Kind of like three, three kind of dimensions of renunciation. You remember that? Sonya does. Anybody? And Sonya and Lance does? Huh? You remember a little bit? So what are the three, what are those three? How would you describe those three, Lance? Huh? Right view and skillful means? Right view, skillful means, and you're blanking on the third one? What? Right view, skillful means, and compassion. Anything else you'd like to say? Okay. So, those are good words, but that's not really the dimensions of renunciation. Okay, but I'll write those down because those are important. And by the way, compassion and skillful means are synonyms, okay?

[01:04]

So compassion, skillful means, and right view. Okay, so this is Buddha's mind. Right view, wisdom, emptiness, together with compassion, skillful means, Okay? Virtue, the practices of virtue. So then... What? That's, that's, yeah, that's what I was referring to. But just let me write what the lines wrote down. So, again, remember the synonyms. Um... Is skillful, is two L's in skillful?

[02:23]

And then one F's in the second one? So the point of Buddhism is the integration of... I mean Buddha invent... What's number one? What's number one in Zen? Number one is Buddha. Number one is Buddha mind, okay? And Buddha mind is the perfect and complete integration of emptiness and compassion. Another word for right view is selflessness too, to write selflessness something. Elves. Do you like it?

[03:26]

Yeah. Yeah. I got this little thing here that pulls you on up. See? Can you see it? See it? And you like it. Get right down low without it. Though I enjoyed seeing you on a leash. You enjoyed seeing me on a leash? Well, I'll stay on a leash then. Anything to entertain you. Would you just put this microphone into the tape player? Yes. Fine. Fine. Okay. So, this is what... You understand this now? This diagram? Selflessness united. It's okay, really.

[04:29]

Now I take this off and see what happens. Huh? Creation is the way we leap into this world of these, this dynamic integration of selflessness, right, you, wisdom, emptiness, compassion, soul, means, virtue, rightness. Okay? And then I asked, All right? So that's right. But I asked, what about... I actually originally asked about the renunciation. And I asked about this. Do you remember the three aspects of renunciation? And Melissa thought she did, but now she's not so sure. But Sonia and Gwen remember something. So Gwen remembered... Renunciation with the expectation of reward. Close, but not quite.

[05:30]

First, the primary kind of renunciation, the first type that we experience is the kind that happens to us when we're practicing compassion. which means when we're practicing virtue, which means when we're practicing giving, precepts, patience, enthusiasm, and concentration, we're doing these practices for the welfare of others, but expecting something. This is the way people usually start. This is like... This is the way humans, and this is the way, sort of, what do you call it, quote, M-A-N, unquote, start. You know, this is the way man practices compassion. You know, man, we say man, you know, that's man versus animals, right? This is a sentient being. The way sentient beings approach practice is with some expectation.

[06:35]

And they even approach compassion with some expectation. This is the only way most people can start. It's the entry-level compassion with expectation. Then you hear the teaching. The teaching comes to you, the teaching of wisdom. You're working on the compassion. Now the teaching of wisdom comes to you. You hear it. And then you let go. Then there's a relief. A release of expectation. A release of expectation including the expectation that you can grip the practices. There's a release of seeking in the practice. Before you hear the teaching and the release happens, there's not renunciation yet. It's virtue practice, which is excellent. You might be doing the best virtue practices, really working to help others, but your practice is selfish.

[07:47]

Because you expect something. Or there is selfishness because there's an expectation of something. An expectation of something means there's an expectation of a self. And also there's a self being brought to the practice of compassion. So there's a self brought to the practice of compassion, and then the self is applied to the practice of compassion, and then the self-orientation conjures up an expectation from the practice. This is the initial approach. Does that seem familiar and make sense? This is the way, this is like normal human approach. And you hear the teaching of selflessness, and then there's some relief. That's the first kind of renunciation, or the first dimension of renunciation. Second dimension of renunciation, what's that?

[08:51]

What? Not close, renunciation for all beings, yes. Pardon? Yes. So you said no expectation? Yeah. No grasping, no expectation. So now in the second kind of renunciation, the practice goes on. the practices of virtues the virtue practices go on you continue to practice giving precepts stabilization and all those good practices and simultaneously with that there's constantly not grasping that those practices and giving away all the merit as you as you do the practice constantly giving it away There's no expectation in the first place.

[09:57]

There was in the past, but now on an ongoing basis, there's no expectation. So you're just like totally engaged in the virtue practice with no expectation of reward. But also, one of the practices you're doing, of course, is giving, right? So you practice giving, and in the merit of giving, you give away. But all the other practices you do, like... monastic regulations or whatever any merit that comes with that any virtue any any any way that that would help anybody you give that away so basically you give away everything that come that comes i know all good things that come with these practices there's never and including you have no expectation you're too busy giving away to have expectation There isn't seven paramitas, right? There's just six. There isn't like giving and so on up to wisdom plus expectations.

[10:59]

Perfection of expectation. We don't... When you're doing these practices, these virtue practices, you're totally engaged in them. And at the beginning you have an extra practice. On top of the virtues you have this extra practice called expectation. When you hear the teaching you drop that practice. Then you continue to do the practice of virtues. And I'm saying in this case, you know, I'm saying you continue to practice the virtue Or there is a continuation of you of the idea of you practicing the virtue but There's no expectation. You have no expectation But there's still the idea of you and practices of you the actor, and the practice is the acted upon. Okay, so this is the second level.

[12:02]

Yes. Well, expectations can arise, you know, like, you know, like you could go to a movie and see some, it could be a movie called Great Expectations, right? You could see the expectations, but you'd be kind of like, oh, look it, they have all these expectations. You'd be just like watching a show of expectation. And you'd be no more, well, I should say you'd be no more involved than you would watching a movie, but you'd be less involved than you are watching a movie. You'd be the way you are before you get into the movie and start expecting something. Or if you were watching like that movie, Great Expectation, you actually might, from the beginning, you might see how stupid it is for this young man to wanna, this young man to wanna be like an aristocrat without any money and without any work.

[13:05]

You might see how foolish he was, and never get caught by it. But expectation is if the mental formation of expectations could arise, but there'd be no grasping of it. So basically there's no grasping and seeking. In the second form of expectation, no grasping and seeking. The third... then opens up into, like, there's no grasping or seeking, and there's also, like, there's not even anything to grasp or seek. This idea of this, you don't see the self which does the practice anymore. The ability to do the practice and what's done are dropped away. Pardon? Well, in the previous stage, there was a self.

[14:12]

Still. Okay? In the middle form of renunciation, there is a self. Then when you drop that idea of the self doing the practice, then you move into the third type. In the third type, as soon as you're in the third type, the renunciation has already happened. So moving from the second to the third is the main thing is that the self, which is doing the practices, drops away. Or the separation between the self doing the practices and the practices drops away. So this is that shift we talk about where to carry the self forward, to have the self already and to do all those, to practice and confirm all the dharmas, to do all the virtues, that's delusion. So in the second phase, it's still delusion. However, it's an excellent delusion. And it's a delusion which has even been applied to grasping and seeking.

[15:17]

So the self is now applied to not grasping and not seeking. And I want you to remind me, this is a very important point, which I want to go back to in a minute. In the first and second phase, and if still in the second phase, there is a self applied to not grasp, there's a self trying to not grasp and not seek. And the self is successful enough so that it sets up the actual realization of not grasping and not seeking, which includes that the self is not carried to the practice anymore. And just that the practices come forward and realize themselves. And the self gets no credit for it. All the practices come forward and realize themselves. All the practices come forward and realize themselves. Everything that comes forward realizes themselves. And when everything comes forward and realizes itself, that determines the activity.

[16:24]

So the action or the activity now is totally determined by what comes forth. Things take care of themselves and the practice happens in that coming forth of all things. This is the third kind of renunciation. However, What I'd like to do today is to work a little bit with you about how necessary, I did it already, but I want to do it again, how necessary the earlier phases are. Okay. Was there, oh, yes, Sarah. Okay. The third phase is what? Is it a view? The third phase is the relinquishment of all views. That's right.

