Mary speaks to Dean about silence

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thank you well i think dean is not here is that right
he was well what can i say
i'm talking to her
you can tell her that i what do you call like i called her out
one thing is last week many of you were here we had a wonderful wonderful event here
karen dakota's was ordained as a priest finally
and at the reception i asked a few people well what is should i talk about is there something in particular that i should talk about next week and dean said
a silence talk about silence we never talk about silence and silence i think she said as it was a million people talking would arrive i think she said that her experience was that out of silence came insights
so i've been sort of chewing on that all week

thinking about silence what is silence to us what is silence and our practice because she's right we probably don't talk about it much because ultimately it i could do then snotty and we could all sit here for half an hour in silence
or even five minutes there's a one of the many coins that pointed silences is a i think it's case
but another three know it's it's case one of the local for of the book of serenity and it seems that the buddha got up on the dharma seat and manjushri who is often them but of these things to do you ever noticed that manjushri the the bodhisattva great wisdom is often the but
yeah and so been drew three strikes the hands dykes the wooden plaque and says behold the dharma of the dharma king the dharma of the king of dharma is less than is max it again
food he gets up
the way
that's one of many and then they are
the a poem what says among other thing that says nothing could be done about manjushri is leaking
them so all right but we have to leak we all link all the time
some as we refer to tip talking as a mistake one continuous mistake
norman fischer years ago when i was really pretty new he said some into me i guess it was in on i don't remember and he said he said sometimes i make a mistake on purpose and i thought wow that's really a presumptuous snotty offensive thing to say you don't make miss i'm
make mistakes out i don't have to try and then years later i heard that phrase which is actually a stock phrase and it's one of the ways of talking about talking that it's making a mistake on purpose because as soon as you
as soon as you think as soon as your form a concept it's dualistic and the serious l dualistic when he opened your mouth so that's what he was talking of her but i didn't know and i was so put off by it i didn't ask him what he was talking about goes it would have come out like well that is creepy
i've never told him then
this may be the first time i ever said it in a public way

so what is what is silence then
brains think gucci amorosi says thoughts or just brain secretions
how do you not think
we say non thinking but non thinking from two as angry think not thinking how do you think not thinking non thinking
the distinction there is that not thinking doesn't work pushing away thoughts doesn't work
so let's let's focus mostly on zaza of course not talking to your fat friends and family doesn't work
but the evidence awesome how much silences there and your zazen
and i thought maybe the distinction is it's it's more about
quiet he understand these are just words so i'm using them that way

if you define silence is absolute silence
it seems to me that not always there are times in zazen i hope that you experience these stones there are times and zazen when there really is just quiet
when there's no i'm breathing there's no i'm sitting there is just breathing going on
that's silent
but there there are a lot of other times and zaza for that's not the case
the fats arrive
wish we sit something called she contacts are just sitting simply sitting we sit in the middle of that thoughts arise
and if we let them they abide and passed away
that's quiet i think
you could say that was silence if you want but i'm making that distinction because i think it's important
two not
push thoughts away to not try so hard it's more of an exploration
a sitting in willingness there's this great i was looking at various coins and here and i'm not gonna
bobby with them i also looked at the what you're going to study pretty soon i think the shinji and languages about nothing but this
but there's one that's not a commonly used one case forty five and the book of serenity
so the case the scripture of perfect enlightenment says at all times do not produce delusive thoughts
also
don't try to stop and annihilate deluded states of mind
don't produce him don't annihilate him
in realms of false conception don't add knowledge and don't find reality and no knowledge
in some sense every every concept we have every conception we have is false
you with me if if i if i'm saying something that sounds odd to please please ask please raise your hand please do everybody else in the room of favor and be brave enough to say what what i don't understand what you're talking about
okay
i don't believe that there's nobody here that's thinking what's she talking about
you're grown ups
yes
what am i talking about okay
thank you for asking it just i talk about this this kind of a lot so i think i don't mind talking about it all but i think sometimes that i'm sort of preaching to the choir and i don't know so so in realms of false conception don't add knowledge
the way i understand this which this may be what i think about it is just what i think about it
we we
we see things you know here's the i there's the bell there's i there's contact and then the mind says oh that shape that metal that the that's a bell and labels it and then the trouble is that i then believe that that's the ultimate truth about
that object and i think that it's solid and then it has a separate existence for me
okay than and the
it's in some sense it's a false conception or matter what because i'm to i'm putting a label on it that we've all agreed that that's a bell that's the big bell i've sounded that bill many times i like that though i actually love that bill but at any rate we have we all have our ideas about it
where where designating it a bill which isn't exactly true
but we have to find a way as i said it so maybe it's a mistake on purpose we have to find a way to talk to each other because how do you train at dawn would have talking about the bell
okay or how do you to teach people you know during the all buddhas at the end of service if you're on the floor you can you get up on your knees that the at the end of the first line at the sound of the big bell
it's difficult to explain that if you don't have some understanding okay so in some sense it's false conception or marijuana
okay okay
but what we do we add it says don't add knowledge which i think means don't
and extra onto it don't add substance onto it don't insist that it's separate from you and solid and there's no emptiness about it at all
two are you with me okay and then don't find reality and no knowledge that you have to you have to call it a bell you have to live we live in this realm okay so don't don't fall off onto the form so
side but also don't fall off onto the emptiness side
okay it's is not nothing it's no thing but it's not nothing
thank you very much risk
i suppose you could understand everything's
i worked
simply insert know about you okay
yes
yes
well we can make mistakes we can have false conceptions about simply anything
practical terms
he thought about the be specially built for all the people your over will see the full moon
that's right
and you might see that you're deluded about them
oh
i know but i want i'm i mean i just i don't want to get too far off i woke my find the i'm trying to answer dean and talk about silence
if i hope the she many people so i suggest to her that she might listen to this lecture she's the audio archives
well i get to i get to title it i we might call it going to marry speaks to dean about silence

