Part of the reason why I ask you to come closer is just to be closer, but also being closer, I think, is one of the ways of getting in touch with and becoming free of fear. I was talking to someone about, actually, it's hard to see now, but as I mentioned yesterday, this Chinese character here is the one for danger. And you kind of see that originally the character was like a person standing on the edge of a cliff. See, I wrote it up on the board there. See the clip with the person on the edge? So that was the original kind of picture that developed into this character, or danger.

[01:07]

And I was talking about how if I stand on the edge of a cliff, If I stand, you know, near the edge of the cliff, I can actually stand there and, you know, not too near the edge, but fairly near. I can feel the danger. If I get way away from the edge, I don't so much feel the danger as much. So I get, if I say I'm closer and closer to the edge of the cliff, the danger seems, you know, more, I'm opening to it more by getting closer to it. And then when I get to a place, I can get to a place where I don't feel fear, but I feel the danger. That make sense? It's just a dangerous place, but I don't feel afraid. And then if I go as far as I can without feeling afraid, but I do feel the danger, and I am in danger, like I'm probably close enough, so if I would just

[02:18]

If I would take one more step or two more steps, I would go off the edge. But I still don't feel fear. I feel kind of comfortable. And if I just lean forward a little bit, without moving my feet, in the same spot, in the same spot where I felt danger but no fear, If I lean forward, I start to tangibly feel something, you know, fear. Kind of sick and maybe woozy or something. Also, if I start to lean back, I also start to feel some fear. So I thought that was an interesting metaphor. When you're in the dangerous place, if you lean forward, you feel fear, more maybe than if you lean backwards. And also if you lean to the side, you'll probably feel some more fear.

[03:22]

But to be in a dangerous spot and to balance and operate, you're in danger, but you don't feel afraid. I don't feel afraid. I think you can actually... Maybe you understand? Does that make sense? And also the etymology of the word danger is... One of the etymologies of the word fear is to lean over, to lean over or press forward. And I mentioned yesterday that for me fear is usually associated with thinking of the future or expecting something. But the etymology of the word is related to danger and pressing forward.

[04:36]

And also the etymology of the word anger is related, sounds a lot like the etymology of the word for anxiety. And the word from anger comes from Old Norse, anger, which means grief. It's spelled, this orthography is A-N-G-R-E, for grief, or the old Norse grief. Anger and anxiety. And again, anxiety is anxious, which is spelled A-N-G-E-R-E. That's Latin, which means to torment or choke. And another thing which I wrote on the board there is called a trigram.

[06:00]

And I Ching uses trigrams and hexagrams. And speaking of the meditation practice of our tradition, one ancestor said, it's like the double split hexagram. And that's a single-split hexagram. That's a single-split trigram. And if you pile, if you make two of those, that makes a hexagram. Doubles split. And that split hexagram is also the hexagram, the water hexagram. And if you look at it, at the center it has a broken line, and on the top and the bottom it has a solid line. The groping line is feminine, and the solid line is masculine. So at the center of the trigram is the feminine, the receptive, and surrounded by the solid masculine lines, which are the giving or the expressive.

[07:13]

And someone asked me, you know, about, it seems like the forms of Zen are kind of masculine. And in a way they are, because they're kind of expressive and assertive and kind of strong and clear. But at the center of the forms is this femininity. So we set these forms up like, you know, we actually set the room up where we put the cushions in rows. We didn't just put them all over the room or just say put them wherever you want. We actually put them in rows. And we suggest, okay, now we're going to sit. Ding. Now we're going to walk. Ding. Now we're going to sit. Now we're going to have lunch. You know, we have some structure. And structures are, you know, kind of solid lines. But and the feminine is more at the opening in it, to receive. The central thing is receiving.

[08:18]

First at the center is receiving, but then after receiving, you employ what you received. So again, here you are Here you are, here we are, in a dangerous situation. We're standing at the edge of a cliff. And again, people don't usually notice that they're standing at the edge of a cliff. But we are. I suggest we are. We're standing real... there's a precipice all around us, and If you step over that precipice, you will die. And you're going to step over that precipice shortly after losing your ability to speech.

[09:23]

Death is really close. Now, from a child's point of view, it seems far away. But as you get older, it doesn't seem so far away. But it isn't far away from children either, even though children die also. And they die just as fast as old people when they die. So death is right nearby all the time. I don't know when we're going to step over it, but it's not going to be long. So it's like Let's get ready for it. Let's be ready for it. So that we can step and say, okay, here we go. Not leaning into it, just, it's time.

[10:28]

Time to die. Not afraid of it. But again, if you are I, walk around thinking, oh, death's far away, then when it comes, you may be quite shocked and do poorly and curl up in a ball and not enjoy it. And again, if you're upright and open to the precipice that's around you, the death precipice, the illness precipice, the pain precipice, the insanity precipice, the bad reputation precipice,

[11:31]

if you're open to that, but not leaning into any of that stuff, just open to it, not leaning away from it, just standing upright, ready, or being upright, ready for whatever. Ready for whatever means not just ready for the things I said, but ready for some other things too, some things which, you know, yeah, some things which aren't so nice, like I think Eric's question yesterday was a little bit about this. If you open to something, some danger, you might become numb and lose your sense of its danger. If you're close to it, you kind of feel like, oh, it's dangerous, oh, no. But if you open to it and relax with it, then might you slip into it? Something like that? Can I have some of your water?

[12:45]

Are you open to my germs? You don't want a bath now? Well, I was open to your germs. How many germs? So when you, if you're a person who, you know, for example, you're open to, you feel open to taking good care of yourself and being kind to people, maybe some of you are like that. I say good, be open to that. But if you really start to open up even more, then you open up to not being kind to yourself, not taking care of yourself, or maybe even worse, not even caring about taking care of yourself, or not even caring about taking care of other people.

[13:59]

If you're open, that means that you're not leaning into the good stuff. Like, here's all these good things. I'm open to them? Yeah. But are you open to them or leaning into them? Some people have a lot of good things they do. They're not really open to them. They're addicted to them. They're leaning into them. Like, I'm a good mother, I'm a good father, I'm a good worker. [...] I'm doing my job well. Not just open to being a good worker, not just wanting to be a good worker. And you can be open to being a good worker or being a good parent without leaning into being a good parent. But you think, well, if I don't lean into it, or rather, if I wanted to be a good parent, then wouldn't I be leaning into it? And I would say, it might be, but I'm actually recommending that you don't.