[17:31]

In the first and second, you might feel that you're directing the activity. In the first, you feel like you're directing the activity. In other words, you have some control over what you do. Like, for example, you might think you have control over your arm. And in the first one, you think you have some control over what you're going to do and what happens, what kind of experiences you have and so on, what kind of experience other people have. There's still some involvement in attempting to control, plus you expect something. The second one, you're still involved in thinking that you're applying or in control of the activity, but you keep giving away the merit and you have no expectation. In the second phase, I think you fully yourself is pretty much there. However, the self is getting worked up

[18:31]

in a sense, through this type of activity, to be ready to leap into the third type. Or the self is getting more and more ready to settle into the body which leaps. Or the self is getting ready to settle into the person who leaps. So like there's a person who's not a self. So Buddhism doesn't say there aren't any persons, there just aren't any self-persons. There aren't any isolated persons. It's not that there's no body, there's no isolated body. And this non-isolated body is the body that leaps into the third kind of renunciation. And this body that leaps there is the body which acts spontaneously within the arrival of all things. Okay. No recognition.

[19:35]

No recognition. Huh? Is there somebody? Yes, she's... Yes, there's somebody is going in and out of your... We say... What is it? I forgot which case it is. Huh? Yeah, which case, this somebody is constantly going in and out of your nose and eyes and ears all the time. This somebody is constantly going in and out of your nose all the time. But this can't be recognized, but it is happening. This somebody, this is who we call the person, the true person, the true person. This is the true person. The true person is the person who is not wounded by grasping. The person who's, the person who, when there's grasping, that person gets wounded and we can't see the true person going in and out of our nose.

[20:39]

We don't realize it. And actually, as it says in that new and service chant, all this is not recognized. The recognitions are happening, the recognitions are happening in the, still happening in the first and second levels of renunciation and prior to that. But this level, there's no recognition because it's, this is, I was going to do this later, but anyway, this kind of practice here of Buddha's wisdom, when Buddha's wisdom and compassion are united, this is not a psychological Buddha. This is not a psychological liberation. It is metaphysical. It transcends human experience. It is inconceivable liberation. And yet, the bodhisattvas are vowing to enter this inconceivable realm of liberation so that they can be a servant in that realm.

[21:55]

But this is not something that's recognized psychologically. This, again, I'll go over this again, but this type of practice, this mahayana practice, is not about what is happening in me. and it's not about what's happening in others. Although as a bodhisattva I'm supposed to be devoted to the welfare of others, I'm not devoted to others having a particular experience in themselves. What I'm devoted to is this relationship, the true relationship between self and others. This selfless compassion, this compassion which can't be grasped, can't be recognized, can't be sought, but if you seek it, you lose it.

[22:59]

This compassion is not recognized in me, and it's not recognized in you. It is realized in between us. When we have a relationship, there's you, me, and the relationship. The relationship is a third thing. And I do not know the relationship, and neither do you. I may have some idea in me of what our relationship is. You may have some idea in you of what the relationship is. But that's not neither one of us. And even adding both of our ideas together, it is truly bigger than both of us. Isn't it? It's bigger than both of us. We cannot control it. We can't like, okay, let's make it this way and make it that way. Let's like make it nicer. Let's like make it bigger.

[24:01]

Let's like make it smoother. But that's fine to say, But it doesn't mean that when it gets bigger or smoother, then it's bigger and smoother in me, or bigger and smoother in you. So renunciation is about getting ourselves ready to leap into in-between, which is not in the realm of recognition. So being psychological beings who are built to grasp and seek knowledge, human beings who are essentially into it's this it's not this can renounce that realm of it's this it's not this or it is it's not to renounce that and enter the realm between it is and is not which is called the middle way but in the middle way no one can recognize the middle way

[25:04]

But you can leap into it through renunciation. And the middle way is the way to realize wisdom united with compassion. Do you want to underscore? Okay, you're going to underscore what you thought you heard me say. Okay. Right, it's not linear. That's correct. Each one of them is medicine for the other ones. So these three levels of renunciation are not linear, as Rin just said. She said you're constantly moving between them, but at a certain point you're not moving between them exactly, but they're simultaneous.

[26:14]

And so now might be a good time to talk about that. So, in a sense, the third type of renunciation, the one where In a sense, the one where the activity, this actual skillful activity is emerging, this appropriate response is emerging without anybody trying to figure out what the appropriate response would be. Or rather... There could still actually be somebody there trying to figure out what the appropriate response is going to be. But the actual response doesn't come from the person who's trying to figure out what the response is, although that person is part of what's going on. So we got, you know, one or more people in the area who are working hard to figure out what's the right answer. And everything... And they're part of what's coming forth, but also what's coming forth is the water in the creek and the stones in the walls and the barometric pressure and all the other people who aren't trying to figure out what the right thing is, plus all the other people who are offering challenges to those who are trying to figure out what the right response would be.

[27:25]

All that coming forth, that actually determines the right response. But actually there probably is somebody right nearby who is trying to figure out what to do. And that first level is the medicine for the third level. Because the third level must be willing to go to the first level and then take on the form of, I'm going to decide to practice. If you attain the third level of renunciation, you must be able to go back to the first one and start practicing at the first level and try on the consciousness which is trying to get something. If you can't go back to the beginning, the third level has not really been achieved. So when you attain the third level of renunciation, or when there is an attainment of the third level of renunciation... Oh, is it hot up here?

[28:36]

The medicine for the third level, to keep the third level healthy, or maybe the acupuncture for the third level, is that you can go back. for that there can be going back to the beginning where you're practicing with some expectation. And where you make a decision, where you, the person, makes a decision to do some practice and expecting something. Because part of what that most thorough, in some sense, the most thorough and complete kind of renunciation, in order to test to see if it's thorough, is tested by going back into the pre-renunciate condition. If it can't go back and try on the pre-renunciate condition, it's not complete. In other words, you need to go back and practice. Now that you practice renunciation, you can enter into the practice of the virtues and you can practice virtues.

[29:42]

You can go into any realm. including the realm of practicing the virtues with expectation. And you can go back and decide to do practices. And if you can't go back to the beginning, you're stuck in this, well, I guess you could say, more or less, Buddha mind. But Buddha mind must not get stuck in Buddha mind. Buddha mind must go beyond Buddha mind and penetrate back to the most hung up, constrained, blocked, sentient being. Pardon? Renounce every understanding and knowledge. Renounce Buddha. Go beyond Buddha. Go beyond this fantastic situation where you're completely integrated. with everything that's happening, and where everything that comes off your body is perfectly appropriate to benefiting beings.

[30:51]

Where you understand, where you realize, and again I say you realize that where there is the realization of no other, self and other are renounced, actor and practice, are renounced, are dropped away, and the actual practice now is realized. The practice is not something I do. Now the practice is realized, it's totally available, and then, because of that, the practice can be integrated now with someone who totally doesn't understand anything about practice and thinks it's something they can do and expect something for it. You can be totally intimate with that situation. And if you can't be, then you're stuck in this practice, and the practice even then gets sick. Yes. The person who is completely liberated, their complete liberation, okay, is that that person is un-wounded, un-hurt by the idea that that person does anything.

[32:08]

That's part of that, that's a dimension of their complete liberation, is they're free of the idea that they're doing things. Yes. And that's also an aspect of their liberation. Well, like they could think, for example, I would like to practice not grasping and not seeking. They could now come back to the point of view of I'm going to do the practices which I've just completed. I'm going to go through this cycle again. Well, it's not so much a... You could say it's a mental attitude that they take on, but it's more like... I think the way it actually works, I think, more, probably, is that they're just open, they're completely open now, and this challenge comes to them. So they're given this state of mind, this, in some sense, very worldly state of mind comes to them, and they're open to it, and they completely...