ah silence
so if the point of that is of is it it's not silent as not know thinking that goes on and in zazen it's not attachment to thinking it's
when i think that this this case is saying is don't don't
don't get caught on either side
and we do we do have there is an intentionality about it
no we say she contrasts are just sitting sit down in the middle of it let the thoughts come and go no one said i i you know i don't think i was here but i feel like i was here and i think it just heard about this but at some point somebody's he gave a talk in l a 's
somebody raise her hand and said i'm relatively new to this practice i've been doing it a few months and my brain has just driving me nuts i just i just am thinking all these thoughts and it won't stop and does it ever does ever stop and sojourn said
you know the difference between you and me is i i have thoughts too but they don't bother me
did that actually happen
if they might as well as right it's right well that's one of the of what i don't know about you i sometimes remind him of been exchanged because i know that he doesn't record in his mind every exchange we have doves on and i remind him a nice tell him what he says and they'll say well that was good
so if we didn't say that i'm sure he'd be happy to adopted i adopted i use that example all the time
so what is silence i think it's as i say i think it's more like quiet
is it's something i'm bore about acceptance
there is as i say an intentionality i intend when i citizen i intend
not to get tangled in my thoughts i intend not to produce them
i do produce them but i don't have to get on the train i don't have to keep on going i have the intention to notice when discursive thought arises
and i have the intention to let it go
so in that sense i intend not to produce them
and i think
i'm not sure what this the person the who wrote the
scripture perfect enlightenment or who recite i don't know i'm not familiar with it i maybe insisted title
so it may be from the pali canon i don't know whoever
said at all times do not produce delusive thoughts
what other kind are there
but i do think
i did it gets
i'm really i think there is i make a distinction in my own mind and my own body
i can tell the difference there are thoughts that i really produce just like a producer of a movie just like the writer of a movie i suppose but we're using the word produce i tell myself stories and i can feel that and my body
and there are other thoughts which do not feel produced
they are produced but not the same way their thoughts that my experience of those is that they arise organically and that may be more of what dean was referring to
you can feel it here
oops
i made them make the recorder do weird things but you can feel it in your guy
when something arises organically
it's a different quality
and i trust those thoughts more and i may allow that tape to run until i noticed that i've intervened and i'm starting to produce it and then i drop it yeah
shit
ah
it's in the neighborhood it's in the neighborhood it's it's a word that surgeon uses and i'm not i don't i've never really asked him about it but it's in that neighborhood yeah i was thinking is just a quick years and and eyeglasses before to the original face as a car
what is this original thought oh i don't know i know i wouldn't dignify it that much because i think it's really useful to keep remembering that any concept anytime i'm talking to myself even if it's in pictures or whatever know there is a disk
since there's a duality to that there is a deluded quality to it is for an illusory quality to it it just that it's i think it's it's even so it's qualitatively different i think of it sometimes i i describe it sometimes as they experience you may have had when you're sort of half awake
like and you're still dreaming
and you know that you're doing that but it's feels like you're watching a movie or listening to a tape and it's running itself and then you wake up just a little more and you start intervening and you start telling yourself a story
so that time before that
and so if it can happen that you're sitting zazen and an insight will arise and it feels like it arises from your gut
and that seems to me can arise and quiet it may not be silent
i mean i'm including non silent and including talking to yourself is most of us don't talk a lot during out loud during zaza
but that it seems to me is it is can be acquired event even if it's not a silent event and whether the person who wrote this a do not produce the elusive thoughts i don't know if they were frank absolutely any kind of thoughts
and maybe it doesn't matter because i get to give the lecture and this person whoever this is a new
so also but it also don't don't try to stop and annihilate them
that's not silence
he was there are lots of wonderful quotes in the shin shin ring about not trying to annihilate
thoughts i know you have a wonderful translation that that sojourn did and i didn't i didn't i have the clerk which i think he's close to
oh
when you try to stop activity to achieve passivity you're very effort fills you with activity
so if you try to push him away
doesn't work it only makes it worse
so the quiet is some kind of acceptance
and and non entanglement sometimes i say that thousand is waiting and willingness
waiting and willingness that the effort is to let go of thoughts let go let go let go but also it is to be open to whatever is arising
particularly the physical sensations
an openness
an openness
on a willingness to allow it whatever the thought is allow it to arise abide and pass away including those kinds of insights i was talking about those can be kind of exciting sometimes
let it go you had the insight you don't have to think about it you don't have to run around us and on right now nothing just let it go it happened it's not gonna unhappy
and that's where the discipline comes in but i didn't know there was an intentionality there is a discipline there's a discipline in letting go sometimes the thoughts are delicious
let him go
that's quiet sometimes the thoughts are in a phrase that i i learned from lender with cuts sometimes they're wicked fun
let him go gossiping is wicked fun or to to let her talk was about years ago
it's wicked fun it is
let it go
oh he sit still and willingness
and there's a quiet and that willingness and that acceptance
in that letting go
and there's patience the dreaded patients
my i dread patients i work with patients actually i work with impatience