[15:06]

If you want to be a good parent, I would suggest you don't lean into being a good parent. I would suggest if you want to be a good parent, that you be open to wanting to be a good parent and that you be open to being a good parent. I think that will be apropos to the point of being a good parent. But if you want to be a good parent and you lean into being a good parent, then you're wanting to and leaning into, but you're not open to. You're grasping being a good parent. That make sense? Not quite? Now, if you want to be a good parent or want to be a good worker, and then you lean into, you're not upright.

[16:09]

You want to be a good worker, but you're not upright with it. You're leaning towards it. You're leaning towards being a good worker, being a good Zen student. You're leaning towards it. Good Zen students do not lean towards being good Zen students. Good Zen students don't even necessarily want to be good Zen students. They don't necessarily want to be good Zen students. They might, and they might not. A good Zen student, I would say, a good Zen student, not exactly good, but a skillful, adept Zen student, a master, a Zen master, is open to being a Zen master, and might want to be a Zen master, but not necessarily. But they would be open to being a Zen master, but they were also being open to being a Zen mistress and not being a Zen master. And they would be open to being a lousy Zen master.

[17:11]

One of the characteristics of Zen masters is they're open to being a terrible Zen master. Because they're not leaning into being a Zen master. They're a Zen master and they're open to being a Zen master. Or being open to being a Zen master is being a Zen master. But when you're open to being a Zen master, that would mean you're also open to not being a Zen master. You wouldn't... Being open doesn't mean you have a preference for being a Zen master. It means you... Okay, I'm open to it. Okay, if that's what's happening, I'll be a Zen master. Well, it's not what's happening. What's happening is you're not a Zen master. Okay, I'll open to that. Yes. Well, what comes up in my mind listening to you is the idea that one could get lazy. And where's that line then? That you'd be open to being lazy.

[18:14]

That's the thing. That's sort of kind of what Eric was saying. If you're open to the danger of getting lazy, then you might get lazy. Well, if there's no possibility of you getting lazy, there would be no danger of getting lazy, so there'd be no danger of lazy to open to. Can you repeat that? If there was no possibility of you being lazy, then there would be no danger of getting lazy. But there is a danger of being lazy, isn't there? But we don't want to look at that. We don't want to even consider that I could be a lazy parent. I have a hard time figuring out how, like, if you say, just be open to being a lousy parent. Yeah. I mean, I get concerned for my child, you know. Exactly. That's what I was saying yesterday. The nurturing parent has to surrender being a nurturing parent.

[19:20]

That's part of the deal. And the parent who isn't nurturing, who's maybe a powerful parent instead of being a nurturing parent, they have to surrender being a powerful parent. It seems like this word could really be subject to misunderstanding. Yes. What I'm teaching is the danger of me being misunderstood. Yeah. So have I, you know, and maybe I have been misunderstood. So it's, and I'll get in trouble for having been misunderstood because then people say, you know, well, I went home and I didn't take care of my kids anymore. I just started taking drugs. It's much more comfortable that way. It's like, I'm cool. I don't care that they're screaming. Oh, it's fun. Nice acrobatics. It's beautiful, that screaming. Oh, it's lovely. I'd like to know how to caution about finding the right path through that.

[20:31]

Yeah, right. And are you in a hurry to find out? I suppose I am. I'm probably not going to be able to answer you because he has... Yes, Christopher? If you lean into something as a good parent, a good worker, isn't that just another way of saying that you get identity or you take your ego and you flesh it out and make yourself proud about that label? Yeah, pretty much the same thing, yeah. Right. So, again, we're talking about Being a good parent, being a good worker, being a good teacher, being a good employee, being a good child. So, as I mentioned to someone earlier, a lot of women come and talk to me about their relationship with their mother, and generally speaking, the ones who come and talk to me, they generally seem to care too much about their mother.

[21:42]

And a lot of women also come and talk to me about being a mother, and they, generally speaking, care too much about their children. They, generally speaking, if they're going to get busted, they want to get busted for caring too much. They don't want to be busted for caring too little. So they generally are on the side of too much care for their children or their own mother. And oftentimes their children and their mothers say, that's OK. They kind of collude. By the way, I might get back to this word collude. Because collude, do you know what it means? Do you know what the etymology of collude is? Play together. colluding. But the thing is that, and it's often used in a sense that you're colluding, but you don't know you're playing together.

[22:46]

You're cooperating or playing along with the person, but you don't admit it. Kind of a deceptive playing along. But anyway, so... Anyway, a lot of parents choose to care too much about their kid just so they won't care too little about their kid. And so to be open to being a good parent will also open you to being a bad parent. To be open to being a good teacher will open you to being a bad parent. When you're open, when you're really open, you're open to the good and the bad. You don't just open. Open means open. It doesn't mean open a little bit over here and close over there. That's half open or a third open. I mean open all around. So then if you open to good, you open to bad. But then people say, but then you might slip into bad.

[23:48]

Well, yes, you might. But that's always the case. You always might be a bad parent. You always might do a bad thing. There is the danger of you doing something unskillful. And people would say, well, I just want to forget about that and close the door on evil and open the door on good. Okay, I understand that. But it's more like, do you want to close the door on evil or do you want to not do it? Closing the door on it doesn't mean you're not going to be evil. And opening the door on good and leaning into it and leaning away from evil doesn't mean you're going to do good. I think you're going to do good if you open to good and open to evil. But it doesn't mean you're going to do good immediately because you have to learn how, if you can actually open and be balanced between good and evil, you will do good. Because in that place you will spin and turn and that will be good.

[24:51]

That will be good. Good is not to grasp good. Good is to balance between good and evil. Evil is, however, to grasp evil, and evil is to grasp good. But to grasp either good or evil, you will be evil. To grasp being a good parent, you'll be a bad parent. If you grasp being a bad parent, you'll be a bad parent. If you reject being a bad parent, you'll be a bad parent. If you reject being a good parent, you'll be a bad parent. Now, people understand, oh yeah, if I reject being a good parent, I'll be a bad parent. Yeah, they get that. But they don't get if I grasp being a good parent, I'll be a bad parent. But grasping and rejecting are in the same area. They're being closed to life. It means you're being closed to yourself when you're not a good parent. You're being closed to yourself as not a good parent.

[25:56]

which means you're going to be closed to your parents when they're not a good parent. And you're going to be closed to your children when they're not being good children. And to be closed to your bad parents and your bad children is being a bad child and being a bad parent, I would say. But does it mean that if you're open that the danger's gone? No. Because the next minute you can close and then slip into being. You name it. So I want to be a good man, but to be a good man I have to be open to being a bad woman. And a bad man. And a mediocre man. Sometimes you say, never mind, I'm open to being a bad man, but I can't be a mediocre man. When I open, I open to being a man, I open to being a woman, I open to being dead, I open to being crazy, I open to being... have a bad reputation, I open to be a nothing.