[33:16]

enter into, not it, but this ungraspable relationship with it, which allows it to develop along with this realization. So this realization then resonates to it Okay? And it is a relationship that's not been entered, but it is basically all that's happening. This worldly thought is all that's happening. But it's, you know, it's given. You don't go look for trouble. Once you're liberated, you don't go look for trouble. It just comes for you. The challenges just come. Say it again? Yeah. Exactly. It was coming to you before, but you couldn't, you weren't up to it, so you ran away from it, or you gripped it. So you didn't understand how this thing was liberation.

[34:18]

So you, like, grasped it or something. But then, you heard the teaching, and you let go of it. And then you moved to the next phase. And then, finally... You, the person, this person that can't be recognized because this person lives in between, you know, his subjective experience and other people's experience. This person now becomes a perfect servant to the situation. And then again, it opens up to more challenges from the realm of grasping and seeking. And that brings more beings into the process. and also tests and purifies any clinging that might be somehow setting back into the renunciation at the highest level. So, of course, the second and third types purify the first type. The third type purifies the first type. The first type purifies the second and third type. But particularly the third type purifies, the first type purifies the third type.

[35:27]

The second type is based on the first type. So once you realize the second type, you probably wouldn't go back to the first type before you go to the third type. But your second type is based on the third type, and the second type is based on the first type, and the third type is based on the second type. The second type is right there for the third type. The third type is standing on the second type. But the third type actually is mostly purified by going back to the first. And not even the first, but before the first. Before the first renunciation, the highest, the most thorough renunciation goes back to pre-renunciation. And then renunciation, and then the second type. And the reason why it goes back to the first type... is because of the second type. The second type is total devotion to all beings and working for the welfare of others with no expectation and giving away all the merit.

[36:33]

That's the basis for the third type. So that's always there for the third type. But what the third type most gets out of touch with is the first type and before the first type. In other words, there's some tendency Even think for somebody called some regression even at this high level and the regression would be In the state of no no actor and no acted upon no practicer and no practice just the practice and or no practicer and that which is practiced, just the practice, at that level, there may be some tendency to regress into not understanding or setting up some division between that state and somebody who hasn't even started the practice yet, or somebody who's practicing but with a greedy mind. So in order to integrate the whole system, you have to dive back into that and open up to those kinds of relationships.

[37:36]

You know, with real sleazeball beginners. Yes. Diving back into that state, yes. She said, in that diving back into, what did you say you're diving back into? Diving back into practice with some gaining idea. And then she said, is there, what? Is there any conscious awareness? Is there any conscious awareness that is any different from being in that state? I would say no. It isn't like you say, well, I'm just visiting. I'm not really here. However, the practice elevates the situation and moves it forward.

[38:50]

That's why the bodhisattva doesn't have to be afraid to go back into the world of suffering like, you know, I'll be lost. The practice will take care of itself. Because the practice at that point was not the bodhisattva doing it anymore. So the bodhisattva allows the practice to go back now and into this level. But there's no, like, sense of that level's over there and the practice is over here. I'm the bodhisattva who's visiting this challenging situation. However, in a sense, the situation is challenging the practice. But it's not challenging the bodhisattva. Because the bodhisattva is just the practice. So there's no, like, bodhisattva awareness of the practice. And this is the realm where salvation occurs, not... This is the realm where universal salvation occurs. There is also psychological salvation.

[39:54]

There is conceivable liberation. There is a conceivable liberation, there is a liberation which you can know about and have a subjective experience, and that would be great, wouldn't it? So there is such things, you can read about them, and so that's fine. But the bodhisattva life is not about conceivable liberation, it's not about subjective experience, it's about a type of relationship. It's about relationship. And so, you know, I wrote those characters on the board, you know, like meet each thing or each limit with no mind. And I talked about no mind means no mind. And that mind means the mind of, first of all, it means the mind of Ascension being it means the mind of quotes man man being Ascension being Not mad as opposed to woman, but the way we're sentient beings so you meet everything with without that mind upon which a self depends And what is the mind upon which self depends?

[41:20]

It's the mind of It is and it isn't. So you meet everything without the mind of it is and it isn't. And actually this is the mind of this person that's going in and out of your nose all day long. This is the mind of the unwounded person, the true person. the person who's not involved in it is or it isn't, who's not involved in gain and loss, who's not involved in grasping and seeking. So, you know, I was saying, meet each thing with no mind, without this type of mind which is essentially into it is and it isn't. And this actually means meet everything with this person. Let this person meet everything. And what is this person? This person is the person who has no mind, no ordinary grasping mind, and this person is totally open and supportive and caring.

[42:31]

This person is a person that leaps Or rather, this person is the person we become when we leave. By letting go of the mind of it is and it isn't. This is a person there. There's no mind. It's a person. Yes. Okay, now he said, going back to Sita's question, we're going back to delusion, but we're not just visiting, we're really there. And again, what she was stressing, I thought, was when you go back, there isn't you and the delusion you're visiting. Or even you and the delusion you really aren't visiting. There's just a delusion. Because you've just come from a place where there wasn't you in the practice, or you in the enlightenment, or you knowing the enlightenment.

[43:33]

You're coming from a place where the enlightenment was a relationship. So now you're re-entering now another relationship, but now the relationship is with ordinary delusion. But it's not you and the delusion. Just like it wasn't you and the enlightenment. No, it's you. It's not you and the delusion. In other words, it's not you and you and the delusion. Okay? It's just you and the delusion. But it's also, there's a relationship there. There's you and the delusion, that's delusion, that's a sentient being. There's you and the delusion and me and the delusion, that's a sentient being. But there's a relationship. Now the relationship is what? It's not the practice and it's not the sentient being, it's the relationship. So the practice doesn't have a self either. We don't even have a self here in the third type of renunciation being held to. So that's the practice.

[44:36]

But the practice doesn't have a self either. So the practice now has to plunge back into, by the vow, has to plunge back into everything, including the delusion, which is, as you said, me and the delusion, or the delusion of me and the enlightenment, or me and the practice, or me and other people. It comes in there, but it's not something in addition to that. It is the relationship And it's ungraspable. We're talking about something inconceivable, but then we're still talking about it. Again, now you can say, he says you go through the three again, but actually there is now bringing, there's a skillful means of the practice which brings beings through. You trust the practice rather than yourself, right?

[45:39]

You trust the practice, which you can't see or grasp. And that's why vow is so important in Zen. This is the realm of vow. You vow to do this, but the vow does the work, not you. We have to get out of the way, which you've heard about before, I'm sure. So I see Rosie and Amy and Martha's next, yes? There's not really regressions. Well, there's not really regression because there's not really delusion. But there is the story, there is the narration of a bodhisattva achieving this kind of renunciation and getting stuck on... as the practice manifesting as it works, as it gets challenged, as the practice gets challenged by certain new versions of delusion, unprecedented challenges, new creative, you know, I mean, let's face it, the way this stuff is coming up is really challenging.

[46:51]

I mean, this particular moment in history is really hard, isn't it? It had its own, you know, unique little things that are very hard not to get caught by. But that keeps challenging the practice. And when the practice somehow congeals and, you know, gets hard, it somehow... I've been continuing to think about this... this character... this Chinese character, Ren, or Run. So the way I was thinking of it is, in one sense, the part on the left means person and the part on the right means two. So it's about, you know, the character's about

[47:55]

you know, true relationship among people. It's often, the character is often translated as benevolence and also humanity. And humanity's In some sense humanity is to be free of a lot of things which are essentially human. In other words, to be free of things which if you didn't have them you wouldn't really be a human. And one of the main things that to be a normal human you need is the ability to pick and choose, the ability to make distinctions, and particularly distinctions between existence and non-existence.

[49:11]

It is and it isn't. It's this and it's not this. So from the point of view of practice, one of the things that's essential in order to be human is to be able to defile practice by saying, this is practice, this isn't practice. So most people that I know can defile practice pretty nicely by projecting their human equipment on the actual life of practice. So this ren is actually, I thought of it as the person avoids those two lines, those two lines. I thought of those two lines like discriminations or distinctions, like self and other.