it's if she can't answer is just sitting and openness and allowing those thoughts to her eyes and not getting tangled
and in that effort

realization can arise it actually there's a poem
call the zazen and shin from which and i think i probably know it well enough this is the
on the brochure at clearwater zendo this excerpt from opponent is realization neither general or particular
neither universal
nor particular
realization neither general nor particular his effort without desire
effort without desire clearwater all the way to the bottom a fish swims like a fish vast sky transparent throughout a bird flies like a bird
so we citizen like human beings
in the quiet comes from not
fighting that
from being willing to be a human being sitting zazen with all the thoughts that arise
and because we're human beings we can let them go
but it's not a silence in the sense of nothing as i like the notion of it's a quiet willingness
anybody have any
questions or remarks yes
oh yeah
we were saying and saying that it's not silence and the usual center was
leaving
with what it could be if it's not so we usually think of silence
shut up don't talk keep quiet shut the doors get the traffic noise out the him
but that's not what what what you mean when you say what a silencer with demons
and you sit quiet as a better word and i was thinking stillness i've been reading
thanks the earliest texts of yoga
sure potentially and the first you know crucial statement is yoga is this stealing or cessation of the turnings turnings of thought
so
i just want to say that
reminded me of a poor which i won't repeat right now but if we just hear what is actually going on
including our own blood
him
that science
it just do eminence and how you use the word as you said so up until that stillness that's fine that's quiet and of course at silence in one way but the way i understood her to be talking about it and the way i have been distinguishing his silence as the absence of sound and it's there isn't any such thing
no bobber i think i think we agree but i just you have to use you have to make a mistake on purpose you have to use a word that's why i say they're just words and you use of a certain way to point at something
so
yeah yeah thank you
good topic fruitful for me who moving
when i find is that
not talking
and forgiving myself for talking
and then a one of the things about asthma is that i don't have breath to talk and that sort of of benefit sometimes not to be there oh bring it forth and because i hear or empty present this stage of my brain development nails are there for them
it's i'm intimate with there
i'm not
you know who i have to it's like oh i didn't need to get them that one after all say oh so as like your body slows you down little bit
so getting old
i'm gonna i think
well it worked just as and i just want to see if there are people that haven't spoken yet yeah
they keep your antivirus miles davis was an album and a silent way i don't know been access but you know so
gnarly old simon garfunkel sounds of success
and what's coming up this is is harmony knew that sensor that i was wondering how all of this connects to dissonance in harmony
fat
i'm going to tell a story did years ago sojourn was leading a practice period at tassajara and it was you know it's the pressure cooker people used to say to me hire a again i hope you find the peace that you see go my it's a pressure cooker in
sometimes people lose it and it was for whatever reason abraxas period where a number of people lost it there was some screaming on the path right by the coffee tea area swearing and screaming somebody through a plate of food across the dining room
didn't hit anybody
and various other things were going on and i went and talked to him and i said you know maybe we should have a have a like a sanga meeting or something in and talk about this because they're these his elephants litter pick at it and he agreed and he he got us all together
either and the zendo and he started talking and he was talking about harmony and the saga and the suzuki roshi said we should be ones that as close as milk and water we should blend is could close of milk and water and and so i thought okay handing me this i'm not over parents area well what what about when we don't
and then he talked about that and i don't remember exactly what he said but the feel of it is a than the point that they're we have to be able to address and being with disharmony
we have to be if we have to include it
because there is a disharmony there are thoughts that arise that are troubling and their interactions with of the people that are troubling and they are life experiences that are troubling even unintentionally somebody dies that's not exactly disharmony but it's disruptive
and not in the silicon valley sentence
we must we have to include that
and we can i think with practice we have at least a better chance of meeting it with some equanimity with some acceptance with some understanding and and we are better able to practice with it through if it's like with one other person or
a couple of other people to to do what code of they think that finger and turned it around and look at ourselves and our part in it and also to see that the other person doesn't want to suffer and so on but it it seems to me that sanga harmony has to be a big enough container to contain
and
disharmony
so make sense