[27:01]

I open to be a nobody. I open to be a frog. And when I open to those things, then when people tell me I'm a terrible father and a terrible husband and a terrible frog and a terrible teacher, then I kind of go, yippee! Let's play! Crucify me! Ha ha! And then they crucify me. and they start a religion about it. And then I get to sit on everybody's altar with blood dripping down my chest. Tell me your name again. Harrison. Harrison. If you were open to being a good person or a bad person, at least in the sense that you're using it, Would there even be a notion of queer or bad? I mean, it seems like they have actual openness.

[28:02]

You wouldn't be able to have this type of discrimination. You can. And if you couldn't, other people would bring it to you. If you're sitting there kind of like open, they say, oh, look at that guy. Let's bring him to discriminations. And to test to see that you're not dreaming that you're open is to see if you can go into a room full of discriminations and be open to them and dance with them. What do you mean by open? What do I mean by it? Well, in some sense, I don't really mean anything by it. I don't really mean anything by it. It's just a way of being. And if I define it too tightly, then it's... If somebody showed me the cartoon, what was it? Another version of that cartoon was, I can be innovative. What are the guidelines? The reason I'm asking that is because it seems to me that the Dharma path is essentially, at least in terms of path quality, it is discriminating between what's virtuous and non-virtuous and avoiding what's non-virtuous and cultivating what's virtuous.

[29:29]

That's basically what the path is. It's hard to understand. Yes, that's right. And it's also about not discriminating between the two. That's the level at which you actually attain avoiding evil and doing good, is when you don't discriminate between them. But at the beginning, Jan, at the beginning you may feel like you shouldn't tell people about this because they may misunderstand. but the fact that Buddhism is about avoiding evil and practicing good, definitely. And what I'm telling you is, today, which can be misunderstood, is in order to avoid evil and do good, you have to be open to evil and open to the good. You have to be open to evil. I say you need to be open to evil and open to the good.

[30:31]

You need to be open to the fact that you can be evil. Otherwise, what might happen is that someone will come up to you and say, you're evil, and you'll smash them in the face. Because you're like, I'm totally into avoiding evil and being good, and now these people are telling me I'm evil. I'm going to get them. They're evil. The people calling me evil are evil. That's what the United States is doing right now. People are calling us evil, and we're calling them evil, and we're attacking the people who call us evil. They think we're evil, and they're attacking us. So then we think, oh. I'm into doing good and they're calling me evil so I'm going to punish them. People who are leaning into avoiding evil are doing evil. It's evil to lean into avoiding evil. However, it's good to be open to evil and not lean into it. Don't grasp evil. Don't lean into evil. But in order not to lean into evil, you have to open to it.

[31:34]

That's what I'm proposing to you. That's what I see. People who are leaning away from evil or pushing evil away, that already is evil. You might say, well, it's not as bad as like actively doing evil. And I say, it is actively doing evil. Because you're ignoring interdependence. You're ignoring that good and evil create each other. that they're interdependent, that the discrimination between them is not ultimately true. In order to see that, that's the opportunity that will arise if you open to danger, open to the danger of being a bad parent. Recently in a class at Green Gulch, one of the students raised his hand and said, I have a confession to make. I told the people, at the end of the internet, I told a bunch of people that you were a crappy teacher.

[32:40]

And I laughed. I didn't laugh just now when I told the story, but I laughed. And I felt really good about laughing. I feel really good when people either tell me they told someone or call me a crappy teacher. I feel good when I laugh at that. And I don't feel good when I feel insulted. I don't feel good about that. What attracted me to Zen was not stories about people who were insulted and felt bad, and who were complimented and felt good. That wasn't what attracted me to Zen. What attracted me is people who, when they're insulted, they go, they laugh. And when they're complimented, they laugh. But when they're insulted, they go, OK. When they're complimented, they go, OK. And then they really feel like, what else? That's today. But you're right, the Dharma path is a path of avoiding evil and doing good.

[33:42]

That's right. The question is, how are you going to pull that off? Because a lot of people, again, some of the people who seem to be leading this country, they're on the path of avoiding evil. They want to crush evil, right? Heard about that? They want to destroy the evil, and they want to do the good. And they think they are doing the good, They think they are doing good. They got the good. They're leaning into the good. They're not open to the possibility that they could be doing something unskillful. They're not open to, maybe we're not doing a good job here. Maybe we're doing a lousy job of taking care of the people in New Orleans. And so they do a lousy job. It seems to be dependent on being able to discriminate between what is evil and what is good, then. It's not so much being able to discriminate. It is being able to discriminate, but it's also just discriminating.

[34:47]

Being able to discriminate sounds like being able to discriminate correctly. Exactly. But, you know... Even if you don't discriminate correctly, you still have to be open to your false discriminations. I'm not really discriminating between good and evil. Or maybe I am. But what I'm saying is, even though I don't really know what good is, I'm proposing to you that good arises in the world through what? Through openness and through receiving my life, that's my life. And so, but I'm not saying there's no danger because there is danger. There's constantly the danger of grasping and rejecting what's happening rather than opening to it and working with it. Opening to who you're meeting and working with.

[35:51]

rather than pushing some people away or pushing some versions of yourself away. But I need to be open to all the versions of myself. And I'm not saying that's easy. And I'm not saying I'm not discriminating between the different versions. But whether I'm discriminating properly or not, I still need to be open to my incorrect discriminations too. That way of being, then even when I go wacko, wacko, and even when I lose my discriminating faculties, or even when I, what do you call it, get Alzheimer's, the practice of spinning and leaping continues. The Buddha way is spinning and leaping. When you spin and leap, When you turn and spin and leap, you do not get involved in evil. I propose that to you. I've never heard that before, spin and leap. What does that mean? Were you here yesterday? No, I just got here last night and just thought about this class. Okay, so one of the first statements I made yesterday was a statement by a Zen teacher, which is, the Buddha way is basically leaping.

[36:58]

basically leaping, and it says leaping what? Leaping clear of abundance and lack, but also it's basically leaping clear of good and evil. Avoiding evil and practicing good is leaping clear of good and evil. It's not getting stuck in either one, because again, we have people who are like, they've got the good, and they're going on banging people on the head with it, because they've got it. Well, yeah, good's good, but don't grab it and hit people with it. But people do that. They hit people with good. They punish people with good. They take good and use it against human beings and against animals and against plants and against the environment. But of course, also grabbing evil and hitting people with it is no good either. Of course that's bad. Everybody understands that. But what people don't understand is that grabbing evil and possessing it yourself, holding on to it, I've got the good, excuse me, grasping good and holding on to it, I've got the good over here.