[50:23]

The person cuts between those two lines, flows between those two lines. and doesn't get involved in self and other, doesn't get involved in it is and it isn't. So I see the character as like having a person there and the person passes through that channel there created by those two horizontal lines. So there's like a river flowing between those lines, a river which doesn't cling to existence or non-existence. which doesn't get involved in permanence or annihilation. All these kinds of distinctions, gain and loss. It's the life that sort of flows between these distinctions. And in that sense, you know, departs from them or doesn't get involved in them.

[51:26]

And this is actually to give up one of the essential things about being human. And by giving up this essential point of being human, one becomes a person of great humanity. by giving up this essential human quality of being involved in distinctions, one becomes a true person, a person who's not wounding himself anymore by being involved in these distinctions. Yes. Yeah, like free to use, free not to use. But the way of using it is not based on another distinction of I'm using it and I'm grasping it.

[52:28]

The use is coming from the same freedom of the distinction. So I mentioned at the last meeting that this ren means that you're not coming from subjective experience. Not coming from subjective experience is called the thus come one. You come from thusness rather than subjective experience, which also means you don't come from objective experience. And somebody asked me about that. In other words, I thought of an example of the first board meeting I went to when I first became a Zen Center board member in the summer of 1970. I went to a board meeting and

[53:31]

And I watched people talk. I listened to people talk. I watched people talk. I myself, being a new member, didn't say much, just kind of watched. And people would say, well, I think we should do this or that would be a good idea. And somebody else says, well, I think that would be a good idea or that's not a good idea. And they went back and forth like this. And suddenly a conclusion came out of this back and forth. And I could see that the way the decision was made was not by somebody getting their way, but also not by nobody expressing their views. People were expressing subjective views or maybe objective views left and right. And Suzuki Roshi, I don't know if he was at that meeting, but uh... he often was at the board meetings and uh... he would often be in a condition that people considered thought was asleep and people sometimes say roshi's asleep and he would say no i'm not i'm here but he didn't very often he wasn't he didn't very often express his opinions

[54:49]

or his subjective experience of the situation. And yet, he was there and the children were playing and I was quite... I thought it was really wonderful that the decision... that I did not know how the decision was made, how the conclusion was arrived at. So, in this spirit, for example, you go to a meeting It could be a staff meeting. It could be a soccer meeting. And you put your thing out there. You put your subjective experience out there. You have a subjective experience. It isn't that you don't have one. You probably do have one, but you put it out there. But it's a gift. You just put it on the table. Here's my opinion. Just give it away. You throw it into the river, which is flowing between right and wrong.

[55:51]

And then somebody else throws their thing in there. And everybody throws their subjective experience into the mix. And the flow actually determines, the flow of all these events determines the action. And you can appreciate that to the extent that you give your subjective and objective opinion. Just give them away. In that way, you are free of your own distinctions, and yet we need your distinctions to be contributed to the process. If you hold them back, that won't work. If you hold them onto them, that won't work. I mean, if you put them in but hold them, that doesn't work. In this way, I see this character as the person who enters this flow of events, the actual creative flow of relationship with no grasping.

[56:57]

Yes? Right. Right. Right. So, again, being a beginner in the board, having not much investment in the decision-making, I could just let it go. It didn't have to be something that I understood. But it was pretty clear to me that nobody really knew what was going on. But the spirit was very good. When I look back at that particular meeting, I think it was... What I say is I think it was one of the most creative and loving meetings I've ever attended.

[58:05]

And then later, maybe when I got more invested in the way things would go, because of my investment, maybe I couldn't see the flow that was in the later meetings. because maybe I had to sort of make it, as you say, project some that it went this way or that way. Maybe it's always going like that, but because of our attachment, we don't see it. And when you're a beginner sometimes and having very little attachment to controlling the experience of the meeting, it might be easier for you to see that actually nobody's in control. And yet... a decision was made. Various decisions were made. But as I said, you know, if I watched, I thought, oh, this is going to, they're going to do, they're going to make, it's going to go this way. And then it would flip over to the other way. And then it would flip over to another way. Or it's going to be like what that person suggested or what that person suggested. But I think what my impression, I don't, you know, this is not really history or true memory, but my impression was of the meeting was that what happened was nobody's idea.

[59:14]

It didn't turn out to be anybody's suggestion. It was something that nobody thought of. But that happened when, in fact, everybody made their contribution with a lot of energy, you know, and I felt, you know, not holding back much. And maybe all of our meetings are like that, but because of our investment, we can't see the flow, which is right there, because we're veering off to the sides. And I also thought of those two horizontal lines as like banks of a river. And I thought, well, rivers, you know, don't cling to their banks unless there's a dam. Then they seem to cling to the banks, right? Then it's a lake. But when rivers are flowing, they touch the limits but flow by them. So we can touch the distinctions upon which our self is built and then just flow by or take the distinctions and throw them into the flow.

[60:19]

Yes. Yes. Yeah. Well, it also sounds like you're saying that humbleness has something to do with when someone talks to you, you listen.

[61:19]

And you just let the words come in. And if you have some inner comment, you just let the comment sort of like not get in the way of hearing what they said. So you might have an opinion, but you just don't grab it as a defense against what the person said or as a, what do you call it, a pallet or a paddle to knock away what they said. You let it in first. That's pretty humble. And that way you're grounded by what the person says, perhaps, unless their comment is something that makes you lift off the ground, like I'm calling you an angel or something. So the way I see this character, which means benevolence or true relationship, is it's encouraging us to practice, or it's encouraging the selfless practice of the ungraspable mind.

[62:31]

So it's selfless in the sense of you give up your basic self-equipment, and your basic self-equipment is making distinctions. You let go of it is and it isn't. That's the selfless practice. And then with this selfless approach, you cultivate this mind which you can't grasp. And... And then I also brought up the issue about the you know Inconceivable liberation so in the in some sense it looks like the early Buddhism the way People remember Shakyamuni Buddha teaching now. Maybe he taught Inconceivable liberation at the beginning according to the Mahayana that the Buddha did teach inconceivable liberation first so one story that that the Mahayana tells is that when the Buddha was awakened and The samadhi that the Buddha was in was the samadhi of the Avatamsaka Sutra, which is called the Ocean Seal Samadhi.

[63:40]

And so, you know, the Buddha didn't think that, well, there's totally inconceivable, it's some inconceivable samadhi, or samadhi of inconceivable liberation. So when people asked the Buddha to teach, he thought, no, you won't want to hear this. He said, please. So then he started, then the Avatamsaka Sutra came out, and people said, you're right, we're not interested in this. So then he taught the Four Noble Truths, which are conceivable. You can grasp them. And they actually show a conceivable liberation. A graspable liberation. A liberation which there could be a subjective experience of. A subjective experience of liberation. And almost like a subjective experience of enlightenment. But it Then later, after people got a little taste of enlightenment, then he said, well, actually, I was just kidding.

[64:51]

Really, there isn't anybody who gets enlightened. Your subjective experience of enlightenment is not enlightenment. There's nobody who gets enlightenment, and there's nothing that you get in enlightenment. So then he supposedly... That was brought out later, but the story is that actually that was brought out early, but people weren't up for it. So it was brought out early, put aside, and then reintroduced in the Prajnapamita literature later. It's inconceivable liberation, a liberation which is metaphysical and ungraspable. And that's the type of liberation which the Buddha is interested in because that's the kind of liberation which is the liberation of the entire world rather than me. It's something that doesn't happen in me. It happens between us. But we cannot grasp what happens between us. And what happens between us, of course, is also all around us.