ah i i was struck by
total joy
and wondering
wondering if that's
a reference to the kind of states that can be
edwin joy
one another and are they how are they different or are they from
well in terms of what it's meant to you have to ask him
ah
pointing a surgeon see i was thinking we must be weird to listen to some of these things on the tape in somebody's gesturing or something it is well i know anyway
i think is it i understand it
to be the kind of joy
where is it ain't no ten in the
ah the kaja buddhist teaching like the kind of thing they will teach him spirit rock
you know there's a kind of is it in the four foundations of mindfulness the so there's a kind of joy that's not you be well we know this much deeper than that does
i started a rise out of maybe i don't know it related to equanimity
so it's her it's a deep foundational kind of joy
oh what he meant i don't know i think i able to the second name is someone that he season they don't and
i'm gonna like to think i know it's been he ever to be one uk and nineteen ninety so
oh i think i am i think it's about my letting myself see the deep joy in practice on all different levels
because merely told me i'm a one and the enneagram system and perfectionist and i have this critical discriminating mind and it's about letting that go and seeing the perfection and enjoy that's there so that's how
i think of it but what it means that i don't know i don't know
yeah
talking about quiet and silence here is now your i'd be variants you are you say we have to speak to each other from time to time and i think maybe some of the kind of emerge from this very recent talk about be quite it might have been in might have been that she was saying that there wasn't enough talking about say
silence so so i don't know i don't i know because it was it was in the middle of reception so we didn't really talk about it and i thought well i'll talk about it and then she'll say whatever and then
so i don't know i kind of your people complain sometimes about too much talking going on not necessarily in the zendo but around the edges of the zendo when the community room were out know whatever that in a session often we talked too much
you know it's not easy to know and i i have to talk to people all the time because at clearwater i am the you know and i am the director nam they you name it i'm not the tensile thing nor the work workload but those other things and so i am talking to people saying will shorten the period or something in
it's it's hard to then stop
so i i think i'm as guilty as anybody
anyway i don't know yeah
what it says
where are my mind silent
i'm just
yeah well it it's easier thousand and as though it's it's easy to describe just sit down and find your posture sit up straight onto the curve in your lower back then an era
and then just follow your breath and after a while don't even think about following your bruh further
it's says easy what's a problem it's hard to do
and forth
yeah
pulling weeds and
ah so this issue of silence pick come up recently from the statements from soju
regarding especially i think in the afternoon sauce in a after we get out of the zendo and were sitting on the steps putting on our shoes we often convert sin and my understanding from what so instead it is
wait until you leave zendo and from that i think he means wait until you step off those steps even
and be more conscious and then about and transition and that silent opportunity yeah well and because this will make a container in here and every time we talk lose it's a problem in vallejo because there's no there's not much of a place to gather so people go
back towards the will go towards the entrance and they talk by the shoe rack which was in the zendo
and i've been thinking about it and thinking about it and trying to figure out
people do they need to talk to each other and connect and so on also so now the summer's coming we could go outside
one more
hmm you say more about
practicing with impatience
i don't know anything about it
are we it
i'll tell you i will tell you something but i have to tell your story out there were some show son deliberate diamond question and answer at the end of a sixteen was blanche hartman at city center when years ago and the person before me whatever the exchange was they talked about patients so then it's my turn so
i
bound whatever and i said what is this patients you speak of and the whole room let erupted with laughter a
i guess the they know that this is something i struggle with
patience is forbearance it's it's being and difficult situation and accepting it is one major way of understanding it's how he can talks about it
and
we practice with it by noticing our impatience which i think it's a lot about noticing your body
noticing what i think that alan years ago talked about i think that i think it was like gleaning in the impulse to lean in and i say it can feel this impulses tightening in your gut and this like oh i have to you don't think i have to say they're so do this but that
that's the impulse behind it and when you get if you can notice it in your body notice that impulse you can lean back a bit take a breath and not you can refrain from saying or doing
that's a good feasible
absolutely i think this is a physical practice
so let's sit down and shut up if okay one more oh you're sitting down and shutting up
sounds good to me