[38:04]

Self-righteousness is evil. But self-righteous people sometimes don't get that. They think the other people, the other self-righteous people are evil. And they're right. They are. But they are too, by holding the good, by thinking they've got the good. Well, spinning is another phrase which is, in the subtle round mouth of the pivot, the spiritual work turns. So it's a proposal that spiritual work is basically spinning. Like, you know a guy named Rumi? Rumi, the poet? Yeah. Do you know what his practice was? Yeah, his practice was to spin. He sat and he would sit in his group and just spin. And while he was spinning, he would say some stuff. And what he said was really kind of wonderful.

[39:08]

But he was spinning while he was saying that. Yes, but it's spinning... It's spinning, but it actually means going round and round, not so much spinning, and going from birth to death. But the spiritual practice is to spin in the middle of birth and death. So birth, okay, death, okay. The Buddhas died in the middle of samsara and spin there. They're not attached to samsara and nirvana. Buddhas aren't even attached to nirvana. You heard about that? They can attain it, but they don't get stuck there. Bodhisattvas attain nirvana, but they don't get stuck. They go into nirvana and they spin. They go into samsara and they spin. And they show other people how to spin, which is showing people how to be free, how to be liberated from birth and death, but also how to be liberated from nirvana.

[40:11]

So it means just not holding anything, basically? Yes, that's what it means, basically. It means not holding anything. And all the different Buddhist schools, I think, agree on don't hold anything. And again, evil is what happens when you do grasp, and good is what happens when you don't. But it's hard to say what good is because without grasping something, But you watch people. You see the people you want. Who do you want to be like? And probably the people you want to be like are people who aren't grasping. That's what attracted me to Zen, was stories about people who weren't grasping, who joyfully didn't grasp, who when someone's going to steal something from them, before they can steal it, they turn it into a gift so the person can't steal. If somebody can steal somebody's face quickly, give it to them.

[41:15]

Gary. Gary. There you go. He's spinning. I haven't called this nanny or anything. I sort of got stuck on him being a man. So to relate this to fear, the metaphor leaning forward the motion of grasping, it is what creates the fear, or at least out of which it arises.

[42:17]

Yeah. There is danger. I'm not saying there's not danger. There's danger. In the sense of, we can be hurt. Danger also, again, has a root of power. There are powers around us. And they can overwhelm us. Yes. Yes! Yes, the power can overwhelm us. Yes! But we don't have to be afraid of the power. We don't have to contract from the power. But if we lean into the power, we feel frightened. Or if we lean away from the power, we feel frightened. If we try to get out of the way of the power. But to stand upright before the power of the universe, which gives us life, than it has been with the world. But if we lean into the universe, we feel afraid of it. But it doesn't mean the universe isn't dangerous.

[43:22]

The universe, from a certain point of view, is dangerous. Again, the word danger has to do with it's powerful. The universe is powerful. My grandson knows that. When we start to go out in the woods, you get scared. You can feel the power of the trees and the power of the mountains and the power of the streams. You can feel that power and it feels like, whoa! And it's hard for him to be upright there. He kind of starts to lean into the forest and get scared. So yeah, it's the leaning into the danger. It's the leaning into the world. It's leaning into other people. That's frightening. But to be upright with people They become fearless. You can say more than one more. I think, like a lot of us, I've been puzzled by the notion of openness. And I'm kind of developing my own working sense.

[44:23]

Maybe it means something like willingness to accept, willingness to experience. Willingness to accept, willingness to experience, willingness to receive. Right. The Chinese character they use for feeling, there's this Chinese character which is used for feeling, receive, and experience. And accept. Yeah. Yeah. And then I've been thinking also of the metaphor of fire, which is sort of like your metaphor of the cliff. Yeah, fire. Rumi said that too. So being open to the fire and the danger of the fire means that you're willing to get close enough to feel it. Yeah. As long as you're upright, you're not afraid of it. It's not so dangerous that you're at immediate risk of falling in. No, it is so dangerous. It is so dangerous. It is. But you're not getting too close to it.

[45:24]

As you lean in... You get burned. It gets hotter. Yeah. If you lean away, it gets cooler. Yeah, exactly. You might slip and fall and slide into it. Right, but also you might freeze. Yeah. So there's an expression in describing Zen meditation, the same text that says it's like this hexagram, the same text says turning away and touching are both wrong because it's like a massive fire. The meditation is like a massive fire and you turn away from it, you'll freeze. But if you touch it, you'll burn. So both turning away and touching are wrong. But being with it We want to be with it. We want to be with it. It's really good. It just happens to be like a mass of fire. So don't lean into it, don't touch it, and don't turn away. Be close to it. Be upright with it. And that will be the end of suffering.

[46:28]

Yes? I was wondering about the role of setting goals or exerting yourself. Like, there's this funny thing I saw the other day that said, only dead fish go to the well. How does my, like, where do I push or where do I exert? Where do you exert? Well, one way to exert would be to exert towards the earth right now. Exert yourself towards the earth, because you happen to be on the earth, and exert yourself towards the sky. Exert yourself into uprightness. Exert yourself into balance. Exert yourself into openness. You know, and like exert yourself in all directions. Exert yourself all directions, which means you're not going to move, you're just going to be upright.

[47:33]

Don't exert yourself forward or backwards. Exert yourself into openness. That would be exertion. That would be a big effort. You'd also have to exert yourself to remember to make that exertion. Having trouble letting go, like, but I need to do this in order to get promotion, and I need to run every day, and I need to... It's hard to let go of those things? Yeah. Yeah, I understand. It's hard to let go of those things. But once you let go of them, then you can do them in a balanced way. You can go running holding on to running. You can do all that stuff holding on to everything you do, but you can also just open to running. But when you're open to running, you're also open to not running, right?

[48:36]

So then if you're open to running and open to not running, you might not go running. And the answer is, right. So what people say is, okay, I'll open to running, but I'm not going to open to not running because I want to go running. And I would say, I do say, well, I understand. I understand. You want to go running and you think, once again, you think, if I open to running and open to not running, I might not run, so I don't want to take the chance that I'm not going to run, so I'm only going to open to running and close to not running. I would say, fine, except that you did an evil thing. And also you get afraid When you're only open to running and closed to not running, you're afraid that you're not going to go running. And you're afraid that you're running, you're running into a cut short or whatever. And if somebody, if you're running and somebody says, what's your name? Huh? Andy?