[65:53]

But the Mahayana is saying, well, that's the type of liberation that the bodhisattva is cultivating, an inconceivable one. And when you hear about the inconceivable liberation, that means also the practice is inconceivable, means the practice is ungraspable, means the practice is not based on your subjective experience of the practice. When you hear about that, or when some people hear about that, they have a problem because Somebody says, I want to have a subjective experience. I want to actually have some experience of enlightenment. I want to taste that one taste of reality. I want to taste, I want to taste selflessness. I want to have an experience of selflessness. Somebody says that. I want to know that I got selflessness now rather than my regular selfishness.

[66:59]

I want to know what it feels like to be free. I want to know, I want to experience the end of suffering. I don't just want the end of suffering. I want to like have a personal experience of it. I want to know what I can do and how I can practice. Okay? And of course we need to practice like that at the beginning. And so Buddha let people practice that way at the beginning and we do Here, we let people come and have a subjective experience, a graspable experience of the practice, of what they're going to do, and all that is fine. And some people have subjective experiences of enlightenment. Fine. That's at the beginning. But then, that approach is gradually dropped and we move into a more selfless cultivation. And somebody asked me, well, and of course, this selfless cultivation is the same as cultivation of selflessness or emptiness.

[68:08]

And then someone said, well, but don't we have to, last practice period you said there had to be kind of like an analysis, an active analysis in order to realize emptiness. Something like that. Was that what you said? Yeah. so but uh there is i mean you know when you when you when you when one is practicing the path of selfless cultivation of the inconceivable mind the self is actually more vociferous than it might be if you're doing a grasping practice if you're doing a practice where you're having one subjective experience after another of what the practice is, and from one moment to the next, you know what the practice is. This is the practice, and I'm doing the practice. This is not the practice, and I'm not doing that. I am doing the practice, not the not the practice. Things are going pretty well. Or I'm doing not the practice, and I confess that, so that's fine.

[69:10]

That's part of the practice, so I'm doing the practice. This way of practicing, there it is. But when a person is practicing that way, they are not necessarily very aware of their self. Their self is being coddled. Their self is being reinforced in a good way, like the way of a beginner. But basically, you're making things worse in a less severe way than you usually make things worse. Because you're doing these nice practices, and then when you're not doing these nice practices, you're noticing it, which is mindfulness, which is good, and admitting it, which is honest, and the precepts, which is good. So you're doing all these practices, all these virtuous practices, in a defiled way. But it's still good relative to not doing those practices in a defiled way.

[70:14]

like lying in a defiled way, is not as good as telling the truth in a defiled way, in a way. It doesn't make sense to you, that lying? Well, there is a distinction. Haven't you noticed? We distinguish between telling the truth and lying, right? We have this thing called lying, which is one of the adaptations we have for promoting the self. If somebody says, whose food is that? And it's not yours, you say, well, it's mine. And they say, oh, okay. Whose money is that? It's mine. So we have this way of telling lies, which is, we got that, right? And then that's different from telling the truth. So there's the distinction, right? Those are two different things. Human beings can make these distinctions. And the why is answered by, you know, biology is the answer to why.

[71:17]

No, it does make a difference between, well, even in biology, it makes a difference if you tell the truth or lie. What you have to do is you have to lie in a way that people don't know you're lying because if they find out that you're lying, if you lie unskillfully, they'll bust you. So there is a difference in skill, even within defilement. Some things are quite good, and then if you do them from a selfish point of view, they're less good because you're not understanding how they're actually happening. namely that you're not doing them, that they're happening by the confluence of many factors. But you think it's happening like, you think your version of it is the way it's happening. That's more grasping. That's also grasping. Telling the, lying is lying, but telling the truth from the point of view of you doing it.

[72:33]

and also making the distinction that this is the truth, those distinctions defile the truth. But it sounds like you're kind of like not getting this. You look like you have your eyes are kind of glazed and stuff like that. Right. So I think I just stopped just for a second here. What I'm saying is that if we do the practice from the point based on distinctions, then we just reinforce the self, which will tell the truth when it's to its advantage according to its opinion, and it will tell a lie when it thinks a lie is to its advantage. But even if you tell the truth from the point of view of this self-distinction, you make another layer of reinforcement on the self. you're practicing based on these distinctions still.

[73:37]

So you're coming from the place of distinctions, and the place of distinction is where the self is built. The self is built on distinctions of existence and non-existence. So everything you do based on distinctions, like every act you do on the base of subjective experience, for example, you tell the truth based on your subjective experience rather than telling the truth as a subjective experience and realize that that's not anything other than a subjective experience and you give it away. So that way of telling the truth is not based on the distinctions. It looks like I lost you again. No, no, the self is based on the distinction, on distinctions. Distinctions are the root of the self. Self is based on the distinction of self and other.

[74:39]

The way the self is evolved is between the distinction between pain and pleasure, good and bad. It's by the techniques of modulating our experience through distinctions that the self is born. The self is born from different patterns of maneuvering. that the organism gets into, and making distinctions between warm and cold, a high intensity, low intensity stimulation. These kinds of techniques of making distinctions are the source of the self. Then, when you use those distinctions to figure out what to do, you're basically going back to the place where the self comes from. So if you practice the precepts or something like that, based on distinctions, you're continuing to practice the precepts from the point of view of self, which goes with also with practice the precepts from the point of view of I'm practicing the precepts, rather than trying to practice the precepts without holding to your distinctions.

[75:48]

while you're practicing them. So you practice them, but you kind of like give them away when you practice them. You practice them, but you don't really grasp them while you're practicing them. In other words, this is just an attempt now to practice the precepts. And you may be not even distinguishing that I'm doing it. But to say, you know, I'm not doing it, is another distinction. Does that give you more of a feeling for it? In other words, you practice with complete relaxation. So all these virtuous practices you do, you do them with relaxation. And when you do them with relaxation, you don't feel so much like you're doing it. Like, you know, what comes to my mind one time is I was... One of the first times I went to a judo class... I was playing. In Judo, you say play. I was playing with the teacher. And I think what happened was I was going to do a throw, and then suddenly I felt that he was doing a throw of me.

[76:59]

And somewhere in the middle of the throw, he was thrown. And Max just went, huh. And that's what the teacher did, too. And that's what everybody did. It was one of those, huh. But it was like, huh. And it was also like, whoa. And it was so fast that obviously I didn't do it. However, I was standing up and the teacher was on the mat. And it was like, this is like slow motion. Like, I'm going to do a throw. No, he's going to do a throw. And then he's on the mat. It was like that. Who did that? This amazing thing happened. The teacher got thrown by this beginning student. But really, that was too fast for me. I didn't do that. And him being thrown came out of the middle of me being thrown. I was like heading towards the mat, as far as I knew.

[78:02]

And something else happened in there, and he got thrown. But he didn't just fall down, he got thrown. He got flipped around and pulled up and put flat on the mat by some process. Things happen that way actually all the time and people love to see it when it happens. And if you get two people together who are practicing from that place, it's not very interesting because nothing happens. that when the masters are playing, since nobody's doing anything, nothing happens. And when the master's with a new student, usually the student is guided into this process of where people are being thrown all over the place. So I'm just saying that when we approach practice from a conceivable way, we're bringing it back to conception, bringing it back to distinctions, and coming back to that level, we're reiterating the self-ish approach to practice.

[79:15]

And also, the reason why I brought that up is because I was relaxed about being thrown. I wasn't too relaxed about throwing him. I wouldn't say I was relaxed there, but when I felt like, oh, I'm being taken for a ride, I relaxed. with being thrown. And out of that relaxation, this other thing happened. And when you practice in a relaxed way, you don't grip the practice. You tell the truth, but in a relaxed way. Not like, okay, I'm going to tell the truth. Oh, I'm going to tell the truth. I'm going to tell the truth. You're not scared. You're not proud. You're not tense. And the truth comes out. But not because of your subjective experience, but because your subjective experience is tossed into the river and then it does a flip and from another part of the river the truth comes out. This is an undefiled way of practicing. In other words, undefiled by my distinctions about what the proper response should be.

