmic consciousness right off, they have trouble finding it. But they don't have so much difficulty finding their value. Sometimes they find their value by actually finding their karmic consciousness, and then they can expand from awareness of the karmic consciousness inversion of body to other aspects of cosmic consciousness, which are more subtle and which cause more trouble. I think that comes exactly to the point I've come to, and then for me the question comes up is, is there any body being an issue to cosmic consciousness, or is it even helpful to talk about abiding

[59:11]

extraterrestrial karmic consciousness? There's not a body in addition to karmic consciousness. But many people, if you tell them to stop looking at their feelings, they don't know what you're talking about. They can't find it. But if you ask them what their hands are, they can tell you. And what the feet are, maybe the hands are a little easier for most people. Feet, some people can't find their feet, but their hands are easier to understand. And then you can get them to pay attention to their hands. Really, they're paying attention to their, you know, their idea of their hands. But you say, look at your idea of your hand, maybe you don't know what you're talking about. So first, we start with the, you know, the body. then go to feelings, then we go to concepts, then we go to the overall patterns of stories, and so on.

[60:20]

So they're all connected, there's nothing separate or in addition to anything else. It's just a question of how to wake people up to their experience and help them become intimate with it. We are in the kitchen.

[61:39]

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