[49:36]

So somebody says, hi, Andy. You're afraid if somebody comes up to you and says, hi, Andy. Because then you might have to stop running. Like, hi, Andy. Run, run, run. Run, run, run. So he started running. He started running and he said, well, there's one of my friends. Oh, God, if I go near him, this is going to cut my run short. I'm not going to get my run. Oh, geez. That's so true. So you're running. You do get a run. But when you get home, you have a heart attack. Because you close your heart to your best friend. You go home and you say, I'm the most selfish person so-and-so in the world, I put my own little run ahead of my best friend, who also, by the way, looked like he was crying. And I didn't want to stop him. He'd probably take four hours for me to talk to this creep.

[50:39]

He was my best friend. He said, get my run, I'm going to be really in great shape, and I'm going to be able to really be a good friend to my friend after I run. So you come home and you feel really bad and then you shoot and you blow your brains out because you realize you're a jerk. Because you're such a selfish person. People do stuff. It's a dangerous world. And if you don't open to it, if I don't open to it, the dangers are going to manifest. But more than that, it's not just the danger that's going to manifest. That's not the bad part. It's not so bad that I'm going to die. It's not so bad that I'm going to do evil. He said, I'm going to miss the opportunity of being in love with all beings. That's what I'm going to miss. Because I'm closed to not going running. I'm closed to not getting my promotion. But it's okay to want to get a promotion and it's okay to go running.

[51:39]

It's okay to want to get a promotion. It's okay to want to go running. It's okay to want to be a good parent and it's okay to want to be a terrible parent. It's okay to want those things. It's okay. But if you're upright with them, you can spin and you won't get into the bad if you spin. When you're spinning, you don't want to do bad things. You're happy. You can say, running, yoga, sounds good. Not doing yoga, sounds great, because I'm spinning. When you're spinning, you don't have to do yoga. You are doing yoga. When you're spinning, you are running. You are doing good. It is good. That's the thing about spiritual work. Spiritual work is a little bit different from worldly work because spiritual work isn't trying to get anything. But it's still okay to try to get stuff as long as you don't lean into it.

[52:40]

You just say, I want to go running. And then, again, like I said yesterday, then you go to your wife or something, you say, I want to go running. She says, don't go running. That's the last time I'm asking you. But you don't exactly ask her, you could ask her, say, can I go running, please? No. I want to go running, what do you think? I think it's a bad idea. I think I should go running in ten seconds, not now. Okay. You said it, I have trouble letting go of getting the promotion and going running. I know, I understand. I myself don't have much trouble letting go of getting promoted. You know, I'm on the verge of death. A few more promotions don't make much difference to me. I had kind of a lousy life, but, you know, I'm happy. I would like to go running, but I probably, actually I've recently decided not to go, not to run anymore, except uphill.

[53:46]

What I'm going to do now is, I gave up running and I'm now going to do fast walking. Take a little tiny steps, fast. That's the kind of practice that would be better for me. And I did it, I've been doing this to see if it would be good. He said, you use 85%, he said most of the muscles in your body are between your torso and your knees, I think. And he said, when you walk, when you run, you use, when you jog, you use 40% of them. When you sprint, you use 60%. And when you walk fast, but not taking big steps, you use 85%. So he recommended that I do sprinting and fast walking, but not taking big steps. I tried to do that, and I'm doing that. But I gave up running, and now I'm doing this. But now can I give up these things? We'll see. But I recommended myself that I let go of this new program that I want to do now.

[54:51]

I recommend I let go, because I find that when I let go of things, that I'm happy, and I also find out that I get to do them just about as much when I let go of them as when I hold on to them. Just about the same. But it's hard to tell because I don't have a test case of one guy who's attached to all the things he wants to do and then me who wants to do stuff but is not attached to it. See, which one gets to do the stuff he wants to do the most? I don't know. But you still get to do the things you want to do, not necessarily all of them. But even if you're holding on to the things you want to do, you don't necessarily get to do all of them, right? But if you don't hold on to them, you will do good and you will avoid evil. I propose that to you. If you do hold on to them, you will do evil and avoid good. That's my proposal. And whichever way you go, you're always in danger. Even if you don't hold on, you're still in danger of holding on and doing evil.

[55:58]

You're always in danger of grasping and leaning and closing. We're always in danger of that. And even if we're not grasping clean, there's still dangers. There's still dangers of falling and breaking your neck. But if you fall and break your neck, you can spin in that, too. You cannot attach to having a broken neck while you have a broken neck. You say, okay, I've got a broken neck and I'm open to having a broken neck. I'm also open to healing. But I'm also open to not healing. It may heal, it may not. I'm open to either way. I'm open to either way. I'm open to everything. We'll see what happens. Yes. Yes. I have a question about the difference between letting go and being open. Like as an example of anger. Yes. Letting go of anger as opposed to being open to your anger.

[57:02]

They're kind of the same. Letting go and being open are kind of the same. There is letting go. Well, basically... I'm using the image of being surrounded by anger. I mean, being surrounded by anger and being surrounded by love and being surrounded by all kinds of dangers. Anger is dangerous and love is dangerous. Love and, yeah, love is dangerous. Love is dangerous. You live in a world of love, you still live in a world of danger. The world's giving you love in a dangerous way. Again, there's danger, but there's opportunities in the middle of the danger. And if you're letting go of everything, you might be a dead fish. Right? And let go of being a dead fish, and let go of being a live fish.

[58:06]

Let go of both. And will you be a dead fish? You might. It also might be a live fish. This leaping is actually also in Zen, sometimes spoken of, the practice of Zen is like a vigorously jumping fish. That's another image for what it's like to practice Zen, to be like a vigorous, like when a fish jumps out of the water. It's like that. That's what it's felt like to be in this place called life. is that, and you're going with the flow, but also you're fully exerting yourself. And you can fully exert yourself also being a fish that's moving quietly through the water, standing still in the water. You don't have to be jumping out of the water to be fully exerting yourself. You can fully exert yourself while you're in hibernation in the winter under the lake.

[59:13]

Really, we are always fully exerting ourselves. And if we tense up and hold on, we miss it. But even tensing up and holding on, we're still fully exerting ourselves, it's just that we miss it. We can't avoid fully exerting ourselves, but we seem to be able to avoid understanding. And when we don't understand it, we feel various degrees of misery. And we seem to get involved in doing things which we don't like to do, like being mean to people and being selfish and being afraid that somebody's going to talk to us when we're on our run. We get into that situation because we don't see. What don't we see? We don't see that we're always fully exerting ourselves and fully alive. When we're running, we are. When we stop and talk to our friend, we are. When you see that, then you don't care what you're doing.