[80:17]

But my distinctions are in the river and so are yours. And they churn up and out comes the truth. but I'm not in control. And it's not that I don't care. There's tremendous caring, but not controlling. It's not like, okay, I don't care, then I'm relaxed. No. It's a relaxation from which care is unhindered. Usually because of our distinctions, care is somewhat hindered. So the funny thing is that because we go against this flow, we leak. So the outflows... Or the loss of energy comes... The outflows come from fighting the flow. Come from sticking to the sides of the river. Which is making distinctions. Sticking to the river means grasping distinctions. And the actions that come from there are sometimes good and sometimes not good.

[81:19]

But even when they're good, since they're coming from distinctions, they're reinforcing the self-centered approach to practice. Which... is not practice. It's wounding the practice and wounding the person. The practice is when that person relaxes and enters into the flow between the distinctions. So it isn't that there's no distinctions about what is true and what is false. There is a distinction. This is true and this is false. You let go of that and then a caring response comes which is the truth that you didn't control. Does that make sense? Huh? You don't know if you totally believe it. Yeah. Well, thank you for your honesty. Where did that come from? Yeah, maybe that was a kind of relaxed response. Was it? Yeah, it was kind of relaxed. It didn't look like you planned that for very long.

[82:21]

So anyway, back to just one more thing is about the analysis of the self. When you're doing this self-centered practice, the self is being coddled, is being assuaged, is being reinforced, is being pumped up. Now you not only have a self, but you've got like a practicing self. You've got a Buddhist self. You've got a good self. You've got a Zen self. You got a super Zen self. You got a cool Zen self. You got a, like, I'm not even Zen anymore self. You got all these selves doing the practice. The self and this very little sense of, what about me? What am I getting out of this? So the self is like, cool. Hey, man, I'm cool. Whatever, right? Whatever. I'm getting what I want. Whatever. So there's not much awareness of the ego when you're doing this self-centered, subjective experience-based, grasping distinctions, I know what's going on, pretty much, practice.

[83:26]

When you do the inconceivable practice, the self's going, well, you know, is this really okay? I mean, you know, what am I getting out of this? I don't know anything, you know. Would somebody please give me something? What am I, you know... well, this isn't really okay. The self's kind of like screaming, and then it's kind of like, well, who are you anyway? Well, yeah, right. So the self actually is more out there on the line in the inconceivable practice. Because it's not so big and powerful, So it's more insecure and it's more like, you know, it's not dead, but it's like, it's like, yeah, I guess, well, I guess, you know, I'm not in control. Is that okay? Yeah. But the self has to decide to go along with this. But if it is going along with it when it says, well, what am I getting out of it?

[84:30]

Just even consider a path that you don't really know what you're going to get out of it. Already you're, You're allowing yourself to do this, so you have to decide to do this vow of this inconceivable practice, but once you do, then the vow takes over, and the self tries to get along with it. Jamie, do you still have a question? Anybody else? Yes? Yes? I'm not sure if you want to ask the question. Well, when you do a ceremony, for example, and you make a vow, when you say that and when you think that, when that phenomena happens, that does have an effect.

[85:56]

And the vow is, in some sense, has some life at that point. It doesn't mean it's not permanent, but it has a life that goes on for a while. And again, I just think of, you know, like there's like you're flying through the air and suddenly somebody else gets thrown. You're standing on a street corner and suddenly you salivate. You know, but you don't. But usually when you salivate, you don't think I'm going to salivate now, do you? Does anybody do that? But we're salivating. Most of the day we're salivating. And we also salivate more when we smell certain things. Or to see things. You see things and there's a squirt. And you see things and there's a squirt in your eye. And you see things and there's a squirt in your armpit.

[86:58]

A lot of things happen in our body, but we don't think of doing them. We could, but we don't. We particularly think of doing those things that are connected to our distinction equipment. But activity can occur without interjecting the self in as the author. So renunciation can occur without the self doing it. Just by, sometimes you just see something, like you just see something or hear something, and there's a letting go. Little dog, big cough. Yes. Yeah, that's

[88:04]

Yeah. Well, actually, first he says, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. And again, it means to study the self, but in some sense it means to study the self that you remember, to study the self that you think, the self that's making the distinctions. That's a good way to do it. It happens when it happens. The self happens when it happens. And if you start studying the self and see that your opportunities to study are given to you, that's part of forgetting the self. When you realize that when you're told to study the self, it isn't that you have to decide to study the self, although that's the way you might start. In fact, the real way of studying the self is maybe the self has pushed upon you.

[89:08]

The self that jumps up at you unexpectedly. Like a lot of people walk to the zendo, but how many times have you walked to the zendo? Are you aware of the self Every step of the way, I'm taking this step, I'm taking this step, I'm going to Zendo. Actually, it's there, but you're not aware of it most of the time. There's this dialogue going on, I'm going to Zendo. It's okay, really, to go Zendo. Yeah, sure, go ahead, keep going. You know, this conversation is going on, but you don't even notice it until somebody comes up to you and says, Jerome, you know, you're late again. And you go, what do you mean, me? Why, I'm always on time. Suddenly, you know. you're given this thing like, which you didn't even notice. You just thought there was like this cool walking to the zendo happening. You didn't think that this arrogant person was pushing his body down the street. But then when you got challenged, you suddenly, whoa, this is stronger than I knew. Or if you're going to the zendo, but not thinking in terms of the distinctions, the self might be crying out for help too.

[90:15]

Is it really okay to practice like this? To not know what's going on? So this brings your self to your attention, and then you're studying it, and then in that situation, the self is forgotten. The self isn't just forgotten like it's there talking to you all day long and you don't even notice it because it's so happy because it thinks it's in charge or because there's a thought that this is the way to go. It's forgotten because in its expressiveness, in its full expression, you see it drop away or it drops away. Well, before you said you get angry, you see yourself, you were about to say you see yourself come up. Didn't you say that?

[91:18]

You see yourself come up. But then you got into anger. Yeah. So studying the self is like to feel the self a little bit more before you get into the anger. A distraction. It's a distraction. No. That's the self. But the anger, that's not necessarily anger. Anger is based on it. Anger and self are based on distinctions. Like the distinction is this is not a good, this is not a good situation. So the self then feels threatened and uses anger. in response to what's discriminated or distinguished as dangerous or not respectful or whatever?

[92:20]

You're confused? Is being confused a distraction? It's just an opportunity. An opportunity to relax. Leslie? Yes? Yeah. Yeah. It could be a clue. But the way he told the story, he saw the self first, and then he got into the anger. So it sounded like he had the clue, he had the self, so I thought, just stop there. What did you say?

[93:25]

Right, so... No, you're right. No, no, you're right. That is the self right there. And what I'm saying is that when the self's there that way, we often don't notice it. Because it's happy. It's happy with being, you know, the sense of being in charge and controlling what's happening. But if that gets taken away from you by someone coming up and saying, stop working on this dish, then the self says, wait a minute. So in that sense, when you're... Then the self says, wait a minute. So in that sense, when you're confronted or... When the self-controlling... mode is frustrated, that's often when we are most aware of the self.

[94:44]

Now, again, sometimes we veer off quickly into anger so we don't even notice it. And then, as Leslie says, that can be a clue to send you back to the self. But when we're comfortable, usually, we're comfortable in burying ourselves. We're comfortable in control. You say, is there any other situation than just trying to control what's happening? Is that what you're saying? It's not exactly that there's another situation. It's just that at the same time that we seem to be concerned with controlling things, We're missing a lot of what's going on right at the same time. It's not like another situation. It's just that we're missing how things are happening if we would stop trying to control.

[95:49]

Like I said... Huh? Because I have a plan... Right. Because I have a plan, I don't notice your face. Because I have a plan, I don't stop and say... How are you? Even though you're like giving me a message, I don't have time for that message because I got this plan. Or because I'm trying to control the meeting, I don't notice how the meeting is actually going. So it's not exactly that the meeting, that the reality is another situation. It's just that my own self-controlling approach to practice distracts me from what's going on. So I need to give up my controlling approach. And when I do, I enter into what's going on besides my attempting to control it. Exactly.

[96:58]

Right. So you're afraid to renounce control over the dish. You feel that you're not allowed to relax. That you have to be tense and stay in control of these onions. Otherwise the world will not work. Because... Yeah, people won't get lunch. Yeah. So... So then you feel like, I can't make this shift. I can't renounce this mode because this mode, generally speaking, gets lunch out pretty well and nobody complains. And if I let go of this, lunch might not be on time or it might not be tasty good or something like that. Right. So you just stay with that way, which is like the way that usually works, plus it's the way that you stay in control, and it's still self-based. And it's based on your subjective experience of what's going to get the lunch out. Yeah, and you will not know another way.

[98:11]

But you can give up the way you know. Of course, you can shift to another way, which you would know. But the way it's actually going, you will not know. The way it's actually going is inconceivable. The way lunch actually gets put out is inconceivable. Yeah. Right. Well, I'll tell you what it means. It means the end of suffering is what it means. It means that you have a certain number of lunches left to make in this life, and if you spend each one of them in control mode, that will be a waste of time. That will be a waste of your life. And if you would take this chance, this dangerous way of letting go of control of the meal, you might get in some trouble. Yeah, you might get in some trouble.

[99:17]

You'll definitely get in trouble the other way, but the trouble will be somewhat more controlled, because you will decide, I want to get in trouble of the way of getting meals out on time and sacrificing my happiness for it, rather than taking this dangerous way, which might liberate all beings, but I might get in trouble for them getting liberated, because I'm giving up control of this meal. I'm relaxing. You have to accept that it might not happen. If you can't accept that it might not happen, then even if you try to stay in control, and even if it doesn't happen when you're trying to be in control, even though it doesn't happen, you can also just not accept that it didn't happen. I mean, it didn't happen, but I don't like it. And I was trying to avoid that, and I didn't accept it before. Before the failure, I did not accept the failure. It's not number... Are you lost?

[100:30]

Yeah. Well, I said... I didn't mean number one like they're most important. I meant number one like they're listed first. And the forms of serving the meals on time, I don't know if there is such a form, but let's say there is, the forms of the ceremonies are opportunities for us to relax. So we set these ceremonies up because certainly these ceremonies, it's not going to be bad if they don't happen. Certainly it's not going to be the end of the world if no bells are hit here today. It's not going to be the end of the world if the dawns completely screw up their chanting. It's not going to be the end of the world if incense doesn't get in the bowls. It's not going to be the end of the world if we don't bow properly. So we have these forms where obviously we could completely screw them up. it would be okay. And it wouldn't be that much trouble. Now we might get, you know, in some monasteries you might get beat up for it, but it's not that bad.

[101:38]

Especially here. We don't beat people up for screwing up in the forums. We ostracize them. Yeah. Yeah. That's the difference. Is that actually, actually, you know, You'll get feedback no matter what you do, but really this whole situation is set up for you to realize that we will allow you, I will allow you, to give up your usual approach knowing that that might mean no lunch. Yeah. But it also might happen that you give up your approach and you see somehow it happened anyway. Now you can say, well, the reason why it happened is because nobody else in the kitchen gave up their approach. They all, you know, continued to like try to stay in control. So the meal happened because they all held on and they all stayed in the ego seat.

[102:39]

So I got out of the ego seat, everybody else stayed in, and that's what made it happen. Well, maybe that's part of what happened. If they all were in their egos doing their work, that's part of the story. That's part of what happened. But you can see that that's not all that happened. Part of what happened also was that you let go, and also you can see that you let go and you don't know how it happened. But you see, actually, it was a wonderful meal, and it didn't happen the way I thought it could ever happen. And I didn't have to stay in control for it to happen. I let go and these hands still kept moving. And they did what they've learned to do in the past. But somehow it wasn't me running the show anymore. And usually I feel like if I would let go, I don't know if the hands really will move properly. Yeah. But maybe you let go and you find out they're still moving. And they're like, wow, look at this, you know.

[103:42]

It doesn't have to be me running the show anymore. It doesn't have to be based on some of these distinctions, which I think if I would let go of some of the distinctions here that I use in the background while I cook lunch, my body would stop working. Well, maybe it won't. But maybe it will. I don't know what will happen. But here anyway, there's certainly, especially in the Zendo, people can let go. Again, there will be consequences whether you're gripping or not gripping, but we already have been gripping pretty much non-stop. Not, you know, not non-stop, but most of the time we're gripping intense about everything we do. There are breaks, but the world has gone on during all those breaks. And some of those breaks were when we consciously let go, other breaks were just letting go happen. And again, you know, my first practice period, you know, I noticed that some of my

[104:48]

muscles that were usually tense were loosening up. And I worried about some of those muscles loosening up. There was never any kind of like what he called accidents as a result of those muscles loosening up. But I actually noticed that certain sphincter muscles can do their job with a lot less energy than they usually have in them. But if you notice the decrease in energy around some muscles, you might feel like, well, geez, will they hold? And they did, you know. But we often overdo, you know, a lot of stuff. And when things start relaxing, we get scared. Even though the environment was such that there was something about the environment that let my body relax. But then when I noticed it, I said, whoa. And the various things like that, some things were relaxed and I didn't even notice them. Like I also, you know, maybe I told this story too. One time I was walking up the road towards the end of the practice period and there was a woman walking in front of me.

[105:55]

And I noticed that it was a woman. And I noticed that I hadn't noticed that women were women for a long time. I hadn't been noticing that. And I hadn't even noticed that I stopped. But for some period of time, I don't know whether it was a week or two weeks or a month or two months, but somewhere around there, I had stopped noticing that the females in the Zendo were like different from the males. It was like not something I was into. And then when this woman was walking in front of me, I got into it again. I noticed, oh, yeah, a woman. Wow. Look at that. See, they walk different. The hips go da-da-da. And I thought, wow. I noticed. But I also said, and I realized that I had not been noticing, and I didn't even notice that I stopped. Now, some people would get frightened if they would actually notice that they stopped noticing the other sex. you know, or, you know, what sex it is.

[106:59]

Like, wait a minute, I'm not making that discrimination anymore? What will happen to me? You know, if I'm like at a dance, what will I do? You know, who will I dance with if I don't make the distinction about what gender this is? But in fact, Tassajara is a place, I think, dedicated to helping us relax and seeing that the world does not fall apart necessarily when we relax. Matter of fact, other opportunities open up when we relax. And one of the main opportunities open up is we actually enter into the actual flow or we realize the actual flow and we stop resisting it by interjecting our own tension and controlling distinctions on the practice. But there's a scary place there. So you're worried the meal won't get out. Somebody else told me he's afraid he'll go insane. Somebody else is afraid that they'll have a bowel movement. Somebody else is afraid that people will think that they're stupid if they don't stay smart and alert.

[108:05]

So all these fears come up when you contemplate relaxing. When you actually get down to it, it's scary. Like go to a meeting and just put your thing out there. Not to keep it to yourself, but put it out there. Just put it out there. Just tell it. But not in a way, you know, what a lot of people do is they give this long prologue before they say what they have to say. Like, I'm going to say something, but I want to say all these things so you know that it's not stupid. You know, like, I'm going to say this, and I know it could sound dumb this way and dumb that way, but I've already checked that out, and I want you to know I know that too. So they're not giving it, they're positioning it. But actually just give it. It's scary. It's scary. I'll get down closer to the floor. Can you open those doors? Is that OK? In the Diamond Sutra, yeah.

[109:22]

I'm just curious . There's no such thing as an arhat and there's no such thing as a Buddha. A Buddha is not a thing. A Buddha is a relationship, right? Now, this relationship, you could say, has all kinds of amazing qualities, but the most amazing thing about the Buddha is the relationship between the Buddha and other beings. But there's no such thing as a mother. You can't have a mother without a child. So there's not a thing called a mother over there. You've got to have a child to have a mother. And actually the Chinese character for person, the way it's usually written, is like this, you know. It looks like a person walking, but also it means that one line depends on the other.