[60:22]

And that's dangerous too. Yes. Ansh. Yeah. I feel like there's, you exert to let go also. Pardon? You exert to let go. You have to exert to let go? Yeah, I feel like you have to because... Why not? I guess, naturally, you know, you can let go, but you're kind of forgotten to do that. Hmm? I think naturally, you can let go, like they say, you're a problem with nature. But you're forgotten that. Yeah. So, for example, like... Maybe it was effort, you know, that you need to exert yourself in some ways to come to your creator, sit every day. Yeah, like when you have a ball movement, you have to exert yourself to let go. Right? And also when you do a backbend in yoga, you have to make a big exertion in order to let go.

[61:28]

When people are in backbends, they really let go. But you have to make a tremendous exertion in order to let go. Otherwise, it's bad for your back. You have to really make a lot of effort to hold the back up so that you can do this big surrender thing. Like I said, curling up in a ball to protect yourself is one way of living. And then sitting up straight and opening yourself. But when you do a backbend, you open yourself even more. But you have to make a big exertion. There has to be a big effort in order to open yourself that fully in a safe way. And I should say in a way that doesn't hurt you. It's not really safe. You can get hurt easily going backbends. But you're really letting go the same time you're making big efforts. So yeah, letting go is not effortless. Letting go actually, again, that's what I'm proposing. that when you let go, that opens the door to how fully alive you are, how fully you exert yourself.

[62:30]

So exertion and letting go are actually partners And that's why, again, a lot of people don't express themselves and exert themselves because they're holding on. They're holding on to, I'll get fired if I exert myself. If I say how I feel, I'll get fired. Or people won't like me. So then they feel like, okay, I'm not going to exert myself. I'm not going to express myself. I'm going to curl up in a ball again. I reckon that's what I said I'd talk about today. Express yourself fully and you'll start to again feel the danger more. But express yourself fully doesn't mean jump into the danger, doesn't mean jump off the cliff. It just means express yourself fully. Climb a mountain and stand on the edge of a cliff. That's a pretty big expression. And your reward is you feel danger. But also you feel alive. So you have to let go of, you know, you have to let go of what?

[63:32]

Of something in order to fully express yourself. And what are you letting go of? Trying to get people to like me? Trying to get people to like me? Which, again, if you let go of trying to get people to like me, then you start to open to the fear that they won't. But actually, you can be afraid that they won't like you and still try to get them to like you. But when you... Did you get that? You can be afraid that people won't like you and be trying to get them to like you, right? But if you let go of trying to get them to like you, then you open to them not liking you. I don't say it's good that people don't like me. It's dangerous that people don't like me. They might hurt me. Also, people who like me might hurt me. People liking me is dangerous and people not liking me is dangerous.

[64:35]

I want them to like me. But my job is to open to them liking me and open to them not liking me. And if I let go of doing things to get them to like me, and also if I let go of doing things to get them to not like me, that goes with opening to them liking me and not liking me. And when I'm open to it, then I'm not afraid of them liking me or not liking me, And if I'm not afraid of you liking me, then I can be nice to you. Even though if I am, you might start really liking me if I'm nice to you. But I'm not afraid of you liking me. I'm open to you not liking me. So I'm not afraid of you liking me, so I can be nice to you. But I can also be myself, which you might find quite disgusting. Because I'm not afraid of you not liking me. It's dangerous if you don't, but I'm not afraid of the danger. I'd rather be me and have you not like me, then go around not being me plus being afraid. It's a combination of the double thing.

[65:39]

I don't get to be me plus I'm afraid. Or I get to be me not being me being afraid. The other way is I get to be me and not afraid, but I don't necessarily get you to like me. There are some people who are fearless and really fully alive You know? And they're really being themselves, and they're very happy, and they're fearless, and people don't like them. And they get in trouble because people don't like them. People go, hit them, attack them, you know? A lot of people attack me. You haven't been doing it very much this weekend, but a lot of people hate me. I mean, not as many people hate me as hate some people, but not as many people hate me as hate George Bush. But I'm just not that famous. If I was famous, a lot of people would hate me, probably. And the reason why they hate me is because I kind of express myself a little bit. And people express themselves.

[66:42]

Some people hated Buddha. Can you imagine? And they tried to hurt him. So anyway, people do attack me, and I just know that that comes with the territory of being me. When my teacher ordained me as a priest, he gave me this Buddhist name, this Chinese name, which is Ten Shin. And he said, Ten Shin means Reb is Reb. My name's Reb. Yes. And he gave me a Buddhist name. It'd be like, he'd give you a Buddhist name and he said, and his name is Tenshin. And he said, Tenshin, the Buddhist name, it means Harrison is Harrison. It means you're you. That's what this name means. It means you are you.

[67:44]

And then he said, and people may have a problem with but nothing can be done about it. And one of the nice things to me about practice is that I'm more myself. I'm more willing to be me. I always was myself, but I wasn't as willing to be myself when I started practicing as I am now. And the more I'm myself, the more dangerous I feel it is. The more I express myself, the more I feel the danger. But also, the less I'm afraid of the danger. The danger is getting turned up, and the fear is rising and getting turned down. Danger gets turned up, fear rises, and so I'm becoming more fearless and more in danger as I express myself more.

[68:50]

But again, as I said, if you turn away from the danger, you turn away from being yourself, you feel kind of safe, you're curled up in a ball, and nobody's going to hurt you. You're already in the worst possible situation. Nobody can make it any worse. And that's why people like that way of being, because they know that nobody can make it any worse for them, because they've already made it as bad as they can get. Because the worst it can be is that you miss out on being yourself. And you've accomplished that. Of course, you are yourself in this form of protecting yourself so much that you're not, you're missing your light. So again, did I sing that song to you the other night? Express yourself. So the usual way it's done is Enjoy yourself.

[69:55]

While you're still in pink, enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. Enjoy yourself. But I change it to express yourself. I think it is good to enjoy yourself, but we have to express ourselves, I think, in order to enjoy ourselves. And again, There's something to think of. Go to a safe place where you can enjoy yourself. And another thing I want to say is that there's an expression that impermanence is the Buddha nature. So we are impermanent beings. So that means we are in danger of being, in a sense, destroyed all the time. And in fact, we are being destroyed all the time. And yet, life goes on. In many languages there's that expression, life goes on.

[70:57]

It's, you know, devastating moment after moment, but it goes on. It's amazing. Enjoy it. Enjoy yourself as life goes on. But also, if you don't express yourself, somehow you're not going to really enjoy yourself. But again, expressing yourself is dangerous. How can we face the danger without being frightened of it? I say, don't lean into it. Don't lean away from it. Just make the effort of opening to it. And realize also, open to impermanence. Open to that whatever you are now, is impermanent if you're healthy it's impermanent if you're whatever age you are it's impermanent if your mind's working well it's impermanent if your mind's working badly it's impermanent if you're depressed it's impermanent if you're happy it's impermanent if you're scared it's impermanent if you're tall it's impermanent your shoulder is impermanent if you're a man it's impermanent if you're a woman if you're kind it's impermanent whatever you are is impermanent

[72:19]

And nobody else, everybody else is like that too. But that impermanence is the door to your Buddha nature. You're constantly being overwhelmed by circumstances, and when they overwhelm you, they give you a new life. And then this life you have is overwhelmed by circumstances, and then you get a new life. And then this is overwhelmed by circumstances, and you get a new life. You're constantly being overwhelmed by the world and being given a new life. Overwhelmed fresh overwhelmed fresh rather than don't overwhelm me and I get stale and still don't stay away It's day of this don't overwhelm me. I gotta protect myself. I'm overwhelmed I Gotta make sure I don't get overwhelmed. Okay fine, but then you get stale Then you're dead fish you're still getting overwhelmed, but you're not enjoying it Would you like to express yourself?

[73:33]

Sure. I have a question. Yes? I'm Julie, first of all. You mean that's your name? That's my name, yes. And as we go through our daily life, how do I identify the moment where I need to open? Because I'm so used to my life... It's now. Okay. So if I have a conversation with someone... That's the time. That's the time. Thank you. I appreciate it. Now's the time. All right. It's now. Always do it now. Always now. Always now. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. That was easy. It was easy. No, but not easy to practice it. No, not at all. Did you want to say something? Not really.

[74:33]

Do you want to say something? Or actually, I should make it more open-ended. Do you want to express anything? Yes, I would love to express something. This is just so helpful for me because you hear, you know, especially in a lot of the healing communities, you know, pushing against your edges, walking to your fear, you know, like you actually need to be doing something. So it, like, makes, at least for me, it's so conflicting because I can just be... So this thing, open, kind of is pushing into my edges and opening these tensions. I don't have to do anything. They just open. Right. Right. Okay, this is walk into my fear, okay? I would change it just a little bit from walk into your fear to, that reminds me of one of Buddhist teachings, which I don't think I have any room right now, but I could go get it.

[75:40]

But I'll just basically at this point tell you that the Buddha said, in one case he said, when I was in the forest, you know, the scary forest, the dangerous forest, I think the forest he went into was more dangerous than the forest I take my grandson in. There are wild animals in the forest I take my grandson into. Actually, there are raccoons, there are mountain lions, and there are coyotes. and possum, and foxes, and rabbits, and mice, and hawks, and owls, and turkey vultures, and crows, and bobcats. There's not rattlesnakes in the forests. I'm thinking of Green Gulch.

[76:41]

But Hathara is also rattlesnakes. And once, recently, first time, a bear. So those are the wild animals. But in Buddhist hymn, there are more wild animals in history. But anyway, he says, when I'm in the forest and I'm meditating, he says, if fear arises in me, if I'm sitting and fear arises in me, I just continue sitting until the fear dissipates. If I'm walking, I continue to walk until the fear dissipates. If I'm standing, I just continue to stand until the fear dissipates. And if I'm reclining, I just continue to recline. So he doesn't... I don't think the Buddha... And I also agree with that. I don't think if you're afraid, you should walk into the fear. That's more like leaning into it. In that fact, if you're afraid, you've already leaned into the danger. So he's sitting in the forest. Even the Buddha, right? Before he was enlightened, he was sitting in the forest and danger arose and he leaned into it.

[77:46]

So he became afraid. But then he was afraid, he didn't do anything about that. He just would continue doing whatever he was doing until actually the fear dissipated. And I would say until he became upright. Until he stopped leaning into the danger of the forest. So just keep expressing yourself the way you are Don't try to adjust yourself when the fear comes. And then find your upright position again in the fear and then you'll be upright and then the situation will still be dangerous. So I wouldn't say walk into the fear or walk into the danger. I'm saying if you're afraid, try to come upright in your fear and the fear will dissipate. If you're in danger, try to be upright in the danger. However, if you're upright in the danger, the danger doesn't go away. It's just that you're upright in the danger. You're upright in the forest and fearless in the forest.

[78:47]

So we live in a dangerous forest. We live in a dangerous world. But we can be upright and fearless and nonviolent. We can be upright, fearless, and avoid evil and practice good. But if we lean into the dangerous world, we become afraid. And when we're afraid, then we become more likely, I would say, to do evil and avoid good. Would you have to say something? What else is there? Well, I also have something about maybe misunderstanding. Okay. I had with you earlier. Okay. Talking about the line, what you call the hexagram. Yes. Just the gender. associations that you put with that and a couple other things, I just, to me, completely misunderstood. I just, you know, I'll say it flat out, I'm a big feminist, so, you know, gender things, I just think about it a lot.

[79:54]

And just the whole strength, you know, for a man and a woman just being the nurturer and the receptor, I just feel like it could definitely be both. Gender, if I don't see why it has to be I agree. I agree. That's why I said generally I'm suggesting, I'm reporting that oftentimes the women, it seems to be that women are more taking the role with babies of being a nurturer and the man takes the role of being the power guy. However, you can also have a gay couple, right? where one of the women is the nurturer and the other one's like the power one. But whichever way it is, if the man was the nurturer and the woman was the power one, then I would say that the man should give up his nurturing and the woman should give up her power.

[80:54]

But generally speaking, just generally in this culture, men seem to be more interested in pro football than women. And women seem to be more interested in babies than men are. Yeah, like when I went to my grandson's second birthday party, and somebody came to the birthday party with a newborn, and these two-year-old girls, a whole gang of them, just came running across the room over to the baby, and the boy just kept jumping around on the play structure. Really? It's just, you know, amazing that they... I don't know how it happened, but the little girls just came tearing across the room to be with the baby, and the boys didn't so much. Yeah, I don't know what it is, but what I'm saying is that the boys need to run over to the baby more, and the girls need to go over to the play structure more. Whatever the balance is, we need to give up the side we're usually open to and move to the side that we're closed to.

[82:03]

Russians have moved to that. I'm open to the other side. Men or women, whatever the case, if I'm a naturally nurturing person, I need to surrender my natural nurturing and go more towards power. And a power people need to give up their power and move towards nurturing. Otherwise, we're going to have abusive relationships, particularly in this example, going to have child abuse, sexual abuse of children. Unless power people surrender power, because I think that sexual abuse is a lot about power. It's about power, you know, just the thrill of power over other people. And sex is one of the most thrilling places for people to abuse power. But the people who are not abusing power sexually, who are nurturing beings and not abusing it, they need to stand up and say, you know, they need to use power to talk to these people who are hung up on power and are abusing it.