[110:29]

You take away one, the other one falls down. So there's no such thing. There's no things, ultimately. I bring up personal liberation because we want to point out to people that they may have this orientation and that this orientation is defiled. We don't actually necessarily encourage people to approach practice from the point of view of what they're going to get out of it, but we let people who are trying to get something out of it come into the practice. And then we say, you can come into practice with the intention of getting something out of it, like getting calm, getting happiness for yourself. That's fine. No problem. And then gradually, we'd like to tell you that that's delusion.

[111:30]

That approach is delusion. And enlightenment would be to see how everything comes to itself to see how that is. That would be enlightenment. And that wouldn't be you getting anything. That would be everything getting itself. It's skillful means. Arhatship is skillful means. And so is bodhisattva. All the Buddha Dharma is skillful means. Appearance is to help people, to draw people into this inconceivable practice, into selfless practice. So beings who have selves, we have various ways to try to encourage the self to cooperate with a self-relaxing process. Because the self is basically a tense issue. The self is like an isolated identity.

[112:34]

So how can we work with this thing to get it to relax and accept that it won't be so bad if it would be like... a lot less in charge of what's going on, and that it wouldn't be the center of the whole thing, but something that has a big, important function in the biological world, and if understood properly, everybody will be much better off. And that this self not examined and dealt with in a relaxed way, the self is the source of all of our, basically all of our terrible human problems. It's the source of nationalism, separatism, racism, all that stuff is coming from self-other, us and them. But to deny that wouldn't be To deny it, it just grows.

[113:37]

To fight it, it grows. To try to get it to relax, to convince the self to sign up for the self-forgetting process, to convince the self to join a selfless practice, and gradually lull it into going along with giving up all distinctions. And our practice here to some extent is like that. We go to the zendo and sometimes we think that we're going to get something out of it and then we're kind of happy. Like this is going to be a good period of meditation. I think I'm going to really get some, deepen my calm here and get some great insights. So we, you know, we have a spring in our step as we go to the zendo then. But just another period of not getting anything. of no gain and just letting go.

[114:39]

And not just letting go, but letting go in a state of awakeness. So not like letting go while dreaming of not letting go. Like dreaming of being Mr. Cool. But actually like dreaming that I'm just sitting in a zendo and... We're doing this wonderful thing together called, you know, looking at the floor. But, you know, it's not so bad. It's not so bad to waste my life this way. And the suggestion is it is necessary that I be willing to basically waste my life in order to do any good.

[115:41]

Waste my life. Waste the life of me getting stuff. Waste that life. Miss that opportunity in order not to waste the opportunity of life. Waste the opportunity of being a human so that I can realize humanity. but we have to be gentle and careful about this. Otherwise, the self goes into reaction and takes revenge on the whole program and, you know, sets up, you know, a super strong fortress then. Now, some people don't go into reaction because they never even get close to practice like that. They're always practicing from a selfish point of view, so they're always, you know, There's no self to go into reaction. The self is perfectly, you know, like totally in control. They're miserable, but, you know, they're not in reaction. But if you actually enter the inconceivable practice, too roughly, the self can go into reaction.

[116:52]

So we have to be gentle about this. Yes? Yes? Well, that's true too. The self is constantly in reaction. That's right. But sometimes the way it's in reaction is that it feels, you know, that it's happily in control. That's the way it's in reaction. And other times, if you get it to go along with a practice of letting go of control, if you push it too hard, it might go into more of its usual back into control mode more. That's what I meant by reaction. But the usual mode is reaction. The usual mode of control is reaction. In other words, you're reacting to the flow of events by denying them and fighting them and trying to get control of them rather than giving up and entering the stream of all life.

[117:59]

If what? Yeah. No, it's not that they don't depend on it. It's just that we are not using our distinctions as the point, as the ground by which things are happening. So if we give up our distinctions, we enter into intimacy with how things actually happen, and then we actually see what our contribution is. We do make a contribution. Things do depend on us. We're part of the picture. But when we come to the experience based on our distinctions of existence and non-existence, we miss, we can't see what our contribution is. And we hurt ourselves.

[119:19]

We cause, we knock our inner, we drain ourselves, we weaken ourselves by our trying to control something that is not to be controlled by us. And when we give that up, we can see what our actual wonderful participation is. We actually are part of this wonderful working. But we can't see it if we're clinging. Well, one example would be he thinks this is the way to do things and somebody else, and he thinks that's not the way to do things.

[120:23]

That's one thing. This is the way it should go. This is not the way it should go. And sometimes somebody else actually is the one who's proposing the other way. So that often comes up, I think. Well, willingness to compromise, but also willingness to let go of your view. Just put your view in there. This is the way I think it should be done. And they put in, this is the way I think it should be done. So you both just throw that in there. That often comes up. So it is subtle, but again, we can't even control the willingness to relax and just put it in. We can't control giving either. So I'm not saying it's not subtle, but there comes a place where you feel If I don't do this, things won't work. In other words, this is the way it must go. So there's an opportunity to loosen up. Maybe you can't, but at least you can identify a sense of where it's got to go this way. This is it. This is it, rather than, well, maybe that's it.

[121:28]

So like I was saying to some people yesterday, only a Buddha can actually see who who you actually are, what your practice actually is. You can't tell who the great bodhisattvas in this room are. So the conclusion of that is that if that's true, we should look at everybody as though they are the Buddha. Everybody might be the Buddha. And I think that some of us think that some people might be and other people is highly unlikely. But yeah, well, so-and-so, yeah, I think that's possible that person's, you know, a bodhisattva, actually. They're going to be a Buddha. Yeah, I could see that, yeah. But this person here is just actually just, no. No, they're not. I mean, it's just not, well, you know, how about maybe they are?

[122:34]

How about treating them, everybody, as though they were Buddha? Yeah. And so when you're doing something in the kitchen, how about treating this way as Buddha and that way as Buddha? Treat both ways as Buddha rather than this way is Buddha and this way is not. And then what would you do? And then you might feel like, if I treat this way as Buddha, things will be fine. But if I treat that way as Buddha, lunch might be late. Well, how about just see? Treat this way as Buddha and that way as Buddha and then what happens? And maybe you find somebody, you know, that you're paralyzed and just standing in the middle of the kitchen treating everything as Buddha. And then other people cook the lunch and it's late. And you say, you know, and he wasn't any help today. So, you know, we're late because Jerome was not doing any work today. He was just standing there crying in the middle of the kitchen. But then maybe Jerome actually gets to see, you know, the lunch was late, but I understood finally what lunch is.

[123:41]

You know? And, you know, some people might say, you know, Jerome, it's okay. It's worth it to us that you understood that something happened. And you understood, and it wasn't your subjective experience either, what you understood. But, you know, maybe it wouldn't be late. I don't know. I'm not saying it always is going to be late every time people are practicing. But really, you know... unlimited. The first kind of renunciation actually is that you renounce. At first you think, this is the practice and I'm doing it. And then you hear the teaching and then you say, okay, this is our practice. Yeah. And this practice is happening. Yeah. But there's no practice that might not be possible. Anything might be practice.

[124:43]

You're open to that when you practice the first kind of renunciation. You see, the emptiness of your practice means that you treat this practice with respect and every other practice with respect. You don't know what the practice is anymore. Or rather, you give up your ideas and distinctions about what is and what isn't practice. Okay? Ben, did you? It's 9.30, though. I guess we should just stop. But maybe we'll just bend. When he's worried and he can't sleep, he checks back to compassion

[125:48]

When he doesn't know what's going on, he checks back to compassion. And compassion is what that you're checking back to? What feeling is it in the body? It's a feeling in your stomach. It's hard to say. Hard to say what it is. But you check back with this thing, which is hard to say what it is. And it seems helpful? It guides you. Sounds fine. So, shall we dive in?

[126:42]

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