[83:11]

And they need to tell, you should take care of the baby more. So whoever's the nurturing one should tell the power one, come over and take care of the baby. Get close to this baby. Not necessarily that you're going to have incest for this baby if you don't. I want you to come and take care of this baby. And it's happening more and more that men are now taken care of. that they're doing it, and women are more standing up and saying, you know, expressing authority, expressing authority, not taking it so much, but express it. So again, I say, you know, I'd like to see more women, this is terrible, I know, but I'd like to see more women watching pro football and more men taking advantage. But I mean, pro football is like, you know, really obnoxious. I can hardly stand to see it myself. It's so violent. Ugh. Huh? Maybe baseball. Yeah, baseball sounds so violent.

[84:12]

But that's why I mentioned cocoa. Huh? In baseball, we always go home and be safe. Thanks so much. Baseball is not as violent as pro football. That's why I say some people should open to pro football, and some people should open to taking more care of babies. And actually, recently, I was exercising in a gym Fortunately for me, I've lived without television in my house for 30, well, actually for almost 40 years now. I haven't had television. However, I do go places where there are televisions. And one of the places I go where there's a television is this Nova Valley Community Center. And so I'm there exercising, and I see the San Francisco 49ers are playing on TV.

[85:14]

And these guys are being extremely aggressive and violent with each other. And I'm looking at that, and then I look out the window, and I see this little baby walking across the playground outside, you know, and this gang of women taking care of this tiny little baby, this extremely fragile, tiny little creature, so adorable, you know. so fragile, and so much nurturing and love and protection of this little kind of fragile, fragile, endangered, this baby, everybody sees, this baby's endangered, endangered, endangered, and taking care of him or her. And over here, these people are endangered too, and they're smashing each other. And they're kind of trying to protect each other, but it's so different. They're trying to protect each other and they're trying to hurt each other. Whereas over here, nobody's trying to hurt baby.

[86:20]

Now the baby may be trying to hurt somebody, but they're protecting the baby from hurting anything too. Like if the baby wants to squash an ant or something. But just that thing about the fragility of life in these two arenas One where it's like, let's accentuate the danger and the fragility and let's try to, let's see if we can break these extremely strong bodies, overwhelm them and crush them. Over here we have this really tiny, very gentle, not very strong body, but kind of strong too. Because this baby can draw all these people around to support it. It's got this power to get all these people to help it. But I'm suggesting that we all have the power We all have the power to get the whole universe to support us. We're actually doing, we're actually, we have that power. But we won't redo anything because the universe makes us. We are, the universe wants us. The universe wants us.

[87:22]

And the universe that wants us is a dangerous place. Because it wants to destroy us all the time and make us again. It wants to destroy us and make us again. Once it makes us, it's had enough of us. And then it wants a new one. And it makes a new one. And then it wants to get rid of that and get another new one. This is a way of looking at things. And everything in the universe is supporting our life, moment by moment, moment by moment. And there's another story. This is a story which I'd like us to wake up to, the story that the universe is giving us life, that everybody in the universe means every living being in the universe is giving us life every moment. I'd like us to wake into that. We have another story, which is that not everybody in the universe is supporting us, and not everybody in the universe is giving us life. That's another story. But that story is already out there in the world.

[88:27]

Right? That story is getting plenty of coverage. And a lot of people are thinking about that story. I'd like to think about the other story. That story is not being thought about enough. The story that everybody's supporting you, everybody's giving you life, that you're receiving that. And once you receive it, you can be a tiny little baby. And you can be a pro football player. You can be a big feminist or a little feminist. You can be whatever you are, and the whole universe supports you. And then it takes it away and gives you another one. So you're in danger all the time, but the danger is part and parcel of your creative life. And if you close to the danger and or lean into it and get frightened, you miss. We miss. And when we miss, then we get very attached to some things. Do you want to say something, Eric?

[89:40]

No. Whoa, whoa, whoa. Be careful of that hand. Would you like to say something? What's your name again? Linda. I've been really appreciating your presence. I've been appreciating yours, too. What I was really struck by about, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes ago, as you talked was how deeply it spoke to what I brought this morning, and how your presence... I don't know if my meditation yesterday... I mean, I'm getting the sense of the communal nature of Buddhism, which I never understood before. Good. So, you know, it's like a field condition to this room. It's amazing to me. Right, it's a field condition. I don't know if my energy flowed toward you or your energy flowed toward me that the two days together got me to a point of thinking about what I need to think about.

[90:51]

Yeah, both. I appreciate that. It's happening anyway. So we set up this situation to wake up to it. It's a situation where obviously I came here to be with you and to help you, but also you came to be with me. We did this together, and you kind of like, it's kind of stood up to wake up to the fact that we're practicing together. We are anyway, even when you can't see it, but we kind of make a little drama, you know, like we're talking about night, which we dramatically enact the reality which we're trying to wake up to. But our enactment is not the real thing in a way. It's just kind of like a little theatrical or dramatic version of it to open the door to the endless reality of the communal nature of life. That we are actually working together with everybody.

[91:55]

So we accept this deal where it's really clear we're working together with somebody. somebody supporting us, and it's somebody who also says that we're supporting them. Kind of say, yeah, okay, yeah. And then the door opens wider. Wayne, do you want to express anything? Sure. I was just thinking as we were talking about feminism and masculine and feminine speaking that it's too bad we don't have better words. And we're clumsy with our expression because we don't have the right words to express those qualities you were talking about. Because we both have. We have both of those, all of us, in us. What do you want to call it? Masculine, feminine. I've done both qualities of myself. And you were talking about, we were talking about the yin and yang yesterday.

[92:59]

Yeah. And you mentioned the I Ching. And in the I Ching, everything is in movement. And the male and the female or the power and the openness are flowing into each other. Right. So that at any stage, we're all of those things. Right. And different current balances. But whatever balance it is, Yi Jing means book of change, right? Jing means book, Yi means change. It's a book about change. So it sets up some ingredients and then says, okay, now they're changing, whatever they are. Try to find out what are our ingredients, and whatever they are, we've got to, like, let go of them so that we can tune into the change. Yeah. Well, we could have another period of meditation before lunch, if you'd like, would you? Okay.

[94:00]

So thank you for your expressions, and I will ask for more this afternoon. And so be ready. So now we could have walking meditation, and then sitting meditation, and then lunch.

[94:17]

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